254 research outputs found
Urban Scale Modeling of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Validation of Emission Inventories
There exists a pressing need for high resolution emissions inventories for cities. For greenhouse gases, cities and regions need a careful analysis of their carbon footprint to design effective policies to control and mitigate emissions. High resolution emissions inventories can be used in conjunction with meteorology models and atmospheric measurements to place top-down constraints on emissions. High resolution emissions inventories for criteria pollutants like NOx, CO, and O3 enable urban-scale air pollution modeling down to the neighborhood level. For example, the Vulcan project estimates CO2 using county-scale vehicle miles traveled (VMT) from the National Mobile Inventory Model (NMIM) County Database (NCD). The Hestia Project similarly allocates CO2 from Vulcanâs county-level inventory down to the building scale using eQUEST and building footprints.
On-road transport is the most important sector for anthropogenic CO2, 38% in Portland, 32% nationally. Here we show a new model of CO2 emissions for the Portland, OR metropolitan region. The backbone is traffic counter recordings made by the Portland Bureau of Transportation at 9,352 sites over 21 years (1986-2006), augmented with PORTAL (The Portland Regional Transportation Archive Listing) freeway data.
We constructed a regression model to fill in traffic network gaps using GIS data such as road class and population density. EPA MOVES was used to estimate transportation CO2 emissions. Our transportation emissions served as input into WRF meteorological modeling to simulate atmospheric CO2 at sites where frequent CO2 measurements are made. We show preliminary model results
Linking allies: successful school-family-community partnerships : an evaluation of the D.C. Everest School District's Families and Schools Together Program
Includes bibliographical references
Stochastic Pharmacokinetic-Pharmacodynamic Modeling for Assessing the Systemic Health Risk of Perfluorooctanoate (PFOA)
A phase 1 dose-escalation trial assessed the chemotherapeutic potential of ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO). Forty-nine primarily solid-tumor cancer patients who failed standard therapy received weekly APFO doses (50mg-1200mg) for six-weeks. Clinical chemistries and plasma PFOA (anionic APFO) were measured pre-dose and weekly thereafter. Several clinical measures including total cholesterol, high-density lipoproteins (HDL), thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), and free thyroxine (fT4), relative to PFOA concentrations, were examined by: standard statistical analyses using general estimating equations (GEE) and a probabilistic analysis using probability distribution functions (pdf) at various PFOA concentrations; and a two-compartment pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model to directly estimate mean changes. Based on the GEE, the average rates of change in total cholesterol and fT4 associated with increasing PFOA were approximately -1.2x10â3mmol/L/ÎŒM and 2.8x10â3pmol/L/ÎŒM, respectively. The PK/PD model predicted more closely the trends observed in the data as well as the pdfs of biomarkers. A decline in total cholesterol was observed, with a clear transition in shape and range of the pdfs, manifested by the maximum value of the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence, that occurred at plasma PFOA between 420 and 565âÎŒM (175,000â230,000âng/mL). HDL was unchanged. An increase in fT4 was observed at a higher PFOA transition point, albeit TSH was unchanged. Our findings are consistent with some animal models and may motivate re-examination of the epidemiological studies to PFOA at levels several orders of magnitude lower than this study. These observational studies have reported contrary associations, but currently understood biology does not support the existence of such conflicting effects
Global Methane Emissions From Wetlands, Rice Paddies, and Lakes
The current concentration of atmospheric methane is 1774±1.8 parts per billion, and it accounts for 18% of total greenhouse gas radiative forcing [Forster et al., 2007]. Atmospheric methane is 22 times more effective, on a per-unit-mass basis, than carbon dioxide in absorbing long-wave radiation on a 100-year time horizon, and it plays an important role in atmospheric ozone chemistry (e.g., in the presence of nitrous oxides, tropospheric methane oxidation will lead to the formation of ozone). Wetlands are a large source of atmospheric methane, Arctic lakes have recently been recognized as a major source [e.g., Walter et al., 2006], and anthropogenic activities--such as rice agriculture--also make a considerable contribution
Spectroscopic parameters for silacyclopropynylidene, SiC, from extensive astronomical observations toward CW Leo (IRC +10216) with the Herschel satellite
A molecular line survey has been carried out toward the carbon-rich
asymptotic giant branch star CW Leo employing the HIFI instrument on board of
the Herschel satellite. Numerous features from 480 GHz to beyond 1100 GHz could
be assigned unambiguously to the fairly floppy SiC molecule. However,
predictions from laboratory data exhibited large deviations from the observed
frequencies even after some lower frequency data from this survey were
incorporated into a fit. Therefore, we present a combined fit of all available
laboratory data together with data from radio-astronomical observations.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, J. Mol. Spectrosc., appeared; CDMS links corrected
(version 2; current version: 3; may be updated later this year
Competing tunneling trajectories in a 2D potential with variable topology as a model for quantum bifurcations
We present a path - integral approach to treat a 2D model of a quantum
bifurcation. The model potential has two equivalent minima separated by one or
two saddle points, depending on the value of a continuous parameter. Tunneling
is therefore realized either along one trajectory or along two equivalent
paths. Zero point fluctuations smear out the sharp transition between these two
regimes and lead to a certain crossover behavior. When the two saddle points
are inequivalent one can also have a first order transition related to the fact
that one of the two trajectories becomes unstable. We illustrate these results
by numerical investigations. Even though a specific model is investigated here,
the approach is quite general and has potential applicability for various
systems in physics and chemistry exhibiting multi-stability and tunneling
phenomena.Comment: 11 pages, 8 eps figures, Revtex-
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