UOA (ΕΚΠΑ)

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Mortality rates of trees in Amazonian rainforests have been increasing for at least 20 years. Yet, there have been no real attempts to understand the mechanistic basis of this result. TREMOR will use a combination of forest inventory data analysis and process-based modelling to investigate several hypotheses that could explain the increases in mortality. These hypotheses include (i) increasing wind disturbance, (ii) increasing drought frequency, (iii) increasing liana abundance, (iv) increased competition and (v) faster senescence. Finally, we hope to scale-up the impacts of increasing tree mortality on Amazon-wide carbon storage by using a dynamic global vegetation model.

The Feedback Musicianship Network (FMN) responds to the need to fill current gaps in knowledge around feedback instruments; we need a common language to describe their complex behaviour, and better understandings of: luthiery in hybrid instruments, virtuosity, composition and notation techniques. The FMN brings stakeholders in feedback musicianship together to establish a new research agenda addressing these gaps, and to build a community hub. This will stimulate and guide future developments in this field, supporting a new generation of instruments and musical practices. Feedback instruments offer a radically different way of engaging with musical practice compared to traditional instruments. They are defined by recirculation of signals through the instrument, which give the instrument 'a life of its own'; the player must guide the instrument rather than controlling it. They possess 'a stimulating uncontrollability' (Ulfarsson, 2019). The use of musical feedback began in the 1950s. Now, a new generation of instruments are using hybrid digital/electronic/acoustic technologies to refine the behaviour of the feedback, creating entirely new musical experiences, and providing fertile areas for creative new instrument designs and modes of musical practice. An example is the Feedback Cello, an acoustic cello augmented with string pickups and exciters; the string signals pass through external effects, and return to the cello through the exciters. This creates a feedback loop which the player navigates by damping and stimulating the strings, or by controlling the external effects. This is a radically different way of playing the cello, effectively turning it into a new instrument. In order to support the next generation of these instruments, we need to advance our understanding of how to shape the behaviour of complex feedback loops, and how to design and build instruments which are essentially hybrids, mixing complex signal processing with traditional acoustic luthiery, and electromechanical transducers that link these two domains. We also need to gain better understanding of the culture surrounding these instruments. This research demands interdisciplinary approaches involving music, engineering, mathematics, philosophy, design and computer science. The FMN will bring these groups together, along with practicing artists and industry representatives, for workshops and symposia at three themed network meetings: (1) Design, Making and Innovation, Aalborg University Copenhagen, (2) Musicianship and Notation, Berlin, (3) Approaches to Signal Processing, University of Sussex. The network will also run two longitudinal activities linking the three meetings: (1) composition of a piece for feedback ensemble, (2) progress reports from musicians learning and developing feedback instruments. These meetings will enable the community to establish a future research agenda, stimulate new activity in instrument design supported by knowledge exchange, and map out creative practices in feedback musicianship in order to guide future cultural engagement. The FMN has a strong interdisciplinary set of confirmed participants, and is guided by a highly qualified advisory board. It will engage further participants through live streaming and archiving of network events. The FMN will disseminate research though three peer reviewed journal articles, the key output being a research review and future research roadmap. Another key output of the network will be a new online hub for feedback musicians; we aim for this to become a focal point for the community to support future developments. The network will engage with the public at four concerts, also available online. Through concerts, knowledge exchange, and online sharing, the network will create impact by engaging the wider public in feedback musicianship, stimulating the design of new instruments and artistic practices, and by creating new dialogues between researchers and the public

Santorini is a major volcano in the Aegean sea (Greece), which is best known for a major eruption (the Minoan eruption) that occurred about 3,600 years ago, and has been implicated in major environmental and political impacts across the eastern Mediterranean. Since that eruption, which formed a large caldera, now flooded by the sea, volcanic activity at Santorini has been restricted to a small region in the middle of the caldera. Over the past 500 years, six moderate eruptions have taken place, forming the young islands of Nea and Palea Kameni. These eruptions have usually happened with little warning - a few very small earthquakes; some movements of the islands (up and down), and some changes in the seawater around the many hotsprings in the area. Each of these eruptions has involved the slow squeezing out of lava, with a few more dramatic explosions and the ejection of blocks of lava, ash and noxious gases. The last, and smallest, of these eruptions took place in 1950. Since 1950, Santorini has been quiescent - with very few earthqaukes, and very little gas emission. Recently, during fieldwork, we measured a large increase in gas emission rates from near the youngest volcanic vent. We have also now seen some rapid movements of the main island of Santorini (measured by GPS), and of New Kameni (measure by satellite): these show that the islands are being lifted up by a few centimetres per month. There has also been a major swarm of very small earthquakes, some of which have been large enough to be felt by the residents of the islands. We think that all of this evidence shows that Santorini has begun a significant phase of 'unrest'. The pattern of unrest that we have seen is similar to the signals reported that happen before some of the historical eruptions, amd we propose an intensive field campaign to measure the ground deformation and gas emissions, associated with the inflation of this major caldera volcano. Because there have been very few opportunities for scientists to monitor the behaviour of caldera volcanoes during periods of unrest, we really don't yet know how to distinguish between background activity, and activity which might happen before an eruption, at least until just a very short time before an eruption happens. For this reason, we wish to use this rare opportunity to measure the changes with a shallow disturbance at a quiescent but dangerous volcano.