Supplementary report to the final report of the coral reef expert group: S2. Practical taxonomy for RIMReP coral reef monitoring — macroalgae

[Extract] This report reviews the benefits and limitations of seven assessment and classification schemes for macroalgae that have been applied in coral reef monitoring. It provides recommendations for a practical scheme of algae identification for use in the Reef 2050 Integrated Monitoring and Reporting Program (RIMReP).An accessible copy of this report is not yet available from this repository, please contact [email protected] for more information

About the limits of microfiltration for the purification of wastewaters

In the past, microfiltration was widely used as a pretreatment step for wastewater stream purification purposes. Experiences performed during the last years shows that microfiltration fails to maintain its performances for longer period of times. Many case studies demonstrate that the adoption of microfiltration leads to the failure of the overall process; the severe fouling of the microfiltration membranes leads to high operating costs with the consequence to make the treatment of the wastewater economically unfeasible. The boundary flux concept is a profitable tool to analyze fouling issues in membrane processes. The boundary flux value separates an operating region characterized by reversible fouling formation from irreversible one. Boundary flux values are not content, but function of time, as calculated by the subboundary fouling rate value. The knowledge of both parameters may fully describe the membrane performances in sub-boundary operating regimes. Many times, for wastewater purification purposes, ultrafiltration membranes appear to be suits better to the needs, even they exhibit lower permeate fluxes compared to microfiltration. Key to this choice is that ultrafiltration appears to resist better to fouling issues, with a limited reduction of the performances as a function of time. In other words, it appears that ultrafiltration exhibit higher boundary flux values and lower sub-boundary fouling rates. In this work, after a brief introduction to the boundary flux concept, for many different wastewater streams (more than 20, produced by the most relevant industries in food, agriculture, manufacture, pharmaceutics), the boundary flux and sub-boundary fouling rate values of different microfiltration and ultrafiltration membranes will be discussed and compared. The possibility to successfully use microfiltration as a pretreatment step strongly depends on the feedstock characteristics and, in detail, on the particle size of the suspended matter. In most cases, microfiltration demonstrates to be technically unsuitable for pretreatment purposes of many wastewater streams; as a consequence, the adoption of microfiltration pushes operators to exceed boundary flux conditions, therefore triggering severe fouling, that leads to economic unfeasibility of the process in long terms

Chromium recovery by membranes for process reuse in the tannery industry

Leather tanning is a wide common industry all over the world. In leather processing, water is one of the most important medium, almost 40-45 L water kg-1 raw-hide or skin is used by tanneries for processing finished leathers. The composition of tannery wastewater presents considerable dissimilarities in the concentration range of pollutants both of inorganic (chlorides, with concentration ranging from several hundred to over 10,000 mg L-1 Cl–; sulphate (VI), ammonium ions and sulphide ions, exhibiting concentration that ranges from tens to several hundred mg L-1) and organic (the COD value is usually several thousand mg L-1 O2). Throughout the years, many conventional processes have been carried out to treat wastewater from tannery industry: unfortunately, in this case, biological treatment methods give rise to an excessive production of sludge, whereas physical and chemical methods are too expensive in terms of energy and reagent costs. In this work, a membrane process based on NF membrane modules was adopted to treat the tannery feedstock after primary conventional treatment. In a first step, the determination of all boundary flux parameters, in order to inhibit severe fouling formation during operation, were performed. After this, experimental work was carried out to validate the approach. The target of water purification was reached, that is the legal discharge to municipal sewer system in Italy of 90% of the initial wastewater stream volume. This allows having an immediate cost saving of 21%. Moreover, the developed process leads to a second benefit, that is the production of 5% of the initial volume as a highly chromium-rich concentrate at no cost suitable to tannery process recycle and reuse. In this case, cost saving rates exceeds 40%. At the end, scale-up of the investigated process will be discussed from technical and economic point of view

Seasonality in algal assemblages on upwelling-influenced coral reefs in the colombian caribbean

Seasonal changes of benthic algal assemblages have been Studied mainly in temperate and sub-tropical areas. It is not clear how natural processes contribute to the seasonal dynamics of algal assemblages on coral reefs, particularly in areas influenced by relatively cold upwelling waters. To investigate the seasonality in algal assemblages we monitored the percent cover of species and algal groups over one year (1994-1995) at two rocky-coral reefs at depths of 9-12 m on the Colombian Caribbean coast (Bahia Chengue,Tayrona National Natural Park, TNNP). The presence of relatively cold waters with temperatures of 25 degreesC and salinities of 36 ppt is indicative of upwelling events, while warm waters of 28-29 degreesC and salinities of 33 ppt indicate the rainy seasons in the area. The algal assemblage changed in composition and abundance throughout the year with a bimodal cover pattern observed for macroalgae and turf algae. During the rainy seasons (May to June and October to December) the assemblage was dominated by algal turfs (up to 43 % cover) and showed low macroalgal cover (< 20 %). In contrast, during the two upwelling periods (February and July to August) it was dominated by macroalgae (up to 44 % cover). Cover of brown macroalgae Dictyota spp. (mainly D. bartayresiana) declined from &AP; 34 % during the upwelling to only 5 % in the non-upwelling rainy seasons. Environmental data revealed a significant inverse correlation between water temperature and macroalgal cover, suggesting that increases in macroalgae are favoured by the presence of cold, upwelling events. It is likely that upwelling events bring nutrient rich waters that stimulate macroalgal growth, however, the role of nutrients regulating the abundance of macroalgae in the TNNP is yet to be investigated. The results of this study support the argument that benthic algal assemblages of coral reefs are a highly dynamic component of these ecosystems

Contributions to material failure numerical simulation in finite deformation settings. Elastoplastic models

Partiendo de la Aproximación de continuo de discontinuidades fuertes (CSDA) como marco para modelar el fenómeno de localización de deformaciones y discontinuidades del campo de desplazamientos, el presente artículo extiende resultados previos obtenidos por los autores empleando cinemáticas de deformación infinitesimal y finita en modelos degradables. Mediante el análisis de discontinuidad fuerte, y adoptando un modelo continuo (tensión-deformación) elastoplástico isótropo, se deriva el modelo constitutivo discreto proyectado (vector tracción versus salto del campo de esplazamiento), junto con las condiciones de discontinuidad fuerte que restringen los estados tensionales en el régimen discontinuo. Se establece una comparación entre los modelos constitutivos discretos proyectados obtenidos con ambas cinemáticas (deformaciones infinitesimales y finitas). Al final del artículo se expone una serie de ensayos numéricos con objeto de corroborar la teoría del modelo propuesto y de enfatizar el papel que desempeña la cinemática de grandes deformaciones en los resultados obtenidos.Peer Reviewe

On the non-existence of sympathetic Lie algebras with dimension less than 25

In this article we investigate the question of the lowest possible dimension that a sympathetic Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ can attain, when its Levi subalgebra $\mathfrak{g}_L$ is simple. We establish the structure of the nilradical of a perfect Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$, as a $\mathfrak{g}_L$-module, and determine the possible Lie algebra structures that one such $\mathfrak{g}$ admits. We prove that, as a $\mathfrak{g}_L$-module, the nilradical must decompose into at least 4 simple modules. We explicitly calculate the semisimple derivations of a perfect Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ with Levi subalgebra $\mathfrak{g}_L = \mathfrak{sl}_2(\mathbb{C})$ and give necessary conditions for $\mathfrak{g}$ to be a sympathetic Lie algebra in terms of these semisimple derivations. We show that there is no sympathetic Lie algebra of dimension lower than 15, independently of the nilradical's decomposition. If the nilradical has 4 simple modules, we show that a sympathetic Lie algebra has dimension greater or equal than 25.Comment: Accepted in Journal of Algebra and its Application

Remaining inconsistencies with solar neutrinos: can spin flavour precession provide a clue?

A few inconsistencies remain after it has been ascertained that LMA is the dominant solution to the solar neutrino problem: why is the SuperKamiokande spectrum flat and why is the Chlorine rate prediction over two standard deviations above the data. There also remains the ananswered and important question of whether the active neutrino flux is constant or time varying. We propose a scenario involving spin flavour precession to sterile neutrinos with three active flavours that predicts a flat SuperK spectrum and a Chlorine rate prediction more consistent with data. We also argue that running the Borexino experiment during the next few years may provide a very important clue as to the possible variability of the solar neutrino flux.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, contribution to TAUP 2009 (Rome

HH 223: a parsec-scale H2 outflow in the star-forming region L723

The dark cloud Lynds 723 (L723) is a low-mass star-forming region where one of the few known cases of a quadrupolar CO outflow has been reported. Two recent works have found that the radio continuum source VLA 2, towards the centre of the CO outflow, is actually a multiple system of young stellar objects (YSOs). Several line-emission nebulae that lie projected on the east-west CO outflow were detected in narrow-band Halpha and [SII] images. The spectra of the knots are characteristic of shock-excited gas (Herbig-Haro spectra), with supersonic blueshifted velocities, which suggests an optical outflow also powered by the VLA 2 YSO system of L723. We imaged a field of ~5' X 5' centred on HH 223, which includes the whole region of the quadrupolar CO outflow with nir narrow-band filters . The H2 line-emission structures appear distributed over a region of 5.5' (0.5 pc for a distance of 300 pc) at both sides of the VLA 2 YSO system, with an S-shape morphology, and are projected onto the east-west CO outflow. Most of them were resolved in smaller knotty substructures. The [FeII] emission only appears associated with HH 223. An additional nebular emission from the continuum in Hc and Kc appears associated with HH 223-K1, the structure closest to the VLA 2 YSO system, and could be tracing the cavity walls. We propose that the H2 structures form part of a large-scale near-infrared outflow, which is also associated with the VLA 2 YSO system. The current data do not allow us to discern which of the YSOs of VLA 2 is powering this large scale optical/near-infrared outflow.Comment: Accepted for A&A http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201015125 12 pages, 9 figure

Arbitrarily high-order (weighted) essentially non-oscillatory finite difference schemes for anelastic flows on staggered meshes

We propose a WENO finite difference scheme to approximate anelastic flows, and scalars advected by them, on staggered grids. In contrast to existing WENO schemes on staggered grids, the proposed scheme is designed to be arbitrarily high-order accurate as it judiciously combines ENO interpolations of velocities with WENO reconstructions of spatial derivatives. A set of numerical experiments are presented to demonstrate the increase in accuracy and robustness with the proposed scheme, when compared to existing WENO schemes and state-of-the-art central finite difference schemes