2,159 research outputs found
Impact of copper mine tailings (stamp sand) on survival and development of aquatic organisms near Gay, Michigan
Heavy metal-rich copper mine tailings, called stamp sands, were dumped by mining companies directly into streams and along the Lake Superior shoreline, degrading Keweenaw Peninsula waterways. One of the largest disposal sites is near Gay, Michigan, where tailings have been moved along the shoreline by currents since mining ceased. As a result, the smallest sand particles have been washed into deeper water and are filling the interstitial spaces of Buffalo Reef, a critical lake trout spawning site. This research is the first to investigate if stamp sand is detrimental to survival and early development of eggs and larvae of lake sturgeon, lake trout, and Northern leopard frogs, and also examines if the presence of stamp sands influences substrate selection of earthworms. This study found that stamp sand had significantly larger mean particle sizes and irregular shapes compared to natural sand, and earthworms show a strong preference for natural substrate over any combination that included stamp sand. Additionally, copper analysis (Cu2+) of surface water over stamp sand and natural sand showed concentrations were significantly higher in stamp sand surface water (100 ÎŒg/L) compared to natural sand surface water (10 ÎŒg/L). Frog embryos had similar hatch success over both types of sand, but tadpoles reared over natural sand grew faster and had higher survival rates. Eggs of lake sturgeon showed similar hatch success and development over natural vs. stamp sand over 17 days, while lake trout eggs hatched earlier and developed faster when incubated over stamp sand, yet showed similar development over a 163 day period. Copper from stamp sand appears to impact amphibians more than fish species in this study. These results will help determine what impact stamp sand has on organisms found throughout the Keweenaw Peninsula which encounter the material at some point in their life history
Maximal regularity for non-autonomous evolution equations
We consider the maximal regularity problem for non-autonomous evolution
equations of the form with initial data
. Each operator is associated with a sesquilinear form on a
Hilbert space . We assume that these forms all have the same domain and
satisfy some regularity assumption with respect to t (e.g., piecewise
-H{\"o}lder continuous for some \alpha\textgreater{} 1/2). We prove
maximal Lp-regularity for all initial values in the real-interpolation space
. The particular case where improves previously
known results and gives a positive answer to a question of J.L. Lions [11] on
the set of allowed initial data .Comment: 19 pages. To appear in Math. An
Healthy ageing and home: The perspectives of very old people in five European countries
This paper reports on in-depth research, using a grounded theory approach, to examine the ways in which very old people perceive healthy ageing in the context of living alone at home within urban settings in five European countries. This qualitative study was part of a cross-national project entitled ENABLE-AGE which examined the relationship between home and healthy ageing. Interviews explored the notion of healthy ageing, the meaning and importance of home, conceptualisations of independence and autonomy and links between healthy ageing and home. Data analysis identified five ways in which older people constructed healthy ageing: home and keeping active; managing lifestyles, health and illness; balancing social life; and balancing material and financial circumstances. Older people reflected on their everyday lives at home in terms of being engaged in purposeful, meaningful action and evaluated healthy ageing in relation to the symbolic and practical affordances of the home, contextualised within constructions of their national context. The research suggests that older people perceive healthy ageing as an active achievement, created through individual, personal effort and supported through social ties despite the health, financial and social decline associated with growing older. The physicality and spatiality of home provided the context for establishing and evaluating the notion of healthy ageing, whilst the experienced relationship between home, life history and identity created a meaningful space within which healthy ageing was negotiated
Arctic-North Atlantic interactions and multidecadal variability of the meridional overturning circulation
Analyses of a 500-yr control integration with the non-flux-adjusted coupled atmosphereâsea iceâoceanmodel ECHAM5/Max-Planck-Institute Ocean Model (MPI-OM) show pronounced multidecadal fluctuations of the Atlantic overturning circulation and the associated meridional heat transport. The period of the oscillations is about 70â80 yr. The low-frequency variability of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC) contributes substantially to sea surface temperature and sea ice fluctuations in the North Atlantic.The strength of the overturning circulation is related to the convective activity in the deep-water formation regions, most notably the Labrador Sea, and the time-varying control on the freshwater export from the Arctic to the convection sites modulates the overturning circulation. The variability is sustained by an interplay between the storage and release of freshwater from the central Arctic and circulation changes in the Nordic Seas that are caused by variations in the Atlantic heat and salt transport. The relatively highresolution in the deep-water formation region and the Arctic Ocean suggests that a better representation of convective and frontal processes not only leads to an improvement in the mean state but also introduces new mechanisms determining multidecadal variability in large-scale ocean circulation
Seeding systems and cropping trends in Saskatchewan results of a PFRA survey, 1997-2002
Non-Peer ReviewedFrom 1997 to 2002, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canadaâs (AAFC) PFRA Branch conducted a
survey of over 4000 annually cropped fields in Saskatchewan. Each year the same fields were
visited shortly after crop emergence to collect information on crop type, row spacing, opener
type, packing system, amount of previous crop residue, orientation of previous crop stubble, and
adoption of low soil disturbance seeding. Key results are the increasing trend toward lower soil
disturbance seeding, and the high incidence of pulse crops associated with low disturbance
seeding. In depth analysis of trends on individual fields suggest that very few producers are able
to maintain low disturbance seeding every year on the same field. This suggests that some
flexibility is required to allow for periodic soil disturbance to address issues such as perennial
weeds
Types of problems elicited by verbal protocols for blind and sighted participants
Verbal protocols are often used in user-based studies of interactive technologies. This study investigated whether different types of problems are revealed by concurrent and retrospective verbal protocols (CVP and RVP) for blind and sighted participants. Eight blind and eight sighted participants undertook both CVP and RVP on four websites. Overall, interactivity problems were significantly more frequent in comparison to content or information architecture problems. In addition, RVP revealed significantly more interactivity problems than CVP for both user groups. Finally, blind participants encountered significantly more interactivity problems than sighted participants. The findings have implications for which protocol is appropriate, depending on the purpose of a particular study and the user groups involved
Three-Body and One-Body Channels of the Auger Core-Valence-Valence decay: Simplified Approach
We propose a computationally simple model of Auger and APECS line shapes from
open-band solids. Part of the intensity comes from the decay of unscreened
core-holes and is obtained by the two-body Green's function ,
as in the case of filled bands. The rest of the intensity arises from screened
core-holes and is derived using a variational description of the relaxed ground
state; this involves the two-holes-one-electron propagator , which
also contains one-hole contributions. For many transition metals, the two-hole
Green's function can be well described by the Ladder
Approximation, but the three-body Green's function poses serious further
problems. To calculate , treating electrons and holes on equal
footing, we propose a practical approach to sum the series to all orders. We
achieve that by formally rewriting the problem in terms of a fictitious
three-body interaction. Our method grants non-negative densities of states,
explains the apparent negative-U behavior of the spectra of early transition
metals and interpolates well between weak and strong coupling, as we
demonstrate by test model calculations.Comment: AMS-LaTeX file, 23 pages, 8 eps and 3 ps figures embedded in the text
with epsfig.sty and float.sty, submitted to Phys. Rev.
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