Catchment Care - Developing an Auction Process for Biodiversity and Water Quality Gains. Volume 1 - Report

This report describes the design, development and trial of catchment care. Catchment Care is an auction-based system which aims to increase the cost effectiveness of funds for private on-ground natural resource management actions.Water;Australia;Natural Resource Management;Catchment Care; auction.

Catchment Care - Developing an Auction Process for Biodiversity and Water Quality Gains. Volume 2 - Appendices

A Market-Based Instrument Pilot Project. Report to the Onkaparinga Catchment Water Management Board.Water;Australia;Natural Resource Management;Catchment Care; auction, market-based instruments.

Environmental Remediation of Perfluoroalkyl Substances: Current and Emerging Strategies

Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) represent a significant challenge to environmental systems due to their extensive presence in everyday consumer products and industrial processes, resulting in the contamination of water and soil sources and consequent negative impact on human health. This review aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the current approaches and their potential for mitigating the environmental impact of these persistent substances. By exploring technological advances in the remediation of PFAS, this review intends to contribute to the understanding appropriate technologies to mitigate the environmental risks associated with PFAS. By focusing on combined treatment strategies, synergistic approaches, advanced tools, and addressing knowledge gaps, more efficient, sustainable, and reliable technologies can be developed for the environmental management of contaminants of interest. Keywords: Environmental remediation, Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), Emerging strategies, Contaminant management, Sustainable technologies. DOI: 10.7176/JEES/13-10-04 Publication date: December 31st 202

Association of drusen deposition with choroidal intercapillary pillars in the aging human eye

PURPOSE. To determine the pattern of drusen accumulation with age and to investigate the initial sites of deposition and their relationship to choroidal capillaries in human donor eyes from the eye bank of Moorfields Eye Hospital.METHODS. Wholemounted, hydrated preparations of the choriocapillaris and Bruch's membrane from donor eyes ranging from 42 to 95 years, with or without retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), were examined by conventional and confocal microscopy. Drusen were visualized by their autofluorescence.RESULTS. In all age groups studied autofluorescent drusen were present at the equator but were not found centrally where the vascular architecture is different, being tubular rather than a honeycomb pattern. Autofluorescing drusen were strongly associated with the lateral walls of the choriocapillaris (an area commonly known as the intercapillary pillars of the choriocapillaris (P = 0.028; Wilcoxon signed ranks test). Nonfluorescing drusen were occasionally seen centrally, but were not easily identified, and because of their large size, their localization with respect to capillary walls was not possible.CONCLUSIONS. These results strongly support the notion that autofluorescent drusen are not randomly distributed and have a specific spatial relationship to choroidal vessel walls. That equatorial drusen fluoresce, whereas central drusen do not, suggests that they may have different chemical compositions at the two sites and possibly different significance in age-related macular disease

An alternative to the Wratten #12 filter when judging central fluorescein patterns

The effectiveness of using the Wratten #12 filter to enhance the fluorescein pattern when judging the central pooling of rigid gas permeable (RGP) contact lenses is well established. As a money saving option, students at Pacific University have been using a substitute filter produced by a lighting company at 1/100 of the cost. The use of this alternative filter to judge fluorescein patterns has been done without scientific support of its efficacy. To compare these two filters, a subject was fit with RGP contact lenses of various base curves. Observers were asked to judge the degree of central pooling in diopters by comparing their view to a photometric scale. The filters and lenses were changed in a random order in a double blind fashion. Although no statistical difference was found between the performance of these two filters, their correlation was lower than expected. We believe the theater filter is a useful inexpensive tool that will enhance the observed image when eva I ua ting fluorescence patterns

The White Dwarf Age of NFC 2477

We present deep photometric observations of the open cluster NGC 2477 using HST/WFPC2. By identifying seven cluster white dwarf candidates, we present an analysis of the white dwarf age of this cluster, using both the traditional method of fitting isochrones to the white dwarf cooling sequence, and by employing a new Bayesian statistical technique that has been developed by our group. This new method performs an objective, simultaneous model fit of the cluster and stellar parameters (namely, age, metallicity, distance, reddening, as well as individual stellar masses, mass ratios, and cluster membership) to the photometry. Based on this analysis, we measure a white dwarf age of 1.035 ± 0.054 ± 0.087 Gyr (uncertainties represent the goodness of model fits and discrepancy among models, respectively) in good agreement with the cluster\u27s main-sequence turnoff age. This work is part of our ongoing work to calibrate main-sequence turnoff and white dwarf ages using open clusters, and to improve the precision of cluster ages to the ~5% level

New Techniques to Determine Ages of Open Clusters Using White Dwarfs

Currently there are two main techniques for independently determining the ages of stellar populations: main-sequence evolution theory (via cluster isochrones) and white dwarf cooling theory. Open clusters provide the ideal environment for the calibration of these two clocks. Because current techniques to derive cluster ages from white dwarfs are observationally challenging, we discuss the feasibility of determining white dwarf ages from the brighter white dwarfs alone. This would eliminate the requirement of observing the coolest (i.e., faintest) white dwarfs. We discuss our method for testing this new idea, as well as the required photometric precision and prior constraints on metallicity, distance, and reddening. We employ a new Bayesian statistical technique to obtain and interpret results

Intermolecular Potential Energy of Two Water Molecules in the Density Functional Formalism

Physic

Fault-tolerance techniques for hybrid CMOS/nanoarchitecture

The authors propose two fault-tolerance techniques for hybrid CMOS/nanoarchitecture implementing logic functions as look-up tables. The authors compare the efficiency of the proposed techniques with recently reported methods that use single coding schemes in tolerating high fault rates in nanoscale fabrics. Both proposed techniques are based on error correcting codes to tackle different fault rates. In the first technique, the authors implement a combined two-dimensional coding scheme using Hamming and Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes to address fault rates greater than 5. In the second technique, Hamming coding is complemented with bad line exclusion technique to tolerate fault rates higher than the first proposed technique (up to 20). The authors have also estimated the improvement that can be achieved in the circuit reliability in the presence of Don-t Care Conditions. The area, latency and energy costs of the proposed techniques were also estimated in the CMOS domain