Stable carbon isotope ratios in Astrangia danae: evidence for algal modification of carbon pools used in calcification

Stable carbon isotope ratios have been measured in skeletons of the temperature shallow water scleractinian coral, Astrangia danae. δ¹³C values ranging from ?5.42 to ?7.30%. revealed the expected depletion of ¹³C in skeletal carbonate relative to sea water bicarbonate. Differences among the ratios could not be attributed to collection site and were not correlated to skeletal morphology. Values of δ¹³C were directly related to zooxanthellae density for all colonies, so that as zooxanthellae concentration increased, δ¹³C valued increased. Colonies maintained under high temperature conditions were offset from the normal, exhibiting ratios less enriched in ¹³C than similar colonies from natural conditions. These trends supported the models of Weber and Goreau in which the carbon pools used in calcification are modified by algal photosynthesis. Direct evidence of physiological differences between symbiotic and asymbiotic colonies of A. danae has also been provided.     

Variation in copepod species assemblage distributions: The utility of the log-normal approach

Pelagic copepod species distributions were found to vary in relation to an environmental gradient. As suggested by Gray, systematic changes were noted in the skewness of the log-normal. However, no systematic changes in the standard of deviation of the log-normal were noted. The data indicate that such assemblages ill-fit Preston's ‘canonical’ expectation. Further, analysis of changes in the evenness function yielded similar conclusions.     

Climate change and energy security: an analysis of policy research

The literature on climate change’s impacts on energy security is scattered across disparate fields of research and schools of thought. Much of this literature has been produced outside of the academy by scholars and practitioners working in “think tanks,” government agencies, and international/multilateral institutions. Here we reviewed a selected set of 58 articles and reports primarily from such sources and performed textual analysis of the arguments. Our review of this literature identifies three potential mechanisms for linking climate change and energy security: Climate change may 1) create second-order effects that may exacerbate social instability and disrupt energy systems; 2) directly impact energy supply and/or systems or 3) influence energy security through the effects of climate-related policies. We identify emerging risks to energy security driven by climate mitigation technology choices but find less evidence of climate change’s direct physical impacts. We used both empirical and qualitative selection factors for choosing the grey literature sample. The sources we selected were published in the last 5 years, available through electronic media and were written in language accessible to general policy or academic readers. The organizations that published the literature had performed previous research in the general fields of energy and/or climate change with some analytical content and identified themselves as non-partisan. This literature is particularly valuable to scholars because identifies understudied relationships that can be rigorously assessed through academic tools and methodologies and informs a translational research agenda that will allow scholars to engage with practitioners to address challenges that lie at the nexus of climate change and energy security.     

A Framework for Quantitative Assessment of Impacts Related to Energy and Mineral Resource Development

Natural resource planning at all scales demands methods for assessing the impacts of resource development and use, and in particular it requires standardized methods that yield robust and unbiased results. Building from existing probabilistic methods for assessing the volumes of energy and mineral resources, we provide an algorithm for consistent, reproducible, quantitative assessment of resource development impacts. The approach combines probabilistic input data with Monte Carlo statistical methods to determine probabilistic outputs that convey the uncertainties inherent in the data. For example, one can utilize our algorithm to combine data from a natural gas resource assessment with maps of sage grouse leks and piñon-juniper woodlands in the same area to estimate possible future habitat impacts due to possible future gas development. As another example: one could combine geochemical data and maps of lynx habitat with data from a mineral deposit assessment in the same area to determine possible future mining impacts on water resources and lynx habitat. The approach can be applied to a broad range of positive and negative resource development impacts, such as water quantity or quality, economic benefits, or air quality, limited only by the availability of necessary input data and quantified relationships among geologic resources, development alternatives, and impacts. The framework enables quantitative evaluation of the trade-offs inherent in resource management decision-making, including cumulative impacts, to address societal concerns and policy aspects of resource development.     

Risk perception bias, self-reporting of illness, and the validity of reported results in an epidemiologic study of recreational water associated illnesses

Epidemiologic studies of water associated illness often have to rely on self-reported symptoms of the outcome illness(es) under study. Individual participant's perception of risk, in theory, can affect the validity of self-reported symptoms. The magnitude and effect of possible "risk perception bias" was evaluated as part of a series of randomized trials designed to assess infectious disease transmission via exposure to marine recreational waters with modest sewage contamination. All study subjects were blinded to both their individual indices of exposure and the outcome illnesses under study. Of the five outcome illnesses studied, the effect of "risk perception bias" only effected one: skin ailments. Although analysis of crude rates of skin ailments showed the exposed group (bathers) to be 3.5 times more likely to report skin ailments relative to the non-exposed (non-bathers), when the data was stratified by any perceived health risk of bathing in such waters, this association was shown to be spurious in nature. Bathers having pre-conceived notions of any health risk due to the exposure were 10.63 times more likely to report skin ailments relative to the unexposed (non-bathers) (95% CI 2.36-47.8, P = 0.0002), while bathers without any pre-conceived notion of risk were no more likely to report skin ailments relative to non-bathers (OR = 0.60, 95% CI 0.11-3.24, P = 0.71). Further stratification by exposure grouping showed bathers with pre-conceived notions of excess risk to be 4.78 times more likely to report skin ailments relative to bathers without any notion of excess risk (95% CI 1.04-21.86, P = 0.03), while among non-bathers those with pre-conceived notions of risk were 3.70 times less likely to report skin ailments relative to non-bathers without any pre-conceived notion of risk (95% CI 0.70-19.60, P = 0.10). This study shows that "risk perception bias" can be strong enough to lead to spurious associations in the presence of self-reported symptoms, and should be controlled for in future epidemiologic studies of recreational water associated illnesses and other water associated environmental exposures where the use of self-reported symptoms cannot be avoided.     

What is the relationship between food shopping and daily mobility? A relational approach to analysis of food access

Recent research on food access has increasingly focused on how individuals’ daily mobility, much of it based on activity spaces created from GPS data. In this paper, we expand this research through an analysis of a large transit survey (n = 21,298 households) from Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. We do this using relational approach focused on the topological connections found in household travel patterns rather than measures of exposure based on geographic distance. Our exploratory data analysis analyzes both grocery shopping and eating out across the metropolitan area, focusing on the position of utilized food sources relative to home and work locations, utilized modes of transit, and other daily activities often combined with food shopping. Households often used food sources located outside their residential neighborhoods, usually moving toward the central city to do so. Eating out occurred farther from home than grocery shopping, though in many cases close to work. Automobile use was most common for grocery shopping trips, but less so in the lowest income households and in the central city. Our findings show that a relational approach can identify distinctive patterns in everyday food provisioning by emphasizing the connections between food shopping and other everyday household activities.     

Growth-rate-dependent prediction of pile set-up and its application in driven pile foundation construction

In this paper research was presented on the development of a growth-rate-dependent model for pile set-up prediction using the restrike and static/statnamic load testing data collected from different projects. The data included: a) restrike records from ninety-five production piles and restrike and load test results of nine instrumented piles driven in soft clays from the relocation project of Highway No. 1 in Louisiana (LA-1); and b) restrike and static load testing data of five fully instrumented square PPC piles driven at four different bridge sites in various soil layers from sands to clays in Florida. Research effort was focused on the prediction of the ultimate shaft resistances with pile set-up formulated using the pile resistance growth rate-dependent model. The timeframe of interest was studied for a practical set-up magnitude such as 90% of the ultimate shaft resistance (Q₉₀). As an application of the rate-dependent model, it was found that piles at the LA-1 relocation project, in general, reached about 95% of the ultimate shaft resistances at the time of 2 weeks after pile installation. The strategy of incorporation of pile set-up in adjusting pile driving criteria or/and design during pile construction, such as the experience-based plan of a two-week waiting period adopted by Louisiana DOTD, was investigated and justified.     

Compositional and Isotopic Analytical Methods in Archaeological Micromorphology

Resin‐impregnated sediment blocks are a by‐product of micromorphological sample processing. These blocks can be further studied using a variety of destructive, nondestructive, and minimally destructive geochemical techniques. X‐ray fluorescence microanalyses conducted on sediment blocks yield semiquantitative major and trace elemental abundances that can be used to generate compositional maps, and to illustrate compositional change within or between archaeological strata and features. Sediment blocks can also be drilled to obtain small sediment samples for stable oxygen and carbon isotopic analyses. Both elemental and isotopic analyses can be conducted in conjunction with micromorphological analyses to yield a holistic picture of archaeological sediment composition, source, and depositional processes. The integration of micromorphological, compositional, and isotopic analyses is used here to aid in the differentiation of calcareous ash and lime plasters from the Neolithic site of Asıklı Höyük, Turkey.