Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Determinants of the Socioeconomic Profile of Fadama III Project Beneficiaries in Three States of Niger Delta Area of Nigeria

The study described the various socioeconomic profile of the Fadama III beneficiaries in Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa and Delta States, and provided implications with necessary recommendations for stakeholders. A sample size of 360 beneficiaries were selected using sampling methods involving multistage and simple random techniques. Results obtained revealed that the average age of respondents in the Niger Delta was 51.33 years. Respondents’ disaggregation by gender showed that male respondents were 57% and female respondents were 43%. It was found that 50.3% of the respondents had secondary education. Respondents’ average years of experience on farming were 14years. The Niger Delta Fadama III farmers had average farm sizes of 1.6 hectares. About one-third of respondents (30%) earned annual farm income of less than ? 120,000.00 in the study area. The household size on the average per state is 6 persons per household. It was generally noted that the activities of local facilitators and extension workers were average at 48% and 57% respectively. The study concluded that the socioeconomic profile of the Fadama III beneficiaries in the Niger Delta are similar in some situations and recommended that needs assessment should be conducted before specific project implementations.
EFFECT OF PIT LATRINES ON HAND DUGWELL WATER QUALITY - A CASE STUDY OF IJERO- EKITI COMMUNITY IN EKITI STATE, NIGERIA

Water samples were taken from 6 private hand dug wells sited at major locations within the community. The samples were assessed for both the bacteriological and physicochemical parameters. Water quality parameters: pH, chloride, nitrate, ammonium, electrical conductivity, turbidity, Iron, Phosphate, sulphate, conductivity, total dissolved solids, total acidity and total alkalinity were determined using standard methods. Faecal coliform, Heterotrophic, Vibrio and Salmonella spp. counts were determined by standard methods. All the physico-chemical parameters analyzed (except turbidity and nitrate) fell within the WHO and EPA standards for drinking water having a p-value of 0.05. The bacteriological analyses, however, showed that the total heterotrophic count ranged from 1.3x10 6 -1.5x10 7 cfu/ml, the highest coliform count was 3.6x10 6 cfu/ml, highest Salmonella-Shigella counts was 6.3x10 3 cfu/ml) and Highest E. coli count was 2.8x10 4 cfu/ml). The bacteria isolated from water samples in this work included Escherichia coli, Enterobacter aerogenes, Pseudomonas spp, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhosa, Shigella spp, Vibrio cholerae, Proteus spp, Klebsiella spp. with Salmonella sp. However, Shigella and V. cholera were only isolated from A, B, D, E samples. Epidemiological data revealed that the reported cases in clinics of water borne diseases like diarrhea and typhoid fever were high, showing infections through consumption of contaminated water from the hang-dug wells. The presence of these biological indicators suggest that the water is potentially harmful to human health if consumed untreated. This study revealed that he presence of these biological indicators suggest that the water is potentially harmful to human health if consumed untreated. Appropriate awareness and local institutional capacity building through provision of well-protected latrines, piped water and sustainable sanitation to reduce potential risk to public health is therefore advocated.
Incorporating synoptic-scale climate signals for streamflow modelling over the Mediterranean region using machine learning models

ABSTRACT Understanding streamflow patterns by incorporating climate signal information can contribute remarkably to the knowledge of future local environmental flows. Three machine learning models, the multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), the M5 Model Tree and the least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) are established to predict the streamflow pattern over the Mediterranean region of Turkey (Besiri and Baykan stations). The structure of the predictive models is built using synoptic-scale climate signal information and river flow data from antecedent records. The predictive models are evaluated and assessed using quantitative and graphical statistics. The correlation analysis demonstrates that the North Pacific (NP) and the East Central Tropical Pacific Sea Surface Temperature (Niño3.4) indices have a substantial influence on the streamflow patterns, in addition to the historical information obtained from the river flow data. The model results reveal the utility of the LSSVM model over the other models through incorporating climate signal information for modelling streamflow.
The Role of Hydrological Initial Conditions on Atmospheric River Floods in the Russian River Basin

A body of work over the last decade or so has demonstrated that most major floods along the U.S. West Coast are attributable to atmospheric rivers (ARs). Recent studies suggest that observed changes in extreme precipitation associated with a general warming of the western United States have not necessarily led to corresponding changes in floods, and changes in antecedent hydrological conditions could be a primary missing link. Here we examine the role of antecedent soil moisture (ASM) conditions on historical AR flooding on California’s Russian River basin, a coastal watershed whose winter precipitation extremes are dominated by ARs. We examined the effect of observed warming on ASM for the period 1950–2017. We first constructed an hourly precipitation product at 1/32° spatial resolution. We used the Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM) to estimate storm total runoff volumes and soil moisture. We found that up to 95% of peaks-over-threshold (POT) extreme discharge events were associated with ARs. The storm runoff–precipitation ratio generally increased with wetter prestorm conditions, and the relationship was stronger as drainage area increased. We found no trends in extreme precipitation but weak downward trends in extreme discharge. The latter were mostly consistent with weak downward trends in the first 2-day storm precipitation. We found no trends in ASM; however, ASM was significantly correlated with peak flow. The ASM was affected more by antecedent precipitation than evapotranspiration, and hence temperature increases had weak effects on ASM.
Elementary Pre-service Teachers’ Perceptions and Experiences of Mathematics Intervention and Response to Intervention Practices

Response to intervention has become a widely implemented early intervention and pre-referral program in many schools due to the reauthorization of the 2004 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Limited studies exist that validate how teacher preparation programs are preparing the next generation of teachers to assess students, apply early academic interventions, monitor progress, and make educational decisions for students with learning difficulties as part of an RTI program. The purpose of this study was to examine elementary pre-service teachers’ perceptions and experiences in a mathematics intervention project (MIP), as part of a university mathematics methods course as related to RTI practices. Data were collected from multiple sources, including: Seidman’s three-step interview series with pre-service participants and course instructors, document analysis of the Mathematics Interactions Project (MIP) students’ responses, mathematics methods course syllabi, and observations of the mathematics methods course instruction. Haskell’s transfer theory was used as the framework from which to analyze the data. It was assumed that if a majority of the 11 principles of meaningful transfer were addressed, higher levels of transfer from university instruction to intervention instruction would be observed during the MIP. Findings indicate differences in RTI understanding according to elementary education degree plan. Candidates in the English as a Second Language (ESL) program did not demonstrate a strong foundational understanding of RTI, evidenced by a lower level of transfer about RTI. Alternately, pre-service teachers in the special education degree plan had a stronger foundational knowledge of RTI, discussed how RTI learning was supported, and had more experiences to implement RTI (principles 1, 7, and 9). Pre-service teachers in the Special Education (SPED) certification degree plan demonstrated a higher level of transfer since more of the principles were met; this was foundational in Haskell’s transfer theory. Implications are that elementary education programs, and particularly projects such as the MIP, should focus explicitly on RTI practices, as these are increasingly necessary in the field of elementary education practice.
Evaluating the Future Role of the University of California Natural Reserve System for Sensitive Plant Protection under Climate Change

Author(s): Riordan, Erin C. ; Rundel, Philip W. | Abstract: Protected areas are critical for conserving California’s many sensitive plant species but their future role is uncertain under climate change. Climate-driven species losses and redistributions could dramatically affect the relevance of protected areas for biodiversity conservation this century. Focusing on the University of California Natural Reserve System (NRS), we predicted the future impact of climate change on reserve effectiveness with respect to sensitive plant protection. First, we evaluated the historical representation of sensitive plant species in the NRS reserve network by compiling species accounts from checklists, floras, and spatial queries of occurrence databases. Next, we calculated projected climate change exposure across the NRS reserve network for the end of the 21st century (2070–2099) relative to baseline (1971–2000) conditions under five future climate scenarios. We then predicted statewide changes in suitable habitat for 180 sensitive plant taxa using the same future climate scenarios in a species distribution modeling approach. Finally, from these predictions we evaluated suitable habitat retention at three spatial scales: individual NRS reserves (focal reserves), the NRS reserve network, and the surrounding mosaic of protected open space. Six reserves—Sagehen Creek Field Station, McLaughlin Natural Reserve, Jepson Prairie Reserve, Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve, Sedgwick Reserve, and Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center—were selected as focal reserves for analyses.
Encryption security against key-dependent-message attacks: applications, realizations and separations

In this thesis we study the notion of circular security for bit-encryption schemes. Informally speaking, a bit-encryption scheme is circular secure if it remains secure even if the key of the system is used to encrypt its own individual bits. This notion (or slight extensions thereof) has foundational applications, most notably in the context of fully-homomorphic encryption and amplification techniques for keydependent-message security. We explore the notion of circular security from three different perspectives, stemming from (1) assumptions sufficient to realize this notion, (2) minimal black-box assumptions on which this notion can be based and (c) applications of this notion when combined with other properties. Our main results are as follows: • We give a construction of circular-secure public-key bit encryption based on any public-key encryption scheme that satisfies two special properties. We show that our constructed scheme besides circular security also offers two forms of key-leakage resilience. Our construction unifies two existing specific constructions of circular-secure schemes in the literature and also gives rise to the first construction based on homomorphic hash proof systems.
A dolomitization event at the oceanic chemocline during the Permian-Triassic transition: COMMENT

Jay M. Gregg, Stephen E. Kaczmarek, David L. Bish, Hans G. Machel, Bruce W. Fouke Boone Pickens School of Geology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074, USA Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008, USA Department of Chemistry, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2E3, Canada Department of Geology, Department of Microbiology, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA
Deep Parsing at the CLEF2014 IE Task (DFKI-Medical)

We present an information extraction system for patient records which has been submitted to the ShARe/CLEF eHealth Evalua- tion Lab 2014 Task 2. The task was information extraction from clinical text in terms of a disease/disorder template lling process. The system uses a lexicalized parser to annotate grammatical relations between dis- eases, disorders, and other constituents on a sentence level. Grammatical pattern matching rules are applied in order to annotate the specics of individual disease/disorder cases. High accuracy is most important for clinical decision support; the comparative results suggest that a deep parsing approach is suitable for this task, as we achieved acc = 0:822 and acc = 0:804 for the two runs of the system.
Climate Change Drives Widespread and Rapid Thermokarst Development in Very Cold Permafrost in the Canadian High Arctic

Climate warming in regions of ice‐rich permafrost can result in widespread thermokarst development, which reconfigures the landscape and damages infrastructure. We present multisite time series observations which couple ground temperature measurements with thermokarst development in a region of very cold permafrost. In the Canadian High Arctic between 2003 and 2016, a series of anomalously warm summers caused mean thawing indices to be 150–240% above the 1979–2000 normal resulting in up to 90 cm of subsidence over the 12‐year observation period. Our data illustrate that despite low mean annual ground temperatures, very cold permafrost (<−10 °C) with massive ground ice close to the surface is highly vulnerable to rapid permafrost degradation and thermokarst development. We suggest that this is due to little thermal buffering from soil organic layers and near‐surface vegetation, and the presence of near‐surface ground ice. Observed maximum thaw depths at our sites are already exceeding those projected to occur by 2090 under representative concentration pathway version 4.5.
Firefighter Observations of “Surprising” Fire Behavior in Mountain Pine Beetle-Attacked Lodgepole Pine Forests

The recent mountain pine beetle outbreak affecting lodgepole pine forests in the Rocky Mountains has created a novel fire environment for wildland firefighters. This paper presents results from an examination of firefighters’ observations of fire behavior in post-outbreak lodgepole pine forests, with a focus on what they considered surprising from a fire behavior standpoint and how this in turn affected their suppression tactics. The surprises in fire behavior experienced by firefighters during the red phase of post-outbreak forests included an elevated level of fire spread and intensity under moderate weather and fuel moisture conditions, increased spotting, and faster surface-to-crown fire transitions with limited or no ladder fuels. Unexpectedly, during the gray phase in mountain pine beetle-attacked stands, crown ignition and crown fire propagation was observed for short periods of time. Firefighters are now more likely to expect to see active fire behavior in nearly all fire weather and fuel moisture conditions, not just under critically dry and windy situations, and across all mountain pine beetle attack phases, not just the red phase. Firefighters changed their suppression tactics by adopting indirect methods due to the potential fire behavior and tree-fall hazards associated with mountain pine beetle-attacked lodgepole pine forests.
Measuring the sosial economic benefits of Jabres cattle keeping in Bantarkawung Sub-district, Brebes, Central Java, Indonesia

This study aimed to explore the socio-economic benefits of Jabres cattle as potential local livestock in two agro ecological zones, lowlands and middle zone in Bantarkawung Sub-District, Brebes, Central Java. The data were collected by Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) method, which is an approach to families or individuals to analyze the reality of their living conditions. This study involved 60 farmers which selected by purposive sampling based on three considerations. The analytical model used to test differences is the analysis of independent T-test. The result showed that the farmers in the middle zone are younger and most of their cattle keeping motivation are for livelihood. Meanwhile, the farmers in the low lands are older and most of their cattle keeping motivation is for saving only (2.90±0.31). This condition caused the socio-economic benefit difference between those locations where the value of net production (185±27 kg/y), added value (IDR 4.900.000±1.204.000), and total benefits (IDR 9.289.000±1.542.000) were higher in the medium land than in the lowlands. Based on these reasons, it can be concluded that middle zone farmers have more possibility to sustain their farm than those of lowlands farmers.
Latest Permian–early Triassic arc amalgamation of the Eastern Tianshan (NW China): Constraints from detrital zircons and Hf isotopes of Devonian–Triassic sediments

The temporal–spatial framework of arc amalgamation is an important key for understanding the anatomy of orogenic collages, present and past. The Junggar‐Balkhash Ocean was a major branch of the southern Paleo‐Asian Ocean where several arcs were amalgamated. Among them, the Dananhu arc with its characteristic juvenile magmatism and lack of Precambrian basement is an efficient recorder of the evolutional history. From our U–Pb and Lu–Hf isotopic analyses of Devonian to Triassic sediments in the Dananhu arc and Permian sediments in the Yamansu‐Central Tianshan arc, we discovered two major changes in detrital zircon provenance of the Dananhu arc: (a) An increasing input of Precambrian ages from the Mongolia collage at 850, 1,850, and 2,500 Ma, together with Phanerozoic zircons ranging from 420 to 480 Ma with negative εHf(t) value since ca. 288 Ma; (b) the presence of the Yamansu‐Central Tianshan arclike Precambrian age cluster of 1,400–1,600 Ma around 243 Ma. In combination with regional tectonothermal events, these two changes correspond to the formation of the Harlik‐Dananhu composite arc in the latest Carboniferous–early Permian followed by its collision with the Yamansu‐Central Tianshan arc in the latest Permian–early Triassic, which marks the termination of the eastern Junggar‐Balkash Ocean. Analysis of the sedimentary successions within the intraoceanic arcs sheds light on the amalgamation history of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt.
Avulsion process : stratigraphic and lithologic records - Application to the Amazon and Zaïre turbidite systems

Our study focuses on the avulsion process, the key for the depocenter migration of stacked channel-levee systems in the deep-sea. To present, the avulsion process has been explained as the abandonment of a channel (parent channel) and the birth of a new one (new channel). A true indice of avulsion has been given by the detection of the HARPs, a seismic term known since the 80s for high-amplitude reflection packets at the base of new channel-levee systems. The HARPs are suggested, in analogy to the studies from ODP Leg 155 of the Amazon Fan, to be sandy deposits in lows adjacent to breached parent channels. Our present work, by re-visiting the Amazon Fan, highlights the great complexity of the HARPs architecture (at the scale of multi-channel high-resolution seismic data) and their lithological heterogeneity. The study of some specific zones within the Zaire Fan allowed to reveal both the earliest stages of an avulsion process related to levee breaches and first splays linked to unconfined flows on the levee, and the latest stage of this process, with the first levee deposition and evolution following the HARPs deposition. These results provide new insights for the understanding of the processes involved during an avulsion (levee breach, HARPs accumulation, levee aggradation) and clues to refine the previous conceptual models and to reach a higher resolution knowledge of this process, by describing the inter-relationship of the different architectural sub-bodies of the HARPs and giving details on both the earliest and latest stages of the avulsion.
A New Computational Model for Fluid-Structure Interaction Phenomena in Wind-Turbine Blades

In this paper, we shall introduce a new approach aimed to create a Virtual Test Environment where the aeroelastic dynamics of innovative prototype blades may be tested at realistic full-scale conditions, with a reasonable computational cost. It combines two advanced numerical models implemented in a parallel HPC supercomputer platform: A model of the dynamics of unsteady separated ﬂows using Vorticity–Velocity Adaptive algorithms; and a model of the structural response of heterogeneous composite blades using Variational– Asymptotic Beam Sectional techniques.
Influence of tillage, fertiliser regime and weeding frequency on germinable weed seed bank in a subhumid environment in Zimbabwe

Minimum tillage (MT) under conservation agriculture (CA), fertiliser application and weeding frequency influence weed seed-bank dynamics in cropping systems. A study was conducted at the Chinhoyi University of Technology farm, Zimbabwe during the 2014/15 and 2015/16 cropping seasons to investigate the influence of tillage, fertiliser and weeding on weed seed-bank dynamics. A field experiment arranged in a split-split plot randomised complete block design with three replications was used. Tillage (conventional tillage [CT] and MT), fertiliser application (zero, low, medium and high) and weeding frequency (twice, four times and clean) were the main plot, subplot and sub-subplot factors, respectively. Minimum tillage decreased Nicandra physalodes (L.) Gaertn. and Leucas martinicensis (Jacq.) R.Br. germinable seeds by up to 40% compared with CT. Germinable seeds of Amaranthus hybridus L. and Galinsoga parviflora Cav. were more frequent in high than medium fertiliser plots. Weeding four times resulted in more weed seeds than weeding twice and clean weeding. Results of this study suggest that some problem weeds, including N. physalodes, are likely to be reduced, whereas Iopmoea plebeia R.Br. may be persistent under MT. The results further suggest that weeding four times created conditions that were favourable for rapid weed seed germination, weed growth and possible seed return.
Diversity, ecology and distribution of benthic diatoms in thermo-mineral springs in Auvergne (France) and Sardinia (Italy)

This study investigated and compared the diatom flora from thermo-mineral springs in Auvergne (France) and Sardinia (Italy). Samples were collected from rock/cobbles and fine sediments in 16 springs between January 2015 and March 2017. A total of 207 taxa (59 genera) were found. Multivariate analyses revealed significant differences in species composition and abundance among diatom assemblages both within each geographic region and between Auvergne and Sardinia (global R = 0.516; p = 0.002), suggesting the importance of local and climatic factors in species distribution. Based on abundance and common occurrence in multiple sites, some taxa can be considered more representative of springs in each region: Crenotia thermalis for Auvergne and Lemnicola exigua, Nitzschia amphibia, N. inconspicua and Rhopalodia operculata for Sardinia. pH, conductivity and HCO3− were the most significant environmental variables for diatom assemblages. Our results highlight the high heterogeneity of these spring systems. Future taxonomic insights can be useful to define the identity of some abundant and dominant taxa not identified at the species level in this study. Their identification is a crucial step for a more precise ecological characterization and comparison of these peculiar spring systems.