Capital investment and regional planning in Britain

British regional problems increasingly emphasize the need to understand the exploitation and movement of all factors of production between different parts of the country. This paper reviews evidence, from work sponsored by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, on the significance for the standard regions of capital investment, interregional capital flows and regional investment multipliers. A high level of economic interdependence allows the effects of investment to become widely spread throughout the British space economy. This limits the power of capital expenditure to lead growth in the region where it takes place. Studies of the spatial implications of capital investment should therefore form part of more general appraisals of factor supply and demand changes and their effects on the decisions of different investing agencies (including government). Two distinctive themes for the geographical study of capital investment are suggested: the examination of relationships between investment projects by different agencies at appropriate sub-regional scales; and the ways in which established patterns of physical capital stock may influence the expenditure of new, mobile funds.     

GLAST large area telescope multiwavelength planning

Gamma-ray astrophysics depends in many ways on multiwavelength studies. The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) Large Area Telescope (LAT) Collaboration has started multiwavelength planning well before the scheduled 2007 launch of the observatory. Some of the high-priority multiwavelength needs include: (1) availability of contemporaneous radio and X-ray timing of pulsars; (2) expansion of blazar catalogs, including redshift measurements; (3) improved observations of molecular clouds, especially at high galactic latitudes; (4) simultaneous broad-band blazar monitoring; (5) characterization of gamma-ray transients, including gamma ray bursts; (6) radio, optical, X-ray and TeV counterpart searches for reliable and effective sources identification and characterization. Several of these activities are needed to be in place before launch.      

Salinograph trends as indicators of the recession characteristics of stream components

Compared to hydrograph recession analysis, which is widely applied in engineering hydrology, the quantitative assessment of stream salinity with time (i.e. the salinograph) has received significantly less attention. In particular, while in many previous hydrological studies an inverse relationship between hydrograph and salinograph responses is apparent, the concept of salinity accession (the inversely related salinity counterpart to hydrograph recession) has not been introduced nor quantitatively evaluated in previous literature. In this study, we conduct a mathematical analysis of salinograph accession, and determine new quantitative relationships between salinity accession and hydrograph recession parameters. An equation is formulated that reproduces the general trend in salinity accession. A salinity accession parameter k_c is then introduced and is shown to be the ratio of direct runoff to total stream flow recession parameters: k_r/k. The groundwater recession parameter k_g was estimated using a simple and rapid method that uses both salinograph and hydrograph data. Salinity accession type‐curves illustrate that under certain conditions, the relative steepness of individual salinographs is dependent upon the ratio of groundwater salinity to direct runoff salinity: C_g/C_r. The salinity accession algorithms are applied to two contrasting field settings: Scott Creek, South Australia and Sandy Creek, northern Queensland, Australia. It was found that k_g > k during periods of obvious stream flow recession, for the events analysed. Salinograph accession behaviour was fairly similar for both sites, despite contrasting environments. Using assumed end‐member salinities for groundwater and direct runoff based upon field observations, the behaviour of k_c from the Scott Creek site was approximately reproduced by varying the initial groundwater to runoff flow ratio: Q_g0/Q_r0, within reasonable parameter ranges. The use of salinograph information when used in addition to standard hydrograph analyses provided useful information on recession characteristics of stream components. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Abundances in intermediate-mass AGB stars undergoing third dredge-up and hot-bottom burning

High-dispersion near-infrared spectra have been taken of seven highly evolved, variable, intermediate-mass (4–6 M_⊙) asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud and Small Magellanic Cloud in order to look for C, N and O variations that are expected to arise from third dredge-up and hot-bottom burning. The pulsation of the objects has been modelled, yielding stellar masses, and spectral synthesis calculations have been performed in order to derive abundances from the observed spectra. For two stars, abundances of C, N, O, Na, Al, Ti, Sc and Fe were derived and compared with the abundances predicted by detailed AGB models. Both stars show very large N enhancements and C deficiencies. These results provide the first observational confirmation of the long-predicted production of primary nitrogen by the combination of third dredge-up and hot-bottom burning in intermediate-mass AGB stars. It was not possible to derive abundances for the remaining five stars: three were too cool to model, while another two had strong shocks in their atmospheres which caused strong emission to fill the line cores and made abundance determination impossible. The latter occurrence allows us to predict the pulsation phase interval during which observations should be made if successful abundance analysis is to be possible.     

Fine‐scale diet of the Australian sea lion (Neophoca cinerea) using DNA‐based analysis of faeces

We applied DNA‐based faecal analysis to determine the diet of female Australian sea lions (n = 12) from two breeding colonies in South Australia. DNA dietary components of fish and cephalopods were amplified using the polymerase chain reaction and mitochondrial DNA primers targeting the short (~100 base pair) section of the 16S gene region. Prey diversity was determined by sequencing ~50 amplicons generated from clone libraries developed for each individual. Faecal DNA was also combined and cloned from multiple individuals at each colony and fish diversity determined. Diets varied between individuals and sites. Overall, DNA analysis identified a broad diversity of prey comprising 23 fish and five cephalopod taxa, including many species not previously described as prey of the Australian sea lion. Labridae (wrasse), Monacanthidae (leatherjackets) and Mullidae (goat fish) were important fish prey taxa. Commonly identified cephalopods were Octopodidae (octopus), Loliginidae (calamary squid) and Sepiidae (cuttlefish). Comparisons of fish prey diversity determined by pooling faecal DNA from several samples provided a reasonable but incomplete resemblance (55–71%) to the total fish diversity identified across individual diets at each site. Interpretation of diet based on the recovery of prey hard‐parts identified one cephalopod beak (Octopus sp.) and one fish otolith (Parapriacanthus elongatus). The present study highlights the value of DNA‐based analyses and their capabilities to enhance information of trophic interactions.     

From the Sun to the Earth: The 13 May 2005 Coronal Mass Ejection

We report the results of a multi-instrument, multi-technique, coordinated study of the solar eruptive event of 13 May 2005. We discuss the resultant Earth-directed (halo) coronal mass ejection (CME), and the effects on the terrestrial space environment and upper Earth atmosphere. The interplanetary CME (ICME) impacted the Earth’s magnetosphere and caused the most-intense geomagnetic storm of 2005 with a Disturbed Storm Time (Dst) index reaching ?263 nT at its peak. The terrestrial environment responded to the storm on a global scale. We have combined observations and measurements from coronal and interplanetary remote-sensing instruments, interplanetary and near-Earth in-situ measurements, remote-sensing observations and in-situ measurements of the terrestrial magnetosphere and ionosphere, along with coronal and heliospheric modelling. These analyses are used to trace the origin, development, propagation, terrestrial impact, and subsequent consequences of this event to obtain the most comprehensive view of a geo-effective solar eruption to date. This particular event is also part of a NASA-sponsored Living With a Star (LWS) study and an on-going US NSF-sponsored Solar, Heliospheric, and INterplanetary Environment (SHINE) community investigation.