Capturing Energy Waste in Ohio: Using Combined Heat and Power to Upgrade Our Electric System

Assesses the state's potential for capturing heat generated during electricity production or industrial processes to meet thermal needs, cut fossil fuel use, and reduce emissions. Recommends ways to remove barriers to combined heat and power adoption

Using macroinvertebrate community composition to distinguish between natural and anthropogenic sedimentation

Excess fine sediment from human activity is a major pollutant to streams across the U.S.; however, distinguishing human-induced sedimentation from natural fine sediment is complex. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently implemented a protocol for the quantitative field assessment of human-induced sedimentation using measurements of stream geomorphology. Macroinvertebrate community composition, streambed sediment stability, and sediment composition were studied at 49 sites in the James River watershed in central Virginia. Sediment composition was found to be a stronger driver of community composition than sediment stability. Although I was not able to show that macroinvertebrate metrics were related to sediment stability independently of actual fine sediment composition, some metrics, including percent Ephemeridae, a family of burrowing mayflies (order = Ephemeroptera) show promise as valuable tools for regional biologists and resource managers to discriminate among streams considered impaired for sediment pollution

Systematic Ichthyofaunal Surveys in Urban and Non-Urban Watersheds

Objectives were to model fish species richness relative to natural and anthropogenic variables in Quantico Creek, a forested undisturbed stream environment, and Cameron Run, a highly disturbed urban stream environment in the lower Piedmont-Fall Line region of the Potomac River watershed. Species richness in all stream orders (e.g. avg. range=2.5-9.65 in 1st-3rd orders) of Quantico Creek were significantly higher than those (e.g. avg. range=2.1- 7.6 in 1st -4th orders) of Cameron Run. Fish species richness in Quantico Creek watershed can be modeled by eight factors: season, stream order, elevation, river km, stream width and depth, watershed size, and percent of undeveloped land cover; and that in Cameron Run can be modeled with four factors: stream gradient, stream flow, water temperature, and percent undeveloped land cover. Therefore, it cannot be assumed that a model composed of one set of variables that represents species richness for a given watershed can be applied to a nearby watershed. Based on potential impacts of increased population growth and climate change in the area, coupled with a paucity of information on the extent of the use of the lower reaches of Quantico Creek as a spawning area for anadromous fishes, we propose that the national park, Prince William Forest Park, should be included as a freshwater protection area for the Quantico Creek watershed as proposed by the National Park Service for 50 other national parks in the country. Data and models generated in our study can serve as baselines in future comparative studies of mid-Atlantic streams relative to changes in system parameters (e.g. human population, corresponding anthropogenic effects and climatic change predicted for the mid-Atlantic region)

Asymmetric shallow mantle structure beneath the Hawaiian Swell—evidence from Rayleigh waves recorded by the PLUME network

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2011. This article is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 187 (2011): 1725–1742, doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.2011.05238.x.We present models of the 3-D shear velocity structure of the lithosphere and asthenosphere beneath the Hawaiian hotspot and surrounding region. The models are derived from long-period Rayleigh-wave phase velocities that were obtained from the analysis of seismic recordings collected during two year-long deployments for the Hawaiian Plume-Lithosphere Undersea Mantle Experiment. For this experiment, broad-band seismic sensors were deployed at nearly 70 seafloor sites as well as 10 sites on the Hawaiian Islands. Our seismic images result from a two-step inversion of path-averaged dispersion curves using the two-station method. The images reveal an asymmetry in shear velocity structure with respect to the island chain, most notably in the lower lithosphere at depths of 60 km and greater, and in the asthenosphere. An elongated, 100-km-wide and 300-km-long low-velocity anomaly reaches to depths of at least 140 km. At depths of 60 km and shallower, the lowest velocities are found near the northern end of the island of Hawaii. No major velocity anomalies are found to the south or southeast of Hawaii, at any depth. The low-velocity anomaly in the asthenosphere is consistent with an excess temperature of 200–250 °C and partial melt at the level of a few percent by volume, if we assume that compositional variations as a result of melt extraction play a minor role. We also image small-scale low-velocity anomalies within the lithosphere that may be associated with the volcanic fields surrounding the Hawaiian Islands.This research was financed by the National Science Foundation under grants OCE-00-02470 and OCE-00-02819. Markee was partly sponsored by a SIO graduate student fellowship

Higher Law: Can Christian Conservatives Transform Law Through Legal Education?

The allure of law schools as transformative institutions in the United States prompted Christian Right leaders to invest in legal education in the 1990s and early 2000s. The aspiration was to control the training of lawyers in order to challenge the secular legal monopoly on law, policy, and culture. In this article, we examine three leading Christian conservative law schools and one training program dedicated to transforming the law. We ask how each institution seeks to realize its transformative mission and analyze how they organize themselves to produce the kinds of capital (human, intellectual, social, cultural) needed to effectively change the law. To do so, we develop a typology of legal institutionbuilding strategies (infiltration, supplemental, and parallel alternative) to compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of institutional forms. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for those looking to law schools as sites of broader transformation within the law