The South Pole Acoustic Test Setup (SPATS) was built to evaluate the acoustic characteristics of the South Pole ice in the 10 kHz to 100 kHz frequency range, for the purpose of assessing the ...feasibility of an acoustic neutrino detection array at the South Pole. The SPATS hardware consists of four vertical strings deployed in the upper 500 m of the South Pole ice cap. The strings form a trapezoidal array with a maximum baseline of 543 m. Each string has 7 stages equipped with one transmitter and one sensor module. Sound is detected or generated by piezoelectric ceramic elements inside the modules. Analogue signals are sent to the surface on electric cables where they are digitized by a PC-based data acquisition system. The data from all strings are collected on a central computer in the IceCube Laboratory from where they are send to a central data storage facility via a satellite link or stored locally on tape. A technical overview of SPATS and its performance is presented.
While conversion of wetlands to nonagricultural purposes has persisted, the five U.S. national wetland inventory reports spanning 1955-2009 show a large decline in the rate of conversion of wetlands ...for agriculture, especially from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. Through regression and path analysis, this study identifies primary policy and economic drivers of this decline in wetland conversions. The Clean Water Act §404 is strongly and negatively related to conversion rates. Crop prices affect wetland conversions both directly, by influencing returns to investments for conversion, and indirectly, by influencing Conservation and Wetland Reserve Program enrollments as well as the regulatory impact of Swampbuster. Along with the proportion of wetlands remaining, these factors explain 90-94% of the annual variation in total wetland conversions, agricultural conversions, and conversion of forested and emergent wetlands.
This landmark publication in comparative linguistics is the first comprehensive work to address the general issue of what kinds of words tend to be borrowed from other languages. The authors have ...assembled a unique database of over 70,000 words from 40 languages from around the world, 18,000 of which are loanwords. This database (http://loanwords.info) allows the authors to make empirically founded generalizations about general tendencies of word exchange among languages.
