Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seasonal and interannual variability of the North Equatorial Current, the Mindanao Current, and the Kuroshio along the Pacific western boundary

Along the Philippine coast in the western Pacific, the North Equatorial Current (NEC) bifurcates into the northward flowing Kuroshio and the southward flowing Mindanao Current. Using both the linear, time-dependent Sverdrup theory and a high-resolution, nonlinear reduced-gravity model, this study investigated the changes in the NEC-Mindanao Current-Kuroshio (NMK) system induced by large-scale surface wind forcings. Using the Florida State University monthly wind stress data from 1961 through 1992, we show that the seasonal bifurcation of the NEC occurs at the northernmost position in October and the southernmost position in February. While the meridional migration of the basin-wide trade wind has a relatively small effect in shifting the bifurcation latitude (by about 100 km), the monsoonal wind along the low-latitude western Pacific is effective in inducing a large northward excursion of the NEC's bifurcation in the fall season. On the interannual timeseale, the positive wind stress curl of the trade wind tends to intensify and shifts the zero wind stress curl line northward prior to El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. With a lag of about 1 year this shift induces the bifurcation of the NEC to occur at a higher latitude. During the La Nina years the NEC generally bifurcates at a lower latitude. No significant seasonal fluctuations are found in the transport of the NEC near the Philippine coast. Seasonal changes in the Mindanao Current and the Kuroshio are, however, significant, and their transports tend to fluctuate 180° out of phase, due to the different speeds of the baroclinic Rossby waves at their respective latitudes. The Kuroshio (the Mindanao Current) has a seasonal minimum (maximum) transport in fall when the NEC bifurcates at the seasonally northernmost latitude. The interannual changes in the inflow NEC are largely controlled by the basin-wide, wind stress curl anomalies. While the quasi-biennial changes are confined only to the southern limb of the NMK system, signals with ENSO timescales are found to influence the midlatitude, subtropical circulation via the Kuroshio.
A 40Ar/39Ar study of oceanic and continental deformation processes during an oblique collision: Taconian orogeny in the Quebec reentrant of the Canadian Appalachians

Two phases of penetrative deformation are documented in the Taconian hinterland of the Appalachian orogen in the Gaspé Peninsula. D1 is associated with the obduction of the Mont‐Albert ophiolite onto the Paleozoic Laurentian margin, whereas D2 corresponds to later transport of allochthons across the margin. In the metamorphic sole, S1 is a SE‐dipping mylonitic fabric with a downdip lineation. In underlying metabasalts, D1 is characterized by NW‐overturned and recumbent folds, and a subhorizontal S1 schistosity with an ENE‐trending orogen‐parallel lineation. D2 is characterized by a S2 steeply dipping penetrative axial‐planar crenulation cleavage and NE‐trending F2 folds. The intraoceanic thrusting of ophiolite is dated at 465 Ma (early D1) whereas emplacement of ophiolite and subsequent deformation of the margin was recorded by isotopic signatures between 459 and 456 Ma (late D1). D2 is dated at 448 Ma throughout the hinterland. Taconian transpressive deformation is related to an oblique collision within the Quebec reentrant of the Canadian Appalachians during the Ordovician.
Rice-shrimp farming in the Mekong Delta: biophysical and socioeconomic issues

Abstract The study area is situated in the southern part of National Highway No. 1 in Gia Rai District(Bac Lieu Province) where farmers have traditionally practised rain-fed rice cultivation.However, in the last five years the high profits possible from shrimp production have led manyfarmers in the study area to convert their rice fields to shrimp production. This has occurred withlimited land use planning from government. In this study the suitability of land under differentfarming practices (in particular rice–shrimp farming) is assessed and recommendations are madefor land use planning. These recommendations incorporated government objectives and theneeds of local farmers. The study involved both soil and household surveys where a total of 249soil observation points were made and a total of 264 households were interviewed aboutsocioeconomic concerns. Land mapping units (LMU) were employed as a basis for the landevaluation. The land mapping units were identified on the basis of combinations of climatic, soiland hydrological characteristics — each of the 22 LMUs identified can be described in terms ofsoil type, rainfall, length of rainy period, maximum inundation depth, length of inundationperiod, tidal magnitude and present land use. The biophysical qualities of each LMU werecombined with information about the required land qualities of four key land use types (LUT)to provide insights for land use planning in the study region. The land use types included in thestudy were double rice cropping (LUT1), rice–shrimp (LUT2), improved–extensive shrimp(LUT3), and extensive shrimp (LUT4). The results showed that only LUT3 and LUT4 werehighly and moderately suitable for all LMUs, indicating that there is potential for fisherydevelopment in the study area. In several of the LMUs, however, LUT1 was found to be highlysuitable and LUT3 and LUT4 only moderately to marginally suitable. The results from theassessment of land suitability were used to evaluate three land-use planning scenarios. Thesescenarios were: 1. maximise rice area; 2. maximise shrimp area; 3. develop separate zones forintensive rice cultivation and shrimp-based systems prioritising rice–shrimp systems. The localgovernment objectives are most supportive of scenario 3; therefore, in this paper only the resultsfor this scenario are shown
Investigating error structure of shuttle radar topography mission elevation data product

An attempt was made to experimentally assess the instrumental component of error of the C‐band SRTM (SRTM). This was achieved by comparing elevation data of 302 runways from airports all over the world with the shuttle radar topography mission data product (SRTM). It was found that the rms of the instrumental error is about ±1.55 m. Modeling of the remaining SRTM error sources, including terrain relief and pixel size, shows that downsampling from 30 m to 90 m (1 to 3 arc‐sec pixels) worsened SRTM vertical accuracy threefold. It is suspected that the proximity of large metallic objects is a source of large SRTM errors. The achieved error estimates allow a pixel‐based accuracy assessment of the SRTM elevation data product to be constructed. Vegetation‐induced errors were not considered in this work.
Drag coefficients for winter Antarctic pack ice

Air-ice and ice-water drag coefficients referenced to 10-m-height winds for winter Antarctic pack ice based on measurements made from R/V Polarstern during the Winter Weddell Sea Project, 1986 (WWSP-86), and from R/V Akademik Fedorov during the Winter Weddell Gyre Study, 1989 (WWGS-89), are presented. The optimal values of the air-ice drag coefficients, made from turbulent flux measurements, are (1.79 +/- 0.06) x 10 exp -3 for WWSP-86 and (1.45 +/- 0.09) x 10 exp -3 for WWGS-89. A single ice-water drag coefficient for both WWSP-86 and WWGS-89, estimated from periods of ice drift throught to represent free-drift conditions, is (1.13 +/- 0.26) x 10 exp -3, and the ice-water turning angle is 18 +/- 18 deg. It is suggested that for a typical Antarctic winter pack ice cover, the ice cover reduces the momentum flux from the atmosphere to the ocean by about 33 percent.
Sand Compaction with Vibratory Rollers

An investigation of some of the factors influencing sand compaction with vibratory smooth-wheeled rollers is reported. Soil density determinations were made in test pits before and after compaction of an eight-foot high test embankment and two successive two-foot lifts. Comparisons are made between compacted density-depth profiles for 2, 5, 15, and 45 roller coverages and for several different roller operating frequencies. Measurements of roller drum acceleration and dynamic stress and acceleration in the soil at various depths below the roller are used to identify some of the mechanisms controlling vibratory compaction.
From Generic to Personalized: Investigating Strategies for Generating Targeted Counter Narratives against Hate Speech

The spread of hate speech (HS) in the digital age poses significant challenges, with online platforms becoming breeding grounds for harmful content. While many natural language processing (NLP) studies have focused on identifying hate speech, few have explored the generation of counter narratives (CNs) as means to combat it. Previous studies have shown that computational models often generate CNs that are dull and generic, and therefore do not resonate with hate speech authors. In this paper, we explore the personalization capabilities of computational models for generating more targeted and engaging CNs. This paper investigates various strategies for incorporating author profiling information into GPT-2 and GPT-3.5 models to enhance the personalization of CNs to combat online hate speech. We investigate the effectiveness of incorporating author profiling aspects, more specifically the age and gender information of HS authors, in tailoring CNs specifically targeted at HS spreaders. We discuss the challenges, opportunities, and future directions for incorporating user profiling information into CN interventions.
The effect of conversation type on entrainment: Evidence from laughter

Entrainment is a phenomenon that occurs across several modalities and at different linguistic levels in conversation. Previous work has shown that its effects may be modulated by conversation extrinsic factors, such as the relation between the interlocutors or the speakers’ traits. The current study investigates the role of conversation type on laughter entrainment. Employing dyadic interaction materials in German, containing two conversation types (free dialogues and task-based interactions), we analyzed three measures of entrainment previously proposed in the literature. The results show that the entrainment effects depend on the type of conversation, with two of the investigated measures being affected by this factor. These findings represent further evidence towards the role of situational aspects as a mediating factor in conversation.
The 2023 WebNLG Shared Task on Low Resource Languages. Overview and Evaluation Results (WebNLG 2023)

The WebNLG task consists of mapping a knowledge graph to a text verbalising the con- tent of that graph. The 2017 WebNLG edi- tion required participating systems to gener- ate English text from a set of DBpedia triples, while the 2020 WebNLG+ challenge addition- ally included generation into Russian and se- mantic parsing of English and Russian texts. In contrast, WebNLG 2023 focuses on four under-resourced languages which are severely under-represented in research on text genera- tion, namely Breton, Irish, Maltese and Welsh. In addition, WebNLG 2023 once again includes Russian. In this paper, we present the organi- sation of the shared task (data, timeline, eval- uation), briefly describe the participating sys- tems and summarise results for participating systems.
Trophic distribution of nutrient production in coral reef fisheries

Coral reef fisheries supply nutritious catch to tropical coastal communities, where the quality of reef seafood is determined by both the rate of biomass production and nutritional value of reef fishes. Yet our understanding of reef fisheries typically uses targets of total reef fish biomass rather than individual growth (i.e. biomass production) and nutrient content (i.e. nutritional value of reef fish), limiting the ability of management to sustain the productivity of nutritious catches. Here, we use modelled growth coefficients and nutrient concentrations to develop a new metric of nutrient productivity of coral reef fishes. We then evaluate this metric with underwater visual surveys of reef fish assemblages from four tropical countries to examine nutrient productivity of reef fish food webs. Species' growth coefficients were associated with nutrients that vary with body size (calcium, iron, selenium and zinc), but not total nutrient density. When integrated with fish abundance data, we find that herbivorous species typically dominate standing biomass, biomass turnover and nutrient production on coral reefs. Such bottom-heavy trophic distributions of nutrients were consistent across gradients of fishing pressure and benthic composition. We conclude that management restrictions that promote sustainability of herbivores and other low trophic-level species can sustain biomass and nutrient production from reef fisheries that is critical to the food security of over 500 million people in the tropics.
GEMINI: Fast Failure Recovery in Distributed Training with In-Memory Checkpoints

Large deep learning models have recently garnered substantial attention from both academia and industry. Nonetheless, frequent failures are observed during large model training due to large-scale resources involved and extended training time. Existing solutions have significant failure recovery costs due to the severe restriction imposed by the bandwidth of remote storage in which they store checkpoints. This paper presents Gemini, a distributed training system that enables fast failure recovery for large model training by checkpointing to CPU memory of the host machines with much larger aggregated bandwidth. However, two challenges prevent naïvely checkpointing to CPU memory. First, the availability of checkpoints in CPU memory cannot be guaranteed when failures occur. Second, since the communication traffic for training and checkpointing share the same network, checkpoint traffic can interfere with training traffic and harm training throughput. To address these two challenges, this paper proposes: 1) a provably near-optimal checkpoint placement strategy to maximize the probability of failure recovery from checkpoints in CPU memory; and 2) a checkpoint traffic scheduling algorithm to minimize, if not eliminate, the interference of checkpoint traffic on model training. Our evaluation shows that overall Gemini achieves a faster failure recovery by more than 13× than existing solutions. Moreover, it achieves optimal checkpoint frequency, i.e., every iteration, and incurs no overhead on training throughput for large model training.
Effects of lightning on reactive nitrogen and nitrogen reservoir species in the troposphere

The impact of lightning on tropospheric reactive nitrogen NOx (NO + NO2) and nitrogen reservoir species (HNO3, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), N2O5, and HNO4) has been evaluated using a global chemical/transport model. Comparison of calculations made with and without lightning show that lightning has a significant effect on the nitrogen species on a global scale, resulting in significant enhancements of NOx, HNO3, and PAN over the no lightning case. Of the nitrogen species, HNO3 is influenced the most, comprising approximately 60 to 80% of the total increase in the nitrogen species concentration. The increase in PAN accounts for approximately 20 to 30% of the nitrogen enhancement by lightning in the middle troposphere. In the lower troposphere of the tropics, NOx is rapidly converted into HNO3 due to the high OH concentration in this region. As a result, the enhancement in NOx from direct lightning emission is limited primarily to the upper troposphere. The conversion between NOx and less reactive nitrogen species (PAN and HNO3) also plays an important role in affecting NOx, especially over the oceans where lightning activity is low. The model results suggest that recycling of NOx from the lightning-enhanced PAN and HNO3 produces 2 to 10 parts per trillion by volume (pptv) increases in NOx over the oceans in the lower troposphere of the tropics. The enhancement of NOx over the oceans can partially explain the observations of NOx (mixing ratios of typically 10–50 pptv) over the tropical oceans, which are characterized by higher concentrations than would be expected from direct transport of NOx from the continents.
NatiSand: Native Code Sandboxing for JavaScript Runtimes

Modern runtimes render JavaScript code in a secure and isolated environment, but when they execute binary programs and shared libraries, no isolation guarantees are provided. This is an important limitation, and it affects many popular runtimes including Node.js, Deno, and Bun [20, 61]. In this paper we propose NatiSand, a component for JavaScript runtimes that leverages Landlock, eBPF, and Seccomp to control the filesystem, Inter-Process Communication (IPC), and network resources available to binary programs and shared libraries. NatiSand does not require changes to the application code and offers to the user an easy interface. To demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach we implemented NatiSand and integrated it into Deno, a modern, security-oriented JavaScript runtime. We reproduced a number of vulnerabilities affecting third-party code, showing how they are mitigated by NatiSand. We also conducted an extensive experimental evaluation to assess the performance, proving that our approach is competitive with state of the art code sandboxing solutions. The implementation is available open source.
FIFO queues are all you need for cache eviction

As a cache eviction algorithm, FIFO has a lot of attractive properties, such as simplicity, speed, scalability, and flash-friendliness. The most prominent criticism of FIFO is its low efficiency (high miss ratio). In this work, we demonstrate a simple, scalable FIFO-based algorithm with three static queues (S3-FIFO). Evaluated on 6594 cache traces from 14 datasets, we show that S3-FIFO has lower miss ratios than state-of-the-art algorithms across traces. Moreover, S3-FIFO's efficiency is robust --- it has the lowest mean miss ratio on 10 of the 14 datasets. FIFO queues enable S3-FIFO to achieve good scalability with 6× higher throughput compared to optimized LRU at 16 threads. Our insight is that most objects in skewed workloads will only be accessed once in a short window, so it is critical to evict them early (also called quick demotion). The key of S3-FIFO is a small FIFO queue that filters out most objects from entering the main cache, which provides a guaranteed demotion speed and high demotion precision.
Multitemporal Analysis of TRMM-Based Satellite Precipitation Products for Land Data Assimilation Applications

Abstract In this study, the recent work of Gottschalck et al. and Ebert et al. is extended by assessing the suitability of two Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM)-based precipitation products for hydrological land data assimilation applications. The two products are NASA’s gauge-corrected TRMM 3B42 Version 6 (3B42), and the satellite-only NOAA Climate Prediction Center (CPC) morphing technique (CMORPH). The two products were evaluated against ground-based rain gauge–only and gauge-corrected Doppler radar measurements. The analyses were performed at multiple time scales, ranging from annual to diurnal, for the period March 2003 through February 2006. The analyses show that at annual or seasonal time scales, TRMM 3B42 has much lower biases and RMS errors than CMORPH. CMORPH shows season-dependent biases, with overestimation in summer and underestimation in winter. This leads to 50% higher RMS errors in CMORPH’s area-averaged daily precipitation than TRMM 3B42. At shorter time scales (5 days or less),.
Coherent free-electron light sources

Abstract. Free-electron light sources feature extraordinary luminosity, directionality, and coherence, which has enabled significant scientific progress in fields including physics, chemistry, and biology. The next generation of light sources has aimed at compact radiation sources driven by free electrons, with the advantages of reduction in both space and cost. With the rapid development of ultra-intense and ultrashort lasers, great effort has been devoted to the quest for compact free-electron lasers (FELs). This review focuses on the current efforts and advancements in the development of compact FELs, with a particular emphasis on two notable paths: the development of compact accelerators and the construction of micro undulators based on innovative materials/structures or optical modulation of electrons. In addition, the physical essence of inverse Compton scattering is discussed, which offers remarkable capability to develop an optical undulator with a spatial period that matches the optical wavelength. Recent scientific developments and future directions for miniaturized and integrated free-electron coherent light sources are also reviewed. In the future, the prospect of generating ultrashort electron pulses will provide fascinating means of producing superradiant radiation, promising high brilliance and coherence even on a micro scale using optical micro undulators.
Computed seismic speeds and attenuation in rocks with partial gas saturation

Calculations for an unconsolidated sand with partial gas saturation show a 20 percent increase in compressional wave velocity between 1 and 100 hz and attenuation of 27 db/1000 ft at 31 hz and 82 db/1000 ft at 123 hz. Shear velocity and attenuation are not affected. Fluid‐flow waves are shown to be responsible for the dispersion and attenuation at low frequencies; relations are derived by extending Gassmann’s viewpoint to include coupling between fluid‐flow waves and seismic body waves. This appears to be an important loss mechanism for heterogeneous porous rocks.
Exposure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis to human alveolar lining fluid shows temporal and strain-specific adaptation to the lung environment

Upon infection, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb) reaches the alveolar space and comes in close contact with human alveolar lining fluid (ALF) for an uncertain period of time prior to its encounter with alveolar cells. We showed that homeostatic ALF hydrolytic enzymes modify the M.tb cell envelope, driving M.tb-host cell interactions. Still, the contribution of ALF during M.tb infection is poorly understood. Here, we exposed 4 M.tb strains with different levels of virulence, transmissibility, and drug resistance (DR) to physiological concentrations of human ALF for 15-min and 12-h, and performed RNA sequencing. Gene expression analysis showed a temporal and strain-specific adaptation to human ALF. Differential expression (DE) of ALF-exposed vs. unexposed M.tb revealed a total of 397 DE genes associated with lipid metabolism, cell envelope and processes, intermediary metabolism and respiration, and regulatory proteins, among others. Most DE genes were detected at 12-h post-ALF exposure, with DR-M.tb strain W-7642 having the highest number of DE genes. Interestingly, genes from the KstR2 regulon, which controls the degradation of cholesterol C and D rings, were significantly upregulated in all strains post-ALF exposure. These results indicate that M.tb-ALF contact drives initial metabolic and physiologic changes in M.tb, with potential implications in infection outcome. IMPORTANCE Tuberculosis, caused by airborne pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. Upon infection, M.tb reaches the alveoli and gets in contact with human alveolar lining fluid (ALF), where ALF hydrolases modify the M.tb cell envelope driving subsequent M.tb-host cell interactions. Still, the contributions of ALF during infection are poorly understood. We exposed 4 M.tb strains to ALF for 15-min and 12-h and performed RNA sequencing, demonstrating a temporal and strain-specific adaptation of M.tb to ALF. Interestingly, genes associated with cholesterol degradation were highly upregulated in all strains. This study shows for the first time that ALF drives global metabolic changes in M.tb during the initial stages of the infection, with potential implications in disease outcome. Biologically relevant networks and common and strain-specific bacterial determinants derived from this study could be further investigated as potential therapeutic candidates.