Jenniferann.com,regional development,and realising the aspirations of mana whenua in Pōkeno

During the 1990s, the township of Pōkeno was held up as an example of a declining rural Aotearoa/New Zealand. By‐passed from the national state highway, it lost its status as a service hub and drastic measures were introduced to revitalise the town, including renaming the town “ Jenniferann.com .” Pōkeno has since undergone an unlikely transformation, with foreign investment and its location within an extended Auckland commuter zone meaning that the township has grown exponentially. This article describes the transformation of Pōkeno and uncovers what has been missing from discussions about Pōkeno's reinvention, namely, the place of mana whenua.     

Sea Level Rise in Miami Beach: Vulnerability and Real Estate Exposure

Sea level rise threatens coastal communities throughout the United States, and South Florida is on the front line. The iconic and built-up city of Miami Beach, Florida, has a well-developed, high-value property market, and the municipality has been lauded for proactively taking action to adapt to anticipated sea level rise. Moving beyond hyperbole and piecemeal evidence, we compile a comprehensive inventory of adaptation and mitigation measures implemented by various municipal agencies. We employ these data sets to measure exposure and readiness for the entire city and make a preliminary effort to develop a city vulnerability index. Our findings reveal that exposure throughout the city is high and that readiness is concentrated near stormwater drainage systems, leading to high vulnerability along the coast. When we compare the spatial patterns of the vulnerability index and the residential property values, we find a mismatch. The most vulnerable regions are characterized by high income, transiency, and an apparent unresponsiveness to sea level rise. No doubt our findings illustrate a lag effect, but if sea level rise increases, the real estate market could reach a tipping point unless state and federal agencies also fund more comprehensive adaptation.     

Search for H I emission from superdisk candidates associated with radio galaxies

Giant gaseous layers(termed “superdisks”) have been hypothesized in the past to account for the strip-like radio emission gap(or straight-edged central brightness depression) observed between twin radio lobes, in over a dozen relatively nearby powerful Fanaroff-Riley Class II radio galaxies. They could also provide a plausible alternative explanation for a range of observations. Although a number of explanations have been proposed for the origin of the superdisks, little is known about their material content. Some X-ray observations of superdisk candidates indicate the presence of hot gas, but a cool dusty medium also seems to be common. If they are entirely or partly composed of neutral gas, then it may be directly detectable and we report here a first attempt to detect/image any neutral hydrogen gas present in the superdisks that are inferred to be present in four nearby radio galaxies. We have not found a positive H I signal in any of the four sources, resulting in tight upper limits on the H I number density in the postulated superdisks,estimated directly from the central rms noise values of the final radio continuum subtracted image. The estimated ranges of the upper limit on neutral hydrogen number density and column density are 10^-4-10^-3 atoms per cm3 and 10^19-10^20 atoms per cm^2, respectively. No positive H I signal is detected even after combining all the four available H I images(with inverse variance weighting). This clearly rules out an H I dominated superdisk as a viable model to explain these structures, however, the possibility of a superdisk being composed of warm/hot gas still remains open.     

Application of soft computing techniques for shallow foundation reliability in geotechnical engineering

This research focuses on the application of three soft computing techniques including Minimax Probability Machine Regression(MPMR),Particle Swarm Optimization based Artificial Neural Network(ANN-PSO)and Particle Swarm Optimization based Adaptive Network Fuzzy Inference System(ANFIS-PSO)to study the shallow foundation reliability based on settlement criteria.Soil is a heterogeneous medium and the involvement of its attributes for geotechnical behaviour in soil-foundation system makes the prediction of settlement of shallow a complex engineering problem.This study explores the feasibility of soft computing techniques against the deterministic approach.The settlement of shallow foundation depends on the parametersγ(unit weight),e0(void ratio)and CC(compression index).These soil parameters are taken as input variables while the settlement of shallow foundation as output.To assess the performance of models,different performance indices i.e.RMSE,VAF,R^2,Bias Factor,MAPE,LMI,U(95),RSR,NS,RPD,etc.were used.From the analysis of results,it was found that MPMR model outperformed PSO-ANFIS and PSO-ANN.Therefore,MPMR can be used as a reliable soft computing technique for non-linear problems for settlement of shallow foundations on soils.     

Hydrogen fluence in Genesis collectors: Implications for acceleration of solar wind and for solar metallicity

NASA's Genesis mission was flown to capture samples of the solar wind and return them to the Earth for measurement. The purpose of the mission was to determine the chemical and isotopic composition of the Sun with significantly better precision than known before. Abundance data are now available for noble gases, magnesium, sodium, calcium, potassium, aluminum, chromium, iron, and other elements. Here, we report abundance data for hydrogen in four solar wind regimes collected by the Genesis mission (bulk solar wind, interstream low‐energy wind, coronal hole high‐energy wind, and coronal mass ejections). The mission was not designed to collect hydrogen, and in order to measure it, we had to overcome a variety of technical problems, as described herein. The relative hydrogen fluences among the four regimes should be accurate to better than ±5–6%, and the absolute fluences should be accurate to ±10%. We use the data to investigate elemental fractionations due to the first ionization potential during acceleration of the solar wind. We also use our data, combined with regime data for neon and argon, to estimate the solar neon and argon abundances, elements that cannot be measured spectroscopically in the solar photosphere.     

Why chromatic imaging matters

During the last two decades, the first generation of beam combiners at the Very Large Telescope Interferometer has proved the importance of optical interferometry for high-angular resolution astrophysical studies in the near- and mid-infrared. With the advent of 4-beam combiners at the VLTI, the u ? v coverage per pointing increases significantly, providing an opportunity to use reconstructed images as powerful scientific tools. Therefore, interferometric imaging is already a key feature of the new generation of VLTI instruments, as well as for other interferometric facilities like CHARA and JWST. It is thus imperative to account for the current image reconstruction capabilities and their expected evolutions in the coming years. Here, we present a general overview of the current situation of optical interferometric image reconstruction with a focus on new wavelength-dependent information, highlighting its main advantages and limitations. As an Appendix we include several cookbooks describing the usage and installation of several state-of-the art image reconstruction packages. To illustrate the current capabilities of the software available to the community, we recovered chromatic images, from simulated MATISSE data, using the MCMC software SQUEEZE. With these images, we aim at showing the importance of selecting good regularization functions and their impact on the reconstruction.     

How U.S. ocean policy and market power can reform the coral reef wildlife trade

As the world’s largest importer of marine ornamental species for the aquaria, curio, home décor, and jewelry industries, the United States has an opportunity to leverage its considerable market power to promote more sustainable trade and reduce the effects of ornamental trade stress on coral reefs worldwide. Evidence indicates that collection of some coral reef animals for these trades has caused virtual elimination of local populations, major changes in age structure, and promotion of collection practices that destroy reef habitats. Management and enforcement of collection activities in major source countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines remain weak. Strengthening US trade laws and enforcement capabilities combined with increasing consumer and industry demand for responsible conservation can create strong incentives for improving management in source countries. This is particularly important in light of the March 2010 failure of the parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to take action on key groups of corals.     

Late Pleistocene to Holocene sedimentation and hydrocarbon seeps on the continental shelf of a steep,tectonically active margin,southern California,USA

Small, steep, uplifting coastal watersheds are prolific sediment producers that contribute significantly to the global marine sediment budget. This study illustrates how sedimentation evolves in one such system where the continental shelf is largely sediment-starved, with most terrestrial sediment bypassing the shelf in favor of deposition in deeper basins. The Santa Barbara–Ventura coast of southern California, USA, is considered a classic area for the study of active tectonics and of Tertiary and Quaternary climatic evolution, interpretations of which depend upon an understanding of sedimentation patterns. High-resolution seismic-reflection data over >570 km² of this shelf show that sediment production is concentrated in a few drainage basins, with the Ventura and Santa Clara River deltas containing most of the upper Pleistocene to Holocene sediment on the shelf. Away from those deltas, the major factor controlling shelf sedimentation is the interaction of wave energy with coastline geometry. Depocenters containing sediment 5–20 m thick exist opposite broad coastal embayments, whereas relict material (bedrock below a regional unconformity) is exposed at the sea floor in areas of the shelf opposite coastal headlands. Locally, natural hydrocarbon seeps interact with sediment deposition either to produce elevated tar-and-sediment mounds or as gas plumes that hinder sediment settling. As much as 80% of fluvial sediment delivered by the Ventura and Santa Clara Rivers is transported off the shelf (some into the Santa Barbara Basin and some into the Santa Monica Basin via Hueneme Canyon), leaving a shelf with relatively little recent sediment accumulation. Understanding factors that control large-scale sediment dispersal along a rapidly uplifting coast that produces substantial quantities of sediment has implications for interpreting the ancient stratigraphic record of active and transform continental margins, and for inferring the distribution of hydrocarbon resources in relict shelf deposits.     

Patterns of carbon sequestration in forests of western ghats and study of applicability of remote sensing in generating carbon credits through afforestation/reforestation

Satellite remote sensing is a proven tool for mapping landuse patterns and estimating vegetation biomass/carbon. Present study aims at estimating the potential of forests of Radhanagari WLS (Western Ghats, India) to sequester the atmospheric carbon-di-oxide, using ground based observations coupled with satellite remote sensing. The study area was stratified for dominant forest types based on the structure and composition of vegetation and elevation variations. Permanent sample plots were laid down in these homogeneous vegetation strata (HVS) to make different observations during time 1 and time 2. Carbon sequestration by plantations was also studied and compared with natural forests. Species and area-specific biomass equations were used for estimating carbon pool and sequestration. Among natural forests ‘mixed moist deciduous’ forests exhibited highest sequestration rate (8%), whereas, plantation as obvious had a comparatively higher sequestration rate than natural forests (20.27%). Total carbon sequestration by forests of the Radhanagari WLS between 2004 and 2006 is 78742.09 tons. Eligible land for reforestation activity under clean development mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol was identified using satellite remote sensing using 1989 and 2005 datasets and it was observed that the potential land that can be used for reforestation activity is 10080 ha.