Victims of exertional heat stroke (EHS) in whom treatment is delayed have higher rates of multi-organ failure and a greater number of fatalities. Death related to EHS is preventable, through immediate treatment via cold-water immersion (CWI). To date little is known about the influence of treatment delays on core cooling following EHS. Thus we sought to examine the effects of treatment delays on cardiovascular and thermal responses prior to, during, and following CWI treatment in individuals with exercise-induced hyperthermia. Our findings demonstrate that treatment delays resulted in a sustained level of hyperthermia and cardiovascular strain that significantly increased the time an individual is at risk to the potential lethal effects of EHS. Moreover, we report that cold water immersion treatment is powerful enough to overcome the adverse effects of treatment delays and rapidly reduce core temperatures while facilitating the re-establishment of blood pressure towards normal resting levels.

This thesis examined the effect of differences in body surface area-to-lean body mass ratio (AD/LBM) on core temperature cooling rates during cold water immersion (2°C, CWI) and temperate water immersion (26°C, TWI) following exercise-induced hyperthermia (end-exercise rectal temperature of 40°C). Individuals with a High AD/LBM (315 cm2/kg) had a ~1.7-fold greater overall rectal cooling rate relative to those with Low AD/LBM (275 cm2/kg) during both CWI and TWI. Further, overall rectal cooling rates during CWI were ~2.7-fold greater than during TWI for both the High and Low AD/LBM groups. Study findings show that AD/LBM must be considered when determining the duration of the immersion period. However, CWI provides the most effective cooling treatment for EHS patients irrespective of physical differences between individuals.

The distribution of biodiversity on the planet faces dramatic spatial reorganization from climate change. This is especially true in the marine realm, where species often live near their physiological limits. Thus, effective conservation agendas for marine biodiversity must be predicated upon robust multi-scenario projections of climate-driven changes in oceanographic conditions. However, much of the theory and empirical work on distributional changes in marine biodiversity comes from shallow-water ecosystems. The deep seafloor (> 200 m) has received comparably little attention despite mounting evidence of the accrual of climatic changes within this largest habitable area of the planet. Here, I present a number of case studies predicting the effects of climate change on the distributions of cold-water coral (CWC) reef habitats and their associated fauna, using both modelling approaches and empirical data collected on multiple oceanographic cruises to the CWC reefs of the southeast USA (SEUS) in 2018-2019. These reefs are persistent features of continental margins (~200 – 4000 m ) around the globe, important biodiversity and biogeochemical cycling hotspots, and sentinels of marine climate change. In Chapter 2, I fit global habitat suitability models (HSMs) using publicly available oceanographic and biogeographic products to predict the occurrence of reef-forming CWC species and the reef habitat they form, testing for taxonomic and regional differences in their ecological niches. I then use an ensemble of global climate model outputs as inputs for ensemble HSMs projecting the distributions of these same taxa to 2100 in a range of climate scenarios, and test for differences in distribution changes across species and bioregions. In Chapter 3, I use higher-resolution regional and global climate products and data from multiple oceanographic cruises to the SEUS to build HSMs for this region; this data collation revealed the largest known, essentially continuous CWC reef province on the planet. The models located pivotal climate refugia primarily at deeper (> 600 m) eastward reef sites – notably including those outside of areas designated to protect coral from bottom-contact fisheries – that may remain suitable to 2100 while shallower sites are projected to experience catastrophic declines. In Chapters 4 and 5 I present community ecological work based from research expeditions to CWC reefs of the SEUS described in Chapter 2. In Chapter 4, I use video imagery and in situ collections of intact seafloor communities to test how the abundance, taxonomic and functional diversity, and community structure of invertebrate communities in hard-substratum ecosystems along the SEUS margin, including CWC reefs and submarine canyons change along biocomplexity (e.g. the percentage of live coral cover), bathymetric, and oceanographic gradients. In Chapter 5, I synthesize invertebrate and fish data from SEUS CWC reefs to fit Bayesian community-level joint HSMs predicting the occurrence and abundance of these faunas as functions of their ecological traits. These models reveal strong distinctions fish and invertebrates in their climate and habitat preferences at CWC reefs, suggesting opposing responses to climate change. Overall, Chapters 3-5 expand upon baseline descriptions of reef habitats and coral-associated fauna in the SEUS, testing for mechanisms driving observed ecological patterns across large environmental gradients. Together, this volume improves our understanding of the ecological drivers of vulnerable marine ecosystem occurrence and biodiversity, augmenting conservation efforts for these critical components of the global ocean. / Biology

Under årens gång har regelverk och byggnormer ändrats, och det har även gjort att utformningen av dessa har påverkats. Utförandekrav har övergått till funktionskrav, vilket har gjort att säkerhetsrisker kan uppstå eftersom olika metoder används vid installation. Ett sådant exempel är risken för legionellatillväxt. För att minimera denna risk har Boverket tagit fram byggregler, däribland att tappkallvattentemperaturen inte får överstiga 24°C under en period på åtta timmar då vattnet är stillastående. Baserat på detta har Säker Vatten AB utvecklat branschregler för VVS-företag och har därmed upptäckt problem då tappkallvattenledningen ligger i ett golv med installerad golvvärme. På denna grund bygger detta arbete som genom simuleringar i Comsol Multiphysics® v. 5.4 undersöker fyra modeller av kallvattenrör i golv med golvvärme. Resultatet för de fyra modellerna visar att kallvattnets temperatur överstiger 24°C vid installation av golvvärme vid användning av smala vattenrör och tunn isolering. Vid undersökning av användning av grövre rör med tjockare isolering blev resultatet att en kombination av 20mm i diameter vattenrör och 80mm isolering respektive 25mm i diameter vattenrör och drygt 50mm isolering klarade Boverkets temperaturkrav. Det framtagna resultatet visar på att det krävs en stor isoleringstjocklek vilket kan göra kallvattenledningen för stor i jämförelse med golvets tjocklek och därmed riskeras golvets stabilitet. Därför kan det vara bättre att använda en annan placering av kallvattenledningen när golvvärme installerats. / Building regulations and standards have changed over the years which has also had an impact on their design. Performance standards have changed to functional standards, which has led to potential safety hazards, as different methods are used by different stakeholders during installation. An example of a potential safety hazard is legionella growth. To minimize this particular hazard, the Swedish Board of Housing, Building and Planning has developed building regulations, including the regulation that the temperature of cold tap water cannot exceed 24°C for a period of eight hours while the water is stagnant. Based on this regulation, Säker Vatten AB has developed a set of trade standards for plumbing companies and has discovered that problems arise when cold-water pipes are situated in floors with underfloor heating. Based on the above, this project studies four models of cold-water pipes situated in floors with underfloor heating through simulations in Comsol Multiphysics® v. 5.4. The results from the four models show that the cold-water temperature exceeds 24°C when underfloor heating is installed and narrow water pipes and thin insulation are used. When studying the use of pipes with larger diameters and thicker insulation, the results show that the combinations of a 20mm diameter pipe with 80mm insulation, and a 25mm diameter pipe with just over 50mm insulation, satisfied the temperature regulations required by the Swedish Board of Housing, Building and Planning. The results obtained show that thick insulation is necessary, which can cause the cold-water pipe to be too large in comparison with the floor’s thickness, risking the floor’s stability. As a result, alternative placement of the cold-water pipe is to is to be preferred when underfloor heating is installed.

As the largest and most poorly environment on Earth, the deep-sea is facing global threats from climate change and anthropogenic disturbance further compounded by the lack of critical baseline data on seafloor species composition and community structure. Many data-deficient regions include those in geographically-isolated offshore environments, like low-latitude seamounts, where sampling and surveys have been limited, resulting in critical knowledge gaps that do not allow for effective conservation measures to be realized. This work seeks to characterize the coral fauna of tropical seamount environments greater than 150 m depth and understand the environmental controls on species distribution and community assembly for long-lived, ecologically-important species, primarily from the Octocorallia, Antipatharia, Stylasteridae, and Scleractinia. Methodologies for accomplishing this research have included analysis of remotely operated vehicle (ROV) video surveys and identification of collected voucher specimens to understand biogeographic patterns within coral communities on seamounts and other rugged seafloor features in 3 different regions: the tropical western Atlantic (Anegada Passage), the equatorial central Pacific (Phoenix Islands), and the tropical eastern Pacific (Costa Rica). These regions represent vastly different oceanographic regimes in terms of biological productivity and water column structure resulting in differential effects on deep-sea coral communities. Evidence from these three regions has shown significant effects of the role that oceanic water masses have on structuring deep-water coral biodiversity and suggests that these features, along with other abiotic environmental variables, are important indicators for understanding species distribution patterns, community structure, and global biogeographic patterns. More broadly, the results of this work have demonstrated the capabilities of exploratory ROV surveys, across multiple platforms, to add practical knowledge to coral species inventories and identify bathyal biogeographic patterns in remote regions of the deep sea. The results of this work, serving as baseline coral biodiversity surveys for each area, are also germane to evaluating the effects of human-mediated disturbance and global climate change in the deep ocean. These disturbances also include ocean acidification, ocean deoxygenation, deep-sea mining, and bottom-contact fishing, all of which have been identified as threats to the seamount benthos. / Biology

Objectives: Quantify the effects of cold water immersion of the ankle on fractioned response time of the dominant lower limb. Design and Setting: A 2x2x5x5 crossover design with repeated measures on time and treatment directed data collection. The independent variables were gender, treatment, time (pretreatment, and post 15 seconds, 3 minutes 6 minutes and 9 minutes) and trial (5 trials for each time group). Response time (Tresp), reaction time (Treac), trial and surface temperature were measurement variables. Subjects: Thirty-six subjects, 18 females and 18 males were recruited from a physically active volunteer college student population. Measurements: Fractioned response time was tested following a 20 minute treatment. Response time and Treac were recorded by the reaction timer, and Tmov was calculated by taking the difference between Tresp and Treac. For each time/subject the high and low Tresp were discarded and the middle three trials were averaged and used for statistical analysis. A 2x2x5 ANOVA was used to determine overall differences between gender, treatment and time followed by Newman-Keuls multiple comparison tests. Results: Males were faster than females for Tresp, Treac and Tmov. Movement time and Tresp were slower with cold water immersion, but Treac was unaffected. Movement time and Tresp were fastest pretreatment, and slowest during the post 15-second time group. Though both Tmov and Tresp progressively sped up from the post 15-second through the post 9-minute time group, they did not return to pretreatment values when data collection discontinued. Conclusions: Immersing the dominant ankle in cold water for 20 minutes increases Tmov of the dominant lower limb; thereby increasing fractioned response time (Tresp).

Cold-water corals act as critical foundation species in the deep sea by creating extensive three-dimensional habitat structures that support biodiversity hotspots. There is currently a paucity of data concerning the environmental requirements and physiology of cold-water corals, severely limiting our ability to predict how resilient they will be to future environmental change. Cold-water corals are expected to be particularly vulnerable to the effects of ocean acidification, the reduction in seawater pH and associated changes to the carbonate system caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Here, the ecological niche and physiology of the cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa is explored to predict its sensitivity to ocean acidification. Species distribution models were generated in order to quantify L. pertusa’s niche in the Gulf of Mexico with regard to parameters including seafloor topography, the carbonate system, and the availability of hard substrate. A robust oceanographic assessment of the Gulf of Mexico was conducted in order to characterize the current environmental conditions at benthic sites, with a focus on establishing the baseline carbonate system in L. pertusa habitats. Finally, an experimental approach was used to test the physiological response of biogeographically separated L. pertusa populations from the Gulf of Mexico and the Norwegian coast to ocean acidification. Based on my findings, it appears that L. pertusa already persists near the edge of its viable niche space in some locations, and therefore may be highly vulnerable to environmental change. However, experimental results suggest that some populations may be surprisingly resilient to ocean acidification, yielding broad implications for the continued persistence of cold-water corals in future oceans. / Biology

Deep-water or cold-water corals are abundant and highly diverse, greatly increase habitat heterogeneity and species richness, thereby forming one of the most significant ecosystems in the deep sea. Despite this remote location, they are not removed from the different anthropogenic disturbances that commonly impact their shallow-water counterparts. The global decrease in seawater pH due to increases in atmospheric CO2 are changing the chemical properties of the seawater, decreasing the concentration of carbonate ions that are important elements for different physiological and ecological processes. Predictive models forecast a shoaling of the carbonate saturation in the water column due to OA, and suggest that cold-water corals are at high risk, since large areas of suitable habitat will experience suboptimal conditions by the end of the century. The main objective of this study was to explore the fate of the deep-water coral community in time of environmental change. To better understand the impact of climate change this study focused in two of the most important elements of deep-sea coral habitat, the reef forming coral Lophelia pertusa and the octocoral community, particularly the gorgonian Callogorgia delta. By means of controlled experiments, I examined the effects of long- and short-term exposures to seawater simulating future scenarios of ocean acidification on calcification and feeding efficiency. Finally In order to understand how the environment influences the community assembly, and ultimately how species cope with particular ecological filters, I integrated different aspects of biology such functional diversity and ecology into a more evolutionary context in the face of changing environment. My results suggest that I) deep-water corals responds negatively to future OA by lowering the calcification rates, II) not all individuals respond in the same way to OA with high intra-specific variability providing a potential for adaptation in the long-term III) there is a disruption in the balance between accretion and dissolution that in the long term can shift from net accretion to net dissolution, and IV) there is an evolutionary implication for certain morphological features in the coral community that can give an advantage under stresfull conditions. Nevertheless, the suboptimal conditions that deep-water corals will experience by the end of the century could potentially threaten their persistence, with potentially negative consequences for the future stability of this already fragile ecosystem. / Biology

Ocean acidification is the reduction in seawater pH due to the absorption of anthropogenic carbon dioxide by the oceans. Reductions in seawater pH can inhibit the precipitation of aragonite, a calcium carbonate mineral used by marine calcifiers such as corals. Lophelia pertusa is a cold-water coral that forms large reef structures which enhance local biodiversity on the seafloor, and is found commonly from 300-600 meters on hard substrata in the Gulf of Mexico. The present study sought to investigate the potential impacts of ocean acidification on L. pertusa in the Gulf of Mexico through combined field and laboratory analyses. A field component characterized the carbonate chemistry of L. pertusa habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, an important step in establishing a baseline from which future changes in seawater pH can be measured, in addition to collecting in situ data for the design and execution of perturbation experiments in the laboratory. A series of recirculating aquaria were designed and constructed for the present study, and support the maintenance and experimentation of live L. pertusa in the laboratory. Finally, experiments testing L. pertusa's mortality and growth responses to ocean acidification were conducted in the laboratory, which identified thresholds for calcification and a range of sensitivities to ocean acidification by individual genotype. The results of this study permit the monitoring of ongoing ocean acidification in the deep Gulf of Mexico, and show that ocean acidfication's impacts may not be consistent across individuals within populations of L. pertusa. / Biology

Previous data have shown that the most prevalent, indirect plasma volume (PV) measurement technique, which utilises changes in haematocrit (Hct) and haemoglobin concentration ([Hb]), underestimates actual PV changes during immersion, when compared to a direct tracer-dilution method. An increase in the F-cell ratio (whole-body haematocrit (Hctw) to large-vessel haematocrit (Hctv) ratio) has been purported as a possible explanation, probably due to hydrostatic and thermally-mediated changes during water immersion. Previous investigators have not quantified the F-cell ratio during immersion. Therefore, this study sought to determine the effect of the F-cell ratio on the indirect method during both, thermoneutral and cold-water immersions. Seven healthy males were tested three times, seated upright in air (control: 21.2°C SD ±1.1), and during thermoneutral (34.5oC SD ±0.2) and cold-water immersion (18.6oC SD ±0.2), immersed to the third intercostal space for 60 min. Measurements during the immersion tests included PV (Evans blue dye column elution, Evans blue dye computer programme, and Hct [Hb]), red cell volume (RCV; sodium radiochromate), cardiac frequency (fc) and rectal temperature (Tre). Plasma volume during the control trial remained stable, and equivalent across the three tests. There was a hydrostatically-induced increase in PV during thermoneutral immersion, when determined by the Evans blue dye method (16.2%). However, the Hct/[Hb] calculation did not adequately reflect this change, and underestimated the relative PV change by 43%. In contrast, PV decreased during cold immersion when determined using the Evans blue dye method by 17.9% and the Hct/[Hb] calculation by 8.0%, respectively, representing a 52% underestimation by the latter method. There was a non-significant decline in RCV during both immersions. Furthermore, an increase (8.6%) and decrease (-14.4%) in blood volume (BV) was observed during thermoneutral and cold-water immersions, respectively. The decline in RCV during thermoneutral immersion attenuated the BV expansion. Despite the disparity between the PV methods, there was no increase in the F-cell ratio during either immersion. In contrast, there was a significant decline in the F-cell ratio during the control: air and thermoneutral immersion, which may indicate that other, undefined variables may impact on the stability of the red cell compartment. The current study is the first to show that the Hct/[Hb] method clearly underestimates PV changes during both thermoneutral and cold-water immersion. Furthermore, RCV was shown, for the first time, to decline during both immersions. However, the changes in the F-cell ratio during this study, did not account for the underestimation of PV change using the Hct/[Hb] method.