Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTANT HEXACHLOROBENZENE INDUCES

23 Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) is a dioxin-like environmental pollutant, widely distributed in the 24 environment. New research links exposure to high levels of persistent organic environmental 25 toxicants to cardiovascular disease, however little is known about the effect of HCB on 26 vascular function and on blood pressure. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate 27 biochemical and cardiovascular changes resulting from subchronic HCB exposure. Adult 28 female Sprague-Dawley rats were treated with vehicle or HCB (5 or 500 mg/kg b.w) for 45 29 days. Systolic blood pressure (BP), recorded by tail cuff plethysmography, was significantly 30 increased at 35, 40 and 45 days of 500 mg/kg HCB-treatment. HCB (500 mg/kg) increased 31 arterial thickness, while both 5 and 500 mg/kg HCB decreased proliferating cell nuclear 32 antigen (PCNA) protein levels and cellular nuclei in abdominal aortas indicating a 33 hypertrophic process. Also, aortas from both groups of HCB-treated rats presented higher 34 sensitivity to noradrenalin (NA) and a significant decrease in maximum contractile response.
Local government in Thailand: A way forward

Abstract This literature review provides an in-depth exploration of local governance in Thailand, illuminating its evolution and critical role in public administration, service provision, and local representation. Historically, Thailand’s local governance, marked by a centralized approach, has undergone transitions aimed at decentralizing power to foster democracy and enhance service delivery. However, there exists a gap in comprehensive studies focusing on the intricacies and challenges within local structures. This review, therefore, seeks to bridge this knowledge gap, theorizing that the effectiveness of local governance is intertwined with political stability, participatory governance, transparency, and harmonious inter-governmental relations. The study unveils significant challenges faced by local governance, including corruption, political interference, limited financial autonomy, and capacity constraints, which are reflective of deeper structural and institutional inadequacies. These challenges impact the representation of local interests and compromise development initiatives and service quality. This work brings forth new insights into the impact of historical contexts, structural dynamics, and political landscapes on local governance structures, contributing to a nuanced understanding of the prevailing issues in a transforming democratic scenario. To fortify local governance, the paper proposes a series of reforms focusing on enhancing accountability, transparency, public participation, and inter-governmental coordination, alongside recommendations to diminish political interference, combat corruption, and bolster financial autonomy and capacity. Implementing these reforms will lead to a more inclusive, transparent, and accountable local governance system, serving as a catalyst for sustainable development and democratic consolidation. This synthesis serves as a guide for future research and policy formulation, aiming at refining local governance frameworks not only in Thailand but also in analogous contexts globally.
Modelling soil water dynamics considering measurement uncertainty

In shallow water table‐controlled environments, surface water management impacts groundwater table levels and soil water dynamics. The study goal was to simulate soil water dynamics in response to canal stage raises considering uncertainty in measured soil water content. Water and Agrochemicals in the soil, crop and Vadose Environment (WAVE) was applied to simulate unsaturated flow above a shallow aquifer. Global sensitivity analysis was performed to identify model input factors with the greatest influence on predicted soil water content. Nash–Sutcliffe increased and Root Mean Square Error reduced when uncertainties in measured data were considered in goodness‐of‐fit calculations using measurement probability distributions and probable asymmetric error boundaries, implying that appropriate model performance evaluation should be carried out using uncertainty ranges instead of single values. Although uncertainty in the experimental measured data limited evaluation of the absolute predictions by the model, WAVE was found a useful exploratory tool for estimating temporal variation in soil water content. Visual analysis of soil water content time series under proposed changes in canal stage management indicated that sites with land surface elevation of less than 2.0‐m NGVD29 were predicted to periodically experience saturated conditions in the root zone and shortening of the growing season if canal stage is raised more than 9 cm and maintained at this level. The models developed could be combined with high‐resolution digital elevation models in future studies to identify areas with the greatest risk of experiencing saturated root zone. The study also highlighted the need to incorporate measurement uncertainty when evaluating performance of unsaturated flow models. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Annual Cycle of Poleward Heat Transport in the Ocean: Results from High-Resolution Modeling of the North and Equatorial Atlantic

The annual cycle of meridional heat transport in the North and equatorial Atlantic Ocean is studied by means of the high-resolution numerical model that had been developed in recent years as a Community Modeling Effort for the World Ocean Circulation Experiment. Similar to previous model studies, there is a winter maximum in northward heat transport in the equatorial Atlantic and a summer maximum in midlatitudes. The seasonal variation in heat transport in the equatorial Atlantic, with a maximum near 8°N, is associated with the out-of-phase changes in heat content to the north and south of that latitude in connection with the seasonal reversal of the North Equatorial Countercurrent. The amplitude of the heat transport variation at 8°N depends on model resolution: forcing with the monthly mean wind stresses of Hellerman–Rosenstein (HR) gives an annual range of 2.1 PW in the case of a 1/3° meridional grid, and 1.7 PW in the case of a 1° grid, compared to 1.4 PW in a previous 2° model. Forcing with the wind stresses of Isemer–Hasse (IH) gives 2.5 PW in the 1/3° and 2.2 PW in the 1° model case. The annual range of heat transport in the subtropical North Atlantic is much less dependent on resolution but sensitive to the wind stress: it increases from 0.5 PW in the case of HR forcing to almost 0.8 PW with IH forcing. The annual cycle of heat transport can be understood in terms of wind-driven variations in the meridional overturning; variations in horizontal gyre transport have only little effect both in the equatorial and in the subtropical Atlantic. In all model solutions the seasonal variations in the near-surface meridional Ekman transport are associated with deep seasonal overturning cells. The weak shear of the deep response suggests that the large variations in heat transport on seasonal and shorter time scales should be of little consequence for observational estimates of mean oceanic heat transports relying on one-time hydrographic surveys.
Structure of the mobile south flank of Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii

How do huge landslides occur in Hawaii? We can begin to address this question by examining an incipient landslide structure on the mobile south flank of Kilauea volcano. Between 1970 and 1989 this part of the south flank moved in a southeast direction (seaward by 4 m on its eastern end and by 10 m on its western end), parallel to the western boundary of a large oifshore topographic bench. We show that abrupt decreases in cumulative flank movement correspond to abrupt decreases in hypocenter concentration. Most of the earthquakes occur in a 7- to 10-km-deep band beneath the south flank, and relative relocation of a subset of these events shows that they are derived from a single horizontal plane which appears to be a decollement. Focal mechanisms for this deep seismicity are dominated by thrust fault mechanisms, with the overlying block moving seaward. A comparison of south flank bathymetry with decollement structures on other volcanoes suggests that the distal end of this decollement coincides with the distal end of the offshore topographic bench (30–50 km from shore and 5 km below sea level). The fault system forming the Hilina pali is connected with this decollement, so that slip on the Hilina pali's normal faults coincides with slip of the decollement and with reverse faulting of the distal end of the bench. (This interpretation is supported by studies of the events associated with the M7.2 Kalapana earthquake in 1975.) When the Hilina pali is connected to the outer bench with a decollement inferred from seismicity, a wedge 8-km thick adjacent to Kilauea's magma system and 1–2 km thick along the edge of the outer bench (an area over 3000 km2) is defined. The thickness adjacent to the magma system decreases eastward along Kilauea's East Rift Zone and southwestward from Kilauea caldera, whereas the thickness of the lip of the outer bench decreases only eastward. Geologic observations and geophysical studies of the subaerial flank reveal an extensive magma system beneath the Koae fault system as well as beneath Kilauea caldera and its East Rift Zone. We infer that the boundary of the proximal end of the mobile flank is the southern boundary of this magma system and that this boundary coincides with the southern boundaries of both the Koae fault system and Kilauea's East Rift Zone.
Effects of Nitrogen and Phosphorus Fertilizer Application on Yield Attributes, Grain Yield and Quality of Rain Fed Rice (NERICA-3) in Gambella, Southwestern Ethiopia

A field experiment was carried out during the 2008 and 2009 crop seasons at Imla, Gambella Zuria District, Gambella, southwestern Ethiopia, to establish the application rates of N and P fertilizers for rice variety NERICA-3 (Oryza sativa x Oryza glaberrima). The treatments consisted of factorial combinations of four rates each of N (0, 46, 92 and 138 kg N ha-1) and P (0, 23, 46 and 69 kg P ha-1) laid down in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. The effects of year showed significant (P ≤ 0.05 for some and P ≤ 0.01 for most) differences for leaf area index (LAI), 1000-grain weight, plant height, panicle length and grain qualities. Similarly, the effects of N were significant (P ≤ 0.01) for productive tillers plant-1, grains panicle-1, LAI, plant height, panicle length, grain yield, crude protein, ether extract and crude fiber. Growth, yield, and quality components did not differ significantly (P > 0.05) due to application of P except crude fiber. Conversely, the effects of year by N interaction were significant (P ≤ 0.05 and/or P ≤ 0.01) for LAI, panicle length, grains panicle-1, crude fiber, plant height and ether extract. Effects of year by P interaction were significant only for crude fiber whereas the interaction effects of N by P and year by N by P on growth, yield and quality parameters were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Rice grain yield increased from 3.54 to 5.90 tons per hectare (t ha-1) with increase in level of N from the control to 92 kg N ha-1 but decreased with further increase of N. In conclusion, sensitivity analysis on coexisting changes in field prices of inputs and rice grain (±15%) showed that 92 kg N gave the highest (681.53%) marginal rate of return (MRR) followed by 23 kg P ha-1 (117.44%). Therefore, application of 92 kg N ha-1 to improve grain yield of rain fed NERICA-3 rice might be more profitable even under risky market situations in and around the study area.
On the process of fine sediment infiltration into static gravel bed: A CFD–DEM modelling perspective

The gravel bed clogging, caused by infiltration and accumulation of fine sediment, degrades the river ecology. A proper understanding of the infiltration process, and underlying mechanism and causes, are necessary to take preventive measures. The process of fine sediment infiltration into static gravel bed is studied by distinguishing between bridging and percolation behaviours, as they affect the river ecology and physical processes occurring in the river system differently. However, several contradicting observations, concerning their occurrences, are reported. We employed the unresolved CFD–DEM method to simulate and investigate the infiltration process. The theoretical size ratios, corresponding to different geometrical configurations for a binary mixture of mono‐disperse spherical particles, representing bridging and percolation processes, are considered and simulated with and without flowing water effects. The effects of several turbulence models on the infiltration process are also studied. We found that fine sediment infiltration in fluvial deposits is mainly gravity‐dominated, supporting Cui's hypothesis that fine sediment infiltration through intra‐gravel flow is similar to fine sediment infiltration driven by gravity. In contrast to consensus in the field, our results demonstrate that the occurrences of different infiltration processes (bridging and percolation) seem to be independent of gravel bed thickness, rather depend only on the relative grain size distribution of fine sediment and gravel. However, a precise definition of a ‘thick enough’ gravel bed is necessary to distinguish between bridging and percolation behaviours. Here, we hypothesize a suitable gravel bed thickness, which might be regarded as a ‘thick enough’ gravel bed.
Modeling spatiotemporal impacts of hydroclimatic extremes on groundwater recharge at a Mediterranean karst aquifer

Karst aquifers provide large parts of the water supply for Mediterranean countries, though climate change is expected to have a significant negative impact on water availability. Recharge is therefore a key variable that has to be known for sustainable groundwater use. In this study, we present a new approach that combines two independent methods for karst recharge estimation. The first method derives spatially distributed information of mean annual recharge patterns through GIS analysis. The second is a process‐based karst model that provides spatially lumped but temporally distributed information about recharge. By combining both methods, we add a spatial reference to the lumped simulations of the process‐based model. In this way, we are able to provide spatiotemporal information of recharge and subsurface flow dynamics also during varying hydroclimatic conditions. We find that there is a nonlinear relationship between precipitation and recharge rates resulting in strong decreases of recharge following even moderate decreases of precipitation. This is primarily due to almost constant actual evapotranspiration amounts despite varying hydroclimatic conditions. During the driest year in the record, almost the entire precipitation was consumed as actual evapotranspiration and only little diffuse recharge took place at the high altitudes of our study site. During wettest year, recharge constituted a much larger fraction of precipitation and occurred at the entire study site. Our new method and our findings are significant for decision makers in similar regions that want to prepare for possible changes of hydroclimatic conditions in the future.
Multilevel Adaptive Cross Approximation (MLACA)

The Multilevel Adaptive Cross Approximation (MLACA) is proposed as a fast method to accelerate the matrix-vector products in the iterative solution of the linear system that results from the discretization of electromagnetic Integral Equations (IE) with the Method of Moments (MoM). The single level ACA, already described in the literature, is extended with a multilevel recursive algorithm in order to improve the asymptotical complexity of both the computational cost and the memory requirements. The main qualities of ACA are maintained: it is purely algebraic and independent of the integral equation kernel Green's function as long as it produces pseudo-rank-deficient matrix blocks. The algorithm is presented in such a way that it can be easily implemented on top of an existing MoM code with most commonly used Green's functions.
Millstone Hill incoherent scatter F region observations during the disturbances of June 1991

The extreme geomagnetic disturbances of early June 1991 were accompanied by dramatic effects in the Earth`s thermosphere and ionosphere which are the subject of coordinated analysis by the Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions (CEDAR) Storm Study project. F region observations taken at Millstone Hill over the interval June 5-11 using a nine-position experiment allow estimation of spatial gradients in ionospheric parameters above the station. From these gradients the motion term in the F region continuity equation is obtained and combined with calculations of rates of production and loss of the major ions in a semiempirical model of the F region ionosphere above Millstone Hill. Electron densities calculated from this semiempirical model using MSIS-86 are generally much smaller than the measurements. This discrepancy could be explained by the presence of vibrationally excited N{sub 2} combined with a decrease in the atomic oxygen to molecular composition ratio of {approx}2 or more on the most disturbed days. Neutral winds calculated by using the incoherent scatter line-of-sight ion drifts show a strong equatorward surge during the day on June 5 and strong equatorward surges during all the disturbed nights. Synoptic observations taken from Millstone Hill by using elevation and azimuth scans duringmore » the nights of June 12, 13, and 14 illustrate the large-scale structure of electron density and its relation to neutral winds and electric fields observed over much of eastern North America. 58 refs., 12 figs., 1 tab. « less
Few-Shot Remote Sensing Scene Classification With Spatial Affinity Attention and Class Surrogate-Based Supervised Contrastive Learning

Learning powerful and discriminative representation is critical for boosting the performance of few-shot remote sensing scene classification (FSRSSC). The remote sensing images have unique characteristics, such as, complex background and co-occurrence of multiple objects, making FSRSSC challenging. To address this problem, in this article, a novel FSRSSC method is proposed. First, a spatial affinity attention (SAA) mechanism is designed to encourage the network model to focus on critical regions. The SAA infers attention maps from both channel and spatial dimensions, and encodes the mean values and affinities of feature nodes in each channel along the vertical and horizontal directions. Second, a class surrogate-based supervised contrastive learning (CSSCL) strategy is proposed to promote intra-class compactness and inter-class dispersion. Different from supervised contrastive learning (SCL), the CSSCL learns a surrogate for each class in the contrastive space and select the corresponding class surrogate rather than the samples from the same class for the anchor to form positive pairs. It can alleviate the impact of too hard or too simple positive sample pairs on the model generalization that exists when SCL is introduced into FSRSSC. The model is trained under the joint supervision of cross-entropy (CE) loss and CSSCL loss on the merged base class data instead of using a meta-learning strategy to learn a robust base feature extractor. Extensive experimentations on three public remote sensing benchmark datasets show that our proposed method can achieve a competitive or state-of-the-art (SOTA) classification performance.
Analyzing Qualitative Changes in Metalinguistic Processing in Typically Developing 5- to 7-Year-Old Children

This study was based on an analysis of some of the qualitative aspects underlying the findings of previous research into the metalinguistic abilities in 160 Italian-speaking, typically developing children aged from 5 to 7 years. This previous research had used six metalinguistic tasks, a nonverbal intelligence test, and two lexical- and grammar-comprehension tests. The outcomes showed a significant improvement in all the dependent variables in the age range considered, measured by a series of ANOVAs, with high correlation between all the variables and a strong homogeneity between the metalinguistic tasks, as revealed by a factor analysis. Using generalized estimating equation (GEE) analysis, the current study analyzed the cognitive levels of response that constituted the total score of each task, at each age (5–6, 6–7, and 7–8 years). Although based on the different distribution of the cognitive levels at each age and in each task, the results of this analysis further confirmed the significance of the developmental changes, and showed different developmental trajectories as a function of the specific task. These results are discussed in light of the different involvement of cognitive processes and literacy skills in the transitional phase between kindergarten and the first two years of primary school.
The Archaeologist's Laboratory: The Analysis of Archaeological Data

Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. What are Data? 3. Systematics, Compilations and Database Design. 4. Research Design and Sampling. 5. Quantification: Abudance and Other Measures in Archaeology. 9. Analysing Pottey. 10. Analysing Osteological and Other Faunal Remains. 11. Analysing Plant Remains. 12. Soils, Sediments and Geomorphology. 13 Seriation. 14. Stratigraphy. 15. Interpreting Radio Carbon Dates. 16. Archaeological Illustration. Glossary. Index.
Laboratory determination of the full electrical resistivity tensor of heterogeneous carbonate rocks at elevated pressures

We describe a measurement system capable of determining the full resistivity tensor of core samples at elevated, geologically representative, pressures using a galvanic method. It is suitable for heterogeneous rocks where it is difficult to measure tensorial resistivity without bias from sample selection and heterogeneity. We demonstrate the efficacy of the system using both synthetic data and measurements on carbonate rock core samples. The apparatus employs a computer controlled array of 16 electrodes to inject current into, and measure boundary voltages on, a 5 cm diameter cylindrical sample. A computationally efficient FE algorithm is used to retrieve the full resistivity tensor from the measured voltages. The algorithm uses isotropic Finite Element code to calculate anisotropic solutions for samples of arbitrary geometry. Initial results from Jurassic limestone and Triassic dolomite samples, reveal cm‐scale heterogeneity and significant bulk anisotropy consistent with rock fabric observed in X‐ray Computed Tomography scan images.
PRODUÇÃO DE MUDAS DE MAMOEIRO ‘FORMOSA’ EM SUBSTRATOS COM DOSES DE LITHOTHAMNIUM

The seedlings are the most important step for the establishment of an orchard healthy, productive and long lived. With the objective to evaluate doses of Lithothamnium (corrective of the acidity of soil, the kelp base), and a type of substratum that promotes a development adequate of papaya changes `Formosa', was considered this work. The experiment was lead in the Sector of Fruits of the Federal University of Lavras, in the first semester of 2004. The Lithothamniun was tested in the doses of: 0; 2; 4; 6 and 8 kg m-3 in two substratum compositions: (composed organic + sand + soil in the ratio of 1:1:3 in volume) and the B (Plantmax + sand + soil in the ratio of 1:1:3 in volume). The following characteristics had been evaluated: length of the aerial part (cm); length of the root (cm); leaf number; dry substance of the aerial part, root and the plus of aerial part and root. Doses of up to 2 kg m-3 of Concinal had shown to be satisfactory in height of changes, and the substratum presented composed organic + sand + soil it to be a good option in the production of papaya changes `Formosa'.