THE EFFECT OF STATES OF EMERGENCY ON GUBERNATORIAL APPROVAL RATINGS

To what extent do unexpected, apolitical events affect governors’ popularity? Individuals’ attitudes towards government are often random, and executives at both the state-level and national-level are held accountable for events that they have little control over. In this study, I seek to understand how these unplanned events affect support for elected officials. Specifically, I examine the effect of the declaration of a State of Emergency on gubernatorial approval. I use an ordinary least squares (OLS) model and data from FEMA as well as the United States Officials Job Approval Ratings dataset to answer such questions. The results indicate that not only do natural and manmade disasters NOT have a negative effect on governors’ popularity, there is actually no correlation between the two variables at all. Instead, I find that relative to one another, major disaster declarations have a stronger negative effect on a governor’s approval ratings than emergency declarations. Though surprising, I suggest that these disasters simply do not affect enough individuals for a long enough time to have an impact on gubernatorial popularity

Mechanisms of soil carbon storage in experimental grasslands

International audienceWe investigated the fate of root and litter derived carbon into soil organic matter and dissolved organic matter in soil profiles, in order to explain unexpected positive effects of plant diversity on carbon storage. A time series of soil and soil solution samples was investigated at the field site of The Jena Experiment. In addition to the main biodiversity experiment with C3 plants, a C4 species (Amaranthus retroflexus L.) naturally labeled with 13C was grown on an extra plot. Changes in organic carbon concentration in soil and soil solution were combined with stable isotope measurements to follow the fate of plant carbon into the soil and soil solution. A split plot design with plant litter removal versus double litter input simulated differences in biomass input. After 2 years, the no litter and double litter treatment, respectively, showed an increase of 381 g C m?2 and 263 g C m?2 to 20 cm depth, while 71 g C m?2 and 393 g C m?2 were lost between 20 and 30 cm depth. The isotopic label in the top 5 cm indicated that 11 and 15% of soil organic carbon were derived from plant material on the no litter and the double litter treatment, respectively. Without litter, this equals the total amount of carbon newly stored in soil, whereas with double litter this corresponds to twice the amount of stored carbon. Our results indicate that litter input resulted in lower carbon storage and larger carbon losses and consequently accelerated turnover of soil organic carbon. Isotopic evidence showed that inherited soil organic carbon was replaced by fresh plant carbon near the soil surface. Our results suggest that primarily carbon released from soil organic matter, not newly introduced plant organic matter, was transported in the soil solution and contributed to the observed carbon storage in deeper horizons

High-Tc bolometers with silicon-nitride spiderwebsuspension for far-infrared detection

High-Tc GdBa2Cu3O7-δ (GBCO) superconducting transition edge bolometers with operating temperatures near 90 K have been made with both closed silicon-nitride membranes and patterned silicon-nitride (SiN) spiderweb-like suspension structures. As a substrate silicon-on-nitride (SON) wafers are used which are made by fusion bonding of a silicon wafer to a silicon wafer with a silicon-nitride top layer. The resulting monocrystalline silicon top layer on the silicon-nitride membranes enables the epitaxial growth of GBCO. By patterning the silicon-nitride the thermal conductance G is reduced from about 20 to 3 μW/K. The noise of both types of bolometers is dominated by the intrinsic noise from phonon fluctuations in the thermal conductance G. The optical efficiency in the far infrared is about 75% due to a goldblack absorption layer. The noise equivalent power NEP for FIR detection is 1.8 pW/√Hz, and the detectivity D* is 5.4×1010 cm √Hz/W. Time constants are 0.1 and 0.6 s, for the closed membrane and the spiderweb like bolometers respectively. The effective time constant can be reduced with about a factor 3 by using voltage bias. Further reduction necessarily results in an increase of the NEP due to the 1/f noise of the superconductor

Low noise far-infrared detection at 90 K using high-T(c) superconducting bolometers with silicon-nitride beam suspension

High-T(c) GdBa2Cu3O7-d (GBCO) superconducting transition edge bolometers with operating temperatures near 90 K and receiving area of 1 mm2 have been made with both closed silicon-nitride membranes and patterned silicon-nitride (Si(x)N(y)) spiderweb-like suspension structures. To enable epitaxial growth of the GBCO layer, a thin monocrystalline Si layer is prepared on the silicon-nitride base, using fusion bonding techniques. By pattering the silicon-nitride supporting membrane the thermal conductance G is reduced from 20 to 3.5 μW/K. The noise of both types of bolometers is fully dominated by the intrinsic noise from phonon fluctuations in the thermal conductance G. The optical efficiency in the far infrared is about 75% due to a gold black absorption layer. The optical noise equivalent power (NEP) is 1.8 pW/√Hz, and the detectivity D* is 5.4x1010 cm√Hz/W. Time constants are 0.1 and 0.6 s, for the closed membrane and the spiderweb like bolometers respectively. We have observed an empirical limit for the NEP for this type of bolometers. The effective timeconstant can be reduced with a factor of 3 by using an electronic feedback system or by using voltage bias. A further reduction necessarily results in an increase of the NEP due to the 1/f noise of the superconductor

Biochar has no effect on soil respiration across Chinese agricultural soils

This work was supported by NSFC (41371298 and 41371300), Ministry of Science and Technology (2013GB23600666 and 2013BAD11B00), and Ministry of Education of China (20120097130003). The international cooperation was funded under a “111” project by the State Agency of Foreign Expert Affairs of China and jointly supported under a grant for Priority Disciplines in Higher Education by the Department of Education, Jiangsu Province, China; The work was also a contribution to the cooperation project of “Estimates of Future Agricultural GHG Emissions and Mitigation in China” under the UK-China Sustainable Agriculture Innovation Network (SAIN). Pete Smith contributed to this work under a UK BBSRC China Partnership Award. The authors are grateful to Yuming Liu, Bin Zhang, Xiao Li, Gang Wu, Jinjin Qu and Yinxin Ye and Dongqi Liu for their contribution to field experiments, and to Rongjun Bian and Qaiser Hussain for their participation in discussions of the data analysis and interpretation, and to Xinyan Yu and Jiafang Wang for their assistance in lab works.Peer reviewedPostprin

Influence of production variables and starting material on charcoal stable isotopic and molecular characteristics

We present a systematic study on the effect of starting species, gas composition, temperature, particle size and duration of heating upon the molecular and stable isotope composition of high density (mangrove) and low density (pine) wood. In both pine and mangrove, charcoal was depleted in o13C relative to the starting wood by up to 1.6% and 0.8%, respectively. This is attributed predominantly to the progressive loss of isotopically heavier polysaccharides, and kinetic effects of aromatization during heating. However, the pattern of o13C change was dependant upon both starting species and atmosphere, with different structural changes associated with charcoal production from each wood type elucidated by Solid-State o13C Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. These are particularly evident at lower temperatures, where variation in the oxygen content of the production atmosphere results in differences in the thermal degradation of cellulose and lignin. It is concluded that production of charcoal from separate species in identical conditions, or from a single sample exposed to different production variables, can result in significantly different o13C of the resulting material, relative to the initial wood. These results have implications for the use of charcoal isotope composition to infer past environmental change

Compound-specific stable carbon isotopic signature of carbohydrate pyrolysis products from C3 and C4 plants

6 páginas.-- 3 figuras.-- 2 tablas.-- 36 referenciasBACKGROUND: Pyrolysis-compound specific isotopic analysis (Py-CSIA: Py-GC-(FID)-C-IRMS) is a relatively novel technique that allows on-line quantification of stable isotope proportions in chromatographically separated products released by pyrolysis. Validation of the Py-CSIA technique is compulsory for molecular traceability in basic and applied research. In this work, commercial sucrose from C4 (sugarcane) and C3 (sugarbeet) photosystem plants and admixtures were studied using analytical pyrolysis (Py-GC/MS), bulk δ13C IRMS and δ13C Py-CSIA. RESULTS: Major pyrolysis compounds were furfural (F), furfural-5-hydroxymethyl (HMF) and levoglucosan (LV). Bulk and main pyrolysis compound δ13C (‰) values were dependent on plant origin: C3 (F, -24.65 ± 0.89; HMF, -22.07 ± 0.41‰ LV, -21.74 ± 0.17‰) and C4 (F, -14.35 ± 0.89‰ HMF, -11.22 ± 0.54‰ LV, -11.44 ± 1.26‰). Significant regressions were obtained for δ13C of bulk and pyrolysis compounds in C3 and C4 admixtures. Furfural (F) was found 13C depleted with respect to bulk and HMF and LV, indicating the incorporation of the light carbon atom in position 6 of carbohydrates in the furan ring after pyrolysis. CONCLUSION: This is the first detailed report on the δ13C signature of major pyrolytically generated carbohydrate-derived molecules. The information provided by Py-CSIA is valuable for identifying source marker compounds of use in food science/fraud detection or in environmental research. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry © 2016 Society of Chemical Industry.This work has been partly funded by the Spanish ‘Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad’ through project GEOFIRE (CGL2012-38655-C04-01). Dr J.M. de la Rosa is the recipient of a fellowship from the JAE-Doc subprogram financed by the CSIC and the European Social Fund.Peer reviewe

Isotopes in pyrogenic carbon: a review

Pyrogenic carbon (PC; also known as biochar, charcoal, black carbon and soot) derived from natural and anthropogenic burning plays a major, but poorly quantified, role in the global carbon cycle. Isotopes provide a fundamental fingerprint of the source of PC and a powerful tracer of interactions between PC and the environment. Radiocarbon and stable carbon isotope techniques have been widely applied to studies of PC in aerosols, soils, sediments and archaeological sequences, with the use of other isotopes currently less developed. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge regarding (i) techniques for isolating PC for isotope analysis and (ii) processes controlling the carbon (<sup>13</sup>C and <sup>14</sup>C), nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen and sulfur isotope composition of PC during formation and after deposition. It also reviews the current and potential future applications of isotope based studies to better understand the role of PC in the modern environment and to the development of records of past environmental change

Towards the co-ordination of terrestrial ecosystem protocols across European research infrastructures

The study of ecosystem processes over multiple scales of space and time is often best achieved by using comparable data from multiple sites. Yet long term ecological observatories have often developed their own data collection protocols. Here we address this problem by proposing a set of ecological protocols suitable for widespread adoption by the ecological community. 2. Scientists from the European ecological research community prioritised terrestrial ecosystem parameters that could benefit from a more consistent approach to data collection within the resources available at most long term ecological observatories. Parameters for which standard methods are in widespread use, or for which methods are evolving rapidly, were not selected. 3. Protocols were developed by domain experts, building on existing methods where possible, and refined through a process of field testing and training. They address above-ground plant biomass; decomposition; land use and management; leaf area index; soil mesofaunal diversity; soil C and N stocks, and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. These complement existing methods to provide a complete assessment of ecological integrity. 4. These protocols offer integrated approaches to ecological data collection that are low cost and are starting to be used across the European Long Term Ecological Research community