Changes of water quality and sediment phosphorus of a small productive lake following decreased phosphorus loading

Esthwaite Water is the most productive or eutrophic lake in the English Lake District. Since 1945 its water quality has been determined from weekly or biweekly measurements of temperature, oxygen, plant nutrients and phytoplankton abundance. The lake receives phosphorus from its largely lowland-pasture catchment, sewage effluent from the villages of Hawkshead and Near Sawrey, and from a cage-culture fish farm. From 1986 phosphorus has been removed from the sewage effluent of Hawkshead which was considered to contribute between 47% and 67% of the total phosphorus loading to the lake. At the commencement of phosphorus removal regular measurements of phosphorus in the superficial 0-4 cm layer of lake sediment were made from cores collected at random sites. Since 1986 the mean annual concentration of alkali-extractable sediment phosphorus has decreased by 23%. This change is not significant at the 5% level but nearly so. There has been no marked change in water quality over this period. Summer dominance of blue-green algae which arose in the early 1980s after decline of the previous summer forms, Ceratium spp., has been maintained. Improvement in water quality is unlikely to be achieved at the present phosphorus loading

A free and open source programming library for landscape metrics calculations

Landscape metrics are used in a wide range of environmental studies such as land use change and land degradation studies, soil erosion and run-off predictions, management of hunting communities, and strategic planning for environmental management, to name just a few. Due to their utility for a variety of applications, there are many indices and software packages that have been designed to provide calculations and analysis of landscape structure patterns in categorical maps. With the purpose of making a comparison between the most used tools (Fragstats, V-Late, PA4...), this paper examines their advantages and disadvantages in order to create a list of common features that need to be incorporated into this type of software. An Application Programming Interface (API) is produced without limitations on data input, that is capable of calculating vector or raster metrics and is extensible. This API should make it possible not only to build third party applications easily, but also make it possible to add new metrics and research into new paradigms related to traditional landscape metrics. Land-metrics DIY (DoIt Yourself) is the library presented in this paper. It can calculate almost 40 landscape metrics from geometry provided by an ESRI Shapefile. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.We especially appreciate the comments and suggestions by A. Jakeman and three anonymous reviewers which led to substantial improvements of the manuscript. This paper is partially supported by the FPU - Doctoral Research Scholarship program of the "Ministerio de Educacion de Espana" (2007-2011). Moreover, we would like to thank all the FOSS community, and in particular to Diego Guidi (NTS main developer) for their interesting and important work. Of course, we also thank the OGC and all FOSS projects related to spatial information because they suppose a strategic support to the further development of our idea and other possible GIS projects.Zaragozi Zaragozi, BM.; Belda Antoli, A.; Linares Pellicer, JJ.; Martínez-Pérez, JE.; Navarro, JT.; Esparza Peidro, J. (2012). A free and open source programming library for landscape metrics calculations. Environmental Modelling and Software. 31:131-140. doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2011.10.009S1311403

History of clinical transplantation

How transplantation came to be a clinical discipline can be pieced together by perusing two volumes of reminiscences collected by Paul I. Terasaki in 1991-1992 from many of the persons who were directly involved. One volume was devoted to the discovery of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), with particular reference to the human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) that are widely used today for tissue matching.1 The other focused on milestones in the development of clinical transplantation.2 All the contributions described in both volumes can be traced back in one way or other to the demonstration in the mid-1940s by Peter Brian Medawar that the rejection of allografts is an immunological phenomenon.3,4 © 2008 Springer New York

Growth temperature of four Campylobacter jejuni strains influences their subsequent survival in food and water

Aim: To determine if Campylobacter jejuni grown at 37 and 42 degrees C have different abilities to survive on beef and chicken, and in water. Methods and Results: Beef, chicken and water were separately inoculated with four Camp. jejuni (two poultry and two beef) strains grown at 37 or 42 degrees C. The matrices were stored at similar to 4 degrees C and Camp. jejuni numbers were monitored over time by plate counts. On beef there was a greater decrease in number for two strains (P < 0.05; similar to 0.7 and 1.3 log CFU cm(-2)) grown at 37 degrees C as compared with 42 degrees C. By contrast on chicken there was a decrease in numbers for two strains (P < 0.05; similar to 1.3 and 1 log CFU g(-1)) grown at 42 degrees C as compared with 37 degrees C. In water there was a greater decrease in numbers for all strains (P < 0.05; similar to 3-5.3 log CFU ml(-1)) grown at 42 degrees C as compared with 37 degrees C. Conclusions: Growth temperature influences the survival of Camp. jejuni on food and in water. Significance and Impact of this study: Campylobacter jejuni survival studies need to consider growth temperature to avoid erroneous results. Campylobacter jejuni grown at 37 degrees C, the body temperature of humans and cattle, may represent a greater public health risk in water than those grown at 42 degrees C, the body temperature of poultry