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"Pratt, Chris"
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Zero dark thirty : the greatest manhunt in history
\"The Academy Award-winning duo behind The hurt locker reteams for this drama detailing the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and starring Oscar-winner Jessica Chastain as the intelligence expert who dedicated a decade of her life to tracking down the world's most wanted terrorist. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the CIA began interrogating suspected Al-Qaeda agents across the globe in a bid to locate the elusive bin Laden. Upon arriving at a CIA black site and witnessing the brutal interrogation tactics firsthand, driven CIA operative Maya (Chastain) aids her unpredictable colleague Dan (Jason Clarke) in gathering the intelligence that will help bring bin Laden to justice. Over the course of the next decade, numerous false leads and dead ends make the search seem more futile than ever. Meanwhile, numerous suicide bombings all across the Middle East and Europe hint that Al Qaeda won't go down without a fight. Then, just when it seemed as if the trail of clues had finally dried up, an old piece of evidence leads Maya to a suspect who may work directly for the man charged with planning the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil \"--Allmovie.com, October 23, 2017.
DVD
A New Contaminant Superhighway? A Review of Sources, Measurement Techniques and Fate of Atmospheric Microplastics
Microplastic pollution is a significant and growing environmental issue. Recent studies have evaluated the atmosphere as an important pathway of microplastic contamination. Airborne microplastics can be transported long distances and accumulate in various terrestrial and aquatic environmental matrices, where they represent a threat to the biosphere. This review systematically summarizes the existing knowledge on airborne microplastics, including the different sampling and analytical techniques, occurrence and sources. We investigate the different sample collection techniques from street dust to indoor and outdoor air and examined sample preparation, pre-treatment and characterization techniques. We further explored the key factors with respect to their occurrence in the environment such as concentration levels, polymer composition, size distribution, shape and colour characteristics. The sources of airborne microplastics were also summarized. The results show that microplastics are ubiquitous in all atmospheric compartments including street dust and indoor and outdoor air at various concentrations, which is influenced by the community’s lifestyle choices, anthropogenic activities and meteorological conditions. Various forms of microplastics including spherules, film, fragments, fibres and granules were identified with fibrous microplastics being the most dominant. Additionally, microplastics of 20 different polymers and varying colour characteristic have been reported in studies focusing on airborne microplastic contamination. The size distribution of microplastics varied among the studied air compartments; however, they were mostly distributed towards the smaller size ranges, less than 1 mm. Our review highlights a need to consider atmospheric pathways in addition to soil and water migration dispersion processes for any holistic assessments of microplastic threats to the biosphere. Moreover, standardization of airborne microplastic sampling methods is needed to optimize the effectiveness of future work in this area.
Journal Article
‘Climate Healing Stones’: Common Minerals Offer Substantial Climate Change Mitigation Potential
This review proposes that mineral-based greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation could be developed into a substantial climate change abatement tool. This proposal was evaluated via three objectives: (1) synthesise literature studies documenting the effectiveness of geological minerals at mitigating GHG emissions; (2) quantify, via meta-analysis, GHG magnitudes that could be abated by minerals factoring-in the carbon footprint of the approach; and (3) estimate the global availability of relevant minerals. Several minerals have been effectively harnessed across multiple sectors—including agriculture, waste management and coal mining—to mitigate carbon dioxide/CO
2
(e.g., olivine), methane/CH
4
(e.g., allophane, gypsum) and nitrous oxide/N
2
O (e.g., vermiculite) emissions. High surface area minerals offer substantial promise to protect soil carbon, albeit their potential impact here is difficult to quantify. Although mineral-based N
2
O reduction strategies can achieve gross emission reduction, their application generates a net carbon emission due to prohibitively large mineral quantities needed. By contrast, mineral-based technologies could abate ~9% and 11% of global CO
2
and CH
4
anthropogenic emissions, respectively. These estimates conservatively only consider options which offer additional benefits to climate change mitigation (e.g., nutrient supply to agricultural landscapes, and safety controls in landfill operations). This multi-benefit aspect is important due to the reluctance to invest in stand-alone GHG mitigation technologies. Minerals that exhibit high GHG mitigation potential are globally abundant. However, their application towards a dedicated global GHG mitigation initiative would entail significant escalation of their current production rates. A detailed cost-benefit analysis and environmental and social footprint assessment is needed to ascertain the strategy’s scale-up potential.
Journal Article
From sport to building control
A trainee surveyor explains how he returned to his family's profession of building control after a career in sport and fitness
Journal Article
A comparative analysis to forecast salinity and sodicity distributions using empirical Bayesian and disjunctive kriging in irrigated soils of the Jordan valley
In arid regions such as the Jordan valley, salinity and sodicity are major constraints to soil quality and crop production. Accurate spatial determination of sodicity and salinity at field scale is a challenge, which can limit the effectiveness of management strategies. Interpolation techniques are used to derive maps to estimate the extent of the areas affected by sodicity and devise appropriate management plans. Nevertheless, different methods may draw different pictures. The main objectives of this study are to compare two interpolation techniques: 1. empirical Bayesian (EBK) and 2. disjunctive kriging (DK) to spatially predict soil salinity and sodicity in intensively used agricultural soils. Surface and subsurface samples were collected from randomly selected agricultural fields and analyzed for salinity (ECe) and sodicity (sodium adsorption ratio -SARe and exchangeable sodium percentage -ESP). Both EBK and DK methods revealed serious soil salinization and sodification problems in the middle and southern parts of the Jordan Valley. Salinity (ECe) maps showed that about 34% of the total area has salinity < 4, 12% < 8, 7% < 16, and 46% exceeds 16 dS m
−1
. For sodicity (ESP), 44% < 10, 18% < 15, and 37% > 15. Surface soils had higher salinity and sodicity levels than subsurface soils. The average values of surface soils were ECe (15.7 dS m
−1
), SARe (9.8), and ESP (15.5), compared with ECe (7.4 dS m
−1
), SARe (7.5), and ESP (13.1) for subsurface soils. Smoother and less patchy predictions were generated using DK compared to EBK. However, EBK had higher accuracy than DK in spatially predicting and addressing the uncertainty inherent in soil salinity and sodicity. This investigation gives important fundamental steps for developing site-specific reclamation techniques to manage and sustain agriculture in these regions.
Journal Article
Peer assistance in children's problem solving
The current study aimed to investigate the extent to which the creation of a context which facilitates conversation and communication would enhance the cognitive capacities of children working on recognized problems. Using a collaborative problem‐solving paradigm, the communication patterns of pairs of 4‐ and 7‐year‐old children were analysed. It was found that collaborative problem solving facilitated lower ability children's subsequent individual problem solving when they were paired with higher ability children. In addition, it was found that older children used more language during collaboration. Holding number of utterances as a covariate, older children used more procedural language and more descriptive language than younger children and lower ability children used more language for checking with their partner. These uses of language were interpreted as demonstrating awareness on the part of older children of the other person in the collaboration although the extent to which this assisted subsequent problem‐solving ability in less able children of either age is not clear and requires further theoretical explication.
Journal Article
Long-term water quality trends in Tampa Bay (1974-2020)
The Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County (EPCHC) established a comprehensive surface water quality monitoring program in 1972 which encompasses all of Tampa Bay as well as major and minor tributaries within Hillsborough County. The program is one of the longest continuous monitoring programs in the United States and has grown to 272 total stations including 135 monthly stations plus an additional 52 monthly hydrographic profile stations and 85 minor tributary stations sampled quarterly. A multi-parameter water quality index (WQI) was developed by EPCHC for evaluating surface water quality trends in Tampa Bay. The WQI incorporates seven parameters including turbidity, Secchi depth, fecal indicator bacteria, chlorophyll a, total phosphorus, total nitrogen, and bottom dissolved oxygen. Tampa Bay water quality has shown dramatic improvements since the 1970s, particularly with decreases in chlorophyll a and fecal coliform which is likely attributed to the advent of advanced wastewater treatment in the early 1980s. These changes are reflected in increasing WQI scores over time with recent annual mean WQI scores falling within the “A” to “B” range as opposed to “D” and “F” scores which were prevalent in the 1970s – mid-1980s.
Journal Article
Questioning the Accuracy of Greenhouse Gas Accounting from Agricultural Waste: A Case Study
The New Zealand Greenhouse Gas Inventory (the NZ Inventory) uses country‐specific data to quantify CH4 emissions from anaerobic ponds treating dairy farm effluent (315 Gg CO2 equivalent [CO2–e] in 2009). In this study, we used literature data to: (i) evaluate the accuracy of the NZ Inventory's parameters used to quantify these CH4 emissions; and (ii) determine whether the NZ Inventory's scope is capturing the full spectrum of sources with bio‐CH4 potential entering anaerobic ponds. The research indicated that the current NZ Inventory methodology is underestimating CH4 emissions from anaerobic ponds across New Zealand by 264 to 603 Gg CO2–e annually. Moreover, the NZ Inventory is currently not accounting for (i) manure from supplementary feed pads and stand‐off pads (annual CH4 emissions = 207–330 Gg CO2–e); (ii) waste milk (153–280 Gg CO2–e); and (iii) supplementary feed waste (90–216 Gg CO2–e). Annual CH4 emissions from anaerobic ponds on dairy farms across New Zealand are thus more likely to be 1029 to 1744 Gg CO2–e, indicating that the NZ Inventory is reporting as little as 18% of actual CH4 emissions produced by this sector. These additional wastes are not accounted for in the methodology prescribed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for estimating CH4 emissions from dairy manure. Consequently, other significant dairying nations will also probably be underestimating their waste CH4 emissions. Our research highlights that, if governments attempt to include country‐specific emission factors in their greenhouse gas inventories, these factors must be based on an assessment of the full spectrum of sources contributing to greenhouse gas emissions within any given sector.
Journal Article
The Relations Between Children’s Reading Comprehension, Working Memory, Language Skills and Components of Reading Decoding in a Normal Sample
The primary aim of the current study was to identify the strongest independent predictors of reading comprehension using word reading, language and memory variables in a normal sample of 180 children in grades 3-5, with a range of word reading skills. It was hypothesized that orthographic processing, receptive vocabulary and verbal working memory would all make independent contributions to reading comprehension. The contributions of reading speed, receptive grammatical skills, exposure to print, visuospatial working memory and verbal learning and retrieval (a measure of longer-term retention) were also investigated. Working memory tasks that required the processing and storage of numerical and spatial material were used. One of the numerical working memory tasks was based on the number span task developed by Yuill, Oakhill, and Parkin \"British Journal of Psychology,\" 1989, 80, 351-361. A visuospatial equivalent of that task was developed from the forward Corsi block task [Corsi, \"Abstracts International,\" 1973, 34, 891]. The results revealed that, after controlling for age and general intellectual ability, the word reading and the language variables had a much stronger relation with reading comprehension than the memory variables. The strongest independent predictor of reading comprehension was orthographic processing since it captured variance in both word reading, language skills and verbal working memory. The forward Corsi task and performance on a measure of verbal learning and retrieval each made small independent contributions to reading comprehension but the contribution of verbal working memory was not significant. It was concluded that tasks measuring the interplay between short-term and long-term memory, in which new information is combined with information already stored in long-term memory, may better predict reading comprehension measured with the text available than working memory tasks which only have a short-term memory component.
Journal Article