The differential geography of housing affordability in Sydney: a disaggregated approach

ABSTRACT

Despite extensive studies being devoted to housing affordability in Australia, few have investigated housing affordability at a disaggregated level. This is in spite of the fact that there are existing socio-economic and demographic disparities across different regions of a city. This study aims to fill this gap by examining housing affordability in Sydney, a city that is characterised by diverse demographic and socio-economic mix, from a sub-city perspective. Two dimensions of affordability are assessed from 1991 to 2016: entry-level and ongoing housing affordability. The study finds that entry-level housing remains extremely unaffordable in all regions of Greater Sydney, although the level of unaffordability varies across regions. Specifically, the deterioration in housing affordability is more obvious in low-income regions such as Western Sydney. In addition, the ongoing housing affordability of those who have entered the market improves considerably within 5–10 years, although there are significant variations between different regions. Importantly, residents in low-income regions such as Western Sydney take a longer period to improve their ongoing affordability. The findings of differential geography of housing affordability have some profound policy implications. Policymakers should consider the disparities across different regions by formulating a more targeted and regionally balanced housing policy.     

A Review on Marine N2 Fixation: Mechanism,Evolution of Methodologies,Rates, and Future Concerns

Ocean Science Journal - Investigations on marine N2 fixation have gained momentum since 1960s with eventual establishments of relevant methodologies to identify species involved and quantify the...     

Temperature-Dependent Bifurcated Seasonal Shift of Phytoplankton Community Composition in the Coastal Water off Southwestern Korea

Ocean Science Journal - Coastal water around the archipelago off southwestern Korea has been bathed in an unprecedented pool of warm water in summer in recent years. Here, we examined phytoplankton...     

A TEM and EELS study of carbon in a melt fragment from the Gardnos impact structure

A carbon‐rich melt fragment from the Gardnos impact structure has been studied for a better understanding of the preservation and structural form(s) of carbon that have been processed by impact melting. The carbon was analyzed in situ in its original petrographic context within the melt fragment, using high‐resolution techniques including focused ion beam‐transmission electron microscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy. Results show that the carbon is largely uniform and has a nanocrystalline grain size. The Gardnos carbon has a graphitic structure but with a large c/a ratio indicating disorder. The disorder could be a result of rapid heating to high temperatures during impact, followed by rapid cooling, with not enough time to crystallize into highly ordered graphite. However, temperature distribution during impact is extremely heterogenous, and the disordered Gardnos carbon could also represent material that avoided extreme temperatures, and thus, it was preserved. Understanding the structure of carbon during terrestrial impacts is important to help determine if the history of carbon within extraterrestrial samples is impact related. Furthermore, the degree of preservation of carbon during impact is key for locating and detecting organic compounds in extraterrestrial samples. This example from Gardnos, together with previous studies, shows that not all carbon is lost to oxidation during impact but that impact melting can encapsulate and preserve carbon where it is available.     

Interaction of water waves with vertical cylinders using null-field integral equations

The scattering of water waves by bottom-mounted vertical circular cylinders is solved by using the null-field integral equations in conjunction with degenerate kernels and Fourier series to avoid calculating the Cauchy and Hadamard principal values. In the implementation, the null-field point can be exactly located on the real boundary owing to the introduction of degenerate kernels for fundamental solutions. An adaptive observer system of polar coordinates is considered to fully employ the properties of degenerate kernels. For the hypersingular equation, vector decomposition for the radial and tangential gradients is carefully considered. This method can be seen as a semi-analytical approach since errors attribute from the truncation of Fourier series. Neither hypersingularity in the Burton and Miller approach nor the CHIEF concept was required to deal with the problem of irregular frequencies. Five advantages of free of calculating principal value, well-posed algebraic system, convergence rate of exponential order, meshfree and elimination of boundary-layer effect, are achieved by using the present approach. Numerical results are given for the forces and free-surface elevation around the circular boundaries. Also, the near-trapped behavior arisen from the physical resonance is detected. A general-purpose program for water wave impinging several circular cylinders with arbitrary number, radii, and positions was developed. Several examples of water wave structure interaction by vertical circular cylinders were demonstrated to see the validity of the present formulation.     

GeoSurveillance: a GIS-based system for the detection and monitoring of spatial clusters

This article introduces a software package named GeoSurveillance that combines spatial statistical techniques and GIS routines to perform tests for the detection and monitoring of spatial clustering. GeoSurveillance provides both retrospective and prospective tests. While retrospective tests are applied to spatial data collected for a particular point in time, prospective tests attempt to incorporate the dynamic nature of spatial patterns via analyzing time-series data to detect emergent clusters as quickly as possible. This article will outline the structure of GeoSurveillance as well as describe the statistical cluster detection methods implemented in the software. It concludes with an illustration of the use of the software to analyze the spatial pattern of low birth weights in Los Angeles County, California.      

The phase difference effects on 3-D structure of wave pressure acting on a composite breakwater

In designing the coastal structures, the accurate estimation of the wave forces on them is of great importance. In this paper, the influences of the phase difference on wave pressure acting on a composite breakwater installed in the three-dimensional (3-D) wave field are studied numerically. We extend the earlier model [Hur, D.S., Mizutani, N., 2003. Coastal Engineering 47, 329–345] to simulate 3-D wave fields by introducing 3-D Navier–Stokes solver with the Smagorinsky's sub-grid scale (SGS) model. For the validation of the model, the wave field around a 3-D asymmetrical structure installed on a submerged breakwater, in which the complex wave deformations generate, is simulated, and the numerical solutions are compared to the experimental data reported by Hur, Mizutani, Kim [2004. Coastal Engineering (51, 407–420)]. The model is then adopted to investigate 3-D characteristics of wave pressure and force on a caisson of composite breakwater, and the numerical solutions were discussed with respect to the phase difference between harbor and seaward sides induced by the transmitted wave through the rubble mound or the diffraction. The numerical results reveal that wave forces acting on the composite breakwater are significantly different at each cross-section under influence of wave diffraction that is important parameter on 3-D wave interaction with coastal structures.     

Comparative oxygen radical formation and toxicity of BDE 47 in rainbow trout cell lines

The polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) constitute a class of flame retardants whose residues have markedly increased in fish and human tissues during the last decade. In particular, the levels of certain PBDE congeners in salmon have raised concern regarding potential risks associated with dietary PBDE exposures. However, little is known regarding PBDE-mediated cell injury in relevant in vitro cell models. We conducted a comparative study of oxyradical production and cell injury in rainbow trout gill (RTgill-W1) and trout liver cells (RTL-W1) exposed to 2,2',4,4'-tetrabromodiphenyl ether (BDE 47), a predominant BDE residue found in fish tissues such as salmonids. Exposure to low micromolar concentrations of BDE 47 elicited a significant loss in RTgill-W1 and RTL-W1 cell viability as measured by alamarBlue assay. The dose-response of BDE toxicity differed among the two cell lines, with the RTL-W1 liver cells showing greater resistance to toxicity at lower BDE 47 doses, but a more dramatic loss of viability relative to gill cells when challenged with higher (50 microM) doses. The sensitivity of the trout liver cells at higher BDE 47 exposures was reflected by a higher basal production of oxygen radical production by 6-carboxy-2',7'-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (DCFH-DA) fluorescence that was markedly enhanced in the presence of BDE 47, suggesting an overwhelming of trout liver cell antioxidant defense pathways. Collectively, our data indicate that RTgill-W1 and RTL-W1 liver cells are sensitive to BDE 47-mediated cell injury through a mechanism that may involve oxidative stress. Our data also provide an in vitro basis for potential tissue differences in BDE 47-mediated cell injury.     

Coastal environmental assessment and management by ecological simulation in Yeoja Bay, Korea

An eco-hydrodynamic model was used to estimate the carrying capacity of pollutant loads and response of water quality to environmental change in Yeoja Bay, Korea. An energy-system model also was used to simulate the fluctuation in nutrients and organic matter in the bordering wetland. Most water quality factors showed a pulsed pattern, and the concentrations of nutrients and organic matter of seawater increased when input loads of nutrients increased due to freshwater discharge. The well-developed tidal zones and wetlands in the northern area of the bay were highly sensitive to input loads. Residence times of water, chemical oxygen demand (COD), and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) within the bay were estimated to be about 16 days, 43.2 days, and 50.2 days, respectively. Water quality reacted more sensitively to the effects of nitrogen and phosphorus input than to COD. A plan to reduce the present levels of COD and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP) by 20–30% and DIN by at least 50% in pollutant loads is needed for satisfying the target water quality criteria. The natural removal rate of nutrients in wetlands by reeds was assessed to be approximately 10%.     

Characteristics of bottom dissolved oxygen in Long Island Sound,New York

The variability of bottom dissolved oxygen (DO) in Long Island Sound, New York, is examined using water quality monitoring data collected by the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection from 1995 to 2004. Self-organizing map analysis indicates that hypoxia always occurs in the Narrows during summer and less frequently in the Western and the Central Basins. The primary factor controlling the bottom DO, changes spatially and temporally. For non-summer seasons, the levels of bottom DO are strongly associated with water temperature, which means DO availability is primarily driven by solubility. During summer, stratification intensifies under weak wind conditions and bottom DO starts to decrease and deviate from the saturation level except for stations in the Eastern Basin. For the westernmost and shallow (<15 m) stations, bottom DO is correlated with the density stratification (represented by difference between surface and bottom density). In contrast, at deep stations (>20 m), the relationship between oxygen depletion and stratification is not significant. For stations located west of the Central Basin, bottom DO continues to decrease during summer until it reaches its minimum when bottom temperature is around 19–20 °C. In most cases the recovery to saturation levels at the beginning of fall is fast, but not necessarily associated with increased wind mixing. Therefore, we propose that the DO recovery may be a manifestation of either the reduced microbial activity combined with the depletion of organic matter or horizontal exchange. Hypoxic volume is weakly correlated to the summer wind speed, spring total nitrogen, spring chlorophyll a, and maximum river discharge. When all variables are combined in a multiple regression, the coefficient of determination (r²) is 0.92. Surprisingly, the weakest variable is the total nitrogen, because when it is excluded the coefficient r² only drops to 0.84. Spring bloom seems to be an important source of organic carbon pool and biological uptake of oxygen plays a more crucial role in the seasonal evolution of bottom DO than previously thought. Our results indicate that the reassessment phase of the Long Island Sound Total Maximum Daily Load policy on nitrogen loading will most likely fail, because it ignores the contributions of the spring organic carbon pool and river discharge. Also, it is questionable whether the goal of 58.5% anthropogenic nitrogen load reduction is enough.