bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Manichaeism and Ancient Mesopotamian "Gnosticism"
Authors: Ataç Mehmet-Ali 
Published: March 2006

AbstractThis essay compares Manichaean cosmogony with select ancient Mesopotamian myths with special emphasis on parallels between the Manichaean "First Creation" and the myth of the Descent of Inanna/Ishtar to the netherworld. It further compares the Manichaean "Second Creation" and "Third Creation" with aspects of the Babylonian Poem of Creation, Enuma Elish, and The Epic of Gilgamesh respectively. Unlike Gnostic myths, no overall semantic network seems to tie individual Mesopotamian myths together. However, close correspondence between both traditions not only helps one see certain Mesopotamian myths in a different light, but also reveals the indebtedness of Gnostic myths to Near Eastern antiquity.
Broadband Albedo Observations in the Southern Great Plains
Authors: Duchon Claude E. , Hamm Kenneth G. 
Published: March 2006

Abstract
Time series of daily broadband surface albedo for 1998 and 1999 have been analyzed from six locations in the network of 22 Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program Solar–Infrared Radiation Stations distributed from central Kansas to central Oklahoma. Two of the stations are in Kansas, and four are in Oklahoma; together they reasonably encompass the variation in geography in the southern Great Plains. Daily precipitation totals locally measured or obtained from nearby Oklahoma Mesonet stations and time series of biweekly maximum normalized difference vegetation index obtained from NOAA’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer were used to determine linkages between surface albedo and amount of precipitation and degree of green vegetation. As part of this determination, daily albedo was categorized according to sky condition, that is, clear, partly cloudy, or overcast, with appropriate boundaries for each category. The more notable results are the following: 1) 2-yr mean annual albedos varied by more than 20% among the six sites, the lowest albedo being 0.18 and the highest albedo being 0.22; 2) the numerical difference was about 4 times the maximum interannual mean difference among the six stations, indicating the importance of geographic location; 3) for sites with a large amount of bare soil, a systematic decrease in albedo in response to rainfall events and a systematic increase in albedo as the soil dried were observed; 4) at the one site with total vegetation cover, that is, no bare soil, albedo response to precipitation events was suppressed; 5) no relation was found between mean annual albedo and annual precipitation; 6) whether days were classified as clear or partly cloudy had little influence on daily albedo, but overcast days typically reduced albedo, sometimes substantially; and 7) the main contributor to low albedos on overcast days with rain was the wet surface; the contribution by the overcast sky was secondary.
High-Resolution Large-Eddy Simulations of Flow in a Steep Alpine Valley. Part I: Methodology, Verification, and Sensitivity Experiments
Authors: Chow Fotini Katopodes , Weigel Andreas P. , Street Robert L. , Rotach Mathias W. , Xue Ming 
Published: March 2006

AbstractThis paper investigates the steps necessary to achieve accurate simulations of flow over steep, mountainous terrain. Large-eddy simulations of flow in the Riviera Valley in the southern Swiss Alps are performed at horizontal resolutions as fine as 150 m using the Advanced Regional Prediction System. Comparisons are made with surface station and radiosonde measurements from the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP)-Riviera project field campaign of 1999. Excellent agreement between simulations and observations is obtained, but only when high-resolution surface datasets are used and the nested grid configurations are carefully chosen. Simply increasing spatial resolution without incorporating improved surface data gives unsatisfactory results. The sensitivity of the results to initial soil moisture, land use data, grid resolution, topographic shading, and turbulence models is explored. Even with strong thermal forcing, the onset and magnitude of the upvalley winds are highly sensitive to surface processes in areas that are well outside the high-resolution domain. In particular, the soil moisture initialization on the 1-km grid is found to be crucial to the success of the finer-resolution predictions. High-resolution soil moisture and land use data on the 350-m-resolution grid also improve results. The use of topographic shading improves radiation curves during sunrise and sunset, but the effects on the overall flow are limited because of the strong lateral boundary forcing from the 1-km grid where terrain slopes are not well resolved. The influence of the turbulence closure is also limited because of strong lateral forcing and hence limited residence time of air inside the valley and because of the stable stratification, which limits turbulent stress to the lowest few hundred meters near the surface.
High-Resolution Large-Eddy Simulations of Flow in a Steep Alpine Valley. Part II: Flow Structure and Heat Budgets
Authors: Weigel Andreas P. , Chow Fotini K. , Rotach Mathias W. , Street Robert L. , Xue Ming 
Published: March 2006

AbstractThis paper analyzes the three-dimensional flow structure and the heat budget in a typical medium-sized and steep Alpine valley—the Riviera Valley in southern Switzerland. Aircraft measurements from the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP)-Riviera field campaign reveal a very pronounced valley-wind system, including a strong curvature-induced secondary circulation in the southern valley entrance region. Accompanying radio soundings show that the growth of a well-mixed layer is suppressed, even under convective conditions. Our analyses are based on the MAP-Riviera measurement data and the output of high-resolution large-eddy simulations using the Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS). Three sunny days of the measurement campaign are simulated. Using horizontal grid spacings of 350 and 150 m (with a vertical spacing as fine as 20 m), the model reproduces the observed flow features very well. The ARPS output data are then used to calculate the components of the heat budget of the valley atmosphere, first in profiles over the valley base and then as averages over almost the entire valley volume. The analysis shows that the suppressed growth of the well-mixed layer is due to the combined effect of cold-air advection in the along-valley direction and subsidence of warm air from the free atmosphere aloft. It is further influenced by the local cross-valley circulation. This had already been hypothesized on the basis of measurement data and is now confirmed through a numerical model. Averaged over the entire valley, subsidence turns out to be one of the main heating sources of the valley atmosphere and is of comparable magnitude to turbulent heat flux divergence. On the mornings of two out of the three simulation days, this subsidence is even identified as the only major heating source and thus appears to be an important driving mechanism for the onset of thermally driven upvalley winds.
Mapping the Hazard of Extreme Rainfall by Peaks over Threshold Extreme Value Analysis and Spatial Regression Techniques
Authors: Beguería Santiago , Vicente-Serrano Sergio M. 
Published: March 2006

AbstractThe occurrence of rainfalls of high magnitude constitutes a primary natural hazard in many parts of the world, and the elaboration of maps showing the hazard of extreme rainfalls has great theoretical and practical interest. In this work a procedure based on extreme value analysis and spatial interpolation techniques is described. The result is a probability model in which the distribution parameters vary smoothly in space. This methodology is applied to the middle Ebro Valley (Spain), a climatically complex area with great contrasts because of the relief and exposure to different air masses. The database consists of 43 daily precipitation series from 1950 to 2000. Because rainfall tends to occur highly clustered in time in the area, a declustering process was applied to the data, and the series of daily cluster maxima were used hereinafter. The mean excess plot and error minimizing were used to find an optimum threshold value to retain the highest records (peaks-over-threshold approach), and a Poisson–generalized Pareto model was fitted to the resulting series. The at-site parameter estimates (location, scale, and shape) were regressed upon a set of location and relief variables, enabling the construction of a spatially explicit probability model. The advantages of this method to obtain maps of extreme precipitation hazard are discussed in depth.
Contrails to Cirrus—Morphology, Microphysics, and Radiative Properties
Authors: Atlas David , Wang Zhien , Duda David P. 
Published: March 2006

Abstract
This work is two pronged, discussing 1) the morphology of contrails and their transition to cirrus uncinus, and 2) their microphysical and radiative properties. It is based upon the fortuitous occurrence of an unusual set of essentially parallel contrails and the unanticipated availability of nearly simultaneous observations by photography, satellite, automated ground-based lidar, and a newly available database of aircraft flight tracks. The contrails, oriented from the northeast to southwest, are carried to the southeast with a component of the wind so that they are spread from the northwest to southeast. Convective turrets form along each contrail to form the cirrus uncinus with fallstreaks of ice crystals that are oriented essentially normal to the contrail length. Each contrail is observed sequentially by the lidar and tracked backward to the time and position of the originating aircraft track with the appropriate component of the wind. The correlation coefficient between predicted and actual time of arrival at the lidar is 0.99, so that one may identify both visually and satellite-observed contrails exactly. Contrails generated earlier in the westernmost flight corridor occasionally arrive simultaneously with those formed later closer to the lidar to produce broader cirrus fallstreaks and overlapping contrails on the satellite image. The minimum age of a contrail is &gt;2 h and corresponds to the longest time of travel to the lidar. The lag between the initial formation of the contrail and its first detectability by Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is ≈33 min, thus accounting for the distance between the aircraft track and the first detectable contrail by satellite. The lidar also provides particle fall speeds and estimated sizes, optical extinction coefficients, optical thickness (τ = 0.35), and ice water path (IWP = 8.1 g m−2). These values correspond to the lower range of those found for midlatitude cirrus by Heymsfield et al. The ice water per meter of length along the cloud lines is 103–104 times that released by typical jet aircraft. The synthesis of these findings with those of prior investigators provides confidence in the present results. Various authors find that contrail-generated cirrus such as reported here contribute to net regional warming.
Objective Assessment of the Information Content of Visible and Infrared Radiance Measurements for Cloud Microphysical Property Retrievals over the Global Oceans. Part I: Liquid Clouds
Authors: L’Ecuyer Tristan S. , Gabriel Philip , Leesman Kyle , Cooper Steven J. , Stephens Graeme L. 
Published: March 2006

Abstract
The importance of accurately representing the role of clouds in climate change studies has become increasingly apparent in recent years, leading to a substantial increase in the number of satellite sensors and associated algorithms that are devoted to measuring the global distribution of cloud properties. The physics governing the radiative transfer through clouds is well understood, but the impact of uncertainties in algorithm assumptions and the true information content of the measurements in the inverse retrieval problem are generally not as clear, making it difficult to determine the best product to adopt for any particular application. This paper applies information theory to objectively analyze the problem of liquid cloud retrievals from an observing system modeled after the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument currently operating on the Aqua and Terra platforms. It is found that four diagnostics—the retrieval error covariance, the information content, the number of degrees of freedom for signal, and the effective rank of the problem—provide a rigorous test of an observing system. Based on these diagnostics, the combination of the 0.64- and 1.64-μm channels during the daytime and the 3.75- and 11.0-μm channels at night provides the most information for retrieving the properties of the wide variety of liquid clouds modeled. With an eye toward developing a coherent representation of the global distribution of cloud microphysical and radiative properties, these four channels may be integrated into a suitable multichannel inversion methodology such as the optimal estimation or Bayesian techniques to provide a common framework for cloud retrievals under varying conditions. The expected resolution of the observing system for such liquid cloud microphysical property retrievals over a wide variety of liquid cloud is also explored.
Objective Assessment of the Information Content of Visible and Infrared Radiance Measurements for Cloud Microphysical Property Retrievals over the Global Oceans. Part II: Ice Clouds
Authors: Cooper Steven J. , L’Ecuyer Tristan S. , Gabriel Philip , Baran Anthony J. , Stephens Graeme L. 
Published: March 2006

Abstract
Cirrus clouds play an important yet poorly determined role in the earth’s climate system and its various feedback mechanisms. As such, a significant amount of work has been accomplished both in understanding the physics of the ice clouds and in using this knowledge to estimate global distributions of ice cloud properties from satellite-based instruments. This work seeks to build on these past efforts by offering a reexamination of the ice cloud retrieval problem in context of recent advancements in the understanding of optical properties for a variety of realistic ice crystal shapes. In this work, the formal information content analysis outlined in Part I is used to objectively select the optimal combination of measurements for an ice cloud microphysical property retrieval scheme given a realistic assessment of the uncertainties that govern the ice cloud retrieval problem. Although this analysis is for a theoretical retrieval combining simulated measurements from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) with the CloudSat Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) above an ocean surface, the general methodology is applicable to any instrument package. Channel selection via information content is determined through a realistic characterization of not only the sensitivity of top-of-the-atmosphere radiances to desired retrieval parameters but also to the uncertainties resulting from both the measurements themselves and from the forward model assumptions used in relating observational and retrieval space. Results suggest that the channels that maximize retrieval information are strongly dependent upon the state of the atmosphere, meaning that no combination of two or three channels will always ensure an accurate retrieval. Because of the complexities of this state-dependent nature and the need for a consistent retrieval scheme for an operational retrieval, a five-channel retrieval approach consisting of a combination of error-weighted visible, near-infrared, and infrared channels is suggested. Such an approach ensures high information content regardless of cloud and atmospheric properties through use of the inherent sensitivities in each of these spectral regions.
Effect of Air Pollution on Precipitation along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains
Authors: Jirak Israel L. , Cotton William R. 
Published: March 2006

Abstract
Air pollution generated in industrial and urban areas can act to suppress precipitation by creating a narrow cloud droplet spectrum, which inhibits the collision and coalescence process. In fact, precipitation ratios of elevated sites to upwind coastal urban areas have decreased during the twentieth century for locations in California and Israel while pollution emissions have increased. Precipitation suppression by pollution should also be evident in other areas of the world where shallow, orographic clouds produce precipitation. This study investigates the precipitation trends for sites along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains to determine the effect of air pollution on precipitation in this region. The examination of precipitation trends reveals that the ratio of upslope precipitation for elevated sites west of Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado, to upwind urban sites has decreased by approximately 30% over the past half-century. Similar precipitation trends were not found for more pristine sites in the region, providing evidence of precipitation suppression by air pollution.
Evaluating a Hybrid Prognostic–Diagnostic Model That Improves Wind Forecast Resolution in Complex Coastal Topography
Authors: Ludwig Francis L. , Miller Douglas K. , Gallaher Shawn G. 
Published: March 2006

Abstract
The results from a hybrid approach that combines the forecasts of a mesoscale model with a diagnostic wind model to produce high-resolution wind forecasts in complex coastal orography are evaluated. The simple diagnostic wind model [Winds on Critical Streamline Surfaces (WOCSS)] was driven with forecasts (on a 9-km grid) from the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) to obtain detailed near-surface wind forecasts with 3-km horizontal spacing. Forecasts were produced by this hybrid model for four cold-season cases—two frontal and two nonfrontal—over the central California coastal region. They were compared with 3-km forecasts from the innermost COAMPS full physics model nest and with winds observed at 35 surface sites scattered throughout the study domain. The evaluation sought to determine the conditions for which the hybrid approach performs well and those for which it does not. The performance (in terms of bias and root-mean-square error) was evaluated 1) when there were and were not fronts and 2) for the early (6–18 h) and late (21–36 h) periods of the mesoscale model forecasts. The geographic distribution of performance was also examined to see if forecasts were affected by mountains and oceans. The hybrid approach performed best during stable, nonfrontal conditions. There were no clearly defined geographic effects on hybrid performance. The computation requirements of the full physics mesoscale model nested down to 3 km are substantially greater than those of the hybrid approach. Suggestions are given for further improvements.
A framework for using epidemiological data for risk assessment
Authors: Swaen G MH 
Published: March 2006

Data on health effects from human exposure to chemicals provide the most direct information for risk assessment. Despite their clear relevance for risk assessment and despite the frequently made statements by regulatory bodies to use epidemiological data whenever deemed appropriate, they are not always optimally used. In this article, a framework for using epidemiological data in risk assessment is presented. Before using an epidemiologic study as the basis for risk assessment, its quality must be evaluated. The quality criteria for such a study strongly depends on the type of association between the chemical and health effect in terms of its specificity and latency period. The framework is built on the type of health effect under consideration, whether it is a specific or non-specific effect and time window of the effect, whether it is an acute, sub-acute or long-term effect. Specificity and latency are aspects that have a great impact on the choice of research design and quality criteria that must be met in order to produce reliable results appropriate for risk assessment purposes. Although expert judgement will always play an important role, the framework can help to assess if a set of epidemiological data are sufficiently reliable to serve as the basis for the derivation of health-based exposure limits. The limitations and suitability to use for risk assessment of epidemiologic studies is more likely to be the result of poor or insufficient exposure data than of poor or unreliable health effect information. It is concluded that the value of epidemiologic data not only depends on its intrinsic quality, but also on the type of health effects under consideration. In this respect, the specificity and latency play an important role.
Risk of Second Malignancy After Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma: A British Cohort Study
Authors: Mudie Nadejda Y. , Swerdlow Anthony J. , Higgins Craig D. , Smith Paul , Qiao Zongkai , Hancock Barry W. , Hoskin Peter J. , Linch David C. 
Published: March 2006

Purpose To assess long-term site-specific risks of second malignancy following non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) in relation to treatment and demographic factors. Patients and Methods A cohort of 2,456 patients with NHL who were first treated from 1973 to 2000 and were younger than 60 years from centers in the British National Lymphoma Investigation were observed, and occurrences of second malignancy was compared with expectations based on general population cancer rates in England and Wales. Results In total, 123 second malignancies occurred. Relative risks (RRs) were significantly elevated for all malignancies combined (RR = 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1 to 1.6) and for leukemia (RR = 8.8; 95% CI, 5.1 to 14.1) and lung cancer (RR = 1.6; 95% CI, 1.1 to 2.3). RRs of malignancy overall diminished significantly with increasing age at first treatment. Leukemia risk was significantly increased after chemotherapy (RR = 10.5; 95% CI, 5.0 to 19.3) and mixed-modality treatment (RR = 13.0; 95% CI, 5.2 to 26.7). Relative risks of lung (RR = 1.9; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.1) and colorectal (RR = 2.1; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.6) cancers were significantly raised following chemotherapy. Conclusion NHL patients are at elevated risk of developing second malignancy, particularly leukemia and lung cancer. The relative risk is greater with patients who are younger at first treatment. Chemotherapy predisposes patients toan increased risk of leukemia, and possibly lung and colorectal cancers. The role of specific drug treatments in the etiology of solid cancers after NHL deserves further investigation.