Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling subsurface transport in extensive glaciofluvial and littoral sediments to remediate a municipal drinking water aquifer

Abstract. Few studies have been carried out that cover the entire transport process of pesticides, from application at the soil surface, through subsurface transport, to contamination of drinking water in esker aquifers. In formerly glaciated regions, such as Scandinavia, many of the most important groundwater resources are situated in glaciofluvial eskers. The purpose of the present study was to model and identify significant processes that govern subsurface transport of pesticides in extensive glaciofluvial and littoral sediments. To simulate the transport processes, we coupled a vadose zone model at soil profile scale to a regional groundwater flow model. The model was applied to a municipal drinking-water aquifer, contaminated with the pesticide-metabolite BAM (2,6-dichlorobenzoamide). At regional scale, with the combination of a ten-meter-deep vadose zone and coarse texture, the observed concentrations could be described by the model without assuming preferential flow. A sensitivity analysis revealed that hydraulic conductivity in the aquifer and infiltration rate accounted for almost half of the model uncertainty. The calibrated model was applied to optimize the location of extraction wells for remediation, which were used to validate the predictive modeling. Running a worst-case scenario, the model showed that the establishment of two remediation wells would clean the aquifer in four years, compared to nine years without them. Further development of the model would require additional field measurements in order to improve the description of macrodispersion in deep, sandy vadose zones. We also suggest that future research should focus on characterization of the variability of hydraulic conductivity and its effect on contaminant transport in eskers.
Evidence for gene-environment interaction in a genome wide study of isolated, non-syndromic cleft palate

Corresponding author: Dr. T.H. Beaty, Dept of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore MD, USA; tbeaty@jhsph.edu. Web Resources: Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), http://www.ncbi. nlm.nih. gov/Omim/ NIH Public Access Author Manuscript Genet Epidemiol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2012 September 1. Published in final edited form as: Genet Epidemiol. 2011 September ; 35(6): 469–478. doi:10.1002/gepi.20595. N IH PA Athor M anscript N IH PA Athor M anscript N IH PA Athor M anscript Non-syndromic cleft palate (CP) is a common birth defect with a complex and heterogeneous etiology involving both genetic and environmental risk factors. We conducted a genome wide association study (GWAS) using 550 case-parent trios, ascertained through a CP case collected in an international consortium. Family based association tests of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and three common maternal exposures (maternal smoking, alcohol consumption and multivitamin supplementation) were used in a combined 2 df test for gene (G) and geneenvironment (G×E) interaction simultaneously, plus a separate 1 df test for G×E interaction alone. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate effects on risk to exposed and unexposed children. While no SNP achieved genome wide significance when considered alone, markers in several genes attained or approached genome wide significance when G×E interaction was included. Among these, MLLT3 and SMC2 on chromosome 9 showed multiple SNPs resulting in increased risk if the mother consumed alcohol during the peri-conceptual period (3 months prior to conception through the first trimester). TBK1 on chr. 12 and ZNF236 on chr. 18 showed multiple SNPs associated with higher risk of CP in the presence of maternal smoking. Additional evidence of reduced risk due to G×E interaction in the presence of multivitamin supplementation was observed for SNPs in BAALC on chr. 8. These results emphasize the need to consider G×E interaction when searching for genes influencing risk to complex and heterogeneous disorders, such as non-syndromic CP.
Early Successes: El Nino, Southern Oscillation and Seasonal Forecasting

Comparison is made between events surrounding the 1982/3 El Niño and the 1997/8 El Niño. The lack of a coherent appreciation of the development in the early stages of the 82/3 El Niño lead to the formation of TOGA, Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere, a 10 year experiment from 1985 which saw the foundation of a comprehensive observing system for the tropical Pacific that has since expanded to cover the tropical Atlantic and is now being extended to the Indian Ocean. With such an observation array in place providing high quality data, the 97/8 El Niño was well captured. Provided the quality of the data obtained while it was a research array can be maintained now that it has operational status, it is highly unlikely that any El Niño or La Niña could sneak up unobserved. Of course, seasonal prediction is about more than just predicting extreme El Niños. The overall skill spanning the period from 1981 is considered. Considerable progress has been made in ocean analyses. This is partly the development of much more mature models and assimilation schemes but partly because of better quality surface fluxes obtained from atmospheric reanalyses. Seasonal forecast skill has also improved over the last 15 years as coupled atmosphere ocean models and ocean analyses have improved. Observing system experiments are used to show the importance of the TAO/TRITON/PIRATA (Tropical Atmosphere Ocean/Triangle Trans-Ocean Buoy Network/Prediction and Research Moored Array in the Atlantic) mooring system as well as altimetry. It is less easy to show statistically significant impact of the Argo (Array for Real-time Geostrophic Oceanography) data on forecast skill at this stage since the Argo period is quite short compared to that of the variability of ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation).
Modeling and optimization of water quality in a large-scale regional water supply system

This report develops a multicommodity flow model to optimize water distribution and water quality in a regional water supply system. Waters from different sources with different qualities are considered as distinct commodities, which concurrently share a single water distribution system. Volumetric water blend is used to represent water quality in the model. The model can accommodate two-way flow pipes, represented by undirected arcs, and the perfect mixing condition. Additionally, blending requirements are specified at certain control nodes within the system to ensure that downstream users receive the desired water quality. The optimization model is highly nonlinear and solved by a hybrid genetic algorithm (GA). We first use GA to globally search for the directions of all undirected arcs. We then use a generalized reduced gradient (GRG) algorithm, which is embedded in GA, to optimize the objective function for fitness evaluation. The proposed methodology was first tested and verified on a simplified hypothetical system and then applied to the regional water distribution system of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD). The results obtained indicate that the optimization model can efficiently allocate waters from different sources with different qualities to satisfy the blending requirements, perfect mixing and two-way flow conditions.
On the focal point of a lens: beyond the paraxial approximation

In this paper we study a planar-convex lens where the focal point is calculated numerically and analytically beyond the paraxial approximation within the context of geometrical optics. We consider this problem as an appropriate and useful example to fill the gap found in physics and optics courses between the simplicity of the paraxial approximation and the complexity of the theory of aberrations, and it can be used as an introduction to non-paraxial behaviour even when teaching general physics courses. We show in a simple way how beyond the paraxial approximation the focal distance is not unique, and how it depends on the distance of the incoming ray to the optical axis. We show the importance of the caustic surface, which is calculated analytically, and its effect on the position of the point with the highest concentration of light, which is defined as the optimal focal distance of the lens. Finally, we also present some simulations showing light distributions in screens placed at different distances from the lens, to illustrate our results.
POLICY INTERACTION AND LEARNING EQUILIBRIA

This note studies fiscal–monetary policy interactions in an endogenous growth model with multiple assets. The “growth-rate Laffer curve” clarifies an important tension between economic growth and government revenue and reveals that higher economic growth does not always finance a larger budget deficit. There are two Pareto-ranked balanced-growth equilibria, which can both be E-stable. Although fiscal policy can eliminate the expectational indeterminacy, it rules out the equilibrium with a higher growth rate and higher welfare. Near the lower bound of the nominal interest rate, an arbitrarily small budget deficit will select the low-growth equilibrium to be the unique E-stable equilibrium.
Determining the Effectiveness of Specialized Bank Tellers

Typical banking systems offer customers the ability to carry out many different transactions. Due to the high variability in service times for different transactions, customers often face increased wait times. The Pareto Principle can be applied to this situation, where about 20% of the transaction types cause 80% of the issues with increased customer wait times. For example, while most customers may need to make simple deposits that take less than two minutes, a small proportion of other types of transactions, such as lost cards, may take five to ten minutes. This often leads to several customers waiting in the queue, especially when all tellers are tied up in longer transactions. This article presents a simulation on the effectiveness of specialized tellers on reducing the time the customers spend in the bank. We present results and conclusions based on data collected at TCF Bank in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Inequality — Measurement, trends, impacts, and policies

The paper investigates the differences in private marginal returns to education between wage-employees and the self-employed in Uganda, using the Mincerian framework with pooled regression models. The study uses a two wave panel (2005/06 UNHS and 2009/10 UNPS) to estimate homogenous and heterogeneous private returns to education for the employed and self-employed. We find similar marginal returns to an additional year of schooling for both types of workers. We investigate the shape of the education-earnings profile and find it is linear but the returns to levels of educational attainment are convex. In this paper we also find the marginal returns to education have decreased over time. With regard to heterogeneous returns to education we employ quantile regression models and find returns to education decreasing with quantile for both worker types, and conclude that investment in education in Uganda is income equalising.
How Direct-to-Consumer Advertising for Prescription Drugs Affects Consumers' Welfare

ABSTRACT In August 1997, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed brand-specific advertising on television. A simultaneous rise in direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) spending and prescription drug sales has resulted in a heated debate among pharmaceutical firms and medical practitioners, as well as in the U.S. Congress and the popular press. One side claims that DTCA creates demand and higher prices for the advertised brands; the other claims that DTCA increases consumer knowledge. The current study sheds light on the debate with a comparison of consumer welfare before and after the 1997 policy change, using a structural econometric model. The results suggest that DTCA seems to be increasing consumer welfare.
Psychopharmacological Profile of Ascorbate in aged Wistar Rats

Clinical and preclinical findings have suggested a role for ascorbate in mood disorders. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of acute and chronic ascorbate treatment in animal models of memory, anxiety and depression using discriminative avoidance, forced swimming, light-dark box and openfield tests. Aged male Wistar rats (18 months) were treated with saline or ascorbate (50, 500 or 1000 mg/kg body weight) during 25 days. The acute treatment did not improve learning and memory parameters evaluated in the plus maze discriminative avoidance test. Besides, in the training session, ascorbate (1000 mg/kg) decreased the time spent in the open arms and 500 and 1000 mg/kg doses increased the time spent in the nonaversive enclosed arm, indicating anxiety-like behavior. On the 10th day of treatment, ascorbate (1000 mg/kg) showed an antidepressant-like activity, since the treated animals showed decreased immobility time when compared to the saline group in the forced swimming test. The treatment with ascorbate did not alter any parameters in the light-dark box test evaluated on the 15th day; however, on the 25th day, ascorbate (500 mg/kg and 1000 mg/kg) decreased the number of entries into peripheral squares and the number of rearings in the open field test, suggesting an anxiolytic-like profile. In conclusion, our findings suggest that acute ascorbate treatment may induces an anxiety state, while at long term seems to exert anxiolytic activity, as well as exhibiting an antidepressant-like activity in aged rats. Correspondence to: Ionara Rodrigues Siqueira. Laboratório de Neuropsicofarmacologia, Departamento de Farmacologia, Instituto de Ciências Básicas da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Rua Sarmento Leite, 500, CEP 90050-170, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. Tel/Fax: + 55 51 3308 3121; e-mail: ionara@ufrgs.br
A CONSISTENT PICTURE EMERGES: A COMPACT X-RAY CONTINUUM EMISSION REGION IN THE GRAVITATIONALLY LENSED QUASAR SDSS J0924+0219

We analyze the optical, UV, and X-ray microlensing variability of the lensed quasar SDSS J0924+0219 using six epochs of Chandra data in two energy bands (spanning 0.4–8.0 keV, or 1–20 keV in the quasar rest frame), 10 epochs of F275W (rest-frame 1089 Å) Hubble Space Telescope data, and high-cadence R-band (rest-frame 2770 Å) monitoring spanning 11 years. Our joint analysis provides robust constraints on the extent of the X-ray continuum emission region and the projected area of the accretion disk. The best-fit half-light radius of the soft X-ray continuum emission region is between 5 × 10 13 ? > and 1015 cm, and we find an upper limit of 1015 cm for the hard X-rays. The best-fit soft-band size is about 13 times smaller than the optical size, and roughly 7 GM BH / c 2 ? > for a 2.8 × 10 8 M ⊙ ? > black hole, similar to the results for other systems. We find that the UV emitting region falls in between the optical and X-ray emitting regions at 1014 cm < r 1 / 2 , UV < 3 × 10 15 ? > cm. Finally, the optical size is significantly larger, by 1. 5σ, than the theoretical thin-disk estimate based on the observed, magnification-corrected I-band flux, suggesting a shallower temperature profile than expected for a standard disk.
Electromagnetic scattering by rough surfaces with large heights and slopes with applications to microwave remote sensing of rough surface over layered media

In this paper, we study the bistatic re∞ection and transmission properties of random rough surface with large slope and large height. Method of Moment (MOM) is used to solve the surface integral equations for 2D rough surface scattering problem. The modeled rough surfaces are similar to random rectangular grating, so that there are large slopes on the surface. The motivation of the study is to analyze scattering by sastrugi surface in Polar Regions. The ridges on the sastrugi surface have heights of about 20cm. In microwave remote sensing of land at 5GHz, 10GHz, 19GHz and 37GHz, these heights are larger than wavelength. Next, we consider
The Structure and Evolution of the Strategic Management Field: A Content Analysis of 26 Years of Strategic Management Research

This paper analyses 26 years of strategic management research published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly and Strategic Management Journal. Through a content analysis, it studies the relationships between the subfields of strategic management. A multiple correspondence analysis provides a map of keywords and authors, and a framework to track this literature over the 26-year period. A discussion of future pathways in the strategic management literature is also provided.
Three-wave and four-wave interactions in gravity wave turbulence

The Weak Turbulence Theory is a statistical framework to describe a large ensemble of nonlinearly interacting waves. The archetypal example of such system is the ocean surface that is made of interacting surface gravity waves. Here we describe a laboratory experiment dedicated to probe the statistical properties of turbulent gravity waves. We setup an isotropic state of interacting gravity waves in the Coriolis facility (13 m diameter circular wave tank) by exciting waves at 1 Hz by wedge wavemakers. We implement a stereoscopic technique to obtain a measurement of the surface elevation that is resolved both in space and time. Fourier analysis shows that the laboratory spectra are systematically steeper than the theoretical predictions and than the field observations in the Black Sea by Leckler et al. JPO 2015. We identify a strong impact of surface dissipation on the scaling of the Fourier spectrum at the scales that are accessible in the experiments. We use bicoherence and tricoherence statistical tools in frequency and/or wavevector space to identify the active nonlinear coupling. These analyses are also performed on the field data by Leckler et al. for comparison with the laboratory data. 3-wave coupling are characterized and shown to involve mostly quasi resonances of waves with second or higher order harmonics. 4-wave coupling are not observed in the laboratory but are evidenced in the field data. We finally discuss temporal scale separation to explain our observations. * nicolas.mordant@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr 2
Law Clerks and Their Influence at the US Supreme Court: Comments on Recent Works by Peppers and Ward

There has been a fair amount of recent scholarly attention to the role and influence of law clerks at the Supreme Court of the United States. This new wave of systematic research began when Todd C. Peppers (2006) published Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk at almost exactly the same time as Artemus Ward and David L. Weiden's (2006) Sorcerers' Apprentices: 100 Years of Law Clerks at the United States Supreme Court. Then Peppers and Ward (2012) teamed up to produce an edited volume, In Chambers: Stories of Supreme Court Law Clerks and Their Justices, in which each chapter focuses on the relationship of a specific justice and his or her clerks. Together these three works raise interesting questions about how one properly studies the role and power of law clerks at the US Supreme Court. How does one measure the influence of these temporary assistants to the justices? Should sociolegal scholars trust them to help us understand the approaches and behavior of the justices today or in the past or do they have an unrealistic and inflated view of their own contributions? This essay offers a broad overview of what scholars and journalists currently know about the role of clerks at the Supreme Court.
Impact of Private Foreign Capital Inflows on Economic Growth in India: An Empirical Analysis

The present study attempts to explain the effects of private foreign capital inflows (FINV) on some macroeconomic variables in India using the time series data between April 1995 to Dec. 2007. The study examines the impact of international capital flows on economic growth. The study also analyses trends and composition capital inflows into India. The Cointegration test confirms the presence of long-run equilibrium relationships between a few pair of variables like private capital inflows (FINV) and economic growth (IIP as proxy of GDP) and FINV and Exchange Rate (EXR). The Granger causality test shows unidirectional causality from FINV to Exchange Rate (EXR) and bi-directional causality from FINV and growth (IIP). Finally study found that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is positively affecting the economic growth, while Foreign Institutional Investment (FII) is negatively affecting the growth. The empirical analysis shows that FDI plays unambiguous role in contributing to economic growth. It concludes that capital inflows have not contributed much towards industrial production or economic growth. There are two reasons for this, one the amount of capital inflows to the country has not been enough and the amount of capital that does flow in, is not utilized to its full potential
Influence Of Spirituality In Pediatric Cancer Management: A Systematic Review

Context: Pediatric cancer is a wide challenge for the patients, family and health care team. They must deal with anxiety, distress, and pain. Thereby, to find meaning for this journey, they use different coping strategies, among which, spirituality appears to be a way, providing well-being and hope.Objective: The purpose of this review was to analyze the influence of spirituality in childhood cancer care, involving biopsychosocial aspects of child, family, and health professionals facing cancer.Data Sources: To achieve this goal, a systematic review of literature was conducted via electronic databases Scopus, MEDLINE and PubMed using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms: “spirituality”, “neoplasm” and “pediatric”. Study Selection: Through this search it was found 65 articles. After analyzing them by abstract 13 met the eligibility criteria and were entirely read before included in the final sample.Data Extractions: sys Most of the studies stated that spirituality helps pediatric patients and their families to find a positive meaning from cancer experience, turning better the management of child. Besides, health practitioners may be able to facilitate this process working as a multidisciplinary team, providing to patient an unabridged care. Results: In this context, previous studies stated that when health care team respects patient’s spirituality their connection becomes stronger allowing confidence to take place, promoting treatment engagement. Spirituality also revealed to be a psychological support that acts improving life’s quality.Conclusion: So, it is necessary to promote a deep discussion about this topic since graduation, providing humanized care to child with cancer by qualified health practitioners.
Egyptian Architecture, Posadas' Metaphor for Composition

Over the years, but especially along the twentieth century, many composers have focused their gaze towards Architecture. Alberto Posadas’ music often resorts to the use of exogenous models, mainly scientific and artistic ones, as a starting point to compose. This paper analyzes ‐ summoning archeology, epistemology, mathematics and esthetics ‐ the way he has used the magnificent Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid at the royal necropolis of Dahshur (Egypt) as an inspiring object. This architectonic model has been useful for him to raise a dense network of metaphors that links spatial aspects of the building with temporal aspects and hierarchic parameters in his quintet Nebmaat.