On-site wastewater reuse technology options in Australia

Domestic wastewater reuse is currently not permitted anywhere in Australia but is widely supported by the community, promoted by researchers, and improvised by up to 20% of householders. Its widespread implementation will make an enormous contribution to the sustainability of water resources. Integrated with other strategies in the outdoor living environment of settlements in arid lands great benefit will be derived. This paper describes six options for wastewater reuse under research by the Remote Area Developments Group (RADG) at Murdoch University and case studies are given where productive use is being made for revegetation and food production strategies at household and community scales. Pollution control techniques, public health precautions and maintenance requirements are described. The special case of remote Aboriginal communities is explained where prototype systems have been installed by RADG to generate windbreaks and orchards. New Australian design standards and draft guidelines for domestic greywater reuse produced by the Western Australian state government agencies for mainstream communities are evaluated. It is recommended that dry composting toilets be coupled with domestic greywater reuse and the various types available in Australia are described. For situations where only the flushing toilet will suffice the unique "net composting" system can be used and this also is described. A vision for household and community-scale on-site application is presented

Modernizing Habitat Suitability Indices (HSI): A Northern Diamondback Terrapin Case Study

Northern diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin terrapin) are a state-endangered species in Rhode Island and is the only species of northeastern turtle that lives in brackish water. Although their conservation status varies by state, terrapins are primarily negatively impacted by anthropogenic factors such as hunting and habitat loss. To improve conservation, management, and restoration efforts for this species, we developed a new habitat suitability index (HSI) for diamondback terrapins, but with a modern twist. Habitat suitability indices were first developed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 1974 as part of their habitat evaluation procedures (HEP) to predict species survival in particular environments using life history and habitat requirements. However, the 1988 HSI published for diamondback terrapins is outdated and includes only three variables to assess nesting site suitability (% shrub cover, % grass cover, and slope). This project focused on updating the HSI by using more site variables to assess habitat suitability and modernizing data collection and analysis. Specifically, we included: soil grain size, soil organic matter, land cover, slope, aspect, mean higher-high water (MHHW), and human influence. This new HSI can be used to evaluate known nesting habitat, to identify potential nesting sites, and to guide nesting habitat restoration. We collected nesting habitat data from 25 terrapin nesting sites in the northeastern USA using survey responses, field collected soil samples, Landsat8 satellite imagery, and data from the US Census Bureau, NRCS web soil survey, and NOAA. We then ranked the importance of nesting habitat variables according to expert opinion, performed soil grain size analysis for all sites, used Google Earth Engine to analyze landcover data, and ArcGIS to map and analyze data for the new HSI. Our data showed that soil type and land cover are the most important site factors. While sandy soils are important for nesting, soil sand fraction size is less important, and terrapins tend to nest in soils low in organic matter. In terms of nest position, we found that the highest terrapin nesting occurs at sites with south, southwest or west facing aspects. In general, we also found that sites with more shallow slopes and lower mean higher-high water had more terrapins. For human influences, we found that while terrapin abundance tended to be lower at sites with higher human population density, the site with most terrapins also had the highest human density. There was no consistent relationship between terrapin abundance and distance to roads. This modernized HSI can be used to assess existing terrapin nesting habitat and to guide consistent data collection and monitoring efforts across sites and regions to better assess nesting habitat quality for this unique species, and improve their chances of survival

An Experimental Study of Auctions Versus Grandfathering to Assign Pollution Permits

We experimentally study auctions versus grandfathering in the initial assignment of pollution permits that can be traded in a secondary spot market. Low and high emitters compete for permits in the auction, while permits are assigned for free under grandfathering. In theory, trading in the spot market should erase inefficiencies due to initial mis-allocations. In the experiment, high emitters exercise market power in the spot market and permit holdings under grandfathering remain skewed towards high emitters. Furthermore, the opportunity costs of “free” permits are fully “passed through.” In the auction, the majority of permits are won by low emitters, reducing the need for spot-market trading. Auctions generate higher consumer surplus and slightly lower product prices in the laboratory arkets. Moreover, auctions eliminate the large “windfall profits” that are observed in the treatment with free, grandfathered permit allocations.market-based regulation, emissions trading, allocation, auctions, grandfathering, climate policy, windfall profits

Electroweak Theory Without Higgs Bosons

A perturbative SU(2)_L X U(1)_Y electroweak theory containing W, Z, photon, ghost, lepton and quark fields, but no Higgs or other fields, gives masses to W, Z and the non-neutrino fermions by means of an unconventional choice for the unperturbed Lagrangian and a novel method of renormalisation. The renormalisation extends to all orders. The masses emerge on renormalisation to one loop. To one loop the neutrinos are massless, the A -> Z transition drops out of the theory, the d quark is unstable and S-matrix elements are independent of the gauge parameter xi.Comment: 27 pages, LaTex, no figures; revised for publication; accepted by Int. J. Mod. Phys. A; includes biographical note on A. F. Nicholso

Nutritional intervention and impact of polyphenol on glycohaemoglobin (HbA1c) in non-diabetic and type 2 diabetic subjects: systematic review and meta-analysis

Polyphenols have been extensively studied for their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. Recently, their antiglycative actions by oxidative stress modulation have been linked to prevention of diabetes and associated complications. This paper assesses the evidence for polyphenol interventions on glycohaemoglobin (HbA1c) in non-diabetic, pre-diabetic and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) subjects. A systematic review of polyphenols clinical trials on HbA1c in humans was performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Thirty-six controlled randomized trials with HbA1c values were included. Polyphenols (extracts, supplements, foods), were supplemented (28 mg to 1.5g) for 0.7 to 12 months. Combining all subjects (n=1954, mean baseline HbA1c=7.03%, 53 mmol/mol), polyphenol supplementation significantly (p<0.001) lowered HbA1c% by -0.53±0.12 units (-5.79±0.13 mmol/mol). This reduction was significant (p<0.001) in T2DM subjects, specifically (n=1426, mean baseline HbA1c=7.44%, 58 mmol/mol), with HbA1c% lowered by -0.21±0.04 units (-2.29±0.4 mmol/mol). Polyphenol supplementation had no significant effect (p>0.21) in the non-diabetic (n=258, mean baseline HbA1c=5.47%, 36 mmol/mol) and the pre-diabetic subjects (n=270, mean baseline HbA1c=6.06%, 43 mmol/mol) strata: -0.39±0.27 HbA1c% units (-4.3±0.3 mmol/mol), and -0.38±0.31 units (-4.2±0.31 mmol/mol), respectively. In conclusion, polyphenols can successfully reduce HbA1c in T2DM, without any intervention at glycaemia, and could contribute to the prevention of diabetes complications

Digitize Your Yearbooks: Creating Digital Access While Considering Student Privacy and Other Legal Issues

Student yearbooks are distinctive cultural records. For the schools and universities that produced them, yearbooks promoted a shared sense of identity and experience among students and helped create enduring loyalty to the institutions long after the students graduated. For scholars and other users, yearbooks are unique primary sources that provide insight into past eras of local student life and culture. In regards to user engagement and preserving local histories, student yearbooks should be ideal candidates for digitization by libraries and archives. However, yearbooks are challenging digitization projects because they are likely to contain privacy-sensitive photographs and other information as well as potentially copyrighted content created by multiple parties. An understanding of state and federal privacy laws, such as FERPA, and the ethical obligations to preserve the privacy of individuals is essential to addressing multi-layered concerns for digital access. The authors offer guidance for yearbook digitization projects based on their investigation of these issues as part of an initiative to digitize their University and K-12 schools’ collections of yearbooks

Investigating Cytotoxicity and Defense functions of bacteriophage Larva genes in host Mycobacterium smegmatis

It is estimated that approximately 75% of gene functions within any given phage cluster remain unknown. Two phage traits that can be measured phenotypically were investigated: cytotoxicity, which causes host cell lysis, and superimmunity, which results in protection of the host from infection by similar phages. Five genes (35, 42, 46, 49, and 59), from a subcluster K5 bacteriophage named Larva, were amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and assembled into a cloning plasmid (pExTra) using isothermal assembly. Initially, chemical transformation of Escherichia coli with the pExTra + gene insert, enabled amplification of the plasmids. Clonal PCR verified the presence of the inserts that were selected for on Kanamycin plates. Host bacteria M. smegmatis cells were electroporated with pExTra + insert and the inducer molecule anhydro-tetracycline (aTc) was used to induce expression of the relevant genes. The expression of Larva genes 35, 42, 46, and 59 were non-toxic to the host. However, Larva gene 49 was toxic, causing the bacteria to lyse. Evidence of this was further revealed in the defense assay where expression of gene 49 caused an absence of bacterial lawn growth. The expression of Larva genes 42 and 59 highlight a defense mechanism associated with these gene products that protects the host from attack by other phage in the same cluster. Further work to elucidate which host-parasite proteins are in contact to cause the phenotypic changes will be investigated using protein-protein interaction (PPIs) assays and hopefully reveal important clues towards understanding phage gene function.https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/sureposters/1011/thumbnail.jp

Price Discovery in Emissions Permit Auctions

Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permitsâ€) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management programs. These auctions create thick markets that can provide important information about changes in current market conditions. This paper reports a laboratory experiment in which half of the bidders experienced unannounced increases in their willingness to pay for permits. The focus is on the extent to which the predicted price increase due to the demand shift is reflected in sales prices under alternative auction formats. Price tracking is comparably good for uniform-price sealed-bid auctions and for multi-round clock auctions, with or without end-of-round information about excess demand. More price inertia is observed for “pay as bid†(discriminatory) auctions, especially for a continuous discriminatory format in which bids could be changed at will during a pre-specified time window, in part because “sniping†in the final moments blocked the full effect of the demand shock.auction, greenhouse gases, price discovery, cap and trade, emission allowances, laboratory experiment

Canada\u27s Residential Schools and the Right to Integrity

Apart from characterizations of the residential schools system as imposing cultural genocide, it is possible to understand the system in terms of a legal wrong involving violations of family integrity. The 19th and early 20th centuries saw increasing state intervention in families generally so as to impose compulsory education. However, wrongs in this intervention were recognized, and international law developed toward a right of family integrity that led to changes in non-Indigenous contexts. Evidence from the TRC shows that Canada did not respond as quickly in the Indigenous context, thus permitting an identification of how the residential schools system violated international law at least in its latter decades. Focus on this international law right of family integrity has potential application to other contexts ofinterference with Indigenous families and is thus a helpful legal approach that should be adopted

An Experimental Analysis of Auctioning Emission Allowances Under a Loose Cap

The direct sale of emission allowances by auction is an emerging characteristic of cap-and-trade programs. This study is motivated by the observation that all of the major implementations of cap-and-trade regulations for the control of air pollution have started with a generous allocation of allowances relative to recent emissions history, a situation we refer to as a “loose cap.†Typically more stringent reductions are achieved in subsequent years of a program. We use an experimental setting to investigate the effects of a loose cap environment on a variety of auction types. We find that all auction formats studied are efficient in allocating emission allowances, but auction revenues tend to be lower relative to competitive benchmarks when the cap is loose. Regardless of whether the cap is tight or loose, the different auction formats tend to yield comparable revenues toward the end of a series of auctions. However, aggressive bidding behavior in initial discriminatory auctions yields higher revenues than in the other auction formats, a difference that disappears as bidders learn to adjust their bids closer to the cut-off that separates winning and losing bids.auction, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, allowance trading, Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, RGGI, cap and trade, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,