Energy Intensity Data for Public Water Supply in the United States

Empirical observations of water use, electricity use, and supporting data describing energy requirements of public water systems in the United States

The potential of carbon markets to accelerate green infrastructure based water quality trading

Abstract Green infrastructure solutions can improve in-stream water quality in lieu of building electricity-consuming gray infrastructure. Permitted under the United States Clean Water Act, these programs allow regulated utilities to trade point-source water quality obligations with non-point source mitigation efforts in the watershed. Carbon financing can provide an incentive for water quality trading. Here we combine data on impaired waters, treatment technologies, and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions in the Contiguous United States, and compare traditional treatment technologies to alternative green infrastructure. We find green infrastructure could save $15.6 billion dollars, 21.2 terawatt-hours of electricity, and 29.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per year while sequestering over 4.2 million tonnes CO2e per year over a 40 year time horizon. Green infrastructure solutions may have the potential to generate$679 million annually in carbon credit revenue (at $20 per credit), which represents a unique opportunity to help accelerate water quality trading

Characterization of the metabolic actions of crude versus dispersed oil in salmon smolts via NMR-based metabolomics

With maritime transport of crude oil from Alaska to California, there is significant potential for a catastrophic spill which could impact migrating salmon. Therefore, this study compared the lethal and sublethal metabolic actions of the water-accommodated fraction (WAF) and the chemically enhanced WAF (CEWAF, via Corexit 9500) of Prudhoe Bay crude oil in smolts of Chinook salmon (Onchorhyncus tshawytscha). After 96-h exposure to the CEWAF, the resulting LC50 was some 20 times higher (i.e., less toxic) than that of the WAR Muscle and liver samples from surviving fish were collected and low-molecular weight metabolites were analyzed using one-dimensional (1)H and projections of two-dimensional (1)H J-resolved NMR. Principal component analysis (PCA), employed to analyze NMR spectra and identify most variance from the samples, revealed age-related metabolic changes in the fish within the replicated studies, but few consistent metabolic effects from the treatments. However, ANOVA results demonstrated that the dose-response metabolite patterns are both metabolite- and organ-dependent. In general, exposure to either WAF or CEWAF resulted in an increase of amino acids (i.e., valine, glutamine and glutamate) and a decrease of both organic osmolytes (i.e., glycerophosphorylcholine) and energetic substrates (i.e., succinate). The simultaneous increase of formate and decrease of glycerophosphorylcholine in the liver, or the decrease of glycerophosphorylcholine in muscle, may serve as sensitive sublethal biomarkers for WAF or CEWAF exposures. respectively. In conclusion, dispersant treatment significantly decreased the lethal potency of crude oil to salmon smolts. and the NMR-based metabolomics approach provided a sensitive means to characterize the sublethal metabolic actions. Published by Elsevier B.V

Should human chondrocytes fly? The impact of electromagnetic irradiation on chondrocyte viability and implications for their use in tissue engineering

A significant logistic factor as to the successful clinical application of the autologous tissue engineering concept is efficient transportation: the donor cells need to be delivered to tissue processing facilities which in most cases requires air transportation. This study was designed to evaluate how human chondrocytes react to X-ray exposure. Primary cell cultures were established, cultured, incubated and exposed to different doses and time periods of radiation. Subsequently, quantitative cell proliferation assays were done and qualitative evaluation of cellular protein production were performed. Our results show that after irradiation of chondrocytes with different doses, no significant differences in terms of cellular viability occurred compared with the control group. These results were obtained when chondrocytes were exposed to luggage transillumination doses as well as exposure to clinically used radiation doses. Any damage affecting cell growth or quality was not observed in our study. However, information about damage of cellular DNA remains incomplete

The psychometric study of risk perception

53 pagesThe writing of this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant PRA-8116925 to Perceptronics, Inc

Informing and educating the public about risk

42 pagesThe objective of informing and educating the public about risk issues seems easy to attain in principle, but, in practice, may be difficult to accomplish. This paper attempts to illustrate why this is so. To be effective, risk communicators must recognize and overcome a number of obstacles that have their roots in the limitations of scientific risk assessment and the idiosyncrasies of the human mind. Doing an adequate job of communicating means finding comprehensible ways of presenting complex technical material that is clouded by uncertainty and inherently difficult to understand. The problems may not be insurmountable, however, if designers of risk information programs are sensitive to the difficulties