Toxicity of antifouling biocides to the intertidal harpacticoid copepod Tigriopus japonicus (Crustacea, Copepoda): effects of temperature and salinity

Intertidal harpacticoid copepods are commonly used in eco-toxicity tests worldwide. They predominately live in mid-high shore rock pools and often experience a wide range of temperature and salinity fluctuation. Most eco-toxicity tests are conducted at fixed temperature and salinity and thus the influence of these environmental factors on chemical toxicity is largely unknown. This study investigated the combined effect of temperature and salinity on the acute toxicity of the copepod Tigriopus japonicus against two common biocides, copper (Cu) and tributyltin (TBT) using a 2 × 3 × 4 factorial design (i.e. two temperatures: 25 and 35 °C; three salinities: 15.0‰, 34.5‰ and 45.0‰; three levels of the biocide plus a control). Copper sulphate and tributyltin chloride were used as the test chemicals while distilled water and acetone were utilised as solvents for Cu and TBT respectively. 96h-LC50s of Cu and TBT were 1024 and 0.149 μg l⁻¹ respectively (at 25 °C; 34.5‰) and, based on these results, nominal biocide concentrations of LC0 (i.e. control), LC30, LC50 and LC70 were employed. Analysis of Covariance using ‘concentration’ as the covariate and both ‘temperature’ and ‘salinity’ as fixed factors, showed a significant interaction between temperature and salinity effects for Cu, mortality increasing with temperature but decreasing with elevated salinity. A similar result was revealed for TBT. Both temperature and salinity are, therefore, important factors affecting the results of acute eco-toxicity tests using these marine copepods. We recommend that such eco-toxicity tests should be conducted at a range of environmentally realistic temperature/salinity regimes, as this will enhance the sensitivity of the test and improve the safety margin in line with the precautionary principle.     

On the relation between the amplitude of light and radial velocity variations of β Canis Majoris stars

The relation between the amplitude of light m and the amplitude of the radial velocity 2K for Canis Majoris stars is investigated. A linear relationship between m and 2K is found. However, the two stars BW Vul and Sco, which have the largest radial velocity variations, do not seem to share this relationship.     

Amplitude ratios of several groups of variable stars

The observed positions of classical cepheids, RR Lyrae stars, Scuti stars and dwarf cepheids in the logg-logT _e plane form a continuous sequence, thereby defining the location of maximum instability. The amplitude ratio (the ratio of radial velocity amplitude to light amplitude) is small for variables at the upper end of the instability strip and increases almost linearly towards the lower end of the strip. The theory of radial pulsation predicts the trend of this correlation.     

First-Order Inconsistencies Caused by Rogue Trajectories

A theoretical requirement of the Interaction by Exchange with the Conditional Mean (IECM) micromixing model is that the mean concentration field produced by it must be consistent with the mean concentration field produced by a traditional Lagrangian stochastic (LS) marked particle model. We examine the violation of this requirement that occurs in a coupled LS–IECM model when unrealistically high particle velocities occur. No successful strategy was found to mitigate the effects of these rogue trajectories. It is our hope that this work will provide renewed impetus for investigation into rogue trajectories and methods to eliminate them from LS models.     

Regional climate model projections for the State of Washington

Global climate models do not have sufficient spatial resolution to represent the atmospheric and land surface processes that determine the unique regional climate of the State of Washington. Regional climate models explicitly simulate the interactions between the large-scale weather patterns simulated by a global model and the local terrain. We have performed two 100-year regional climate simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). One simulation is forced by the NCAR Community Climate System Model version 3 (CCSM3) and the second is forced by a simulation of the Max Plank Institute, Hamburg, global model (ECHAM5). The mesoscale simulations produce regional changes in snow cover, cloudiness, and circulation patterns associated with interactions between the large-scale climate change and the regional topography and land-water contrasts. These changes substantially alter the temperature and precipitation trends over the region relative to the global model result or statistical downscaling. To illustrate this effect, we analyze the changes from the current climate (1970–1999) to the mid twenty-first century (2030–2059). Changes in seasonal-mean temperature, precipitation, and snowpack are presented. Several climatological indices of extreme daily weather are also presented: precipitation intensity, fraction of precipitation occurring in extreme daily events, heat wave frequency, growing season length, and frequency of warm nights. Despite somewhat different changes in seasonal precipitation and temperature from the two regional simulations, consistent results for changes in snowpack and extreme precipitation are found in both simulations.     

Linear and nonlinear vibration of non-uniform beams on two-parameter foundations using p-elements

A hierarchical finite element is presented for the geometrically nonlinear free and forced vibration of a non-uniform Timoshenko beam resting on a two-parameter foundation. Legendre orthogonal polynomials are used as enriching shape functions to avoid the shear-locking problem. With the enriching degrees of freedom, the accuracy of the computed results and the computational efficiency are greatly improved. The arc-length iterative method is used to solve the nonlinear eigenvalue equation. The computed results of linear and nonlinear vibration analyses show that the convergence of the proposed element is very fast with respect to the number of Legendre orthogonal polynomials used. Since the elastic foundation and the axial load applied at both ends of the beam affect the ratios of linear frequencies associated with the internal resonance, they influence the nonlinear vibration characteristics of the beam. The axial tensile stress of the beam in nonlinear vibration is investigated in this paper, and attention should be paid to the geometrically nonlinear vibration resulting in considerably large axial tensile stress in the beam.     

A Statistical Upscaling Workflow for Warm Solvent Injection Processes for Heterogeneous Heavy Oil Reservoirs

Natural Resources Research - Hybrid solvent- and thermal-based methods offer an important potential for reducing the environmental impact and enhancing recoveries in heavy oil production processes....     

An integrated web-based air pollution decision support system – a prototype

To efficiently and effectively monitor and mitigate air pollution in the urban environment, it is of paramount importance to integrate into a unified whole air pollutant concentration databases coming from different sources including the ground-based stations, mobile sensors, remote sensing, atmospheric-chemical-transport models and social media for the analysis and unraveling of the complex air pollution processes in space and time. This study constructs and implements for the first time a prototype of the fully integrated air pollution decision support system (APDSS) that put together in an integrated manner all relevant multi-scale, multi-type and multi-source data for decision-making on urban air pollution. The prototype contains the main system that handles the multi-source, multi-type and multi-scale databases, queries, visualization and data mining algorithms and the integrated modules that individually and holistically capitalize on the power of the ground-based stations, ground and aerial mobile sensors, satellite-borne remote-sensing technologies, atmospheric-chemical-transport models and social media. It renders a solid scientific foundation and system development methodology for the study of the spatiotemporal air pollution profiles crucial to the mitigation of urban air pollution. Real-life applications of the prototype are employed to illustrate the functionality of the APDSS.     

Numerical Study of Dual-Plume Interference in a Turbulent Boundary Layer

Direct numerical simulation is used to investigate the interference arising from the dispersion of passive scalar plumes released from a pair of point sources in a fully-developed wall-bounded shear flow. Four different lateral separations of the two sources for both near ground-level and elevated releases are considered. The downwind evolution of the correlation between the plume concentrations along the centreline between the two sources and the behaviour of the lateral profiles of the correlation at various locations downwind of the two sources are examined in detail. Differences in the exceedance probability over a high concentration level for a single plume and the total plume are highlighted and studied, and the effects of destructive and constructive interferences on the exceedance probabilities for the total plume are used to explain these differences. One significant result is that all higher-order (third-order and above) moments of the total concentration can be inferred from the application of a clipped-gamma distribution using the information embodied in only the first- and second-order concentration moments of each single plume, and in the cross-correlation coefficient of the instantaneous concentration of the two plumes.