Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
USING FOSSIL LEAVES AS PALEOPRECIPITATION INDICATORS : AN EOCENE EXAMPLE

Estimates of past precipitation are of broad interest for many areas of inquiry, including reconstructions of past environments and topography, climate modeling, and ocean circulation studies. The shapes and sizes of living leaves are highly sensitive to moisture conditions, and assemblages of fossil leaves of flowering plants have great potential as paleoprecipitation indicators. Most quantitative estimates of paleoprecipitation have been based on a multivariate data set of morphological leaf characters measured from samples of living vegetation tied to climate stations. However, when tested on extant forests, this method has consistently overestimated precipitation. We present a simpler approach that uses only the mean leaf area of a vegetation sample as a predictor variable but incorporates a broad range of annual precipitation and geographic coverage into the predictor set. The significant relationship that results, in addition to having value for paleoclimatic reconstruction, refines understanding of the long-observed positive relationship between leaf area and precipitation. Seven precipitation estimates for the Eocene of the Western United States are revised as lower than previously published but remain far wetter than the same areas today. Abundant moisture may have been an important factor in maintaining warm, frost-free conditions in the Eocene because of the major role of water vapor in retaining and transporting atmospheric heat.
Second Language Tutoring using Social Robots

When discussing second language learning, we must recognize the difference between the language we understand (receptive vocabulary) and the language we use (productive vocabulary). As receptive vocabulary is considered to be an easier and more sensitive measure of a student’s knowledge, productive vocabulary is not often measured. At the same time, previous studies on foreign language learning have found that robots can help to reduce language anxiety, leading to improved results. We conducted a study with 25 children to measure the effectiveness of a robot measuring and encouraging production compared to a human experimenter. We found that a robot is able to match the experimenter’s performance in getting children to produce, despite the person’s advantages in social ability, and discuss the extent to which a robot may be suitable for this task.
Uranium, thorium and potassium contents of St. Paul's rocks

Neutron activation analysis of uranium, thorium and potassium has been. made on St. Paul's rocks of possible oceanic mantle origin. Results of analysis showed that average values of WISEMAN's “challengerite” are (15.8 ± 0.5) × 10-8 gU/g, (34.5 ± 1.0) × 10-8 gTh/g and (3100 ± 60) × 10-6 gK/g, giving a rate of heat production of ca. 300 × 10-16 cal/cm3·sec. This value agrees with the rate expected for the pyrolitic oceanic upper mantle. Other types of St. Paul's rocks, such as “owenites”, “paulites” and “questites” were shown to contain these elements comparable in amount with peridotite nodules. The Th/U ratio of these rocks, however, is unusually low.
Vision-Based Navigation for a Small Fixed-Wing Airplane in Urban Environment

An urban operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) demands a high level of autonomy for tasks presented in a cluttered environment. While fixed-wing UAVs are well suited for long-endurance missions at a high altitude, enabling them to navigate inside an urban area brings another level of challenges. Their inability to hover and low agility in motion cause more difficulties on finding a feasible path to move safely in a compact region, and the limited payload allows only low-grade sensors for state estimation and control. We address the problem of achieving vision-based autonomous navigation for a small fixed-wing in an urban area with contributions to the following several key topics. Firstly, for robust attitude estimation during dynamic maneuvering, we take advantage of the line regularity in an urban scene, which features vertical and horizontal edges of man-made structures. The sensor fusion with gravity-related line segments and gyroscopes in a Kalman filter can provide driftless and realtime attitude for flight stabilization. Secondly, as a prerequisite to sensor fusion, we present a convenient self-calibration scheme based on the factorization method. Natural references such as gravity, vertical edges, and distant scene points, available in urban fields, are sufficient to find intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of inertial and vision sensors. Lastly, to generate a dynamically feasible motion plan, we propose a discrete planning method that encodes a path into interconnections of finite trim states, which allow a significant dimension reduction of a search space and result in naturally implementable paths integrated with flight controllers. The most probable path to reach a target is computed by the Markov Decision Process with motion uncertainty due to wind, and a minimum target observation time is imposed on the final motion plan to consider a camera’s limited field-of-view. In this thesis, the effectiveness of our vision-based navigation system is demonstrated by what we call an ”air slalom” task in which the UAV must autonomously search and localize multiple gates, and pass through them sequentially. Experiment results with a 1m wing-span airplane show essential navigation capabilities demanded in urban operations such as maneuvering passageways between buildings.
Probabilistic analysis of hydrological drought characteristics using meteorological drought

Abstract Droughts are an inevitable consequence of climate variability and are pervasive across many regions. Their effects can vary on an extensive scale, depending on the type of drought and people's vulnerability. Crucial characteristics of both hydrological (groundwater, streamflow) and meteorological (precipitation) droughts are related to their durations and severities, and these characteristics are typically correlated. While many studies have addressed the dependencies between these characteristics for either the meteorological or hydrological drought, the cross-dependence between meteorological and hydrological drought characteristics is barely investigated. The development of meteorological drought characteristics to hydrological drought characteristics is often hard to model and their connection is not definitively established. In order to better understand and explain this relationship, this study seeks to apply statistical tools and models. Drought characteristics data from areas in Europe with different climates are analysed. Two approaches of identifying related meteorological and hydrological drought are explored and compared. Classical linear correlation techniques do not provide promising results, indicating that any statistic of a hydrological drought is not a straightforward function of a preceding meteorological drought. Subsequently, the application of the concept of copulas to explore this dependence between meteorological and hydrological drought characteristics is investigated. The more comprehensive approach of copulas shows that the meteorological drought contains probability information of the successive hydrological drought. Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz Citation Wong, G. , van Lanen, H.A. J., and Torfs, P.J.J.F. , 2013. Probabilistic analysis of hydrological drought characteristics using meteorological drought. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 58 (2), 253–270.
Rough-sea deghosting of streamer seismic data using pressure gradient approximations

A new method is presented for seismic deghosting of towed streamer data acquired in rough seas. The deghosting scheme combines pressure recordings along one or several cables with an estimate of the vertical pressure gradient (or the vertical component of the particle velocity). The estimation of the vertical pressure gradient requires continuous elevation measurements of the wave height directly above the receivers. The vertical pressure gradient estimate is obtained by spatially weighting the pressure field. Each spatial weight generally is the product of two weight functions. The first is a function of partial derivatives acting solely along the horizontal Cartesian coordinates. It can be implemented by finite-difference or Fourier derivative operations. The second is a function of the vertical Cartesian coordinate and accounts for the varying sea state. This weight can be changed from one receiver to the next, making the deghosting a local process. Integrated with the measured pressure field, the esti.
Local versus broad scale environmental drivers of continental beta diversity patterns in subterranean spider communities across Europe

Macroecologists seek to identify drivers of community turnover (β-diversity) through broad spatial scales. Yet, the influence of local habitat features in driving broad-scale β-diversity patterns remains largely untested, due to the objective challenges of associating local-scale variables to continental-framed datasets. We examined the relative contribution of local- versus broad-scale drivers of continental β-diversity patterns, using a uniquely suited dataset of cave-dwelling spider communities across Europe (35–70° latitude). Generalized dissimilarity modeling showed that geographical distance, mean annual temperature, and size of the karst area in which caves occurred drove most of β-diversity, with differential contributions of each factor according to the level of subterranean specialization. Highly specialized communities were mostly influenced by geographical distance, while less specialized communities were mostly driven by mean annual temperature. Conversely, local-scale habitat features turned out to be meaningless predictors of community change, which emphasizes the idea of caves as the human accessible fraction of the extended network of fissures that more properly represents the elective habitat of the subterranean fauna. To the extent that the effect of local features turned to be inconspicuous, caves emerge as experimental model systems in which to study broad biological patterns without the confounding effect of local habitat features. computed a Sørensen dissimilarity index. We used generalized dissimilarity models (GDMs) to compare patterns of β-diversity between communities of troglophile and troglobiont spiders and evaluate the relative contribution of local- versus broad-scale environmental gradients in explaining these patterns. GDM represents a nonlinear extension of a traditional distance approach of matrix regression. It permits to analyze patterns in the compositional dissimilarity among sites and to quantify how much sites differ in their environmental conditions (environmental distance) and how isolated they are from one another (geographical In contrast to standard linear matrix regressions, a GDM accommodates for the variation in the rate of turnover (non-stationarity) at different positions along a gradient,
Response of the Mediterranean Sea thermohaline circulation to observed changes in the winter wind stress field in the period 1980–1993

This paper seeks to model changes in deep water production in the eastern Mediterranean induced by changes in winter wind stress. An analysis of individual monthly wind stress fields over the Mediterranean for 1980–1993 from the SOC flux data set shows that an intensification of the winter mean (mainly January) wind stress over the Aegean Sea and Levantine basin occurred in the latter half of this period. A weakening of the Mistral occurred at the same time. Two monthly wind stress climatologies were created using the 1980–1987 and 1988–1993 periods, and these were used to force an ocean general circulation model of the Mediterranean, with climatological surface T, S relaxation. The Levantine intermediate water (LIW) dispersal path in the Ionian is altered in the 1988–1993 experiment with no pathway to the Adriatic and, consequently, greatly reduced exchange at Otranto and a collapse in Adriatic deep water formation. In contrast, there is an increased exchange of LIW at the Cretan arc straits and enhanced Aegean deep water production in the 1988–1993 experiment. Much more Aegean water exits into the Levantine and Ionian basins as is shown by an east-west cross section south of Crete, along a similar path to the Meteor cruise in 1995. Changes in air-sea fluxes are diagnosed from the model showing a small increase in wintertime cooling over the Aegean and reduced cooling over the Adriatic after 1987. While the changes in air-sea fluxes are probably underrepresented by this simulation, the large changes induced by the wind forcing suggest this could be a mechanism in the altered thermohaline state of the eastern Mediterranean since 1987.
A conceptual model for infiltration and redistribution in crusted soils

Treating the crust as a single layer, a simplified but accurate infiltration and redistribution model for a crust‐topped soil profile is developed. The method is an extension of an earlier infiltration and redistribution model for homogeneous soil profiles. The crust layer is conceptually subdivided into regions associated with surface water content and interface water content, respectively. The extension of the wetting front into the subsoil is described by the homogeneous soil method described earlier. Two ordinary differential equations are written which match pressure heads and fluxes at the soil interface and are solved by a Runge‐Kutta technique. The model is tested against the results of the Richards equation with variations in the key variables of capillary length scale and saturated hydraulic conductivity for both soil and crust and for cases where ponding occurs both in the crust region and after wetting has entered the subsoil region. In all cases the profile water contents and infiltration rates are very reasonably simulated.
Ecological environment changes of mining areas around Nansi lake with remote sensing monitoring

Underground mining activity has existed for more than 100 years in Nansi lake. Coal mining 15 not only plays a supporting role in local social and economic development but also has a significant 16 impact on the ecological environment in the region. Landsat series remote sensing data (1988~2019) 17 are used to research the impact of coal mining on the ecological environment in Nansi lake . Then 18 Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is applied to extract the water area of the upstream lake from 19 1988 to 2019, and ecological environment and spatiotemporal variation characteristics are analyzed by 20 Remote Sensing Ecology Index (RSEI). The results illustrate that the water area change is associated 21 with annual precipitation. Compared with 2009, the ecological quality of the lake is worse in 2019, 22 and then the reason for this change is due to large-scale underground mining. Therefore, the coal mines 23 from the natural reserve may be closed or limited to the mining boundary for protecting the lake's ecological environment.
Socio-economic status of buffalo farmers and the management practices of buffaloes in selected areas of Bagerhat District of Bangladesh

The study was conducted to investigate the socio-economic status of the buffalo farmers and the management practices of buffaloes at different villages of Boraikhali, Hoglabunia and Khawlia union of Morrelgonj upazilla in Bagerhat district of Bangladesh. A total of 60 respondents (20 from each union) were randomly selected from three unions. The data was collected through personal interviewing with pre-tested questioner. The investigation revealed that buffalo rearing was practiced by the middle (3040 years) and old (>40 years) aged farmers than the young (<30 years). Majority (82%) of the buffalo farmers are educated but only 12% are illiterate. The major occupation of the selected farmers are buffalo rearing (50%) followed by crop production, dairying and poultry rearing. The buffalo farmers basically have no training skills but practiced buffalo rearing as their family profession and 30% of them are influenced by the neighboring buffalo farmers. The buffalo farmers purchased usually one pair of buffalo and reared at least for 2 years. The farmers fed their buffalos with locally available roughages and tree leaves but they did not practice concentrate feeding. The CP contents of the available feedstuffs are comparable and even higher and the CF content was found lower compared to other unconventional feedstuffs indicated the availability of good quality feeds for buffaloes in the studied areas. Semiintensive feeding system was practiced for rearing buffaloes followed by extensive feeding system. Majority of the buffalo farmers allowed wallowing buffaloes for once or twice in a day for at least 1-2 hours. The major diseases of buffaloes found in the studied areas were foot and mouth followed by black quarter, anthrax and hemorrhagic septicemia. Most of the buffalo farmers practiced vaccination and deworming regularly. The average cost of one pair of buffalo was 60000-200000 BDT. The annual total cost of production was Tk 5,070, while a gross return was Tk 15,630 per buffalo. The annual food and cloth purchasing capacity of the buffalo farmers were found to be increased to 62.85 and 58.33%, respectively. Similarly, the ability to maintain social status, health care, education and housing of the buffalo farmers were also increased through buffalo rearing. Considering all this parameters related to livelihood, it was clearly found that the socio-economic status of the buffalo farmers was improved through buffalo rearing although the management practices need to be improved with scientific approaches.
Intraindividual variability in verbal fluency performance is moderated by and predictive of mild cognitive impairments.

OBJECTIVE The current study was designed to achieve 2 primary objectives: (a) determine the moderating effect of mild cognitive impairments (MCI) on intraindividual variability in semantic and letter fluency performance taking into account longitudinal annual assessments; and (b) establish predictive utility for intraindividual variability in semantic and letter fluency performance as a risk factor of incident MCI. METHODS Participants were community-residing older adults (n = 514; M age = 75.89 ± 6.45; 55.1% female). Sixty participants were diagnosed with MCI at baseline and 50 developed incident MCI during the follow-up. We operationalized intraindividual variability as word generation slopes derived from 3 consecutive time intervals during the standard 1-min administration of both letter and semantic fluency tasks (i.e., 0-20 s, 21-40 s, and 41-60 s). RESULTS Linear mixed effects models revealed significant within task slope effects for semantic (estimate = -8.350; p < .0001; 95% confidence interval [CI] = -8.604, -8.095) and letter (estimate = -5.068; p < .0001; 95% CI [-5.268, -4.869]) fluency indicating that word generation declined over the course of both tasks. The two-way interactions of MCI × Slope were significant for semantic (estimate = 1.34; p = .001; 95% CI [0.551, 2.126]) and letter (estimate = 0.733; p = .020; 95% CI [0.116, 1.350]) fluency indicating attenuated slopes among MCI participants compared to controls taking into account repeated annual assessments. Cox proportional-hazards models revealed that attenuated word generation slope, at baseline, in semantic (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.063; p = .015; 95% = 1.149 to 3.702) but not letter (HR = 0.704; p = .243; 95% CI [0.391, 1.269]) fluency was associated with increased risk of incident MCI. CONCLUSION Intraindividual variability in verbal fluency performance has clinical and predictive utility; it can be easily incorporated into testing batteries in clinical and research settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Seismicity, structure and rheology of the lithosphere in the Lake Baikal region

This paper combines observations of seismicity, gravity, topography and thermal and velocity structures to investigate the rheological properties of the lithosphere in the Lake Baikal region. We examine the seismogenic thickness (Ts) using 25 earthquakes of Mw 5.1–7.1 , whose full source parameters have been determined by inversion of teleseismic waveforms, 13 of which are presented here for the first time. These 25 events, plus six others (Mw 5.0–5.8) whose depths are well constrained, show that moderate earthquakes occur at depths up to ∼30 km in the northeast Baikal rift. Based on the teleseismic waveform modelling results and published relocations of microearthquakes using regional networks, we conclude that the mantle is not a significant source of seismicity in the Baikal region. Using the admittance between free-air gravity and topography, we estimate the effective elastic thickness (Te) in the region to be between 5 and 20 km. Nowhere do the data require that Te > Ts , consistent with the simple interpretation that the long-term strength of the lithosphere resides in its seismogenic layer. A weak mantle in the Baikal region can be explained by its high temperature, which we estimate by combining local geotherm estimates with the regional upper mantle velocity structure, obtained from fundamental and higher-mode surface waves. Geotherms are fitted to pressure and temperature estimates from mantle nodules at four sites, both within and outside the Siberian shield. In order to constrain the temperatures at the Moho, we estimated crustal thicknesses using teleseismic receiver functions. Moho temperatures are estimated to exceed ∼550°C beneath the Siberian shield and are higher in the more recently deformed mountain belts to the south. Based on a reassessment of oceanic geotherms and seismicity, it seems likely, therefore, that the mantle in the Baikal region is too hot to be a source of long-term strength. This is consistent with the recent suggestion that the distribution of mantle seismicity in both the oceans and the continents is dependent on temperature alone. Finally, we note that results from S-wave tomography studies, combined with the observed locations of rift-related earthquakes, lead us to suspect that the frequently published position of the edge to the Siberian shield at the surface provides a poor description of that same boundary at depth.
Assessing Antibody Pharmacokinetics in Mice with In Vivo Imaging

Recent advances in small-animal molecular imaging instrumentation combined with well characterized antibody-labeling chemistry have enabled detailed in vivo measurements of antibody distribution in mouse models. This article reviews the strengths and limitations of in vivo antibody imaging methods with a focus on positron emission tomography and single-photon emission computed tomography and a brief discussion of the role of optical imaging in this application. A description of the basic principles behind the imaging techniques is provided along with a discussion of radiolabeling methods relevant to antibodies. Practical considerations of study design and execution are presented through a discussion of sensitivity and resolution tradeoffs for these techniques as defined by modality, signaling probe (isotope or fluorophore) selection, labeling method, and radiation dosimetry. Images and analysis results from a case study are presented with a discussion of output data content and relevant informatics gained with this approach to studying antibody pharmacokinetics.
Evaluation of the Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization Test to Predict Recurrence and/or Progression of Disease after bacillus Calmette-Gu erin for Primary High Grade Nonmuscle Invasive Bladder Cancer: Results from a Prospective Multicenter Trial

From the Departments of Urology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (YL), Dallas, Texas, McGill University Health Center (WK), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, University of Rochester (EM), Rochester, New York, University of Southern California (SD), Los Angeles, California, Ochsner Medical Center (DC), New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mayo Clinic (SAB), Rochester, Minnesota, Division of Urology (BAI, LGD) and Duke Cancer Center Biostatistics (LGD), Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, and Abbott Molecular Inc. (HTM, AMJ, SJ), Des Plaines, Illinois