An analysis of the challenges for groundwater governance during shale gas development in South Africa

As a prelude to potential development of South Africa’s shale gas resources, it is critical to develop and implement effective groundwater governance arrangements. Existing policies and plans were analysed to determine whether critical gaps or barriers exist that could potentially lead to impacts on groundwater systems. Ten high-priority governance challenges were identified: (a) defining relevant metrics for baseline groundwater quality and availability; (b) developing guidelines for shale gas resource licensing, exploration, drilling, extraction, production, and completion; (c) defining and enforcing compliance monitoring systems; (d) dealing punitively with non-compliant operators; (e) mitigating and managing risks to prevent impairment of groundwater resources; (f) implementing a goal-based regulatory framework; g) enforcing strict chemical disclosure requirements; (h) coordinating across government departments and regulatory bodies meaningfully and productively; (i) implementing a framework for subsidiarity and support to local water management; and (j) providing an incentive framework that supports strong groundwater management and environmental protection. To overcome these challenges, it is recommended that a decentralised, polycentric, bottom-up approach involving multiple institutions is developed to adaptively manage shale gas development. This transition from the current rigid regulatory structure can foster cooperation and collaboration among key stakeholders. The use of a pro-active groundwater governance structure that can accommodate current, near-term, and long-term shale gas development is important for ensuring that future energy development in South Africa incorporates the influence of other simultaneous stressors such as climate (e.g. drought), landuse changes, population growth, industry, and competing demands for water.Keywords: groundwater, water governance, shale gas, South Afric

Survey: Women and California Law

This survey of California law, a regular feature of the Women\u27s Law Forum, summarizes recent California Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions of special importance to women. A briefanalysis of the issues pertinent to women raised in each case is provided

Survey: Women and California Law

This survey of California law, a regular feature of the Women\u27s Law Forum, summarizes recent California Supreme Court and Court of Appeal decisions of special importance to women. A briefanalysis of the issues pertinent to women raised in each case is provided

Protecting quantum entanglement from leakage and qubit errors via repetitive parity measurements

Protecting quantum information from errors is essential for large-scale quantum computation. Quantum error correction (QEC) encodes information in entangled states of many qubits, and performs parity measurements to identify errors without destroying the encoded information. However, traditional QEC cannot handle leakage from the qubit computational space. Leakage affects leading experimental platforms, based on trapped ions and superconducting circuits, which use effective qubits within many-level physical systems. We investigate how two-transmon entangled states evolve under repeated parity measurements, and demonstrate the use of hidden Markov models to detect leakage using only the record of parity measurement outcomes required for QEC. We show the stabilization of Bell states over up to 26 parity measurements by mitigating leakage using postselection, and correcting qubit errors using Pauli-frame transformations. Our leakage identification method is computationally efficient and thus compatible with real-time leakage tracking and correction in larger quantum processors.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figure

An Optical Study of BG Geminorum: An Ellipsoidal Binary with an Unseen Primar Star

We describe optical photometric and spectroscopic observations of the bright variable BG Geminorum. Optical photometry shows a pronounced ellipsoidal variation of the K0 I secondary, with amplitudes of ~0.5 mag at VRI and a period of 91.645 days. A deep primary eclipse is visible for wavelengths < 4400A; a shallower secondary eclipse is present at longer wavelengths. Eclipse timings and the radial velocity curve of the K0 secondary star indicate an interacting binary where a lobe-filling secondary, M_2 ~ 0.5 Msun, transfers material into a extended disk around a massive primary, M_1 ~ 4.5 Msun. The primary star is either an early B-type star or a black hole. If it did contain a black hole, BG Gem would be the longest period black hole binary known by a factor of 10, as well as the only eclipsing black hole binary system.Comment: 27 pages, includes 8 figures and 5 tables, accepted to A

Physical health and the onset and persistence of depression in older adults: an eight-wave prospective community based study.

Background. Poor physical health has long been recognized to be one of the most important risk factors for depression in older adults. Since many aspects of physical health can be targeted for improvement in primary care, it is important to know whether physical health problems predict the onset and/or the persistence of depression. Methods. The study is based on a sample which at the outset consisted of 327 depressed and 325 non-depressed older adults (55-85) drawn from a larger random community-based sample in the Netherlands. Depression was measured using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D) at eight successive waves. Results. From all incident episodes, the majority (57%) was short-lived. These short episodes could generally not be predicted by physical health problems. The remaining incident episodes (43%) were not short-lived and could be predicted by poor physical health. Chronicity (34%) was also predicted by physical health problems. Conclusions. The study design with its frequent measurements recognized more incident cases than previous studies; these cases however did have a better prognosis than is often assumed. The prognosis of prevalent cases was rather poor. Physical health problems were demonstrated to be a predictor of both the onset and the persistence of depression. This may well have implications for prevention and intervention

Employment in Personality Disorders and the Effectiveness of Individual Placement and Support:Outcomes from a Secondary Data Analysis

Purpose Personality disorders (PDs) are associated with severe functional impairment and subsequent high societal costs, increasing the need to improve occupational functioning in PD. Individual placement and support (IPS) is an effective, evidence-based method of supported employment, which so far has been tested in various mixed patient populations with severe mental illness (SMI, including PDs). However, the effectiveness of IPS for PDs per se remains uninvestigated. Methods Data from the SCION trial were used, including 31 SMI patients with PDs and 115 SMI patients with other primary diagnoses (primarily psychotic disorders). First, the interaction effect of diagnosis (PD vs other SMI) and intervention (IPS vs traditional vocational rehabilitation) was studied. Second, in the IPS condition, difference between diagnostic groups in time to first job was studied. Results We did not find evidence of a moderating effect of PD diagnosis on the primary effect of IPS (proportion who started in regular employment) (OR = 0.592, 95% CI 0.80–4.350, p = 0.606) after 30 months. Also, PD diagnosis did not moderate the effect of time until first job in IPS. Conclusions From the present explorative analysis we did not find evidence for a moderating effect of PD diagnosis on the effectiveness of IPS among PD participants. This indicates that IPS could be as effective in gaining employment in participants with PD as it is in participants with other SMI. Future studies, implementing larger numbers, should confirm whether IPS is equally effective in PDs and study whether augmentations or alterations to the standard IPS model might be beneficiary for PD

Outcome of depression in later life in primary care: longitudinal cohort study with three years’ follow-up

Objectives To study the duration of depression, recovery over time, and predictors of prognosis in an older cohort (≥55 years) in primary care