Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Théorie de l'électrofiltration: nouveaux développements, validation expérimentale et applications à l'hydrogéologie et au volcanisme.

La methode de polarisation spontanee (PS) consiste en la mesure du potentiel electrique naturellement present dans le sol. Elle est la seule methode sensible aux ecoulements d'eau souterrains. Les principaux objectifs de cette these ont ete de (1) determiner l'influence de la conductivite de surface et du regime d'ecoulement sur le coefficient de couplage electrocinetique (parametre crucial pour l'interpretation des signaux de PS), (2) de montrer l'efficacite de la PS dans la mise en evidence des phenomenes hydromecaniques et (3) de caracteriser les ecoulements de fluides en contexte volcanique. Nous avons developpe un modele corrigeant le coefficient de couplage electrocinetique a la fois des effets de la conductivite de surface et du nombre de Reynolds. La validite de ce modele a ete confirmee grâce a des experiences realisees sur billes de verre. Lors d'experiences en cuve, la methode du potentiel spontane associee a un appareillage de haute sensibilite nous a permis de caracteriser la signature electrique liee a des phenomenes hydromecaniques. Utilisees a partir des enregistrements de PS realises a la surface de la cuve les methodes d'analyse en ondelettes et d'intercorrelation ont montre la nature dipolaire de la source electrique liee a de telles perturbations et ont permis sa localisation. Sur le Stromboli en Italie, nous avons utilise une approximation au premier ordre de la relation entre l'epaisseur de la zone vadose et l'anomalie de PS afin de determiner la profondeur d'un aquifere situe sur le flanc est du volcan.
Avaliação do cálculo da resistência ao punçoamento centrado de lajes fungiformes reforçadas com fibras de aço - Modelos teóricos

Desde 1979 que as fibras de aço vêm sendo estudadas como uma alternativa de reforço às estruturas de betão armado. No que diz respeito ao sistema estrutural de lajes fungiformes, os avanços conseguidos no campo da ciência dos materiais e das técnicas de construção já permitem a construção de estruturas onde as lajes são reforçadas praticamente apenas por fibras de aço. Para que este novo sistema construtivo possa competir com os métodos convencionais é necessário que os modelos teóricos que descrevem o complexo comportamento da ligação laje-pilar acompanhem a evolução destas técnicas construtivas. No entanto, ainda não existem regras de projeto que considerem a contribuição das fibras de aço na resistência ao punçoamento de lajes fungiformes.
Individual differences in time-varying and stationary brain connectivity during movie watching from childhood to early adulthood: age, sex, and behavioral associations

Spatially remote brain regions exhibit dynamic functional interactions across various task conditions. While time-varying functional connectivity during movie watching shows sensitivity to movie content, stationary functional connectivity remains relatively stable across videos. These findings suggest that dynamic and stationary functional interactions may represent different aspects of brain function. However, the relationship between individual differences in time-varying and stationary connectivity and behavioral phenotypes remains elusive. To address this gap, we analyzed an open-access functional MRI dataset comprising participants aged 5 to 22 years, who watched two cartoon movie clips. We calculated regional brain activity, time-varying connectivity, and stationary connectivity, examining associations with age, sex, and behavioral assessments. Model comparison revealed that time-varying connectivity was more sensitive to age and sex effects compared with stationary connectivity. The preferred age models exhibited quadratic log age or quadratic age effects, indicative of inverted-U shaped developmental patterns. In addition, females showed higher consistency in regional brain activity and time-varying connectivity than males. However, in terms of behavioral predictions, only stationary connectivity demonstrated the ability to predict full-scale intelligence quotient. These findings suggest that individual differences in time-varying and stationary connectivity may capture distinct aspects of behavioral phenotypes.
Climatic change and variability in southern Africa

This book considers the ways in which southern Africa's climates have changed over three thousand million years, and over the period of metereological record. Present-day circulation is discussed, and the manner in which the circulation modulates wet and dry spells is explained. The author proposes a circulation model to account for palaeoclimatic changes over the subcontinent over the last twenty-five millenia. The research, material, and expertise accumulated over a period of some 17 years have been gathered together in this book. Nothing similar exists for southern Africa, or for any other southern hemisphere countries. Climatologists; metereologists; geographers.
Nitrogen systematics and gas fluxes of subduction zones: Insights from Costa Rica arc volatiles

Volcanic gases are a powerful tool for assessing magmatic processes in subduction zones. We report gas chemistry and nitrogen isotope compositions of fumaroles, bubbling springs, and geothermal wells from the Costa Rican segment of the Central American volcanic segment (CAVS), and new correlation spectroscopy (COSPEC) SO2 flux measurements of Poás and Arenal volcanoes. N2/He ratios (100–8,250) and nitrogen isotope compositions (δ15N = −3.02 to +1.69‰) of Costa Rica volatiles are consistent with sources ranging from typical arc‐type end‐members, with nitrogen addition from the subducting slab, to MORB end‐member, having experienced no slab modification. Overall, nitrogen‐helium chemistry of Costa Rican material indicates a diminished slab contribution versus other locations along the arc (e.g., Nicaragua and Guatemala). We use SO2 flux measurements of Poás and Arenal (1.80*105 ± 4.00*104 and 8.30*103 ± 4.00*103 kg/day, respectively, or 1.30*105 ± 6.25*104 and 2.81*106 ± 6.25*105 mol/day, respectively) to extrapolate a SO2 flux for the Costa Rica segment of 1.09*109 mol/day. Using CO2/St (St = total sulfur) of 2.7 and 5.9, we calculate CO2 fluxes of 1.88*108 and 4.11*108 kg/yr, respectively (2.94*109 and 6.42*109 mol/yr, respectively). Other volatile fluxes (N2, He, H2, Ar, HCl, and H2O) are calculated using CO2/St and regional gas chemistry. For Costa Rica, the output/input ratios of nitrogen are less than unity (0.03 to 0.06 for CO2/St of 2.7 and 5.9, respectively), suggesting more N is subducted than released in the subarc, possibly resulting from sediment offscraping, forearc devolatilization, limited fluid availability in the subarc, or subduction past the subarc.
Design and Optimization of Residual Neural Network Accelerators for Low-Power FPGAs Using High-Level Synthesis

Residual neural networks are widely used in computer vision tasks. They enable the construction of deeper and more accurate models by mitigating the vanishing gradient problem. Their main innovation is the residual block which allows the output of one layer to bypass one or more intermediate layers and be added to the output of a later layer. Their complex structure and the buffering required by the residual block make them difficult to implement on resource-constrained platforms. We present a novel design flow for implementing deep learning models for field programmable gate arrays optimized for ResNets, using a strategy to reduce their buffering overhead to obtain a resource-efficient implementation of the residual layer. Our high-level synthesis (HLS)-based flow encompasses a thorough set of design principles and optimization strategies, exploiting in novel ways standard techniques such as temporal reuse and loop merging to efficiently map ResNet models, and potentially other skip connection-based NN architectures, into FPGA. The models are quantized to 8-bit integers for both weights and activations, 16-bit for biases, and 32-bit for accumulations. The experimental results are obtained on the CIFAR-10 dataset using ResNet8 and ResNet20 implemented with Xilinx FPGAs using HLS on the Ultra96-V2 and Kria KV260 boards. Compared to the state-of-the-art on the Kria KV260 board, our ResNet20 implementation achieves 2.88X speedup with 0.5% higher accuracy of 91.3%, while ResNet8 accuracy improves by 2.8% to 88.7%. The throughputs of ResNet8 and ResNet20 are 12971 FPS and 3254 FPS on the Ultra96 board, and 30153 FPS and 7601 FPS on the Kria KV26, respectively. They Pareto-dominate state-of-the-art solutions concerning accuracy, throughput, and energy.
Modelo probabilístico de la distribución geográfica del matorral subinerme en la reserva de la biósfera de Mapimí, Durango, México

The shrub species from Mexico’s arid lands are an essential part of the arid ecosystem that helps in the carbon sequestration process (e.g. calcite -CaCO3) in the soil, helping to mitigate the greenhouse effect that is present in dangerous levels in some parts of the globe. This research, focuses on developing a Logistic Multiple Regression (LMR) model for predicting the occurrence of shrubland. This model used a geographic information system (GIS) to analyze some soil and terrain variables that influence the shrubland growth and distribution. The research was carried out at Mapimi Biosphere Reserve in Mexico (central coordinates 26°37’ N and 103°50' W). The study area considered an extension of 15' latitude and 20' longitude, corresponding to the one that has the cartographic unit, scale 1:50,000, published by INEGI (key G13B64). The information of 36 georegistered soil samples distributed randomly in the study area were used to calculate, through the interpolation technique called IDW (30 m per pixel), the digital maps with continuous surfaces for 12 soil variables, that included: ESP, EC, pH, organic matter, calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, the content of sand, silt and clay, as well as soil depth. Additionally, terrain variables like slope and aspect were also considered, being calculated from a Digital Elevation Model. Furthermore, 200 sampling points were randomly generated in the GIS system on the vegetation map for those areas classified as ‘shrubland’. Additionally, another 200 randomly generated points were created for those regions classified as ‘no shrubland’. Finally, a matrix data was constructed containing the 400 observations that included the 14 variables above mentioned, where those points with the shrubland presence were coded as ‘1' whereas all those points where the shrubland was not found where coded as ‘0'. A regression analysis was performed using SAS Proc Logistic. The results established that the only independent variables that showed statistical significance (P < 0.05) were the organic matter (<0.0001); the phosphorus content (0.0001); and the pH (0.0239). The parameter estimated were: intercept (10.5748); pH (-1.5583); organic matter (2.3055); and the phosphorus (0.1550). The resulting model to predict the occurrence of shrubland was the following: p = (e10.5748–1.5583[pH]+2.3055[OM%]+0.1550[Phosphorus] /(1+ e10.5748–1.5583[pH]+2.3055[OM%]+0.1550[Phosphorus]). This modelwas applied to the geographic database containing the digital maps to obtain a general map showing the probabilities of shrubland occurrence. Finally, a map query was performed to locate those regions were the probability was bigger than 0.80 showing good agreement to observations in field. Based upon these results, it is possible to conclude that GIS along with LMR are a good tools to estimate the probability to find some vegetal species, which can be helpful when taking decisions regarding the planning and management of natural resources.
The determinants of the migration decisions of immigrant and non-immigrant physicians in Canada

In this paper, we use data from the confidential master files of the Canadian Census over the years 1991-2006 to study the geographic mobility of immigrant and non-immigrant physicians who are already resident in Canada. We consider both inter- and intra- provincial migration, with a particular focus on migration to and from rural areas of Canada. We exploit the fact that it is possible to link individuals within families in the Census files in order to investigate the impact on the migration decision of the characteristics of a married physician’s spouse. Our results indicate that the magnitude of outflows is substantial and that the retention of immigrant physicians in rural areas and in some provinces will continue to be difficult. We find strong evidence that migration is a family decision, and spousal characteristics (education, age, years in Canada for immigrants) are important. As well, we find that large Canadian cities (mainly in Ontario) are the likely destination for the types of immigrant physicians typically able to be recruited to other areas, implying recruitment efforts of smaller provinces may have significant implications for the size of health care costs in larger provinces.
Polynomial models as a tool for mapping high-resolution satellite imagery

The use of High Resolution Satellite Imagery (HRSI) has opened up opportunities for exploiting their high spatial resolution in mapping. Many remote sensing satellite sensors exist that can be effectively used for map production, including SPOT, IRS-1C/D, Ikonos, and recently QuickBird. Successful exploitation of the high accuracy potential of these systems depends on the accuracy of the mathematical models used for sensor geometry. However, in the absence of sensor calibration and satellite orbit information for most HRSI, practical approaches have to be adopted. A number of different sensor models are available in most software packages, among them polynomial models are especially popular due to their simplicity and reasonable accuracy. This paper presents a comparative analysis and evaluation of the use of different polynomial models, as opposed to satellite rigorous models, with different HRSI. Experiments were performed using different real data sets of IRS-1D, Ikonos, and QuickBird. Our analyses suggest that approximate mathematical models can be effectively used for rectification and 3D determination process after taking into consideration different factors that may affect the results such as the satellite inclination angles, differences in terrain elevations and sensor geometry.
Convergence in Social Protection Across EU Countries, 1970-1999

This paper examines the degree of convergence in social protection registered in the European Union during the 1970-99 period. To that end, we use Eurostat data and study the long-run properties of the data set using time series analysis. Our results indicate that there is no evidence of long-run convergence in Social Protection expenditure to GDP ratios. However, we do find evidence of catching-up with respect both to Germany and the EU average for all countries belonging to EU12, except for Greece.
Beyond the Chat: Executable and Verifiable Text-Editing with LLMs

Conversational interfaces powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently become a popular way to obtain feedback during document editing. However, standard chat-based conversational interfaces do not support transparency and verifiability of the editing changes that they suggest. To give the author more agency when editing with an LLM, we present InkSync, an editing interface that suggests executable edits directly within the document being edited. Because LLMs are known to introduce factual errors, Inksync also supports a 3-stage approach to mitigate this risk: Warn authors when a suggested edit introduces new information, help authors Verify the new information's accuracy through external search, and allow an auditor to perform an a-posteriori verification by Auditing the document via a trace of all auto-generated content. Two usability studies confirm the effectiveness of InkSync's components when compared to standard LLM-based chat interfaces, leading to more accurate, more efficient editing, and improved user experience.
Constructed Wetland/Filter Basin System as a Prospective Pre-Treatment Option for Aquifer Storage and Recovery and a Potential Remedy for Elevated Arsenic

The efficiency to improve the water quality of industrial and municipal wastewater in a constructed wetland/filter basin treatment system was investigated. The wetland system was constructed in a closed phosphate mine used for clay settling and sand tailings in Polk County, Florida. During 18-months of monitoring the chemical/microbiological composition of treated wetland water remained relatively constant, despite significant seasonal variations in temperature, rainfall and humidity. The following changes in water quality between input and output were observed: substantial decrease of water temperature (up to 10 °C), reduction of As, SO4, F, Cl, NO3, NO2, Br, Na, K, Ca, and Mg, change in pH from 9 to 6.5–7, increase of H2S (up to 1060 μg/L), and a change from positive to negative ORP. There were no exceedances of the primary drinking water standards, volatile organic compounds, synthetic organic compounds, and radionuclides, but a number of exceedances for the secondary drinking water standards (Al, F, Fe, Mn, color, odor, total dissolved solids, and foaming agents). The concentration of fecal and total coliform bacteria in the wetland water was high, but
GENTRIFICATION AND TRANSIT IN NORTHWEST CHICAGO

LeRoy and Sonstelie (1983) propose that the presence of transit, in combination with declining automobile costs, leads to the gentrification of inner-city, transit-served neighborhoods. This paper attempts to empirically demonstrate whether the existence of transit spurred phenomena consistent with gentrification, utilizing data from northwest Chicago between 1975 and 1991. Using changes in residential property values as an indicator of gentrification, evidence is found that properties closest to transit stations increased in value much quicker than those farther away, especially in the period 1985-1991. Properties adjacent to transit stations had a 20% higher increase in value compared with those located a half-mile away, supporting the hypothesis that transit access was a spur to gentrification. The data also supports the notion that gentrification has spread like a “wave" over time, moving away from the lakefront and downtown.
1.1. Climate Change, Population Growth, and Crop Production: An Overview

The publication of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006 and the Fourth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007 have pushed the scientific and public debate on climate change a decisive step forward. It is now beyond doubt that anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the main cause for recently observed climate change and that early and bold mitigation measures will eventually be much cheaper than later adaptation to potentially drastic climate impacts. The agricultural sector is directly affected by changes in temperature, precipitation, and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, but it is also contributing about one-third to total GHG emissions, mainly through livestock and rice production, nitrogen fertilization, and tropical deforestation. Agriculture currently accounts for 5% of world economic output, employs 22% of the global workforce, and occupies 40% of the total land area. In the developing countries, about 70% of the population lives in rural areas, where agriculture is the largest supporter of livelihoods. In many developing countries, the economy is heavily depending on agriculture. The sector accounts for 40% of gross domestic product (GDP) in Africa and 28% in South Asia. However, in the future, agriculture will have to compete for scarce land and water resources with growing urban areas and industrial production. A large share of the world’s poor population lives in arid or semiarid regions, which are already characterized by highly volatile climate conditions. Under conditions of future climate change, a worldwide increase in climate variability and extreme weather events is very likely. The connections between agricultural development and climate change reveal some fundamental issues of global justice. The industrialized countries, mostly located in medium to high latitudes, are responsible for the major share of accumulated GHG emissions. They are economically less dependent on agriculture, they will be less affected by climate impacts, and they have on average a higher adaptive capacity. Most developing countries are located in the lower latitudes, they are dependent on agriculture, they will be strongly affected by climate impacts, and they have lower (or nonexistent) adaptive capacity. Creating more options for climate change adaptation and improving the adaptive capacity in the agricultural sector will be crucial for improving food security and preventing an increase
QUANTIFYING THE LOSS MECHANISMS OF NITROGEN

ABSTRACT: Nitrogen (N) is a key factor in maintaining higher yield production and worldwide economic viability of agricultural systems. Since N is one of the most dynamic and mobile elements, its management is difficult, especially in irrigated systems where significant losses can be produced by leaching or denitrification. The major pathways for N loss are ammonia (NH3) volatilization; emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), oxides of N (NO and NO2), and dinitrogen (N2) gases; leaching of nitrates (NO3); and off-site transport due to wind and water erosion of N tied in the organic matter and in the inorganic NO3 and ammonium (NH4) compartments. Nitrogen is dynamic and mobile. Its fate and transport in agricultural systems is affected by management and unpredictable events. Its average worldwide N use efficiencies (NUEs) have been reported to be about 50% and even as low as 33% for cereals. Farmers usually apply a uniform rate of N to agricultural fields assuming that N sources, sinks, and mechanisms for loss are constant across fields. It is well documented that variability of soil properties that affect N sources makes managing N to maximize NUE difficult. Such variable soil properties include soil organic matter content, residual soil NO3-N, amount of crop residue returned to the surface soil, yield variability (N sink), and changes in soil chemical and physical properties. Fields vary from coarse gravelly areas where N losses are primarily attributed to NO3-leaching, to clayey areas where water is ponded and N losses may be primarily dominated by denitrification (N2/N2O). Management is being established as the predominant factor that can reduce N losses in the environment. If we are to improve N management to increase NUE we will need to do it within the context of the N cycle accounting for N loss mechanisms and how to manage them. This paper will review how we can quantify these N losses.
Decadal climate variability, dynamics and predictability

Observed Climatic Variability: Time Dependence. - Observed Climatic Variability: Spatial Structure. - Predictability of the Atmosphere and Oceans: From Days to Decades. - Mechanisms for Decadal-to-Centennial Climate Variability. - Long-Term Coordinated Changes in the Convective Activity of the North Atlantic. - A Mechanism for Decadal Climate Variability. - The Climate Response to the Changing Greenhouse Gas Concentration in the Atmosphere. - Analysis of Thermohaline Feedbacks. - An Overview of Century Time-Scale Variability in the Climate System: Observations and Models. - Steady States and Variability in Oceanic Zonal Flows. - Spectral Methods: What They Can and Cannot Do for Climatic Time Series. - List of Participants.