Valuing Coastal Beaches and Closures Using Benefit Transfer: An Application to Barnstable, Massachusetts

Each year, millions of Americans visit beaches for recreation, resulting in significant social welfare benefits and economic activity. Considering the high use of coastal beaches for recreation, closures due to bacterial contamination have the potential to greatly impact coastal visitors and communities. We used readily-available information to develop two transferable models that, together, provide estimates for the value of a beach day as well as the lost value due to a beach closure. We modeled visitation for beaches in Barnstable, Massachusetts on Cape Cod through panel regressions to predict visitation by type of day, for the season, and for lost visits when a closure was posted. We used a meta-analysis of existing studies conducted throughout the United States to estimate a consumer surplus value of a beach visit of around $22 for our study area, accounting for water quality at beaches by using past closure history. We applied this value through a benefit transfer to estimate the value of a beach day, and combined it with lost town revenue from parking to estimate losses in the event of a closure. The results indicate a high value for beaches as a public resource and show significant losses to the town when beaches are closed due to an exceedance in bacterial concentrations

The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond: the electronic solution

The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy centre is a unique defect in diamond that possesses properties highly suited to many applications, including quantum information processing, quantum metrology, and biolabelling. Although the unique properties of the centre have been extensively documented and utilised, a detailed understanding of the physics of the centre has not yet been achieved. Indeed there persists a number of points of contention regarding the electronic structure of the centre, such as the ordering of the dark intermediate singlet states. Without a sound model of the centre's electronic structure, the understanding of the system's unique dynamical properties can not effectively progress. In this work, the molecular model of the defect centre is fully developed to provide a self consistent model of the complete electronic structure of the centre. The application of the model to describe the effects of electric, magnetic and strain interactions, as well as the variation of the centre's fine structure with temperature, provides an invaluable tool to those studying the centre and a means to design future empirical and ab initio studies of this important defect.Comment: 24 pages, 6 figures, 10 table

Monitoring Ion Channel Function In Real Time Through Quantum Decoherence

In drug discovery research there is a clear and urgent need for non-invasive detection of cell membrane ion channel operation with wide-field capability. Existing techniques are generally invasive, require specialized nano structures, or are only applicable to certain ion channel species. We show that quantum nanotechnology has enormous potential to provide a novel solution to this problem. The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in nano-diamond is currently of great interest as a novel single atom quantum probe for nanoscale processes. However, until now, beyond the use of diamond nanocrystals as fluorescence markers, nothing was known about the quantum behaviour of a NV probe in the complex room temperature extra-cellular environment. For the first time we explore in detail the quantum dynamics of a NV probe in proximity to the ion channel, lipid bilayer and surrounding aqueous environment. Our theoretical results indicate that real-time detection of ion channel operation at millisecond resolution is possible by directly monitoring the quantum decoherence of the NV probe. With the potential to scan and scale-up to an array-based system this conclusion may have wide ranging implications for nanoscale biology and drug discovery.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

An examination of the precipitation delivery mechanisms for Dolleman Island, eastern Antarctic Peninsula

Copyright @ 2004 Wiley-BlackwellThe variability of size and source of significant precipitation events were studied at an Antarctic ice core drilling site: Dolleman Island (DI), located on the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Significant precipitation events that occur at DI were temporally located in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) reanalysis data set, ERA-40. The annual and summer precipitation totals from ERA-40 at DI both show significant increases over the reanalysis period. Three-dimensional backwards air parcel trajectories were then run for 5 d using the ECMWF ERA-15 wind fields. Cluster analyses were performed on two sets of these backwards trajectories: all days in the range 1979–1992 (the climatological time-scale) and a subset of days when a significant precipitation event occurred. The principal air mass sources and delivery mechanisms were found to be the Weddell Sea via lee cyclogenesis, the South Atlantic when there was a weak circumpolar trough (CPT) and the South Pacific when the CPT was deep. The occurrence of precipitation bearing air masses arriving via a strong CPT was found to have a significant correlation with the southern annular mode (SAM); however, the arrival of air masses from the same region over the climatological time-scale showed no such correlation. Despite the dominance in both groups of back trajectories of the westerly circulation around Antarctica, some other key patterns were identified. Most notably there was a higher frequency of lee cyclogenesis events in the significant precipitation trajectories compared to the climatological time-scale. There was also a tendency for precipitation trajectories to come from more northerly latitudes, mostly from 50–70°S. The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was found to have a strong influence on the mechanism by which the precipitation was delivered; the frequency of occurrence of precipitation from the east (west) of DI increased during El Niño (La Niña) events

Tackling the Mouse‐on‐Mouse Problem in Cochlear Immunofluorescence: A Simple Double‐Blocking Protocol for Immunofluorescent Labeling of Murine Cochlear Sections with Primary Mouse Antibodies

The mouse is the most widely used animal model in hearing research. Immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescent staining of murine cochlear sections have, thus, remained a backbone of inner ear research. Since many primary antibodies are raised in mouse, the problem of "mouse-on-mouse" background arises due to the interaction between the anti-mouse secondary antibody and the native mouse immunoglobulins. Here, we describe the pattern of mouse-on-mouse background fluorescence in sections of the postnatal mouse cochlea. Furthermore, we describe a simple double-blocking immunofluorescence protocol to label mouse cochlear cryosections. The protocol contains a conventional blocking step with serum, and an additional blocking step with a commercially available anti-mouse IgG blocking reagent. This blocking technique virtually eliminates the "mouse-on-mouse" background in murine cochlear sections, while adding only a little time to the staining protocol. We provide detailed instructions and practical tips for tissue harvesting, processing, and immunofluorescence-labeling. Further protocol modifications are described, to shorten the duration of the protocol, based on the primary antibody incubation temperature. Finally, we demonstrate examples of immunofluorescence staining performed using different incubation times and various incubation temperatures with a commercially available mouse monoclonal primary antibody

Factors associated with self-care activities among adults in the United Kingdom: a systematic review

Background: The Government has promoted self-care. Our aim was to review evidence about who uses self-tests and other self-care activities (over-the-counter medicine, private sector,complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), home blood pressure monitors). Methods: During April 2007, relevant bibliographic databases (Medline, Embase, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts, PsycINFO,British Nursing Index, Allied and Complementary Medicine Database, Sociological Abstracts, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences, Arthritis and Complementary Medicine Database, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Pain Database) were searched, and potentially relevant studies were reviewed against eligibility criteria. Studies were included if they were published during the last 15 years and identified factors, reasons or characteristics associated with a relevant activity among UK adults. Two independent reviewers used proformas to assess the quality of eligible studies. Results: 206 potentially relevant papers were identified, 157 were excluded, and 49 papers related to 46 studies were included: 37 studies were, or used data from questionnaire surveys, 36 had quality scores of five or more out of 10, and 27 were about CAM. Available evidence suggests that users of CAM and over-the-counter medicine are female, middle-aged, affluent and/or educated with some measure of poor health, and that people who use the private sector are affluent and/or educated. Conclusion: People who engage in these activities are likely to be affluent. Targeted promotion may, therefore, be needed to ensure that use is equitable. People who use some activities also appear to have poorer measures of health than non-users or people attending conventional services. It is, therefore, also important to ensure that self-care is not used as a second choice for people who have not had their needs met by conventional service

Low atmospheric CO2 levels during the Little Ice Age due to cooling-induced terrestrial uptake

Low atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration during the Little Ice Age has been used to derive the global carbon cycle sensitivity to temperature. Recent evidence confirms earlier indications that the low CO2 was caused by increased terrestrial carbon storage. It remains unknown whether the terrestrial biosphere responded to temperature variations, or there was vegetation re-growth on abandoned farmland. Here we present a global numerical simulation of atmospheric carbonyl sulfide concentrations in the pre-industrial period. Carbonyl sulfide concentration is linked to changes in gross primary production and shows a positive anomaly during the Little Ice Age. We show that a decrease in gross primary production and a larger decrease in ecosystem respiration is the most likely explanation for the decrease in atmospheric CO2 and increase in atmospheric carbonyl sulfide concentrations. Therefore, temperature change, not vegetation re-growth, was the main cause of the increased terrestrial carbon storage. We address the inconsistency between ice-core CO2 records from different sites measuring CO2 and δ13CO2 in ice from Dronning Maud Land (Antarctica). Our interpretation allows us to derive the temperature sensitivity of pre-industrial CO2 fluxes for the terrestrial biosphere (γL = -10 to -90 Pg C K-1), implying a positive climate feedback and providing a benchmark to reduce model uncertainties