scholarly journals Radiocarbon Analysis of Methane at the NERC Radiocarbon Facility (East Kilbride)

Radiocarbon ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1477-1487 ◽  
Author(s):  
M H Garnett ◽  
C Murray ◽  
P Gulliver ◽  
P L Ascough

ABSTRACTMethane is the second most important anthropogenically produced greenhouse gas, and radiocarbon (14C) analysis is extremely valuable in identifying its age and source in the environment. At the NERC Radiocarbon Facility (East Kilbride, UK) we have developed expertise in analysis of methane 14C concentration and methodological approaches to field sampling over the past 20 years. This has opened a wide range of applications, which have mainly focused on (1) the age and source of methane emitted by peatlands and organic soils (e.g. to quantify the release of ancient carbon), (2) the source of aquatic emissions of methane, and (3) the age of methane generated by amenity and illegal landfill. Many of these scientifically important applications involve challenging sampling and measurement considerations, which our development program has continually aimed to overcome. Here, we describe our current methods, and recent improvements to aid field collection of samples in remote locations. We present the results of tests which (1) show the effectiveness of our methods to remove contaminants, especially CO2, (2) quantify the 14C background contribution, and (3) demonstrate the reliability of metal gas storage canisters for sample storage.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Park MooJong ◽  
Song Youngseok ◽  
Lee Heesup ◽  
Park Juhyeok

<p>Recently, climate change due to global warming has been frequented by large-scale weather disasters that have not been experienced in the past. Among various weather disasters, drought is one of the representative weather disasters in Korea recently along with heavy rains. In the case of drought, it occurs in a wide range in the short term and long term, and it is difficult to identify specific occurrence times, places, and causes, and damage and influence are enormous.</p><p>In the past, the Republic of Korea has been prepared with non-structural measures such as securing irrigation water for drought restoration, developing emergency management, and developing a drought information system based on drought index. The reduction measures for drought degradation were mainly used by Palmer Draught Severity Index (PDSI), Standardized Precision Index (SPI), Crop Moisture Index (CMI), Crop Specific Drug Index (CMI), and Profication (DICS Index), and Survey.</p><p>In this study, we intend to establish standards for reducing drought damage by investigating and analyzing drought damage characteristics in Korea. In the past, drought damage in Korea occurred in agriculture, living and industry, and the ministry manages and stores the data on drought damage. The drought damage in South Korea from 1965 to 2018 occurred a total of 204 times, mostly in South Gyeongsang and South Jeolla provinces, rather than in special cities and metropolitan cities. The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of drought damage in Korea and establish the measures to reduce mega drought.</p><p>Acknowledges : This research was supported by a grant(2019-MOIS31-010) from Fundamental Technology Development Program for Extreme Disaster Response funded by Korean Ministry of Interior and Safety(MOIS).</p>


2022 ◽  
pp. 096394702110721
Author(s):  
Michael Burke ◽  
Karen Coats

This article constitutes an introduction to the five articles that appear in this special issue. This framing process starts by highlighting the sparse, yet important, work that has been conducted over the past 20 years on children’s literature in the field of stylistics. The focus in the article then turns to a more general discussion on the language of children’s literature. Here, in this chronological overview of language usage in books written for children, an outline is sketched from the writers and philosophers of the enlightenment up to contemporary debates on literacy, cognition and theory of mind. In the section that follows, the five studies that appear in this special issue are briefly synopsized. What becomes apparent is the wide range of methodological approaches that have been taken by the scholars in question to analyze the texts that are under investigation, in both quantitative and qualitative ways. The article ends with a plea for more stylistic work to be conducted in the areas of both children’s literature and young adult fiction. This is especially pertinent because stylisticians possess the key linguistic and analytic skills and tools to help, in interdisciplinary settings, to address current social, emotional and cognitive challenges pertaining to child development through literacy and through reading in particular.


Author(s):  
A. Strojnik ◽  
J.W. Scholl ◽  
V. Bevc

The electron accelerator, as inserted between the electron source (injector) and the imaging column of the HVEM, is usually a strong lens and should be optimized in order to ensure high brightness over a wide range of accelerating voltages and illuminating conditions. This is especially true in the case of the STEM where the brightness directly determines the highest resolution attainable. In the past, the optical behavior of accelerators was usually determined for a particular configuration. During the development of the accelerator for the Arizona 1 MEV STEM, systematic investigation was made of the major optical properties for a variety of electrode configurations, number of stages N, accelerating voltages, 1 and 10 MEV, and a range of injection voltages ϕ0 = 1, 3, 10, 30, 100, 300 kV).


2020 ◽  
Vol 04 (04) ◽  
pp. 369-372
Author(s):  
Paul B. Romesser ◽  
Christopher H. Crane

AbstractEvasion of immune recognition is a hallmark of cancer that facilitates tumorigenesis, maintenance, and progression. Systemic immune activation can incite tumor recognition and stimulate potent antitumor responses. While the concept of antitumor immunity is not new, there is renewed interest in tumor immunology given the clinical success of immune modulators in a wide range of cancer subtypes over the past decade. One particularly interesting, yet exceedingly rare phenomenon, is the abscopal response, characterized by a potent systemic antitumor response following localized tumor irradiation presumably attributed to reactivation of antitumor immunity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Thomas Leitch

Building on Tzvetan Todorov's observation that the detective novel ‘contains not one but two stories: the story of the crime and the story of the investigation’, this essay argues that detective novels display a remarkably wide range of attitudes toward the several pasts they represent: the pasts of the crime, the community, the criminal, the detective, and public history. It traces a series of defining shifts in these attitudes through the evolution of five distinct subgenres of detective fiction: exploits of a Great Detective like Sherlock Holmes, Golden Age whodunits that pose as intellectual puzzles to be solved, hardboiled stories that invoke a distant past that the present both breaks with and echoes, police procedurals that unfold in an indefinitely extended present, and historical mysteries that nostalgically fetishize the past. It concludes with a brief consideration of genre readers’ own ambivalent phenomenological investment in the past, present, and future each detective story projects.


What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries? Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ‘hard man’, has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of masculinity in a wider context. This interdisciplinary collection examines a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, exploring the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour. How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romances, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men – work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce – the book also illustrates the range of masculinities that affected or were internalised by men. Together, the chapters illustrate some of the ways Scotland’s gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how, more generally, masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Christina Landman

Dullstroom-Emnotweni is the highest town in South Africa. Cold and misty, it is situated in the eastern Highveld, halfway between the capital Pretoria/Tswane and the Mozambique border. Alongside the main road of the white town, 27 restaurants provide entertainment to tourists on their way to Mozambique or the Kruger National Park. The inhabitants of the black township, Sakhelwe, are remnants of the Southern Ndebele who have lost their land a century ago in wars against the whites. They are mainly dependent on employment as cleaners and waitresses in the still predominantly white town. Three white people from the white town and three black people from the township have been interviewed on their views whether democracy has brought changes to this society during the past 20 years. Answers cover a wide range of views. Gratitude is expressed that women are now safer and HIV treatment available. However, unemployment and poverty persist in a community that nevertheless shows resilience and feeds on hope. While the first part of this article relates the interviews, the final part identifies from them the discourses that keep the black and white communities from forming a group identity that is based on equality and human dignity as the values of democracy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-54
Author(s):  
Dildora Alinazarova ◽  

In this article, based on an analysis of a wide range of sources, discusses the emergence and development of periodicals and printing house in Namangan. The activities of Ibrat- as the founder of the first printing house in Namangan are considered. In addition, it describes the functioning and development of "Matbaai Ishokia" in the past and present


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yinlu Feng ◽  
Zifei Yin ◽  
Daniel Zhang ◽  
Arun Srivastava ◽  
Chen Ling

The success of gene and cell therapy in clinic during the past two decades as well as our expanding ability to manipulate these biomaterials are leading to new therapeutic options for a wide range of inherited and acquired diseases. Combining conventional therapies with this emerging field is a promising strategy to treat those previously-thought untreatable diseases. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has evolved for thousands of years in China and still plays an important role in human health. As part of the active ingredients of TCM, proteins and peptides have attracted long-term enthusiasm of researchers. More recently, they have been utilized in gene and cell therapy, resulting in promising novel strategies to treat both cancer and non-cancer diseases. This manuscript presents a critical review on this field, accompanied with perspectives on the challenges and new directions for future research in this emerging frontier.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hidayat Hussain ◽  
Ivan R. Green ◽  
Muhammad Saleem ◽  
Khanzadi F. Khattak ◽  
Muhammad Irshad ◽  
...  

Background: Cucurbitacins belong to a group of tetracyclic triterpenoids that display a wide range of biological effects. In the past, numerous cucurbitacins have been isolated from natural sources and many active compounds have been synthesized using the privileged scaffold in order to enhance its cytotoxic effects. Objective: his review covers patents on the therapeutic effects of natural cucurbitacins and their synthetic analogs published during the past decade. By far, the majority of patents published are related to cancer and Structure-Activity Relationships (SAR) of these compounds are included to lend gravitas to this important class of natural products. Methods: The date about the published patents was downloaded via online open access patent databases. Results: Cucurbitacins display significant cytotoxic properties, in particular cucurbitacins B and D which possess very potent effects towards a number of cancer cells. Numerous cucurbitacins isolated from natural sources have been derivatized through chemical modification at the C(2)-OH and C(25)- OH groups. Most importantly, an acyl ester of the C(25)-OH and, iso-propyl, n-propyl and ethyl ether groups of the C(2)-OH demonstrated the most increased cytotoxic activity. Conclusion: The significant cytotoxic effects of natural and semi-synthetic cucurbitacins make them attractive as new drug candidates. Moreover, cucurbitacins have the capability to form conjugates with other anticancer drugs which will synergistically enhance their anticancer effects. The authors believe that in order to get lead compounds, there should be a greater focus on the synthesis of homodimers, heterodimers, and halo derivatives of cucurbitacins. In the opinion of the authors the analysis of the published patents on the cucurbitacins indicates that these compounds can be developed into a regimen to treat a wide spectrum of cancers.


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