Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of Organic Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope and C/N Ratios as Source Indicators of Organic Matter Provenance in Estuarine Systems: Evidence from the Tay Estuary, Scotland

The source of particulate organic matter (POM) in lacustrine and estuarine sediments from the Tay River catchment has been evaluated using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope and elemental C/N ratios. The δ13C, δ15N and C/N compositions of POM from the two environments (respectively -25·4 to -28·0%, 0·2 to 4·0%, 12·17 to 19·5 and -23·2 to -26·6%, 2·6 to 10·6%, 9·03 to 15·71) were statistically distinct, enabling, by use of a simple two component mixing equation, assessment of the ability of each tracer to estimate the terrigenous flux to the estuarine organic matter pool. Estuarial mixing of terrigenous, indigenous estuarine and marine derived organics, recorded by δ13C data, was only partly confirmed by equivalent δ15N and C/N compositions which reflected greater control by organic matter diagenesis and biological processing. Limited data indicate sewage derived contributions are insignificant. Of the three tracers employed, only δ13C ratios are reliable as provenance indicators. Both δ15N and C/N ratios are limited because the original POM source signature may be lost or overprinted by biochemical alteration prior to and/or soon after deposition. The simultaneous application of these tracers provides substantially more information regarding the source, quality and turnover of sedimentary POM in these contrasting systems than could be achieved using one technique alone.
The effect of adaptation and contrast on apparent brightness

Measurements have been made of the variation of the brightness-sensitivity of the eye over a range of adaptation brightnesses extending from 0.001 to 400 equivalent foot-candles. The method adopted involves the use of binocular matching, the left eye, at a constant state of adaptation, being used as a reference standard, and the right eye, adapted to various brightnesses, viewing a test patch. From the experimental results, curves each of which represents physical brightnesses differing from those for subjective black by a constant number of just noticeable brightness-differences, and curves of equal apparent brightness have been constructed. It is shown that the brightness of the surround field has a very great effect on the apparent brightness of the test patch, the change caused by changing the surround brightness being almost instantaneous. The effect of this surround field, viewed with the right eye, on the comparison patch, as viewed with the left eye, both fields merging binocularly, is discussed and is shown to be negligible at least in comparison with the first-mentioned effect. The results obtained show that it may be impossible to construct sensation curves of the simple type hitherto postulated for considering the reproduction of photographic tone.
Current-Induced Modulation of the Ocean Wave Spectrum and the Role of Nonlinear Energy Transfer

Abstract Numerical simulations were performed to investigate current-induced modulation of the spectral and statistical properties of ocean waves advected by idealized and realistic current fields. In particular, the role of nonlinear energy transfer among waves in wave–current interactions is examined. In this type of numerical simulation, it is critical to treat the nonlinear transfer function (Snl) properly, because a rigorous Snl algorithm incurs a huge computational cost. However, the applicability of the widely used discrete interaction approximation (DIA) method is strictly limited for complex wave fields. Therefore, the simplified RIAM (SRIAM) method is implemented in an operational third-generation wave model. The method approximates an infinite resonant quadruplet with 20 optimized resonance configurations. The performance of the model is assessed by applying it to fetch-limited wave growth and wave propagation against a shear current. Numerical simulations using the idealized current field reve.
Monthly temperature, salinity, and transport variability of the Bering Strait through flow

The Bering Strait through flow is important for the Chukchi Sea and the Arctic and Atlantic oceans. A realistic assessment of through flow properties is also necessary for validation and boundary conditions of high‐resolution ocean models. From 14 years of moored measurements, we construct a monthly climatology of temperature, salinity and transport. The strong seasonality in all properties (∼31.9 to 33 psu, ∼−1.8 to 2.3°C and ∼0.4 to 1.2 Sv) dominates the Chukchi Sea hydrography and implies significant seasonal variability in the equilibrium depth and ventilation properties of Pacific waters in the Arctic Ocean. Interannual variability is large in temperature and salinity. Although missing some significant events, an empirical linear fit to a local (model) wind yields a reasonable reconstruction of the water velocity, and we use the coefficients of this fit to estimate the magnitude of the Pacific‐Arctic pressure‐head forcing of the Bering Strait through flow.
The Private Premium in Public Bonds

This paper is the first to document the presence of a private premium in public bonds. We find that spreads are 31 basis points higher for public bonds of private companies than for bonds of public companies, even after controlling for observable differences, including rating, financial performance, industry, bond characteristics and issuance timing. The estimated private premium increases to 40 to 50 basis points when a propensity matching methodology is used or when we control for fixed issuer effects. Despite the premium pricing, bonds of private companies are no more likely to default or be downgraded than are public bonds. They do not have worse secondary market performance or higher CDS spreads nor are they necessarily less liquid. Bond investors appear to discount the value of privately held equity. The effect does not come only from the lack of a public market signal of asset quality, because very small public companies also pay high spreads.
Fully End-to-end Autonomous Driving with Semantic Depth Cloud Mapping and Multi-Agent

—Focusing on the task of point-to-point navigation for an autonomous driving vehicle, we propose a novel deep learning model trained with end-to-end and multi-task learning manners to perform both perception and control tasks simultaneously. The model is used to drive the ego vehicle safely by following a sequence of routes deﬁned by the global planner. The perception part of the model is used to encode high-dimensional observation data provided by an RGBD camera while performing semantic segmentation, semantic depth cloud (SDC) mapping, and trafﬁc light state and stop sign prediction. Then, the control part decodes the encoded features along with additional information provided by GPS and speedometer to predict waypoints that come with a latent feature space. Furthermore, two agents are employed to process these outputs and make a control policy that determines the level of steering, throttle, and brake as the ﬁnal action. The model is evaluated on CARLA simulator with various scenarios made of normal-adversarial situations and different weathers to mimic real-world conditions. In addition, we do a comparative study with some recent models to justify the performance in multiple aspects of driving. Moreover, we also conduct an ablation study on SDC mapping and multi-agent to understand their roles and behavior. As a result, our model achieves the highest driving score even with fewer parameters and computation load. To support future studies, we share our codes at https://github.com/oskarnatan/end-to-end-driving.
Blacklistable anonymous credentials: blocking misbehaving users without ttps

Several credential systems have been proposed in which users can authenticate to services anonymously. Since anonymity can give users the license to misbehave, some variants allow the selective deanonymization (or linking) of misbehaving users upon a complaint to a trusted third party (TTP). The ability of the TTP to revoke a user's privacy at any time, however, is too strong a punishment for misbehavior. To limit the scope of deanonymization, systems such as "e-cash" have been proposed in which users are deanonymized under only certain types of well-defined misbehavior such as "double spending. " While useful in some applications, it is not possible to generalize such techniques to more subjective definitions of misbehavior. We present the first anonymous credential system in which services can "blacklist" misbehaving users without contacting a TTP. Since blacklisted users remain anonymous, misbehaviors can be judged subjectively without users fearing arbitrary deanonymization by a TTP.
University of Birmingham Controls on the formation and stability of gas hydrate-related bottom-simulating reflectors (BSRs): A case study from the west Svalbard continental slope

[ 1 ] The growth and stability of the free-gas zone (FGZ) beneath gas-hydrate related bottom-simulating seismic reflectors (BSRs) is investigated using analytical and numerical analyses to understand the factors controlling the formation and depletion of free gas. For a model based on the continental slope west of Svalbard (a continental margin of north Atlantic type), we find that the FGZ is inherently unstable under a wide range of conditions because upward flow of under-saturated liquid depletes free gas faster than it is produced by hydrate recycling. In these scenarios, the 150-m-thick FGZ that presently exists there would deplete within 10 5 –10 6 years. We suggest the FGZ is in a stable state, however, that is formed by a diffusion-dominated mechanism that produces low concentrations of gas in a FGZ of steady state thickness. Gas forms across a thick zone because the upward fluid flux is relatively low and because the gas–water solubility decreases to a minimum several hundred meters below the seabed. This newly understood solubility-curvature effect is complementary to hydrate recycling, but becomes the most important factor controlling the presence and properties of the BSR in environments where the rate of upward fluid flow and the rate of hydrate recycling are both relatively low (i.e., rifted continental margins). If the present-day FGZ is in steady state, we estimate that the upward fluid flux in the west Svalbard site must be less than 0.15 mm a (cid:1) 1 .
Vertical patterns of soil water acquisition by non‐native rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) in Xishuangbanna, southwest China

The rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) has been extensively cultivated in Xishuangbanna, southwest (SW) China. It shows strong synchronicity for flushing and shedding, displaying a very different phenology to the native vegetation. However, little is known about the water‐use patterns of the plant in this area. We assessed seasonal water‐use strategies of rubber trees over the course of a rainy/dry season cycle. Stable isotope compositions of water in xylem, soil, rain and groundwater were sampled on seasonally distinct dates, and soil water content, root distribution and leaf water potential on sunny days were measured in order to determine the proportion of water derived from different soil layers. Midday leaf water potential of rubber trees was relatively stable throughout the year and did not drop significantly during the late dry season, displaying isohydric behaviour. Soil and stem water isotope signatures along with rooting distributional patterns revealed that rubber trees extracted their water mostly from the top 30 cm and less from below 70 cm of the soil profile during the late rainy season when soil water was plentiful. During the late dry season, as the moisture in the middle soil layers (30–70 cm) was gradually depleted, the depth of water uptake shifted to deeper soil levels. Model calculations showed that the proportion of water uptake from the shallow soil layer (<30 cm) increased markedly after the most recent rainfall in the late dry season and the early rainy season (varying between 65% and 71%), indicating significant plasticity in sources of water uptake in this dimorphic‐rooted species. This ability to take up a large proportion of shallow soil water after rainfall is likely the key feature enabling rubber trees to thrive through the period of greatest water demand. Our results suggest that rubber trees are able to adjust the allocation of resources and thus acclimate to the spatiotemporal changes to water conditions in the soil profile. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Robust Explanations for Deep Neural Networks via Pseudo Neural Tangent Kernel Surrogate Models

One of the ways recent progress has been made on explainable AI has been via explain-by-example strategies, specifically, through data attribution tasks. The feature spaces used to attribute decisions to training data, however, have not been compared against one another as to whether they form a truly representative surrogate model of the neural network (NN). Here, we demonstrate the efficacy of surrogate linear feature spaces to neural networks through two means: (1) we establish that a normalized psuedo neural tangent kernel (pNTK) is more correlated to the neural network decision functions than embedding based and influence based alternatives in both computer vision and large language model architectures; (2) we show that the attributions created from the normalized pNTK more accurately select perturbed training data in a data poisoning attribution task than these alternatives. Based on these observations, we conclude that kernel linear models are effective surrogate models across multiple classification architectures and that pNTK-based kernels are the most appropriate surrogate feature space of all kernels studied.
The 2012 NIST speaker recognition evaluation

In 2012 NIST held the latest in an ongoing series of text-independent speaker recognition evaluations (SRE ’s ). The 2012 NIST Speaker Recognition Evaluation (SRE12) was the largest and most complex SRE to date, including over 100 million trials. Several aspects of SRE12 were new; most significantly, NIST released in advance of the evaluation target speaker training data from six preexisting corpora, and systems were permitted to utilize joint information from target speakers for speaker modeling and test segment scoring. Results from the evaluation suggest that systems found it easier to reject non-target trials where the test speaker was among the target speakers.
Library instruction in a cloud: perspectives from the trenches

Purpose – Cloud computing flexibility has advantages for IT professionals as well as non‐technical users. This paper aims to look at cloud computing from the library instruction perspective. The authors aim to discuss types of cloud computing applications for organizing information and sharing content, creating tutorials, collaboration, scheduling and storage. Additionally, the paper seeks to discuss types of applications used at ISU for library instruction and implications for teaching.Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a literature review followed by practical applications of library instruction that included cloud‐computing technologies.Findings – The paper encourages library professionals to take advantage of cloud computing applications to provide better library instruction.Originality/value – This paper offers insights on how cloud computing can be used for library instruction.
Geographic Aspects of Temperature and Concentration Feedbacks in the Carbon Budget

Abstract The geographical distribution of feedback processes in the carbon budget is investigated in a manner that parallels that for climate feedback/sensitivity in the energy budget. Simulations for a range of emission scenarios, made with the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) earth system model (CanESM1), are the basis of the analysis. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere and provide the forcing for changes to the atmospheric carbon budget. Transports redistribute the emitted CO2 globally where local feedback processes act to enhance (positive feedback) or suppress (negative feedback) local CO2 amounts in response to changes in CO2 concentration and temperature. An increased uptake of CO2 by the land and ocean acts to counteract increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations so that “carbon–concentration” feedbacks are broadly negative over the twenty-first century. Largest values are found over land and particularly in tropical regions where CO2 ac.
Improving video retrieval using multilingual knowledge transfer

Video retrieval has seen tremendous progress with the devel- opment of vision-language models. However, further improving these models require additional labelled data which is a huge manual effort. In this paper, we propose a framework MKTVR, that utilizes knowledge transfer from a multilin- gual model to boost the performance of video retrieval. We ﬁrst use state-of-the-art machine translation models to con- struct pseudo ground-truth multilingual video-text pairs. We then use this data to learn a video-text representation where English and non-English text queries are represented in a common embedding space based on pretrained multilingual models. We evaluate our proposed approach on four English video retrieval datasets such as MSRVTT, MSVD, DiDeMo and Charades. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art results on all datasets out- performing previous models. Finally, we also evaluate our model on a multilingual video-retrieval dataset encompassing six languages and show that our model outperforms previous multilingual video retrieval models in a zero-shot setting. ↑ , rank 10 (R@10) ↑ , Median Rank (MdR) ↓ and Mean Rank (MnR) ↓ are reported. Results of other methods taken from mentioned references. Our model surpasses previous state-of-the-art performance. In video-to-text retrieval, our model achieved 1.6 points boost in performance.
Numerical simulations of the profile properties of undeformed first‐year sea ice during the growth season

A simulation scheme is developed that estimates salinity profiles for first-year sea ice during the growth season as a function of the growth history of the ice. The model considers the dependence of the initial ice salinity on ice growth velocity and sea water salinity and also the subsequent drainage of brine from the ice. The equation for ice growth assumes a linear temperature profile within the ice and is driven by surface heat balance equations that are based on smoothed climatic data for the central Arctic Basin. The estimated salinity profiles are in good agreement with natural profiles. Although temperature and salinity profiles depend upon the time of the year when ice growth is initiated, the brine volume profiles which they specify are essentially a unique function of ice thickness; a conclusion that holds even when the insulative effects of snow are considered. The temperature and brine volume profiles are then utilized to calculate the ice strength and elastic modulus profiles, which in turn specify the composite mechanical properties of the ice sheets through the application of a theory developed by Assur (1967). Significant differences, which are largest for thin ice sheets, are observed between ice sheet properties as calculated using composite plate theory and properties calculated from uniform plate theory and average ice properties. These results provide a justification for the practice, common within the ice modeling community, of parameterizing the mechanical behavior of pack ice on the basis of the ice thickness distribution.
Modeling pointing at targets of arbitrary shapes

We investigate pointing at graphical targets of arbitrary shapes. We first describe a previously proposed probabilistic Fitts' law model [7] which, unlike previous models that only account for rectangular targets, has the potential to handle arbitrary shapes. Three methods of defining the centers of arbitrarily shaped targets for use within the model are developed. We compare these methods of defining target centers, and validate the model using a pointing experiment in which the targets take on various shapes. Results show that the model can accurately account for the varying target shapes. We discuss the implications of our results to interface design.
Thermal evidence of water exchange through a coastal aquifer: Implications for nutrient fluxes

We report the discovery of a semi‐confined, high permeability zone (HPZ) 2 meters below the sea bed where exchanges between coastal aquifers and the ocean occur. A temperature probe placed in the HPZ recorded a 1°C semidiurnal cycle. The cycle was in phase with the tide, indicating tidal pumping was driving water exchange through the HPZ. We use these temperature variations to quantify water exchange between the HPZ and the ocean. Water in the HPZ is enriched in nutrients and radium; both total dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus correlate strongly with dissolved 226Ra. We use these correlations and previously quantified subterranean fluxes of 226Ra to demonstrate that this system may be a significant source of nutrients to the coastal ocean.
Spatial-spectral encoded compressive hyperspectral imaging

This paper proposes a novel compressive hyperspectral (HS) imaging approach that allows for high-resolution HS images to be captured in a single image. The proposed architecture comprises three key components: spatial-spectral encoded optical camera design, over-complete HS dictionary learning and sparse-constraint computational reconstruction. Our spatial-spectral encoded sampling scheme provides a higher degree of randomness in the measured projections than previous compressive HS imaging approaches; and a robust nonlinear sparse reconstruction method is employed to recover the HS images from the coded projection with higher performance. To exploit the sparsity constraint on the nature HS images for computational reconstruction, an over-complete HS dictionary is learned to represent the HS images in a sparser way than previous representations. We validate the proposed approach on both synthetic and real captured data, and show successful recovery of HS images for both indoor and outdoor scenes. In addition, we demonstrate other applications for the over-complete HS dictionary and sparse coding techniques, including 3D HS images compression and denoising.
Low-power logic circuit and SRAM cell applications with silicon on depletion Layer CMOS (SODEL CMOS) technology

In this paper, the switching performance of Silicon on Depletion Layer CMOS (SODEL CMOS) is investigated with a view to realizing high-speed and low-power CMOS applications. Thanks to smaller parasitic capacitance, the propagation delay time (/spl tau//sub pd/) in SODEL CMOS has been improved by up to 25% compared to that of conventional bulk CMOS in five stacked nFET inverters at the same V/sub dd/. It is also confirmed that about 30% better power-delay product can be realized at the same /spl tau//sub pd/ with reduced V/sub dd/ in SODEL CMOS. In SRAM cell applications, SODEL CMOS shows high Static Noise Margin (SNM) of /spl sim/95 mV at V/sub dd/=0.6 V. Smaller bitline delay is expected and confirmed in SODEL CMOS SRAM by SPICE simulations. Latch-up immunity for /spl alpha/-particle irradiation in SODEL CMOS was also found to be comparable to that of conventional bulk CMOS. Therefore, SODEL CMOS device and circuit technology is expected to provide a better solution for low-power system-on-a-chip (SoC).