Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dating Hydrologic and Geomorphic Change Using Dendrochronology in Tully Valley, Central New York: A Summary

Abstract This report summarizes the results of three case studies where dendrochronology was used to evaluate hydrologic and geomorphic change in parts of Tully Valley, in central New York, over the past 150 years. The case studies evaluate 1) the changes in water quantity and quality in a wetland area several miles north of an area of former solution-brine mining, 2) the development of recent bedrock fractures above former solution brine-mining areas, and 3) the development and timing of landslide movement. The advantage of contemporary dendrochronology is that tree-ring analysis can provide a background of hydrologic and geomorphic change when no direct documentation or data are available.
Probabilistic Assessment of Ground-Water Vulnerability to Nonpoint Source Pollution in Agricultural Watersheds

This paper presents a probabilistic framework for the assessment of ground-water pollution potential by pesticides in two adjacent agricultural watersheds in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain. Indices for estimating streams vulnerability to pollutants’ load from the surficial aquifer are also presented. The methodology combines physically based mass fraction models (or indices), which describe natural attenuation of pesticides in the subsurface with Monte Carlo simulations and ArcView GIS to generate pollution potential cumulative distributions in the soil for a selected pesticide. The pollution potential is defined here as the probability of exceeding a prescribed threshold limit of leached fraction of a pesticide’s mass applied per acre at the source. Uncertainty of soil parameters, such as the saturated hydraulic conductivity, porosity7 field capacity, and organic carbon fraction, are based on statistics and distributions related to drainage (SCS hydrologic) soil groups and soil texture. Probability density functions and cumulative distributions for the leached mass fractions below the root zone are generated through Monte Carlo simulations for different hydrologic soil groups and land use. The probabilistic scheme is applied to assess the vulnerability of ground water in two agricultural watersheds in the MidAtlantic coastal plain to a selected relatively short-lived pesticide. The probability maps and expected leached fractions of the pesticide show that well drained landscapes pose greater risks for potential ground water pollution by the pesticide. In the case of cultivated lands, the Monte Carlo simulations show that the coefficient of variation for the leached mass fraction is higher for poorly drained than in well drained soils in the area.
The World Health Organization (who) Classification of the Myeloid Neoplasms

A World Health Organization (WHO) classification of hematopoietic and lymphoid neoplasms has recently been published. This classification was developed through the collaborative efforts of the Society for Hematopathology, the European Association of Hematopathologists, and more than 100 clinical hematologists and scientists who are internationally recognized for their expertise in hematopoietic neo-plasms. For the lymphoid neoplasms, this classification provides a refinement of the entities described in the Revised Euro-pean-American Lymphoma (REAL) Classi-fication—a system that is now used worldwide. To date, however, there has been no published explanation or rationale given for the WHO classification of the myeloid neoplasms. The purpose of this communication is to outline briefly the WHO classification of malignant myeloid diseases, to draw attention to major differences between it and antecedent classification schemes, and to provide the rationale for those differences .
Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation, Volume 32

Since its founding, NASA has been dedicated to the advancement of aeronautics and space science. The NASA scientific and technical information (STI) program plays a key part in helping NASA maintain this important role. The NASA STI program operates under the auspices of the Agency Chief Information Officer. It collects, organizes, provides for archiving, and disseminates NASA's STI. The NASA STI program provides access to the NASA Aeronautics and Space Database and its public interface, the NASA Technical Reports Server, thus providing one of the largest collections of aeronautical and space science STI in the world. Results are published in both non-NASA channels and by NASA in the NASA STI Report Series, which includes the following report types: • TECHNICAL PUBLICATION. Reports of completed research or a major significant phase of research that present the results of NASA Programs and include extensive data or theoretical analysis. Includes compilations of significant scientific and technical data and information deemed to be of continuing reference value. NASA counterpart of peer-reviewed formal professional papers but has less stringent limitations on manuscript length and extent of graphic presentations. Scientific and technical findings that are preliminary or of specialized interest, e.g., quick release reports, working papers, and bibliographies that contain minimal annotation. Does not contain extensive analysis. • CONTRACTOR REPORT. Scientific and technical findings by NASA-sponsored contractors and grantees. • CONFERENCE PUBLICATION. Collected papers from scientific and technical conferences, symposia, seminars, or other meetings sponsored or co-sponsored by NASA. English-language translations of foreign scientific and technical material pertinent to NASA's mission. Specialized services also include organizing and publishing research results, distributing specialized research announcements and feeds, providing information desk and personal search support, and enabling data exchange services. Level of Review: This material has been technically reviewed by technical management. Trade names and trademarks are used in this report for identification only. Their usage does not constitute an official endorsement, either expressed or implied, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Government has a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to prepare derivative works, publish, or reproduce this manuscript, and allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. Any publisher accepting this manuscript for publication acknowledges that the United States Government retains such a license in any published form of this manuscript. All other rights are retained by the copyright owner. Abstract NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office has extended the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research …
Mechanisms of summer intraseasonal sea surface temperature oscillations in the Bay of Bengal

Intraseasonal variations (ISV) of sea surface temperature (SST) in the Bay of Bengal (BoB) is highest in its northwestern part. An Indian Ocean model forced by QuikSCAT winds and climatological river discharge (QR run) reproduces ISV of SST, albeit with weaker magnitude. Air-sea fluxes, in the presence of a shallow mixed layer, efficiently effect intraseasonal SST fluctuations. Warming during intraseasonal events is smaller (<1°C) for June - July period and larger (1.5° to 2°C) during September, the latter due to a thinner mixed layer. To examine the effect of salinity on ISV, the model was run by artificially increasing the salinity (NORR run) and by decreasing it (MAHA10 run). In NORR, both rainfall and river discharge were switched off and in MAHA10 the discharge by river Mahanadi was increased tenfold. The spatial pattern of ISV as well as its periodicity was similar in QR, NORR and MAHA10. The ISV was stronger in NORR and weaker in MAHA10, compared to QR. In NORR, both intraseasonal warming and cooling were higher than in QR, the former due to reduced air-sea heat loss as the mean SST was lower, and the latter due to enhanced subsurface processes resulting from weaker stratification. In MAHA10, both warming and cooling were lower than in QR, the former due to higher air-sea heat loss owing to higher mean SST, and the latter due to weak subsurface processes resulting from stronger stratification. These model experiments suggest that salinity effects are crucial in determining amplitudes of intraseasonal SST variations in the BoB.
Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation, Volume 35

Abstract Several GEOS-5 applications, including the GEOS-5 seasonal forecasting system and the MERRA-Land data product, rely on global precipitation data that have been corrected with satellite and/or gauge-based precipitation observations. This document describes the methodology used to generate the corrected precipitation estimates and their use in GEOS-5applications. The corrected precipitation estimates are derived by disaggregating publicly available, observationally based, global precipitation products from daily or pentad totals to hourly accumulations using background precipitation estimates from the GEOS-5 atmospheric data assimilation system. Depending on the specific combination of the observational precipitation product and the GEOS-5 background estimates, the observational product may also be downscaled in space. The resulting corrected precipitation data product is at the finer temporal and spatial resolution of the GEOS-5 background and matches the observed precipitation at the coarser scale of the observational product, separately for each day (or pentad) and each grid cell. 1
Removal of spatial inconsistency and shape disagreement for conflation of road maps with aerial images

With rapidly widening access to high-capacity geospatial data via high-speed Internet, user demand for multiform and accurate information has increased. Correspondingly, there is a growing need for hybrid map services that can combine heterogeneous data. Conflation, defined as the combining of information from diverse sources so as to reconcile spatial inconsistencies, has emerged to meet that need. In this research, we developed an approach that conflates road maps with aerial images using road intersections as conjugate features. The method has a three-process workflow including preprocessing for road candidate identification, spatial inconsistency removal, and shape disagreement removal. On the basis of overall comparative evaluations of the experimental results with a reference, it was found that the correctness of the conflated road was 36.6% better than that of the original road.
The Mawson Diamictite and the Carapace Sandstone, formations of the Ferrar Group at Allan Hills and Carapace Nunatak, Victoria Land, Antarctica

Abstract Four hundred feet (130 m) plus of current-bedded sandstones and fine lithic conglomerates of Jurassic age at Carapace Nunatak, formerly attributed to the Beacon Group, are shown to consist of re-derived Beacon and primary basaltic volcanic detritus. They are here named the Carapace Sandstone and referred to the Ferrar Group. They are conformably overlain by over 1,000 ft (300 m) of Kirkpatrick Basalt, including a thick hyaloclastite breccia with pillows, and a 50 ft (15 m) intercalation of what is here called Mawson Diamictite. The latter, also Jurassic in age, is also exposed extensively at nearby Allan Hills, where it fills a depression eroded several hundred feet into Permian and Triassic coal measures and sandstones of the Beacon Group. The diamictite consists, like the Carapace Sandstone, of mixed Beacon and basaltic debris, but contains more basalt, is coarser-grained, very poorly sorted, and generally unstratified. More than 1,000 ft (300 m) thick, it was originally called Mawson Tillite.
Reliable probabilistic forecasts from an ensemble reservoir inflow forecasting system

This paper describes a probabilistic reservoir inflow forecasting system that explicitly attempts to sample from major sources of uncertainty in the modeling chain. Uncertainty in hydrologic forecasts arises due to errors in the hydrologic models themselves, their parameterizations, and in the initial and boundary conditions (e.g., meteorological observations or forecasts) used to drive the forecasts. The Member‐to‐Member (M2M) ensemble presented herein uses individual members of a numerical weather model ensemble to drive two different distributed hydrologic models, each of which is calibrated using three different objective functions. An ensemble of deterministic hydrologic states is generated by spinning up the daily simulated state using each model and parameterization. To produce probabilistic forecasts, uncertainty models are used to fit probability distribution functions (PDF) to the bias‐corrected ensemble. The parameters of the distribution are estimated based on statistical properties of the ensemble and past verifying observations. The uncertainty model is able to produce reliable probability forecasts by matching the shape of the PDF to the shape of the empirical distribution of forecast errors. This shape is found to vary seasonally in the case‐study watershed. We present an “intelligent” adaptation to a Probability Integral Transform (PIT)‐based probability calibration scheme that relabels raw cumulative probabilities into calibrated cumulative probabilities based on recent past forecast performance. As expected, the intelligent scheme, which applies calibration corrections only when probability forecasts are deemed sufficiently unreliable, improves reliability without the inflation of ignorance exhibited in certain cases by the original PIT‐based scheme.
Understanding informal carers’ experiences of caring for older people with a hip fracture: a systematic review of qualitative studies

Abstract Purpose: This systematic review aimed to reconceptualize experiences from a variety of papers to provide direction for research, policy and practice. Method: Meta-ethnography was used to inform the review, and 21 studies were included. Findings: The analysis identified a core theme of “engaging in care: struggling through”, as carers, who wanted to be involved in caring, learnt to live with the intense and stressful impact of caring and changes to their life. The core theme is represented through three themes (1) Helping another to live, (2) Adapting ways of living and (3) Negotiating the unknown. Conclusions: The discussion identified a focus on carers of people suffering from a hip fracture, the willingness of informal carers to engage in caring and the intense experience of adapting to changes in relationships and dependency alongside a steep experiential learning curve. Tensions exist in negotiations with complex health care systems as carers do not feel their expertise is valued and struggle to find and understand information. Implications for Rehabilitation Including relatives/carers in the umbrella of care within a family-centred approach. Involving relatives/carers within shared decision-making about care requirements and rehabilitation goals. Utilizing forms of experiential learning to help the development of relatives/carers skills in relation to their role as carer. Providing opportunities for carers to explore ways of sustaining their own health through self-compassion.
Numerical Simulation of the Effects of Grassland Degradation on the Surface Climate in Overgrazing Area of Northwest China

The climatic effects of LUCC have been a focus of current researches on global climate change. The objective of this study is to investigate climatic effects of grassland degradation in Northwest China. Based on the stimulation of the conversion from grassland to other land use types during the next 30 years, the potential effects of grassland degradation on regional climate in the overgrazing area of Northwest China from 2010 to 2040 have been explored with Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF). The analysis results show that grassland will mainly convert into barren land, croplands, and urban land, which accounts for 42%, 48%, and 10% of the total converted grassland area, respectively. The simulation results indicate that the WRF model is appropriate for the simulation of the impact of grassland degradation on climate change. The grassland degradation during the next 30 years will result in the decrease of latent heat flux, which will further lead to the increase of temperature in summer, with an increment of 0.4–1.2°C, and the decrease of temperature in winter, with a decrement of 0.2°C. In addition, grassland degradation will cause the decrease of precipitation in both summer and winter, with a decrement of 4–20 mm.
Nonlinear wavelet image processing: variational problems, compression, and noise removal through wavelet shrinkage

This paper examines the relationship between wavelet-based image processing algorithms and variational problems. Algorithms are derived as exact or approximate minimizers of variational problems; in particular, we show that wavelet shrinkage can be considered the exact minimizer of the following problem. Given an image F defined on a square I, minimize over all g in the Besov space B(1)(1)(L (1)(I)) the functional |F-g|(L2)(I)(2)+lambda|g|(B(1)(1 )(L(1(I)))). We use the theory of nonlinear wavelet image compression in L(2)(I) to derive accurate error bounds for noise removal through wavelet shrinkage applied to images corrupted with i.i. d. , mean zero, Gaussian noise. A new signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which we claim more accurately reflects the visual perception of noise in images, arises in this derivation. We present extensive computations that support the hypothesis that near-optimal shrinkage parameters can be derived if one knows (or can estimate) only two parameters about an image F: the largest alpha for which FinEpsilon(q)(alpha )(L(q)(I)),1/q=alpha/2+1/2, and the norm |F|B(q)(alpha)(L(q)(I)). Both theoretical and experimental results indicate that our choice of shrinkage parameters yields uniformly better results than Donoho and Johnstone's VisuShrink procedure; an example suggests, however, that Donoho and Johnstone's SureShrink method, which uses a different shrinkage parameter for each dyadic level, achieves a lower error than our procedure.
A quantum leap in the reproducibility, precision, and sensitivity of gene expression profile analysis even when sample size is extremely small

Transcript-level quantification is often measured across two groups of patients to aid the discovery of biomarkers and detection of biological mechanisms involving these biomarkers. Statistical tests lack power and false discovery rate is high when sample size is small. Yet, many experiments have very few samples (≤ 5). This creates the impetus for a method to discover biomarkers and mechanisms under very small sample sizes. We present a powerful method, ESSNet, that is able to identify subnetworks consistently across independent datasets of the same disease phenotypes even under very small sample sizes. The key idea of ESSNet is to fragment large pathways into smaller subnetworks and compute a statistic that discriminates the subnetworks in two phenotypes. We do not greedily select genes to be included based on differential expression but rely on gene-expression-level ranking within a phenotype, which is shown to be stable even under extremely small sample sizes. We test our subnetworks on null distributions obtained by array rotation; this preserves the gene-gene correlation structure and is suitable for datasets with small sample size allowing us to consistently predict relevant subnetworks even when sample size is small. For most other methods, this consistency drops to less than 10% when we test them on datasets with only two samples from each phenotype, whereas ESSNet is able to achieve an average consistency of 58% (72% when we consider genes within the subnetworks) and continues to be superior when sample size is large. We further show that the subnetworks identified by ESSNet are highly correlated to many references in the biological literature. ESSNet and supplementary material are available at: http://compbio.ddns. comp.nus. edu.sg:8080/essnet .
Identification of sex-specific DNA methylation changes driven by specific chemicals in cord blood in a Faroese birth cohort

ABSTRACT Faroe islanders consume marine foods contaminated with methylmercury (MeHg), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and other toxicants associated with chronic disease risks. Differential DNA methylation at specific CpG sites in cord blood may serve as a surrogate biomarker of health impacts from chemical exposures. We aimed to identify key environmental chemicals in cord blood associated with DNA methylation changes in a population with elevated exposure to chemical mixtures. We studied 72 participants of a Faroese birth cohort recruited between 1986 and 1987 and followed until adulthood. The cord blood DNA methylome was profiled using Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChips. We determined the associations of CpG site changes with concentrations of MeHg, major PCBs, other organochlorine compounds [hexachlorobenzene (HCB), p,p’-dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (p,p’-DDE) and p,p’-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane], and perfluoroalkyl substances. In a combined sex analysis, among the 16 chemicals studied, PCB congener 105 (CB-105) exposure was associated with the majority of differentially methylated CpG sites (214 out of a total of 250). In female-only analysis, only 73 CB-105 associated CpG sites were detected, 44 of which were mapped to genes in the ELAV1-associated cancer network. In males-only, methylation changes were seen for perfluorooctane sulfonate, HCB, and p,p’-DDE in 10,598, 1,238, and 1,473 CpG sites, respectively, 15% of which were enriched in cytobands of the X-chromosome associated with neurological disorders. In this multiple-pollutant and genome-wide study, we identified key epigenetic toxicants. The significant enrichment of specific X-chromosome sites in males implies potential sex-specific epigenome responses to prenatal chemical exposures.
Climatology 2011: An MLS and sonde derived ozone climatology for satellite retrieval algorithms

[1] The ozone climatology used as the a priori for the version 8 Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV) retrieval algorithms has been updated. The climatology was formed by combining data from Aura MLS (2004–2010) with data from balloon sondes (1988–2010). The Microwave Limb Sounder (MLS) instrument on Aura has excellent latitude coverage and measures ozone daily from the upper troposphere to the lower mesosphere. The new climatology consists of monthly average ozone profiles for ten degree latitude zones covering pressure altitudes from 0 to 65 km. Ozone below 8 km (below 12 km at high latitudes) is based on balloons sondes, while ozone above 16 km (21 km at high latitudes) is based on MLS measurements. Sonde and MLS data are blended in the transition region. Ozone accuracy in the upper troposphere is greatly improved because of the near uniform coverage by Aura MLS, while the addition of a large number of balloon sonde measurements improves the accuracy in the lower troposphere, in the tropics and southern hemisphere in particular. The addition of MLS data also improves the accuracy of the climatology in the upper stratosphere and lower mesosphere. The revised climatology has been used for the latest reprocessing of SBUV and TOMS satellite ozone data.
Mechanism for Sea Surface Temperature Cooling In the Gulf of Oman during Winter

We report on sea surface temperature (SST) cooling in the Gulf of Oman during winter monsoon 1993 using evidence from the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR). A combination of the AVHRR SST and scatterometer‐based momentum and heat fluxes is used to discuss the SST‐cooling mechanism. Cold SST evolves in the gulf during an intense outbreak of wintertime winds. The turbulence generated by these winds in the surface atmospheric boundary layer depletes large heat from the sea surface and cause 1–2°C SST cooling during January–March. Additionally, the alongshore component of the wind stress promotes Ekman dynamics and further enhances SST cooling along the periphery of the gulf.