The first polluted river? Repeated copper contamination of fluvial sediments associated with Late Neolithic human activity in southern Jordan

The roots of pyrometallurgy are obscure. This paper explores one possible precursor, in the Faynan Orefield in southern Jordan. There, at approximately 7000 cal. BP, banks of a near-perennial meandering stream (today represented by complex overbank wetland and anthropogenic deposits) were contaminated repeatedly by copper emitted by human activities. Variations in the distribution of copper in this sequence are not readily explained in other ways, although the precise mechanism of contamination remains unclear. The degree of copper enhancement was up to an order of magnitude greater than that measured in Pleistocene fluvial and paludal sediments, in contemporary or slightly older Holocene stream and pond deposits, and in the adjacent modern wadi braidplain. Lead is less enhanced, more variable, and appears to have been less influenced by contemporaneous human activities at this location. Pyrometallurgy in this region may have appeared as a byproduct of the activity practised on the stream-bank in the Wadi Faynan ~7000 years ago

A comparison of statistical emulation methodologies for multi-wave calibration of environmental models

Expensive computer codes, particularly those used simulating environmental or geological processes such as climate models, require calibration (sometimes called tuning). When calibrating expensive simulators using uncertainty quantification methods, it is usually necessary to use a statistical model called an emulator in place of the computer code when running the calibration algorithm. Though emulators based on Gaussian processes are typically many orders of magnitude faster to evaluate than the simulator they mimic, many applications have sought to speed up the computations by using regression-only emulators within the calculations instead, arguing that the extra sophistication brought using the Gaussian process is not worth the extra computational power. This was the case for the analysis that produced the UK climate projections in 2009. In this paper we compare the effectiveness of both emulation approaches upon a multi-wave calibration framework that is becoming popular in the climate modelling community called \history matching". We find that Gaussian processes offer significant benefits to the reduction of parametric uncertainty over regression-only approaches. We find that in a multi-wave experiment, a combination of regression-only emulators initially, followed by Gaussian process emulators for refocussing experiments can be nearly as effective as using Gaussian processes throughout for a fraction of the computational cost. We also discover a number of design and emulator-dependent features of the multi-wave history matching approach that can cause apparent, yet premature, convergence of our estimates of parametric uncertainty. We compare these approaches to calibration in idealised examples and apply it to a well-known geological reservoir mode

Direct characterization of a nonlinear photonic circuit's wave function with laser light

© The Author(s) 2018. Integrated photonics is a leading platform for quantum technologies including nonclassical state generation 1, 2, 3, 4, demonstration of quantum computational complexity 5 and secure quantum communications 6. As photonic circuits grow in complexity, full quantum tomography becomes impractical, and therefore an efficient method for their characterization 7, 8 is essential. Here we propose and demonstrate a fast, reliable method for reconstructing the two-photon state produced by an arbitrary quadratically nonlinear optical circuit. By establishing a rigorous correspondence between the generated quantum state and classical sum-frequency generation measurements from laser light, we overcome the limitations of previous approaches for lossy multi-mode devices 9, 10. We applied this protocol to a multi-channel nonlinear waveguide network and measured a 99.28±0.31% fidelity between classical and quantum characterization. This technique enables fast and precise evaluation of nonlinear quantum photonic networks, a crucial step towards complex, large-scale, device production

Quantitative assessment of sewer overflow performance with climate change in northwest England

Changes in rainfall patterns associated with climate change can affect the operation of a combined sewer system, with the potential increase in rainfall amount. This could lead to excessive spill frequencies and could also introduce hazardous substances into the receiving waters, which, in turn, would have an impact on the quality of shellfish and bathing waters. This paper quantifies the spilling volume, duration and frequency of 19 combined sewer overflows (CSOs) to receiving waters under two climate change scenarios, the high (A1FI), and the low emissions (B1) scenarios, simulated by three global climate models (GCMs), for a study catchment in northwest England. The future rainfall is downscaled, using climatic variables from HadCM3, CSIRO and CGCM2 GCMs, with the use of a hybrid generalized linear–artificial neural network model. The results from the model simulation for the future in 2080 showed an annual increase of 37% in total spill volume, 32% in total spill duration, and 12% in spill frequency for the shellfish water limiting requirements. These results were obtained, under the high emissions scenario, as projected by the HadCM3 as maximum. Nevertheless, the catchment drainage system is projected to cope with the future conditions in 2080 by all three GCMs. The results also indicate that under scenario B1, a significant drop was projected by CSIRO, which in the worst case could reach up to 50% in spill volume, 39% in spill duration and 25% in spill frequency. The results further show that, during the bathing season, a substantial drop is expected in the CSO spill drivers, as predicted by all GCMs under both scenarios

The ROAM/EORTC-1308 trial: Radiation versus Observation following surgical resection of Atypical Meningioma: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND Atypical meningiomas are an intermediate grade brain tumour with a recurrence rate of 39-58 %. It is not known whether early adjuvant radiotherapy reduces the risk of tumour recurrence and whether the potential side-effects are justified. An alternative management strategy is to perform active monitoring with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and to treat at recurrence. There are no randomised controlled trials comparing these two approaches. METHODS/DESIGN A total of 190 patients will be recruited from neurosurgical/neuro-oncology centres across the United Kingdom, Ireland and mainland Europe. Adult patients undergoing gross total resection of intracranial atypical meningioma are eligible. Patients with multiple meningioma, optic nerve sheath meningioma, previous intracranial tumour, previous cranial radiotherapy and neurofibromatosis will be excluded. Informed consent will be obtained from patients. This is a two-stage trial (both stages will run in parallel): Stage 1 (qualitative study) is designed to maximise patient and clinician acceptability, thereby optimising recruitment and retention. Patients wishing to continue will proceed to randomisation. Stage 2 (randomisation) patients will be randomised to receive either early adjuvant radiotherapy for 6 weeks (60 Gy in 30 fractions) or active monitoring. The primary outcome measure is time to MRI evidence of tumour recurrence (progression-free survival (PFS)). Secondary outcome measures include assessing the toxicity of the radiotherapy, the quality of life, neurocognitive function, time to second line treatment, time to death (overall survival (OS)) and incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gained. DISCUSSION ROAM/EORTC-1308 is the first multi-centre randomised controlled trial designed to determine whether early adjuvant radiotherapy reduces the risk of tumour recurrence following complete surgical resection of atypical meningioma. The results of this study will be used to inform current neurosurgery and neuro-oncology practice worldwide. TRIAL REGISTRATION ISRCTN71502099 on 19 May 2014