Use of wetlands, ponds and buffer zones in Finland

Main purpose of the CWs (constructed wetlands) for the treatment of runoff from agricultural areas is to reduce nutrient loading to surface waters and hence combat eutrophication. The most important single design parameter controlling retention effectiviness of a CW is its area in relation to the catchment area. Input concentrations, catchment properties(soil type!), hydraulic efficiency and CW soil properties also have a significant influence on the effectiviness

WARFARE AND WELFARE? Understanding 19th and 20th Century Central Government Spending

This paper evaluates theories aiming to explain the size and growth of government spending, develops a framework inclusive of the so-called guns vs. butter tradeoff effect, and offers insights especially for the period 1870-1938. There were differences between the excessive and responsive government explanations, and between the long-run and short-run explanations, as well as cross-section and time series approaches. Here central government spending, conditioned by the regime characteristics, is proposed to be analyzed on the basis of the demand characteristics of military spending and social spending, their interaction, public debt constraints, as well as institutional constraints and other environmental variables.

Exploring Temporal Networks with Greedy Walks

Temporal networks come with a wide variety of heterogeneities, from burstiness of event sequences to correlations between timings of node and link activations. In this paper, we set to explore the latter by using greedy walks as probes of temporal network structure. Given a temporal network (a sequence of contacts), greedy walks proceed from node to node by always following the first available contact. Because of this, their structure is particularly sensitive to temporal-topological patterns involving repeated contacts between sets of nodes. This becomes evident in their small coverage per step as compared to a temporal reference model -- in empirical temporal networks, greedy walks often get stuck within small sets of nodes because of correlated contact patterns. While this may also happen in static networks that have pronounced community structure, the use of the temporal reference model takes the underlying static network structure out of the equation and indicates that there is a purely temporal reason for the observations. Further analysis of the structure of greedy walks indicates that burst trains, sequences of repeated contacts between node pairs, are the dominant factor. However, there are larger patterns too, as shown with non-backtracking greedy walks. We proceed further to study the entropy rates of greedy walks, and show that the sequences of visited nodes are more structured and predictable in original data as compared to temporally uncorrelated references. Taken together, these results indicate a richness of correlated temporal-topological patterns in temporal networks

On the role of the environments and star formation for quasar activity

We investigate the host galaxy and environment properties of a sample of 400 low z (<0.5) quasars that were imaged in the SDSS Stripe82. We can detect and study the properties of the host galaxy for more than 75% of the data sample. We discover that quasar are mainly hosted in luminous galaxies of absolute magnitude M* -3 < M(R) < M* and that in the quasar environments the galaxy number density is comparable to that of inactive galaxies of similar luminosities. For these quasars we undertake also a study in u,g,r,i and z SDSS bands and again we discover that the mean colours of the quasar host galaxy it is not very different with respect to the values of the sample of inactive galaxies. For a subsample of low z sources the imaging study is complemented by spectroscopy of quasar hosts and of close companion galaxies. This study suggests that the supply and cause of the nuclear activity depends only weakly on the local environment of quasars. Contrary to past suggestions, for low redshift quasar there is a very modest connection between recent star formation and the nuclear activity.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of the conference "QUASARS at all cosmic epochs", accepted for publication on Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Scienc

Relic density in nonuniversal gaugino mass models with SO(10) GUT symmetry

Non-universal boundary conditions in grand unified theories can lead to nonuniversal gaugino masses at the unification scale. In R-parity preserving theories the lightest supersymmetric particle is a natural candidate for the dark matter. The composition of the lightest neutralino and the identity of the next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle are studied, when nonuniversal gaugino masses come from representations of SO(10). In these cases, the thermal relic density compatible with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe observations is found. Relic densities are compared with the universal case. Mass spectra in the studied cases are discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 13 figures, revtex4, two-column. V2: Typos corrected and references adde