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SummaryThe scale-up of a microchannel reactor for Fischer-Tropsch (FT) synthesis has progressed through multiple scales. Equivalent process performance was demonstrated across each scale. Small single channel test reactors (~4 cm in length) have demonstrated excellent performance of an FT catalyst provided by Oxford Catalysts, Ltd. Catalyst from the same batch was tested in two long microchannel reactors (~62 cm in length), with equal performance at a GHSV of 12,400 hr -1 . Further the same catalyst replicated the performance from both short and long single channel reactors in a pilot reactor with 276 parallel process channels (~ 16 cm in length). The elusive premise of numbering up microchannel has been demonstrated, enabling the scale-up of reactor capacity.

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Climate-related impacts to marine ecosystems threaten the biological, social, and economic resilience of the U.S. fishing industry. Changes in ocean conditions and variability in fisheries productivity have stimulated an effort to integrate climate information into fisheries science and management processes to inform more responsive decision-making. However, institutional, capacity, and budget constraints within U.S. federal and state fisheries management agencies may hinder the potential to deliver climate-ready strategies for many fisheries. We examine whether adaptive comanagement as a governance approach can enhance capacity and advance climate-ready fisheries objectives. Adaptive comanagement may improve the quality of science and decision-making needed to prepare for and respond to impacts of climate change in fisheries by taking advantage of skills, technology, and funding often not optimally utilized under the current governance system. We focus on the potential to improve information flows as a means to achieve climate-ready fisheries via adaptive comanagement, but suggest that a greater level of partnership in the management process may be possible in the future after a period of formal experimentation and learning.

Winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus) once supported robust commercial and recreational fisheries in the New York (USA) region, but since the 1990s populations have been in decline. Available data show that settlement of young-of-the-year winter flounder has not declined as sharply as adult abundance, suggesting that juveniles are experiencing higher mortality following settlement. The recent increase of blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) abundance in the New York region raises the possibility that new sources of predation may be contributing to juvenile winter flounder mortality. To investigate this possibility we developed and validated a method to specifically detect winter flounder mitochondrial control region DNA sequences in the gut contents of blue crabs. A survey of 55 crabs collected from Shinnecock Bay (along the south shore of Long Island, New York) in July, August, and September of 2011 showed that 12 of 42 blue crabs (28.6%) from which PCR-amplifiable DNA was recovered had consumed winter flounder in the wild, empirically supporting the trophic link between these species that has been widely speculated to exist. This technique overcomes difficulties with visual identification of the often unrecognizable gut contents of decapod crustaceans, and modifications of this approach offer valuable tools to more broadly address their feeding habits on a wide variety of species.