Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modeling Multispecies Reactive Transport in Ground Water

In this paper, the details of RT3D, a general purpose, multispecies, reactive transport code, are presented. The code uses MODFLOW to simulate flow and several MT3D sub‐programs to simulate advection and dispersion. A set of reaction modules were developed and incorporated into RT3D to simulate various types of multispecies reactive transport. This new computer model can be used for analyzing different types of subsurface contaminant reactions, microbial metabolisms, and microbial transport kinetics. Details of the model and numerical solution procedure are presented. The numerical formulation of the code is general enough to allow description of any type of reaction with any number of mobile/immobile species. Several example problems are presented to test the performance of the code, and to illustrate its features. The presented numerical model is shown to be a useful tool for analyzing different types of subsurface bioremediation systems. Prediction based on this model can be used for screening remediation alternatives including natural attenuation and/or for forecasting contaminant exposure levels and environmental risks at sensitive, downgradient receptors.
Automatic registration method for medium-resolution remote sensing images of coral reefs with morphological information pairing and constrained iterative fining

Abstract. Automatic registration of medium-resolution remote sensing images of coral reefs, particularly those without artificial facilities, faces two challenges: difficulty in identifying the same coral reefs in different images and instability of the fine-tuning process. To overcome these challenges, we propose an automatic registration method that combines morphological information pairing with constrained iterative fining. This method comprises three steps. First, the contours of the coral reefs were extracted using level set method. Subsequently, the same coral reefs in the two images were identified and paired based on morphological similarities and relative locations. Finally, iterative fine registration with a constrained strategy was performed by controlling abnormal changes in the geometric center to further improve the registration accuracy for every pair of coral reefs. The proposed automatic registration method was validated using a Landsat5 image acquired on April 15, 2005 and a HJ-1B image acquired on May 4, 2010. Compared with the scale-invariant feature transform (SIFT) method and the SIFT with Random Sample Consensus method, the proposed method showed good performance in the automatic registration of coral reef images.
The response of vegetation to changing fire regimes and human activity in East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia

Three fine-resolution pollen, charcoal and statigraphic records are presented from Tea Tree Swamp, East Gippsland, Victoria. There is evidence for low levels of burning before European contact in Eucalyptus forest with an understorey dominated by shrubs and grasses. The burning activities of leasehold settlers, as well as burning and clearing by miners and timber cutters significantly increased the incidence of fire, reducing the cover of shrubs and permitting grasses to dominate the understorey. This is associated with a minor hydrological change indicated by increased representation of Myriophyllum, as well as an increase in the rate of sediment accumulation. Evidence is presented for the recovery of the shrub vegetation and a decline in the dominance of grasses after the inception of fire suppression measures invoked in response to severe fires in Victoria in AD 1939. All three cores show a substantial increase in the abundance of either Sphagnum or Myriophyllum pollen in recent times. These changes are interpreted as responses to hydrological changes associated with recent intensive forestry activities in the catchment above the site.
A novel plane method to the calibration of the thermal camera

This paper provides an up-to-date review of research efforts in thermal camera and target object recognition techniques based on two-dimensional (2D) images in the infrared (IR) spectra (8-12μm). From the geometric point of view, a special target plate was constructed with a radiation source of lamp excited that allows all of these devices to be calibrated geometrically along a radiance-based approach. The calibration theory and actual experimental procedures were described, then an automated measurement of the circle targets by image centroid algorithm. The key parameters of IR camera were calibrated out with 3 inner and 6 outer of Tsai model in thermal imaging. The subsequent data processing and analysis were then outlined. The 3D model from the successful calibration of a representative sample of the infrared array camera was presented and discussed. They provide much new and easy way to the geometric characteristics of these imagers that can be used in car-night-vision, medical, industrial, military, and environmental applications.
TRANSMISSIVITY OF A NONWOVEN POLYPROPYLENE GEOTEXTILE UNDER SUCTION

A permeameter has been developed for measuring in-plane transmissivity of geotextiles under a nearly constant value of suction along its length. The permeameter is capable of imposing gradients in excess of 10% and normal pressure up to 240 kPa, and permits the monitoring of the suctions within the geotextile during testing. To demonstrate the capability of the permeameter, a series of transmissivity measurements were made on a nonwoven polypropylene geotextile subject to different suction heads, normal pressures, and gradients. Transmissivities were up to two orders of magnitude less than the saturated value depending the on the magnitude of the suction head and whether the geotextile was being wetted or dried (hysteresis). Transmissivity values were independent of the gradient for these measurements. Increasing the applied normal pressure decreased the transmissivity at all values of suction head.
The Analysis of User Acceptance Using UTAUT and Delone & McLean Model: Study Case of Banking Mobile Application

This study aims to determine the acceptance of the use of mobile banking applications and analyze the factors that influence their acceptance. The models proposed in this study are the UTAUT and Delone & McLean integration models. The criteria for respondents in this study were mobile banking users for at least 4 months and using purposive sampling. Data analysis was carried out using the PLS-SEM approach. In this study, 5 of the 8 hypotheses were accepted. Then, the factors that affect the acceptance of mobile banking users are obtained, namely performance expectancy, social influence, service quality, and information quality. Then the factors that do not affect user acceptance are effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and system quality. The findings of this study are that 78.3% of users accept that they want to use mobile banking in the future and recommend it to mobile banking developers in the hope that in the future the application will be easier to understand, compatible with all smartphone systems that are used by many people, and system quality will be improved to minimize constraints on the application.
Bowing of marble panels: on-site damage analysis from the Oeconomicum Building at Göttingen (Germany)

Abstract The use of natural stone panels or cladding material for building facades has led to some durability problems, especially with marble slabs. To examine the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic parameters on bowing, a very detailed study was performed on the Oeconomicum Building at the University of Goettingen. In total 1556 panels from the whole building were measured with respect to bowing using a bow-meter. The variation of bowing ranges from concave (up to 23 mm/m) to convex (up to −11 mm/m). The variation is not controlled by the position with respect to the geographical coordinates, height above ground, shadows, temperature etc. On the north facade the different rock structures visible on the panel surfaces are a result of the marble slabs being cut in different directions. The different degrees of bowing are associated with the structure of the marble since all other influencing factors are relatively constant (position, temperature, moisture content, building physics). Experimental data on the expansion behaviour under dry and/or wet conditions reveal different degrees of bowing with respect to the rock fabric and may help to explain the observed differences in bowing. The effect of the rock fabric, especially of the lattice preferred orientation in this case, clearly controls the deterioration of the marble and the degree of bowing. The bowing is also characterized by an increase in the porosity, decreasing values of ultrasonic wave velocities and flexural strength. The loss of cohesion in the strongly deteriorated panels is clearly visible in the microstructure by the open grain boundaries which are interconnected to intergranular microcracks.
Gig Worker Response to Algorithmic and Other Management Practices in India

The body of research on gig workers, their lived experiences and their strategies to adapt to gig work has grown steadily in the past decade. However, few studies provide depth and detail on ways in which the social, cultural, political, and economic context within which gig platforms operate impacts the experiences, perceptions and reactions of workers, with particular lacunae around experiences of workers in the global South. We take an exploratory and analytical approach to examine the lived experiences of workers and the role of such contextual factors in India’s ride -hailing sector. Deriving an initial conceptual framework from existing literature, we draw upon both primary and secondary data to refine it further through the identification of additional constructs and overarching factors that shape driver experiences. We find that an extended ecosystem view of the gig economy and socio-economic parameters such as the Indian labour market are crucial overarching contextual factors that influence management processes as well as worker experiences. In addition, driver tenure and socio-economic background as well as evolution of their psychological contract with the platform organisation over time are some of the constructs that have a profound impact on their lived experiences. We use our results and analysis to provide a future research agenda for those studying the gig economy with the aim of promoting rich, multi-perspective, cross-cutting studies that can account for the heterogeneous socio-economic and cultural environment within which gig economies operate. Our findings are also essential for policymakers, regulatory bodies, governments, and the gig organisations themselves to ensure that they collaboratively make the right choices for the growth of a sustainable gig economy that provides value for communities, workers, clients, and users along with the platform organizations.
GroupPrompter: A Prompting Method for Semantic Segmentation Based on SAM

The SAM shows remarkable generalization and transformable capabilities for category-agnostic segmentation. Although the semantics in latent space are explored slightly, more researches are working on instance segmentation. And it’s unclear how to design the appropriate prompts for semantic segmentation, which have large impact the performance. In this paper, by summarizing several existing methods for semantic segmentation with SAM, we propose a learnable prompt method for semantic segmentation based on the SAM model, incorporating the latent semantic features with prompt learning by a grouping approach, referred as GroupPrompter. This enables SAM to perform semantic segmentation with the automatic learned prompts. And the experimental results on ADE20K, Pascal Context and COCO-Stuff datasets validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Predicting North Atlantic sea surface temperature variability on the basis of the first‐mode baroclinic Rossby wave model

[1] Predictability of sea surface temperature (SST) variations over the North Atlantic Ocean is studied on the basis of the first-mode baroclinic Rossby wave model. This simple linear wave model can explain about 10%∼46% of the wintertime SST variability in several regions of the North Atlantic basin, including the tropics between 5°N and 20°N, the eastern subtropics between 27°N and 34°N, and the east of Newfoundland. It is shown that the wintertime SST anomalies can be skillfully predicted up to 3 months ahead in the tropical Atlantic, 18 months in the eastern subtropical Atlantic, and 3 years east of Newfoundland on the basis of the first-mode baroclinic Rossby wave adjustment.
Health Care Personnel’s Perspectives on Quality of Palliative Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic – A Cross-Sectional Study

Purpose The provision of high-quality palliative care is challenging, especially during a pandemic like COVID-19. The latter entailed major consequences for health care systems and health care personnel (HCP) in both specialist and community health care services, in Norway and worldwide. The aim of this study was to explore how the HCP perceived the quality of palliative care in nursing homes, medical care units, and intensive care units during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods This study had a cross-sectional design. A total of 290 HCP from Norway participated in the study (RR = 25.8%) between October and December 2021. The questionnaire comprised items concerning respondents’ demographics and quality of care, the latter measured by the short form of the Quality from the Patient’s Perspective—Palliative Care instrument, adapted for HCP. The STROBE checklist was used. Results This study shows that the HCP scored subjective importance as higher in all dimensions, items and single items than their perception of the actual care received. This could indicate a need for improvement in all areas. Information about medication, opportunity to participate in decisions about medical and nursing care and continuity regarding receiving help from the same physician and nurse are examples of areas for improvement. Conclusion Study results indicate that HCP from nursing homes, medical care units, and intensive care units perceived that quality of palliative care provided was not in line with what they perceived to be important for the patient. This indicate that it was challenging to provide high-quality palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Complexity in Genetic Epilepsies: A Comprehensive Review

Epilepsy is a highly prevalent neurological disorder, affecting between 5–8 per 1000 individuals and is associated with a lifetime risk of up to 3%. In addition to high incidence, epilepsy is a highly heterogeneous disorder, with variation including, but not limited to the following: severity, age of onset, type of seizure, developmental delay, drug responsiveness, and other comorbidities. Variable phenotypes are reflected in a range of etiologies including genetic, infectious, metabolic, immune, acquired/structural (resulting from, for example, a severe head injury or stroke), or idiopathic. This review will focus specifically on epilepsies with a genetic cause, genetic testing, and biomarkers in epilepsy.
Transport characteristics and origins of carbon monoxide and ozone in Hong Kong, South China

Transport characteristics and origins of carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O3) transported to Hong Kong were investigated using backward Lagrangian particle dispersion modeling (LPDM) and measurement data collected at a regional background station, Hok Tsui, in South China during 2005–2007. LPDM was conducted using the Hybrid Single‐Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model (HYSPLIT) driven by Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) data and emission inventories of CO. The LPDM simulations showed very good performance in characterizing temporal variations in CO on both seasonal and synoptic scales during the 3 years. Based on the LPDM simulations, the seasonal cycles of the source origins and transport age of CO were investigated. Carbon monoxide at the background station was found to originate mainly from the coastal regions in southern China and from eastern China, with averaged transport time of about 1 day and 2–4 days, respectively. The O3 annual maximum in autumn was influenced by regional transport of O3 precursors originating from eastern China, suggesting a strong continental outflow and its regional impacts. Photochemical processes contributed to occurrence of O3 episodes with sharp daytime O3 peaks produced from fresh subregional emissions from Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region, mixed with inland continental air. By examining the O3‐CO relationship and Lagrangian transport time, the roles of transport and photochemical processes in different seasons at Hok Tsui were also investigated. This study demonstrated unique applications of backward LPDM in observational data analysis as well as in understanding source‐receptor relationships and multiscale transport of CO and O3.
Entrainment-driven modulation of Southern Ocean mixed layer properties and sea ice variability in CMIP5 models

The evolution of the upper Southern Ocean hydrographic structure in response to the representative concentration pathways 4.5 (RCP 4.5) forcing scenario is analyzed using model data drawn from the coupled model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) archive. A robust freshening trend is evident, associated with an increase in stratification and decoupling of the upper ocean as the mixed layer gains buoyancy at a faster rate than the underlying ocean. The magnitudes of the individual terms of the salinity and heat budgets are evaluated. Convection-driven entrainment from the thermocline into the mixed layer is found to play a significant role in modulating the mixed layer salinity, whilst the heat budget of the mixed layer is dominated by a primary balance between atmospheric warming and the entrainment-modulated supply of oceanic heat from below the mixed layer. The relationship between oceanic heat storage below the mixed layer, ice thickness and atmospheric temperature is investigated, and a very disparate response noted amongst the models considered here. Based on this analysis, we hypothesize that the balance between the entrainment-modulated supply of oceanic heat from below the mixed layer and the heat supplied by the atmosphere may play an important role in determining the simulated sea ice variability.
Training law students like athletes: experimenting with the constraints-led approach in law clinics

ABSTRACT We studied to what extent insights from the “constraints-led approach” (CLA) in physical education can be applied to skills teaching for law students in preparation for law clinics. In the CLA, athletes are challenged to independently find optimal movement solutions in a dynamic setting, rather than responding to verbal cues in a fixed environment. Similarly, we designed and implemented two CLA training exercises in preparation for law clinics aimed at implicit acquisition of problem analysis skills. Our analysis of retrospective pre-test (RPT) data finds that after the training exercises participants are better able to structure a clinical problem statement, and report being better equipped to find and analyse the “real” problem of a client in a clinic. We conclude that the CLA is an effective method for skill acquisition training in preparation for clinical legal education.
Vector Mapping Method for Buildings in Remote Sensing Images Based on Joint Semantic-Geometric Learning

An important high-precision building vector mapping method automatically delineates building polygons from high-resolution remote sensing images. Deep learning methods have greatly improved the accuracy of automatic building segmentation in remote sensing images. However, building polygons in vector forms have a compact and regular structured expression effect, which corresponds more with the application requirements of cartography and geographic information systems (GIS). We propose a vector mapping method for buildings in remote sensing images with joint semantic-geometric learning to generate building polygon vectors in remote sensing images automatically. The method, aiming to provide cartography and GIS data sources, consists of three modules: multi-task segmentation, contour regularization, and polygon optimization. To reduce missing extractions and mis-extractions and obtain a complete building segmentation mask, the multitask segmentation module performs joint semantic-geometric learning on three related tasks: building instance detection, pixel-wise contour segmentation, and edge extraction. The regularization module normalizes the segmentation mask expression using geometric constraints and image information, whereas the polygon optimization module combines geometric constraints with deep learning methods to ensure vectorization quality. The experimental results show that the proposed method adapts well to building vector extraction tasks under different scenarios and can generate building vector polygons that match the ground truth labels. This method offers significant advantages in solving problems, such as building polygon irregularity and vertex offset.
Effect of compositional and structural variations on log responses of igneous and metamorphic rocks. I: mafic rocks

Abstract Well logging has become a standard method in the oil industry for the investigation of subsurface geology. Accordingly, interpretation techniques have been mainly developed for use in sedimentary rocks, and the log responses of sediments are well known. However, this is not the case for igneous and metamorphic rocks. We present a compilation of log responses for mafic rocks from drill-holes in oceanic and continental basement. The holes cover a variety of mafic rocks: mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB), gabbro, basalt and andesitic basalt from back-arc basins, flood basalt from large igneous provinces (LIPs), and continental metamorphic rocks. The comparison of log responses shows that rocks from the same geological setting have similar in situ physical properties. Differences in physical properties between rocks from different geological settings are mainly related to variations in the structure of the rocks, while variations in composition have only a minor effect on the in situ physical properties. In volcanic rocks, variations in fracturing and vesicularity related to cooling of the lava strongly influence log responses. Mafic rocks from continental drill-holes were enriched in radioactive elements during regional metamorphism, resulting in higher values in the total gamma-ray compared to the oceanic rocks.
Research on stereo vision odometry

The stereo visual odometer in vision based on the navigation system is proposed in the paper. The stereo visual odometer can obtain the motion data to implement the position and attitude estimation of ALV(Autonomous Land Vehicle). Two key technology in the stereo vision odometer are dissertated. The first is using SIFT(Scale Invariant Feature Transform) to extract suitable feature, match points pairs in the feature, and track the feature of fore and after frames of the same point on the object. The second is using matching and tracking to obtain the different 3-D coordinate of the feature of the point on the object, and to compute the motion parameters by motion estimate. The unknown outdoor environment is adopted in the experiment. The results show that the stereo vision odometer is more accurate, and the measurement error dose not increase with the movement distance increasing. It can be used as an important supplement of conventional odometer.