COMPARISON OF HEAVY METAL CONCENTRATIONS IN SURFACE SEDIMENT OF TANJUNG PIAI WETLAND WITH OTHER SITES RECEIVING ANTHROPOGENIC INPUTS ALONG THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST OF PENINSULAR MALAYSIA

1 INTRODUCTIONOur sampling trip to Tanjung Piai wetland in2002 showed that the site had not been developed andrecognized yet as a wetland of international importance(Ramsar). Recently, our field trip in January 2005to the same site to collect sediment sam…     

Assessment of Estimated Bedrock and Stream Sediment Geochemical Backgrounds in Catchment Basin Analysis

Natural Resources Research - The weighted mean and the multiple regression techniques are two methods that are employed to estimate elemental background concentration of lithologies upstream of...     

Investigating the removal of ethylbenzene from aqueous solutions using modified graphene oxide: application of response surface methodology

This research focused on the application of response surface methodology (RSM) for the removal of ethylbenzene by the graphene oxide grafted with polymethyl vinyl ketone and aniline (GO-MVK-ANI) from wastewater. The adsorbent was prepared through polymerization of graphene oxide with methyl vinyl ketone using ammonium persulfate initiator and further modification by aniline. The synthesized material was characterized via Fourier transform infrared resonance spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller analysis. RSM was used to minimize the number of experiments and investigate the effect of three selected parameters (contact time, initial pH and adsorbent dose) on the removal efficiency of ethylbenzene. Additionally, the affecting parameters were optimized based on the selected target (ethylbenzene removal efficiency). The results show that 73% ethylbenzene could be adsorbed with initial ethylbenzene concentration of 20 mg/l under the optimum conditions (the contact time of 11 min, pH of 5.64 and adsorbent dose of 3.75 g/l). In this paper, high R ²-value (97.18%) for ethylbenzene removal and a good agreement with adjusted R ²-value (94.65%) indicated that the model was successful and the results demonstrated a reasonable proportion of the experimental and the predicted results.     

Glacier changes using satellite data and effect of climate in Tirungkhad basin located in western Himalaya

Glaciers are widely recognized as key indicators of climate change, and melt water obtained from them is an important source of fresh water and for hydropower generation. Regular monitoring of a large number of Himalayan glaciers is important for improving our knowledge of glacier response to climate change. In the present study, Survey of India topographical maps (1966) and Landsat datasets as ETM+ (2000, 2006) and TM (2011) have been used to study glacier fluctuations in Tirungkhad basin. A deglaciation of 26.1% (29.1?km²) in terms of area from 1966 to 2011 was observed. Lower altitude small glaciers (area?<?1?km²) lost more ice (34%), while glaciers with an area <10?km² lost less (20%). The percentage of change in glacier length was 26% (31.9?km) from 1966 to 2011. The south-facing glaciers showed high percentages of loss. From 2000 to 2011, debris cover has increased by 1.34%. The analysis of the trend in meteorological data collected from Kalpa and Purbani stations was carried out by Mann Kendall non-parametric method. During the last two decades, the mean annual temperature (T_max and T_min) has increased significantly, accompanied with a fall in snow water equivalent (SWE) and rainfall. The increasing trend in temperature and decreasing trend in SWE were significant at 95% confidence level. This observation shows that the warming of the climate is probably one of the major reasons for the glacier change in the basin.     

Monthly variations of net heat flux at the air‐sea interface in coastal waters near Jeddah,Red Sea

Abstract

Based on 16 years of oceanographic and meteorological data the monthly variations of the net heat flux at the air‐sea interface in coastal waters near Jeddah show that the sea gains an average of about 14 ±2 W m^?2 from April to October and loses about 79± 4W m^?2from November to March. The loss of heat during the winter months is not compensated by the gain during the summer months and therefore leads to an annual average deficit of 25 ± 3 Wm^?2. The gain during summer may not favour the formation of a strong seasonal thermocline.     

Field investigation on the results of non-linear shallow water equations in the Swash Zone

For the study of the cross-shore wave-induced hydrodynamics in the swash zone, a numerical model is developed based on the one-dimensional non-linear shallow water (NSW) equations for prediction of hydrodynamic parameters in the swash zone. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the outputs of the numerical model, the model's predictions in terms of water surface elevations and cross-shore velocities, are compared to field data from full-scale experiments conducted on three sites with different beach slope; mild and steep, several bed particle sizes and under various incident wave conditions. The quantitative and qualitative comparison of the results of the numerical model and the full-scale data reveals that the model can generally predict many aspects of the flow in the surf and swash zone on both types of beach. The accuracy is adequate for application in a sediment transport study. Considering the time-history and probability distribution of water surface elevation, the model is generally more accurate on steep beaches than on the mild beach. The model can adequately simulate the dominant frequency across the beach and saturation of higher frequencies on both mild and steep beaches for various incident wave energy characteristics. With regard to the horizontal (cross-shore) velocity, the sawtooth shape of time-history and negative acceleration of water are well predicted by the model for both mild and steep beaches. Due to the uncertainties in maximum and minimum values of velocity data, clear judgement about the accuracy of the numerical model in this matter was not possible. However, the comparison of the minimum velocities (offshore direction) revealed that the application of friction factors below the range which is suggested by literature best match the data.     

Microwave solar limb brightening

Previous models of microwave limb brightening have omitted the alignment of spicules along supergranule boundaries, have neglected the high temperature sheath around spicules, and have assumed an interspicular medium which was averaged over chromospheric network and non-network regions. We present a model which includes these factors. By constraining the model to conform to results from earlier UV and optical studies we are effectively left with two free parameters: the temperature at the core of the spicules, T _core, and (at solar minimum), the interspicular chromospheric network density model of the lower transition zone. The absence of limb brightening at the short millimeter wavelengths implies T _core 6000 k. Differences between the model and certain deconvolved observations near 9 mm are expected as a consequence of an extension of emission beyond the optical limb, predicted by the model, which affects the accuracy of the deconvolution technique. Unlike models which assume homogeneous spicules in a random distribution, ours does not require an abnormally high spicule area.