Eight urgent,fundamental and simultaneous steps needed to restore ocean health,and the consequences for humanity and the planet of inaction or delay

1. The ocean crisis is urgent and central to human wellbeing and life on Earth; past and current activities are damaging the planet's main life support system for future generations. We are witnessing an increase in ocean heat, disturbance, acidification, bio‐invasions and nutrients, and reducing oxygen levels. Several of these act like ratchets: once detrimental or negative changes have occurred, they may lock in place and may not be reversible, especially at gross ecological and ocean process scales.
2. Each change may represent a loss to humanity of resources, ecosystem function, oxygen production and species. The longer we pursue unsuitable actions, the more we close the path to recovery and better ocean health and greater benefits for humanity in the future.
3. We stand at a critical juncture and have identified eight priority issues that need to be addressed in unison to help avert a potential ecological disaster in the global ocean. They form a purposely ambitious agenda for global governance and are aimed at informing decision‐makers at a high level. They should also be of interest to the general public.
4. Of all the themes, the highest priority is to rigorously address global warming and limit surface temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2100, as warming is the pre‐eminent factor driving change in the ocean. The other themes are establishing a robust and comprehensive High Seas Treaty, enforcing existing standards for Marine Protected Areas and expanding their coverage, especially in terms of high levels of protection, adopting a precautionary pause on deep‐sea mining, ending overfishing and destructive fishing practices, radically reducing marine pollution, putting in place a financing mechanism for ocean management and protection, and lastly, scaling up science/data gathering and facilitating data sharing.
5. By implementing all eight measures in unison, as a coordinated strategy, we can build resilience to climate change, help sustain fisheries productivity, particularly for low‐income countries dependent on fisheries, protect coasts (e.g. via soft‐engineering/habitat‐based approaches), promote mitigation (e.g. carbon storage) and enable improved adaptation to rapid global change.

     

Identification of three triterpenoids in almond hulls

Three triterpenoids, betulinic acid, oleanolic acid, and ursolic acid, were isolated as their methyl esters (treatment with diazomethane) from diethyl ether extracts of almond hulls (Nonpareil variety) using flash chromatography and preparative high-performance liquid chromatography. The triterpenoids, which comprised approximately 1% of the hulls, were characterized using chromatographic and spectroscopic methods. These studies demonstrate that almond hulls are a rich source of these triterpenoids, which have reported anti-inflammatory, anti-HIV, and anti-cancer activities.     

Catecholamine-induced alteration in sedimentation behavior of membrane bound beta-adrenergic receptors

Incubation of astrocytoma cells with catecholamines results in a decrease in catecholamine-stimulated adenylate cyclase activity and a concomitant alteration in the sedimentation properties of particulate beta-adrenergic receptors. The altered receptors exhibit agonist binding properties similar to those of receptors that are "uncoupled" from adenylate cyclase.     

STUDIES ON EQUINE HERPESVIRUSES 5. Isolation and Characterisation of Slowly Cytopathic Equine Herpesviruses in Queensland

The isolation and characterization of 71 strains of slowly cytopathic herpesviruses (EHV2) from horses in Queensland is described. Specimens from aged horses at slaughter yielded 7 isolates from leucocytes and 4 from tonsils, but EHV2 strains could not be detected in salivary glands, spleen, kidney or intestinal wall. A further EHV2 strain (EK550) was isolated from cell cultures prepared from the kidney of an adult horse. Repeated sampling yielded 39 nasal, ocular and genital EHV2 strains from a group of 16 mares and their young foals, and 20 strains from a group of 6 yearlings.
Laboratory examination of these EHV2 strains demonstrated variations in plaque size and growth in non-host cell cultures, and at least two serological groups were detected. EHV2 infection of foals transplacentally was not detected, but neonatal infection of foals from chronically infected mares appeared probable.     

The impact of boreal forest fire on climate warming

We report measurements and analysis of a boreal forest fire, integrating the effects of greenhouse gases, aerosols, black carbon deposition on snow and sea ice, and postfire changes in surface albedo. The net effect of all agents was to increase radiative forcing during the first year (34 +/- 31 Watts per square meter of burned area), but to decrease radiative forcing when averaged over an 80-year fire cycle (-2.3 +/- 2.2 Watts per square meter) because multidecadal increases in surface albedo had a larger impact than fire-emitted greenhouse gases. This result implies that future increases in boreal fire may not accelerate climate warming.     

A Standardized Method for the Instrumental Determination of Cooked Spaghetti Firmness

A standardized method to determine cooked spaghetti firmness was developed. The effects of process and instrument variables were investigated and optimized to provide reproducible results between laboratories and to enable discrimination among samples with similar firmness characteristics. Commercial spaghetti samples of varying thickness were chosen to artificially create a range in firmness, and used to investigate the effect of a wide range of variables on cooked spaghetti firmness including sample preparation, cooking procedure, postcooking treatment, sample presentation, and instrument settings. Cooked spaghetti firmness determined using a TA‐XT2i texture analyzer was significantly affected by optimum cook time, postcook cooling, rest time, and crosshead speed (P < 0.001), as well as strand length, spaghetti to cooking water ratio, number of strands cut, and strand position (P < 0.05). Although previous work showed a reasonable correlation between laboratories when using in‐house methods (r = 0.85), the correlation improved to r = 0.96 when using the standardized method to analyze 29 commercially produced spaghetti samples. The Spearman rank correlation increased from r_s = 0.81 to r_s = 0.95, prestandardization and poststandardization, indicating greater agreement between laboratories in sample ranking.