History and Applications of Dust Devil Studies

Studies of dust devils, and their impact on society, are reviewed. Dust devils have been noted since antiquity, and have been documented in many countries, as well as on the planet Mars. As time-variable vortex entities, they have become a cultural motif. Three major stimuli of dust devil research are identified, nuclear testing, terrestrial climate studies, and perhaps most significantly, Mars research. Dust devils present an occasional safety hazard to light structures and have caused several deaths

Croquis du passage de l'Aar par les troupes du camp fédéral de Thoune et attaque des ouvrages de l'école fédérale de genie et d'artillerie dans la plaine de Thierachern, le 23 août 1826

Semantic coordination, namely the problem of finding an agreement on the meaning of heterogeneous semantic models, is one of the key issues in the development of the Semantic Web. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for discovering semantic mappings across hierarchical classifications based on a new approach to semantic coordination. This approach shifts the problem of semantic coordination from the problem of computing structural similarities (what most other proposed approaches do) to the problem of deducing relations between sets of logical formulae that represent the meaning of concepts belonging to different models (here, classifications). We show why this is a significant improvement on previous approaches, and present the results of preliminary tests on two types of hierarchical classifications, namely web directories and catalog

Changes in water quality of the River Frome (UK) from 1965 to 2009: is phosphorus mitigation finally working?

The water quality of the River Frome, Dorset, southern England, was monitored at weekly intervals from 1965 until 2009. Determinands included phosphorus, nitrogen, silicon, potassium, calcium, sodium, magnesium, pH, alkalinity and temperature. Nitrate-N concentrations increased from an annual average of 2.4 mg l−1 in the mid to late 1960s to 6.0 mg l−1 in 2008–2009, but the rate of increase was beginning to slow. Annual soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP) concentrations increased from 101 μg l−1 in the mid 1960s to a maximum of 190 μg l−1 in 1989. In 2002, there was a step reduction in SRP concentration (average=88 μg l−1 in 2002– 2005), with further improvement in 2007–2009 (average=49 μg l−1), due to the introduction of phosphorus stripping at sewage treatment works. Phosphorus and nitrate concentrations showed clear annual cycles, related to the timing of inputs from the catchment, and within-stream bioaccumulation and release. Annual depressions in silicon concentration each spring (due to diatom proliferation) reached a maximum between 1980 and 1991, (the period of maximum SRP concentration) indicating that algal biomass had increased within the river. The timing of these silicon depressions was closely related to temperature. Excess carbon dioxide partial pressures (EpCO2) of 60 times atmospheric CO2 were also observed through the winter periods from 1980 to 1992, when phosphorus concentration was greatest, indicating very high respiration rates due to microbial decomposition of this enhanced biomass. Declining phosphorus concentrations since 2002 reduced productivity and algal biomass in the summer, and EpCO2 through the winter, indicating that sewage treatment improvements had improved riverine ecology. Algal blooms were limited by phosphorus, rather than silicon concentration. The value of long-term water quality data sets is discussed. The data from this monitoring programme are made freely available to the wider science community through the CEH data portal (http://gateway.ceh.ac.uk/