Nutrient chemistry of a large, deep lake in subarctic Alaska

Project Officer Eldor W. Schallock Assessment and Criteria Development Division Corvallis Environmental Research Laboratory Corvallis, Oregon 97330;Corvallis Environmental Research Laboratory Office of Research and Development U. S. Environmental Protection Agency Corvallis, Oregon 97330; R800276The primary objective of this project was to assess the state of the water quality of Harding Lake, and to attempt to predict the effects of future development within its watershed. Since the major effect of degradation of water quality due to human activity is the promotion of nuisance growths of plants, the major emphasis was placed on measurements of plant growth and concentrations of the major nutrients they require. Planktonic algal growth was found to be low, below 95.6 gm/m2/year, and the growth of submerged rooted plants was found to be relatively less important at approximately 1.35 gm/m2/year. Measurements of the growth of attached algae were not conducted, therefore the relative importance of their growth is currently unknown. A model for predicting the effect of future real estate development in the watershed was modified and applied to this lake. This model adequately describes current water quality conditions, and is assumed to have some predictive ability, but several cautions concerning application of this model to Harding Lake are discussed. A secondary objective was to study the thermal regime of a deep subarctic lake. Intensive water temperature measurements were made throughout one year and less intensive measurements were conducted during two additional years. The possibility that this lake may occasionally stratify thermally under the ice and not mix completely in the spring was discovered. The implications of this possibility are discussed for management of subarctic lakes. Hydrologic and energy budgets of this lake are attempted; the annual heat budget is estimated at 1.96 x 104 ± 1.7 x 103 cal/cm2. The results of a study of domestic water supply and waste disposal alternatives in the watershed, and the potential for enteric bacterial contamination of the lake water are presented. Limited work on the zooplankton, fishes, and benthic macroinvertebrates of this lake is also presented

Physics Potential of Very Intense Conventional Neutrino Beams

The physics potential of high intensity conventional beams is explored. We consider a low energy super beam which could be produced by a proposed new accelerator at CERN, the Super Proton Linac. Water Cherenkov and liquid oil scintillator detectors are studied as possible candidates for a neutrino oscillation experiment which could improve our current knowledge of the atmospheric parameters and measure or severely constrain the parameter connecting the atmospheric and solar realms. It is also shown that a very large water detector could eventually observe leptonic CP violation. The reach of such an experiment to the neutrino mixing parameters would lie in-between the next generation of neutrino experiments (MINOS, OPERA, etc) and a future neutrino factory.Comment: Talk given at the Venice Conference on Neutrino Telescopes, Venice, March, 200

A ‘healthy baby’: The double imperative of preimplantation genetic diagnosis

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 The Authors.This article reports from a study exploring the social processes, meanings and institutions that frame and produce ‘ethical problems’ and clinical dilemmas for practitioners, scientists and others working in the specialty of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). A major topic in the data was that, in contrast to IVF, the aim of PGD is to transfer to the woman’s womb only those embryos likely to be unaffected by serious genetic disorders; that is, to produce ‘healthy babies’. Staff described the complex processes through which embryos in each treatment cycle must meet a double imperative: they must be judged viable by embryologists and ‘unaffected’ by geneticists. In this article, we focus on some of the ethical, social and occupational issues for staff ensuing from PGD’s double imperative.The Wellcome Trus

Brain-specific tropomyosins TMBr-1 and TMBr-3 have distinct patterns of expression during development and in adult brain

In this study we report on the developmental and regional expression of two brain-specific isoforms of tropomyosin, TMBr-1 and TMBr-3, that are generated from the rat alpha-tropomyosin gene via the use of alternative promoters and alternative RNA splicing. Western blot analysis using an exon-specific peptide polyclonal antibody revealed that the two isoforms are differentially expressed in development with TMBr-3 appearing in the embryonic brain at 16 days of gestation, followed by the expression of TMBr-1 at 20 days after birth. TMBr-3 was detected in all brain regions examined, whereas TMBr-1 was detected predominantly in brain areas that derived from the prosencephalon. Immunocytochemical studies on mixed primary cultures made from rat embryonic midbrain indicate that expression of the brain-specific epitope is restricted to neurons. The developmental pattern and neuronal localization of these forms of tropomyosin suggest that these isoforms have a specialized role in the development and plasticity of the nervous system

Physics Potential of the SPL Super Beam

Performances of a neutrino beam generated by the CERN SPL proton driver are computed considering a 440 kton water Cerenkov detector at 130 km from the target. $\theta_{13}$ sensitivity down to $1.2^\circ$ and a $\delta$ sensitivity comparable to a Neutrino Factory, for $\theta_{13} \geq 3^\circ$, are within the reach of such a project.Comment: Invited talk at the Nufact02 Workshop, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, July 200

Measuring the νμ\nu_{\mu} to νμˉ\bar{\nu_{\mu}} Ratio in a High Statistics Atmospheric Neutrino Experiment

By exploiting differences in muon lifetimes it is possible to distinguish $\nu_{\mu}$ from $\bar{\nu_{\mu}}$ charged current interactions in underground neutrino detectors. Such observations would be a useful tool in understanding the source of the atmospheric neutrino anomaly.Comment: 6 pages no figure