Measuring the impact of water conservation campaigns in California

The reductions in water use achieved by urban households in California during the recent drought are well documented. What is not documented is how those reductions were achieved. In this paper, we report on survey data from the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Areas describing the water conservation activities undertaken. We also examine variation in water conservation activities across households and adjust statistically for social desirability biases in the self-reports.Thanks go to UCLA's Survey Research Center for the data collection and especially to Eve Fielder, the Director, who took a particular interest in the study. We are also indebted to the Save the Earth Foundation for funding the earlier research projects that made the data collection for this paper possible. Finally, we wish to express our appreciation to three reviewers who helped us clarify a number of arguments in the paper.     

Methylhopane biomarker hydrocarbons in Hamersley Province sediments provide evidence for Neoarchean aerobiosis

Bacteriohopanepolyols with A-ring methyl substituents are bacterial lipid biomarkers that are presently known to originate from just a few specific taxa. When preserved in ancient rocks, the fossilized hydrocarbon skeletons of these molecules have the potential to provide biogeochemical records of those taxa and their respective physiologies. Considering both their occurrences in modern organisms, and their Proterozoic and Phanerozoic sedimentary distributions, hopanes carrying 2-methyl or 3-methyl substituents are proposed to be derived from cyanobacteria and oxygen-respiring methanotrophs, respectively. Here we report the distribution of methylhopanes in 2.72–2.56 billion-year-old, Neoarchean rocks from the Hamersley Province on the Pilbara Craton. The relative abundance of C₃₁-3β-methylhopane, but not that of C₃₁-2α-methylhopane, shows a strong correlation to the carbon isotopic composition of co-occurring kerogen (insoluble particulate organic matter). The unanticipated nature of this relationship provides evidence for a shallow-water locus of carbon cycling through aerobic oxidation of CH₄ and, coincidentally, a means to demonstrate biomarker syngenicity. 2α-Methylhopanes are most abundant in both shale and carbonate from shallow-water sediments, and a positive correlation to carbonate abundance, contrasts to variable, but generally lower, 2α-methylhopane abundances of deeper water facies. These observations are consistent with their origin from cyanobacteria which were likely the cornerstone of microbial communities in shallow-water ecosystems providing molecular oxygen, fixed carbon, and possibly fixed nitrogen.     

Searching for periodicities in the MACHO light curve of LMC X-2

Using the exceptional long-term monitoring capabilities of the MACHO project, we present here the optical history of LMC X-2 for a continuous 6-yr period. These data were used to investigate the previously claimed periodicities for this source of 8.15 h and 12.54 d: we find upper limits of 0.10 mag and 0.09 mag, respectively.     

Growth Drivers of Bakken Oil Well Productivity

This paper identifies the drivers of the phenomenal growth in productivity in hydraulically fractured horizontal oil wells producing from the middle member of the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. The data show a strong underlying spatial component and somewhat weaker temporal component. Drivers of the spatial component are favorable reservoir conditions. The temporal component of well productivity growth is driven by increasing the number of fracture treatments and by increasing the volume of proppant and injection fluids used on a per fracture treatment basis. Random Forest, a nonparametric modeling procedure often applied in the context of machine learning, is used to identify the relative importance of geologic and well completion factors that have driven the growth in Bakken well productivity. The findings of this study suggest that a significant part of the well productivity increases during the period from 2010 to 2015 has been the result of improved well site selection. For the more recent period, that is, from 2015 through 2017, part of the improved well productivity has resulted from substantial increases in the proppant and injection fluids used per stage and per well.

     

Hoag’s object,remnant of a vanished bar?

The beautiful ringed Hoag’s object, named after its discoverer, is an interesting galaxy. Because of the roundness of its ring-like structure, it has been proposed to be a collisional ring galaxy; however, there is no obvious nearby culprit galaxy that could have collided with it. Considering an alternative, much gentler hypothesis, we study the development of the observed structure via a turning, bar perturbation in the disk potential. However, there is currently no obvious bar present, and rings produced by bars are typically oval. On the basis of much recent work improving our understanding of bar evolution, we assume the bar grows and then vanishes. In simulations of a disk of particles, under such a bar turning in the disk plane, we obtain a bulge core, empty void, and circular ring in the disk that mimic the observations of Hoag’s object. We conclude the inner edge of the ring is just beyond the outer Lindblad resonance (OLR) with the bar pattern speed. We estimate the amount of gas mass in the bulge core to be twice that of the ring. Our simulations indicate that the Hoag Object ring could survive at least 6 billion years after the bar vanishes.     

Role of Stranded Gas from Central Asia and Russia in Meeting Europe’s Future Import Demand for Gas

Stranded gas is natural gas in discovered fields that is currently not commercially producible for either physical or economic reasons. This study examines stranded gas from Russia and Central Asia and the role it can play in addressing Europe’s growing demand for imported natural gas requiring additional volumes of gas in excess of 130 trillion cubic feet. We find sufficient volumes of stranded gas in fields in the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan in the Amu-Darya Basin and in Russian fields in the West Siberian Basin. The analysis focused on the estimated cost of extraction and delivery to a single market location for various concentrations of gas in stranded gas fields in Central Asia and Russia. At import prices of 10 per million British thermal units (MMBTU), there are sufficient gas resources in stranded fields that can be commercially developed and delivered to the European market. If, however, imported gas prices fall below10 per million British thermal units (MMBTU), there are sufficient gas resources in stranded fields that can be commercially developed and delivered to the European market. If, however, imported gas prices fall below 7 per MMBTU, most of the stranded gas evaluated from West Siberia will not be commercial. The costs of delivering gas from the largest stranded gas fields in Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan were calculated to be greater than 30% below the costs of delivering gas from the largest stranded gas fields in Russia, which are located in the Yamal Peninsula. Central Asian gas producers, particularly those east of the Caspian Sea, have limited market options due to the near monopoly position that Gazprom holds in transporting pipeline gas from east of Europe. This study examines several additional options to supply gas to Europe by reviewing expected delivered costs from North African and Atlantic basin suppliers.     

The XMM Cluster Survey: forecasting cosmological and cluster scaling-relation parameter constraints

We forecast the constraints on the values of  σ₈, Ω_m  and cluster scaling-relation parameters which we expect to obtain from the XMM Cluster Survey (XCS). We assume a flat Λ cold dark matter Universe and perform a Monte Carlo Markov Chain analysis of the evolution of the number density of galaxy clusters that takes into account a detailed simulated selection function. Comparing our current observed number of clusters shows good agreement with predictions. We determine the expected degradation of the constraints as a result of self-calibrating the luminosity–temperature relation (with scatter), including temperature measurement errors, and relying on photometric methods for the estimation of galaxy cluster redshifts. We examine the effects of systematic errors in scaling relation and measurement error assumptions. Using only  ( T , z )  self-calibration, we expect to measure Ω_m to ±0.03 (and  Ω_Λ  to the same accuracy assuming flatness), and σ₈ to ±0.05, also constraining the normalization and slope of the luminosity–temperature relation to ±6 and ±13 per cent (at 1σ), respectively, in the process. Self-calibration fails to jointly constrain the scatter and redshift evolution of the luminosity–temperature relation significantly. Additional archival and/or follow-up data will improve on this. We do not expect measurement errors or imperfect knowledge of their distribution to degrade constraints significantly. Scaling-relation systematics can easily lead to cosmological constraints 2σ or more away from the fiducial model. Our treatment is the first exact treatment to this level of detail, and introduces a new 'smoothed ML' (Maximum Likelihood) estimate of expected constraints.     

Annual variation of temperature sensitivity of soil organic carbon decomposition in North peatlands: implications for thermal responses of carbon cycling to global warming

Temperature sensitivities of microbial respiration and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) production were investigated by using a novel method, thermal gradient (2–20°C) temperature bar, in two typical peatlands (bog and fen) in North Wales, UK over 12 months. The study indicated that temperature sensitivity of soil organic carbon decomposition in North peatlands was regulated not only by temperature but soil water content, dry–rewet event and phenologies. Potential decreases of Q₁₀ (CO₂) with increasing soil temperature were confirmed in both peatlands, but Q₁₀ (DOC) increase with increasing soil temperature in both bog and fen sites. These results imply, if other factors such as the so-called CO₂ fertilization effect are simultaneously taken into account, that the feedback of global warming induced CO₂ release from peatlands to climate change may be overestimated in current biogeochemical models. However, global warming might have been nonlinearly accelerating DOC thermal production, and therefore it helps explaining the causes of remarkable increase of DOC in surface water in the Northern Hemisphere during last several decades.