Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dynamics of the Brazil‐Malvinas Confluence based on inverted echo sounders and altimetry

We use data from Geosat altimeter and from 10 inverted echo sounder (IES) moorings deployed in the SW Atlantic Ocean off the Argentine continental shelf to investigate several aspects of the dynamics of the upper layer in the Brazil-Malvinas Confluence region. We use the altimeter data to estimate the sea height anomalies at each IES location and use the IES data to compute the upper layer thickness, taken in this work to go to the depth of the 8°C isotherm. We first discuss the sea height and upper layer thickness variations caused by the passage of the Brazil Current, Malvinas Current, and warm anticyclonic and cold cyclonic eddies. We introduce a two-layer model in which we decompose the sea height into its baroclinic and barotropic contributions. We then propose a method to monitor the thickness of the upper layer and the barotropic and baroclinic transports as a function of the sea height anomalies and the statistics of the upper layer thickness and reduced gravity for the region. We compute the reduced gravity values from the slope of a linear fit between the sea height anomalies and the upper layer thicknesses. We estimate the reduced gravity values for this region to range from 0.005 to 0.011 m s−2. We also estimate the mean barotropic sea height difference using two methods: conservation of mass and conservation of potential vorticity. Finally, we compute the time series for the baroclinic and barotropic transports during the Geosat Exact Repeal Mission time period. Our results suggest that the mean baroclinic transport in the upper layer decreases from 12 Sv at around 35°S to 7 Sv at 37°S. Our results also indicate that there is a significant barotropic contribution to the upper layer transport in the confluence region.
An Improved capacitance sensor for in situ monitoring of soil moisture

A low-power, capacitance-based penetrating soil moisture sensor (SMS) is presented. The SMS is battery-operated, inexpensive, and simple to use. The sensor differs from previous capacitance-based devices in 2 aspects: the measured matrix is contained within the sensor; and the air space between the soil and the probe, which adds an undesirable background, is reduced. Soil moisture changes, not dependent on salinity, correlated well with both water matric potential and water content determined gravimetrically. An SMS installed at 0.45 m depth produced a voltage drop of ~15 mV for each mm of applied irrigation water. The SMS is suitable for controlling irrigation, detecting leaks from disposal containers, fuel tanks, or water reservoirs, and monitoring liquid level.
Historic Preservation

Social justice and housing issues are clearly an area of concern for sociologists, yet preservation of older homes and buildings may seem to be the very antithesis, evoking images of homes of the nation’s elite or neighborhood gentrification by the white upper middle class. Often preserved historic sites do not fully represent members of the community, past or present. Despite increasing efforts at inclusion, marginalization of groups can still be found in the practice of historic preservation. The ideology and practice of preserving chosen heritage sites and buildings and protecting them from destruction or deterioration offer sociologists a unique window into social inequalities. In this article, we explore the intricacies of preserving the buildings and heritage of a former Finntown, a once thriving community of Finnish-American working-class immigrants and now home to a sizable population of Latino working-class immigrants. Inclusive, multilayered historic preservation can be a source of social justice if honoring the past does not sacrifice the needs of marginalized groups in the present.
Clonal structure and reduced diversity of the invasive alien plant Erigeron annuus in Lithuania

The alien species Erigeron annuus (L.) Pers. is in an intensive spreading phase in Lithuania. Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPDs) and inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) assays were used to study the genetic structure of old and new invasive populations and to determine the most spread genotypes of this species in Lithuania. Pairwise genetic distances between populations established using RAPD and ISSR markers significantly correlated (r=0.91, P<0.05). Our study indicates that there are two genetically different types of E. annuus populations. The first type is represented by a widely spread main clone and related monomorphic populations. The second type is represented by polymorphic populations, some of them present at sites where E. annuus has not been previously observed. Main clone predominates in nine populations and is from the region where this species was first described in natural ecosystems of Lithuania. UPGMA cluster analysis revealed genetic relationships between the main clone and accessions from old cemeteries where E. annuus has been grown as an ornamental plant. We found high genetic differentiation among populations (GST=0.58 for RAPDs, GST=0.64 for ISSRs). Taken together, our results will contribute to the monitoring of E. annuus spread in Lithuania.
PALORBITOLINA LENTICULARIS FROM THE NORTHERN ADRIATIC REGION: PALEOGEOGRAPHICAL AND EVOLUTIONARY IMPLICATIONS

Samples bearing Palorbitolina were obtained from three localities on the islands of Cres and Losinj in the northern Adriatic. Although a relatively small number (<60) of specimens were studied, the size of the embryonic chamber and test diameters of Palorbitolina lenticularis indicate a Lower Aptian age. This is confirmed for the Adriatic carbonate platform by the presence of Lower Aptian index taxa. Both embryonic chamber and test diameter variation are pronounced. No change was observed concerning the relationship between stratigraphic horizon and the embryonic chamber diameter. A proportional relationship between the size of the embryonic chamber and the test was determined. These data show that before it appeared on the Adriatic carbonate platform, Palorbitolina already colonized the predominantly mixed clastic-carbonate environments of the Mediterranean, as has been suggested by Velic & Sokac (1978). Although an essentially westwards water circulation during the late Barremian and early Aptian probably aided Palorbitolina in colonization of the Tethyan realm, it can neither explain the simultaneous existence of Palorbitolina in different and remote parts of the Tethys nor its dispersal, which must have been very rapid.
Exploring the Efficacy of Homoeopathy in Managing Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Comprehensive Perspective on Treatment, Quality of Life, and Financial Implications

: Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic immune-inflammatory systematic disease that affects mainly synovial joints with possibly of extra articular manifestation. Homoeopathy plays a major role in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. These kinds of diseases can have effects on our work and family life due to their long-term and sometimes lifelong effects. Moreover, due to prolonged care and frequent hospitalizations, financial strain and subsequent isolation occurs.
Historical variability of sea ice edge position in the Nordic Seas

[1] Historical ice observations in the Nordic Seas from April through August are used to construct time series of ice edge position anomalies spanning the period 1750-2002. While analysis showed that interannual variability remained almost constant throughout this period, evidence was found of oscillations in ice cover with periods of about 60 to 80 years and 20 to 30 years, superimposed on a continuous negative trend. The lower frequency oscillations are more prominent in the Greenland Sea, while higher frequency oscillations are dominant in the Barents. The analysis suggests that the recent well-documented retreat of ice cover can partly be attributed to a manifestation of the positive phase of the 60-80 year variability, associated with the warming of the subpolar North Atlantic and the Arctic. The continuous retreat of ice edge position observed since the second half of the 19th century may be a recovery after significant cooling in the study area that occurred as early as the second half of the 18th century.
Rice heading date retrieval based on multi-temporal MODIS data and polynomial fitting

The objective of the study is to identify the rice heading date and analyse its spatial characteristics on a regional scale using multi-temporal Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) data and a new approach: quadratic polynomial fitting. The cloud-contaminated NDVI value was identified by reliability data and linearly interpolated with values before and after the cloudy one. The discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) and quadratic polynomial fitting were implemented to generate new time series curves. Rice heading date was retrieved by calculating the day for maximum NDVI. Comparing with DFT, the proposed quadratic polynomial fitting significantly improves the computation efficiency, while providing approximate precision of estimation. In regional analysis, the rice heading date retrieved from polynomial fitting is more consistent than that from DFT. The study also suggests that multi-temporal MODIS NDVI data combined with different methods can retrieve crop phenology information on a large scale.
Energy and depth of Usu 2000 phreatic explosions

On 31 March 2000, the Usu volcano located in Hokkaido, Japan began erupting after 22 years of dormancy. After the first phreato‐magmatic explosion, there were many small‐scale phreatic explosions at the Nishiyama and Kompirayama Craters. In April and May, observations were made using a piezo blast‐sensor and a visible video recorder to get a better understanding of volcanic explosions. The data thus obtained were analyzed using the scaling‐laws that relate surface phenomena to both explosion energy and depth. The analysis using the shape of the explosion‐cloud and the peak over‐pressure of the volcanic blast‐wave indicated that the average explosion energy and depth of the phreatic explosions of mid‐April ranged from 1010 to 1012 J and originated from between just beneath the ground surface to a depth of a few tens of meters.
Wet Aggregate Stability of Some Botswana Soil Profiles

ABSTRACT During intense and short rainfall events, important losses of fertility are expected as a result of erosion in drylands because the nutrient pools are concentrated in the topsoil. Therefore, we evaluated the kinetics of aggregate stability in some Haplargids and Torripsamments in Botswana as it represents a resistance factor against losses of materials, measuring also the release of organic matter and phosphorus during wet sieving. We found very low contents of 1–2 mm aggregates in both soil types—although the Haplargids had higher levels of this size aggregate (19%) compared with the Torripsamments (10%)—and no differences between the topsoil and the deeper horizons. The total losses of aggregates were similar in topsoils and deep soil horizons and independent from soil order, but the Entisols had a greater proportion of aggregate breakdown, 38% on the average, when the sample was water-saturated. Only clay and silt content, and cation exchange capacity showed good correlations with aggregate stability. Organic matter or iron oxides had no effect, suggesting that aggregation is the result of cation bridging between mineral particles. Up to 97% of the organic matter released into water was lost at the beginning of the wet sieving, but the amounts were not related to aggregate breakdown, indicating that organic matter, besides not influencing the stability of macroaggregates, had little effect on the stabilization of microaggregates. Phosphorus was also released during the wet sieving, and was related to soil available P (r = 0.713 after 5 min). With no effect of organic matter on aggregate stability, and nutrients concentrated in the topsoil, the vulnerability of these soils to fertility losses is therefore extremely high.
Spatially distributed evapotranspiration estimation using remote sensing and ground-based radiometers over cotton at Maricopa, Arizona, USA

Spatially distributed estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) could be valuable for monitoring croplands. Recently various ET estimation approaches have been developed that include visible and near infrared for vegetation indices and thermal infrared for surface temperatures. However, these approaches rely on high-resolution remotely sensed data (<100 m) that are too infrequent for operational use. To help fill the gap, a two-part ground and remote sensing approach is developed. The first part projects vegetation cover from the latest NDVI scenes using a simplified crop model. The second part projects spatially distributed surface temperatures using cover projections and ground-based radiometers. The projections from both parts are then input to a two-source energy balance model. The approach is demonstrated using data over a 2003 cotton experiment conducted in Maricopa, Arizona, USA. Using soil moisture depletion observations for validation, estimates were usually accurate to within 1 mm/d for two weeks beyond the latest remote sensing acquisition.
A Field Study

©2011 University of Phoenix View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI:10.1002/jls.20202 23 This study tested the relationship between employees’ sources of work motivation and their display of organizational citizenship behaviors. Two hundred thirty-nine employees from 38 locations of four companies in the agricultural industry completed the Motivation Sources Inventory and were rated by their leaders in organizational citizenship behaviors. Results showed significant positive relationships between individuals’ self-concept internal motivations and organizational citizenship behaviors. Results also showed significant negative relationships between instrumental and self-concept external motivations and organizational citizenship behaviors. A hierarchical regression with each of the significant covariates accounted for 12% of the total variance in organizational citizenship behavior. These results indicate that employees’ sources of motivation offer some explanation of their organizational citizenship behaviors. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. W O R K M O T I VA T I O N A N D
The general aspects of the distribution of Antarctic foraminifera

Benthic foraminifers collected in different regions of the high Antarctic (Weddell Sea, Mawson Sea, Davis Sea and some other locations in East Antarctic) on the shelf and upper part of the bathyal zone (2–2315m) were analyzed to determine regularities in their distribution. Most samples contained living organisms. The composition of the foraminiferal assemblages is influenced by many factors of water characteristics such as temperature, salinity, nutrient composition, availability of carbonate and variations in CCD, presence of near-bottom flows. The changes of water masses at different depths or mixing of the different water masses are clearly seen in the changes of the foraminiferal species composition. In some cases the local variations of water characteristics, seasonality and ice melting are also responsible for the foraminiferal distribution. Two faunas were identified: those of the shelf associated with the cold-water masses (−1° to 1.9°) and the upper slope with warmer water (−0.5°), the majority of the characteristic forms being circumantarctic. Species abundance displays two maximums at depths of 180-300m and 1500-2300m. At depths to 500, and even to 700m, both arenaceous and calcareous forms, especially miliolids, are abundant. Below this boundary some living calcareous forms were also found, though arenaceous ones were dominant. The presence of calcareous foraminifers at the majority of the stations in our material may be explained by the higher resistance of living calcareous forms to carbonate dissolution comparing the empty tests, dissolving more rapidly. The overall pattern of these our data and of data from previous studies allows to draw some general conclusions with regard to the Antarctic foraminiferal fauna: a high degree of endemism which, for the shelf depths of 2-50m, sometimes reaches 80%; the gigantism of many species; a wide range of vertical distribution of many species; introduction of deep water species of other oceans onto the shelf and the upper part of the bathyal zone; often high species diversity and high quantity abundance of many species in the community; abundance of circumantarctic species, often with a great number of species belonging to a single genus; the abundance (often predominance) of agglutinated forms compared to calcareous ones. Some taxonomic notes and morphological observations are given, as well as comparisons of some closely related Arctic and Antarctic forms.
Crystal-Mush Compaction and the Origin of Pegmatitic Segregation Sheets in a Thick Flood-Basalt Flow in the Mesozoic Hartford Basin, Connecticut

Where the Holyoke flood-basalt flow in the Mesozoic Hartford Basin in Connecticut is thick and contains coarse-grained, horizontal segregation sheets in its central part, the lower part of the flow is strongly depleted in incompatible elements; where the flow is thin and contains no segregation sheets it is homogeneous throughout. This chemical variation can be explained only through compaction of the partly crystallized basalt. The composition of the segregation sheets shows that they separated from the basalt following only 33% crystallization. The segregation sheets, however, are clearly intrusive into the basalt, which must therefore have already formed a crystal mush with finite strength at this low degree of crystallinity. The incompatible element concentrations indicate that the partly crystallized basalt underwent as much as 28% compaction in the lowest 60 m of the flow. Between 60 and 130 m above the base of the flow, the crystal mush became dilated, and eventually ruptured with formation of the segregation sheets. No segregation sheet has a composition indicating separation after more than 33% crystallization of the basalt. This is interpreted to indicate that compaction ceased at this stage because of the increasing strength of the mush and the increasing density of the fractionating interstitial liquid
Cyanobacteria Diversity in Blooms from the Greater Sudbury Area

The Greater Sudbury Area is approximately 400 km north of the city of Toronto and falls within a large number of temperate lakes of various sizes. This area has been mined for nickel and other metals for several decades. These activities have affected the watersheds of Northern Ontario and have influenced the chemistry of a number of lakes. Blooms of cyanobacteria occur yearly in several lakes, mainly in the early and late summer months. Much of the chemistry of these lakes is known but the nature of the cyanobacterial blooms and the factors that may contribute to their sudden appearance are not. We sampled blooms from five Greater Sudbury Area lakes and identified the species present by morphological and molecular methods. The dominant genera present as characterized by morphological examination were Synechocystis, Leptolyngbya, Anabaena, Cyl-indrospermum, Nostoc, Borzia, Phormidium, Pseudoanabaena, Oscillatoria, and Planktothrix. Three of these isolates, Leptolyngbya, Anabaena, and Planktothrix were confirmed by partial rRNA sequence analysis.
Trade, human capital, and technology diffusion in the Mediterranean agricultural sector

This paper investigates the roles of human capital and openness in the process of technology diffusion and productivity growth in the Mediterranean agricultural sector. We estimate a nonlinear productivity growth specification that nests the logistic and the confined exponential technology diffusion functional forms, using a panel of nine South Mediterranean countries and five European Union countries for the period 1990 to 2005. The estimation results suggest that the steady state is a balanced growth path, with all backward economies growing at the pace determined by the leading edge. The findings illustrate the positive roles of openness and human capital in facilitating technology diffusion and fostering agricultural growth. We find strong complementary effects between foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods and educational attainment on farming performance.
Modeling descending carbon dioxide injections in the ocean

An integral double plume model is used to explore the fate of solid CO2 hydrate particles released continuously into a quiescent ocean for the purposes of CO2 sequestration. Such a release is desirable because hydrate particles are negatively buoyant and dissolution of CO2 enhances this negative buoyancy through the solute density effect. Plume depth and thickness are shown to increase with CO2 mass loading and initial hydrate particle diameter, and exceed the equivalent rise height and thickness associated with positively buoyant droplet releases. The depths also greatly exceed those associated with a single particle release, highlighting the importance of the “plume” effect. Plumes initially composed of multiple particle sizes produce greater maximum plume depth, but similar average plume depth and dilution compared with plumes composed of homogeneous particles, suggesting that adequate simulations can be made using a single particle size. Although the model is valid only for discharge to quiescent receiving water, analysis shows the effects of an ambient current decrease with increasing mass flow rate or decreasing particle size, making results relevant for most likely release scenarios.
Phase-map unwrapping: a comparison of some traditional methods and a presentation of a new approach

This paper deals with the problems encountered when unwrapping a noisy phase map obtained in connection with phase shifting speckle interferometry. Due to decorrelation of the speckle patterns obtained before and after loading the object, these phase maps are very noisy and unwrapping requires smoothing. Traditional procedures based upon averaging or median filtering in a window have some disadvantages. Averaging tends to smooth the jumps to be identified in the phase map and median filtering is very slow. A new fast-edge preserving approach is presented and compared to some traditional methods by means of evaluating their performance when filtering and unwrapping a computer-generated noisy sawtooth pattern.
Nonlinear predictors for lossless compression of AVHRR imagery

Nonlinear predictors based on feedforward artificial neural networks are investigated for use in lossless compression of AVHRR Imagery. The FNN predictors are designed and compared to the optimum nonlinear Mean Square Error predictor, and to the linear predictor. The predictors are compared based on the first order entropy of the predictor error, on run time, and memory requirements. The FNN predictors can be designed to have a wide range of performance with a trade off between first order entropy error, and memory and run time. There is little difference in prediction errors between the linear and FNN predictors for large sample sizes, when the image is segmented into large areas. The difference can be greater for smaller sample sizes, when the image is segmented into smaller areas such as the typical 8 X 8 pixel size. The results indicate there is no advantage to using nonlinear predictors when compression and run time requirements are taken into account.