EarthN: A new Earth System Nitrogen Model

The amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere, oceans, crust, and mantle have important ramifications for Earth's biologic and geologic history. Despite this importance, the history and cycling of nitrogen in the Earth system is poorly constrained over time. For example, various models and proxies contrastingly support atmospheric mass stasis, net outgassing, or net ingassing over time. In addition, the amount available to and processing of nitrogen by organisms is intricately linked with and provides feedbacks on oxygen and nutrient cycles. To investigate the Earth system nitrogen cycle over geologic history, we have constructed a new nitrogen cycle model: EarthN. This model is driven by mantle cooling, links biologic nitrogen cycling to phosphate and oxygen, and incorporates geologic and biologic fluxes. Model output is consistent with large (2-4x) changes in atmospheric mass over time, typically indicating atmospheric drawdown and nitrogen sequestration into the mantle and continental crust. Critical controls on nitrogen distribution include mantle cooling history, weathering, and the total Bulk Silicate Earth+atmosphere nitrogen budget. Linking the nitrogen cycle to phosphorous and oxygen levels, instead of carbon as has been previously done, provides new and more dynamic insight into the history of nitrogen on the planet.Comment: 36 pages, 12 figure

Downflow heat transfer in a heated ribbed vertical annulus with a cosine power profile

Experiments designed to investigate downflow heat transfer in a heated, ribbed annulus test section simulating one of the annular coolant channels of a Savannah River Plant production reactor Mark 22 fuel assembly have been conducted at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. The inner surface of the annulus was constructed of aluminum and was electrically heated to provide an axial cosine power profile and a flat azimuthal power shape. Data presented in this report are from the ECS-2c series, which was a follow on series to the ECS-2b series, conducted specifically to provide additional data on the effect of different powers at the same test conditions, for use in evaluation of possible power effects on the aluminum temperature measurements. Electrical powers at 90%, 100%, and 110% of the power required to result in the maximum aluminum temperature at fluid saturation temperature were used at each set of test conditions previously used in the ECS-2b series. The ECS-2b series was conducted in the same test rig as the previous ECS-2b series. Data and experimental description for the ECS-2b series is provided in a previous report. 18 refs., 25 figs., 3 tabs

Downflow dryout in a heated ribbed vertical annulus with a cosine power profile (Results from test series ECS-2, WSR, and ECS-2cE)

Experiments designed to investigate surface dryout in a heated, ribbed annulus test section simulating one of the annular coolant channels of a Savannah River Plant production reactor Mark 22 fuel assembly have been conducted at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. The inner surface of the annulus was constructed of aluminum and was electrically heated to provide an axial cosine power profile and a flat azimuthal power shape. Data presented in this report are from the ECS-2, WSR, and ECS-2cE series of tests. These experiments were conducted to examine the onset of wall thermal excursion for a range of flow, inlet fluid temperature, and annulus outlet pressure. Hydraulic boundary conditions on the test section represent flowrates (0.1--1.4 1/s), inlet fluid temperatures (293--345 K), and outlet pressures (-18--139.7 cm of water relative to the bottom of the heated length (61--200 cm of water relative to the bottom of the lower plenum)) expected to occur during the Emergency Coolant System (ECS) phase of postulated Loss-of-Coolant Accident in a production reactor. The onset of thermal excursion based on the present data is consistent with data gathered in test rigs with flat axial power profiles. The data indicate that wall dryout is primarily a function of liquid superficial velocity. Air entrainment rate was observed to be a strong function of the boundary conditions (primarily flowrate and liquid temperature), but had a minor effect on the power at the onset of thermal excursion for the range of conditions examined. 14 refs., 33 figs., 13 tabs

North and North East Lincolnshire Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessment : Final report

This report presents the findings of an assessment of the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers across North and North East Lincolnshire. The research and report were commissioned by the two unitary authorities (North Lincolnshire Council and North East Lincolnshire District Council) in August 2007. The study was led by a team of researchers from the Salford Housing & Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at the University of Salford with support from researchers at the Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University. The study was greatly aided by research support and expertise from members of the Gypsy and Traveller communities. The study was managed by a Steering Group composed of officers representing the commissioning authorities. This report also builds on a previous exploratory study commissioned by the two local authorities in 2005

Unprecedented Alexandrium blooms in a previously low biotoxin risk area of Tasmania, Australia.

During October 2012, a shipment of blue mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) from the poorly monitored east coast of Tasmania, Australia, was tested by Japanese import authorities and found to be contaminated with unacceptable levels of Paralytic Shellfish Toxins (PSTs; 10 mg/kg). Subsequently local oysters, scallops, clams, the viscera of abalone and rock lobsters were also found to be contaminated. This led to a global product recall and loss to the local economy of AUD 23M. Following low toxicity during 2013 and 2014 and implementation of minimal shellfish farm closures, a more severe bloom event occurred during July-November 2015 and again June-September 2016 (up to 300,000 Alexandrium cells/L; 24 mg/kg PST in mussels, 6 mg/kg in Crassostrea gigas oysters), also causing 4 human illnesses resulting in hospitalization after consumption of wild shellfish. While Alexandrium tamarense had been detected in low concentrations in southeastern Australia since 1987, all cultured strains belonged to the mostly non-toxic group 5 (now designated A. australiense; detected since 1987) and weakly toxic group 4 (A. pacificum; detected in 1997). In contrast, the 2012 to 2016 outbreaks were dominated by highly toxic group 1 (A. fundyense) never detected previously in the Australian region. Molecular analyses suggest that A. fundyense may have been a cryptic ribotype previously present in Tasmania, but newly stimulated by altered water column stratification conditions driven by changing rainfall and temperature patterns. Increased seafood and plankton monitoring of the area now include the implementation of Alexandrium qPCR, routine Neogen™ immunological and HPLC PST tests, but ultimately may also drive change in harvesting strategies and aquaculture species selection by the local seafood industry

North and North East Lincolnshire Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessment : Executive summary

This report provides an executive summary of Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessment in North and North East Lincolnshire. This research was commissioned by North Lincolnshire Council and North East Lincolnshire District Council in August 2007. The study was led by a team of researchers from the Salford Housing & Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at the University of Salford with support from researchers at the Centre for Regional, Economic and Social Research (CRESR) at Sheffield Hallam University. The study was managed by a Steering Group composed of officers representing the commissioning authorities. This report also builds on a previous exploratory study commissioned by the two local authorities in 2005

Database Learning: Toward a Database that Becomes Smarter Every Time

In today's databases, previous query answers rarely benefit answering future queries. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we change this paradigm in an approximate query processing (AQP) context. We make the following observation: the answer to each query reveals some degree of knowledge about the answer to another query because their answers stem from the same underlying distribution that has produced the entire dataset. Exploiting and refining this knowledge should allow us to answer queries more analytically, rather than by reading enormous amounts of raw data. Also, processing more queries should continuously enhance our knowledge of the underlying distribution, and hence lead to increasingly faster response times for future queries. We call this novel idea---learning from past query answers---Database Learning. We exploit the principle of maximum entropy to produce answers, which are in expectation guaranteed to be more accurate than existing sample-based approximations. Empowered by this idea, we build a query engine on top of Spark SQL, called Verdict. We conduct extensive experiments on real-world query traces from a large customer of a major database vendor. Our results demonstrate that Verdict supports 73.7% of these queries, speeding them up by up to 23.0x for the same accuracy level compared to existing AQP systems.Comment: This manuscript is an extended report of the work published in ACM SIGMOD conference 201

VerdictDB: Universalizing Approximate Query Processing

Despite 25 years of research in academia, approximate query processing (AQP) has had little industrial adoption. One of the major causes of this slow adoption is the reluctance of traditional vendors to make radical changes to their legacy codebases, and the preoccupation of newer vendors (e.g., SQL-on-Hadoop products) with implementing standard features. Additionally, the few AQP engines that are available are each tied to a specific platform and require users to completely abandon their existing databases---an unrealistic expectation given the infancy of the AQP technology. Therefore, we argue that a universal solution is needed: a database-agnostic approximation engine that will widen the reach of this emerging technology across various platforms. Our proposal, called VerdictDB, uses a middleware architecture that requires no changes to the backend database, and thus, can work with all off-the-shelf engines. Operating at the driver-level, VerdictDB intercepts analytical queries issued to the database and rewrites them into another query that, if executed by any standard relational engine, will yield sufficient information for computing an approximate answer. VerdictDB uses the returned result set to compute an approximate answer and error estimates, which are then passed on to the user or application. However, lack of access to the query execution layer introduces significant challenges in terms of generality, correctness, and efficiency. This paper shows how VerdictDB overcomes these challenges and delivers up to 171$\times$ speedup (18.45$\times$ on average) for a variety of existing engines, such as Impala, Spark SQL, and Amazon Redshift, while incurring less than 2.6% relative error. VerdictDB is open-sourced under Apache License.Comment: Extended technical report of the paper that appeared in Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 1461-1476. ACM, 201

Characterization of the Transient Response of the ILS with One Module Installed to Heatup Changes in Power Level and Cooldown

This report provides documentation of the initial startup and testing of the first electrolysis module in the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) High Temperature Steam Electrolysis Integrated Laboratory Scale (ILS) facility. Initial shakedown testing of the INL ILS experimental facility commenced on August 22, 2007. This fulfilled a DOE Level 2 milestone. Heatup of the first ILS module started at approximately 4:10 PM on September 24, 2007. Initial module testing continued for 420 hours. The test average H2 production rate was approximately 1.3 Nm3/hr (0.116 kg H2/hr), with a peak measured value of over 2 Nm3/hr (0.179 kg H2/hr). Significant module performance degradation was observed over the first 250 hours, after which no further degradation was noted for the remainder of the test. Once all test objectives had been successfully met, the test was terminated in a controlled fashion. Discussion is included concerning several modifications that will be incorporated into the facility components to improve reliability and ease of operation for future long term testing