Community Response Strategies for Environmental Problems of Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal in Fairbanks, Alaska

This report examines the history of the response strategies of the Fairbanks, Alaska, community to problems of water supply and wastewater disposal. Fairbanks is significant since it is the largest settlement in the northern subarctic and arctic regions of North America. Today, the City of Fairbanks and the surrounding urban area have a combined population of over 40,000

Environmental quality conditions in Fairbanks, Alaska, 1972

Published by The Institute of Water Resources and The Institute of Social, Economic and Government Research Fairbanks, AlaskaThis study represents a starting point for investigating the nature and interconnectivity of environmental quality problems in Fairbanks in the 1970's. Since the Fairbanks flood of 1967, no detailed survey of environmental quality conditions has been conducted despite the impact of the flood, the considerable expansion of the city limits, and the population expansion (anticipated and actual) associated with the oil pipeline. The study focuses on selective aspects of environmental quality of continuing and increasing concern to Fairbanks area residents and also to the city and borough governments. Specifically, the issues analyzed are (1) the environmental setting of the area, (2) structures, especially housing conditions, (3) premise conditions, and (4) waste control. Much of the data was derived from a program called NEEDS, an acronym for Neighborhood Environmental Evaluation and Decision System. NEEDS was developed by the Bureau of Community Environmental Management of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare for rapid gathering of environmental, health, and social information in urban areas.1 The NEEDS survey design consists of two separate stages. Stage I is concerned with collecting general environmental quality information to determine geographically where the most pronounced environmental health problems exist in a given urban area. Stage II consists of detailed interviews with residents of the identified "problem areas" to determine the exact nature of existing health and environmental problems, e.g., housing, health, availability of services, and attitudes regarding existing government (local, state, and federal) programs. With this information, local officials could begin to reorganize existing programs and/or develop new programs to solve some of the interrelated environmental quality problems in the disadvantaged sections of their cities.The work upon which this report is based was supported by funds provided by the State of Alaska, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, the United States Public Health Service, and the Office of Water Research and Technology

Approaches towards the synthesis of saxitoxin alkaloids

2013 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Zetekitoxin AB is a toxin isolated from the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki). The structure and activity of zetekitoxin AB was a mystery for 30 years until 2004 when it was elucidated by Yamashita and coworkers. It was found to be a potent analog of Saxitoxin, a marine neurotoxin. Saxitoxin is a sodium channel blocker and has been used extensively as a research probe. Zetekitoxin AB shows an affinity profile similar to saxitoxin, but is considerably more potent. Due to the endangerment of the Panamanian golden frog there is no source of zetekitoxin AB, preventing further studies. Presented herein is a concise synthesis of 4,5-epi-11-hydroxy-saxitoxinol, which utilizes D-ribose to direct an asymmetric Mannich reaction. This approach allows many modes of reactivity, which can be used to potentially access various analogs of saxitoxin with novel bioactivity

Carbon and stable carbon isotopes in mantle derived material

In this investigation, three possible forms of carbon were identified in mantle-derived material: volatile carbon (methane and carbon dioxide), residual carbon of uncertain location, and carbonate carbon. Volatiles were separated by vacuum crushing, the residuals and total carbon by vacuum fusion, and carbonate carbon by acid evolution. Isotopic analyses of the evolved gases indicate that the residual carbon has a carbon isotope value of approximately -15% to -2%, the volatile carbon gas has a value of less than -21% , and the carbonate about -6.8%, all values being relative to PDB. The different isotopic values displayed by the separate forms of carbon indicate that there are several forms of carbon in the mantle. Carbon as a volatile phase may be of importance in the magmatic and intrusive processes of mantle material upward into the crust

Simulation of nanoscale patterns yielded by ion bombardment of solid surfaces

2018 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis includes numerical investigations into two topics of self-organized topographies produced on solid surfaces that are bombarded with a broad ion beam. The first topic is the formation of terraces. When a surface is bombarded at relatively large angles of incidence, the surface often develops facets that are characterized by large regions of nearly constant gradient in height, which are called terraces. The second topic is related to the observation that when the surface of a nominally flat binary material is bombarded with a broad, normally-incident ion beam, disordered hexagonal arrays of nanodots can form. Shipman and Bradley have derived equations of motion that govern the coupled dynamics of the height and composition of such a surface [P. D. Shipman and R. M. Bradley, Phys. Rev. B 84, 085420 (2011)]. We investigate the influence of initial conditions on the hexagonal order yielded by integration of those equations of motion. In our work on terrace formation, we introduce a model that includes an improved approximation to the sputter yield and that produces a terraced surface morphology at long times for a wide range of parameter values. Numerical integrations of our equation of motion reveal that the terraces coarsen for a finite amount of time after which the coarsening is interrupted, just as observed experimentally. We also show that the terrace propagation direction can reverse as the amplitude of the surface disturbance grows. This highlights the important role higher order nonlinearities play in determining the propagation velocity at high fluences. We study the nanoscale terraced topographies that arise when a solid surface is bombarded with a broad ion beam that has a relatively high angle of incidence θ. Our simulations establish that the surfaces exhibit interrupted coarsening, i.e., the characteristic width and height of the surface disturbance grow for a time but ultimately asymptote to finite values as the fully terraced state develops. In addition, as θ is reduced, the surface can undergo a transition from a terraced morphology that changes little with time as it propagates over the surface to an unterraced state that appears to exhibit spatiotemporal chaos. For different ranges of the parameters, our equation of motion produces terraced topographies that are remarkably similar to those seen in various experiments, including pyramidal structures that are elongated along the projected beam direction and isolated lenticular depressions. For our study of the influence of prepatterning surfaces governed by the Bradley-Shipman equations, the initial conditions studied are hexagonal and sinusoidal templates, straight scratches and nominally flat surfaces. Our simulations indicate that each of the prepatterned surfaces can lead to marked improvements in the hexagonal order compared to what is obtained from the nominally flat surfaces. For the hexagonal and sinusoidal templates with amplitude approximately equal to one hundredth of the amplitude of the pattern obtained at late times, the greatest improvement in order is obtained if the initial wavelength is approximately equal to or double the linearly selected wavelength. Our simulations of sinusoidal templates demonstrate that increasing the amplitude of the template can improve the effectiveness of templates with longer wavelengths. Scratches enhance the hexagonal order in their vicinity if their width is close to or less than the linearly selected wavelength. Our results suggest that prepatterning a binary material can dramatically increase the hexagonal order achieved at large ion fluences

THE ISLAMIC WORLD AND THE LATIN EAST: WILLIAM OF TRIPOLI AND HIS SYRIAN CONTEXT

For nearly two centuries after the First Crusade, a Latin-Christian elite controlled significant parts of the eastern Mediterranean, home to a diverse array of Christians, Muslims, and Jews. While seemingly a rich context for inter-religious cultural exchange, the dominant historical narrative has called this society a form of “proto-Apartheid,” with Frankish rulers successfully erecting impermeable boundaries between themselves and their largely Arabic-speaking subjects.This dissertation challenges this narrative through an investigation of the life and work of William of Tripoli, a thirteenth-century Dominican born in modern Lebanon, who spent his career evangelizing Muslims from a priory in Akko (Acre, Israel). William wrote two treatises on Islam that have been called “peculiar,” because of their positive portrayal of both the Qurʾān and the Prophet Muḥammad, but have not otherwise been integrated into our understanding of the cultural milieu of the Latin East.argue that the “peculiar” elements in William’s work were borrowed from Arabic-Christian and Muslim sources, and that his entire rhetorical approach to Islam was informed by them. Through a contextualization of his work, I show that the religious, cultural, and social barriers of the Latin East were far more permeable than prior scholarship has acknowledged. Living and working alongside Muslims and eastern Christians cultivated within the Franks of the Latin East a uniquely Latin Eastern perspective. This was defined, above all, by the mental and emotional flexibility to interact with one’s neighbors from different sectarian communities in any of the ways that the context required, even while disagreeing with them in a broad, religious sense. William of Tripoli is the best written example we have of this perspective. He sought a pia interpretatio, or a pious interpretation of the Qurʾān, two centuries before this term was coined, because personal engagement with Islam had convinced him this was the best way to accomplish his missionary goals