The effects of adsorptive materials on microbial community composition and PAH degradation at the sediment capewater interface

Capping with layers of inert or adsorptive materials is used to control the release of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons(PAH)in sediment but little is known about microbial degradation processes in these materials.A rich native microbial community inhabits the sediment bed,and capping media can influence enrichment and biodegradation activity of benthic microorganisms.The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of capping media(sand,organoclay,and powdered activated carbon[PAC])on microbial communities under oxic conditions typical of the capewater interface,where naphthalene degradation(model PAH)is likely to be maximized.Bench scale experiments compared naphthalene concentrations,nahAc biomarker abundance,microbial community composition,and cellular attachment in systems amended with adsorptive and non-adsorptive capping materials.Results indicate that activated carbon promoted and enhanced bioactivity;PAC treatments showed high biodegradation rates,nahAc biomarker levels,and attached biological growth consistent with enrichment of the PAHdegrading genus Pseudomonae.In contrast,sand did not enhance biological activity compared to media-free systems.Naphthalene strongly influenced microbial community composition at the species level in all treatments except organoclay,which promoted biological signatures commonly associated with impeding degradation activity.Data overall suggest that adsorptive capping materials can both promote(PAC)and inhibit(organoclay)bioactivity in the surficial layer of caps,indicating that media selection is critical to the design of bioactive capping systems.     

Sub-image data processing in Astro-WISE

Most often, astronomers are interested in a source (e.g., moving, variable, or extreme in some colour index) that lies on a few pixels of an image. However, the classical approach in astronomical data processing is the processing of the entire image or set of images even when the sole source of interest may exist on only a few pixels of one or a few images. This is because pipelines have been written and designed for instruments with fixed detector properties (e.g., image size, calibration frames, overscan regions, etc.). Furthermore, all metadata and processing parameters are based on an instrument or a detector. Accordingly, out of many thousands of images for a survey, this can lead to unnecessary processing of data that is both time-consuming and wasteful. We describe the architecture and an implementation of sub-image processing in Astro-WISE. The architecture enables a user to select, retrieve and process only the relevant pixels in an image where the source exists. We show that lineage data collected during the processing and analysis of datasets can be reused to perform selective reprocessing (at sub-image level) on datasets while the remainder of the dataset is untouched, a difficult process to automate without lineage.     

Selenodetic control network

Identification details of the 66 first-order selenodetic control points - i.e., points consisting of craters having diameters larger than 8 km - are given. The distribution of all 211 reference points of the network on the Blagg-Müller maps is also presented. In the Appendix the corresponding Blagg-Müller and LPL Catalogue number for each crater as well as the frame numbers of Lunar Orbiter IV photographs in which the craters have been studied are included.On leave from the Astronomy Department, University of Athens, Greece.The Lunar Science Institute is operated by the Universities Space Research Association under Contract No. NSR 09-051-001 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This paper is Lunar Science Institute Contribution No. 237.     

Deglaciation of the Irish Sea Basin: a critique of the glaciomarine hypothesis

The glaciomarine model for deglaciation of the Irish Sea basin suggests that the weight of ice at the last glacial maximum was sufficient to raise relative sea‐levels far above their present height, destabilising the ice margin and causing rapid deglaciation. Glacigenic deposits throughout the basin have been interpreted as glaciomarine. The six main lines of evidence on which the hypothesis rests (sedimentology, deformation structures, delta deposits, marine fauna, amino‐acid ratios and radiocarbon dates) are reviewed critically. The sedimentological interpretation of many sections has been challenged and it is argued that subglacial sediments are common rather than rare and that there is widespread evidence of glaciotectonism. Density‐driven deformation associated with waterlain sediments is rare and occurs where water was ponded locally. Sand and gravel deposits interpreted as Gilbert‐type deltas are similarly the result of local ponding or occur where glaciers from different source areas uncoupled. They do not record past sea‐levels and the ad hoc theory of ‘piano‐key tectonics’ is not required to explain the irregular pattern of altitudes. The cold‐water foraminifers interpreted as in situ are regarded as reworked from Irish Sea sediments that accumulated during much of the late Quaternary, when the basin was cold and shallow with reduced salinities. Amino‐acid age estimates used in support of the glaciomarine model are regarded as unreliable. Radiocarbon dates from distinctive foraminiferal assemblages in northeast Ireland show that glaciomarine sediments do occur above present sea‐level, but they are restricted to low altitudes in the north of the basin and record a rise rather than a fall in sea‐level. It is suggested here that the oldest dates, around 17 000 yr BP, record the first Late Devensian (Weichselian) marine inundation above present sea‐level. This accords with the pattern but not the detail of recent models of sea‐level change. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Seismogram synthesis using normal mode superposition: the locked mode approximation

Summary. A normal mode superposition approach is used to synthesize complete seismic codas for flat layered earth models and the P-SV phases. Only modes which have real eigenwavenumbers are used so that the search for eigenvalues in the complex wavenumber plane is confined to the real axis. In order to synthesize early P -wave arrivals by summing a number of'trapped'modes, an anomalously high velocity cap layer is added to the bottom of the structure so that most of the seismic energy is contained in the upper layers as high-order surface waves. Causality arguments are used to define time windows for which the resulting synthetic seismograms are close approximations to the exact solutions without the cap layer. The traditional Thomson—Haskell matrix approach to computing the normal modes is reformulated so that numerical problems encountered at high frequencies are avoided and numerical results of the locked mode approximation are given.     

Dangerous anthropogenic interference, dangerous climatic change, and harmful climatic change: non-trivial distinctions with significant policy implications

Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) calls for stabilization of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations at levels that prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI) in the climate system. However, some of the recent policy literature has focused on dangerous climatic change (DCC) rather than on DAI. DAI is a set of increases in GHGs concentrations that has a non-negligible possibility of provoking changes in climate that in turn have a non-negligible possibility of causing unacceptable harm, including harm to one or more of ecosystems, food production systems, and sustainable socio-economic systems, whereas DCC is a change of climate that has actually occurred or is assumed to occur and that has a non-negligible possibility of causing unacceptable harm. If the goal of climate policy is to prevent DAI, then the determination of allowable GHG concentrations requires three inputs: the probability distribution function (pdf) for climate sensitivity, the pdf for the temperature change at which significant harm occurs, and the allowed probability (“risk”) of incurring harm previously deemed to be unacceptable. If the goal of climate policy is to prevent DCC, then one must know what the correct climate sensitivity is (along with the harm pdf and risk tolerance) in order to determine allowable GHG concentrations. DAI from elevated atmospheric CO₂ also arises through its impact on ocean chemistry as the ocean absorbs CO₂. The primary chemical impact is a reduction in the degree of supersaturation of ocean water with respect to calcium carbonate, the structural building material for coral and for calcareous phytoplankton at the base of the marine food chain. Here, the probability of significant harm (in particular, impacts violating the subsidiary conditions in Article 2 of the UNFCCC) is computed as a function of the ratio of total GHG radiative forcing to the radiative forcing for a CO₂ doubling, using two alternative pdfs for climate sensitivity and three alternative pdfs for the harm temperature threshold. The allowable radiative forcing ratio depends on the probability of significant harm that is tolerated, and can be translated into allowable CO₂ concentrations given some assumption concerning the future change in total non-CO₂ GHG radiative forcing. If future non-CO₂ GHG forcing is reduced to half of the present non-CO₂ GHG forcing, then the allowable CO₂ concentration is 290–430 ppmv for a 10% risk tolerance (depending on the chosen pdfs) and 300–500 ppmv for a 25% risk tolerance (assuming a pre-industrial CO₂ concentration of 280 ppmv). For future non-CO₂ GHG forcing frozen at the present value, and for a 10% risk threshold, the allowable CO₂ concentration is 257–384 ppmv. The implications of these results are that (1) emissions of GHGs need to be reduced as quickly as possible, not in order to comply with the UNFCCC, but in order to minimize the extent and duration of non-compliance; (2) we do not have the luxury of trading off reductions in emissions of non-CO₂ GHGs against smaller reductions in CO₂ emissions, and (3) preparations should begin soon for the creation of negative CO₂ emissions through the sequestration of biomass carbon.     

LINKING SEDIMENT EXPOSURE WITH EFFECTS: MODELING TECHNIQUES, ORGANIC AVAILABILITY AND UPTAKE

1 INTRODUCTION Sediments are the ultimate sink for many hydrophobic contaminants and represent biologically important environmental habitats. Exposure of the sediment-associated contaminants is not only influenced by the fate and transport of sediment but also is influenced by a variety of physical, chemical, and biological processes that involve no net movement of sediments. These processes include pore water transport processes such as advection and diffusion, and sediment mixing process…