This study examined seasonal differences in microbial community structure in the sediment of three streams in North Carolina’s Neuse River Basin. Microbes that reside in sediment are at the base of the food chain and have a profound influence on the health of freshwater stream environments. Terminal-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (T-RFLP), molecular fingerprint analysis of 16S rRNA ge...

The variability of the north Australian wet season is examined by performing cluster analysis on the wind and thermodynamic information contained in the 2300 UTC radiosonde data at Darwin for 49 wet seasons (September–April) from 1957/58 to 2005/06. Five objectively derived regimes of the wet season are obtained and are found to differ significantly in their synoptic environment, cloud patterns...

To elucidate the effects of seasonal variation of precipitation on the distribution of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in estuarine sediments and benthic feeders, PCB concentrations of river surface sediments and mullet fish (Liza macrolepis) were investigated in the estuary of Er-Jen River near former PCB contamination sites before and after each wet season from 2002 to 2004. Analyses of grai...

This research relates to the cellulosic fibres of treated deinked Mixed Office Waste (MOW) paper and is directed particularity to a method for improving the wet strength of recycled paper. The effect of chemical treatment of fibre was investigated. Fibres were treated with 6 and 10% Succinic Acid (SA), with 3% and 5% catalysts (based on the total weight of fibres). The catalysts used for this r...

Abstract The role of coarse woody debris (CWD) in the global carbon (C) cycle is growing under increasing tree mortality driven by climate variability and disturbances. Quantifying C CWD critically depends on accurate estimates density concentration CWD. This study considered main decomposition pathways (the proportions decomposed fungi vs. invertebrates; fungal decay types) relationships betwe...

There is now an established understanding that sweat, and perspiration in general, function as an important regulator of body temperature. This understanding has displaced the earlier view of humoral pathology, that sweating is a means of excreting excess or ill-mixed humours. Its role in regulating heat loss could not be clearly discerned until the measurement of heat loss by evaporation in th...

Mosquitoes are problematic as vectors and pests in many tropical cities, including Darwin, the principal city in the Northern Territory of Australia. To monitor peaks in mosquito populations, the Medical Entomology unit of the Health Department sets overnight CO(2) -baited traps weekly. Trap setting and retrieving, followed by mosquito counting and identification, are labor intensive. Aiming to...

Wet-etching is a key step in wafer fabrication. A wet-etch station is a chemical batch process involving a complex interplay of mixed intermediate storage (MIS) policies and a shared robot for wafer transfers. Its operation poses a challenging resource-constrained scheduling problem that is crucial for enhancing productivity, improving yield and minimizing contamination. In this paper, we devel...

-A vermiculite (Libby, Montana) sample obtained from the Zonolite company contained mostly coarse-grained separates with only 8.7 per cent clay. The 2-50 #m fraction was used for particle-size reduction studies by wet and dry grinding, and size-fractionated into < 2, 2-5, 5-20 and 20--50 #m sizes. About 18 per cent of the sample was attrited to clay after 64 hr of wet grinding, but as much as 5...

High-resolution X-ray imaging combined with a steady-state flow experiment is used to demonstrate how pore-scale displacement affects macroscopic properties in an altered-wettability microporous carbonate, where porosity and fluid saturation can be directly obtained from the grey-scale micro-CT images. The resolvable macro pores are largely oil-wet average thermodynamic contact angle of 120°. p...