Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geochemical Behavior of Uranium and Radon in Groundwater of Jurassic Granite Area, Icheon, Middle Korea

Uranium concentrations (a total of 82 samples) in groundwater in Icheon, middle Korea, showed a wide range from 0.02 to 1640 μg/L with a mean of 56.77 μg/L, a median of 3.03 μg/L, and a standard deviation of 228.63 μg/L. Most groundwater samples had quite low concentrations: 32.9% were below 1 μg/L, while 15.9% exceeded 30 μg/L, the maximum contaminant level (MCL) of the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). Radon concentrations also ranged widely from 1.48 to 865.8 Bq/L. Although the standard deviation of radon was large (151.8 Bq/L), the mean was 211.29 Bq/L and the median was 176.86 Bq/L. Overall, 64.6% of the samples exceeded the alternative maximum contaminant level (AMCL) of the US EPA (148 Bq/L). According to statistical analyses, there was no close correlations between uranium and radon, but there were correlations between uranium and redox potential (Eh) (−0.54), dissolved oxygen (DO) (−0.50), HCO3− (0.45), Sr (0.65), and SiO2 (−0.44). Radon showed independent behavior with respect to most components in groundwater. Uranium concentrations in groundwater increased with increasing water–rock interactions. Anomalously high uranium and radon concentrations in groundwater are preferentially localized in granite areas and spatial distributions are remarkably heterogeneous.
Lignin oxidation products as a potential proxy for vegetation and environmental changes in speleothems and cave drip water – a first record from the Herbstlabyrinth, central Germany

Abstract. Here, we present the first quantitative speleothem record of lignin oxidation products (LOPs), which has been determined in a Holocene stalagmite from the Herbstlabyrinth Cave in central Germany. In addition, we present LOP results from 16 months of drip water monitoring. Lignin is only produced by vascular plants and therefore has the potential to be an unambiguous vegetation proxy and to complement other vegetation and climate proxies in speleothems. We compare our results with stable isotope and trace element data from the same sample. In the stalagmite, LOP concentrations show a similar behavior to P, Ba and U concentrations, which have previously been interpreted as vegetation proxies. The LOP S∕V and C∕V ratios, which are usually used to differentiate between angiosperm and gymnosperm and woody and non-woody vegetation, show complex patterns suggesting additional influencing factors, such as transport and microbiological effects. The drip water from a fast drip site shows a seasonal pattern of LOPs with low LOP concentrations in winter and higher LOP concentrations in summer. These results indicate the potential of LOPs as a new proxy for vegetational and environmental changes in speleothems but also demonstrate the complexity and the current limitations of our understanding of the transport of lignin from the soil into the cave and the speleothems.
Monitoring chemical contamination levels in Karasu River based on the use of Enochrus spp. (Hydrophilidae) and Chondrostoma regium (Cyprinidae)

Introduction. Existing literature indicate that e lements are present in varying concentration in all ecosystems but anthropogenic activities increase the level of this pollutants. Aim of the study. To find out concentration of some heavy elements (Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Se, Br, Sr, Pb) as heavy element pollution in Erzurum (Turkey), accumulation level of Hydrophilidae (Coleoptera) and C hondrostoma regium species and to assess the health status of Erzurum wetlands . Material and methods. W ater, sediment, fish and insect samples were collected in Karasu River (Erzurum, Turkey). Heavy elements levels in insects and abiotic samples were analyzed by Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometer. Fish tissues, from the same habitat were measured by ICP-MS. Results. T he elements concentrations were found to increase from fish tissues to insects (fish tissues< sediment < water <insects). It can be said that insects accumulate more heavy elements than fish tissues thus insects can be one of the source of contamination of the fish . All results were well below the limits for fish proposed by national and international standards and did not pose a health concern for fish consumers. Conclusions. Based on the analyses of fish samples, heavy element concentrations in fish from studied areas of Erzurum are low. Although levels of heavy element are not high, residue of Pb, Cd and Hg in food may cause health problem for future . Keywords: Aquatic insects, fish, EDXRF, ICP-MS, h ealth hazard.
Exploring the Effects of Intention-oriented Input-based Instruction in Second Language Pragmatics: A Case of English Request Hedges

The present study investigates the effects of two types of intention-oriented input-based approaches ―intentional learning-induced instruction (INT＋) and incidental learning-induced instruction (INT－) on learners' recognition and production of English request hedges. The results demonstrated that the INT＋and INT－groups performed significantly better than the control group on an acceptability judgment test (an unplanned written judgment test). There were no statistically significant differences between the two experimental groups on the acceptability judgment test, which suggested that the incidental input-based learning took place and had some effects on recognizing English request hedges. In other words, it showed that incidental learning became possible in recognizing English hedges when learners were able to attend to and became aware of both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic resources of English request hedges. However, a comparison of those learners in the two treatment groups in a discourse completion test (an unplanned written-production test) indicated an advantage for the INT＋group and implied that the intentional input-based learning involving processing of English polite requests through pragmalinguistic-sociopragmatic connection contributed more to producing English requests hedges.
Technology and Textbooks: The Future

ABSTRACT This article describes two separate studies: a survey of students’ textbook perceptions, purchases, and usage for e-textbooks and print textbooks and a conjoint analysis on e-textbook attributes. Print textbooks were perceived as easier to read, understand, and navigate, whereas e-textbooks were perceived to be cheaper. Students were willing to purchase e-textbooks, although most did not have e-readers. In the conjoint study, price was the most important attribute, followed by access to online study guides, videos, and quizzes and the duration of e-textbook accessibility. The ideal e-textbook was priced at 60% of the print textbook; was accessible for one year; and provided access to online study guides, videos, and quizzes.
Solar Wind Dynamic Pressure Upstream From Saturn: Estimation From Magnetosheath Properties and Comparison With SKR

An analytical method is developed by which measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft in Saturn's magnetosheath can be used to infer the upstream solar wind parameters, specifically the solar wind speed (Vsw) and the dynamic pressure (Pd). The method is validated by comparing the results with other estimates of these parameters, including the mSWiM MHD model and magnetopause and bow shock models applied to observed boundary crossings. The comparisons suggest that the new inferred Vsw are on average ~40 km/s lower than the mSWiM values, and the dynamic pressure values are slightly lower as well. We find few of the lower Pd values predicted by mSWiM, probably because Cassini would have been inside the expanded magnetosphere under such conditions. Systematic temporal variations such as interplanetary shocks do seem to be captured well, with arrival times within several days of the MHD prediction. Compared to dynamic pressures estimated from boundary crossings with well‐known magnetopause and bow shock models, the magnetosheath‐inferred dynamic pressure tends to be somewhat lower, but within the uncertainties of the analytical derivation. Comparison of the inferred dynamic pressure with observed Saturn's kilometric radiation (SKR) activity reveals several episodes of very good temporal tracking between dynamic pressure and SKR intensity, with relatively short time delays (4–5 hr), suggesting rather direct driving. Such good tracking intervals occur almost exclusively on the dawnside of the magnetosphere, where the dominant SKR source is visible. When the tracking is good, the SKR fluxes vary roughly as the square of the dynamic pressure.
Roles of Dynamic Forcings and Diabatic Heating in Summer Extreme Precipitation in East China and the Southeastern United States

Extratropical regional-scale extreme precipitation events (EPEs) are usually associated with certain synoptic perturbations superimposed on slow-varying background circulations. These perturbations induce a dynamically forced ascent that destabilizes the atmospheric stratification and stimulates deep convection, which further drives the perturbation by releasing latent heat. This study identifies the characteristics of large-scale perturbations associated with summer EPEs in two representative regions, East China (ECN) and the southeastern United States (SUS), and analyzes the roles of dynamic forcings and diabatic heating using the quasigeostrophic omega equation. Composites of 39 events in each region show that the upper-level absolute vorticity advection and tropospheric warm advection promote dynamically forced ascent in EPEs, and the moisture advection premoistens the local environment. The background circulation and synoptic perturbations in ECN and the SUS have significant differences. The background vorticity, temperature, and moisture advection form the quasi-steady mei-yu front in ECN, which provides favorable conditions for heavy rainfall. In the SUS, weaker background ascents are forced mainly through vorticity advection. In the synoptic scale, the EPEs in ECN are triggered by short-wavelength wave trains, and in the SUS the EPEs are triggered by longer wavelength potential vorticity intrusions. Although the amplitudes of the dynamically forced ascent in the two regions are similar, diabatic heating contributes much more to the vertical motion in ECN than the SUS, which indicates that there is stronger diabatic heating feedback there. The stronger diabatic heating feedback in ECN appears to be due to stronger moisture advection, convective environments with more humidity, and stronger coupling between convection and large-scale dynamics.
Systematic Literature Review on Relational Properties in Business-to-Business

This paper conducts a systematic literature review and reports the result in details. The focus is on the transaction cost economics and how TCE manifests in the literature when addressing the relational properties in the business-to-business context. Starting from 1196 journal papers, the initial set includes 203 papers fulfilling the inclusion criterion, of which 10 journal papers address the TCE theory. The ATLAS.ti software tool is used in qualitative data. The findings show strong marketing literature presence when the inclusion criterion needs that the relational properties and behavior are addressed in the business-to-business context. Interestingly, TCE appearance is such low however its well-recognized status as one of the main paradigms. The further research may deepen the synthesis on the relational properties and their effect on the business performance.
Eldonioids with associated trace fossils from the lower Cambrian Emu Bay Shale Konservat-Lagerstätte of South Australia

Abstract. Rare specimens of eldonioids recovered from the lower Cambrian (Series 2, Stage 4) Emu Bay Shale (EBS) Konservat-Lagerstätte represent the first record of the group for the Cambrian of East Gondwana. The disc-shaped body of the EBS taxon bears fine concentric corrugations on the dorsal surface and, ventrally, a series of internal lobes that have primary and secondary bifurcations, as well as a coiled sac. It appears to be most similar to Rotadiscus and Pararotadiscus of the Cambrian Chengjiang and Kaili biotas of South China, respectively. While the structure of the internal lobes would indicate that this occurrence in the EBS represents a new taxon within the Rotadiscidae, lack of detail regarding the precise number of internal lobes and the condition of the circumoral tentacles warrants a more conservative approach in leaving the genus and species under open nomenclature. The EBS specimens also host trace fossils, including the remains of a burrow, which are generally lacking in the body-fossilbearing layers of the Konservat-Lagerstätte interval. These traces appear to have been made by small organisms and are similar to traces associated with the discs of Pararotadiscus guizhouensis (Zhao and Zhu, 1994) from the Kaili Biota. The available taphonomic, paleoenvironmental, and ichnological evidence indicates that the EBS eldonioids are most likely vagrants that were transported or settled into the ‘preservational trap’ and subsequently exposed on the substrate for a brief period before burial, thereby allowing organisms to exploit their carcasses for nutrients or other purposes.
Attributing Historical and Future Evolution of Radiative Feedbacks to Regional Warming Patterns using a Green’s Function Approach: The Preeminence of the Western Pacific

Global radiative feedbacks have been found to vary in global climate model (GCM) simulations. Atmospheric GCMs (AGCMs) driven with historical patterns of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea ice concentrations produce radiative feedbacks that trend toward more negative values, implying low climate sensitivity, over recent decades. Freely evolving coupled GCMs driven by increasing CO2 produce radiative feedbacks that trend toward more positive values, implying increasing climate sensitivity, in the future. While this time variation in feedbacks has been linked to evolving SST patterns, the role of particular regions has not been quantified. Here, a Green’s function is derived from a suite of simulations within an AGCM (NCAR’s CAM4), allowing an attribution of global feedback changes to surface warming in each region. The results highlight the radiative response to surface warming in ascent regions of the western tropical Pacific as the dominant control on global radiative feedback changes. Historical warming from the 1950s to 2000s preferentially occurred in the western Pacific, yielding a strong global outgoing radiative response at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and thus a strongly negative global feedback. Long-term warming in coupled GCMs occurs preferentially in tropical descent regions and in high latitudes, where surface warming yields small global TOA radiation change but large global surface air temperature change, and thus a less-negative global feedback. These results illuminate the importance of determining mechanisms of warm pool warming for understanding how feedbacks have varied historically and will evolve in the future.
Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Mixing Phenomena in Double-Tee Junctions

This work investigates mixing phenomena in a pressurized pipe system with two sequential Tee junctions and experiments are conducted for a range of different inlet flow ratios, varying distances between Tee junctions and two pipe branching configurations. Additionally, obtained experimental results are compared with results from previous studies by different authors and are used to validate the numerical model using the open source computational fluid dynamics toolbox OpenFOAM. Two different numerical approaches are used—Passive scalar model and Multiphase model. It is found that both numerical models produce similar results and that they are both greatly dependent on the turbulent Schmidt number. After the calibration procedure, both models provided good results for all investigated flow ratios, double-Tee junction distances, and pipe branching configurations, therefore both numerical models can be applied for a wide range of pipe networks configurations, but passive scalar model is the viable choice due to its much higher computational efficiency. Obtained results also describe the relationship between the double-Tee distances and complete mixing occurrence.
Socioeconomic Determinants of Food Insecurity Among Rural Households in Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia

The major aim of this study was to assess the socioeconomic determinants of food insecurity among rural households in Wolaita Zone, Southern Ethiopia. Data for the study was obtained from 168 randomly selected rural households by using an interview schedule. To select sample respondents, the multi-stage sampling technique was used. The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) index and binary logistic regression model were used for data analysis. The finding from FGT index showed that about 66.1 percent of households in the study area were found food insecure and the remaining 33.9 percent were found food secure. The depth and severity of food insecurity were found 15 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively. The logistic regression model result revealed that factors such as land size, income from productive safety net program, credit access, farm income, and non-farm income are the statistically significant factors influencing the households’ food insecurity status. Accordingly, access to credit positively affects households’ food insecurity status, whereas the other significant variables affect it negatively. Consequently, improving productivity of land through better production methods, increasing farmers’ participation in safety net programs, Promoting income diversification, Revising credit repayment policies and promoting rural off-farm employment opportunities are suggested to improve the state of food insecurity in the study area.
Are there economic benefits from marine protected areas? An analysis of scuba diver expenditure

In 1998, the Italian authorities declared the marine area around the Peninsula of Portofino, Liguria, a Marine Protected Area (MPA) covering 13 km of coastline on the north-western coast of Italy. Thus, many feared decreased local tourism and resultant economic loss due to limitations on activities within the MPA. The MPA has, however, led to an increase in scuba in the area. This research evaluates the importance of scuba divers as a source of tourism and income for the local economies surrounding the Portofino MPA. Research indicates that spending is a better criterion for analysis than numbers of visitors to an attraction or area. Therefore, understanding spending behaviour is important in influencing the benefits derived from scuba diving tourism. While scuba diving is a popular activity worldwide and a drawcard for many destinations, little research analysing their spending behaviour is available. This research was conducted at the Portofino MPA, Italy, where more than 700 questionnaires were completed during June/July 2016 with the assistance of eight of approximately 20 diving operators in the area. The results provide dive operators and the destination marketing organisation with information on specific market segments and insight into the spending behaviour of divers.
Discrimination of Senescent Vegetation Cover from Landsat-8 OLI Imagery by Spectral Unmixing in the Northern Mixed Grasslands

Abstract The mixed grasslands of North America are ecosystems with a high volume of dead biomass. This characteristic underlies key ecosystem features such as the rate of carbon and nutrient uptake, heat flux exchange between the surface and the atmosphere, and wildlife habitat. Senescent vegetation is an important forage resource for grazing animals and is related to natural fire frequency and intensity. Therefore, quantitative estimation of photosynthetic vegetation (PV), senescent vegetation (NPV), and bare soil (BS) fraction is important for natural resource management. The authors propose an approach for extracting PV, NPV, and BS endmembers from the normalized difference vegetation index–dead fuel index (NDVI–DFI) plane by using the Landsat-8 imagery. The constrained linear spectral unmixing model was applied to discriminate NPV, PV, and BS using original spectral bands, NDVI–DFI indices, and original spectral plus NDVI and DFI indices. As a comparison, the traditional NDVI–SWIR32 was also investigated. Results showed that the DFI performed better than the SWIR32 to predict NPV from spectral unmixing. Index selection has a significant effect on NPV and BS cover fraction estimation. Choice of equation setup has a significant effect on the PV estimation. The methods proposed here can be applied to grassland ecosystems across the northern mixed grasslands region.
Data report: permeability, porosity, and frictional strength of core samples from IODP Expedition 366 in the Mariana forearc

Core samples from International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 366 were tested in the laboratory to determine permeability, porosity, density, and frictional strength and their relation to mineralogy as part of an effort to understand hydromechanical processes at convergent plate margins. Seven samples were tested from a depth range of 19.6 to 197.9 m below seafloor. The samples were derived from three serpentinite mud volcanoes in the Mariana forearc region that formed where slab-derived fluids and materials ascend along faults. The physical characteristics mirror compositional differences between predominantly serpentine-rich and saponite-rich samples. Permeability values ranged from 10−17 to 10−19 m2, low enough to facilitate the formation of high fluid pressures that have been observed in the Mariana and other subduction megathrust environments. Porosity ranged from 0.37 to 0.51 and density ranged from 1.66 to 2.01 g/cm3. Serpentine-rich samples have coefficients of friction of 0.2–0.4, consistent with crustal serpentinite from a variety of fault zones, whereas saponite-rich samples have friction values less than 0.2, consistent with saponite fault gouge from the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) drill hole in California (USA).
Landscape and Tectonic Evolution of Bayin River Watershed, Northeastern Qaidam Basin, Northern Tibetan Plateau: Implications for the Role of River Morphology in Source Analysis and Low‐Temperature Thermochronology

The Bayin River, the largest river in the northeastern Qaidam basin, plays an important role in the source‐to‐sink system and landscape evolution at the basin‐mountain boundary between the Qilian Mountains and the Qaidam basin in the northern Tibetan Plateau. In this study, we conduct field observation, topographic analysis, zircon U–Pb dating, and apatite (U–Th)/He dating to constrain the landscape and tectonic evolution of the Bayin River watershed. Bedrock zircon U–Pb dating indicates the age group of 420–450 Ma for far‐source sediments and the age group of >1,700 Ma for near‐source sediments in the Bayin River watershed. Detrital zircon U–Pb dating results from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic strata in the Bayin River watershed reveal that the most important source transition occurred during the Cretaceous. The Zongwulong Mountains gradually uplifted throughout the Cenozoic, along with decreasing far source and increasing near source based on detrital zircon U–Pb dating. Rapid uplift occurred across the Qilian Mountains during the late Cenozoic, leading to high normalized steepness indices, young apatite (U–Th)/He ages, and deep incised valleys at the basin‐mountain transition zone. The knickpoints caused by the latest headward erosion just reach an elevation of ~3,800 m on the river longitudinal profiles, indicating that the latest uplift magnitude is ~300–400 m relative to the basin surface of the Qaidam basin. Elevation distribution and apatite (U–Th)/He ages reveal that river incision leads to high relief in the Zongwulong Mountains and influences its tectonic evolution.