Heavy Metals in Sediments of the Upper Hawkesbury‐Nepean River

There is little published information on heavy metals in surficial sediments of the upper Hawkesbury‐Nepean River in central New South Wales, Australia. In the current investigation, the fine fraction (<62.5 µm) of 90 sediment samples taken from this section of the river was analysed by flame‐Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy for nine heavy metals (Ag, Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu Co, Fe, Ni and Mn) to determine background and enrichment. Sediment in the upper Hawkesbury‐Nepean River is not heavily polluted by heavy metals. Maximum enrichment over background for Ni and Ag, Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu and Mn is 3x, 5.7x, 6x, 6.7x, 12x and 13.6x, respectively. Mean heavy metal concentrations for this, the upper section of the river, are about half the mean values for the Hawkesbury River between Windsor and Broken Bay in the lower, estuarine section of the river. The highest Cu, Pb and Zn concentrations (214, 108 and 334 mg kg^?1, respectively) occur in surficial sediments in Peachtree Creek at Penrith and the Nepean River near Jacksons Lane, Castlereagh. These metal concentrations are possibly associated with industrial activity at Penrith. Two of the six sewage treatment plants on the upper Hawkesbury‐Nepean River are associated with high metal concentrations (Cu, Zn, Fe and Mn) in sediments, that is, the West Camden and Penrith sewage treatment plants. Other possible sources of heavy metals are coal mining and washing which occurs at several places in the upper catchment. The highest Cd, Co and Fe concentrations (1.7, 27.6 mg kg^?1 and 4.81%, respectively) were found in sediments 400 m downstream of the Nepean Dam and the highest concentrations of Ni and Mn (54 and 790 mg kg^?1, respectively) were located in sediment from the Nepean River at Moresby Hill Road Bridge, near Robertson and at the Avon Dam Road Bridge. The source of these metals is unknown.     

Sandercock: ‘Expanding the language of planning’

In her book Towards Cosmopolis, to which this paper is an appendix, Leonie Sandercock outlines with insight, passion and sensitivity an emancipatory politics of difference and the ways in which a progressive planning, transformed from its modernist roots, can contribute to such a politics. It is in this context that she has developed the idea of what a planning curriculum should look like. But somehow, in discussing planning education, the forceful and imaginative thrust of her book seems to get lost in a rather narrowly‐based conception of what ‘planning education’, itself a multiplicity of practices, looks like these days and in homogenized images of the ‘planner’ which can easily be criticized.     

The Vice President in the U.S. Senate: Examining the Consequences of Institutional Design

The constitutional placement of the vice president as the president of the Senate gives procedural control of the Senate to an individual who is not elected by the chamber. We argue that because the vice president frequently acts against the wishes of Senate majorities, senators have been reluctant to allow chamber power to be centralized under their largely unaccountable presiding officer. This fear has had a major influence on Senate development, preventing the Senate from allowing its chair to reduce dilatory action, as the House has done. Accordingly, delay, via the filibuster, has become commonplace in the Senate. Such delay has reduced the Senate's efficiency, but has largely freed it from the potential influence of the executive branch.     

The Clerk, the Thief, His Life as a Baker: Ashton Embry and the Supreme Court Leak Scandal

On December 16, 1919, Ashton Fox Embry, law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Joseph McKenna, abruptly resigned from the position he had held for almost nine years. His explanation? His fledgling bakery business required his undivided attention. Newspapers that morning hinted at a different reason: Embry resigned because he had conspired with at least three individuals to use inside knowledge of upcoming U.S. Supreme Court decisions to profit on Wall Street.2 A grand jury returned an indictment against Embry and his associates a few months later, and Embry’s argument that he had committed no crime ultimately reached the Supreme Court, the very institution he was accused of betraying. Despite the sensational headlines and fierce legal battle arising from his indictment, the United States Attorney quietly dismissed Embry’s case in 1929, almost ten years after the story had broken. Few Court scholars have ever heard of Embry, and the memory of Embry, much like the case against him, has disappeared with time.3 This article unravels the “Supreme Court Leak Case” by reconstructing what happened almost eighty years ago.     

Between rocks and a hard place: prehistoric funerary practices at Wādī Ḍebayʿān,northern Qatar

Archaeological survey by the Qatar National Historic Environment Record Project (QNHER) in 2009, led to the discovery of a Neolithic flint scatter, a settlement and an ancient, raised shoreline associated with higher, mid‐Holocene sea levels at Wādī ?ebay?ān, north‐western Qatar (Al‐Naimi et al. 2010, 2011; Cuttler, Tetlow & Al‐Naimi 2011). The QNHER project is a collaboration between Qatar Museums and the University of Birmingham, which over the past five years has developed a national geospatial database for the recording of archaeological sites and historic monuments in Qatar. A significant aspect of the project involved archaeological survey and excavation in advance of major construction projects. Between 2012 and 2014 excavations at Wādī ?ebay?ān revealed a burial of a typology previously unknown in Qatar, the unmarked graves (Cuttler, Al‐Naimi & Tetlow 2013).