Evaluating the use of 3'-(p-Aminophenyl) fluorescein for determining the formation of highly reactive oxygen species in particle suspensions

Background  

Given the importance of highly reactive oxygen species (hROS) as reactants in a wide range of biological, photochemical, and environmental systems there is an interest in detection and quantification of these species. The extreme reactivity of the hROS, which includes hydroxyl radicals, presents an analytical challenge. 3'-(p-Aminophenyl) fluorescein (APF) is a relatively new probe used for measuring hROS. Here, we further evaluate the use of APF as a method for the detection of hydroxyl radicals in particle suspensions.     

Stream-aquifer interactions in the Maules Creek catchment, Namoi Valley, New South Wales, Australia

The interaction between surface-water streams and groundwater in the Maules Creek catchment of northern New South Wales, Australia has been investigated using a wide range of techniques. Zones of groundwater discharge were mapped by measuring the temperature and fluid electrical-conductivity distribution in bores and surface water. Zones where surface water appears to be recharging the aquifer were investigated by measuring the vertical head gradient between the stream and adjacent bores and by estimates of the decreasing surface flow. Geological heterogeneity appears to be the most significant factor in controlling exchange. Lithological information was assembled using geophysical logging of existing bores, supplemented by the results of electrical resistivity imaging. A preliminary water balance was assembled from the available State records of groundwater abstraction for irrigation, rainfall, evapotranspiration and flow gauging in Maules Creek and the adjacent Namoi River. The analysis has demonstrated the complexity of these coupled systems and gives an indication of the most efficient techniques to be deployed in the field to investigate these complex but important systems.     

Using ocean quahog (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Arctica islandica</Emphasis>) shells to reconstruct palaeoenvironment in Öresund,Kattegat and Skagerrak,Sweden

Shells of Arctica islandica collected between 1884 and 2004 from Öresund, Kattegat and Skagerrak (Swedish West Coast) were used to monitor local climate variations and the influence of human activities on the local environment. For this purpose, we analysed the growth, structure and chemical composition of these shells and compared them with shells collected from Kiel Bay, Norway and Iceland. The growth rate of the studied shells registers an NAO periodicity of ca 8 years. However, the observed signal is weak because of other environmental interferences that are either of natural or anthropogenic origin. For example, the oxygen isotope ratios show temperature fluctuation, but also the influx of low salinity water. Higher contents of S, N, Cu, Zn, As, Cd and P in shell portions formed during the last century are related to human activities such as mining and industrial development. Our study indicates that in order to use Arctica shells as archives of climate change it is necessary to study the full range of environmental data that is recorded in the shells by using a multi element and isotope approach in combination with different analytical techniques including investigation of growth rates and shell structure.     

‘I want to take risks,like my mother’: Memory,affect, and Vietnamese masculinities – the legacy of gendered variations in socio-economic mobility during Ðổi mới

Young Vietnamese men who witnessed their mother's changing economic and labour market situations through the early years of Ð?i m?i (the policy of economic liberalization in Vietnam after 1986) have developed conceptions of masculinity that are ambivalent to notions of male power and authority within what is often termed the ‘traditional’ neo-Confucian family. On the basis of the life narratives of a small group of men in their early twenties, the author suggests that the value young men place on their mother's work and familial influence during Ð?i m?i contrasts with the findings of much gender scholarship on women's social and economic (im) mobility in the 1990s in Vietnam and on young men's own masculinist narratives. Most gender-sensitive research in this area has suggested that Vietnamese women remained curtailed in the early 1990s by a resurgence of male-oriented kinship systems and patriarchal structures at household level. However, the author discusses the young men as being equivocal. While invoking broad Confucian tropes, these men remember their mothers as economically dynamic relative to their fathers. This led to the informants citing their mother's histories of economic risk-taking as exemplifying free-market capability. Further, the finding suggests that Vietnamese women's social and economic mobility in the 1990s strongly affected young men's contemporary ideas and practices related to masculinity.     

Hypsographic Demography Across Scale

The typical framework for assessing human population distribution is across a flat, two-dimensional landscape. We alter this perspective by examining population distribution with respect to a third dimension, elevation. This alternative framework, termed hypsographic demography, conceptually provides a more complete visualization and understanding of population distribution. We apply hypsographic demography to North Carolina from the scale of the entire state to streams of different sizes. At the state scale, elevation and population are generally inversely correlated. The flat coastal plain contains the majority of the population at low elevations, whereas higher elevations contain smaller populations due to steep topography, which limits development. At the county scale, the historic location and expansion of cities was more closely correlated with observed patterns of hypsographic demography than elevation or topography. At the scale of the stream, the influence of topography on hypsographic demographics gains importance where topography limits the land available to develop. We use this approach to illustrate how changing the perspective for viewing population distribution can be applied to floodplain policy.     

Developing the Commons: The Contradictions of Growth in Exurban Montana

Property development in exurban areas has the capacity to undermine the amenity values that undergird that development. Predicated on that contradiction, this research seeks to explain the emergence of local, informal, planning-based regulations in the traditionally antiregulatory context of rural Montana. Adopting both the insights of institutional common property theory and those of critical materialist analysis of economic growth, the work reconciles accounts of development as inherently ecologically self-destructive with those stressing creative development and adoption of rules for collective self-governance. Using a detailed case analysis of a Montana county undergoing rapid growth, it examines what drives localized land use regulation, what controls are enacted, and whether such controls are resisted or facilitated by development capital. Findings suggest that informal regulations seek to control externalities of development on valuable amenity commons and that they are adopted with the acceptance, if not encouragement, of the development community. These fragile instruments are vulnerable to opposition, however, highlighting problems of more general relevance: Growth depends on a deregulated development regime, which produces externalities that undermine the valorization of property. Localized regulatory planning regimes are therefore both a solution to contradictions inherent in growth and a potential source of future planning problems.     

Beyond “Lawn People”: The Role of Emotions in Suburban Yard Management Practices

Many recent studies have applied satellite remote sensing data to large-scale hydrologic and biospheric modeling. It is widely accepted that the thermal infrared observations from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) have the potential to estimate land surface conditions, such as surface temperature, near surface air temperature, and near surface water vapor. In this study, algorithms to estimate all three variables are presented and applied to an area covering the state of Oklahoma for a six day period in August, 1994. The results were validated using ground observations from the 111 station Oklahoma Mesonet. Validation of the remote sensing algorithms with Mesonet observations produced comparable results to previous validation studies. In addition, the validation process revealed inadequacies in thermal modeling that had not been detected in previous validation studies leading to the development of a new approach to estimate atmospheric water vapor.     

Trading in the dark – The medicinal plants production network in Uttarakhand

Medicinal plant cultivation and gathering can play a vital role in the course of livelihood diversification for the marginalized population living in remote areas. However, this requires an integration of the respective production networks that allows the producers a fair and reliable income and does not endanger rare plant species. This paper analyses the situation within the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and identifies structures and entities hindering medical plant cultivation and its potentials. Based on the broad network understanding of the Global Production Network approach, the case study focuses on the middlemen and their hidden embeddedness. It shows how governmental organizations and in particular non‐governmental organizations and farmers' institutions can help to overcome clandestine structures of illegal trade and contribute towards a redesign of the medicinal plant network in a more equitable and transparent way.     

Possibilities and limits of prospective GIS land cover modelling—a compared case study: Garrotxes (France) and Alta Alpujarra Granadina (Spain)

This study focuses on the possibilities and the limits of a prospective GIS land cover modelling applied to two case studies (France and Spain). The methodology, based on available GIS tools, consists of using earlier land cover maps and relevant environmental factors (calibration data) to model actual, known land cover to validate the model. The model aggregates Markov chain analysis for time prediction and multi‐critera evaluation, multi‐objective evaluation and cellular automata to perform spatial contiguity of modelled land cover scores. The first results give an accurate, pixel by pixel prediction rate of approximately 75%. An important issue of this study consists of analysing prediction residues to improve the model.