Palaeohydrology of the Fazzan Basin and surrounding regions: The last 7 million years

We have integrated information on topography, geology and geomorphology with the results of targeted fieldwork in order to develop a chronology for the development of Lake Megafazzan, a giant lake that has periodically existed in the Fazzan Basin since the late Miocene. The development of the basin can be best understood by considering the main geological and geomorphological events that occurred thought Libya during this period and thus an overview of the palaeohydrology of all Libya is also presented. The origin of the Fazzan Basin appears to lie in the Late Miocene. At this time Libya was dominated by two large rivers systems that flowed into the Mediterranean Sea, the Sahabi River draining central and eastern Libya and the Wadi Nashu River draining much of western Libya. As the Miocene progressed the region become increasingly affected by volcanic activity on its northern and eastern margin that appears to have blocked the River Nashu in Late Miocene or early Messinian times forming a sizeable closed basin in the Fazzan within which proto-Lake Megafazzan would have developed during humid periods. The fall in base level associated with the Messinian desiccation of the Mediterranean Sea promoted down-cutting and extension of river systems throughout much of Libya. To the south of the proto Fazzan Basin the Sahabi River tributary know as Wadi Barjuj appears to have expanded its headwaters westwards. The channel now terminates at Al Haruj al Aswad. We interpret this as a suggestion that Wadi Barjuj was blocked by the progressive development of Al Haruj al Aswad. K/Ar dating of lava flows suggests that this occurred between 4 and 2 Ma. This event would have increased the size of the closed basin in the Fazzan by about half, producing a catchment close to its current size (-350,000 km(2)). The Fazzan Basin contains a wealth of Pleistocene to recent palaeolake sediment outcrops and shorelines. Dating of these features demonstrates evidence of lacustrine conditions during numerous interglacials spanning a period greater than 420 ka. The middle to late Pleistocene interglacials were humid enough to produce a giant lake of about 135,000 km(2) that we have called Lake Megafazzan. Later lake phases were smaller, the interglacials less humid, developing lakes of a few thousand square kilometres. In parallel with these palaeohydrological developments in the Fazzan Basin, change was occurring in other parts of Libya. The Lower Pliocene sea level rise caused sediments to infill much of the Messinian channel system. As this was occurring, subsidence in the Al Kufrah Basin caused expansion of the Al Kufrah River system at the expense of the River Sahabi. By the Pleistocene, the Al Kufrah River dominated the palaeohydrology of eastern Libya and had developed a very large inland delta in its northern reaches that exhibited a complex distributary channel network which at times fed substantial lakes in the Sirt Basin. At this time Libya was a veritable lake district during humid periods with about 10% of the country underwater. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Excluding exceptions: Housing non-affordability and the oppression of environmental sustainability?

This paper explores the provision of homes for less wealthy households in rural England. By allowing 'exceptions' to UK planning law to provide low-income housing for local residents, the national government seeks to secure dwellings for the less wealthy and so sustain socially mixed rural villages. This paper explores how the production of homes through the exception policy is not conducive to the construction of many new houses. The particular emphasis in the paper is on how responsible agents are discouraged from being more active in erecting new village homes for low-income households. Empirically, the paper draws on documents, interviews and a social survey in the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk to investigate the process of delivering rural exception homes. It is concluded that, despite Government assertions that a socially mixed countryside is desirable, the decision-making criteria that dominate the worldviews of agents in social housing provision work against this outcome. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Developments in radiocarbon calibration for archaeology

This update on radiocarbon calibration results from the 19th International Radiocarbon Conference at Oxford in April 2006, and is essential reading for all archaeologists. The way radiocarbon dates and absolute dates relate to each other differs in three periods: back to 12400 cal BR radiocarbon dates can be calibrated with tree rings, and the calibration curve in this form should soon extend back to 18 000 cal BP Between 12 400 and 26000 cal BR the calibration curves are based on marine records, and thus are only a best estimate of atmospheric concentrations. Beyond 26000 cal BR dates have to be based on comparison (rather than calibration) with a variety of records. Radical variations are thus possible in this period, a highly significant caveat,for the dating of middle and lower Paleolithic art, artefacts and animal and human remains.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and administration system on prescribing errors, administration errors and staff time: a before-and-after study

Objectives: To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing, automated dispensing, barcode patient identification and electronic medication administration record (EMAR) system on prescribing and administration errors, confirmation of patient identity before administration, and staff time. Design, setting and participants: Before-and-after study in a surgical ward of a teaching hospital, involving patients and staff of that ward. Intervention: Closed-loop electronic prescribing, automated dispensing, barcode patient identification and EMAR system. Main outcome measures: Percentage of new medication orders with a prescribing error, percentage of doses with medication administration errors (MAEs) and percentage given without checking patient identity. Time spent prescribing and providing a ward pharmacy service. Nursing time on medication tasks. Results: Prescribing errors were identified in 3.8% of 2450 medication orders pre-intervention and 2.0% of 2353 orders afterwards (p<0.001; χ2 test). MAEs occurred in 7.0% of 1473 non-intravenous doses pre-intervention and 4.3% of 1139 afterwards (p = 0.005; χ2 test). Patient identity was not checked for 82.6% of 1344 doses pre-intervention and 18.9% of 1291 afterwards (p<0.001; χ2 test). Medical staff required 15 s to prescribe a regular inpatient drug pre-intervention and 39 s afterwards (p = 0.03; t test). Time spent providing a ward pharmacy service increased from 68 min to 98 min each weekday (p = 0.001; t test); 22% of drug charts were unavailable pre-intervention. Time per drug administration round decreased from 50 min to 40 min (p = 0.006; t test); nursing time on medication tasks outside of drug rounds increased from 21.1% to 28.7% (p = 0.006; χ2 test). Conclusions: A closed-loop electronic prescribing, dispensing and barcode patient identification system reduced prescribing errors and MAEs, and increased confirmation of patient identity before administration. Time spent on medication-related tasks increased.

The impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the ward pharmacist’s time and activities

Objective To assess the impact of a closed-loop electronic prescribing and automated dispensing system on the time spent providing a ward pharmacy service and the activities carried out. Setting Surgical ward, London teaching hospital. Method All data were collected two months pre- and one year post-intervention. First, the ward pharmacist recorded the time taken each day for four weeks. Second, an observational study was conducted over 10 weekdays, using two-dimensional work sampling, to identify the ward pharmacist's activities. Finally, medication orders were examined to identify pharmacists' endorsements that should have been, and were actually, made. Key findings Mean time to provide a weekday ward pharmacy service increased from 1 h 8 min to 1 h 38 min per day (P = 0.001; unpaired t-test). There were significant increases in time spent prescription monitoring, recommending changes in therapy/monitoring, giving advice or information, and non-productive time. There were decreases for supply, looking for charts and checking patients' own drugs. There was an increase in the amount of time spent with medical and pharmacy staff, and with 'self'. Seventy-eight per cent of patients' medication records could be assessed for endorsements pre- and 100% post-intervention. Endorsements were required for 390 (50%) of 787 medication orders pre-intervention and 190 (21%) of 897 afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Endorsements were made for 214 (55%) of endorsement opportunities pre-intervention and 57 (30%) afterwards (P < 0.0001; chi-square test). Conclusion The intervention increased the overall time required to provide a ward pharmacy service and changed the types of activity undertaken. Contact time with medical and pharmacy staff increased. There was no significant change in time spent with patients. Fewer pharmacy endorsements were required post-intervention, but a lower percentage were actually made. The findings have important implications for the design, introduction and use of similar systems.

A data collection case study supporting requirements oriented prediction and management in software developments

Consider the statement "this project should cost X and has risk of Y". Such statements are used daily in industry as the basis for making decisions. The work reported here is part of a study aimed at providing a rational and pragmatic basis for such statements. Of particular interest are predictions made in the requirements and early phases of projects. A preliminary model has been constructed using Bayesian Belief Networks and in support of this, a programme to collect and study data during the execution of various software development projects commenced in May 2002. The data collection programme is undertaken under the constraints of a commercial industrial regime of multiple concurrent small to medium scale software development projects. Guided by pragmatism, the work is predicated on the use of data that can be collected readily by project managers; including expert judgements, effort, elapsed times and metrics collected within each project.

Housing and property restitution and IDP return in Kosovo

The establishment of the Housing and Property Directorate (HPD) and Claims Commission (HPCC) in Kosovo has reflected an increasing focus internationally on the post-conflict restitution of housing and property rights. In approximately three years of full-scale operation, the institutions have managed to make a property rights determination on almost all of the approximate 30,000 contested residential properties. As such, HPD and HPCC are being looked to by many in other post-conflict areas as an example of how to proceed. While the efficiency of the organizations is commendable, one of the key original goals - the return of displaced persons to their homes of origin - has to a large degree been left aside. The paper focuses on two distinct failures of the international community with respect to the functioning of HPD/HPCC and its possible effect on returns: a failure of coordination between HPD/HPCC and other organizations working on returns, and the isolation of residential property rights determinations from other aspects of building a property rights-respecting culture in Kosovo.

Data assimilation for marine monitoring and prediction: The MERCATOR operational assimilation systems and the MERSEA developments

During the past 15 years, a number of initiatives have been undertaken at national level to develop ocean forecasting systems operating at regional and/or global scales. The co-ordination between these efforts has been organized internationally through the Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE). The French MERCATOR project is one of the leading participants in GODAE. The MERCATOR systems routinely assimilate a variety of observations such as multi-satellite altimeter data, sea-surface temperature and in situ temperature and salinity profiles, focusing on high-resolution scales of the ocean dynamics. The assimilation strategy in MERCATOR is based on a hierarchy of methods of increasing sophistication including optimal interpolation, Kalman filtering and variational methods, which are progressively deployed through the Syst`eme d’Assimilation MERCATOR (SAM) series. SAM-1 is based on a reduced-order optimal interpolation which can be operated using ‘altimetry-only’ or ‘multi-data’ set-ups; it relies on the concept of separability, assuming that the correlations can be separated into a product of horizontal and vertical contributions. The second release, SAM-2, is being developed to include new features from the singular evolutive extended Kalman (SEEK) filter, such as three-dimensional, multivariate error modes and adaptivity schemes. The third one, SAM-3, considers variational methods such as the incremental four-dimensional variational algorithm. Most operational forecasting systems evaluated during GODAE are based on least-squares statistical estimation assuming Gaussian errors. In the framework of the EU MERSEA (Marine EnviRonment and Security for the European Area) project, research is being conducted to prepare the next-generation operational ocean monitoring and forecasting systems. The research effort will explore nonlinear assimilation formulations to overcome limitations of the current systems. This paper provides an overview of the developments conducted in MERSEA with the SEEK filter, the Ensemble Kalman filter and the sequential importance re-sampling filter.

Global estimates of snow water equivalent from passive microwave instruments: history, challenges and future developments

Snow properties have been retrieved from satellite data for many decades. While snow extent is generally felt to be obtained reliably from visible-band data, there is less confidence in the measurements of snow mass or water equivalent derived from passive microwave instruments. This paper briefly reviews historical passive microwave instruments and products, and compares the large-scale patterns from these sources to those of general circulation models and leading reanalysis products. Differences are seen to be large between the datasets, particularly over Siberia. A better understanding of the errors in both the model-based and measurement-based datasets is required to exploit both fully. Techniques to apply to the satellite measurements for improved large-scale snow data are suggested.

Developments in near infrared spectroscopy

Vibrational spectroscopy at high excitation is an important research frontier for two reasons. Firstly, the near infrared is proving to be an important area for the analytical applications of spectroscopy, and we would therefore like to understand how the spectra we observe relate to the molecular structure of the absorbing species. Secondly, there is a fundamental interest in understanding molecular dynamics and energy flow within a polyatomic molecule at high excitation, because this is the boundary between spectroscopy and chemistry through which we try to understand the details of a chemical reaction. In this presentation I shall survey recent progress in this field.

Effect of breed, gender, housing system and dietary crude protein content on performance of finishing beef cattle fed maize-silage-based diets

Maize silage-based diets with three dietary crude protein (CP) supplements were offered to 96 finishing cattle of contrasting breed (Holstein Friesian (HF) v. Simmental x HF (SHF)) and gender (bull v. steer) housed in two types of feeding system (group fed v. individually fed). The three protein supplements differed either in CP or protein degradability (degradable (LUDP) v. rumen undegradable (HUDP)) and provided CP concentrations of 142 (Con), 175 (LUDP) and 179 (HUDP) g/kg dry matter (DM) respectively, with ratios of degradable to undegradable of 3.0, 1.4 and 0.9:1 for diets Con, LOP and HUDP respectively. DM intakes were marginally higher (P = 0. 102) for LOP when compared with Con and HOP Rates of daily live-weight gain (DLWG) were higher (P = 0.005) in LUDP and HOP when compared with Con. HF had higher DM intakes than SHF although this did not result in any improvement in HF DLWG. Bulls had significantly better DM intakes, DLWG and feed conversion efficiency than steers. Conformation scores were better in SHF than HF (P < 0.001) and fat scores lower in bulls than steers (p < 0.001). There was a number of first order interactions established between dietary treatment, breed, gender and housing system with respect to rates of gain and carcass fat scores.