Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Application of environmental tracers to study groundwater recharge in a semi-arid area of Central Tunisia

Abstract Groundwater of the Tertiary-Quaternary Formations in the Jeloula basin (Central Tunisia), together with rain and surface waters, were analysed to investigate the mineralization processes, the origin of the water and its recharge sources. The water samples present a large spatial variability of chemical facies which is related to their interaction with the geological formations. The main sources of the water mineralization are the dissolution of evaporitic and carbonate minerals and cation exchange reactions. Stable isotopes indicate that most groundwater samples originate from infiltration of modern precipitation. Surface water samples from small dam reservoirs show a 18O/2H enrichment, which is typical of water exposed to open-surface evaporation in a semi-arid region. Considerable data of 3H and 14C allow the qualitative identification of the present-day recharge that is probably supplied by infiltration of recent flood waters in the Wadi El Hamra valley, and by direct infiltration of meteoric water through the local carbonate outcrops. Editor D. Koutsoyiannis; Associate editor S. Faye
Guiding Instruction-based Image Editing via Multimodal Large Language Models

Instruction-based image editing improves the controllability and flexibility of image manipulation via natural commands without elaborate descriptions or regional masks. However, human instructions are sometimes too brief for current methods to capture and follow. Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) show promising capabilities in cross-modal understanding and visual-aware response generation via LMs. We investigate how MLLMs facilitate edit instructions and present MLLM-Guided Image Editing (MGIE). MGIE learns to derive expressive instructions and provides explicit guidance. The editing model jointly captures this visual imagination and performs manipulation through end-to-end training. We evaluate various aspects of Photoshop-style modification, global photo optimization, and local editing. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that expressive instructions are crucial to instruction-based image editing, and our MGIE can lead to a notable improvement in automatic metrics and human evaluation while maintaining competitive inference efficiency.
Orientation and motion of current layers: minimization of the Faraday residue

A simple analytical solution is presented for a minimization problem encountered by Terasawa et al. [1996] in analyzing electromagnetic (EM) field and plasma data series acquired by a spacecraft traversing a one‐dimensional (1D) current layer. Their analysis was developed to infer the direction of spatial variation, n, and velocity, un, along n of a 1D EM structure such as the bowshock, the magnetopause, or the geotail current sheet. We show that the optimization procedure of Terasawa et al., which involved a numerical search, in fact reduces to solving a 3 × 3 eigen‐problem for a certain matrix Q defined in terms of the data. A step‐by‐step outline is given of the operations needed to predict n and un in this manner from an actual data set. Statistical estimates of uncertainty are given. Two magnetopause crossings by the spacecraft AMPTE/IRM are used to illustrate the procedure and to compare the results with those obtained by other methods.
Cost Reduction on Testing Evolving Cancer Registry System

The Cancer Registration Support System (CaReSS), built by the Cancer Registry of Norway (CRN), is a complex real-world socio-technical software system that undergoes continuous evolution in its implementation. Consequently, continuous testing of CaReSS with automated testing tools is needed such that its dependability is always ensured. Towards automated testing of a key software subsystem of CaReSS, i.e., GURI, we present a real-world application of an extension to the open-source tool EvoMaster, which automatically generates test cases with evolutionary algorithms. We named the extension EvoClass, which enhances EvoMaster with a machine learning classifier to reduce the overall testing cost. This is imperative since testing with EvoMaster involves sending many requests to GURI deployed in different environments, including the production environment, whose performance and functionality could potentially be affected by many requests. The machine learning classifier of EvoClass can predict whether a request generated by EvoMaster will be executed successfully or not; if not, the classifier filters out such requests, consequently reducing the number of requests to be executed on GURI. We evaluated EvoClass on ten GURI versions over four years in three environments: development, testing, and production. Results showed that EvoClass can significantly reduce the testing cost of evolving GURI without reducing testing effectiveness (measured as rule coverage) across all three environments, as compared to the default EvoMaster. Overall, EvoClass achieved ≈31% of overall cost reduction. Finally, we report our experiences and lessons learned that are equally valuable for researchers and practitioners.
Promptbreeder: Self-Referential Self-Improvement Via Prompt Evolution

Popular prompt strategies like Chain-of-Thought Prompting can dramatically improve the reasoning abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) in various domains. However, such hand-crafted prompt-strategies are often sub-optimal. In this paper, we present Promptbreeder, a general-purpose self-referential self-improvement mechanism that evolves and adapts prompts for a given domain. Driven by an LLM, Promptbreeder mutates a population of task-prompts, and subsequently evaluates them for fitness on a training set. Crucially, the mutation of these task-prompts is governed by mutation-prompts that the LLM generates and improves throughout evolution in a self-referential way. That is, Promptbreeder is not just improving task-prompts, but it is also improving the mutationprompts that improve these task-prompts. Promptbreeder outperforms state-of-the-art prompt strategies such as Chain-of-Thought and Plan-and-Solve Prompting on commonly used arithmetic and commonsense reasoning benchmarks. Furthermore, Promptbreeder is able to evolve intricate task-prompts for the challenging problem of hate speech classification.
Calculation of Capillary Conductivity from Pressure Plate Outflow Data 1

The flow equation describing the movement of water out of a soil sample in the pressure plate apparatus has been solved for a special case. It is assumed that during the outflow process (a) the capillary conductivity is approximately constant, and (b) the relation between the water content and the suction is linear. Both of these conditions can be met if the pressure increment which causes the outflow is made sufficiently small. By measuring the outflow from the sample as a function of time and using the solution of the flow equation, the capillary conductivity can be calculated for each suction interval. Conductivity measurements on three soils indicate that the conductivity decreases approximately as the inverse square to cube of the suction. By using the pressure membrane apparatus, the range of suction over which measurements were made was extended up to 15 bars. View complete article To view this complete article, insert Disc 2 then click button8
The Relations between the Llandovery Rocks of Llandovery and those of Garth

While we were engaged in examining the districts described in the two preceding communications, we frequently compared notes upon the succession and fauna. These comparisons appeared to show that during the Llandovery Epoch the geological events in one district were reproduced with some exactness in the other. A closer enquiry revealed, however, certain significant differences between the two areas, and, as both the similarities and the differences throw an interesting light upon the earth-movements which affected these areas during the Llandovery Epoch, we believe that it will serve a useful purpose to bring them to the notice of the Society. The observations upon which the comparisons are based are contained in the accounts of the respective areas, except that some additional facts relating to the northern part of the Llandovery district are recorded in this paper and on the map which accompanies it (p. 408). Both districts lie on the eastern flank of the Towy Anticline, and on the same general line of strike. The rocks belong to the shelly facies, but contain an occasional graptolite. About 5 miles away to the west, the Llandovery rocks of Rhayader and of Ystradffin mark the position of the western flank of the Towy Anticline, but these belong to the graptolitic facies. The axis of that anticline is not situated midway between the eastern and the western Silurian outcrops; it must, in fact, pass within a mile or two west of the base of the Silurian in both the Garth and the Llandovery
EFFECTS OF DRY DENSITY AND GRAIN SIZE DISTRIBUTION ON SOIL-WATER CHARACTERISTIC CURVES OF SANDY SOILS

ABSTRACT The soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) of soil plays the key roll in unsaturated soil mechanics which is a relatively new field of study having wide applications particularly in Geotechnical and Geo-environmental Engineering. To encourage the geotechnical engineers to apply unsaturated soil mechanics theories in routine practice, numerical methods, based on the SWCC and saturated soil properties, have been developed to predict unsaturated permeability function and unsaturated shear strength properties which are expensive and time consuming to measure in laboratories. Further, several methods have been proposed to predict the SWCC in order to avoid difficulties in measuring the SWCC in laboratories. It is time consuming and it may require special techniques or apparatus to measure the SWCC in laboratories. However, it is important to have laboratory measured data of SWCCs to enhance and verify the proposed numerical methods. Hence, employing a Tempe pressure cell apparatus, the present study aims to investigate the effects of dry density and grain-size distribution on the SWCCs of sandy soils. Drying and wetting SWCCs were obtained for four sandy soils with different dry densities. The test data were best-fitted using the Fredlund and Xing (1994) equation and found that the fitting parameter, a, increases linearly with increasing the air-entry value of the SWCC and the fitting parameter, m, decreases with increasing the residual suction of the SWCC. The results revealed that soils with a low density have lower air-entry value and residual suction than soils with a high dry density. Further, the maximum slope of drying SWCC and hysteresis of drying and wetting SWCCs decrease with increasing density of soil. The air-entry value, residual suction, and hysteresis (the difference between the drying and wetting SWCCs) tends to decrease when the effective D10 of the soil increases. A soil with uniform grain-size distribution (the steeper slope in grain-size distribution) has a less hysteresis and a greater slope of drying SWCC than those of a non-uniform soil.
Resolved Star Formation in TNG100 Central and Satellite Galaxies

Recent cosmological hydrodynamical simulations have produced populations of numerical galaxies whose global star-forming properties are in good agreement with those of observed galaxies. Proper modeling of energetic feedback from supernovae and active galactic nuclei is critical to the ability of simulations to reproduce observed galaxy properties, and historically, such modeling has proven to be a challenge. Here, we analyze the local properties of central and satellite galaxies in the z = 0 snapshot of the TNG100 simulation as a test of feedback models. We generate a face-on projection of stellar particles in TNG100 galaxies, from which we demonstrate the existence of a resolved star-forming main sequence (ΣSFR–Σ* relation) with a slope and normalization that is in reasonable agreement with previous studies. We also present radial profiles of various galaxy populations for two parameters: the distance from the resolved main-sequence line (ΔΣSFR) and the luminosity-weighted stellar age (Age L ). We find that, on average, high-mass central and satellite galaxies quench from the inside out, while low-mass central and satellite galaxies have similar, flatter profiles. Overall, we find that, with the exception of the starburst population, the TNG100 feedback models yield simulated galaxies whose radial distributions of Age L and ΔΣSFR agree with those of observed galaxies.
Leveraging Side Information for Ligand Conformation Generation using Diffusion-Based Approaches

Ligand molecule conformation generation is a critical challenge in drug discovery. Deep learning models have been developed to tackle this problem, particularly through the use of generative models in recent years. However, these models often generate conformations that lack meaningful structure and randomness due to the absence of essential side information. Examples of such side information include the chemical and geometric features of the target protein, ligand-target compound interactions, and ligand chemical properties. Without these constraints, the generated conformations may not be suitable for further selection and design of new drugs. To address this limitation, we propose a novel method for generating ligand conformations that leverage side information and incorporate flexible constraints into standard diffusion models. Drawing inspiration from the concept of message passing, we introduce ligand-target massage passing block, a mechanism that facilitates the exchange of information between target nodes and ligand nodes, thereby incorporating target node features. To capture non-covalent interactions, we introduce ligand-target compound inter and intra edges. To further improve the biological relevance of the generated conformations, we train energy models using scalar chemical features. These models guide the progress of the standard Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models, resulting in more biologically meaningful conformations. We evaluate the performance of SIDEGEN using the PDBBind-2020 dataset, comparing it against other methods. The results demonstrate improvements in both Aligned RMSD and Ligand RMSD evaluations. Specifically, our model outperforms GeoDiff (trained on PDBBind-2020) by 20% in terms of the median aligned RMSD metric.
Robust Stochastic Optimization via Gradient Quantile Clipping

We introduce a clipping strategy for Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) which uses quantiles of the gradient norm as clipping thresholds. We prove that this new strategy provides a robust and efficient optimization algorithm for smooth objectives (convex or non-convex), that tolerates heavy-tailed samples (including infinite variance) and a fraction of outliers in the data stream akin to Huber contamination. Our mathematical analysis leverages the connection between constant step size SGD and Markov chains and handles the bias introduced by clipping in an original way. For strongly convex objectives, we prove that the iteration converges to a concentrated distribution and derive high probability bounds on the final estimation error. In the non-convex case, we prove that the limit distribution is localized on a neighborhood with low gradient. We propose an implementation of this algorithm using rolling quantiles which leads to a highly efficient optimization procedure with strong robustness properties, as confirmed by our numerical experiments.
On the Contractivity of Plug-and-Play Operators

In plug-and-play (PnP) regularization, the proximal operator in algorithms such as ISTA and ADMM is replaced by a powerful denoiser. This formal substitution works surprisingly well in practice. In fact, PnP has been shown to give state-of-the-art results for various imaging applications. The empirical success of PnP has motivated researchers to understand its theoretical underpinnings and, in particular, its convergence. It was shown in prior work that for kernel denoisers such as the nonlocal means, PnP-ISTA provably converges under some strong assumptions on the forward model. The present work is motivated by the following questions: Can we relax the assumptions on the forward model? Can the convergence analysis be extended to PnP-ADMM? Can we estimate the convergence rate? In this letter, we resolve these questions using the contraction mapping theorem: i) for symmetric denoisers, we show that (under mild conditions) PnP-ISTA and PnP-ADMM exhibit linear convergence; and ii) for kernel denoisers, we show that PnP-ISTA and PnP-ADMM converge linearly for image inpainting. We validate our theoretical findings using reconstruction experiments.
Optical and spin coherence of Er$^{3+}$ in epitaxial CeO$_2$ on silicon

Solid-state atomic defects with optical transitions in the telecommunication bands, potentially in a nuclear spin free environment, are important for applications in fiber-based quantum networks. Erbium ions doped in CeO$_2$ offer such a desired combination. Here we report on the optical homogeneous linewidth and electron spin coherence of Er$^{3+}$ ions doped in CeO$_2$ epitaxial film grown on a Si(111) substrate. The long-lived optical transition near 1530 nm in the environmentally-protected 4f shell of Er$^{3+}$ shows a narrow homogeneous linewidth of 440 kHz with an optical coherence time of 0.72 $\mu$s at 3.6 K. The reduced nuclear spin noise in the host allows for Er$^{3+}$ electron spin polarization at 3.6 K, yielding an electron spin coherence of 0.66 $\mu$s (in the isolated ion limit) and a spin relaxation of 2.5 ms. These findings indicate the potential of Er$^{3+}$:CeO$_2$ film as a valuable platform for quantum networks and communication applications.
Geographic distribution of lightning‐induced electron precipitation observed as VLF/LF perturbation events

Expected occurrence characteristics of lightning-induced electron precipitation (LEP) events at longitudes of the western (110° W) versus eastern (71° W) United States are considered from the point of view of available trapped particle flux at the edge of the loss cone. Considering published data on nighttime fluxes of >68 keV electrons observed at L ≃ 2.5, and for “direct” precipitation into the northern hemisphere induced by northern hemisphere lightning, the occurrence rate and flux levels are expected to be a factor of 20–200 higher in the west than in the east, assuming no significant variation in lightning source activity with longitude. Again assuming lightning sources in the north, it is predicted that at 71° W, “mirrored” precipitation into the southern hemisphere would involve precipitation fluxes 30–300 times higher than “direct” precipitation into the northern hemisphere. However, at 110° W and again assuming lightning in the north, southern hemisphere precipitation would tend to be limited to that small fraction of particles that were initially scattered into the northern loss cone and that were then backscattered from the northern atmosphere so as to reach the south. Preliminary experimental investigation of these predictions is based on observations of lightning-associated perturbations of two geographically separate subionospheric VLF/LF signal paths, one (48.5 kHz) originating at Silver Creek, Nebraska, and observed at Stanford, California, and the other (28.5 kHz) originating at Aguadilla, Peurto Rico, and observed at Lake Mistissini, Quebec. The association of the characteristic VLF signal perturbations with lightning is generally evidenced by simultaneous (within ∼1 s) observation of single or multiple radio atmospherics. In most cases, high-resolution measurements of event signatures reveal a ∼0.5–1 s delay between the atmospheric and event onset, as well as an ∼1-s onset duration, consistent with theoretical predictions of a test particle model of the gyroresonant whistler-particle interaction. The data, considered in the light of previous observations in the southern hemisphere, provide qualitative support for several of the predictions based on considerations of the trapped flux level near the loss cone, in particular the prediction of comparable rates in the north at 110° W and the south at 71° W, and the prediction of substantially larger rates in the south than in the north near 71° W.
Handling Correlated Rounding Error via Preclustering: A 1.73-approximation for Correlation Clustering

We consider the classic correlation clustering problem: Given a complete graph where edges are labelled either + or −, the goal is to find a partition of the vertices that minimizes the sum of the +edges across parts plus the sum of the −edges within parts. Recently, Cohen-Addad, Lee and Newman [CLN22] gave a 1.995-approximation for the problem using the Sherali-Adams hierarchy, hence beating the integrality gap of 2 of the classic linear program. We significantly improve upon this result by providing a 1.73-approximation for the problem. Our approach brings together a new preprocessing of correlation clustering instances that enables a new LP formulation which combined with the algorithm from [CLN22] yields the improved bound.
Anisotropic quark stars in energy-momentum squared gravity with an interacting quark equation of state

We investigate anisotropic quark stars within the context of energy-momentum squared gravity (EMSG), assuming the internal composition consists of homogeneous, charge-neutral 3-flavor interacting quark matter with ${\cal O}(m_s^4)$ corrections. We performed numerical calculations of the equation of state (EoS) and the modified Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) structure equation. Additionally, we discussed the impact of the GB coupling parameter $\alpha $ on the mass-radius relationship. Furthermore, we compared our results with astronomical observational data. Our research offers a new perspective, proposing that in EMSG, accounting for anisotropy could lead to denser stars than in isotropic scenarios.
Characterizing losses in InAs two-dimensional electron gas-based gatemon qubits

The tunnelling of cooper pairs across a Josephson junction (JJ) allow for the nonlinear inductance necessary to construct superconducting qubits, amplifiers, and various other quantum circuits. An alternative approach using hybrid superconductor-semiconductor JJs can enable superconducting qubit architectures with all electric control. Here we present continuous-wave and time-domain characterization of gatemon qubits and coplanar waveguide resonators based on an InAs two-dimensional electron gas. We show that the qubit undergoes a vacuum Rabi splitting with a readout cavity and we drive coherent Rabi oscillations between the qubit ground and first excited states. We measure qubit relaxation times to be $T_1 =$ 100 ns over a 1.5 GHz tunable band. We detail the loss mechanisms present in these materials through a systematic study of the quality factors of coplanar waveguide resonators. While various loss mechanisms are present in III-V gatemon circuits we detail future directions in enhancing the relaxation times of qubit devices on this platform.