Some aspects of currents in Long Island Sound

Current observations were obtained at three locations forming a cross section along 70°34'W longitude in Long Island Sound. Fifteen days of data were selected from each series so that nearly simultaneous observations were used in the analysis. Elementary statistics were computed for the data prior to performing a least squares tidal current analysis. Eight tidal current constituents were fitted in two cases and nine in the remaining instance. Constituent current ellipses were constructed along with the average ellipses. Using the constituents previously computed, the tidal current was predicted for the period of observations. These values were subtracted from the observed current, generating a residual current series. Spectra were computed for each directional component along with cross spectra between the north and east components and also between corresponding components at each of the three different locations. Coherence square and phase relationships also accompanied the latter. An attempt was also made to correlate wind and the residual current by means of cross spectra. However, lack of sufficient wind data prevented a meaningful analysis. The natural period of oscillation of Long Island Sound was estimated by Defant's method of seiche analysis for a bay. This value was used in the equations for a cooscillating system and a comparison was made between the computed and observed amplitudes of the tide. The mean percent error for numerous locations throughout the Sound was 7.1%. Comparison was also made between the maximum flows computed from the above equations and some observed values. The maximum percent error was 24% in an ebbing direction

HUMAN SANITARY WASTES AND WASTE TREATMENT IN NEW YORK CITY

Henry Hudson first sailed toNew Yorkharbor 400 years ago. Since then,New York Cityhas both affected and been affected by water quality in greaterNew YorkHarbor. In this paper, we focus on sewers, sewerage, and sewage treatment inManhattanand their effects on theHudson River. It is clear that feedbacks among drinking water quality and quantity, population, public perceptions, regulations, and estuarine water quality exist, although their strength and character have varied over time. Early land uses damaged local water supplies found on ManhattanIsland. New Yorkthen began to exploit the large fresh water resources available to its north, which helped the City to expand more rapidly. Water availability also allowed for water carriage sanitary practices, increasing discharges of wastes through a growing sewer network into local waters. The discharge of wastes degraded water quality, affecting natural resources in the harbor. Untreated wastes led to disease from contaminated seafood, and also more generalized effects on public health. Overall, New Yorklifestyles became largely detached from its shoreline, partly due to the industrial character of the waterfront, and partly because of odors and visual blight from pollution. Growing public distaste over poor harbor water quality, especially in the early 20th century, led to some sewage treatment. More and more comprehensive treatment followed regulatory and legal actions, beginning in mid-twentieth century. Concurrently, maritime commerce declined, and the waterfront became underutilized. However, in the twenty-first century, natural resources are recovering, andNew York City citizens once again flock to the shores of theHudson River, to new and revitalized parks, new areas of development and older areas undergoing transformation, and into the harbor, now largely cleaned of its fouling from sanitary waste disposal. Today New York City public life has a much greater orientation toward the waterfront, which certainly was fostered by improved harbor water quality, and the opportunities for growth that were available with the disappearance of the City’s maritime industries. Thus, there has been a complicated relationship between the City and its rivers and harbor. One aspect has been continuing use of local water bodies as receptacles for wastes, which has benefitted those living in the City. Gaining these benefits has had continuing costs, however. Marine resources were damaged and some were lost, and quality of life on land was affected. Trying to undo the impacts, which has required great effort and much capital, has been hampered by technology decisions that appear suboptimal with the advantage of more than 100 years of hindsight. Still, modern sewage treatment, initiated by local efforts and concerns, but spurred on to completion by the forces unleashed by the great environmental awakening of the 1960s and 1970s, has made it possible for the citizens of New York to again fish, boat, and even swim in City waters

Suffolk County, a National Leader in Environmental Initiatives. Why?

Abstract: Suffolk County has been a leader, often within New York State and sometimes nationally, in developing plans and legislation to preserve the bodies of water, farmlands, and open spaces. Is this circumstantial and fortuitous? Or, were there forces that inspired governmental leaders to take action? This article explores those questions with the hope of inspiring our next generation of leaders to be vigilant and bold as threats to our natural resources, open spaces, and health continue to arise

Understanding tides

Published June 1977. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the Sea Grant Catalog: http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/publication

Wood dynamics in headwater streams of the Colorado Rocky Mountains

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Acceleressence: Dark Energy from a Phase Transition at the Seesaw Scale

Simple models are constructed for "acceleressence" dark energy: the latent heat of a phase transition occurring in a hidden sector governed by the seesaw mass scale v^2/M_Pl, where v is the electroweak scale and M_Pl the gravitational mass scale. In our models, the seesaw scale is stabilized by supersymmetry, implying that the LHC must discover superpartners with a spectrum that reflects a low scale of fundamental supersymmetry breaking. Newtonian gravity may be modified by effects arising from the exchange of fields in the acceleressence sector whose Compton wavelengths are typically of order the millimeter scale. There are two classes of models. In the first class the universe is presently in a metastable vacuum and will continue to inflate until tunneling processes eventually induce a first order transition. In the simplest such model, the range of the new force is bounded to be larger than 25 microns in the absence of fine-tuning of parameters, and for couplings of order unity it is expected to be \approx 100 microns. In the second class of models thermal effects maintain the present vacuum energy of the universe, but on further cooling, the universe will "soon" smoothly relax to a matter dominated era. In this case, the range of the new force is also expected to be of order the millimeter scale or larger, although its strength is uncertain. A firm prediction of this class of models is the existence of additional energy density in radiation at the eV era, which can potentially be probed in precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background. An interesting possibility is that the transition towards a matter dominated era has occurred in the very recent past, with the consequence that the universe is currently decelerating.Comment: 10 pages, references adde

Permeability Prediction in Tight Carbonate Rocks using Capillary Pressure Measurements

The prediction of permeability in tight carbonate reservoirs presents ever more of a challenge in the hydrocarbon industry today. It is the aim of this paper to ascertain which models have the capacity to predict permeability reliably in tight carbonates, and to develop a new one, if required. This paper presents (i) the results of laboratory Klinkenberg-corrected pulse decay measurements of carbonates with permeabilities in the range 65 nD to 0.7 mD, (ii) use of the data to assess the performance of 16 permeability prediction models, (iii) the development of an improved prediction model for tight carbonate rocks, and (iv) its validation using an independent data set. Initial measurements including porosity, permeability and mercury injection capillary pressure measurements (MICP) were carried out on a suite of samples of Kometan limestone from the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The prediction performance of sixteen different percolation-type and Poiseuille-type permeability prediction models were analysed with the measured data. Analysis of the eight best models is included in this paper and the analysis of the remainder is provided in supplementary material. Some of the models were developed especially for tight gas sands, while many were not. Critically, none were developed for tight gas carbonates. Predictably then, the best prediction was obtained from the generic model and the RGPZ models (R2 = 0.923, 0.920 and 0.915, respectively), with other models performing extremely badly. In an attempt to provide a better model for use with tight carbonates, we have developed a new model based on the RGPZ theoretical model by adding an empirical scaling parameter to account for the relationship between grain size and pore throat size in carbonates. The generic model, the 28 new RGPZ Carbonate model and the two original RGPZ models have been tested against independent data from a suite of 42 samples of tight Solnhofen carbonates. All four models performed very creditably with the generic and the new RGPZ Carbonate models performing well (R2 = 0.840 and 0.799, respectively). It is clear from this study that the blind application of conventional permeability prediction techniques to carbonates, and particularly to tight carbonates, will lead to gross errors and that the development of new methods that are specific to tight carbonates is unavoidable

Control of Glycogen Content in Retina: Allosteric Regulation of Glycogen Synthase

Retinal tissue is exceptional because it shows a high level of energy metabolism. Glycogen content represents the only energy reserve in retina, but its levels are limited. Therefore, elucidation of the mechanisms controlling glycogen content in retina will allow us to understand retina response under local energy demands that can occur under normal and pathological conditions. Thus, we studied retina glycogen levels under different experimental conditions and correlated them with glucose-6-phosphate (G-6-P) content and glycogen synthase (GS) activity