Sources and management of water colour in the river Tees

Over recent decades, a wide range of rivers and lakes draining peat-dominated catchments across the UK have exhibited statistically-significant increases in water colour and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration. This has implications for the carbon budget of those peatlands, and for the long-term viability of water treatment works which must remove the colour in the treatment process. Suggested causes for such increases include lower water tables in the peat, and changes in the peat chemistry through decreasing atmospheric acid deposition. One factor potentially affecting the peat water tables, and therefore possibly related to the increases in DOC, is the practice of peatland drainage, which may affect both the production of DOC and the hydrological behaviour of the peat. Drainage is no longer believed to be beneficial in increasing the amenity value of peat and so there is a need to understand whether blocking the drains will be an effective strategy in decreasing DOC export and mitigating the observed increases at water treatment works. This thesis presents the results of monitoring individual blocked drain, unblocked drain, and stream catchments. The results are used to construct detailed DOC export budgets and to compare the behaviour of the catchments. This enables identification of the extent to which drainage increases DOC export; of differences in behaviour between blocked and unblocked drains, and of whether drain blocking is likely to reverse any such increase in DOC export. Results from these individual small catchments are considered in the context of the overall DOC export across the larger scale catchment of a large water treatment works. DOC sources across the larger catchment were also monitored and, using novel statistical techniques, catchment export is related to catchment properties including the presence of drainage. These results are used to assess the likely benefits of a large scale drain blocking programme with respect to the DOC concentration observed at the water treatment works. Results are presented showing that drainage does substantially increase the DOC export from peat, with DOC export being highest from flat, extensively drained peat areas. Blocking does decrease the export from individual drain catchments, but not to pre-drainage levels, even a decade after blocking. The decreases due to blocking are shown to be due primarily to changes in the hydrological behaviour of the drains rather than changes in the production of DOC. Therefore a catchment-wide drain blocking programme is recommended as a strategy for reduction, but not total amelioration, of the increasing DOC trend that is observed at water treatment works. However, before this is implemented further understanding of the large scale changes in peatland hydrology that may follow blocking will be required, as the results do not indicate a reduction in DOC production

Growing Up Catholic in a Scottish City: The Relationship Between Denominational Identity, Denominational Schools, and Attitude Toward Christianity Among 11- to 15-Year-Olds

From a large survey conducted in a Scottish city, this article identifies 1,285 students attending Catholic schools (16.6% of whom were not Catholics) and 1,240 Catholic students (14.8% of whom were educated in non-Catholic schools). The data demonstrate that Catholic students educated in Catholic schools hold a more positive attitude toward Christianity than comparable Catholic students educated in non-Catholic schools and that non-Catholic students educated in Catholic schools hold a less positive attitude toward Christianity than comparable Catholic students. Both findings have implications for the evaluation of the Catholic school system

Interview with Earl Gibson

An interview with Earl Gibson regarding his experiences in a one-room school house.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/ors/1020/thumbnail.jp

The Time-Course of Lexical and Structural Processes in Sentence Comprehension

Online sentence comprehension involves multiple types of cognitive processes: lexical processes such as lexical access, which call on the user's knowledge of the meaning of words in the language, and structural processes such as the integration of incoming words into an emerging representation. In this article, we investigate the temporal dynamics of lexical access and syntactic integration. Unlike much previous work that has relied on temporary ambiguity to investigate this question, we manipulate the frequency of the verb in unambiguous structures involving a well-studied syntactic complexity manipulation (subject- vs. object-extracted clefts). The results demonstrate that for high-frequency verbs, the difficulty of reading a more structurally complex object-extracted cleft structure relative to a less structurally complex subject-extracted cleft structure is largely experienced in the cleft region, whereas for low-frequency verbs this difficulty is largely experienced in the postcleft region. We interpret these results as evidence that some stages of structural processing follow lexical processing. Furthermore, we find evidence that structural processing may be delayed if lexical processing is costly, and that the delay is proportional to the difficulty of the lexical process. Implications of these results for contemporary accounts of sentence comprehension are discussed

New Constraints on the Lyman Continuum Escape Fraction at z~1.3

We examine deep far-ultraviolet (1600 Angstrom) imaging of the Hubble Deep Field-North (HDFN) and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) to search for leaking Lyman continuum radiation from starburst galaxies at z~1.3. There are 21 (primarily sub-L*) galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts between 1.1<z<1.5 and none are detected in the far-UV. We fit stellar population templates to the galaxies' optical/near-infrared SEDs to determine the starburst age and level of dust attenuation, giving an accurate estimate of the intrinsic Lyman continuum ratio, f_1500/f_700, and allowing a conversion from f_700 limits to relative escape fractions. We show that previous high-redshift studies may have underestimated the amplitude of the Lyman Break, and thus the relative escape fraction, by a factor of ~2. Once the starburst age and intergalactic HI absorption are accounted for, 18 galaxies in our sample have limits to the relative escape fraction, f_esc,rel < 1.0 with some limits as low as f_esc,rel < 0.10 and a stacked limit of f_esc,rel < 0.08. This demonstrates, for the first time, that most sub-L* galaxies at high redshift do not have large escape fractions. When combined with a similar study of more luminous galaxies at the same redshift we show that, if all star-forming galaxies at z~1 have similar relative escape fractions, the value must be less than 0.14 (3 sigma). We also show that less than 20% (3 sigma) of star-forming galaxies at z~1 have relative escape fractions near unity. These limits contrast with the large escape fractions found at z~3 and suggest that the average escape fraction has decreased between z~3 and z~1. (Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. aastex format. 39 pages, 11 figure

The communicative function of ambiguity in language

We present a general information-theoretic argument that all efficient communication systems will be ambiguous, assuming that context is informative about meaning. We also argue that ambiguity allows for greater ease of processing by permitting efficient linguistic units to be re-used. We test predictions of this theory in English, German, and Dutch. Our results and theoretical analysis suggest that ambiguity is a functional property of language that allows for greater communicative efficiency. This provides theoretical and empirical arguments against recent suggestions that core features of linguistic systems are not designed for communication.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0844472

Dynamic analysis of harvesting and handling systems for biomass energy feedstocks

Desenvolveu-se um modelo matemático, em SLAM II, para simular colheita e transporte de palhada de milho, feno e cavacos de madeira para abastecer continuamente uma unidade de processamento de biomassa. Usaram-se dez anos de dados climatológicos e de produção do estado de Indiana, EUA, para quantificar o efeito do clima no desempenho do sistema, que foi analisado em diferentes situações. O clima mostrou ser variável importante, especialmente na colheita de palhada de milho e feno. Houve casos em que foi preferível alugar equipamento do que comprar, para diminuir custos de produção. Foram produzidas, em média, 3,3 t/ha e 1,9 t/ha de palhada de milho e feno, respectivamente. Cavacos de madeira vindos de corte de florestas naturais totalizaram 86 t/ha, de desbaste, 53 t/ha, e de plantações, 40 t/ha (100, 20 e 5 anos de rotação respectivamente). Em ano de condições climatológicas médias, colheita e transporte de palhada de milho (fardos cilíndricos) custaram 71% mais caro que de cavacos de madeira (corte de florestas naturais). Fardos retangulares e cilíndricos equivaleram-se em custos de produção, mas transportar os cilíndricos custou 55% a mais. Custos para produzir e transportar cavacos mostraram-se cerca de duas vezes maiores em florestas naturais, quando comparados com corte de plantações de árvores.A SLAM II combination network discrete event model was developed to simulate harvest and transport of corn residue, hay and wood chips for continuous delivery to a biomass conversion plant. The model used ten years of climatological and production data of the state of Indiana, USA, in order to quantify the effect of weather on the system, analysed in many situations. Weather played an important role on system performance, especially on collection and transportation of corn residue and hay. There were situations when it was better not to buy forestry equipment, but to rent it, in order to decrease production costs. Corn residue yields averaged 3.3 t/ha and hay yields averaged 1.9 t/ha. Wood chips produced 86 t/ha for clear cut, 53 t/ha for thinning and 40 t/ha for plantations (100, 20 and 5 years rotation age respectively). On an average weather year it cost up to 71% more to collect and transport corn residue bales than wood chips from clear cut. Stacks and bales cost about the same to produce, but it cost 55% more to transport bales. Production and transportation costs were about twice as much for clear cut compared to plantation

Genotype and expression analysis of two inbred mouse strains and two derived congenic strains suggest that most gene expression is trans regulated and sensitive to genetic background

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Differences in gene expression may be caused by nearby DNA polymorphisms (<it>cis </it>regulation) or by interactions of gene control regions with polymorphic transcription factors (<it>trans </it>regulation). <it>Trans </it>acting loci are much harder to detect than <it>cis </it>acting loci and their effects are much more sensitive to genetic background.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To quantify <it>cis </it>and <it>trans </it>regulation we correlated haplotype data with gene expression in two inbred mouse strains and two derived congenic lines. Upstream haplotype differences between the parental strains suggested that 30-43% of differentially expressed genes were differentially expressed because of <it>cis </it>haplotype differences. These <it>cis </it>regulated genes displayed consistent and relatively tissue-independent differential expression. We independently estimated from the congenic mice that 71-85% of genes were <it>trans </it>regulated. <it>Cis </it>regulated genes were associated with low p values (p < 0.005) for differential expression, whereas <it>trans </it>regulated genes were associated with values 0.005 < p < 0.05. The genes differentially expressed between congenics and controls were not a subset of those that were differentially expressed between the founder lines, showing that these were dependent on genetic background. For example, the cholesterol synthesis pathway was strongly differentially expressed in the congenic mice by indirect <it>trans </it>regulation but this was not observable in the parental mice.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The evidence that most gene regulation is <it>trans </it>and strongly influenced by genetic background, suggests that pathways that are modified by an allelic variant, may only exhibit differential expression in the specific genetic backgrounds in which they were identified. This has significant implications for the interpretation of any QTL mapping study.</p