Monitoring of the water levels in the wetlands of Fourmile Branch near the F- and H-areas of SRS

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) has issued a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Hazardous Waste Part B Permit that prescribes a remediation approach for the groundwater in the F- and H-Area (Sadler, 1995). This approach calls for the installation of extraction and injection wells to capture and remediate the 10,000 pCi/ml tritium contaminant plume. Modeling of the groundwater remediation system suggests that wetland areas near Fourmile Branch may be impacted by reduced water levels. In order to assess potential impacts of the remediation effort on the riparian wetland system, a network of piezometers has been established. This network of piezometers has been established along the groundwater outcrop (i.e. seepline) for the water table aquifer, specifically targeting those areas closest to the extraction wells. The purpose of the piezometer network is to establish baseline hydraulic head data for the water table aquifer at the F- and H-Area seeplines prior to startup of the groundwater extraction/injection remediation system. A total of twenty piezometers were installed at fourteen different locations. Twelve piezometers were installed in F-Area, and eight were installed in H-Area. Following installation, monthly water level measurements have been taken from each piezometer, and are presented in this report. Additionally, some piezometers have been instrumented with data loggers to allow for continuous monitoring of water levels. The purpose of continuous monitoring is to investigate the natural variability of water levels in the riparian wetland system of Fourmile Branch. Of particular interest is the variation in water levels associated with rainfall events, and evapotraspiration demand. The frequency, magnitude, and duration of these natural variations are unknown, and more frequent monitoring is required to assess them

Monitoring of the water levels in the wetlands of Fourmile Branch near the F- and H-areas of SRS

The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) has issued a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Hazardous Waste Part B Permit that prescribes a remediation approach for the groundwater in the F- and H-Area (Sadler, 1995). This approach calls for the installation of extraction and injection wells to capture and remediate the 10,000 pCi/ml tritium contaminant plume. Modeling of the groundwater remediation system suggests that wetland areas near Fourmile Branch may be impacted by reduced water levels. In order to assess potential impacts of the remediation effort on the riparian wetland system, a network of piezometers has been established. This network of piezometers has been established along the groundwater outcrop (i.e. seepline) for the water table aquifer, specifically targeting those areas closest to the extraction wells. The purpose of the piezometer network is to establish baseline hydraulic head data for the water table aquifer at the F- and H-Area seeplines prior to startup of the groundwater extraction/injection remediation system. A total of twenty piezometers were installed at fourteen different locations. Twelve piezometers were installed in F-Area, and eight were installed in H-Area. Following installation, monthly water level measurements have been taken from each piezometer, and are presented in this report. Additionally, some piezometers have been instrumented with data loggers to allow for continuous monitoring of water levels. The purpose of continuous monitoring is to investigate the natural variability of water levels in the riparian wetland system of Fourmile Branch. Of particular interest is the variation in water levels associated with rainfall events, and evapotraspiration demand. The frequency, magnitude, and duration of these natural variations are unknown, and more frequent monitoring is required to assess them

Results of the Quarterly Tritium Survey of Fourmile Branch and Its Seeplines in the F and H Areas of SRS: May 1995

The Environmental Sciences Section of the Savannah River Technology Center established a quarterly monitoring program of the Fourmile Branch stream and its associated seepline located down gradient from the F- and H-Area Seepage Basins. The primary focus of this program was to survey and track changes in tritium levels; however, specific conductivity, and pH were also surveyed and tracked. The measurement from the eleventh survey (May 1995) exhibited similar tritium levels, conductivity measurements, and pH values to data from previous sampling events. The overall results of the tritium survey and stream monitoring data (Looney et al., 1993) indicate that the tritium plume resulting from the past operation of the seepage basins continues to flush from the Fourmile Branch wetland system

Isolating a light Higgs boson from the di-photon background at the LHC

We compute the QCD corrections to the gluon fusion subprocess gg to gamma gamma, which forms an important component of the background to the search for a light Higgs boson at the LHC. We study the dependence of the improved pp to gamma gamma X background calculation on the factorization and renormalization scales, on various choices for photon isolation cuts, and on the rapidities of the photons. We also investigate ways to enhance the statistical significance of the Higgs signal in the di-photon channel.Comment: Additional reference included, 17 pages, 16 figure files, revte

Using behavior-analytic implicit tests to assess sexual interests among normal and sex-offender populations

The development of implicit tests for measuring biases and behavioral predispositions is a recent development within psychology. While such tests are usually researched within a social-cognitive paradigm, behavioral researchers have also begun to view these tests as potential tests of conditioning histories, including in the sexual domain. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the utility of a behavioral approach to implicit testing and means by which implicit tests can be built to the standards of behavioral psychologists. Research findings illustrating the short history of implicit testing within the experimental analysis of behavior are reviewed. Relevant parallel and overlapping research findings from the field of social cognition and on the Implicit Association Test are also outlined. New preliminary data obtained with both normal and sex offender populations are described in order to illustrate how behavior-analytically conceived implicit tests may have potential as investigative tools for assessing histories of sexual arousal conditioning and derived stimulus associations. It is concluded that popular implicit tests are likely sensitive to conditioned and derived stimulus associations in the history of the test-taker rather than 'unconscious cognitions', per se

Linear Collider Physics Resource Book for Snowmass 2001, 3: Studies of Exotic and Standard Model Physics

This Resource Book reviews the physics opportunities of a next-generation e+e- linear collider and discusses options for the experimental program. Part 3 reviews the possible experiments on that can be done at a linear collider on strongly coupled electroweak symmetry breaking, exotic particles, and extra dimensions, and on the top quark, QCD, and two-photon physics. It also discusses the improved precision electroweak measurements that this collider will make available.This Resource Book reviews the physics opportunities of a next-generation e+e- linear collider and discusses options for the experimental program. Part 3 reviews the possible experiments on that can be done at a linear collider on strongly coupled electroweak symmetry breaking, exotic particles, and extra dimensions, and on the top quark, QCD, and two-photon physics. It also discusses the improved precision electroweak measurements that this collider will make available

Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations

Data descriptor: a global multiproxy database for temperature reconstructions of the Common Era

Reproducible climate reconstructions of the Common Era (1 CE to present) are key to placing industrial-era warming into the context of natural climatic variability. Here we present a community-sourced database of temperature-sensitive proxy records from the PAGES2k initiative. The database gathers 692 records from 648 locations, including all continental regions and major ocean basins. The records are from trees, ice, sediment, corals, speleothems, documentary evidence, and other archives. They range in length from 50 to 2000 years, with a median of 547 years, while temporal resolution ranges from biweekly to centennial. Nearly half of the proxy time series are significantly correlated with HadCRUT4.2 surface temperature over the period 1850-2014. Global temperature composites show a remarkable degree of coherence between high-and low-resolution archives, with broadly similar patterns across archive types, terrestrial versus marine locations, and screening criteria. The database is suited to investigations of global and regional temperature variability over the Common Era, and is shared in the Linked Paleo Data (LiPD) format, including serializations in Matlab, R and Python. (TABLE) Since the pioneering work of D'Arrigo and Jacoby1-3, as well as Mann et al. 4,5, temperature reconstructions of the Common Era have become a key component of climate assessments6-9. Such reconstructions depend strongly on the composition of the underlying network of climate proxies10, and it is therefore critical for the climate community to have access to a community-vetted, quality-controlled database of temperature-sensitive records stored in a self-describing format. The Past Global Changes (PAGES) 2k consortium, a self-organized, international group of experts, recently assembled such a database, and used it to reconstruct surface temperature over continental-scale regions11 (hereafter, ` PAGES2k-2013'). This data descriptor presents version 2.0.0 of the PAGES2k proxy temperature database (Data Citation 1). It augments the PAGES2k-2013 collection of terrestrial records with marine records assembled by the Ocean2k working group at centennial12 and annual13 time scales. In addition to these previously published data compilations, this version includes substantially more records, extensive new metadata, and validation. Furthermore, the selection criteria for records included in this version are applied more uniformly and transparently across regions, resulting in a more cohesive data product. This data descriptor describes the contents of the database, the criteria for inclusion, and quantifies the relation of each record with instrumental temperature. In addition, the paleotemperature time series are summarized as composites to highlight the most salient decadal-to centennial-scale behaviour of the dataset and check mutual consistency between paleoclimate archives. We provide extensive Matlab code to probe the database-processing, filtering and aggregating it in various ways to investigate temperature variability over the Common Era. The unique approach to data stewardship and code-sharing employed here is designed to enable an unprecedented scale of investigation of the temperature history of the Common Era, by the scientific community and citizen-scientists alike

Socioeconomic deprivation is associated with reduced response and lower treatment persistence with TNF inhibitors in rheumatoid arthritis

Objective To investigate the association between socioeconomic deprivation and outcomes following TNF inhibitor (TNFi) treatment. Methods Individuals commencing their first TNFi in the British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Register for RA (BSRBR-RA) and Biologics in RA Genetics and Genomics Study Syndicate (BRAGGSS) cohort were included. Socioeconomic deprivation was proxied using the Index of Multiple Deprivation and categorized as 20% most deprived, middle 40% or 40% least deprived. DAS28-derived outcomes at 6 months (BSRBR-RA) and 3 months (BRAGGSS) were compared using regression models with the least deprived as referent. Risks of all-cause and cause-specific drug discontinuation were compared using Cox models in the BSRBR-RA. Additional analyses adjusted for lifestyle factors (e.g. smoking, BMI) as potential mediators. Results 16 085 individuals in the BSRBR-RA were included (mean age 56 years, 76% female), of whom 18%, 41% and 41% were in the most, middle and least deprived groups, respectively. Of 3459 included in BRAGGSS (mean age 57, 77% female), proportions were 22%, 36% and 41%, respectively. The most deprived group had 0.3-unit higher 6-month DAS28 (95% CI 0.22, 0.37) and were less likely to achieve low disease activity (odds ratio [OR] 0.76; 95% CI 0.68, 0.84) in unadjusted models. Results were similar for 3-month DAS28 (β = 0.23; 95% CI 0.11, 0.36) and low disease activity (OR 0.77; 95% CI 0.63, 0.94). The most deprived were more likely to discontinue treatment (hazard ratio 1.18; 95% CI 1.12, 1.25), driven by ineffectiveness rather than adverse events. Adjusted estimates were generally attenuated. Conclusion Socioeconomic deprivation is associated with reduced response to TNFi. Improvements in determinants of health other than lifestyle factors are needed to address socioeconomic inequities