Suffolk University

About: Suffolk University is a education organization based out in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Sugar beet. The organization has 6462 authors who have published 9321 publications receiving 235328 citations.

Long-term and regional variability of phytoplankton biomass in the Northeast Atlantic (1960-1995)

Abstract: Long-term regional changes in phytoplankton biomass in the Northeast Atlantic and North Sea are investigated using data from the Continuous Plankton Recorder survey. During the last decade there have been large changes in the long-term variation in phytoplankton biomass in the Northeast Atlantic and North Sea. Most regions, particularly in the North Sea, have shown a considerable increase in phytoplankton biomass while the opposite pattern was seen in the northern oceanic region of the Northeast Atlantic. These different spatial responses show similar patterns of change to the decadal variability in sea surface temperature influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation index. Two rare oceanographic events and their relationship to the interannual changes in phytoplankton biomass are discussed. The results highlight the importance of maintaining long-term biological monitoring programmes to assess the biological responses to slow oceanic/atmospheric processes and to rare or episodic physical events.

Effectiveness of different precipitated phosphates as phosphorus sources for plants

Abstract: Eleven precipitated phosphates were evaluated as sources of phosphorus (P) for plant growth by comparing their effectiveness with that of monocalcium phosphate, a source of water-soluble P that is generally considered to be fully plant available. The precipitated phosphates comprised struvites recovered from waste water discharges (mainly magnesium ammonium phosphate), laboratory synthesised struvites, a synthetic iron phosphate and a recovered calcium phosphate. Precipitating phosphates in these forms could be a way for removing P from waste water before it is discharged to rivers, so reducing the risk of eutrophication. Application to agricultural land would be one potential use for such phosphates. Evaluation was by pot experiments with a sandy loam soil and with a sandy clay loam soil using perennial ryegrass as the test crop. The soils differed in pH (6.6 and 7.1) and in Olsen P (28 and 11 mg L -1 ). Measured variables were grass dry-matter (DM) yield and grass P concentration which were used to calculate offtake of P in the harvested grass. DM yields of ryegrass and P offtakes given by the synthetic and recovered struvites were not significantly different statistically either between themselves or to MCP applied at the same rate. On this basis these struvites could be used to recycle P to similar soils and the effect of the P on crop yield should be similar to that of MCP

ZEUS: a toolkit and approach for building distributed multi-agent systems

Abstract: The innate difficulty of constructing multi-agent systems has motivated agent developers to move away from developing point solutions to point problems in favour of developing methodologies and toolkits for building distributed multi-agent systems. This philosophy led to the development of the ZEUS Agent Building Toolkit, which facilitates the rapid development of collaborative agent applications through the provision of a library of agent-level components and an environment to support the agent building process. The ZEUS toolkit is a synthesis of established agent technologies with some novel solutions to provide an integrated collaborative agent building environment.