Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hydrogeochemical Characterization of Rural Drinking Water in the Gauley River Basin, Monongahela National Forest

Hydrogeochemical Characterization of Rural Drinking Water in the Gauley River Basin, Monongahela National Forest Arati A. Umarvadia In the Appalachian Plateau region, the heterogeneous coal geology and fractured bedrock aquifers has led to complexity in understanding groundwater resources in West Virginia. Groundwater is a major resource in the Monongahela National Forest where private residences, public works, and national forest operations all rely heavily on this resource. In recent years, Marcellus shale gas has been explored in a small region of the Gauley River Basin, within the boundaries of the Monongahela National Forest. Hydrogeochemical evaluation of groundwater was carried out in this region with the objective of establishing a baseline of groundwater chemistry prior to potential Marcellus development. Groundwater was analyzed from 48 wells over the 400-square kilometer study area and analyzed for 23 parameters including major and trace constituents, and stable isotopes. The multivariate methods of principal components analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were combined with graphical methods (Piper, Stiff, Gibbs) to identify trends in water geochemistry. Samples were classified into three clusters: cluster 3 as deep groundwater, corresponding with high mineralization, valley settings, and silicate weathering processes; cluster 2 as shallower groundwater, corresponding with low mineralization, hilltop and hillside settings, and carbonate weathering processes; and cluster 1 as pristine groundwater, corresponding with little to no mineralization, predominantly occurring at hilltop settings and in groundwater springs. Overall, samples showed relatively low TDS that are indicative of fairly pure groundwaters. The increased mineralization from cluster 1 to cluster 3 is indicative of the evolution of groundwater along the flow path. This study establishes a baseline of groundwater chemistry and identifies that the chemical composition of groundwater in undeveloped regions of the Appalachian Plateau are relatively pure. Furthermore, groundwater chemistry is topographically distinct, with water-rock interactions along the groundwater flow path controlling the hydrogeochemistry in the region. Acknowledgments A sincere thank you to my thesis committee, Dr. Nicolas Zegre, Dr. Joe Donovan, Dr. Pamela Edwards, and Dr. Mike Strager, whose insight and expertise greatly assisted this research. Funding was provided by the United States Forest Service Northern Research Station, Grant # 11-JV-11242301-064.
Chain substitution and successive approximation method: Throughput analysis at SMEs

The purpose of this research work is to illustrate that using the logic of theory of constraints (TOC) concerning the Throughput is adequate in management decisions to improve performance in the context of small and medium enterprises. The TOC approach assumes the use of Throughput as an indicator of performance, and in this paper the method of chain substitution and successive approximation is proposed to analyze this indicator. After the implementation of the Throughput per hour analysis, the owner-manager changed her perspective about what her priorities should be in the exercise of the administrative process. The identification of the restriction of what prevented him from obtaining more money allowed him to make the decisions or courses of action that maximized the Throughput per hour, thus improving his performance as owner-manager, the performance of his enterprise and the economic situation of his employees. The originality of this article consists in the application of TOC approach through the design of the indicator Throughput per hour to analyse the performance of an entrepreneur and the application of the chain substitution and successive approximation method for the study of the restrictions that inhibit it.
Description of Arichlidon New Genus and Two New Species from Australia; Bhawania Reyssi Redescribed and Assigned to Arichlidon (Chrysopetalidae: Polychaeta)

Arichlidon hanneloreae gen. nov., sp. nov. is described from coastal and offshore coral reefs in tropical Eastern and western Australian waters, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Marshall Islands. Arichlidon acropetalon sp. nov. is described from deeper waters off north Queensland, eastern Australia. Bhawania reyssi Katzmann, Laubier and Ramos, 1974, is redescribed and assigned to the new genus Arichlidon. Additional material of B. reyssi is recorded from Cape Verde Is lands, Eastern Atlantic; Mediterranean localities, including specimens from abyssal depths of the eastern Mediterranean, and the Red Sea. The new genus is characterised by a distinct convex, broad, short body form and the shapes of the highl y ornamented lateral, main and median paleae groups. Epitokous spinigerous neurosetae, not recorded before in the Chrysopetalidae, are described for Arichlidon lwnneloreae sp. nov .
Repeated, multiscale, magmatic erosion and recycling in an upper-crustal pluton: implications for magma chamber dynamics and magma volume estimates

Abstract The Tuolumne Intrusive Complex, an upper-crustal (7–11 km emplacement depths), incrementally constructed (95–85 Ma growth history) plutonic complex (~1100 km2), preserves evidence from several data sets indicating the repeated, multiscale, magmatic erosion of older units occurred and that some eroded material was recycled into younger magma batches. These include: (1) map patterns of internal contacts (hundreds of kilometers) that show local hybrid units, truncations, and evidence of removal of older units by younger; (2) the presence of widespread xenolith and cognate inclusions (thousands), including “composite” inclusions; (3) the presence of widespread enclaves (millions), including “composite” enclaves, plus local enclave swarms that include xenoliths and cognate inclusions; (4) the presence of widespread schlieren-bound magmatic structures (>9000) showing evidence of local (meter-scale) truncations and erosion; (5) antecrystic zircons (billions) and other antecrystic minerals from older units now residing in younger units; (6) whole-rock geochemistry including major element, REE, and isotopic data; and (7) single mineral petrographic and geochemical studies indicating mixing of distinct populations of the same mineral. Synthesis of the above suggests that some erosion and mixing occurred at greater crustal depths, but that thousands of “erosion events” at the emplacement site resulted in removal of ~35–55% of the original plutonic material from the presently exposed surface with some (~25%? ) being recycled into younger magmas and the remainder was either erupted or displaced downward. The driving mechanisms for mixing/recycling are varied but likely include buoyancy driven intrusion of younger batches into older crystal mushes, collapse and avalanching along growing and over-steepened solidification fronts within active magma chambers (1 to >500 km2 in size), and local convection in magma chambers driven by internal gradients (e.g., buoyancy, temperature, and composition).
Current status of opioid prescription in South Korea using narcotics information management system

Background Recognizing the seriousness of the misuse and abuse of medical narcotics, the South Korean government introduced the world's first narcotic management system, the Narcotics Information Management System (NIMS). This study aimed to explore the recent one-year opioid prescribing patterns in South Korea using the NIMS database. Methods This study analyzed opioid prescription records in South Korea for the year 2022, utilizing the dispensing/administration dataset provided by NIMS. Public data from the Korean Statistical Information Service were also utilized to explore prescription trends over the past four years. The examination covered 16 different opioid analgesics, assessed by the total number of units prescribed based on routes of administration, type of institutions, and patients’ sex and age group. Additionally, the disposal rate for each ingredient was computed. Results In total, 206,941 records of 87,792,968 opioid analgesic units were analyzed. Recently, the overall quantity of prescribed opioid analgesic units has remained relatively stable. The most prescribed ingredient was oral oxycodone, followed by tapentadol and sublingual fentanyl. Tertiary hospitals had the highest number of dispensed units (49.4%), followed by community pharmacies (40.2%). The highest number of prescribed units was attributed to male patients in their 60s. The disposal rates of the oral and transdermal formulations were less than 0.1%. Conclusions Opioid prescription in South Korea features a high proportion of oral formulations, tertiary hospital administration, pharmacy dispensing, and elderly patients. Sustained education and surveillance of patients and healthcare providers is required.
UNRAVELING CAREER DEVELOPMENT PRACTICES AND EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT IN SOUTH AFRICAN LOGISTICS COMPANIES

This study delves into the dynamics of career development practices and employee engagement within logistics companies in Durban City, South Africa. Employing a descriptive-correlational research design, the investigation sought answers to key questions regarding the extent of career development practices, the levels of employee engagement, and the relationship between these two critical aspects. The study focused on a sample of 215 employees from five logistics companies in Durban City, South Africa, employing a stratified random sampling approach tailored to the unique characteristics of each company. Primary data collection was conducted through a structured questionnaire, validated for content relevance and reliability, ensuring the instrument's consistency. Ethical principles, including informed consent, anonymity, voluntarism, and confidentiality, were rigorously upheld throughout the study. Data analysis utilized weighted mean and Pearson correlation as statistical tools. The main findings reveal a significant gap in the implementation of career development practices, particularly in essential areas such as career planning, succession planning, and career training. These deficiencies, reflected in low average weighted means, call for strategic interventions to address critical aspects of employee growth and development. Additionally, the study identifies suboptimal levels of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement among employees in logistics companies, emphasizing the need for comprehensive enhancement. A noteworthy discovery is the strong positive correlation between career development practices and employee engagement, highlighted by a robust Pearson Correlation of . 887. This statistically significant relationship underscores the interconnectedness of these factors, suggesting that addressing identified gaps in career development practices could catalyze improvements in overall employee engagement within logistics companies. In conclusion, these findings collectively advocate for the enhancement of career development practices as a catalyst for improving employee engagement, fostering a more dynamic and productive workforce. The study's recommendations include the implementation of comprehensive career development programs, prioritization of engagement initiatives, and the integration of technological solutions for career training. These strategies, tailored to the evolving business landscape, hold the potential to contribute to the overall success and sustainability of logistics companies in South Africa. Article visualizations:
Characterization and classification of some forest soils of north Karnataka

Four pedons selected in at forest Devimanaghat, K,handgar, Hosad and Ajinkere in north Karnataka were characterized for their morphological, physical and chemical properties. The texture and colour (hue) of soils varied from sandy loam to clay and 2.5YR to lOYR respectively associated with predominantly sub-angular blocky structure. The soils had high amounts of coarse fragments and sand fractions. The soils were acidic (pH 5.1 to 5.9), rich in organic carbon and are associated with low cation exchange capacity. Based on the characteristics, these forest soils were classified as Dystric Haplustepts, Kanhaplic
Unsupervised Linear Component Analysis for a Class of Probability Mixture Models

We deal with a model where a set of observations is obtained by a linear superposition of unknown components called sources. The problem consists in recovering the sources without knowing the linear transform. We extend the well-known Independent Component Analysis (ICA) methodology. Instead of assuming independent source components, we assume that the source vector is a probability mixture of two distributions. Only one distribution satisfies the ICA assumptions, while the other one is concentrated on a specific but unknown support. Sample points from the latter are clustered based on a data-driven distance in a fully unsupervised approach. A theoretical grounding is provided through a link with the Christoffel function. Simulation results validate our approach and illustrate that it is an extension of a formerly proposed method.
GPU-based optimization of pilgrim simulation for hajj and umrah rituals

Tawaf ritual performed during Hajj and Umrah is one of the most unique, large-scale multi-cultural events in this modern day and age. Pilgrims from all over the world circumambulate around a stone cube structure called Ka'aba. Disasters at these types of events are inevitable due to erratic behaviours of pilgrims. This has prompted researchers to present several solutions to avoid such incidents. Agent-based simulations of a large number of pilgrims performing different the ritual can provide the solution to obviate such disasters that are either caused by mismanagement or because of irregular event plans. However, the problem arises due to limited parallelisation capabilities in existing models for concurrent execution of the agent-based simulation. This limitation decreases the efficiency by producing insufficient frames for simulating a large number of autonomous agents during Tawaf ritual. Therefore, it has become very necessary to provide a parallel simulation model that will improve the performance of pilgrims performing the crucial ritual of Tawaf in large numbers. To fill in this gap between large-scale agent-based simulation and navigational behaviours for pilgrim movement, an optimised parallel simulation software of agent-based crowd movement during the ritual of Tawaf is proposed here. The software comprises parallel behaviours for autonomous agents that utilise the inherent parallelism of Graphics Processing Units (GPU). In order to implement the simulation software, an optimized parallel model is proposed. This model is based on the agent-based architecture which comprises agents having a reactive design that responds to a fixed set of stimuli. An advantage of using agents is to provide artificial anomaly to generate heterogeneous movement of the crowd as opposed to a singular movement which is unrealistic. The purpose is to decrease the execution time of complex behaviour computation for each agent while simulating a large crowd of pilgrims at increased frames per second (fps). The implementation utilises CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) platform for general purpose computing over GPU. It exploits the underlying data parallel capability of an existing library for steering behaviours, called OpenSteer. It has simpler behaviours that when combined together, produces more complex realistic behaviours. The data-independent nature of these agent-based behaviours makes it a very suitable candidate to be parallelised. After an in-depth review of previous studies on the simulation of Tawaf ritual, two key behaviours associated with pilgrim movement are considered for the new model. The parallel simulation is executed on three different high-performance configurations to determine the variation in different performance metrics. The parallel implementation achieved a considerable speedup in comparison to its sequential counterpart running on a single-threaded CPU. With the use of parallel behaviours, 100,000 pilgrims at 10 fps were simulated.
Efficient Dynamic Correspondence Network

We tackle the problem of establishing dense correspondences between a pair of images in an efficient way. Most existing dense matching methods use 4D convolutions to filter incorrect matches, but 4D convolutions are highly inefficient due to their quadratic complexity. Besides, these methods learn features with fixed convolutions which cannot make learnt features robust to different challenge scenarios. To deal with these issues, we propose an Efficient Dynamic Correspondence Network (EDCNet) by jointly equipping pre-separate convolution (Psconv) and dynamic convolution (Dyconv) to establish dense correspondences in a coarse-to-fine manner. The proposed EDCNet enjoys several merits. First, two well-designed modules including a neighbourhood aggregation (NA) module and a dynamic feature learning (DFL) module are combined elegantly in the coarse-to-fine architecture, which is efficient and effective to establish both reliable and accurate correspondences. Second, the proposed NA module maintains linear complexity, showing its high efficiency. And our proposed DFL module has better flexibility to learn features robust to different challenges. Extensive experimental results show that our algorithm performs favorably against state-of-the-art methods on three challenging datasets including HPatches, Aachen Day-Night and InLoc.
Accretion Cycles, Structural Evolution, and Thrust Activity in Accretionary Wedges With Various Décollement Configurations: Insights From Sandbox Analog Modeling

The architecture (geometry, fault network, and stacking pattern of accreted thrust sheets) of accretionary wedges influences subduction zone processes. However, it remains challenging to constrain the architectural evolution in natural accretionary wedges over geological timescales. In this study, we undertook sandbox analog modeling, with quantitative analysis of the wedge geometry and digital image correlation‐based kinematics, to delineate the wedge growth history with four décollement settings (single or double and continuous or discontinuous). The results show that the wedge is formed by repeated episodic frontal accretion with a constant cycle (i.e., the accretion cycle), and the degree of coupling between the base of the wedge and subducting plate interface appears to depend on the relative strengths of the wedge and detachment. An interbedded décollement layer in the incoming sediment facilitated wedge segmentation and rearrangement of the internal fault network, which weakened the wedge strength. A combination of a detachable high‐friction patch in the basal décollement and a continuous interbedded weak layer enabled underplating of underthrusted sediment beneath the inner wedge, which involved a low‐angle, long‐lived forethrust and multiple cycles of frontal accretion on short‐lived forethrusts at the deformation front. Our findings suggest that décollement configuration is a key factor in controlling the accretion cycle, strain distribution, fault network, and wedge strength on timescales of ∼105 yr in natural accretionary systems. This result should be considered when investigating modern subduction zones.
A comparative systematic review and meta-analysis on the diagnostic accuracy of non-invasive tests for Helicobacter pylori detection in elderly patients

Background Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection, a type I carcinogen, affects approximately 50% of the global population, correlating with various gastric pathologies. Notably, diagnostic sensitivities of non-invasive methods, such as the stool antigen test (HpSA), Serology, and Urea Breath Test (UBT), have been suggested to be less effective in older age groups. This study systematically reviews and meta-analyzes the diagnostic accuracy of these tests within the elderly population. Methods A comprehensive literature search was performed across multiple databases, including PubMed, Medline, and Web of Science, up to July 2023. Data were pooled and analyzed using random-effects models. Sensitivity, specificity, and Diagnostic Odds Ratios (DOR) were computed for the tests. Heterogeneity and risk of bias were assessed. Results Eight studies involving diverse geographic locations and totaling between 46 and 1,441 participants per study were included. The pooled sensitivity and specificity for HpSA were 72.5 and 94.7%, for Serology 83.7 and 73.3%, and for UBT 96.4 and 88.3%, respectively. DOR for UBT, HpSA, and Serology were 94.5, 47.9, and 14.2, respectively. High levels of heterogeneity were observed across the studies. Conclusion UBT and HpSA proved effective for diagnosing H. pylori in those over 60, while serology showed lower specificity. Despite methodological variations in available studies, these non-invasive tests offer reliable alternatives, especially for older patients who recently undergone endoscopy or without an indication for it, warranting consideration by healthcare practitioners.
Ethical leadership and TMT decision-making of corporate social responsibility – a perspective of self-determination theory

This study examines the impact of ethical leadership on top management team (TMT) decision-making regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR), considering the mediating role of TMT passion and the moderating role of performance stress. The study distinguishes between TMT harmonious and obsessive work passion and categorizes CSR as proactive and reactive. The findings reveal the following: (1) Ethical leadership positively influences proactive CSR, with TMT harmonious work passion acting as a positive mediator and TMT obsessive work passion playing a negative mediating role; (2) ethical leadership positively affects reactive CSR, with both TMT harmonious and obsessive work passion serving as positive mediators; (3) performance stress diminishes the impact of ethical leadership on TMT harmonious work passion; however, it amplifies the effect on TMT obsessive work passion. Consequently, the mediating effect of TMT harmonious work passion weakens, while the mediating effect of TMT obsessive work passion strengthens. This study emphasizes the significant role of TMT in CSR strategic decision-making and proposes a novel mediating mechanism through which ethical leadership drives CSR decision-making by considering TMT work passion. These findings reconcile the theoretical-practical conflict and have important theoretical and practical implications for enterprises in fulfilling their social responsibility.
Role of Specific Autoantibodies in Neurodegenerative Diseases: Pathogenic Antibodies or Promising Biomarkers for Diagnosis

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) affect millions of people worldwide. They develop due to the pathological accumulation and aggregation of various misfolded proteins, axonal and synaptic loss and dysfunction, inflammation, cytoskeletal abnormalities, defects in DNA and RNA, and neuronal death. This leads to the activation of immune responses and the release of the antibodies against them. Recently, it has become clear that autoantibodies (Aabs) can contribute to demyelination, axonal loss, and brain and cognitive dysfunction. This has significantly changed the understanding of the participation of humoral autoimmunity in neurodegenerative disorders. It is crucial to understand how neuroinflammation is involved in neurodegeneration, to aid in improving the diagnostic and therapeutic value of Aabs in the future. This review aims to provide data on the immune system’s role in NDDs, the pathogenic role of some specific Aabs against molecules associated with the most common NDDs, and their potential role as biomarkers for monitoring and diagnosing NDDs. It is suggested that the autoimmune aspects of NDDs will facilitate early diagnosis and help to elucidate previously unknown aspects of the pathobiology of these diseases.