Heavy Rainfall Warning Assessment Tool User Guide. Version 1.2

This report is a User Guide to a PC tool for assessing Heavy Rainfall Warnings. Development of the PC tool formed an important operational output of the Environment Agency and Met Office funded project: "Development of Rainfall Forecast Performance Monitoring Criteria. Phase 1: Development of Methodology and Algorithms" (Jones et al., 2003). The Heavy Rainfall Warning (HRW) Assessment Tool is a toolkit for Microsoft Excel. The tool allows the user to configure an assessment framework for a particular format of Heavy Rainfall Warning, enter and save data for forecasts and ground-truths, and generate a range of performance measures and other statistics for new and previously saved data. Summary tables are presented using Excel's PivotTable feature, from which charts can also be generated. Performance measures are provided to assess forecasts of heavy rainfall in continuous variable, categorical and probability form: these include bias, rmse, R-squared Efficiency, skill scores and the Continuous Brier Score

California's Pacific bonito resource, its status and management

Pacific bonito, Sarda chiliensis, have become increasingly important to California's sport and commercial fishermen since the early 1960's, but are now showing signs of decline. Recent investigations have revealed much about the bonito's life history and population dynamics. These recent discoveries have been brought together into a document which will serve as a guide to future management actions. Document has 44 pages

Changes with Time in the Availability of Soil Applied Zinc to Navy Beans and in the Chemical Extraction of Zinc from Soils

The effect of the incubation of zinc (Zn) applied to the soil on Zn uptake and the Zn concentrations in chemical extractants was studied. In a glasshouse experiment using a Zn-deficient gravelly sandy loam, the effect of recently applied Zn was compared with that of Zn incubated with the soil for 15 days at 40°C on growth and Zn uptake by navy beans (Phaseolus vulgaris cv. Gallaroy). At the second harvest (33 days after sowing), the dry weight of shoots of recently applied Zn was consistently higher than that of incubated Zn, except at the highest rate of 1 µg Zn g-1 soil, where yields were similar. Comparisons of the slope of the linear regressions of Zn uptake as a function of rate of application showed that incubated Zn was approximately 80% as effective as recently applied Zn. A laboratory experiment measured the decrease in Zn concentration in HCl, EDTA, DTPA, and dilute CaCl2 with incubation for up to 8 days at 40°C in four contrasting soils from Western Australia and Queensland. An addition of 2.5 µg Zn g-1 soil increased the concentration of Zn in all extractants at all times of incubation compared with the untreated soil. The recovery of the added Zn was generally highest with HCl and lowest with 0.002 M CaCl2 and decreased exponentially in all extractants with increasing time of incubation in all soils. The order of the rate of decrease in Zn concentration for all extractants was krasnozem \u3e gravelly sandy loam \u3e sand \u3e sandy clay loam. The model, Y = CtB, where C and B are constants, was used to describe the relationship between the recovery of added Zn and time of incubation

A historic jet-emission minimum reveals hidden spectral features in 3C 273

Aims. The aim of this work is to identify and study spectral features in the quasar 3C 273 usually blended by its strong jet emission. Method. A historic minimum in the sub-millimetre emission of 3C 273 triggered coordinated multi-wavelength observations in June 2004. X-ray observations from the INTEGRAL, XMM-Newton and RXTE satellites are complemented by ground-based optical, infrared, millimetre and radio observations. The overall spectrum is used to model the infrared and X-ray spectral components. Results. Three thermal dust emission components are identified in the infrared. The dust emission on scales from 1 pc to several kpc is comparable to that of other quasars, as expected by AGN unification schemes. The observed weakness of the X-ray emission supports the hypothesis of a synchrotron self-Compton origin for the jet component. There is a clear soft-excess and we find evidence for a very broad iron line which could be emitted in a disk around a Kerr black hole. Other signatures of a Seyfert-like X-ray component are not detected.Comment: 4 pages. Accepted for publication in A&A Letter

Unraveling of free carrier absorption for terahertz radiation in heterostructures

The relation between free carrier absorption and intersubband transitions in semiconductor heterostructures is resolved by comparing a sequence of structures. Our numerical and analytical results show how free carrier absorption evolves from the intersubband transitions in the limit of an infinite number of wells with vanishing barrier width. It is explicitly shown that the integral of the absorption over frequency matches the value obtained by the f-sum rule. This shows that a proper treatment of intersubband transitions is fully sufficient to simulate the entire electronic absorption in heterostructure THz devices.Comment: 6 pages, accepted by Physical Review

A new tissue test for accurate diagnosis of copper deficiency in cereals

Copper deficiency in ceereals can now be accurately diagnosed using tissue analysis

H\u3csup\u3e+\u3c/sup\u3e/OH\u3csup\u3e-\u3c/sup\u3e Excretion and Nutrient Uptake in Upper and Lower Parts of Lupin (\u3cem\u3eLupinus angustifolius\u3c/em\u3e L.) Root Systems

The cultivation of narrow-leafed lupins (Lupinus angustifolius L.) increase rates of subsoil acidification, and this is thought to be partly related to their pattern of nutrient uptake and H+/OH- excretion. The main hypothesis of this study was that H+ and OH- excretion is not distributed evenly over the entire length of the root system but is limited to zones where excess cation or anion uptake occur. Seedlings of nodulated lupins were grown in solution culture using vertically split pots that allowed the upper and lower zones of the root system to be supplied with varying concentrations of K+ and NO-3. Net H+/OH- excretion was equated to the addition of NaOH/HCl required to maintain a constant pH in the nutrient solution during a 4-d treatment period and nutrient uptake was measured by depletion from solution in each zone of the split pots. The excess of cation over anion uptake was positively correlated with H+ excretion in each rooting zone. In zones where K+ was supplied at 1200 µM, cation uptake was dominated by K+ and up to twice as much H+ was excreted than in zones where K+ was absent. In zones where NO-3 was supplied at 750 µM, the anion/cation uptake was balanced, however H+ excretion continued to occur in the zone. When NO-3 was supplied at 5000 µM, anion uptake exceeded cation uptake but there was no OH- excretion. Organic acid anions may be excreted by lupins to maintain their internal electroneutrality when anion uptake exceeds cation uptake. Rhizosphere pH would not increase unless the pKa of the excreted organic anions was greater than the external pH

Symptoms and treatment of copper deficiency of wheat

Copper deficiency in wheat is still common but may not be easily noticed