Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Recent trends in weather and seasonal cycles: An analysis of daily data from Europe and China

A wavelet analysis is conducted to investigate daily variability (DV, timescales of less than 3 days), weekly (weather) variability (WV, timescales of 5 days up to 2 months), and seasonal variability (SV, timescales of 8 to 17 months) in five temperature series from Europe and China and two westerly indices for the European/North Atlantic sector back to the 18th century. DV exhibits local features so that it is sensitive to any inhomogeneity in each series. Analysis of DV shows the potential for further homogenization of the data and suggests that for the present study, daily series are only truly homogeneous back to the 19th century. WV is responsible for extremes of large-scale cold/warm variations in the daily series and explains about 80% of the total variance. WV is found to be significantly weaker in northern Europe by 7-10% during warming periods, especially for winter and autumn, but summer temperature correlates positively with WV, with a maximum coefficient of 0.52 for central England. This indicates that for warming periods, WV is reduced in the cold season, but is potentially increased in the warm season. The principal timescale of weather, about 16 days in Europe and 11 days in China, does not exhibit significant trends. Changes in SV from cold to warm periods often result in weaker seasonal cycles, with an unprecedented reduction of up to 3°C at St. Petersburg during the warm period since 1988. The analysis of the westerly indices supports the recent unusually anomalous seasonal cycles, with stronger winter westerlies over the northern Atlantic and Europe. The trends in WV of the westerly indices coincide with the temperature data, implying they are responsible for the large-scale changes over northern Europe.
Megatsunami deposits on Kohala volcano, Hawaii, from flank collapse of Mauna Loa

The origin of coastal and high-elevation marine gravels on the Hawaiian islands of Lanai and Molokai is controversial, because the vertical tectonics of these islands is poorly constrained. The gravels are either from eustatic highstands or were left by massive tsunamis from offshore giant landslides. In contrast, at Kohala on the island of Hawaii, where continuous subsidence is well established, lithofacies analysis and dating of a fossiliferous marine conglomerate 1.5–61 m above present sea level support a tsunami origin and indicate a runup of >400 m >6 km inland. The conglomerate age, 110 ± 10 ka, suggests a tsunami caused by the ca. 120 ka giant Alika 2 landslide from nearby Mauna Loa volcano.
Crustose Coralline Algae: A Re-evaluation in the Geological Sciences

The crustose coralline algae are well known in shallow tropical waters as reef frame-builders and sediment producers. Although their abundance at greater depths and in arctic waters has been previously recorded, this knowledge in recent decades has been largely ignored by geologists and marine scientists in general. Many erroneous or misleading ecological and paleoecological statements and conclusions have resulted, and we have endeavored to clarify matters through the citation of the older literature along with more recent ecological studies. A parallel tendency to “simplify” the taxonomic structure of crustose corallines has threatened to add considerable confusion to modern marine studies. We have discussed recent work on anatomy, reproduction, and taxonomy. These and classical data are summarized in the form of keys and an evolutionary tree, which are intended to provide the geologist and marine biologist with a working facility with the group. A number of quantitative ecological studies treating crustose corallines have appeared during the past decade; these results are discussed and possibilities for future ecological work indicated. The occurrence of rhodoliths (maerl, free corallines) and the factors controlling the development of these deposits are also noted.
Short article: Early detection and avoidance of threatening faces during passive viewing

To evaluate whether there is an early attentional bias towards negative stimuli, we tracked participants’ eyes while they passively viewed displays composed of four Ekman faces. In Experiment 1 each display consisted of three neutral faces and one face depicting fear or happiness. In half of the trials, all faces were inverted. Although the passive viewing task should have been very sensitive to attentional biases, we found no evidence that overt attention was biased towards fearful faces. Instead, people tended to actively avoid looking at the fearful face. This avoidance was evident very early in scene viewing, suggesting that the threat associated with the faces was evaluated rapidly. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and extended it to angry faces. In sum, our data suggest that negative facial expressions are rapidly analysed and influence visual scanning, but, rather than attract attention, such faces are actively avoided.
Methods for Assessment of Soil Degradation

INTRODUCTION Basic Concepts (Degradation, Resilience, Rehabilitation), R. Lal, W.H. Blum, C. Valentin, and B.A. Stewart SOIL DEGRADATION PROCESSES Soil Erosion Processes Water Erosion, J. Laflen and E. Roose Wind Erosion, E. Skidmore Erosion Modeling, C. Rose and G. McTainsh Physical Degradation Soil Structure, D. Gabriels and R. Horn Crusting, C. Valentin Hard Setting, C. Mullins Soil Compaction, I. Hakansson and W. Voorhees Chemical Degradation Soil Organic Matter and Nutrient Depletion, E. Paul Acidification, M. Sumner Salt Buildup, I. Szabolcs Sodic Soils, P. Rengasamy Soil Pollution and Contamination, T.J. Logan and B.R. Singh Acid Sulphate Soil, D. Dent and M.E. F. Van Mensvoort Mineland Degradation, W. Dick et al. Biological Degradation Soil Organic Matter and Biomass Carbon, J. Berthelin DYNAMICS AND MAPPING Long-Term Characterization: Monitoring and Modeling, J. Bouma Scaling and Extrapolation, L.T. West Remote Sensing and GIS, G.W. Petersen Mapping Soil Degradation at Different Scales, M.R. Hoosbeek et al. Revisiting GLASOD Methodology, R. Oldeman Sociological Approach, H.E. Dregne IMPACT OF SOIL DEGRADATION Agronomic, R. Lal Economic, J. Sanders and D. Southgate Economic Impact of Soil Erosion, P. Crosson Greenhouse Effect, R. Lal and C. Valentin Water Quality, G.M. Pierzynski and J.K. Koelliker CONCLUSIONS Holistic Approach to Combat Soil Degradation, C. Valentin and R. Lal Research and Development Priorities, R. Lal, W.H. Blum, C. Valentin, and B.A. Stewart INDEX
The Discriminant Center-surround Hypothesis for Bottom-up Saliency

The classical hypothesis, that bottom-up saliency is a center-surround process, is combined with a more recent hypothesis that all saliency decisions are optimal in a decision-theoretic sense. The combined hypothesis is denoted as discriminant center-surround saliency, and the corresponding optimal saliency architecture is derived. This architecture equates the saliency of each image location to the dis-criminant power of a set of features with respect to the classification problem that opposes stimuli at center and surround, at that location. It is shown that the resulting saliency detector makes accurate quantitative predictions for various aspects of the psychophysics of human saliency, including non-linear properties beyond the reach of previous saliency models. Furthermore, it is shown that discriminant center-surround saliency can be easily generalized to various stimulus modalities (such as color, orientation and motion), and provides optimal solutions for many other saliency problems of interest for computer vision. Optimal solutions, under this hypothesis, are derived for a number of the former (including static natural images, dense motion fields, and even dynamic textures), and applied to a number of the latter (the prediction of human eye fixations, motion-based saliency in the presence of ego-motion, and motion-based saliency in the presence of highly dynamic backgrounds). In result, discriminant saliency is shown to predict eye fixations better than previous models, and produces background subtraction algorithms that outperform the state-of-the-art in computer vision.
Diverse Voltage-sensitive Dyes Modulate Gabaa Receptor Function Recommended Citation Diverse Voltage-sensitive Dyes Modulate Gaba a Receptor Function We Found That Popular Members of Several Different Families of Voltage-sensitive Dyes Modulate Gaba a Receptor with Maximum Efficacy and Potency Simil

Diverse voltage-sensitive dyes modulate GABAA receptor function. Voltage-sensitive dyes are important tools for assessing network and single-cell excitability, but an untested premise in most cases is that the dyes do not interfere with the parameters (membrane potential, excitability) that they are designed to measure.
Deep Dyslexia: A Case Study of

Deep dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder marked by the occurrence of semantic errors (e.g., reading RIVER as “ocean”). In addition, patients exhibit a number of other symptoms, including visual and morphological effects in their errors, a part-of-speech effect, and an advantage for concrete over abstract words. Deep dyslexia poses a distinct challenge for cognitive neuropsychology because there is little understanding of why such a variety of symptoms should co-occur in virtually all known patients. Hinton and Shallice (1991) replicated the co-occurrence of visual and semantic errors by lesioning a recurrent connectionist network trained to map from orthography to semantics. While the success of their simulations is encouraging, there is little understanding of what underlying principles are responsible for them. In this paper we evaluate and, where possible, improve on the most important design decisions made by Hinton and Shallice, relating to the task, the network architecture, the training procedure, and the testing procedure. We identify four properties of networks that underly their ability to reproduce the deep dyslexic symptom-complex: distributed orthographic and semantic representations, gradient descent learning, attractors for word meanings, and greater richness of concrete vs. abstract semantics. The firstthree of these are general connectionist principles and the last is based on earlier theorizing. Taken together, the results demonstrate the usefulness of a connectionist approach to understanding deep dyslexia in particular, and the viability of connectionist neuropsychology in general.
Grammatical category dissociation in multilingual aphasia

Word retrieval deficits for specific grammatical categories, such as verbs versus nouns, occur as a consequence of brain damage. Such deficits are informative about the nature of lexical organization in the human brain. This study examined retrieval of grammatical categories across three languages in a trilingual person with aphasia who spoke Arabic, French, and English. In order to delineate the nature of word production difficulty, comprehension was tested, and a variety of concomitant lexical–semantic variables were analysed. The patient demonstrated a consistent noun–verb dissociation in picture naming and narrative speech, with severely impaired production of verbs across all three languages. The cross-linguistically similar noun–verb dissociation, coupled with little evidence of semantic impairment, suggests that (a) the patient has a true “nonsemantic” grammatical category specific deficit, and (b) lexical organization in multilingual speakers shares grammatical class information between languages. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the architecture of lexical organization in bilinguals.
Large‐scale climate control of zooplankton transport and biogeography in the Kuroshio‐Oyashio Extension region

We studied decadal‐scale climate control of zooplankton biogeography driven by Kuroshio Extension (KE) dynamics using long‐term zooplankton data and an advection model driven with currents from the Earth Simulator eddy‐resolving ocean model. Passive tracer model experiments indicated that warm‐water species transported from the south were retained in the Kuroshio‐Oyashio Extension (KOE) region during years with a weak KE. A 2.5 year lag in the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO) index was significantly correlated with the KE strength and with warm‐water species abundance. These findings indicate that climate signals from the central and eastern North Pacific propagated westward, influencing not only transport in the KOE region but also regional ecosystem variability. Because the NPGO controls important aspects of the transport dynamics and ecosystem variability in the eastern North Pacific, this study provides additional evidence that large‐scale climate patterns drive coherent changes in ecosystems throughout the North Pacific by impacting regional‐scale transport dynamics.
Évolution récente des dunes littorales à l'est de Dunkerque (Nord de la France) / Recent coastal dunes evolution, East of Dunkirk, Northern France

Resume L'evolution morphologique des dunes littorales de l'est de Dunkerque est marquee par une migration du bourrelet bordier vers l'interieur des terres. Malgre le recul du front de cette dune et la presence de formes erosives liees aux facteurs naturels (houles de tempete, vent) et une forte frequentation humaine, son elevation et son elargissement, ainsi que le comblement d'anciennes et importantes zones de deflation, combines au developpement du couvert vegetal, conduisent a un bilan sedimentaire equilibre au cours des dernieres decennies. L'evolution des trois bourrelets dunaires etudies est variable au cours du temps : les vitesses de recul varient ou meme s'inversent en quelques decennies, sans doute en liaison avec les modifications subies par le systeme complexe de bancs et de chenaux tidaux et subtidaux qui borde le littoral.
The detection and mapping of Alaskan wildfires using a spaceborne imaging radar system

Abstract The study presented here focuses on using a spaceborne imaging radar, ERS-1, for mapping and estimating areal extent of fires which occurred in the interior region of Alaska. Fire scars are typically 3 to 6 dB brighter than adjacent unburned forests in the ERS-1 imagery. The enhanced backscatter from burned areas was found to be a result of high soil moisture and exposed rough ground surfaces. Fire scars from 1979 to 1992 are viewed in seasonal ERS-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data obtained from 1991 to 1994. Three circumstances which influence the detectability of fire scars in the ERS-1 imagery are identified and examined; seasonality of fire scar appearances, fires occurring in mountainous regions, and fires occurring in wetland areas. Area estimates of the burned regions in the ERS-1 imagery are calculated through the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) database. The results of this analysis are compared to fire records maintained by the Alaska Fire Service (AFS) and to estimates.
Endolithic aspartic acid as a proxy of fluctuations in coral growth

[1] Coral skeleton has been widely studied for monitoring past fluctuations in marine environment. Although stable carbon isotope (δ13C) data appear to reflect coral metabolism, their interpretations differ from place to place and are sometimes controversial, because they are also affected by carbon isotopic composition of dissolved inorganic carbon in seawater. Association of an organic matrix with biological carbonates has been reported in many previous studies. With the help of high-resolution microsampling of coral skeleton and advanced technique for amino acid (AA) quantification in low-volume sample, we show that aspartic acid (Asp) in coral skeleton varies with distinct seasonal pattern, and is useful in understanding why corals calcify faster in summer than in winter. Since Asp containing organic matrix in the skeleton is synthesized by the coral, changes in mole concentration of Asp relative to other AAs of the skeleton make it a potential indicator for monitoring fluctuations in coral physiology in the past.
Drumlin Formation Related to Inverted Melt-Water Erosional Marks

Abstract Drumlin forms are described from maps and air photographs of a part of the Athabasca Plains, northern Saskatchewan. Three major forms, spindle, parabolic and transverse asymmetrical are recognized. These forms, which may show superimposed minor elements, depart from classical descriptions of drumlins, but are similar to moulds of erosional marks created by separated fluid flows. Assemblages of drumlins also show characteristics similar to those of erosional marks. The form analogy between drumlins and moulds of erosional marks is carried to a conclusion that drumlins may be formed by the infilling of erosional marks created on the under-side of glaciers by separated, subglacial melt-water flows. Estimates of specific discharge are obtained by means of an expected range of Reynolds number. Geomorphological evidence is given for large-scale erosion by subglacial melt water. A discussion of the sedimentology, stratigraphy, and deformational structure of the interiors of drumlins shows that they may be explained by the erosional-mark hypothesis. This paper emphasizes the importance of melt water as a geomorphic agent and may have broad implications for ice-sheet dynamics and profiles, rates of deglaciation, and the occurrence of bedrock thrusting by ice.
Controls on the distribution of landslides triggered by the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Sichuan Province, China

Landsliding is the dominant mass wasting process in upland areas where the rate of river incision is higher than that of rock weathering of hillslopes. Although progressive erosional processes can provide sufficient conditions for slope failure, the majority of landslides are induced by earthquakes, rainstorms or a combination of these two. Landslides are also one of the most destructive geological processes, being the primary cause of damage and fatalities associated with severe storms and earthquakes in mountainous regions. On 12th May 2008 the magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake occurred in the Longmen Shan mountain range, on the northwest margin of the Sichuan Basin. Landsliding contributed greatly to the high death toll of over 70,000 and widespread infrastructural damage produced by the earthquake. The event offers an opportunity to both broaden the global database of seismically induced landslides and study the processes involved in earthquake-triggered landsliding, for a large continental thrust event with complex faulting mechanisms and diverse geophysical conditions. To achieve this, the following investigation builds upon recent advances in landslide remote sensing, to develop automated detection algorithms through which landslides can be accurately mapped using a range of satellite data. Using these techniques, a first order, regional landslide inventory map of slope failures triggered by the Wenchuan earthquake is produced, over an area of 12,000km2 along the main rupture zone. The production of this dataset demonstrates the application of automated classification techniques for the rapid generation of landslide data, for both geomorphological research and hazard management applications. The data is used to examine the interaction of fault rupture dynamics, topography and geology on landslide failure location, and identify key characteristics of the landslide distribution. Findings of the study demonstrate high levels of landslide occurrence along the entire mapped length of the rupture zone, and an exponential decay in landslide density with distance from the co-seismic surface ruptures. This is superimposed over a marked hanging wall effect, along with clear geological and topographic controls on landslide occurrence. Through generalised linear modelling, peak ground acceleration attenuation patterns, hillslope gradient, relief, local elevation and geology are identified as core controls on the location of landslides. The results of this research shed light on some increasingly recognised though poorly understood characteristics of seismically induced landslide distributions. The dataset produced contributes to the limited global database of earthquake-triggered landslide inventories, as well producing a widely applicable resource for further study of the Wenchuan earthquake and post-seismic landscape evolution.
Spatial and temporal diversity of positive selection on shared haplotypes at the PSCA locus among worldwide human populations

Selection on standing genetic variation is important for rapid local genetic adaptation when the environment changes. We report that, for the prostate stem cell antigen (PSCA) gene, different populations have different target haplotypes, even though haplotypes are not unique to specific populations. The C-C-A haplotype, whereby the first C is located at rs2294008 of PSCA and is a low risk allele for gastric cancer, has become a target of positive selection mainly in Asian populations. Conversely, the C-A-G haplotype carrying the same C allele has become a selection target in African populations. However, Asian and African populations share both haplotypes, consistent with the haplotype divergence time (170 kya) prior to out-of-Africa. The frequency of C-C-A/C-A-G is 0.344/0.278 in Asia and 0.209/0.416 in Africa. 2D-SFS analysis revealed that the extent of intra-allelic variability of the target haplotype is extremely small in each local population, suggesting that C-C-A or C-A-G is under ongoing hard sweeps in local populations. From the TMRCA of selected haplotypes, the estimated onset times of positive selection were recent (3-55 kya), concurrently with population subdivision from a common ancestor. Additionally, estimated selection coefficients from ABC analysis were up to ∼3%, similar to those at other loci under recent positive selection on standing genetic variation. Phylogeny of local populations and TMRCA of selected haplotypes revealed that spatial and temporal switching of positive selection targets is a unique and novel feature of ongoing positive selection at PSCA. This switching may reflect potential of rapid adaptability to distinct environments.
Mechanical effects of chemical degradation of bonded geomaterials in boundary value problems

ABSTRACT The paper presents a constitutive approach to describe the effects of rock weathering processes in boundary value problems. The term rock weathering is used to refer to a number of chemical and physical phenomena that continuously transform a rock mass into a granular soil. From an engineering point of view rock weathering can be interpreted as a generalised decay of the mechanical properties of the original material. It acts at a constitutive level essentially by reducing the strength-of the bonds joining the grains together. Such a material degradation can occur in a time scale which is comparable to the average life of engineering structures. Weathering can induce subsidence on shallow foundations resting on soft rocks layers or it can be crucial for what concerns the stability of slopes or abandoned underground mines. In the first part of the paper, it is shown how the progressive destruction of the intergranular bonds due to weathering has been modelled satisfactorily by extending a strain hardening elastoplastic model. Such a model has been corroborated by means of special oedometer tests on soft rock specimens in which a progressive chemical debonding has been induced through the exposition of the rock to a uniform flow of an acid solution. In the second part of the work, three different boundary value problems in which weathering effects cannot be neglected are presented. The numerical analyses performed with the proposed constitutive model refer to: i) the weathering-induced subsidence of a circular foundation; ii) the stability of a slope subject to weathering from the ground surface; and, iii) the effects of the progressive collapse of pillars in an abandoned underground mine.