AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE RELATIVE MOTIONS BETWEEN A FLOATING HARBOUR TRANSHIPPER AND A FEEDER VESSEL IN REGULAR WAVES

The Floating Harbour Transhipper (FHT) is a pioneering logistics solution that was designed to meet the growing demands for coastal transhipment in the mining sector as well as commercial port operations. The primary advantage of the FHT system is that it can reduce transhipment delays caused by inclement weather, by reducing relative motions between the FHT and feeder vessel. The feeder is sheltered when inside the FHT well dock when compared to the more exposed location when a feeder is in a traditional side-by-side mooring arrangement. This paper discusses previously published studies into the relative motions of vessels engaged in side-by-side mooring arrangements and also presents details and results from a series of physical scale model experiments. In these experiments, both side-by-side and aft well dock mooring arrangements are investigated. The results provide strong evidence that the FHT well dock concept can significantly reduce the heave, pitch and roll motions of feeder vessels when transhipping in open seas – this being the cornerstone of any successful open water transhipment operation.

Hypothesis: The highly folded brain surface might be structured and located so as to facilitate inter-brain synchronization

We integrate recent findings from neuro-anatomy, electroencephalography, quantum biology and social/neurodevelopment to propose that the brain surface might be specialised for communication with other brains. Ground breaking, but still small-scale, research has demonstrated that human brains can act in synchrony and detect the brain activity of other human brains. Group aggregation, in all species, maximises community support and safety but does not depend on verbal or visual interaction. The morphology of the brain’s outermost layers, across a wide range of species, exhibits a highly folded fractal structure that is likely to maximise exchange at the surface: in humans, a reduced brain surface area is associated with disorders of social communication. The brain sits in a vulnerable exposed location where it is prone to damage, rather than being housed in a central location such as within the ribcage. These observations have led us to the hypothesis that the brain surface might be specialised for interacting with other brains at its surface, allowing synchronous non-verbal interaction. To our knowledge, this has not previously been proposed or investigated.

Multisite interaction with Sufu regulates Ci/Gli activity through distinct mechanisms in Hh signal transduction

The tumor suppressor protein Suppressor of fused (Sufu) plays a conserved role in the Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway by inhibiting Cubitus interruptus (Ci)/Glioma-associated oncogene homolog (Gli) transcription factors, but the molecular mechanism by which Sufu inhibits Ci/Gli activity remains poorly understood. Here we show that Sufu can bind Ci/Gli through a C-terminal Sufu-interacting site (SIC) in addition to a previously identified N-terminal site (SIN), and that both SIC and SIN are required for optimal inhibition of Ci/Gli by Sufu. We show that Sufu can sequester Ci/Gli in the cytoplasm through binding to SIN while inhibiting Ci/Gli activity in the nucleus depending on SIC. We also find that binding of Sufu to SIC and the middle region of Ci can impede recruitment of the transcriptional coactivator CBP by masking its binding site in the C-terminal region of Ci. Indeed, moving the CBP-binding site to an “exposed” location can render Ci resistant to Sufu-mediated inhibition in the nucleus. Hence, our study identifies a previously unidentified and conserved Sufu-binding motif in the C-terminal region of Ci/Gli and provides mechanistic insight into how Sufu inhibits Ci/Gli activity in the nucleus.

An Experimental Study On The Relative Motions Between A Floating Harbour Transhipper And A Feeder Vessel In Regular Waves - Technical Note

The Floating Harbour Transhipper (FHT) is a pioneering logistics solution that was designed to meet the growing demands for coastal transhipment in the mining sector as well as commercial port operations. The primary advantage of the FHT system is that it can reduce transhipment delays caused by inclement weather, by reducing relative motions between the FHT and feeder vessel. The feeder is sheltered when inside the FHT well dock when compared to the more exposed location when a feeder is in a traditional side-by-side mooring arrangement. This paper discusses previously published studies into the relative motions of vessels engaged in side-by-side mooring arrangements and also presents details and results from a series of physical scale model experiments. In these experiments, both side-by-side and aft well dock mooring arrangements are investigated. The results provide strong evidence that the FHT well dock concept can significantly reduce the heave, pitch and roll motions of feeder vessels when transhipping in open seas – this being the cornerstone of any successful open water transhipment operation.

The House as a Cosmology

One of the most popular sub-disciplines of archaeology is experimental archaeology, the re-creation of items, structures, and practices of past societies in the present day. This area of study has a long pedigree in Continental Europe, but was a relatively late development in Britain. One of the pioneers of this approach was Peter Reynolds, who created the Butser Ancient Farm Research Project to explore life in the Iron Age (Reynolds 1979). When it was set up, in the 1970s, experimental archaeology was undertaken with full scientific rigour. Important goals included the quantification of resources required to create a house, the management of ancient breeds of domestic animals, the productivity of Welds of ancient cereals, and the function of pits. All these tasks were carried out with a critical attention to detailed data recording and scientific rigour. More recently, experimental archaeology has become geared towards the general public, and though Butser Farm has retained a scientific core to its activities it also caters for a wider public, providing both knowledge and entertainment about past societies. I had a brief experience of this work in 1977 when I took part in a week-long Weld school at Butser Farm, organized by Glasgow University. This was a key period in the development of the Iron Age farm. The original farm had been created on a spur near the top of Butser, specifically away from easy public access and in a very exposed location. Public interest in the experiment had become difficult to manage and a new site had just been located in the Queen Elizabeth Country Park, a much more accessible location near the main road from Portsmouth to London. The new location was designed to be a public amenity that would attract visitors to the Country Park and represented a move from ‘Laboratory to Living Museum’ (Reynolds 1979: 93). The main job we were to undertake was to help with the construction of a large roundhouse that would form the centre of the new farm. Two previous timber houses had been built up on the hill, but both had been fairly modest affairs; one was based on a house plan from Wheeler’s excavation at Maiden Castle, the other was slightly larger and based on the excavation of a house in the Balksbury enclosure, Hampshire (Reynolds 1979).

Measurements and modelling of snowmelt and turbulent heat fluxes over shrub tundra

Measurements of snowmelt and turbulent heat fluxes were made during the snowmelt periods of two years at two neighbouring tundra sites in the Yukon, one in a sheltered location with tall shrubs exposed above deep snow and the other in an exposed location with dwarf shrubs covered by shallow snow. The site with buried vegetation showed a transition from air-to-surface heat transfers to surface-to-air heat transfers as bare ground became exposed during snowmelt, but there were daytime transfers of heat from the surface to the air at the site with exposed vegetation even while snow remained on the ground. A model calculating separate energy balances for snow and exposed vegetation, driven with meteorological data from the sites, is found to be able to reproduce these behaviours. Sensitivity of simulated fluxes to model parameters describing vegetation cover and density is investigated.

Numerical Modelling of Automatic Mooring Winches Applied to Moored Ships in Harbours

In order to control excessive motions of moored ships, automatic mooring winches, namely constant tension winches and automatic tension winches, have been employed. It has been common practice the recovering force in automatic tension winches never becoming lower than one third of the rendering force. However, the existence of such a non-zero recovering force implies that the cable where that force is applied to may be counteracting the rendering force produced on an opposing cable by another winch. Ideally, winches should only produce forces to reduce ship motions, hence the recovering force should be zero. This paper describes the use of a numerical model for moored ship behaviour in the study of the effects of automatic tension winches in the motion amplitudes of a 108 416 m3 displacement ship moored in two different conditions: a) alone at an exposed location; b) 30 m apart from a vertical breakwater. Additional cables connected to automatic mooring winches are considered and the change from idealized conditions where the cables apply forces on the ship with no vertical component to realistic conditions where such component exists is investigated as well as the influence of the recovering force on the ship motions for the ship subject to regular head waves.

Preliminary information on cod and haddock production in submerged cages off the coast of New Hampshire, USA

The University of New Hampshire's Open Ocean Aquaculture project is intended to evaluate the potential development of offshore aquaculture in the northeastern United States. As part of this project, both cod (Gadus morhua) and haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) were raised in submerged cages at an exposed location 14 km off the coast of New Hampshire, USA. In September 2003, at a mean weight of 45 g, 30 000 cod were transferred offshore into a 200-m3 nursery net located inside a 3000-m3 cage submerged 12 m below the surface. Cod were later released into the main cage at a mean weight of 90 g and are intended to be grown to a market size of 2–3 kg. As of February 2005, the cod averaged 652 g, had a 92% survival rate, an FCR of 1.49, and an SGR of 0.49% d−1. Haddock research was initiated in mid-September 2002, when 3000 haddock (16 g mean weight) were transferred to a 35-m3 inshore nursery pen. By mid-December 2002, their mean weight had increased to 78 g, and the fish were transferred to an offshore cage. As of February 2005, the haddock had a survival rate of 92%, mean weight of 1360 g, FCR of 2.36, and SGR of 0.35% d−1.

The Plasmodial Surface Anion Channel Is Functionally Conserved in Divergent Malaria Parasites

ABSTRACT The plasmodial surface anion channel (PSAC), a novel ion channel induced on human erythrocytes infected with Plasmodium falciparum, mediates increased permeability to nutrients and presumably supports intracellular parasite growth. Isotope flux studies indicate that other malaria parasites also increase the permeability of their host erythrocytes, but the precise mechanisms are unknown. Channels similar to PSAC or alternative mechanisms, such as the upregulation of endogenous host transporters, might fulfill parasite nutrient demands. Here we evaluated these possibilities with rhesus monkey erythrocytes infected with Plasmodium knowlesi, a parasite phylogenetically distant from P. falciparum. Tracer flux and osmotic fragility studies revealed dramatically increased permeabilities paralleling changes seen after P. falciparum infection. Patch-clamp of P. knowlesi-infected rhesus erythrocytes revealed an anion channel with striking similarities to PSAC: its conductance, voltage-dependent gating, pharmacology, selectivity, and copy number per infected cell were nearly identical. Our findings implicate a family of unusual anion channels highly conserved on erythrocytes infected with various malaria parasites. Together with PSAC's exposed location on the host cell surface and its central role in transport changes after infection, this conservation supports development of antimalarial drugs against the PSAC family.