The farmers have pointed me towards a few personalities to begin profiling. Firstly there is the herd that is currently being milked for commercial milk and cheese production and then there are the cows who are taking care of the calves. The latter are kept separately and are lovingly referred to as ‘the nursery’. In the nursery I met Norma and Josie who are acting as wet nurses. The cows are mothering 5 calves between the two of them, calves who are not necessarily theirs.  Norma is an older cow, and a veteran mother. She is a Normande which are said by the North American Normande Association to “reach sexual maturity early and have good fertility, mammary conformation, mothering ability and production longevity”. Josie on the other hand is a Jersey which is one of the oldest dairy breeds, popular because of its milk and butterfat production.They have an average weight of 900 pounds, and produce more pounds of milk per pound of body weight than any other breed. Most Jerseys produce more then 13x their bodyweight in milk each time they lactate. Norma and Josie are in the nursery due to the fact that their milk has tested high in somatic cell counts. Somatic cells are white blood cells which are produced when the immune system is in overdrive due to an infection of some sort, possibly mastitis. The milk is not commercially viable when the somatic cell counts are too high and if Norma and Josie’s counts don’t drop they will have to leave the herd. In this instance the farmers are performing a type of experiment to see if rigorous suckling will lower their somatic cell counts. They will test again after this batch of calves is weened from Norma and Josie. This constant milking from calves takes quite a toll on Norma and Josie physically and they are both looking quite thin these days. Traumatic suckling syndrome? Might they benefit from an online support group of nursing mothers? Josie is now a password holding member of http://www.breastfeeding.com/forums/.

Adaptation to fairly rudimentary housing development … not only ducks but owls and otherscheck in …

speculations about thte animations of drought for instance …

a good thousand recent papers on water research .

use

another reason why we just need to explode the riparian zones … more better everywhere.

images showing the bat density on the trees. Strange fruit for a tree.

www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/8765/2010/

doi:10.5194/acpd-10-8765-2010

© Author(s) 2010. This work is distributed

under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Single particle characterization of black carbon aerosols at a tropospheric alpine site in Switzerland

D. Liu1, M. Flynn1, M. Gysel2, A. Créso Targino1, I. Crawford1, K. Bower1, T. Choularton1, Z. Juranyi2, M. Steinbacher3, C. Hüglin3, J. Curtius4, M. Kampus4, A. Petzold5, E. Weingartner2, U. Baltensperger2, and H. Coe1

1Centre for Atmospheric Science, School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

2Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland

3EMPA Überlandstrasse 129, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland

4Institute for Atmospheric Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

5Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, Oberpfaffenhofen, 82234 Wessling, Germany

Abstract. Black carbon (BC) mass, size distribution and mixing state in sub-micron aerosols were characterized from late February to March 2007 using a single particle incandescence method at the high alpine research station Jungfraujoch (JFJ), Switzerland (46.33° N, 7.59° E, 3580 m a.s.l.). JFJ is a ground based location, which is at times exposed to continental free tropospheric air. A median mass absorption coefficient (MAC) of 10.2±3.2 m2 g−1 at λ = 630 nm was derived by comparing single particle incandescence measurements of black carbon mass with continuous measurements of absorption coefficient. This value is comparable with other estimates at this location. The aerosols measured at the site were mostly well mixed and aged during transportation via the free troposphere. Pollutant sources were traced by air mass back trajectories, trace gases concentrations and the mass loading of BC. In southeasterly wind directions, mixed or convective weather types provided the potential to vent polluted boundary layer air from the southern Alpine area and industrial northern Italy, delivering enhanced BC mass loading and CN concentrations to the JFJ. The aerosol loadings at this site were also significantly influenced by precipitation, which led to the removal of BC from the atmosphere. Precipitation events were shown to remove about 65% of the BC mass from the free tropospheric background reducing the mean loading from 10±5 ngm−3 to 4±2 ngm−3. Overall, 40±15% of the observed BC particles within the detectable size range were mixed with large amounts of non-refractory materials present as a thick coating around the BC core. The growth of particle size into the accumulation mode was positively linked with the degree of BC mixing, suggesting the important role of condensable materials in increasing particle size as well as enhancing BC mixing state. It is the first time that BC mass, size distribution and mixing state are reported in the free troposphere over Europe. These ground based measurements also provide the first temporal study of BC in the European free troposphere quantitatively measured by single particle methods. At the present time there is only limited information of BC and its mixing state in the free troposphere, especially above Europe. The results reported in this paper provide an important constraint on modelled representation of BC.

via ACPD – Abstract – Single particle characterization of black carbon aerosols at a tropospheric alpine site in Switzerland.