Mercury sources to Lake Ozette and Lake Dickey : highly contaminated remote coastal lakes, Washington State, USA

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2009. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Water, Air, & Soil Pollution 208 (2009): 275-286, doi:10.1007/s11270-009-0165-y.Mercury concentrations in largemouth bass and mercury accumulation rates in age-dated sediment cores were examined at Lake Ozette and Lake Dickey in Washington State. Goals of the study were to compare concentrations in fish tissues at the two lakes with lakes in a larger statewide dataset and evaluate factors influencing lake loading at Ozette and Dickey, which may include: catchment disturbances, coastal mercury cycling, and the role of trans-Pacific Asian mercury. Mercury fish tissue concentrations at the lakes were among the highest recorded in Washington State. Wet deposition and historical atmospheric monitoring from the area show no indication of enhanced deposition from Asian sources or coastal atmospheric processes. Sediment core records from the lakes displayed rapidly increasing sedimentation rates coinciding with commercial logging. The unusually high mercury flux rates and mercury tissue concentrations recorded at Lake Ozette and Lake Dickey appear to be associated with logging within the catchments

The Importance and Creation of High-Quality Sounds in Healthcare Applications

In this chapter we look at Audio, a key aspect of virtual and augmented realities that, because of the dominance of the visual sense, is often overlooked in the creation of healthcare and other applications. Audio design and implementation is often under budgeted and considered at a late stage in many projects. This chapter seeks to raise awareness for the importance of high-quality audio in healthcare applications and describes the process of creating quality sound recordings. By way of an example, we describe research that uses nature sounds in conjunction with virtual environments for the purpose of managing stress, pain and other illnesses. We show how noise and distortions can have adverse effects on patient recovery and then describe how to avoid common mistakes in the recording of sounds. We discuss the equipment and workflow that is needed for the production of high-quality sound recordings for use in contemporary healthcare applications