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- Blunden, Jessica, et al.
(author)
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State of the Climate in 2012
- 2013
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In: Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS). - 0003-0007 .- 1520-0477. ; 94:8, s. S1-S258
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- For the first time in serveral years, the El Nino-Southern Oscillation did not dominate regional climate conditions around the globe. A weak La Ni a dissipated to ENSOneutral conditions by spring, and while El Nino appeared to be emerging during summer, this phase never fully developed as sea surface temperatures in the eastern conditions. Nevertheless, other large-scale climate patterns and extreme weather events impacted various regions during the year. A negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation from mid-January to early February contributed to frigid conditions in parts of northern Africa, eastern Europe, and western Asia. A lack of rain during the 2012 wet season led to the worst drought in at least the past three decades for northeastern Brazil. Central North America also experienced one of its most severe droughts on record. The Caribbean observed a very wet dry season and it was the Sahel's wettest rainy season in 50 years. Overall, the 2012 average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces ranked among the 10 warmest years on record. The global land surface temperature alone was also among the 10 warmest on record. In the upper atmosphere, the average stratospheric temperature was record or near-record cold, depending on the dataset. After a 30-year warming trend from 1970 to 1999 for global sea surface temperatures, the period 2000-12 had little further trend. This may be linked to the prevalence of La Ni a-like conditions during the 21st century. Heat content in the upper 700 m of the ocean remained near record high levels in 2012. Net increases from 2011 to 2012 were observed at 700-m to 2000-m depth and even in the abyssal ocean below. Following sharp decreases in to the effects of La Ni a, sea levels rebounded to reach records highs in 2012. The increased hydrological cycle seen in recent years continued, with more evaporation in drier locations and more precipitation in rainy areas. In a pattern that has held since 2004, salty areas of the ocean surfaces and subsurfaces were anomalously salty on average, while fresher areas were anomalously fresh. Global tropical cyclone activity during 2012 was near average, with a total of 84 storms compared with the 1981-2010 average of 89. Similar to 2010 and 2011, the North Atlantic was the only hurricane basin that experienced above-normal activity. In this basin, Sandy brought devastation to Cuba and parts of the eastern North American seaboard. All other basins experienced either near-or below-normal tropical cyclone activity. Only three tropical cyclones reached Category 5 intensity-all in Bopha became the only storm in the historical record to produce winds greater than 130 kt south of 7 N. It was also the costliest storm to affect the Philippines and killed more than 1000 residents. Minimum Arctic sea ice extent in September and Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in June both reached new record lows. June snow cover extent is now declining at a faster rate (-17.6% per decade) than September sea ice extent (-13.0% per decade). Permafrost temperatures reached record high values in northernmost Alaska. A new melt extent record occurred on 11-12 July on the Greenland ice sheet; 97% of the ice sheet showed some form of melt, four times greater than the average melt for this time of year. The climate in Antarctica was relatively stable overall. The largest maximum sea ice extent since records begain in 1978 was observed in September 2012. In the stratosphere, warm air led to the second smallest ozone hole in the past two decades. Even so, the springtime ozone layer above Antarctica likely will not return to its early 1980s state until about 2060. Following a slight decline associated with the global 2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production reached a record 9.5 +/- 0.5 Pg C in 2011 and a new record of 9.7 +/- 0.5 Pg C is estimated for 2012. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 2.1 ppm in 2012, to 392.6 ppm. In spring 2012, 2 concentration exceeded 400 ppm at 7 of the 13 Arctic observation sites. Globally, other greenhouse gases including methane and nitrous oxide also continued to rise in concentration and the combined effect now represents a 32% increase in radiative forcing over a 1990 baseline. Concentrations of most ozone depleting substances continued to fall.
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- Dietze, Stefan, et al.
(author)
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Interlinking educational resources and the web of data A survey of challenges and approaches
- 2013
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In: Program. - : Emerald. - 0033-0337 .- 1758-7301. ; 47:1, s. 60-91
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Purpose - Research in the area of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) throughout the last decade has largely focused on sharing and reusing educational resources and data. This effort has led to a fragmented landscape of competing metadata schemas, or interface mechanisms. More recently, semantic technologies were taken into account to improve interoperability. The linked data approach has emerged as the de facto standard for sharing data on the web. To this end, it is obvious that the application of linked data principles offers a large potential to solve interoperability issues in the field of TEL. This paper aims to address this issue. Design/methodology/approach - In this paper, approaches are surveyed that are aimed towards a vision of linked education, i.e. education which exploits educational web data. It particularly considers the exploitation of the wealth of already existing TEL data on the web by allowing its exposure as linked data and by taking into account automated enrichment and interlinking techniques to provide rich and well-interlinked data for the educational domain. Findings - So far web-scale integration of educational resources is not facilitated, mainly due to the lack of take-up of shared principles, datasets and schemas. However, linked data principles increasingly are recognized by the TEL community. The paper provides a structured assessment and classification of existing challenges and approaches, serving as potential guideline for researchers and practitioners in the field. Originality/value - Being one of the first comprehensive surveys on the topic of linked data for education, the paper has the potential to become a widely recognized reference publication in the area.
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- Martinez-Tomas, Rebeca, et al.
(author)
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Daily intake of fruit and vegetable soups processed in different ways increases human serum beta-carotene and lycopene concentrations and reduces levels of several oxidative stress markers in healthy subjects
- 2012
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In: Food Chemistry. - : Elsevier BV. - 0308-8146 .- 1873-7072. ; 134:1, s. 127-133
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The effect of daily intakes of two differently processed fruit and vegetable soups on beta-carotene and lycopene bioavailability, oxidative stress and cardiovascular risk biomarkers was investigated. An optimised soup produced using heat treatments and high pressure homogenisation for high nutrient retention, and a traditionally produced reference soup were tested. Serum beta-carotene concentration was significantly higher with the optimised than with the reference soup after the supplementation (0.41 +/- 0.05 vs. 0.24 +/- 0.03 mu M, respectively), whereas the serum lycopene concentration was higher in subjects consuming the reference (0.06 +/- 0.02 vs. 0.16 +/- 0.02 mu M). The change in serum homocysteine levels tended to be greater in the optimised group (-1.67 +/- 0.63 vs. 0.02 +/- 0.17 mu M, p = 0.06). Serum antioxidant enzyme activity decreased significantly with consumption of both soups, but to a greater extent with the optimised soup. The consumption of the fruit and vegetable soups increased serum beta-carotene and lycopene concentrations and reduced the levels of several oxidative stress makers, particularly in subjects consuming the optimised soup.
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- Sanchez-Campillo, M., et al.
(author)
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Changes in carotenoid concentration in human postprandial chylomicrons and antioxidant effect in HepG2 caused by differently processed fruit and vegetable soups.
- 2012
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In: Food Chemistry. - : Elsevier BV. - 0308-8146 .- 1873-7072. ; 133:1, s. 38-44
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Ten subjects consumed one serving of an optimised or a reference soup produced using modified or traditional processing methods, respectively. Both soups contained the same proportions of carrot, tomato and broccoli, but with 5% olive oil in the optimised soup and 2.5% in the reference soup. The β-carotene content in 600 mL of the optimised/reference soups was 4.10/2.90 mg, and the lycopene content was 3.90/2.71 mg. The β-carotene and lycopene concentrations in chylomicrons isolated from blood serum samples were similar for both groups. Only 50% of subjects could be considered as carotenoid responders and, in agreement with in vitro accessibility data, the β-carotene concentration in the chylomicrons of these subjects was significantly higher in the group consuming the optimised soup, while no changes were found for lycopene. Postprandial chylomicrons from the optimised soup group exhibited significantly higher antioxidant activity in HepG2 cells than the other group. The stimulation of HepG2 cells by human postprandial chylomicrons seems useful for evaluating the antioxidant effect of different food matrices. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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- Sicilia, Miguel-Angel, et al.
(author)
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Navigating learning resources through linked data : A preliminary report on the re-design of organic.edunet
- 2011
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In: Linked Learning 2011 eLearning Approaches for the Linked Data Age. - : Rheinisch-Westfaelische Technische Hochschule Aachen. ; , s. 1-8
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Learning objects repositories have grown and matured in the last years, being currently a cornerstone for open education. Several current systems are offering metadata openly through mainstream harvesting protocols or providing standardized query interfaces. Also, the use of standardized vocabularies or ontologies is becoming more common to provide a degree of semantic interoperability. However, learning object metadata is typically not linked across repositories, and it is not providing a way to navigate by using other sources of data available on the Web. The linked open data (LOD) approach provides the framework for the evolution of learning object repositories into a more flexible system of sharing learning resource metadata. This paper describes how linked data has been integrated in the design and redesign of the export mechanisms of Organic.Edunet, a federation of learning repositories in the domain of organic agriculture that uses an RDF store and several ontologies to browse and search resources. The paper focuses on how the existing search and semantic browsing mechanisms can benefit from the use of LOD across repositories.
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