Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oregon's Fish and Wildlife in a Changing Climate

Oregon's fish and wildlife include animals on land, fish and other species in rivers and lakes, and various kinds of sea life in estuaries and coastal ocean. Of great cultural and economic value, this immense biodiversity -some of which is already threatened or endangered -inhabits complex and dynamic ecosystems we have only begun to understand, let alone examine in terms of climate change. However, it is clear that the abundance and distribution of species are shifting already and will shift more rapidly as habitats on land, in freshwater, and in sea are altered due to increasing temperatures and related environmental changes. Some patterns are already evident:  Insects from south of Oregon, including pests, are moving into the state, and the timing of development of native species is advancing as spring conditions arrive sooner.  Frogs are reproducing earlier in the year compared to past decades and emergent infectious diseases affecting frogs and their relatives are increasing in severity.  Land birds are shifting their distributions northward and migrating earlier.  Small mammals in eastern Oregon are contracting their ranges on mountaintops.  In our freshwaters, climate-related habitat loss has increased in severity for salmon and other cool-water fishes.  In the ocean, harmful algal blooms have increased substantially in the past 15 years, and recurring "dead zones" have appeared in recent years.  The species composition of copepods (food for many marine fishes) has shifted substantially in recent years.  Highly predatory Humboldt squid have recently shifted their distribution into Oregon waters from tropical and subtropical regions.
Improving sub-seasonal forecast skill of meteorological drought: a weather pattern approach

Abstract. Dynamical model skill in forecasting extratropical precipitation is limited beyond the medium-range (around 15 d), but such models are often more skilful at predicting atmospheric variables. We explore the potential benefits of using weather pattern (WP) predictions as an intermediary step in forecasting UK precipitation and meteorological drought on sub-seasonal timescales. Mean sea-level pressure forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ensemble prediction system (ECMWF-EPS) are post-processed into probabilistic WP predictions. Then we derive precipitation estimates and dichotomous drought event probabilities by sampling from the conditional distributions of precipitation given the WPs. We compare this model to the direct precipitation and drought forecasts from the ECMWF-EPS and to a baseline Markov chain WP method. A perfect-prognosis model is also tested to illustrate the potential of WPs in forecasting. Using a range of skill diagnostics, we find that the Markov model is the least skilful, while the dynamical WP model and direct precipitation forecasts have similar accuracy independent of lead time and season. However, drought forecasts are more reliable for the dynamical WP model. Forecast skill scores are generally modest (rarely above 0.4), although those for the perfect-prognosis model highlight the potential predictability of precipitation and drought using WPs, with certain situations yielding skill scores of almost 0.8 and drought event hit and false alarm rates of 70 % and 30 %, respectively.
Infrastructure Development in Punjab, Pakistan: From Assessment to Spatiotemporal Analysis at District Level

Access to inclusive and sustainable infrastructure to the masses of each spatial unit of any country and region is of the paramount importance. This paper aims at examining the level of infrastructure development, analysis of spatial disparities in infrastructure and temporal comparison of infrastructure development across the districts in Punjab, Pakistan. For this purpose, the current study uses a wide range of indicators to depict the real picture of infrastructure development in Punjab and to analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics. The overall infrastructure development has been divided into three sub-dimensions; public-utilities infrastructure, communication infrastructure and social infrastructure. All the data has been taken from Multiple Indicators Cluster Survey (MICS) Punjab, Census of Healthcare Establishments in Punjab, and Punjab Development Statistics (PDS). For the temporal assessment, the two different time periods of 2011 and 2014 have also been compared. The Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) technique has been used to assign the weights to indicators in sub-dimensions and to each sub-dimension in composite index. Geographic Information System (GIS) tools have also been applied for spatial mapping and representation of analysis results. The study finds that the Southern and South-Western districts of Punjab are the most deprived districts in all dimensions of infrastructure studied in this study. Whereas, the districts of North and North-Eastern Punjab are the best districts in almost all dimensions of infrastructure development. The temporal analysis reveals that the level of infrastructure development depreciated in most of the districts as it could not be developed as per the increase in population. These findings emphasize the need for prioritizing the public investment on infrastructure in the deprived districts on Southern and South-Western border of Punjab to remove the disparities.
Impacts of Summer North Atlantic Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies on the East Asian Winter Monsoon Variability

The present study investigates the impacts of the North Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies on the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) variability. It is found that the northern component of the EAWM variability is associated with a dipole pattern of preceding summer North Atlantic SST anomalies during 1979–2016. The processes linking preceding summer North Atlantic SST to EAWM include the North Atlantic air–sea interactions and atmospheric wave train triggered by the North Atlantic SST anomalies. Atmospheric wind anomalies in the preceding spring–summer result in the formation of a dipole SST anomaly pattern through surface heat flux changes. In turn, the induced SST anomalies provide a feedback on the atmosphere, modifying the location and intensity of anomalous winds over the North Atlantic. The associated surface heat flux anomalies switch the North Atlantic SST anomaly distribution from a dipole pattern in summer to a tripole pattern in the following winter. The North Atlantic tripole SST anomalies excite an atmospheric wave train extending from the North Atlantic through Eurasia to East Asia in winter, resulting in anomalous EAWM. However, the relationship of the northern component of EAWM to preceding summer North Atlantic SST anomalies is weak before the late 1970s. During 1956–76, due to weak air–sea interaction over the North Atlantic, no obvious tripole SST anomaly pattern is established in winter. The atmospheric wave train in winter is located at higher latitudes, leading to a weak connection between the northern component of EAWM and the preceding summer North Atlantic dipole SST anomaly pattern.
Comparative Thermal Ecology of Coastal and Inland Pacific Rattlesnakes ( Crotalus oreganus )

Global biodiversity is declining as a direct result of anthropogenic climate change. Ectothermic species have become focal organisms for studying the ecological effects of altered climates due to the clear relationship between environmental temperatures and ectotherms’ basic physiological functions. Historically, examinations of these effects have focused heavily on heliothermic lizards, and most others have tended to focus on single populations or sympatric species within a single community. Addressing the long-term energetic implications of environmental temperature variation will provide valuable insight into the cascading physiological effects that certain populations or species may experience as a result of altered climates. In this study, we used thermal and behavioral data collected between 2010 and 2017 from four distinct populations of Pacific rattlesnakes ( Crotalus oreganus ) on the Central Coast of California. Two of these populations occupy thermally mild, coastal habitats while the other two occupy more thermally dynamic, inland habitats. Using operative temperature models, surgically implanted temperature loggers, and radiotelemetry, we collected data on the thermal microhabitats available within each of these study sites as well as field active body temperatures for 85 individual snakes. With the addition of a lab-derived preferred body temperature range, we determined the thermal quality of each site and the thermoregulatory accuracy of snakes from each population. Field behavioral observations, gathered from snakes at all four sites changes in snake metabolic rates and maintenance energy expenditure. Due to the relatively high preferred body temperature of C. oreganus , thermal quality of the environment will actually increase under these climate models; due to an increase in ambient temperature, the proportion of hourly temperatures that fall within the preferred body temperature range will increase. If snake body temperature were to increase as the climate warms, a theoretical increase in body temperature of 1 and 2°C would have a low impact on the overall energetic needs of snakes, still allowing them to meet baseline maintenance energetic needs with only one large meal a year. Furthermore, we expect small increases in ambient temperature to have little impact on rattlesnakes because they are fairly precise thermoregulators, maintaining fairly constant body temperatures regardless of their thermal surroundings. Overall, our results show that studying the thermal ecology of multiple populations of a single species can reveal fine-scale information about the relationship between the thermal landscape and both ectotherm behavior and physiological processes. Additionally, our findings show that some species of large-bodied reptiles may be robust to modest thermal perturbations under conservative climate change predictions.
Caution with the continued use of Jeffrey Beall’s “predatory” open access publishing lists

Mr. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the Auraria Library, University of Colorado Denver, with an MA in English and Spanish, but no PhD, became famous because of his blog, www.scholarlyoa. com. Beall’s blog thus became synonymous with Beall, and Beall with his blog, and both are used interchangeably in this paper. Thus, praise or criticisms that one regularly reads in social media or blogs that refer to one, in general refer to both.
Observer-based fault detection of technical systems over networks

The introduction of networks into technical systems for facilitating remote data transmission, low complexity in wiring and easy diagnosis and maintenance, raises new challenges in fault detection (FD), such as how to handle network-induced time-varying transmission delays, packet dropouts, quantization errors and bit errors. These factors lead to increasing interest in developing new structures and design schemes for FD of technical systems over networks. In this thesis all network-induced effects are analyzed and modeled systematically at first. By observing the stochastic inheritance of networks, an FD framework of Markov jumping linear systems is presented as a basis for the later developments. Then two observer-based schemes for the purpose of FD over networks with guaranteed false alarm rate (FAR) are proposed: a remote FD system and an FD system of networked control systems (NCSs). The remote FD scheme is for detecting faults in technical systems at a remote site, where system measurements are transmitted via networks. In this scheme, the coding mechanism of communication channels is investigated from the view point of control engineering and new methods are developed for optimal residual generation and evaluation by considering network-induced data loss and corruption. A novel design scheme of FD system is also developed for NCSs, where the technical system is networked, i.e. controllers, actuators and sensors are connected with communication channels. In this scheme, network-induced transmission delays, packet dropouts, quantization errors are taken into account for the design of the optimal FD system. The linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) and convex optimization techniques are applied for assisting the design procedures. The developed schemes are tested with numerical examples and implemented in a three-tank system benchmark, and their superiority to existing solutions is demonstrated. Existing restrictions are overcome and new observer-based FD schemes over networks are introduced having the following characteristics: (1) the residual generators in both schemes are optimal in the sense of achieving the best trade-off between sensitivity to system faults and robustness against system disturbances and network-induced effects; (2) the proposed schemes can provide reliability information of rising fault alarms by analyzing the mean and variance of residual signals. Such information is very useful for practical applications in industries; (3) the design of residual generators and computation of thresholds can be efficiently solved by means of existing LMI-solvers.
Psychological distress in survivors of farmers' suicides in drought prone Aurangabad and Jalna Districts of Marathwada region in Maharashtra, India

Background: Survivors of suicide experience psychological distress for years after suicide. In India, farmers' suicide survivors are special group, with unique set of stressors. There are very few studies examining this group in India. The objective was to assess psychological distress and its correlates in survivors of farmers' suicides. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study from two districts of Marathwada region of Maharashtra. A predesigned and pretested semi-structured questionnaire to assess sociodemographic variables was used. Self-reporting questionnaire-20 was administered to evaluate psychological distress in 93 survivors of farmers' suicides. Standard descriptive statistics (percentages, means, and Chi-square test) were used. Results: Female-to-male ratio was 2.8:1. Majority (76%) survivors were young adults and 97.8% were from rural area. Most survivors assessed in study were spouse (68.8%) followed by parents (9.6%), siblings (2.2%), progeny, and others (19.35%) of suicide victims. Of all survivors, 75% were doing farming, while rest had other sources of income in addition to farming. Out of 93 survivors, 81.7% of survivors were experiencing significant psychological distress. Twenty-eight percent survivors themselves had thought of ending their life during 1 month prior to assessment. Most commonly, distress was expressed through somatic symptoms and depressed mood. There was no significant correlation of psychological distress with age, sex, occupation, and place of residence of survivors. There was no significant correlation between psychological distress and relationship of survivor with suicide victim. Conclusions: Survivors of farmers' suicides are suffering from significant psychological distress. Suicide ideation was present in significant number of them. The current situation needs urgent psychological intervention to alleviate their suffering.
Assessing the Influence of Environmental Factors on Groundwater Antibiotic Occurrence by Means of Variation Partitioning

The spatial distribution of antibiotics in alluvial aquifers presents a large variability caused by the joint action of several factors including hydrology, land use, and groundwater properties. In this study, the influences of these factors on the spatial variability of antibiotics is evaluated based on an extensive database of 47 wells located in the Baix Fluvià alluvial aquifer (NE Catalonia). Statistical methods such as redundancy and variation partitioning (VP) analyses, which are not commonly used in hydrogeological studies, are herein tested and used to estimate the effects of environmental factors on the observed antibiotic occurrence. Using VP, the total explained variation of the antibiotic distribution only reaches 18% of the total variability, meaning that the whole set of explanatory parameters is insufficient or inadequate to describe the occurrence of antibiotics and their concentration. The results point out that groundwater properties are the most representative parameters, while those related to antibiotic sources and aquifer susceptibility have lower influences. Omitting solute transport parameters that actually govern antibiotic fate (i.e., sorption coefficients and degradation rates) from the statistical analysis limited the success of the VP results. VP thus highlights the importance of researching antibiotic transport in groundwater by determining the reactive properties of these pollutants above other hydrogeochemical variables. We conclude that the present capacity to predict antibiotic existence at a specific location—for instance, a supply well—based on field data is still poor and unrepresentative, being an impediment for groundwater pollution management.
Embracing Causal Complexity

Causal complexity has long been recognized as a ubiquitous feature underlying organizational phenomena, yet current theories and methodologies in management are for the most part not well-suited to its direct study. The introduction of the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) configurational approach has led to a reinvigoration of configurational theory that embraces causal complexity explicitly. We argue that the burgeoning research using QCA represents more than a novel methodology; it constitutes the emergence of a neo-configurational perspective to the study of management and organizations that enables a fine-grained conceptualization and empirical investigation of causal complexity through the logic of set theory. In this article, we identify four foundational elements that characterize this emerging neo-configurational perspective: (a) conceptualizing cases as set theoretic configurations, (b) calibrating cases’ memberships into sets, (c) viewing causality in terms of necessity and sufficiency relations between sets, and (d) conducting counterfactual analysis of unobserved configurations. We then present a comprehensive review of the use of QCA in management studies that aims to capture the evolution of the neo-configurational perspective among management scholars. We close with a discussion of a research agenda that can further this neo-configurational approach and thereby shift the attention of management research away from a focus on net effects and towards examining causal complexity.
Filling the Egyptian pollinator knowledge-gap: checklist of flower-visiting insects in South Sinai, with new records for Egypt

Flower visitor surveys were conducted across the St Katherine Protectorate of South Sinai, Egypt, between April-July 2012 and 2013. We present a checklist of 112 species of flower visitors belonging to the orders Coleoptera, Diptera, Hemiptera, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera. The Hymenoptera were the most diverse group of flower visitors, consisting of 69 species from eight families: Apidae (14), Colletidae (8), Crabronidae (10), Halictidae (13), Megachilidae (19), Scoliidae (1), Sphecidae (2) and Vespidae (2). We recorded nine species that were endemic to the region and thirteen that were new to the Egyptian fauna, including one new to science, Hylaeus oliviae Dathe, 2015. The study provides a valuable initial checklist of pollinators within the St Katherine Protectorate, but the description of novel species and the high proportion of new records for Egypt suggest that species numbers are likely to be underestimated. We highlight the need for future research into Egyptian pollinator fauna, particularly within the St Katherine Protectorate where endemic bees are still being described.
Geochemistry of igneous rocks in Iceland: a review

Two important large-scale geochemical trends are observed in Iceland and the adjoining spreading ridges, one along the ridges and active rift zones, and the other between the rift zones and off-rift areas of recent volcanism. Along the ridges, basalt compositions are increasingly enriched in incompatible elements (i.e. elements which preferentially partition into melts) towards Iceland, reecting enhanced melting of fusible, fertile components of a heterogeneous mantle. These heterogeneities may be garnet pyroxenites that are derived from recycled oceanic lithosphere. Recent basalts erupted outside the rift zones are more enriched in incompatible elements than those of the rift zones. These two trends reect variations in mantle temperature, compositional structure and ow eld as well as the role of tectonics. Mantle melts move rapidly from their deep source regions towards the surface in porous channels or dykes. These melts mix and cool in lower-crustal magma chambers before eruptions. The limited basalt production rate away from the rift zones results in a relatively low crustal thermal gradient, facilitating the production of silicic magmas by fractional crystallization of incoming basalts. However in the hot rift zones, where hydrothermal activity is plentiful, crustal anatexis may result to produce silicic melts. Thorough mixing of crustal melts and solid crustal material with basalts may account for the compositional features of large ssure eruptions such as Laki.
The Inter-Calibration of the DSCOVR EPIC Imager with Aqua-MODIS and NPP-VIIRS

The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) through the earth polychromatic imaging camera (EPIC) continuously observes the illuminated disk from the Lagrange-1 point. The EPIC sensor was designed to monitor the diurnal variation of ozone, clouds, aerosols, and vegetation, especially those features that benefit from observation near-backscatter conditions. The EPIC sensor does not contain any onboard calibration systems. This study describes the inter-calibration of EPIC channels 5 (0.44 µm), 6 (0.55 µm), 7 (0.68 µm), and 10 (0.78 µm) with respect to Aqua-MODIS and NPP-VIIRS. The calibration is transferred using coincident ray-matched reflectance pairs over all-sky tropical ocean (ATO) and deep convective cloud (DCC) targets. A robust and automated image-alignment technique based on feature matching was formulated to improve the navigation quality of the EPIC images. The EPIC V02 dataset exhibits improved navigation over V01. As the visible channels display similar spatial features, a single visible channel can be used to co-register the remaining visible bands. The VIIRS-referenced EPIC ATO and DCC ray-matched calibration coefficients are within 0.3%. The EPIC four-year calibration trends based on VIIRS are within 0.15%/year. The MODIS-based EPIC calibration coefficients were compared against the Geogdzhayev and Marshak 2018 published calibration coefficients and were found to be within 1.6%.