Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Magnitude and timing of New Hebrides Arc rotation: Paleomagnetic evidence from Nendo, Solomon Islands

Paleomagnetic results from Nendo record a total rotation of the northwestern corner of the New Hebrides Arc of 52° ± 12° clockwise. Reversed magnetic polarity and a nannofossil assemblage constrain the age of the Nendo pole to 4.29 - 3.58 Ma. Paleomagnetic data from Malekula, farther south in the same arc, imply a rotation of only about 28° since the late Miocene, probably because these poles have been affected by rotation of Malekula in response to collision of the arc with the D'Entrecasteaux Zone aseismic ridge. A new late Miocene reconstruction of the New Hebrides and Vitiaz arcs based on the paleomagnetic evidence requires a rotation of 39° around the point of intersection of the two arcs. The same rotation restores both the northwestern and southeastern segments of the New Hebrides Arc, although rotation of the southeastern segment commenced earlier. A series of sequential movements of segments of the arc, occurring at different times but acting to keep the arc roughly collinear, may be driven by a mechanism which minimizes deformation of the subducted plate. Propagation of spreading into the northwestern corner of the North Fiji Basin after 4.3 Ma is implied by the paleomagnetic results, and is consistent with spreading anomaly patterns in the basin. When the New Hebrides and Vitiaz Arcs are restored to their position relative to the Lau Ridge at 10 Ma, the Fiji Platform can be accommodated after clockwise rotation of 140°, to a position in line with the New Hebrides Arc. The large rotation for Fiji is consistent with paleomagnetic evidence indicating at least 115° of rotation.
First 40Ar-39Ar Ages from Low-T Mafic Blueschist Blocks in a Franciscan Mélange near San Simeon: Implications for Initiation of Subduction

The Franciscan Complex of California is a type example of an accretionary prism with widespread high-P/T subduction-zone metamorphism. Low-T, fine-grained, lawsonite-bearing mafic blueschists encased in a shale-matrix mélange near San Simeon have been dated for the first time. 40Ar-39Ar ages were obtained for phengite separated from four blocks and from an actinolitic rind on the margin of one of the blocks. The three blocks with lawsonite + epidote yield ages of between 154 and Ma, while the actinolitic rind yields an age of Ma. These ages are from the part of the Franciscan Complex west of the San Andreas Fault that moved northward at least 300 km with respect to the extensive Franciscan exposures east of the fault. The ages obtained in this study show that some fine-grained, low-T (lawsonite + epidote) Franciscan blueschist blocks formed at the same time as coarse-grained, high-T (garnet ± epidote) Franciscan blueschist blocks. These dated rocks indicate that both high- and low-T mafic blueschists are coeval and probably formed along 1000+ km of the North American Plate margin at ∼160–155 Ma. The episode of dynamic blueschist metamorphism was soon followed by high-Mg rind formation and a long period of nearly static high-P/T conditions.
An Introduction to Interfaces and Colloids

An Introduction to Interfaces and Colloids: The Bridge to Nanoscience The second printing of this book corrected a large number of typographical and other errors that appeared in the First Printing, but additional errors are still being found. John Berg Chapter 2 p. 27, Table 2-1: For Methylene iodide, the surface tension should be 50.8 mN/m. p. 27, line 7 below Table 2-1: The reference to Jasper’s database is: Jasper, J.J., “The Surface Tension of Pure Liquid Compounds,” J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data, 1 [4], 841-1009 (1972). p. 28, Line 3 from bottom: Delete “generally good for” p. 38, Fig. 2-12: The word written as "molecuar" in the figure should be "molecular" p. 42, Table 2-2: "Methyl iodide" should "Methylene iodide" p. 57, second line from bottom: “btween” should be “between” p. 69, line 3: “interracial” should be “interfacial” p. 60-61, Eqs. (2.54), (2.55) and (2.57): The sign in front of the second term should be – instead of +, and after Eq. (2.54): “where ∆ refers to the lower phase minus the upper phase. ” p. 73, Eq. (2.73): The equation should read:
Implications of Modern Sedimentary Environments for Sequence Stratigraphy

Abstract One method of testing the concept of sequence stratigraphy is to compare it with the deposits of well established modern sedimentary environments. In the northern Gulf of Mexico, the late Wisconsinan-Holocene Mississippi River has deposited a Type 1 sequence which includes lowstand, transgressive and highstand systems tracts. Results from modern Mississippi River sedimentary environments support the methodology used in sequence analysis but raise important problems for sequence time scales, correlation and driving mechanisms.
Bacterial contamination of mussels at Mahe Estuary, Malabar coast

Mussel samples from the mussel bed and near-by market, beach sand, sediment and water from the Mahe estuary were analysed for the bacterial quality. Indicator bacteria such as Escherichia coli and faecal streptococci were isolated from water, sediment and both mussel samples especially during monsoon and postmonsoon months. Pathogens like Salmonella and Vibrio c holerae non 01 were isolated from the mussel samples. The sewage and land drainage of the region contribute to the contamination of the environment.
Excess heating of 4He2+ and O6+ relative to H+ downstream of interplanetary shocks

Using observations made by the solar wind ion composition spectrometer on Ulysses during its trip in the ecliptic plane to Jupiter, we examined the temperature ratios T(4He2+)/T(H+) and T(O6+)/T(H+) across 15 shocks, including forward and reverse shock pairs as well as isolated shocks. The mean value over the whole set of downstream data studied was 7±3 for the T(4He2+)/T(H+). Appreciable differentiated heating downstream of a shock occurred for an upstream ratio T(4He2+)/T(H+)<4.5. Downstream in the shock regions, characterized by a quasisteady plasma flux, values of T(4H2+)/T(H+) and T(O6+)/T(H+) are observed in the range 4.6 to 10.8 and 19 to 48, respectively. Downstream of the shock, extra-heated ions heavier than H+ added a mean 13±6% to the ions' plasma pressure. (This is in addition to the pressure calculated using the common assumption of a temperature scaling with the ion masses in heliospheric collisionless plasma.) The extra heating of 4He2+ relative to H+ was larger for a smaller plasma β, agreeing with the prediction of the magnetohydrodynamic calculations by Zhao et al. [1991], although they appeared to underestimate the amount of added heating by a factor of 1.25 to 2.
Rapid Detection of Malaria Based on Hairpin-Mediated Amplification and Lateral Flow Detection

Malaria is listed as one of the three most hazardous infectious diseases worldwide. Travelers and migrants passing through exit and entry ports are important sources of malaria pandemics globally. Developing accurate and rapid detection technology for malaria is important. Here, a novel hairpin-mediated amplification (HMA) technique was proposed for the detection of four Plasmodium species, including P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. malariae, and P. ovale. Based on the conserved nucleotide sequence of Plasmodium, specific primers and probes were designed for the HMA process, and the amplicon can be detected using lateral flow detection (LFD); the results can be read visually without specialized equipment. The specificity of HMA-LFD was evaluated using nucleic acids extracted from four different Plasmodium species and two virus species. The sensitivity of HMA-LFD was valued using 10× serial dilutions of plasmid containing the template sequence. Moreover, 78 blood samples were collected to compare HMA-LFD and qPCR. The HMA-LFD results were all positive for four different Plasmodium species and negative for the other two virus species. The sensitivity of HMA-LFD was tested to be near five copies/μL. The analysis of clinical samples indicated that the consistency of HMA-LFD and qPCR was approximately 96.15%. Based on these results, the HMA-LFD assay was demonstrated to be a rapid, sensitive, and specific technique for the detection of Plasmodium and has great advantages for on-site detection in low-resource areas and exit and entry ports.
THE PLIO-QUATERNARY MAGMATISM OF SOUTHERN TUSCANY AND NORTHERN LATIUM: COMPOSITIONAL CHARACTERISTICS, GENESIS AND GEODYNAMIC SIGNIFICANCE

Southern Tuscany has been traditionally considered as a typical crustal anatectic magmatic province. However, extensive petrological and geochemical investigations carried out in the last years revealed a much more complex magmatic setting given by the occurrence of a large variety of rock types. The main rock associations are represented by: 1) acid volcanics and intrusives of crustal anatectic origin; 2) Ultrapotassic rocks with lamproitic (LMP) affinity; 3) Hybrid rocks between LMP and Roman-type (ROM) potassic and highly potassic magmas; 4) High-potassium calcalkaline (HKCA) and shoshonitic (SHO) magmas. Acid anatectic rocks are generally associated and mixed with mafic lavas and enclaves of variable composition. LMP, HKCA, SHO, and ROM-LMP hybrid magmas are of mantle origin. Their high enrichment in incompatible elements and the crustal-like isotopic signatures are consistent with a genesis in an anomalous upper mantle that was metasomatized by addition of subduction-related upper crustal material. However, variations of some key petrological and geochemical parameters reveal significant compositional heterogeneity of mantle beneath Tuscany. Petrological and geochemical data for mafic magmas suggest a complex evolutionary history of mantle sources, with at least two metasomatic events. These affected lithospheric and asthenospheric mantle, generating strong vertical and lateral compositional heterogeneity. The close similarity of Tuscany LMP rocks as those occurring in the Western Alps suggests that the earliest metasomatic modification was likely related to Alpine subduction processes. Younger mantle modifications occurred during subduction of the Adria Plate; this was responsible for the widespread Roman magmatism, but also produced some effects in the Tuscany province, as indicated by the occurrence of hybrids between Roman-type and lamproitic magmas.
Enhancing Legal English Skills for Law Students through Simulation-based Activities

Legal English, a sub-type of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), is in demand for legal practitioners in a new area of global integration. Teaching legal English has been seen as a complicated yet interesting process due to its complex features (Kamolidinovna, 2021). Consequently, several modern and innovative teaching methods are proposed to facilitate students to strengthen their legal English skills. This empirical paper focalizes on law students’ viewpoints on the benefits of Simulation-based Activities (SbAs) in the legal English course; explores the efficiency of SbAs on students’ legal English aspects development; at the same time, it also reveals students’ obstacles when partaking in such activities. In order to achieve these aims, the study made use of a mixed-research approach with the assistance of the data collection instruments, namely survey questionnaires, interviews, paper-based tests and performance-based tests. The results revealed that the participants expressed the favorable perspectives towards the significance of SbAs in their legal English skills enhancement shown through high Mean values (M>=3.40). Also, integrating SbAs into teaching legal English brought about positive effects on students’ motivation, critical thinking, research and other soft skills despite a number of obstacles during the application process. Additionally, the values Sig.2-tailed tests of all variables indicate the statistical difference in students’ performance of the control and treatment groups. Accordingly, SbAs are highly recommended to effectively instruct learners to fulfill their legal English course properly.
FFK: Fourier-Transform Fuzzy-c-means Kalman-Filter Based RSSI Filtering Mechanism for Indoor Positioning

As indoor positioning has been widely utilized for many applications of the Internet of Things, the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) fingerprint has become a common approach to distance estimation because of its simple and economical design. The combination of a Gaussian filter and a Kalman filter is a common way of establishing an RSSI fingerprint. However, the distributions of RSSI values can be arbitrary distributions instead of Gaussian distributions. Thus, we propose a Fouriertransform Fuzzyc-means Kalmanfilter (FFK) based RSSI filtering mechanism to establish a stable RSSI fingerprint value for distance estimation in indoor positioning. FFK is the first RSSI filtering mechanism adopting the Fourier transform to abstract stable RSSI values from the low-frequency domain. Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) can identify the major Line of Sight (LOS) cluster by its fuzzy membership design in the arbitrary RSSI distributions, and thus FCM becomes a better choice than the Gaussian filter for capturing LOS RSSI values. The Kalman filter summarizes the fluctuating LOS RSSI values as the stable latest RSSI value for the distance estimation. Experiment results from a realistic environment show that FFK achieves better distance estimation accuracy than the Gaussian filter, the Kalman filter, and their combination, which are used by the related works.
Slip‐generated patterns of swarm microearthquakes from West Bohemia/Vogtland (central Europe): Evidence of their triggering mechanism?

[1] We investigated space-time relations between consecutive events of West Bohemian 2000 swarm and their association with the Coulomb stress changes induced on a fault plane by prior swarm events. A few thousand M ≤ 3.3 strike-slip swarm earthquakes clustered along a fault plane at depths 6.5–10.5 km and showed common rake angle of 30°. In order to disclose earthquake interaction we investigated the space-time relations between consecutive earthquakes. We determined relative position vectors for each consecutive event pair, the prior event and the immediate aftershock (IA), and we measured time lags between them. The resulting cluster of relative position vectors shows a high density of aftershocks near the origin, which decays with distance. It points out a triggering effect of the prior event upon subsequent aftershocks. The spatial distribution of the relative positions disclosed dominance of aftershocks in the slip-parallel directions, which is manifested by pronounced elongation of the cluster of the relative positions and of the angular dependence of the rate of IAs. The temporal distribution of the relative positions indicates that some aftershocks prove high interevent velocities and occur systematically at greater distances, suggesting the existence of two distinct triggering mechanisms acting at large and small timescales. We evaluated the complete Coulomb stress change upon the fault plane due to the prior event and showed that the observed space-time distribution of the relative positions can be explained by a common effect of both static and dynamic stress changes, which act on different distance and timescale.
Analysis of Productivity and Competitiveness in Beekeeping: A Case Study of Cundinamarca, Colombia

Purpose: The objective of this article is to analyze the productivity and competitiveness of beekeepers located in the department of Cundinamarca, Colombia. Theoretical framework: Measuring productivity and competitiveness is a fundamental aspect of business management. In the case of beekeeping in Colombia, which has artisanal nature based on local knowledge and traditional practices, there is usually a lack of records and information that would allow this type of study. Design/Methodology/Approach: We designed a questionnaire related to productive factors and competitiveness in beekeeping and applied it to members of the Association of Environmentalist Beekeepers. We determined the productive index and the profitability of assets and equity -identified as measures of the beekeepers’ productivity and competitiveness- for the year 2020 using a quantitative analysis. Findings: The depreciation of fixed assets is the highest production cost. The organizational and technological management implemented by the producers, as well as the time dedicated to beekeeping, are relevant factors to achieve productivity and business competitiveness. Research, Practical & Social implications: This research has expanded the comprehension of beekeeping as an activity with profound economic, social, and environmental impacts. This study can be a basis for other research works and policy design oriented to achieve a comprehensive measurement of business performance and make programs to impulse the beekeepers in the country. Originality/Value: This research broadens the understanding of the importance of cost management in the productivity and competitiveness of the beekeepers studied. We do not approach productivity as the quantity of honey and pollen produced but as the production efficiency. Competitiveness was evaluated using globally accepted indicators and easily interpreted to measure business performance.
Combined effects of QBO and 11‐year solar cycle on the winter hemisphere in a stratosphere‐troposphere coupled system

Combined effects of the quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO) and the 11‐year solar cycle (SC) on the winter hemisphere are investigated with an idealized mechanistic circulation model of a stratosphere‐troposphere coupled system. A zonal momentum forcing is imposed to mimic a westerly or easterly phase of the QBO and a heating anomaly associated with the SC is introduced around the stratopause. A series of long time integrations of 39,600 days are performed to obtain statistically significant results for forty‐six combinations of these experimental parameters. The obtained dependence of the temperature response in the polar stratosphere on the combination of QBO and SC are qualitatively consistent with the observed responses. The difference in the winter polar stratosphere between the solar maximum and minimum phase is highly significant at above the 95% confidence level in many cases of the QBO westerly runs. The SC effect is, however, relatively small compared to the QBO effect.
Consumer Purchase Likelihood of Landscape Management Pest Scouting Program

The US landscape industry consists of 632,000 businesses with >1 million persons employed in 2022. The most common service that landscape service providers (LSPs) perform is pest management. Over the past 25 years, LSPs have been challenged to adopt more holistic approaches to pest management via the use of nonchemical and less toxic chemical controls. Integrated pest management (IPM), specifically scouting, may be a useful approach for LSPs to manage pests more sustainably and market new services, such as biological control releases. Scant literature is available on LSP scouting practices or consumer acceptance of scouting services. The goal of this study was to determine if IPM-aware consumers were more likely to purchase a scouting program offered by an LSP. An online survey was distributed across the United States through a third-party panel service. The final sample included 928 usable responses. Data were analyzed using a binary logistic regression model. Fifty-seven percent of respondents reported having some knowledge or were very knowledgeable of IPM. Respondents 65 years of age and older were 13.1% points less likely to purchase a scouting service. Education level did not influence purchase likelihood. Consumer knowledge of IPM had a positive influence on the purchase likelihood, respondents with “some knowledge” (5.6%) and “very knowledgeable” (8.6%) were more likely to buy IPM services. Further, if the consumer was open to purchasing the scouting program, it is plausible that they might be more willing to allow an LSP to use a combination of chemical and nonchemical methods to manage pests.
Regional fire history based on charcoal analysis of sediments from nine lakes in western Mongolia

Fires are common in grassland regions of the world, and the frequency and severity of fire is linked to climate-driven changes in fuel loads. Western Mongolia is dominated by grasslands but the fire history of this region is largely unknown. We reconstructed modern fire (48 lakes) and historical fires (9 lakes) using sediment charcoal. Modern fuel loads were estimated using a combination of clipped plots, satellite-based estimates of annual aboveground net primary productivity (NPP) and NPP modeled from annual temperature and precipitation. Loss-on-ignition and environmental magnetics of lake sediments were analyzed as proxies for climate. We found little evidence for modern or historical fire in the landscape, as charcoal was absent from the surface sediments of 34 of 48 lakes. Charcoal influxes were uniformly low, averaging from 0.002 to 0.028 mm2/cm2 per yr, over the past 1200 years at nine lakes, and the past 6000—5000 years at two of the lakes with longer sediment records. In the modern landscape, livestock grazing has eliminated most of the fuels necessary to carry a fire, as measured fuel loads (27.3±4.9 g/m2) were only ~20% of aboveground annual NPP estimated using MODIS Imagery or modeled from climate data. The historical absence of fire may indicate a longer history of intensive grazing than sometimes assumed, and cultural prohibitions against burning may also play a role. Regional summary indicated a >50% decrease in charcoal influxes since AD 1600 at most sites which may be related to lower temperatures or greater aridity during the `Little Ice Age'. Alternatively this decrease in charcoal influxes may reflect increases in livestock numbers or increased local concentrations because of restrictions on the movement of animals coincident with the establishment of Manchu rule in the late seventeenth century.