The Community Well Water Testing Program: Volunteer Groundwater Nitrate Monitoring in the Southern Willamette Valley of Oregon

In October 2006, the Oregon State University Extension Service Well Water Program began a groundwater monitoring project to learn more about well water nitrate levels in the Southern Willamette Valley and increase community involvement in groundwater management activities. The primary objectives of the program were to elucidate trends in spatial and temporal variability of nitrate in well derived drinking water, facilitate understanding of regional groundwater issues through neighbor-to-neighbor outreach, and assist rural residents in protecting their drinking water supply. The Community Well Water Testing Program established neighborhood networks in which volunteer monitors tested their own well and their neighbors’ wells for nitrate on a monthly basis. Each volunteer monitor was responsible for collecting water samples from 3-9 neighborhood wells, analyzing the samples using a LaMotte nitrate-nitrogen test kit, and reporting results to both the well owner and program managers. During the 2006-2007 sampling year, 20 volunteer monitors tested 1,209 well water samples for nitrate. The mean nitrate concentration for all tested wells over this period was 3.0 mg/L. Annual mean nitrate values ranged from 0 to 14.1 mg/L with a median of 1.9 mg/L. Eleven wells had an annual mean nitrate value over 7 mg/L, the Oregon groundwater nitrate action level, while 6 wells had an annual mean nitrate value over 10 mg/L, the national nitrate public water supply standard. Results showed considerable regional variability as well as seasonal variation by well. Monitoring prompted questions, interest, and learning while initiating conversations and involvement among neighbors. Collectively, monitoring and neighborhood outreach brought attention to regional groundwater resources and encouraged increased awareness

Nuclear Clusters as a Probe for Expansion Flow in Heavy Ion Reactions at 10-15AGeV

A phase space coalescence description based on the Wigner-function method for cluster formation in relativistic nucleus-nucleus collisions is presented. The momentum distributions of nuclear clusters d,t and He are predicted for central Au(11.6AGeV)Au and Si(14.6AGeV)Si reactions in the framework of the RQMD transport approach. Transverse expansion leads to a strong shoulder-arm shape and different inverse slope parameters in the transverse spectra of nuclear clusters deviating markedly from thermal distributions. A clear ``bounce-off'' event shape is seen: the averaged transverse flow velocities in the reaction plane are for clusters larger than for protons. The cluster yields --particularly at low $p_t$ at midrapidities-- and the in-plane (anti)flow of clusters and pions change if suitably strong baryon potential interactions are included. This allows to study the transient pressure at high density via the event shape analysis of nucleons, nucleon clusters and other hadrons.Comment: 38 pages, 9 figures, LaTeX type, eps used, subm. to Phys. Rev.

VIBRONIC MAGNETIC ROTATIONAL STRENGTHS IN THE 1B2u^{1}B_{2u} STATE OF BENZENE

Author Institution: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Chemical Physics University of Minnesota Institute of Arthritis; Department of Chemistry, Stanford UniversityProgressions of B terms in the magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectrum of the vibronical1y allowed 260 nm $^{1}A_{1g} \rightarrow ^{1}B_{2u}$ transition of benzene are assigned to $e_{2}$ g vibrationa1 modes. Experimental MCD spectra of benzene and benzene- $d_{6}$ in solution at room temperature and liquid nitrogen temperature are reported. Magnetic rotational strengths (B values) and oscillator strengths associated with each of the four e2g vibrations in benzene and benzene-$d_{6}$ have been calculated by two different methods, a perturbation treatment Involving the $\pi$ electrons only and a CNDO/S-CI calculation for a geometry in which the nuclei are distorted along a normal coordinate. The results of the two calculations agree reasonably well with each other and with experiment. Two terms that dominate the magnetic rotational strengths are identified