Perspectives on Water Quality Monitoring Approaches for Behavioral Change Research

Publication history: Accepted - 7 June 2022; Published online - 1 July 2022This review considers enhanced approaches to river water quality monitoring in north-western Europe following a series of study visits (11 sites in 7 countries). Based on the evidence gathered, options were identified and evaluated for their suitability to deliver specific water quality monitoring objectives and with a focus on effecting behavioral change. Monitoring programs were diverse, ranging from enhanced grab sampling and laboratory analysis to sub-hourly sampling of multiple parameters and nutrients in autonomous high-specification, bank-side or mobile laboratories. Only one program out of all the cases evaluated could readily identify influences that had produced behavioral change among stakeholders. This was principally because the other programs were focused on top-down policy change or surveillance rather than specifically focused on influencing behavior. Nevertheless, program researchers were clear that stakeholder engagement potential was very high and that the sites acted as important focus points for discussion on water quality issues, and so part of a suite of tools that might ultimately change behavior. This identifies a space where water quality monitoring solutions could be adapted for behavioral change research.This study was funded by the Department for Agriculture Environment and Rural Affairs, Belfast (Project 17/4/07)

F17RS SGR No. 23 (Election Recruitment)

A RESOLUTION Urging and Requesting Efforts to Improve Election Recruitment Processe

F17RS SGR No. 22 (Election Ballot Desired Name)

A RESOLUTION Urging and Requesting the Election to add a space for Desired Ballot Names on the Candidate Filing For

Soil phosphorus, hydrological risk and water quality carrying capacities in agricultural catchments

To support profitable agricultural production, nutrients, including phosphorus (P) are applied to soils. However, to avoid over-application and mobilisation of excess P, in-soil concentrations must be maintained at the agronomic optimum (crop requirement) through soil test P (STP) data. Areas above optimum STP (e.g., Olsen P) status have been linked to elevated instream soluble reactive P (SRP) concentrations. For example, when this status is combined with hydrologically sensitive areas (HSAs), excess P can be mobilised and transported directly to surface waters. Catchment carrying capacities for high STP are a possible management strategy to reduce these pressures. The aim of this study was to investigate the transferability of catchment carrying capacity approaches using primary and secondary datasets. Field by field STP status and LiDAR derived HSAs (2 m grid resolution) were compared with instream SRP concentrations using combinations of least squares regressions. The high range of STP catchment carrying capacities (15 % − 44 %, depending on the regression used) was influenced by the variation of instream SRP concentration thresholds (48 – 71 µg L-1) that are determined using altitude and alkalinity factors. However, a single SRP threshold of 35 µg L-1 reduced the catchment STP carrying capacity to a smaller range (10 % − 16 %), with a mean of 13 %. The analysis showed that instream particulate P concentrations were also related to above optimum STP but to a lesser degree and that all HSAs were vulnerable to P loss when soils were above optimum STP. Targeted management strategies should follow a “treatment-train” approach starting with reducing the catchment or farm area above agronomic optimum STP to a carrying capacity (proposed here as 13 %), followed by interception measures located at HSA breakthrough and delivery points to reduce both instream SRP concentration and load

Pseudo-unitarizable weight modules over generalized Weyl algebras

We define a notion of pseudo-unitarizability for weight modules over a generalized Weyl algebra (of rank one, with commutative coeffiecient ring $R$), which is assumed to carry an involution of the form $X^*=Y$, $R^*\subseteq R$. We prove that a weight module $V$ is pseudo-unitarizable iff it is isomorphic to its finitistic dual $V^\sharp$. Using the classification of weight modules by Drozd, Guzner and Ovsienko, we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for an indecomposable weight module to be isomorphic to its finitistic dual, and thus to be pseudo-unitarizable. Some examples are given, including $U_q(\mathfrak{sl}_2)$ for $q$ a root of unity.Comment: 38 page

Fat Talk And Romantic Relationships: Does Fat Talk Affect Relationship Satisfaction And Sexual Satisfaction?

Using vignettes about a fictional couple, the present study examined how varied levels of the woman’s fat talk were perceived to affect the couple’s relationship and sexual satisfaction. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk and included 239 heterosexual people (127 men, 112 women) with long-term (i.e., at least 1 year) relationship experience. Using a 3 (Level of Body Talk: Excessive Fat Talk, Minimal Fat Talk, vs. Self-Accepting Body Talk) x 2 (Participant Gender: Male vs. Female) x 2 (Perspective: Michael vs. Jessica) design, participants were randomly assigned to a Body Talk and Perspective condition and were asked to read a vignette and complete a series of questionnaires. Supporting hypotheses, analyses indicated participants in the excessive fat talk condition perceived lower satisfaction levels than the minimal fat talk and self-accepting body talk conditions. The satisfaction levels perceived by the self-accepting body talk and minimal fat talk conditions did not significantly differ. Participants’ perceptions of the target woman’s signal that she cared about her physical appearance did not differ across the three conditions. Research in this area is in its infancy; more is needed to inform interventions to improve body image and sexual satisfaction and to reduce women's habitual fat talk

Simplicity and maximal commutative subalgebras of twisted generalized Weyl algebras

In this paper we show that each non-zero ideal of a twisted generalized Weyl algebra (TGWA) $A$ intersects the centralizer of the distinguished subalgebra $R$ in $A$ non-trivially. We also provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the centralizer of $R$ in $A$ to be commutative, and give examples of TGWAs associated to symmetric Cartan matrices satisfying this condition. By imposing a certain finiteness condition on $R$ (weaker than Noetherianity) we are able to make an Ore localization which turns out to be useful when investigating simplicity of the TGWA. Under this mild assumption we obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the simplicity of TGWAs. We describe how this is related to maximal commutativity of $R$ in $A$ and the (non-) existence of non-trivial $\Z^n$-invariant ideals of $R$. Our result is a generalization of the rank one case, obtained by D. A. Jordan in 1993. We illustrate our theorems by considering some special classes of TGWAs and providing concrete examples.Comment: 32 pages, no figures, minor improvements of the presentation of the materia

Perspectives on water quality monitoring approaches for behavioural change research

Publication history: Accepted - 7 June 2022; Published online - 1 July 2022This review considers enhanced approaches to river water quality monitoring in north-western Europe following a series of study visits (11 sites in 7 countries). Based on the evidence gathered, options were identified and evaluated for their suitability to deliver specific water quality monitoring objectives and with a focus on effecting behavioral change. Monitoring programs were diverse, ranging from enhanced grab sampling and laboratory analysis to sub-hourly sampling of multiple parameters and nutrients in autonomous high-specification, bank-side or mobile laboratories. Only one program out of all the cases evaluated could readily identify influences that had produced behavioral change among stakeholders. This was principally because the other programs were focused on top-down policy change or surveillance rather than specifically focused on influencing behavior. Nevertheless, program researchers were clear that stakeholder engagement potential was very high and that the sites acted as important focus points for discussion on water quality issues, and so part of a suite of tools that might ultimately change behavior. This identifies a space where water quality monitoring solutions could be adapted for behavioral change research.This study was funded by the Department for Agriculture Environment and Rural Affairs, Belfast (Project 17/4/07)