The year 2015 is the 25th annum of the international disaster and risk reduction proposed by the United Nations. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) has achieved significant progress worldwide. The goals of disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and sustainable development have become the joint responsibility of all countries in their economic, societal, cultural, political, and ecological construction activities. In the past 25 years, UNISDR together with national governments, scientific community, NGOs, entrepreneur groups, media and various relevant regional organizations is gaining effective results in alleviating human being's casualties, property losses, and damages to resources and environment caused by natural hazards on the world and is earning a great reputation at every stratum of society as well. Nevertheless, data released by related UN organizations indicate that natural disaster and disaster risk are still on the rise globally. Some nations and regions are still extremely vulnerable to large-scale disasters, although significant progress has been made in DRR actions. Natural disaster risk reduction is still a long haul ahead. FoundationsThe global hot spots project jointly finished by the World Bank and Columbia University (the USA) is the first ever cartography of major natural disaster risks at the global scale (Dilley et al. 2005). The UNISDR Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR) inspired this Atlas (UN-ISDR 2009, 2011 All faculties and students of BNU on the disaster risk science and the international experts who participated in the IHDP/Future Earth-Integrated Risk Governance and "111 Project", as well as all the personnel involved in these two projects, throughout ten years of preparation, planning, and action, were organized to compile this atlas, aiming to reflect the spatial patterns of the main natural disaster risk all around the world. This atlas provides scientific evidence for taking effective measures of world natural disaster risk reduction by demonstrating the spatial variation from the following three spatial scales for the main natural disaster risk on the world: the grid unit (1°× 1°, 0.75°× 0.75°, 0.5°× 0.5°, 0.25°× 0.25°, 0.1°× 0.1°or 1 km × 1 km), the comparable geographic unit (about 448,334 km 2 per unit), and the national or regional unit (245 nations and regions). International Scientific and Technological CooperationClose cooperation with worldwide scientific institutions lays the scientific foundation of this Atlas. Scientific BasisThe World Atlas of Natural Disaster Risk attempts to reveal the spatial pattern of the risks of natural disaster which are mainly caused by physical hazards in the world with multiple perspectives of natural environment, exposure, disaster loss, and disaster risk with the framework of Regional Disaster System Theory (Shi 1991(Shi , 1996(Shi , 2002(Shi , 2005(Shi , 2009. It emphasizes the spatial-temporal pattern of worldwide natural disasters from the perspective of individual disasters and integrated disasters, in...

No abstract

No abstract

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) help many organisms protect themselves from freezing in subzero temperatures. The most active AFPs found to date are those from insects, which possess exceptionally regular beta-helical structures. On the ice-binding surface of these proteins, regularly arrayed water molecules are observed within the repeating Thr-Xxx-Thr motif, but the exact role of these water molecules remains unknown. In this work, we have employed a number of computational methods to examine the role of these water molecules in an AFP from Tenebrio molitor (TmAFP). Our investigation involved a combination of molecular and quantum mechanical approaches. Properties such as stability, interaction energy, orbital overlap, and conformational analysis of various systems, including TmAFP-water, TmAFP-water-ice, and TmAFP-ice, were systematically evaluated and compared. The regularly arrayed water molecules were found to remain associated with TmAFP before ice binding, demonstrating that they are an intrinsic part of the protein. These water molecules may assist TmAFP in the process of ice recognition and binding. However, after facilitating the initial stages of ice recognition and binding, these water molecules are excluded in the final formation of the AFP-ice complex. The departure of these water molecules enables a better two-dimensional match between TmAFP and ice. These results agree with experimental observations showing that although these water molecules are aligned with the ice-binding hydroxyl groups of Thr residues in one dimension, they are in fact positioned slightly off in the second dimension, making a good two-dimensional match impossible.

Climate change and its projected natural hazards have an adverse impact on the functionality and operation of transportation infrastructure systems. This study presents a comprehensive framework to analyze the risk to transportation infrastructure networks that are affected by natural hazards. The proposed risk analysis method considers both the failure probability of infrastructure components and the expected infrastructure network efficiency and capacity loss due to component failure. This comprehensive approach facilitates the identification of high-risk network links in terms of not only their susceptibility to natural hazards but also their overall impact on the network. The Chinese national rail system and its exposure to rainfall-related multihazards are used as a case study. The importance of various links is comprehensively assessed from the perspectives of topological, efficiency, and capacity criticality. Risk maps of the national railway system are generated, which can guide decisive action regarding investments in preventative and adaptive measures to reduce risk.