A new stepwise carbon cycle data assimilation system using multiple data streams to constrain the simulated land surface carbon cycle

Acknowledgements. This work was mainly funded by the EU FP7 CARBONES project (contracts FP7-SPACE-2009-1-242316), with also a small contribution from GEOCARBON project (ENV.2011.4.1.1-1-283080). This work used eddy covariance data acquired by the FLUXNET community and in particular by the following networks: AmeriFlux (U.S. Department of Energy, Biological and Environmental Research, Terrestrial Carbon Program; DE-FG02-04ER63917 and DE-FG02-04ER63911), AfriFlux, AsiaFlux, CarboAfrica, CarboEuropeIP, CarboItaly, CarboMont, ChinaFlux, Fluxnet-Canada (supported by CFCAS, NSERC, BIOCAP, Environment Canada, and NRCan), GreenGrass, KoFlux, LBA, NECC, OzFlux, TCOS-Siberia, USCCC. We acknowledge the financial support to the eddy covariance data harmonization provided by CarboEuropeIP, FAO-GTOS-TCO, iLEAPS, Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, National Science Foundation, University of Tuscia, Université Laval and Environment Canada and US Department of Energy and the database development and technical support from Berkeley Water Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Microsoft Research eScience, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of California-Berkeley, University of Virginia. Philippe Ciais acknowledges support from the European Research Council through Synergy grant ERC-2013-SyG-610028 “IMBALANCE-P”. The authors wish to thank M. Jung for providing access to the GPP MTE data, which were downloaded from the GEOCARBON data portal (https://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/geodb/projects/Data.php). The authors are also grateful to computing support and resources provided at LSCE and to the overall ORCHIDEE project that coordinate the development of the code (http://labex.ipsl.fr/orchidee/index.php/about-the-team).

The Pratt Pouch Provides a Three-Fold Access Increase to Antiretroviral Medication for Births outside Health Facilities in Southern Zambia.

INTRODUCTION: Modern day antiretroviral therapy allows HIV+ pregnant women to lower the likelihood of viral transmission to their infants before, during, and after birth from 20-45% to less than 5%. In developing countries, where non-facility births may outnumber facility births, infant access to safe antiretroviral medication during the critical first three days after birth is often limited. A single-dose, polyethylene pouch ("Pratt Pouch") addresses this challenge by allowing the medication to be distributed to mothers during antenatal care. METHODS: The Pratt Pouch was introduced as part of a one year clinical feasibility study in two districts in Southern Province, Zambia. Participating nurses, community health workers, and pharmacists were trained before implementation. Success in achieving improved antiretroviral medication access was assessed via pre intervention and post intervention survey responses by HIV+ mothers. RESULTS: Access to medication for HIV-exposed infants born outside of a health facility increased from 35% (17/51) before the introduction of the pouch to 94% (15/16) after (p<0.05). A non-significant increase in homebirth rates from 33% (pre intervention cohort) to 50% (post intervention cohort) was observed (p>0.05). Results remained below the national average homebirth rate of 52%. Users reported minimal spillage and a high level of satisfaction with the Pratt Pouch. CONCLUSION: The Pratt Pouch enhances access to infant antiretroviral medication in a rural, non-facility birth setting. Wide scale implementation could have a substantial global impact on HIV transmission rates from mother to child.

(Table 2) Composition of rain water collected over the Indian Ocean in 1967

Analytical data on the basic salt composition in evaporation products of sea (ocean) water and of rain water falling on the central area of the Indian Ocean are examined. Both hot and low-temperature (vacuum) distillation were used. When ocean water evaporates under calm conditions, sea salts in molecular-dispersed state, metamorphosed in the upper boundary layer, enter the atmosphere in addition to water vapor ("salt respiration of the ocean"). Concentration of these salts is about 0.5 mg per liter of water evaporated. Salts also enter the atmosphere from a foam-covered ocean surface as aerosols.

An Evidence-Based Approach to Access Reform (Working Paper 22)

In August 2000, the federal government began an internal review of the Access to Information Act (ATIA). The ATIA gives Canadians a qualified right of access to records held by federal institutions. Decisions about reform should be based on good evidence about the operation of the Act and the likely impact of proposed reforms. This paper describes how data on ATIA operations is collected by federal institutions and provides a guide to academic researchers interested in conducting empirical research on the operation of the law. It constructs a small dataset that describes the processing of a sample of 663 requests received in 1999, and uses this dataset to illustrate the potential of an evidence-based approach to ATIA reform. The dataset can be downloaded from http://evidence.foilaw.net. The project was supported by a $4,800 grant from the Principal’s Development Fund of Queen’s University awarded in May 2001. Comments should be sent to the principal investigator, Alasdair Roberts, at roberts@policystudies.ca.

Utilizing “Big Data” to Improve the Hotel Sector’s Energy Efficiency: Lessons from Recent Economics Research

Hotel chains have access to a treasure trove of “big data” on individual hotels’ monthly electricity and water consumption. Benchmarked comparisons of hotels within a specific chain create the opportunity to cost-effectively improve the environmental performance of specific hotels. This paper describes a simple approach for using such data to achieve the joint goals of reducing operating expenditure and achieving broad sustainability goals. In recent years, energy economists have used such “big data” to generate insights about the energy consumption of the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. Lessons from these studies are directly applicable for the hotel sector. A hotel’s administrative data provide a “laboratory” for conducting random control trials to establish what works in enhancing hotel energy efficiency.

Diagnostic Tests and their Application in the Management of Soil- and Water-borne Oomycete Pathogen Species

Oomycete diseases cause significant losses across a broad range of crop and aquaculture commodities worldwide. These losses can be greatly reduced by disease management practices steered by accurate and early diagnoses of pathogen presence. Determinations of disease potential can help guide optimal crop rotation regimes, varietal selections, targeted control measures, harvest timings and crop post-harvest handling. Pathogen detection prior to infection can also reduce the incidence of disease epidemics. Classical methods for the isolation of oomycete pathogens are normally deployed only after disease symptom appearance. These processes are often-time consuming, relying on culturing the putative pathogen(s) and the availability of expert taxonomic skills for accurate identification; a situation that frequently results in either delayed application, or routine ‘blanket’ over-application of control measures. Increasing concerns about pesticides in the environment and the food chain, removal or restriction of their usage combined with rising costs have focussed interest in the development and improvement of disease management systems. To be effective, these require timely, accurate and preferably quantitatve diagnoses. A wide range of rapid diagnostic tools, from point of care immunodiagnostic kits to next generation nucleotide sequencing have potential application in oomycete disease management. Here we review currently-available as well as promising new technologies in the context of commercial agricultural production systems, considering the impacts of specific biotic and abiotic and other important factors such as speed and ease of access to information and cost effectiveness

Submission Fees - A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?

Knowledge Exchange examined different routes in achieving the vision of 'having a layer of scholarly and scientific content openly available in the internet'. One of these routes involves exploring new developments in the future of publishing. Work is being undertaken investigating interesting alternative business models which could contribute to the transition to open access. In this light KE has commissioned a study investigating whether submission fees could play a role in a business model for Open Access journals. The general conclusion of the report bearing the title ‘Submission Fees a tool in the transition to open access?', written by Mark Ware, is that there are benefits to publishers in certain cases to switch to a model in which an author pays a fee when submitting an article. Especially journals with a high rejection rate might be interested in combining submission fees with article processing charges in order to make the transition to open access easier. In certain disciplines, notably economic and finance journals and in some areas of the experimental life sciences, submission fees are already common. Overall there seems to be an interest in the model but the risks, particularly those involved in any transition, are seen by the publishers to outweigh the perceived benefits. There is also a problem in that the advantages offered by submission fees are often general benefits that might improve the system but do not provide publishers and authors with direct incentives to change to open access. To support transition funders, institutions and publication funds could make it clear that submission fees would be an allowable cost. At present this is often unclear in their policies. Author acceptance of submission fees is critical to its success. It is an observable fact that authors will accept them in some circumstances. Author acceptance would require further study though. Based on the interviews and the modelling in the study one model in particular is regarded as the most suitable way to meet the current requirements (i.e. to strengthen open access to research publications). In this model authors pay a submission fee plus an Article Processing Fee and the article is subsequently made available in open access. Both fees are set at levels that balance acceptability with the author community with securing a meaningful mix of revenues for the Publisher.

Mobility in vehicular networks with multiple access points to the infrastructure

Nowadays there is a huge evolution in the technological world and in the wireless networks. The electronic devices have more capabilities and resources over the years, which makes the users more and more demanding. The necessity of being connected to the global world leads to the arising of wireless access points in the cities to provide internet access to the people in order to keep the constant interaction with the world. Vehicular networks arise to support safety related applications and to improve the traffic flow in the roads; however, nowadays they are also used to provide entertainment to the users present in the vehicles. The best way to increase the utilization of the vehicular networks is to give to the users what they want: a constant connection to the internet. Despite of all the advances in the vehicular networks, there were several issues to be solved. The presence of dedicated infrastructure to vehicular networks is not wide yet, which leads to the need of using the available Wi-Fi hotspots and the cellular networks as access networks. In order to make all the management of the mobility process and to keep the user’s connection and session active, a mobility protocol is needed. Taking into account the huge number of access points present at the range of a vehicle for example in a city, it will be beneficial to take advantage of all available resources in order to improve all the vehicular network, either to the users and to the operators. The concept of multihoming allows to take advantage of all available resources with multiple simultaneous connections. This dissertation has as objectives the integration of a mobility protocol, the Network-Proxy Mobile IPv6 protocol, with a host-multihoming per packet solution in order to increase the performance of the network by using more resources simultaneously, the support of multi-hop communications, either in IPv6 or IPv4, the capability of providing internet access to the users of the network, and the integration of the developed protocol in the vehicular environment, with the WAVE, Wi-Fi and cellular technologies. The performed tests focused on the multihoming features implemented on this dissertation, and on the IPv4 network access for the normal users. The obtained results show that the multihoming addition to the mobility protocol improves the network performance and provides a better resource management. Also, the results show the correct operation of the developed protocol in a vehicular environment.

Transfer function-noise modeling and spatial interpolation to evaluate the risk of extreme (shallow) water-table levels in the Brazilian Cerrados

Water regimes in the Brazilian Cerrados are sensitive to climatological disturbances and human intervention. The risk that critical water-table levels are exceeded over long periods of time can be estimated by applying stochastic methods in modeling the dynamic relationship between water levels and driving forces such as precipitation and evapotranspiration. In this study, a transfer function-noise model, the so called PIRFICT-model, is applied to estimate the dynamic relationship between water-table depth and precipitation surplus/deficit in a watershed with a groundwater monitoring scheme in the Brazilian Cerrados. Critical limits were defined for a period in the Cerrados agricultural calendar, the end of the rainy season, when extremely shallow levels (< 0.5-m depth) can pose a risk to plant health and machinery before harvesting. By simulating time-series models, the risk of exceeding critical thresholds during a continuous period of time (e.g. 10 days) is described by probability levels. These simulated probabilities were interpolated spatially using universal kriging, incorporating information related to the drainage basin from a digital elevation model. The resulting map reduced model uncertainty. Three areas were defined as presenting potential risk at the end of the rainy season. These areas deserve attention with respect to water-management and land-use planning.

Contested Play and Clean Water: McMillan Park, Race, and the Built Environment in Washington, D.C., 1900-1941

This study focuses on the intersection of the politics and culture of open public space with race relations in the United States from 1900 to 1941. The history of McMillan Park in Washington, D.C. serves as a lens to examine these themes. Ultimately, the park’s history, as documented in newspapers, interviews, reports, and photographs, reveals how white residents attempted to protect their dominance in a racial hierarchy through the control of both the physical and cultural elements of public recreation space. White use of discrimination through seemingly neutral desires to protect health, safety, and property values, establishes a congruence with their defense of residential property. Without similar access to legal methods, African Americans acted through direct action in gaps of governmental control. Their use of this space demonstrates how African-American residents of Washington and the United States contested their race, recreation, and spatial privileges in the pre-World War II era.

Why are some cyano-based ionic liquids better glucose solvents than water?

Among different classes of ionic liquids (ILs), those with cyano-based anions have been of special interest due to their low viscosity and enhanced solvation ability for a large variety of compounds. Experimental results from this work reveal that the solubility of glucose in some of these ionic liquids may be higher than in water – a well-known solvent with enhanced capacity to dissolve mono- and disaccharides. This raises questions on the ability of cyano groups to establish strong hydrogen bonds with carbohydrates and on the optimal number of cyano groups at the IL anion that maximizes the solubility of glucose. In addition to experimental solubility data, these questions are addressed in this study using a combination of density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Through the calculation of the number of hydrogen bonds, coordination numbers, energies of interaction and radial and spatial distribution functions, it was possible to explain the experimental results and to show that the ability to favorably interact with glucose is driven by the polarity of each IL anion, with the optimal anion being dicyanamide.

THE DEVELOPMENT EFFECTIVENESS OF INTERNATIONAL WATER AND SANITATION INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS: DEFINING “QUALITY AT ENTRY” OF WORLD BANK PROJECTS.

Over the past 15 years, the number of international development projects aimed at combating global poverty has increased significantly. Within the water and sanitation sector however, and despite heightened global attention and an increase in the number of infrastructure projects, over 800 million people remain without access to appropriate water and sanitation facilities. The majority of donor aid in the water supply and sanitation sector of developing countries is delivered through standalone projects. The quality of projects at the design and preparation stage is a critical determinant in meeting project objectives. The quality of projects at early stage of design, widely referred to as quality at entry (QAE), however remains unquantified and largely subjective. This research argues that water and sanitation infrastructure projects in the developing world tend to be designed in the absence of a specific set of actions that ensure high QAE, and consequently have relatively high rates of failure. This research analyzes 32 cases of water and sanitation infrastructure projects implemented with partial or full World Bank financing globally from 2000 – 2010. The research uses categorical data analysis, regression analysis and descriptive analysis to examine perceived linkages between project QAE and project development outcomes and determines which upstream project design factors are likely to impact the QAE of international development projects in water supply and sanitation. The research proposes a number of specific design stage actions that can be incorporated into the formal review process of water and sanitation projects financed by the World Bank or other international development partners.

WATER USE AND SYSTEM RELIABILITY UNDER DIESELGENERATOR AND SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC POWERED PUMPING SYSTEMS: A CASE STUDY OF SOLLA TOGO

Access to improved potable water sources is recognized as one of the key factors in improving health and alleviating global poverty. In recently years, substantial investments have been made internationally in potable water infrastructure projects, allowing 2.3 billion people to gain access to potable water from 1990-2012. One such project was planned and installed in Solla, Togo, a rural village in the northern part of the country, from 2010-2012. Ethnographic studies revealed that, while the community has access to potable water, an estimated 45% of the village’s 1500 residents still rely on unprotected sources for drinking and cooking. Additionally, inequality in system use based on income level was revealed, with the higher income groups accessing the system more regularly than lower income groups. Cost, as well as the availability of cheaper sources, was identified as the main deterrent from using the new water distribution system. A new water-pricing scheme is investigated here with the intention of making the system accessible to a greater percentage of the population. Since 2012, a village-level water committee has been responsible for operations and maintenance (O&M), fulfilling the community management model that is recommended by many development theorists in order to create sustainable projects. The water committee received post-construction support, mostly in the form of technical support during system breakdowns, from the Togolese Ministry of Water and Sanitation (MWSVH). While this support has been valuable in maintaining a functional water supply system in Solla, the water committee still has managerial challenges, particularly with billing and fee collection. As a result, the water committee has only received 2% - 25% of the fees owed at each private connection and public tap stand, making their finances vulnerable when future repairs and capital replacements are necessary. A new management structure is proposed by the MWSVH that will pay utilities workers a wage and will hire an accountant in order to improve the local management and increase revenue. This proposal is analyzed under the new water pricing schemes that are presented. Initially, the rural water supply system was powered by a diesel-generator, but in 2013, a solar photo-voltaic power supply was installed. The new system proved a fiscal improvement for the village water committee, since it drastically reduced their annual O&M costs. However, the new system pumps a smaller volume of water on a daily basis and did not meet the community’s water needs during the dry season of 2014. A hydraulic network model was developed to investigate the system’s reliability under diesel-generator (DGPS) and solar photovoltaic (PVPS) power supplies. Additionally, a new system layout is proposed for the PVPS that allows pumping directly into the distribution line, circumventing the high head associated with pumping solely to the storage tank. It was determined that this new layout would allow for a greater volume of water to be provided to the demand points over the course of a day, meeting a greater fraction of the demand than with the current layout.

UPGRADING AN INTERMITTENT & BRANCHED WATER NETWORK TO A CONTINUOUS & LOOPED NETWORK: A CASE STUDY IN COASTAL PERU

This case study sought to determine how the potable water network of Cerro Prieto, Peru could be improved. The network as it exists now is branched and operated intermittently, exposing residents to water contamination risks and inconvenience. Using EPANET, it was found that the as-built network can support continuous water service, all points could stay over 10 psi, and the current water consumption rate could be maintained. To keep all points over 20 psi, the height of elevated water tank must be increased 6 feet, and the pump switched on whenever the tank drains. It was also found that almost the entire community would benefit from several possible closed loops in the network, but the high cost gives downstream loops higher priority. Due to the scarcity of water in the region, the first action must be assessing the well capacity, and a water conservation plan that may include water meters.

Potential Arctic tundra vegetation shifts in response to changing temperature, precipitation and permafrost thaw

Over the past decades, vegetation and climate have changed significantly in the Arctic. Deciduous shrub cover is often assumed to expand in tundra landscapes, but more frequent abrupt permafrost thaw resulting in formation of thaw ponds could lead to vegetation shifts towards graminoid-dominated wetland. Which factors drive vegetation changes in the tundra ecosystem are still not sufficiently clear. In this study, the dynamic tundra vegetation model, NUCOM-tundra (NUtrient and COMpetition), was used to evaluate the consequences of climate change scenarios of warming and increasing precipitation for future tundra vegetation change. The model includes three plant functional types (moss, graminoids and shrubs), carbon and nitrogen cycling, water and permafrost dynamics and a simple thaw pond module. Climate scenario simulations were performed for 16 combinations of temperature and precipitation increases in five vegetation types representing a gradient from dry shrub-dominated to moist mixed and wet graminoid-dominated sites. Vegetation composition dynamics in currently mixed vegetation sites were dependent on both temperature and precipitation changes, with warming favouring shrub dominance and increased precipitation favouring graminoid abundance. Climate change simulations based on greenhouse gas emission scenarios in which temperature and precipitation increases were combined showed increases in biomass of both graminoids and shrubs, with graminoids increasing in abundance. The simulations suggest that shrub growth can be limited by very wet soil conditions and low nutrient supply, whereas graminoids have the advantage of being able to grow in a wide range of soil moisture conditions and have access to nutrients in deeper soil layers. Abrupt permafrost thaw initiating thaw pond formation led to complete domination of graminoids. However, due to increased drainage, shrubs could profit from such changes in adjacent areas. Both climate and thaw pond formation simulations suggest that a wetter tundra can be responsible for local shrub decline instead of shrub expansion.