Innovative Stormwater Treatment Technologies: Best Management Practices Manual

Urban stormwater carries a number of pathogens, nutrients, heavy metals, sediment, and other contaminants as surface runoff flows over land. The increase in impervious or paved surfaces associated with development in urban areas reduces the natural infiltration of precipitation into the ground. With impervious cover, precipitation collects and carries contaminants before draining into nearby surface waters. Stormwater runoff from paved surfaces in developed areas can degrade downstream waters with both contaminants and increased volumes of water. This publication aims to make information on innovative stormwater treatment technologies more available to New Hampshire’s urban planners, developers, and communities. Traditional runoff management techniques such as detention basins and infiltration swales may be preferable, but are not always practical for treating urban stormwater. Lack of space for natural solutions is often a problem in existing developed areas, making innovative treatment technologies an attractive alternative. Mostly designed for subsurface installation, urban “retrofits” use less space than conventional methods to treat stormwater. This manual provides information on the innovative stormwater “retrofit” technologies currently available for use in developed areas in New Hampshire

Data management of nanometre­ scale CMOS device simulations

In this paper we discuss the problems arising in managing and curating the data generated by simulations of nanometre scale CMOS (Complementary Metal–Oxide Semiconductor) transistors, circuits and systems and describe the software and operational techniques we have adopted to address them. Such simulations pose a number of challenges including, inter alia, multi­TByte data volumes, complex datasets with complex inter-relations between datasets, multi­-institutional collaborations including multiple specialisms and a mixture of academic and industrial partners, and demanding security requirements driven by commercial imperatives. This work was undertaken as part of the NanoCMOS project. However, the problems, solutions and experience seem likely to be of wider relevance, both within the CMOS design community and more generally in other disciplines

Secure, performance-oriented data management for nanoCMOS electronics

The EPSRC pilot project Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is focused upon delivering a production level e-Infrastructure to meet the challenges facing the semiconductor industry in dealing with the next generation of ‘atomic-scale’ transistor devices. This scale means that previous assumptions on the uniformity of transistor devices in electronics circuit and systems design are no longer valid, and the industry as a whole must deal with variability throughout the design process. Infrastructures to tackle this problem must provide seamless access to very large HPC resources for computationally expensive simulation of statistic ensembles of microscopically varying physical devices, and manage the many hundreds of thousands of files and meta-data associated with these simulations. A key challenge in undertaking this is in protecting the intellectual property associated with the data, simulations and design process as a whole. In this paper we present the nanoCMOS infrastructure and outline an evaluation undertaken on the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) and the Andrew File System (AFS) considering in particular the extent that they meet the performance and security requirements of the nanoCMOS domain. We also describe how metadata management is supported and linked to simulations and results in a scalable and secure manner

Integrating security solutions to support nanoCMOS electronics research

The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded Meeting the Design Challenges of nanoCMOS Electronics (nanoCMOS) is developing a research infrastructure for collaborative electronics research across multiple institutions in the UK with especially strong industrial and commercial involvement. Unlike other domains, the electronics industry is driven by the necessity of protecting the intellectual property of the data, designs and software associated with next generation electronics devices and therefore requires fine-grained security. Similarly, the project also demands seamless access to large scale high performance compute resources for atomic scale device simulations and the capability to manage the hundreds of thousands of files and the metadata associated with these simulations. Within this context, the project has explored a wide range of authentication and authorization infrastructures facilitating compute resource access and providing fine-grained security over numerous distributed file stores and files. We conclude that no single security solution meets the needs of the project. This paper describes the experiences of applying X.509-based certificates and public key infrastructures, VOMS, PERMIS, Kerberos and the Internet2 Shibboleth technologies for nanoCMOS security. We outline how we are integrating these solutions to provide a complete end-end security framework meeting the demands of the nanoCMOS electronics domain

Systematic review of the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and economic evaluation, of denosumab for the treatment of bone metastases from solid tumours

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Support for Integrated Ecosystem Assessments of NOAA’s National Estuarine Research Reserves System (NERRS), Volume I: The Impacts of Coastal Development on the Ecology and Human Well-being of Tidal Creek Ecosystems of the US Southeast

A study was conducted, in association with the Sapelo Island and North Carolina National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRs), to evaluate the impacts of coastal development on sentinel habitats (e.g., tidal creek ecosystems), including potential impacts to human health and well-being. Uplands associated with southeastern tidal creeks and the salt marshes they drain are popular locations for building homes, resorts, and recreational facilities because of the high quality of life and mild climate associated with these environments. Tidal creeks form part of the estuarine ecosystem characterized by high biological productivity, great ecological value, complex environmental gradients, and numerous interconnected processes. This research combined a watershed-level study integrating ecological, public health and human dimension attributes with watershed-level land use data. The approach used for this research was based upon a comparative watershed and ecosystem approach that sampled tidal creek networks draining developed watersheds (e.g., suburban, urban, and industrial) as well as undeveloped sites. The primary objective of this work was to clearly define the relationships between coastal development with its concomitant land use changes and non-point source pollution loading and the ecological and human health and well-being status of tidal creek ecosystems. Nineteen tidal creek systems, located along the southeastern United States coast from southern North Carolina to southern Georgia, were sampled during summer (June-August), 2005 and 2006. Within each system, creeks were divided into two primary segments based upon tidal zoning: intertidal (i.e., shallow, narrow headwater sections) and subtidal (i.e., deeper and wider sections), and watersheds were delineated for each segment. In total, we report findings on 24 intertidal and 19 subtidal creeks. Indicators sampled throughout each creek included water quality (e.g., dissolved oxygen concentration, salinity, nutrients, chlorophyll-a levels), sediment quality (e.g., characteristics, contaminants levels including emerging contaminants), pathogen and viral indicators, and abundance and genetic responses of biological resources (e.g., macrobenthic and nektonic communities, shellfish tissue contaminants, oyster microarray responses). For many indicators, the intertidally-dominated or headwater portions of tidal creeks were found to respond differently than the subtidally-dominated or larger and deeper portions of tidal creeks. Study results indicate that the integrity and productivity of headwater tidal creeks were impaired by land use changes and associated non-point source pollution, suggesting these habitats are valuable early warning sentinels of ensuing ecological impacts and potential public health threats. For these headwater creeks, this research has assisted the validation of a previously developed conceptual model for the southeastern US region. This conceptual model identified adverse changes that generally occurred in the physical and chemical environment (e.g., water quality indicators such as indicator bacteria for sewage pollution or sediment chemical contamination) when impervious cover levels in the watershed reach 10-20%. Ecological characteristics responded and were generally impaired when impervious cover levels exceed 20-30%. Estimates of impervious cover levels defining where human uses are impaired are currently being determined, but it appears that shellfish bed closures and the flooding vulnerability of headwater regions become a concern when impervious cover values exceed 10-30%. This information can be used to forecast the impacts of changing land use patterns on tidal creek environmental quality as well as associated human health and well-being. In addition, this study applied tools and technologies that are adaptable, transferable, and repeatable among the high quality NERRS sites as comparable reference entities to other nearby developed coastal watersheds. The findings herein will be of value in addressing local, regional and national needs for understanding multiple stressor (anthropogenic and human impacts) effects upon estuarine ecosystems and response trends in ecosystem condition with changing coastal impacts (i.e., development, climate change). (PDF contaions 88 pages

Semi-infinite herringbone waveguides in elastic plates

The paper includes novel results for the scattering and localisation of a time-harmonic flexural wave by a semi-infinite herringbone waveguide of rigid pins embedded within an elastic Kirchhoff plate. The analytical model takes into account the orientation and spacing of the constituent parts of the herringbone system, and incorporates dipole approximations for the case of closely spaced pins. Illustrative examples are provided, together with the predictive theoretical analysis of the localised waveforms

Velocity-conductivity relations for cratonic lithosphere and their application : example of Southern Africa

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems 14 (2013): 806–827, doi:10.1002/ggge.20075.Seismic velocity is a function of bulk vibrational properties of the media, whereas electrical resistivity is most often a function of transport properties of an interconnected minor phase. In the absence of a minor conducting phase then the two should be inter-relatable primarily due to their sensitivity to temperature variation. We develop expressions between shear wave velocity and resistivity for varying temperature, composition, and water content based on knowledge from two kimberlite fields: Jagersfontein (Kaapvaal Craton) and Gibeon (Rehoboth Terrane). We test the expressions through comparison between a new high-resolution regional seismic model, derived from surface wave inversion of earthquake data from Africa and the surrounding regions, and a new electrical image from magnetotelluric (MT) data recorded in SAMTEX (Southern African Magnetotelluric Experiment). The data-defined robust linear regression between the two is found to be statistically identical to the laboratory-defined expression for 40 wt ppm water in olivine. Cluster analysis defines five clusters that are all geographically distinct and tectonically relate to (i) fast, cold, and variably wet Kaapvaal Craton, (ii) fast and wet central Botswana, (iii) slow, warm, and wet Rehoboth Terrane, (iv) moderately fast, cold, and very dry southernmost Angola Craton, and (v) slow, warm, and somewhat dry Damara Belt. From the linear regression expression and the MT image we obtain predicted seismic velocity at 100 km and compare it with that from seismic observations. The differences between the two demonstrate that the linear relationship between Vs and resistivity is appropriate for over 80% of Southern Africa. Finally, using the regressions for varying water content, we infer water content in olivine across Southern Africa.We wish to again acknowledge the three main funding agencies, the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Continental Dynamics Program (grant EAR0455242 to RLE), the South African Department of Science and Technology (grant to South African Council for Geoscience), and Science Foundation Ireland (grant 05/RGP/GEO001 to AGJ), for their support. Industry support for SAMTEX from De Beers Group Services, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration resulted in a program far more extensive than originally conceived. S.F. has been supported by the NERC New Investigator grant NE/G000859/1. M.M. wishes to thank Science Foundation Ireland (grant 08/RFP/GEO1693 SAMTEX to AGJ) for support. J.F. wishes to thank Enterprise Ireland (grant Topo-Med to AGJ), Science Foundation Ireland (grant 10/IN.1/I3022 IRETHERMto AGJ), and the JAE-DOC Programme from Spanish CSIC, cofunded by FSE for support.2013-10-0

Current Fertility Status Does Not Predict Sociosexual Attitudes and Desires in Normally Ovulating Women

Previous research has found that women at peak fertility show greater interest in extra-pair sex. However, recent replications have failed to detect this effect. In this study, we add to this ongoing debate by testing whether sociosexuality (the willingness to have sex in the absence of commitment) is higher in women who are at peak fertility. A sample of normally ovulating women (N = 773) completed a measure of sociosexuality and had their current fertility status estimated using the backward counting method. Contrary to our hypothesis, current fertility was unrelated to sociosexual attitudes and desires, even when relationship status was included as a moderator. These findings raise further doubts about the association between fertility and desire for extra-pair sex