Sources, sinks and stores of Nitrogen and Phosphorus associated with public water supply and the vadose zone

Reactive Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorus (P) in the environment remain a considerable problem for both ecosystems and drinking water quality. Although public water supply processes and the vadose zone are well known components of the anthropogenically perturbed hydrological cycle, the impact of these components on N and P cycling is poorly understood. The aim of this thesis was to improve the understanding of sources, sinks and stores of N and P associated with public water supply and the vadose zone, to support the development of integrated nutrient management approaches. Mains water leakage is shown to be an important source of P, which will increase in importance in the future. Mains water leakage of P has significant temporal variability associated with winter burst events, summer shrink-swell leakage and active leakage control. Mains water leakage has also been shown to be an important source of N in urban areas, contributing up to 20% of all N loads. Abstraction for public water supply has been shown to be a considerable temporary sink of N, equivalent to up to 39% of denitrification. The unsaturated zone has also been shown to be an important store of nitrate, with the quantity of nitrate stored in the vadose zone being equivalent to 200% of estimates of inorganic N stored in soils globally. The results of this thesis have important implications for the development of integrated nutrient management approaches. The sources, sinks and stores associated with public water supply and the vadose zone quantified in this thesis should be considered in future macronutrient budgets and models. Continued use of existing models which do not consider these additional N and P sources, sinks and stores should be tempered with the knowledge gained from this research

The Alaska Statehood Act Does Not Guarantee Alaska Ninety Percent of the Revenue from Mineral Leases on Federal Lands in Alaska

This Comment argues that Alaska\u27s position that Congress purposefully incorporated the Mineral Leasing Act into the Statehood Act through section 28(b), and in doing so, permanently granted the state ninety percent of the revenues from mineral development on federal lands, is legally incorrect. The text of the Act simply does not support the position that mineral-lease and royalty proceeds from federal lands are part of Alaska\u27s compact. In addition, the legislative history of the Act does not support Alaska\u27s position, nor does case law that has addressed related issues. Following this Introduction, Part II of this Comment expands on Alaska\u27s position and explains Alaska\u27s Statehood Compact argument. Part III reviews the historical background of the Alaska Statehood Act as it pertains to the ninety percent-ten percent revenue- sharing formula under the MLA. Part IV discusses Alaska v. United States,24 a case that addressed closely related issues and likely will figure prominently in any future argument concerning Alaska\u27s rights under the Act. Part V, after analyzing the text and legislative history of the Act and judicial treatment of statehood agreements generally, concludes the Comment by arguing that Alaska\u27s position will not have success with the courts

JavaFlow : a Java DataFlow Machine

textThe JavaFlow, a Java DataFlow Machine is a machine design concept implementing a Java Virtual Machine aimed at addressing technology roadmap issues along with the ability to effectively utilize and manage very large numbers of processing cores. Specific design challenges addressed include: design complexity through a common set of repeatable structures; low power by featuring unused circuits and ability to power off sections of the chip; clock propagation and wire limits by using locality to bring data to processing elements and a Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) design; and reliability by allowing portions of the design to be bypassed in case of failures. A Data Flow Architecture is used with multiple heterogeneous networks to connect processing elements capable of executing a single Java ByteCode instruction. Whole methods are cached in this DataFlow fabric, and the networks plus distributed intelligence are used for their management and execution. A mesh network is used for the DataFlow transfers; two ordered networks are used for management and control flow mapping; and multiple high speed rings are used to access the storage subsystem and a controlling General Purpose Processor (GPP). Analysis of benchmarks demonstrates the potential for this design concept. The design process was initiated by analyzing SPEC JVM benchmarks which identified a small number methods contributing to a significant percentage of the overall ByteCode operations. Additional analysis established static instruction mixes to prioritize the types of processing elements used in the DataFlow Fabric. The overall objective of the machine is to provide multi-threading performance for Java Methods deployed to this DataFlow fabric. With advances in technology it is envisioned that from 1,000 to 10,000 cores/instructions could be deployed and managed using this structure. This size of DataFlow fabric would allow all the key methods from the SPEC benchmarks to be resident. A baseline configuration is defined with a compressed dataflow structure and then compared to multiple configurations of instruction assignments and clock relationships. Using a series of methods from the SPEC benchmark running independently, IPC (Instructions per Cycle) performance of the sparsely populated heterogeneous structure is 40% of the baseline. The average ratio of instructions to required nodes is 3.5. Innovative solutions to the loading and management of Java methods along with the translation from control flow to DataFlow structure are demonstrated.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

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An interesting D-lemma: what is all the excitement about vitamin D?

There has been a dramatic interest in the importance of vitamin D, “the sunshine vitamin”, in the past few years with regard to its impact on various aspects of health and disease. Research into well-known skeletal effects, as well as extraskeletal effects, has been overwhelming. At times it has been difficult to make informed clinical decisions regarding replacement, if needed at all. This article aims to provide the physician with a summary of the most important clinical effects of vitamin D, as well as give guidelines on testing for possible deficiency and consideration of replacement thereof

A patient with multiple phaeochromocytomas and visual loss

A young man was diagnosed with Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease. We report the details of his case and review the relevant literature.Keywords: multiple phaeochromocytomas, visual los

Leiomyoma: A rare cause of adrenal incidentaloma

A 40-year-old, treatment-naïve, human immunodeficiency virus- (HIV) positive male was found to have a large right adrenal incidentaloma on ultrasound of the abdomen, which was confirmed on adrenal computed tomography imaging. The laboratory workup excluded functionality of the mass lesion. As the radiological examination of the mass raised the suspicion of a non-benign lesion, the patient underwent a right adrenalectomy. Histology, supported by a panel of immunohistochemical stains, confirmed the diagnosis of an adrenal leiomyoma. Most of the reported cases of adrenal leiomyomas in the literature are of patients with HIV and/or latent Epstein-Barr virus infections. This case illustrates that benign tumours, such as leiomyomas, can mimic the imaging phenotype of adrenal cortical carcinomas, and should be included in the differential diagnosis of adrenal incidentalomas, especially in the HIV-positive population

Regulatory practice and transport modelling for nitrate pollution in groundwater

This report forms the first deliverable of a project jointly funded by BGS and the Environment Agency to consider the potential for incorporating the outputs from the BGS unsaturated zone travel time work in assessing the risks to water from nitrate. This is to help to inform the nitrate vulnerable zones (NVZs) designation process. In England, the Environment Agency advises Defra on identifying areas for designation as NVZs. Over time, the designation process has developed and become more complex since the first round of designations in 1996. The designation process for groundwater initially used only public supply monitoring data and the associated source catchment area. In December 2000, the European Court of Justice held that the UK had failed to designate sufficient NVZs for the protection of all waters, not just for drinking water sources. This resulted in the development of revised methodologies for the designation of NVZs which separately address surface waters, groundwater and waters at risk of eutrophication. This was implemented in 2002. Further reviews have been carried out in 2008 and 2012 and as a result, modifications and improvements to methods have been made at each designation round. For groundwater the Environment Agency developed a numerical risk assessment procedure that uses a range of risk factors including both nitrate concentration data and nitrate-loading data to assess the risk of nitrate pollution. The loading data is based on farm census returns made to Defra and combined using the NEAP-N methodology developed by ADAS (Lord and Anthony, 2000). The overall risk assessment considers both current observed concentrations and predicted future concentrations as well as current loadings. However, this approach has a number of disadvantages including a lack of a specific term for the time of travel to the water table and emergence of pollutant both into groundwater and to groundwater discharge points that support surface water features. Instead, these issues are considered at the conceptual level in workshops with local EA hydrogeologists. A key question for Defra and the Agency is how long it will take for nitrate concentrations to peak and then stabilise at an acceptable, lower level, in response to existing and future land management control measures. This is most important for soils, for aquifers, for lakes and for groundwater-fed wetland systems that respond less quickly to changes in loading. Groundwater and lake catchment numerical models can provide first-order estimates of likely response times, but can be difficult and costly to set-up for many different situations and are difficult to apply consistently at the national scale. A previous review of nitrate vulnerable zones suggests a range of further needs: • to understand the recent developments in nitrate pollution simulation and particularly the potential to understand/characterise past nitrate loading from changing land management practices and correlate these with observed nitrate concentrations over time; • to evaluate the retention of nitrate in catchments, particularly in the unsaturated zone of soils and aquifers; • to simulate the recent and future anticipated decreases in nitrate loading by sectors within the UK; • to understand the likely time taken for nitrate concentrations to peak and then stabilise at an acceptable, lower level, in response to existing and future control measures. Without evidence of how long it may take systems to recover it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of existing measures or decide whether additional measures are necessary. The aim of this project is to investigate the use of new models to inform decision-making on nitrate pollution in groundwater and the potential for incorporating unsaturated zone processes in future NVZ designations. The work described here forms the first task of this project and aims to review NVZ methodology and recent designation experience. As part of this we will: • collate information from the Agency on the recent application of the methodology; • provide case study examples of designation in different time-lag settings and/or where these are not corroborated by water quality

Geological resources: perception and impact for enhancing sustainability and resilience in urban settings

Unprecedented rates of urbanisation and city growth has created many challenges such as the ability to address the impacts of climate change, manage large-scale population increases and cope with resource insecurity. As a result, cities are becoming increasingly reliant on geo-resources to support their everyday services and development. Geo-resources - naturally occurring assets of the Earth that can be harnessed to create something functional for our consumption - include; geo-materials, sub-surface space, groundwater and geothermal energy. The enhanced utilisation of geo-resources can be seen to contribute to wider policy goals of building sustainable and resilient cities. Within this context, this study assesses the geo-resource potential of three UK case study sites by developing and implementing a novel geo-resources mapping tool. Alongside this, key stakeholder interviews were conducted, and a detailed examination of urban planning and design documentation undertaken to establish the enablers and barriers to geo-resource use in situ. The case studies revealed that the geo-resources-potential mapping tool provided an indication of the suitability of a site for utilising a specific geo-resource, which was supplemented by an urban design geo-resource (UDG) matrix to connect the mapping results with geo-resources infrastructure and site-specific urban design guidance and planning policy information. The interview series and document examinations further identified clear factors supporting and preventing the use of geo-resources in specific urban settings. In particular, the study revealed that: costs and finance mechanisms, risks and unknowns, communication, policy, and multiple benefits are the key factors impacting geo-resource uptake. In operationalising this research, this work provides a starting point to engage urban stakeholders with geological resource expertise and demonstrates how their utilisation can enhance the sustainability and resilience of urban settings as a whole