How to protect estuaries in Durham, NH

Estuaries are some of the most diverse and fragile ecosystems on our planet. All over the nation, along the coastal states, half of the wetlands, about 55 million acres, have been destroyed (“Habitat Loss Nationwide,” n.d.). Most of these wetlands get Dutton 3 cleared and drained for development, agriculture, etc. In the estuaries located in the Gulf of Maine, development has doubled in the last forty years in the lower watershed (“Habitat Loss Nationwide,” n.d.). This has resulted in an increase in population and impervious surfaces, which correlates with the negative impacts to the watershed, such as runoff and sedimentation (National Research Council, 1987). Other factors have contributed to the degradation of the estuaries in the Piscataqua region such as sealevel rise and an increase in fertilizer use (citations). Some changes have been made to protect these estuaries, however, solving the cumulative impacts need to be included in the protection. Each individual activity is not independent of each other. Their activities work together to decrease the productivity and health of the estuaries. We have policies that have been created, and zoning that has been changed to improve estuaries, however, we need to take that next step forward to fill in the gaps. The goal of this paper is to analyze the current policies and programs, identify the gaps to improve and enhance the programs to be in line with the longstanding ideals of protection and conservation of Durham’s estuaries

Polymers in Fluid Flows

The interaction of flexible polymers with fluid flows leads to a number of intriguing phenomena observed in laboratory experiments, namely drag reduction, elastic turbulence and heat transport modification in natural convection, and is one of the most challenging subjects in soft matter physics. In this paper we review our present knowledge on the subject. Our present knowledge is mostly based on direct numerical simulations performed in the last twenty years, which have successfully explained, at least qualitatively, most of the experimental results. Our goal is to disentangle as much as possible the basic mechanisms acting in the system in order to capture the basic features underlying different theoretical approaches and explanations

Legal origin and the evolution of environmental quality

We extend the empirical literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) by showing the legal origin matters for the evolution of environmental quality. Using observations of ambient sulfur dioxide levels, we find that the EKC for French and British legal origin countries diverge as incomes rise, with the EKC for French legal origin countries lying significantly below that for countries of British legal origin. This finding is robust to the inclusion of proxies for democracy and corruption, the institutional variables emphasized in the current EKC literature. Our results are consistent with the idea that the British common law tradition places a greater emphasis on private relative to collective property rights.Environmental quality, institutions, legal origin. economic development, evironmental Kuznets curve

The perception of emotion in artificial agents

Given recent technological developments in robotics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, it is perhaps unsurprising that the arrival of emotionally expressive and reactive artificial agents is imminent. However, if such agents are to become integrated into our social milieu, it is imperative to establish an understanding of whether and how humans perceive emotion in artificial agents. In this review, we incorporate recent findings from social robotics, virtual reality, psychology, and neuroscience to examine how people recognize and respond to emotions displayed by artificial agents. First, we review how people perceive emotions expressed by an artificial agent, such as facial and bodily expressions and vocal tone. Second, we evaluate the similarities and differences in the consequences of perceived emotions in artificial compared to human agents. Besides accurately recognizing the emotional state of an artificial agent, it is critical to understand how humans respond to those emotions. Does interacting with an angry robot induce the same responses in people as interacting with an angry person? Similarly, does watching a robot rejoice when it wins a game elicit similar feelings of elation in the human observer? Here we provide an overview of the current state of emotion expression and perception in social robotics, as well as a clear articulation of the challenges and guiding principles to be addressed as we move ever closer to truly emotional artificial agents

Dependence of heat transport on the strength and shear rate of prescribed circulating flows

We study numerically the dependence of heat transport on the maximum velocity and shear rate of physical circulating flows, which are prescribed to have the key characteristics of the large-scale mean flow observed in turbulent convection. When the side-boundary thermal layer is thinner than the viscous boundary layer, the Nusselt number (Nu), which measures the heat transport, scales with the normalized shear rate to an exponent 1/3. On the other hand, when the side-boundary thermal layer is thicker, the dependence of Nu on the Peclet number, which measures the maximum velocity, or the normalized shear rate when the viscous boundary layer thickness is fixed, is generally not a power law. Scaling behavior is obtained only in an asymptotic regime. The relevance of our results to the problem of heat transport in turbulent convection is also discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, submitted to European Physical Journal