Modelling the effects of land-use and land-cover change on water availability in the Jordan River region

Within the GLOWA Jordan River project, a first-time overview of the current and possible future land and water conditions of a major part of the Eastern Mediterranean region (ca. 100 000 km<sup>2</sup>) is given. First, we applied the hydrological model TRAIN to simulate current water availability (runoff and groundwater recharge) and irrigation water demand on a 1 km×1 km spatial resolution. The results demonstrate the scarcity of water resources in the study region, with extremely low values of water availability in the semi-arid and arid parts. Then, a set of four divergent scenarios on the future of water has been developed using a stakeholder driven approach. Relevant drivers for land-use/land-cover change were fed into the LandSHIFT.R model to produce land-use and land-cover maps for the different scenarios. These maps were used as input to TRAIN in order to generate scenarios of water availability and irrigation water demand for the region. For this study, two intermediate scenarios were selected, with projected developments ranging between optimistic and pessimistic futures (with regard to social and economic conditions in the region). Given that climate conditions remain unchanged, the simulations show both increases and decreases in water availability, depending on the future pattern of natural and agricultural vegetation and the related dominance of hydrological processes

Determination of inherent dissolution performance of drug substances

The dissolution behavior of novel active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) is a crucial parameter in drug formulation since it frequently affects the drug release. Generally, a distinction is made between surface-reaction- and diffusion-controlled drug release. Therefore, dissolution studies such as the intrinsic dissolution test defined in the pharmacopeia have been performed for many years. In order to overcome the disadvantages of the common intrinsic dissolution test, a new experimental setup was developed within this study. Specifically, a flow channel was designed and tested for measuring the mass transfer from a flat, solid surface dissolving into a fluid flowing over the surface with well-defined flow conditions. A mathematical model was developed that distinguishes between surface-reaction- and diffusion-limited drug release based on experimental data. Three different drugs—benzocaine, theophylline and griseofulvin—were used to investigate the mass flux during dissolution due to surface reaction, diffusion and convection kinetics. This new technique shows potential to be a valuable tool for the identification of formulation strategies

Spontaneous annihilation of high-density matter in the electroweak theory

In the presence of fermionic matter the topologically distinct vacua of the standard model are metastable and can decay by tunneling through the sphaleron barrier. This process annihilates one fermion per doublet due to the anomalous non-conservation of baryon and lepton currents and is accompanied by a production of gauge and Higgs bosons. We present a numerical method to obtain local bounce solutions which minimize the Euclidean action in the space of all configurations connecting two adjacent topological sectors. These solutions determine the decay rate and the configuration of the fields after the tunneling. We also follow the real time evolution of this configuration and analyze the spectrum of the created bosons. If the matter density exceeds some critical value, the exponentially suppressed tunneling triggers off an avalanche producing an enormous amount of bosons.Comment: 38 pages, 6 Postscript figure

Chemically Specific Cellular Imaging of Biofilm Formation

This document and the accompanying manuscripts summarize the technical accomplishments for our one-year LDRD-ER effort. Biofilm forming microbes have existed on this planet for billions of years and make up 60% of the biological mass on earth. Such microbes exhibit unique biochemical pathways during biofilm formation and play important roles in human health and the environment. Microbial biofilms have been directly implicated in, for example, product contamination, energy losses, and medical infection that cost the loss of human lives and billions of dollars. In no small part due to the lack of detailed understanding, biofilms unfortunately are resistant to control, inhibition, and destruction, either through treatment with antimicrobials or immunological defense mechanisms of the body. Current biofilm research has concentrated on the study of biofilms in the bulk. This is primarily due to the lack of analytical and physical tools to study biofilms non-destructively, in three dimensions, and on the micron or sub-micron scale. This has hindered the development of a clear understanding of either the early stage mechanisms of biofilm growth or the interactions of biofilms with their environment. Enzymatic studies have deduced a biochemical reaction that results in the oxidation of reduced sulfur species with the concomitant reduction of nitrate, a common groundwater pollutant, to dinitrogen gas by the bacterium, Thiobacillus denitrificans (TD). Because of its unique involvement in biologically relevant environmental pathways, TD is scheduled for genome sequencing in the near future by the DOE's Joint Genome Institute and is of interest to DOE's Genomes to Life Program. As our ecosystem is exposed to more and more nitrate contamination large scale livestock and agricultural practices, a further understanding of biofilm formation by organisms that could alleviate these problems is necessary in order to protect out biosphere. However, in order to study this complicated organism, we needed to first turn our attention to a well understood organism. Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) is a well-studied organism and will be used to compare our results with others. Then, we will turn our attention to TD. It is expected that the research performed will provide key data to validate biochemical studies of TD and result in high profile publications in leading journals. For this project, our ultimate goal was to combine both Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) experimental analysis with computer simulations to provide unique 3D molecular structural, dynamics, and functional information on the order of microns for this DOE mission relevant microorganism, T. denitrificans. For FY05, our goals were to: (1) Determine proper media for optimal growth of PA; growth rate measurements in that media and characterization of metabolite signatures during growth via {sup 1}H and {sup 13}C NMR, (2) Determine and build mineral, metal, and implant material surfaces to support growth of PA, (3) Implementing new MRI sequences to image biofilms more efficiently and increase resolution with new hardware design, (4) Develop further diffusion and flow MRI measurements of biofilms and biofilm formation with different MRI pulse sequences and different hardware design, and (5) Develop a zero dimension model of the rate of growth and the metabolite profiles of PA. Our major accomplishments are discussed in the following text. However, the bulk of this work is described in the attached manuscript entitled, ''NMR Metabolomics of Planktonic and Biofilm Modes of Growth in Pseudomonas aeruginosa''. This paper will be submitted to the Journal of Bacteriology in coming weeks. In addition, this one-year effort has lead to our incorporation into the Enhanced Surveillance Campaign during FY05 for some proof-of-principle MRI measurements on polymers. We are currently using similar methods to evaluate these polymers. In addition, this work on MRI measurements on polymers has lead to a paper entitled, ''Characterization of local deformation in filled-silicone elastomers subject to high strain NMR MOUSE and Magnetic Resonance Imaging as a diagnostic tool for detection of inhomogeneities''

Exploring future agricultural development and biodiversity in Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi: a spatially explicit scenario-based assessment

Competition for land is increasing as a consequence of the growing demands for food and other commodities and the need to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services. Land conversion and the intensification of current agricultural systems continues to lead to a loss of biodiversity and trade-offs among ecosystem functions. Decision-makers need to understand these trade-offs in order to better balance different demands on land and resources. There is an urgent need for spatially explicit information and analyses on the effects of different trajectories of human-induced landscape change in biodiversity and ecosystem services. We assess the potential implications of a set of plausible socio-economic and climate scenarios for agricultural production and demand and model-associated land use and land cover changes between 2005 and 2050 to assess potential impacts on biodiversity in Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. We show that different future socio-economic scenarios are consistent in their projections of areas of high agricultural development leading to similar spatial patterns of habitat and biodiversity loss. Yet, we also show that without protected areas, biodiversity losses are higher and that expanding protected areas to include other important biodiversity areas can help reduce biodiversity losses in all three countries. These results highlight the need for effective protection and the potential benefits of expanding the protected area network while meeting agricultural production needs

Ein implantierbares Telemetriesystem zur Impedanzspektroskopie

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Die kontinuierliche Überwachung des intrakorporalen Zustandes von Geweben beispielsweise zur Erkennung ischämischer Vorgänge nach gefäßchirurgischen Eingriffen oder im Rahmen der Rejektionsdiagnostik läßt sich durch bisher vorhandene Meßsysteme nur bedingt erreichen. Speziell die direkte Erfassung sensitiver Gewebeparameter über einen längeren Zeitraum ohne Belastung für den Patienten stellt in diesem Zusammenhang ein Problem dar. In der nachfolgenden Arbeit wird das Konzept eines implantierbaren Telemetriesystems vorgestellt, das die Bewertung des Gewebezustandes über die Messung der frequenzabhängigen Bioimpedanz ermöglicht. Besondere Beachtung wird der Auslegung und Umsetzung der einzelnen Systemkomponenten sowie der Vorstellung erster in vitro Messungen zur Evaluierung des Meßsystems geschenkt

Modelling historical and current irrigation water demand on the continental scale

Abstract. Water abstractions for irrigation purposes are higher than for any other pan-European water use sector and have a large influence on river runoff regimes. This modelling experiment assesses historic and current irrigation water demands for different crops in five arc minute spatial resolution for pan-Europe. Two different modelling frameworks have been applied in this study. First, soft-coupling the dynamic vegetation model LPJmL with the land use model LandSHIFT leads to overestimations of national irrigation water demands, which are rather high in the southern Mediterranean countries. This can be explained by unlimited water supply in the model structure and illegal or not gauged water abstractions in the reported data sets. The second modelling framework is WaterGAP3, which has an integrated conceptual crop specific irrigation module. Irrigation water requirements as modelled with WaterGAP3 feature a more realistic representation of pan-European water withdrawals. However, in colder humid regions, irrigation water demands are often underestimated. Additionally, a national database on crop-specific irrigated area and water withdrawal for all 42 countries within pan-Europe has been set up and integrated in both model frameworks

Evidence of gating in hundred nanometer diameter pores: an experimental and theoretical study

We report on the observation of an unexpected gating mechanism at the 100 nm scale on track-etched polycarbonate membranes. Transport measurements of methyl viologen performed by absorption spectroscopy under various pH conditions demonstrated that perfect gating was achieved for 100 nm diameter pores at pH 2, while the positively charged molecular ions moved through the membrane according to diffusion laws at pH 5. An oppositely charged molecular ion, naphthalene disulfonate, in the same membrane, showed the opposite trend: diffusion of the negative ion at pH 2 and perfect gating at pH 5. The influence of parameters such as ionic strength and membrane surface coating were also investigated. A theoretical study of the system shows that at this larger length scale the magnitude of the electric field in the vicinity of the pores is too small to account for the experimental observations, rather, it is the surface trapping of the mobile ion (Cl{sup -} or Na{sup +}) which gives rise to the gating phenomena. This surprising effect might have potential applications for high-throughput separation of large molecules and bio-organisms

Fermion sea along the sphaleron barrier

In this revised version we have improved the treatment of the top and bottom quark mass. This leads to slight changes of the numerical results, especially of those presented in Fig.4. The discussion of the numerical procedure and accuracy has been extended.Comment: 39 pages (LaTex) plus 5 figures (uuencoded postscript files); RUB-TPII-62/93, to appear in Phys.Rev.

Estimulaçao cardíaca atrioventricular sincrônica através de um eletrodo flutuante único (Modo VDD)

Um marcapasso bicameral que utiliza um eletrodo flutuante único para estimulaçao no modo VDD foi implantado em 25 pacientes com distúrbio da conduçao intra-cardíaca do tipo bloqueio atrioventricular total (21 pacientes) ou de 2º grau (4 pacientes). Presumiu-se funçao sinusal normal através do eletrocardiograma convencional e da história clínica. As etiologias dos distúrbios de conduçao foram a miocardioesclerose (22 pacientes), cirúrgica (2 pacientes) ou a doença de Chagas (1 paciente). O eletrodo flutuante único SL 60 (Biotronik), dotado de dois sensores atriais situados a 13 cm da extremidade que contém o eletrodo ventricular unipolar, foi introduzido por via transvenosa. As medidas eletrofisiológicas (média ± erro padrao) no implante foram onda P de 2,87 ± 0,27 mV, QRS de 10,97 ± 0,92 mV e limiar de estimulaçao ventricular de 0,51 ± 0,04 V. O gerador de pulsos Dromos SL (Biotronik) foi mantido na programaçao padrao. Após implante os pacientes realizaram teste ergométrico e/ou eletrocardiograma ambulatorial de 24 horas. As complicaçoes registradas foram a perda da sensibilidade atrial em dois pacientes (8%), requerendo reposicionamento do eletrodo, insuficiência cronotrópica ao exercício por bradicardia sinusal em um (4%) e estimulaçao de músculo peitoral ou inibiçao temporária do gerador por miopotenciais em um (4%), solucionada por reprogramaçao. Em até 6 meses de seguimento, 24 pacientes (96%) apresentam sincronismo atrioventricular adequado graças à estimulaçao produzida pelo marcapasso implantado. O implante de um marcapasso atrioventricular sequencial com eletrodo flutuante único é simples e a estimulaçao VDD é efetiva em pacientes com bloqueio cardíaco e funçao sinusal normal. Seu uso em pacientes chagásicos deve ser avaliado, pois miopotenciais cardíacos reduzidos podem comprometer a sensibilidade atrial