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Maize is the most important crop grown in South Africa, but yields can be severely reduced by extreme high summer average temperatures and low precipitation, potentially adversely affecting both domestic consumption and regional food security exports. To help understand and manage climate risks to food security in Southern Africa it is essential to quantify the present-day likelihood and magnitude of climate extremes in South Africa’s maize-growing region and explore the potential for unprecedented climate conditions which would likely result in record low maize yields. We analyse a large ensemble of initialised climate model simulations, which provides almost 100 times as many plausible present-day summers as the equivalent observational dataset. We quantify the risk of unprecedented climate extremes affecting maize production in South Africa and examine the role of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. We find that the South African maize region is at risk of experiencing record-breaking hot, cold, dry or wet events under current climatic conditions. We find that the annual chance of unprecedented high temperatures in South Africa is approximately 4%, increasing to 62% during very strong El Niño years. We also find that the chance of exceeding the present day seasonal high temperature record has increased across the 1979–2018 period, being five times more likely now than it was in 1980. These extreme events could result in a record-breaking number of days above the optimum, or even the maximum, temperature for maize production, and lead to more severe floods or droughts. Under climate change scenarios, the magnitude and frequency of climate extremes is projected to increase meaning that the unprecedented extremes studied here could become commonplace in the future. This suggests that significant investment is needed to develop adaptations that manage the climate-related risks to food systems now and build resilience to the projected impacts of climate change.

Abstract - In the following pages, a brief, personal outline of the history of translation is sketched, so as to determine the whys and wherefores of the form/content dichotomy that seems to be plaguing translators and translation theorists incessantly. From the outset, in Classical times, sense rules supreme. In the late middle ages with the advent of Bible translation in Europe, the word – being the word of God – assumes new-found importance, especially as any deviation from it implies heresy. With Neo-Classicism and the Age of Enlightenment, the original tenets of antiquity unsurprisingly make their comeback, though somewhat short-lived this time. With the Romantics and post-Romantics, foreign lands and cultures gain ever greater interest, as indeed do their various forms of expressions. In contemporary Europe, over the last hundred years or so, with its preoccupation for markets and product diversification, the two schools of thought seem to co-habit quite comfortably, notwithstanding modern linguistic theory that renders form and content into indivisible components of language, thus making the dichotomy fatuous. Riassunto - Nelle pagine seguenti si delinea brevemente una traccia personale della storia della traduzione in modo da determinare i motivi della dicotomia forma/contenuto che pare affliggere costantemente i traduttori e teorici della traduzione. Fin dall'inizio dell’epoca classica, il senso regna sovrano. La parola è considerata spesso niente più di un veicolo modesto per la sublimità del pensiero. Soltanto nel tardo medioevo, con l'avvento della traduzione della Bibbia in Europa, la parola,essendo la parola di Dio, assume una nuova importanza, in quanto ogni deviazione da essa significa un’eresia. Con il Neoclassicismo e l’Illuminismo non sorprende che i principi originali dell'antichità facciano ritorno, anche se solo per breve tempo. Con il Romanticismo e il post-Romanticismo, cresce l’interesse per le terre e le culture straniere, nonché per vari modi in cui si esprimono. Nel corso degli ultimi cento anni circa, nell’Europa contemporanea, con la preoccupazione per i mercati e la diversificazione dei prodotti, le due scuole di pensiero sembrano convivere piuttosto tranquillamente, nonostante lo sviluppo della teoria della linguistica moderna che considera forma e contenuto componenti indivisibili del linguaggio. Di conseguenza il problema della dicotomia non sussiste più.

In the following pages, a brief, personal outline of the history of translation is sketched, so as to determine the whys and wherefores of the form/content dichotomy that seems to be plaguing translators and translation theorists incessantly. From the outset, in Classical times, sense rules supreme. In the late middle ages with the advent of Bible translation in Europe, the word - being the word of God - assumes new-found importance, especially as any deviation from it implies heresy. With Neo-Classicism and the Age of Enlightenment, the original tenets of antiquity unsurprisingly make their comeback, though somewhat short-lived this time. With the Romantics and post-Romantics, foreign lands and cultures gain ever greater interest, as indeed do their various forms of expressions. In contemporary Europe, over the last hundred years or so, with its preoccupation for markets and product diversification, the two schools of thought seem to co-habit quite comfortably, notwithstanding modern linguistic theory that renders form and content into indivisible components of language, thus making the dichotomy fatuous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We performed simulations with the existing MIRO&CO-3D ecological model to assess the present-day magnitude and geographical extent of undesirable Phaeocystis colony blooms in the Southern Bight of the North Sea (SBNS) receiving anthropogenic nutrient inputs from large European rivers that mix with the inflowing Atlantic waters. The criterion of 4·106Phaeocystis colonial cells L-1 of Lancelot et al. (2009) is used to scale the presence of undesirable bloom. These simulations are compared with a reconstructed pristine SBNS ecosystem making use of nutrient inputs calculated with the Seneque/Riverstrahler model of the river system when all human activities on the watershed have been erased. Interannual variability is considered by performing model runs for two contrasted meteorological years: wet (2001) and dry (2005). Results show a large excess of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) delivery to the SBNS, i.e., 12 and 5 times the pristine situation respectively. In contrast, the total silicon (Si) input is decreased with respect to natural conditions due to freshwater diatom growth in some eutrophied rivers. Qualitatively, rivers deliver nutrients in large Si excess for pristine condition but N excess for both 2001 and 2005, when scaled to the N, P and Si requirement of coastal diatoms. Responding to the river nutrient inputs, either natural or of anthropogenic origin, phytoplankton blooms are simulated in the vicinity of the river mouths, especially in the eastern SBNS receiving 78-98% of the direct river inputs. In this area nutrients cumulate along a SW-NE gradient and the bloom is forming a wide ribbon parallel to the coast. A short time-delay is simulated between the western and eastern SBNS due to light limitation imposed by the amount of suspended particles carried by the Thames River. A spring diatom-Phaeocystis succession is simulated for both present-day and pristine condition. Diatoms dominate the bulk of the pristine phytoplankton community; Phaeocystis colonies develop in the whole domain, especially in the Thames and Scheldt river plume though their biomass remains low and never exceed the threshold of 4·106 cells L-1. In contrast, present-day Phaeocystis colonies start growing when diatoms attain their maximum in April, co-occur with and supplement them in May and June, reaching colonial cells densities >4·106 cells L-1 in many locations of the SBNS. Overall, Phaeocystis colonies are favored by wet meteorological conditions that enhance river N delivery. The geographical extent of undesirable Phaeocystis blooms thus varies between dry and wet years and affects 72% of the modeled SBNS domain distributed in three areas: the eastern band (90%), the Thames plume (6%) and a small offshore area (4%) possibly connected to the eastern band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Mars Workshop on Amazonian and Present-Day Climate was held in June 2018. In this paper, we describe the context and motivations for the Workshop and summarize the proceedings. In particular, we identify 37 high-priority Mars Amazonian and present-day climate questions that arose from presentations and discussion at the workshop, which we group under Key Questions on (1) interpreting the record in the Polar Layered Deposits, (2) identifying and characterizing off-polar climate records (such as large subsurface mid-latitude ice deposits and signs of aqueous alteration), (3) the global budget of dust/sand, salts, and ice, and (4) the global movement of these materials. These 37 questions pertain to processes in the atmosphere, surface, and subsurface active in the present and past, as well as the record they leave of the historical climate. As many of the processes of interest are interconnected, the questions we present are often intertwined; some questions are identified as being of highest-priority because of their larger scientific value and/or that addressing it would contribute important information towards answering many other questions. Related to the high-priority questions, we identify key measurements in the areas of PLD formation and evolution, surface change/interactions, state of global reservoirs, and environmental (surface/atmospheric) conditions. Our objective is for these lists of high-priority questions and measurements to contribute towards discussion of future Mars scientific exploration, and to record the state of Mars Amazonian climate knowledge as of the time of our workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Atlantic-Mediterranean polychaete Sabellaria alveolata lives in agglutinated tubes adjoined to each other to form discrete reef-like bioconstructions in shallow-water settings characterised by high hydrodynamic energy where sediment particles are constantly resuspended. Tubes are built with sand grains glued by proteinaceous secretions. Analyses of a reef fragment collected near Sampieri (SE Sicily, Sicily Strait) allowed the first detailed description of the tube architecture and biocement of this worms from the Mediterranean. The tube consists of an inner thin organic membrane and three agglutinated layers including: (a) a thin inner layer of flat grains arranged side by side; (b) a thick mid layer with a frame of relatively large sub-rounded grains with cavities partly filled by small grains; and (c) a thin outer layer of large, flat to curved, usually biogenic clasts diverging towards the opening. This particular architecture is distinctive of the family. Morphological and epifluorescence observations revealed that biocement consists of drops at the contact between sub-spherical grains and strips along edges of flat grains. Biocement is a solid foam-like material characterised by high abundance of carbon; the presence of phosphorous and nitrogen confirms its proteinaceous composition. Due to the electrostatic interaction with the proteins, calcium and magnesium are most likely complexed to the cement rather than being trapped in the cells. These elements contribute to the solidification of the glue and stabilisation of the tube structure. However, the organic nature of cement and the high energy of their habitat, make sabellariid reefs dynamic and ephemeral, and the preservation as fossils unlikely, with a confident record only extending back to the Miocene., (© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)