Potential for Abrupt Changes in Atmospheric Methane

Methane (CH4) is the second most important greenhouse gas that humans directly influence, carbon dioxide (CO2) being first. Concerns about methane’s role in abrupt climate change stem primarily from (1) the large quantities of methane stored as solid methane hydrate on the sea floor and to a lesser degree in terrestrial sediments, and the possibility that these reservoirs could become unstable in the face of future global warming, and (2) the possibility of large-scale conversion of frozen soil in the high- latitude Northern Hemisphere to methane producing wetland, due to accelerated warming at high latitudes. This chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge about these reservoirs and their potential for forcing abrupt climate change

Technical Bulletins: Civil Penalties for Wastewater Pretreatment Violations

This Technical Bulletin provides an overview (not a comprehensive analysis) of the Attorney General\u27s opinion concerning the amount of the penalty that a municipality can charge for wastewater pretreatment violations

Technical Bulletins: EPA Regulations on Contractor Retainage Interest Change

This Technical Bulletin provides information about a ruling from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which made it extremely important that bid documents contain a section stating that interest will be paid on retainage

Public Works Standards & Specifications

The goal and intention of this publication is for cities to have guidelines of some of the standards and specifications on construction projects. Readers should be careful in their adoption and use as these guidelines are not all-inclusive of the standards and specifications which may be necessary in a specific local community situation. It is recommended that all public works projects be developed, designed and constructed under the direction of a registered professional engineer

Extending the 5S Framework of Digital Libraries to support Complex Objects, Superimposed Information, and Content-Based Image Retrieval Services

Advanced services in digital libraries (DLs) have been developed and widely used to address the required capabilities of an assortment of systems as DLs expand into diverse application domains. These systems may require support for images (e.g., Content-Based Image Retrieval), Complex (information) Objects, and use of content at fine grain (e.g., Superimposed Information). Due to the lack of consensus on precise theoretical definitions for those services, implementation efforts often involve ad hoc development, leading to duplication and interoperability problems. This article presents a methodology to address those problems by extending a precisely specified minimal digital library (in the 5S framework) with formal definitions of aforementioned services. The theoretical extensions of digital library functionality presented here are reinforced with practical case studies as well as scenarios for the individual and integrative use of services to balance theory and practice. This methodology has implications that other advanced services can be continuously integrated into our current extended framework whenever they are identified. The theoretical definitions and case study we present may impact future development efforts and a wide range of digital library researchers, designers, and developers

Guidelines for normalising early modern English corpora:decisions and justifications

Corpora of Early Modern English have been collected and released for research for a number of years. With large scale digitisation activities gathering pace in the last decade, much more historical textual data is now available for research on numerous topics including historical linguistics and conceptual history. We summarise previous research which has shown that it is necessary to map historical spelling variants to modern equivalents in order to successfully apply natural language processing and corpus linguistics methods. Manual and semiautomatic methods have been devised to support this normalisation and standardisation process. We argue that it is important to develop a linguistically meaningful rationale to achieve good results from this process. In order to do so, we propose a number of guidelines for normalising corpora and show how these guidelines have been applied in the Corpus of English Dialogues

Pupil involvement in school affairs

The research constitutes an enquiry into forms of pupil involvement in Scottish secondary school. The introduction begins by recounting the management-orientated background of the research. The main purpose of the research is established, namely to develop a set of guidelines such as might be useful to staff who are engaged in school management. A survey approach is seen as impractical and inappropriate and an approach based on the study of selected cases is preferred. The theoretical discussion in Chapter 2 refers to key concepts relating to pupil-centred education and to the notions of involvement and participation. Three models of pupil involvement are postulated, one being authority-based, the second rights-based and termed a 'democratic model', the third being needs-based and termed a 'training model'. These models are intended to help clarify some of the complexities-of the situation, and. they also provide a framework for the examination, of practice in schools. The extensive enquiries into practice in five selected schools where there are pupil councils are reported in detail in Chapter 3. The different origins, structures and procedures are identified and compared. Particular attention is paid to Headteacher roles, and to the roles of other staff in key positions, in trying to throw light on the nature of pupil involvement. The situations in these schools are examined in as much detail as possible in order to provide the basis for a set of guidelines for staff and pupils interested in establishing or improving pupil council arrangements. Material gathered from many other schools also provides content for the guidelines; these are set out in the seven sections which form Chapter 4. The concluding discussion in Chapter 5 argues that the research has been successful in achieving its main purpose, that of generating a set of guidelines for those who are concerned in the management of pupil involvement. It is further argued that traditional forms of involvement through prefect systems where they survive are not in tune with the present 'climate of thought. Pupil councils, displaying something of both a 'training' and a 'democratic' model, are represented as essential to secondary schools today. The enquiry ends as it began, with a discussion of management in terms of the light which examples of pupil involvement might throw on management theory and practice. Additional data and documentation are located in the appendices. There is also a bibliography of key works consulted during the enquiry. Videotaped examples of several pupil councils in session in two schools, with a studio interview of one Headteacher and two pupil councillors, accompany this thesis

Review: Pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) as endocrine disrupting contaminants (EDCs) in South African surface waters

Globally, water resources are under constant threat of being polluted by a diverse range of man-made chemicals, and South Africa is no exception. These  contaminants can have detrimental effects on both human and wildlife health. It is increasingly evident that several chemicals may modulate endocrine system pathways in vertebrate species, and these are collectively referred to as endocrine disrupting contaminants (EDCs). Although the endocrine-disrupting effect of water pollutants has been mainly linked to agricultural pesticides and industrial effluents, other pollutants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are largely unnoticed, but also pose a potentially significant threat. Here we present for the first time in a South African context, a summarised list of PPCPs and other EDCs detected to date within South African water systems, as well as their possible endocrine-disrupting effect in-vitro and in-vivo. This review addresses other factors which should be investigated in future studies, including endocrine disruption, PPCP metabolites, environmental toxicology, and antibiotic resistance. The challenges of removing EDCs and other pollutants at South African wastewater treatment works (WWTWs) are also highlighted. The need for focused research involving both in-vitro and in-vivo studies to detect PPCPs in water systems, and to delineate adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) of priority PPCPs to aid in environmental impact  assessment (EIA), are discussed.Keywords: pharmaceutical, endocrine disruption, wastewater, sewage wate