Creating Residential and Tenure Histories from Multi‐Year White Pages

In epidemiology research, a list of residences a person has occupied as well as a history of tenants for a residence are useful pieces of information for investigating geographically localized risk factors, environmental exposures, and for analyzing disease clusters. This article reports on a methodology for constructing residential and tenure histories using multi‐year white page phone listings. Residential histories associate a person with a list of addresses of residence and the length of occupancy at each address. Tenure histories document the list of persons occupying a residence along with length of occupancy. These histories were created using fuzzy matching on name address pairs between sequential years. Simulated annual phone listing data were used to develop and test the methodology which was then applied to an actual white page phone listing for a study town in Maine. The approach is applied locally and generates partial local residential and tenure histories that capture local migrations. We see these local history sets as building blocks for constructing more geographically extensive histories over time. Geocoded results were compared against numbers of housing units reported in the 2000 and 2010 US Census to assess the proportion of local residences captured by phone listings.     

Consumption-based GHG emission accounting: a UK case study

Global GHG emissions continue to rise, with nearly a quarter of it due to trade that is not currently captured within global climate policy. In the context of current trade patterns and limited global cooperation on climate change, the feasibility of consumption-based emissions accounting to contribute to a more comprehensive (national) policy framework in the UK is investigated. Consumption-based emissions results for the UK from a range of models are presented, their technical robustness is assessed, and their potential application in national climate policy is examined using examples of policies designed to reduce carbon leakage and to address high levels of consumption. It is shown that there is a need to include consumption-based emissions as a complementary indicator to the current approach of measuring territorial emissions. Methods are shown to be robust enough to measure progress on climate change and develop and inform mitigation policy. Finally, some suggestions are made for future policy-oriented research in the area of consumption-based accounting that will facilitate its application to policy.

Policy relevance

Emissions embodied in trade are rapidly increasing and there is thus a growing gap between production emissions and the emissions associated with consumption. This is a growing concern due to the absence of a global cap and significant variation in country-level mitigation ambitions. Robust measurements of consumption-based emissions are possible and provide new insights into policy options. This includes trade-related policy (e.g. border carbon adjustments) and domestic policies (e.g. resource efficiency strategies). As climate policy targets deepen, there is a need for a broad range of policy options in addition to production and technological solutions. Consumption-based emissions are complementary to production-based emissions inventories, which are still the most accurate estimate for aggregated emissions at the global level. However, without consumption-based approaches, territorial emissions alone will not provide a complete picture of progress in regional and national emissions reduction.     

Paleolimnological comparison of algal changes in a clear-versus a brown-water lake over the last two centuries in the northeastern U.S.A

Journal of Paleolimnology - We reconstructed historical diatom and algal pigment records from a clear-water versus a brown-water lake in the northeastern U.S. to compare ecological responses to...     

A Collimated Stellar Wind Emanating from a Massive Protostar

We report multi-wavelength observations towards IRAS 16547–4247, a luminous infrared source with a bolometric luminosity of 6.2 × 10⁴ L _⊙. Dust continuum observations at 1.2-mm indicate that this object is associated with a dust cloud with a size of about 0.4 pc in diameter and a mass of about 1.3 × 10³ M _⊙. Radio continuum observations show the presence of a triple radio source consisting of a compact central object and two outer lobes, separated by about 0.3 pc, symmetrically located from the central source. Molecular hydrogen line observations show a chain of knots that trace a collimated flow extending over 1.5 pc. We suggest that IRAS 16547–4247 corresponds to a dense massive core which hosts near its central region a high-mass star in an early stage of evolution. This massive YSO is undergoing the ejection of a collimated stellar wind which drives the H₂ flow. The radio emission from the lobes arises in shocks resulting from the interaction of the collimated wind with the surrounding medium. We conclude that the thermal jets found in the formation of low-mass stars are also produced in high-mass stars.     

Cubic anomalies in the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe

We perform a frequentist analysis of the bispectrum of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe first-year data. We find clear signal domination up to  ℓ≈ 200  , with overall consistency with Gaussianity, except for the following features. There is a flat patch (i.e. a low χ² region) in the same-ℓ components of the bispectrum spanning the range  ℓ= 32–62  ; this may be interpreted as ruling out Gaussianity at the 99.6 per cent confidence level. There is also an asymmetry between the north and south inter-ℓ bispectrum components at the 99 per cent confidence level. The preferred asymmetry axis correlates well with the  (ℓ, b ) = (57, 10)  direction quoted in the literature for asymmetries in the power spectrum and three-point correlation function. However, our analysis of the quadrupole (its bispectrum and principal axes) fails to make contact with previously claimed anomalies.     

Remnant riparian vegetation,sediment and nutrient loads,and river rehabilitation in subtropical Australia

A decline in the ecosystem health of Australia's Moreton Bay, a Ramsar wetland of international significance, has been attributed to sediments and nutrients derived from catchment sources. To address this decline the regional management plan has set the target of reducing the loads by 50%. Reforestation of the channel network has been proposed as the means to achieve this reduction, but the extent of revegetation required is uncertain. Here we test the hypothesis that sediment and nutrient loads from catchments decrease proportionally with the increasing proportion of the stream length draining remnant vegetation. As part of a routine regional water quality monitoring program sediment and nutrient loads were measured in 186 flow events across 22 sub‐catchments with different proportions of remnant woodland. Using multiple linear regression analysis we develop a predictive model for pollutant loads. Of the attributes examined a combination of runoff and the proportion of the stream length draining remnant vegetation was the best predictor. The sediment yield per unit area from a catchment containing no remnant vegetation is predicted to be between 50 and 200 times that of a fully vegetated channel network; total phosphorus between 25 and 60 times; total nitrogen between 1.6 and 4.1 times. There are ~48 000 km of streams in the region of which 32% drain areas of remnant vegetation. Of these 17 095 km are above the region's water storage dams. We estimate that decreasing the sediment and phosphorus loads to Moreton Bay by 50% would involve rehabilitating ~6350 km of the channel network below the dams; halving the total nitrogen load would require almost complete restoration of the channel network. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.