Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A hydrophilic/hydrophobic organic (H2O) aerosol model: Development, evaluation and sensitivity analysis

[1] A secondary organic aerosol (SOA) model, the Hydrophilic/Hydrophobic Organic model (H2O), is presented and evaluated over Europe. H2O uses surrogate organic molecules to represent the myriad of SOA species and distinguishes two kinds of surrogate species: hydrophilic species (which condense preferentially into an aqueous phase) and hydrophobic species (which condense only into an organic phase). These surrogate species are formed from the oxidation in the atmosphere of volatile organic compounds. H2O includes several important processes, including the effect of nitrogen oxides (NOX) on SOA formation, the dissociation of organic acids in an aqueous phase, the oligomerization of aldehydes, the non-ideality of the particle phase and the hygroscopicity of organics. Concentrations of organic aerosols were simulated over Europe from July 2002 to July 2003 for comparison with measurements of the European Monitoring Evaluation Program (EMEP). In H2O, primary organic aerosols (POA) are considered as semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOC) present in both the gas phase and the particle phase. Taking into account the gas-phase fraction of SVOC increases significantly organic PM concentrations, particularly in winter, in better agreement with observations. The impacts on organic aerosol formation of ideality, of the choice of the parameterization for isoprene SOA formation, and of the OM/OC ratio of the model were also investigated. Assuming ideality in H2O was found to lead to a small decrease in OM. Compared to a two-product parameterization, the parameterization of Couvidat and Seigneur [2011] for SOA formation from isoprene oxidation leads to a significant increase in isoprene SOA by taking into account their hydrophilic properties and suggests that most models may currently underestimate isoprene SOA.
Evidence for a structure‐free state at high solar wind speeds

A statistical study has been made of the variability of the basic solar wind flow parameters in high- and low-speed flows. Care was taken to exclude data taken during positive speed gradients, where dynamical effects severely alter the flow parameters. The study reveals that other than the bulk velocity the flow parameters within high-speed streams are steadier and more uniform from stream to stream than they are within low-speed flows, by a factor of 3. Comparison of simple models of the structure-free solar wind with average high-speed flow parameters should therefore be more meaningful than comparison with low-speed parameters. Of particular importance to models of the lower corona and chromosphere-corona transition region are the particle and energy fluxes carried by the solar wind. If we assume that all of the solar wind originates in coronal holes, our best estimates of these fluxes at 1 Rs are 1.2 × 1014 cm−2 s−1 and 6.4 × 105 ergs cm−2 s−1, respectively, with an uncertainty of ±40%. Interestingly, the He abundance is observed to be nearly uniform within high-speed flows at 1 AU. Thus it seems unlikely that a steady state fractionation of heavy elements occurs in those open field regions of the low corona from which the high-speed solar wind originates. The high-speed solar wind He abundance may therefore be a faithful measure of the He abundance of the outer layer of the sun. Our best estimate is Nα/Np = 0.048 ± 0.005, where Nα and Np are the densities of the alpha particle and proton populations, respectively.
intehweb.com Human-Robot Collaboration: A Literature Review and Augmented Reality Approach in Design

NASA's vision for space exploration stresses the cultivation of human-robotic systems. Similar systems are also envisaged for a variety of hazardous earthbound applications such as urban search and rescue. Recent research has pointed out that to reduce human workload, costs, fatigue driven error and risk, intelligent robotic systems will need to be a significant part of mission design. However, little attention has been paid to joint human-robot teams. Making human-robot collaboration natural and efficient is crucial. In particular, grounding, situational awareness, a common frame of reference and spatial referencing are vital in effective communication and collaboration. Augmented Reality (AR), the overlaying of computer graphics onto the real worldview, can provide the necessary means for a human-robotic system to fulfill these requirements for effective collaboration. This article reviews the field of human-robot interaction and augmented reality, investigates the potential avenues for creating natural human-robot collaboration through spatial dialogue utilizing AR and proposes a holistic architectural design for human-robot collaboration.
Estimating potential soil erosion for environmental services in a sugarcane growing area using multisource remote sensing data

Characterization of landscapes is crucial in modelling potential soil erosion to ascertain environmental services that are provided by the main land use in the ecosystem. Remote sensing techniques have proved successful in characterization of landscapes. In this study area of a rain-fed Kibos-Miwani sugar zone of Kenya, we used Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data extracted from satellite imagery to characterize the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the vegetation conditions, and to model potential soil erosion. Data used included Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 250 m NDVI acquired in the period 2000 to 2013; 30 m Landsat5 time series images acquired between November 2010 and June 2011; a 30 m digital elevation model (DEM); and ground observations (land cover and soil characteristics). Temporal NDVI was extracted directly from MODIS 250 m images to study the changes in seasonal vegetation conditions with time, and spatial NDVI was extracted by analysing Landsat5 images at the field scale. NDVI extracted from Landsat images for a specific date, represented vegetation conditions for that simulation period. To compute potential soil erosion, we used Landsat 5 NDVI, the slope, aspect, curvature and soil physical properties as input data sets in the spatially explicit Fuzzy-based dynamic soil erosion model (FuDSEM). Land cover data collected revealed that sugarcane was the main land use, occupying 76% of the land cover. Results were consistent with crop management practices, illustrating a spatially heterogeneous land scape with varied vegetation conditions throughout the year. Out of simulations, we noted a homogeneous low erosion risk in areas with natural land cover with a global mean of 0.42. Medium to intense erosion risk in cropped areas was evident, with erosion risk varying from one pixel to the other. Simulation results suggest that crop management practices (planting and harvesting processes) are the drivers of erosion in sugar cane cultivated areas.
Transforming the Miocene Altyn Tagh fault slip into shortening of the north‐western Qilian Shan: insights from the drainage basin geometry

Although it has long been proposed that active crustal shortening within the Qilian Shan accommodates slip along the Altyn Tagh fault, questions regarding the temporal and spatial amount of slip transfer remain debated. Traditional shortening calculations cannot yet be made accurately, because the geology is not known well enough. Following the view that long, linear drainage basins in the north‐western Qilian Shan developed in response to internal shortening associated with slip transfer along the Altyn Tagh fault, we targeted this special irregular drainage basin geometry to develop an alternative way to estimate shortening. We infer a total of ~66 km of shortening in the western Qilian Shan with a north‐eastward decrease in the magnitude of shortening. This ~39% shortening strain is comparable to previous estimates. Estimates of dates of initiation support the view that significant shortening and topographical growth within the north‐western Qilian Shan occurred in post‐Middle Miocene time.
Unconformity of red sandstones in north Vietnam: field evidence for Indosinian orogeny in northern Indochina?

We re‐examine several unconformity sites in northwestern Vietnam where the Indosinian orogenesis has been defined. Field observations in the Black‐River (Song Da) region, near Son La, demonstrate that red sandtones and conglomerates, reportedly of Cretaceous age, occur unconformably above schistosed epimetamorphic middle‐Triassic sediments. A mesozoic unconformity thus really exists in this region, though the age of deformation is poorly contrained (upper Triassic to upper Cretaceous). In most places, however, the unconformity is strongly deformed, folded Triassic limestones are often thrusted onto the Cretaceous rocks. This implies that Tertiary deformations probably due to the India–Asia collision have been strong in the northern part of the Indochina block.
Differences and Relationships between Interpretation Attributes, Visitors' Satisfaction, and Attitudes on Cultural Heritage according to Interpretation Media

The purpose of this paper is to suggest more effective interpretation method to enrich visitors` satisfaction and attitudes on cultural heritage. The paper examined the difference of interpretation effectiveness and the relationship of interpretation attributes and visitors` satisfaction and attitudes on cultural heritage according to the type of interpretation media. The result of empirical analysis shows that there is significant difference of interpretation attributes, visitors` satisfaction and attitudes on cultural heritage according to interpretation media type. Also the different interpretation attributes have effects on visitors` satisfaction, and the degree of effect of each attribute on attitudes on cultural heritage are different according to interpretation media. Most important and meaningful finding is that educational interpretation is also necessary to enhance visitors` behavior to cultural heritage preservation as well as interesting and effective interpretation have strong impacts on visitors` satisfaction. Other implications are also suggested.
Photosynthetic parameters and empirical modelling of primary production: a case study on the Antarctic Peninsula shelf

Eight hundred photosynthesis-irradiance relationships were determined in the shelf waters adjacent to Palmer Station, Antarctica during the spring/summer periods of 1991–94. Biomass specific maximum photosynthetic rate, PBmax, and the light limited photosynthetic efficiency, αB, were poorly correlated to the physical forcing and nutrient regimes at the sampling stations. The two photosynthetic parameters, however, did strongly covary indicating the minimum irradiance required to saturate photosynthesis, Ik, was relatively constant in this highly variable environment. The variability in Ik could partially be attributed to both depth in the water column and time of the year, with the highest values occurring for surface samples during the summer period of peak incident irradiance. Given this and the significant dependence of Pmax on phytoplankton biomass, a simple empirical model for primary productivity was developed. An independent test of the model was performed on data collected in a mesoscale offshore grid and predicted primary production was found to be within 13% of measured values. Although there are limitations to this approach (i.e. exclusion of diel periodicity in photosynthetic response), these results provide relatively robust estimates of daily primary production for the Southern Ocean.
Islands under Siege: National Parks and the Politics of External Threats

If the Park Service can't or won't protect our national parks, who will? It's high time we figure that out, notes John Freemuth. Saddled from the beginning with a contradictory mandate to promote recreational use of parks yet preserve them for future generations the Park Service has always walked an administrative tightrope. But within the last few years a new kind of threat has appeared, and the Park Service finds itself in an even more precarious position, its effectiveness impaired. Increasingly national parks have come under environmental attack from sources outside the parks, beyond the jurisdiction of the Park Service. Smog from neighboring cities now obscures famous vistas. Noise and water pollution from nearby industries spills across park boundaries. Acid rain eats away at old-growth forests. John Freemuth sees these new external assaults as political problems. In examining the questions they raise, he focuses on two cases: the proposed mining of the tar sands of south-central Utah, near Canyonlands National Park, and the poor air quality in several Western parks caused by new sources and levels of pollution. He traces the shifts in government action that have accompanied waves of citizen activism and uncovers evidence of ineffective legislation, inept implementation, and the potent political power of pro-development forces. Through it all he finds the Park Service hamstrung by unclear, conflicting priorities and bureaucratic inertia. In his conclusion Freemuth analyzes a diverse set of political strategies that have been and are being used to deal with the threats to our national parks, evaluating each in terms of environmental effectiveness and political feasibility. "
The Fifteen Twenty Fracture Zone and the North American–South American plate boundary

The Fifteen Twenty Fracture Zone offsets the Mid-Altantic Ridge over 195 km in a sinistral sense. It was surveyed in 1982 between 30°W and 60°, i.e. from anomaly 34 on the African plate to anomaly 34 on the American plate where it disappears as the Barracuda Ridge into the Caribbean subduction zone. The fossil limbs of the Fifteen Twenty Fracture Zone show a remarkable symmetry to both sides of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Barracuda Ridge appears to have undergone a later deformation. The sections of the Fifteen Twenty FZ between 49°W and 54°W to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and between 37.5°W and 42.5°W to the east do not exhibit the normal characteristics of a fracture zone but have elongate and extremely narrow transverse ridges (dykes) along the fracture zone axis. The present transform domain shows signs of leaking. This is interpreted as a result of a fairly recent (about 7 Ma bp) change in spreading direction of the area. This change in spreading direction seems to have affected only the area south of 17°50′N. It may have resulted from a northward migration of the plate boundary between the North American and South American plates and the coming into existence of a triple point near 16°N. From this reconstruction, the location of the differential pole between the North American and South American plates is 16°N/53.5°W. This location leads to increasing compression from 53.5° to 60°W, affecting the Barracuda Ridge and Trough with a N–S shortening of about 16 km in 7 Ma. From 53.5° to 45°W, N–S extension occurred (about 19 km near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge), which led to the origin of the volcano–tectonic complex of Researcher Ridge, Researcher Trough and Royal Trough to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Virtual backbone construction in multihop ad hoc wireless networks

Summary Recent research points out that the flooding mechanism for topology update or route request in existing ad hoc routing protocols greatly degrades the network capacity. If we restrict the broadcast of control packets within a small subset of hosts in the network, the protocol overhead can be substantially reduced. This motivates our research of constructing a virtual backbone by computing a connected dominating set (CDS) in unit-disk graphs. In this paper, we propose two distributed algorithms to approximate a minimum CDS. These algorithms take linear time. Their performance is verified by a complete theoretical analysis. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Codes in Context: How States, Markets, and Civil Society Shape Adherence to Global Labor Standards

Transnational business regulation is increasingly implemented through private voluntary programs-like certification regimes and codes of conduct-that diffuse global standards. But little is known about the conditions under which companies adhere to these standards. We conduct one of the first large-scale comparative studies to determine which international, domestic, civil society, and market institutions promote supply chain factories' adherence to the global labor standards embodied in codes of conduct imposed by multinational buyers. We find that suppliers are more likely to adhere when they are embedded in states that participate actively in the ILO treaty regime and that have stringent domestic labor law and high levels of press freedom. We further demonstrate that suppliers perform better when they serve buyers located in countries where consumers are wealthy and socially conscious. Taken together, these findings suggest the importance of overlapping state, civil society, and market governance regimes to meaningful transnational regulation.
Glacial/interglacial changes in sediment rain rate in the SW Indian Sector of subantarctic Waters as recorded by 230Th, 231Pa, U, and δ15N

High-resolution records of opal, carbonate, and terrigenous fluxes have been obtained from a high-sedimentation rate core (MD84-527: 43°50′S; 51°19;′E; 3269 m) by normalization to 230Th. This method estimates paleofluxes to the seafloor on a point-by-point basis and distinguishes changes in sediment accumulation due to variations in vertical rain rates from those due to changes in syndepositional sediment redistribution by bottom currents. We also measured sediment δ15N to evaluate the changes in nitrate utilization in the overlying surface waters associated with paleoflux variations. Our results show that opal accumulation rates on the seafloor during the Holocene and stage 3, based on 14C dating, were respectively tenfold and fivefold higher than the vertical rain rates, At this particular location, changes in opal accumulation on the seafloor appear to be mainly controlled by sediment redistribution by bottom currents rather than variations in opal fluxes from the overlying water column. Correction for syndepositional sediment redistribution and the improved time resolution that can be achieved by normalization to 230Th disclose important variations in opal rain rates. We found relatively high but variable opal paleoflux during stage 3, with two maxima centered at 36 and 30 kyr B.P., low opal paleoflux during stage 2 and deglaciation and a pronounced maximum during the early Holocene, We interpret this record as reflecting variations in opal production rates associated with climate-induced latitudinal migration of the southern ocean frontal system. Sediments deposited during periods of high opal paleoflux also have high authigenic U concentrations, suggesting more reducing conditions in the sediment, and high Pa-231/Th-230 ratios, suggesting increased scavenging from the water column. Sediment δ15N is circa 1.5 per mil higher during isotopic stage 2 and deglaciation. The low opal rain rates recorded during that period appear to have been associated with increased nitrate depletion. This suggests that opal paleofluxes do not simply reflect latitudinal migration of the frontal system but also changes in the structure of the upper water column. Increased stratification during isotopic stage 2 and deglaciation could have been produced by a meltwater lid, leading to lower nitrate supply rates to surface waters.
Un demi-siècle de prévision numérique du temps

EnglishThis paper gives an historical background of the techniques currently used in numerical weather prediction models and the milestones in their evolution during the last fifty years. After a reminder of the major contributions of Charney, Fjortoft and von Neumann in 1950, it tries to show the logic for the choice of the various systems of equations and the numerical techniques used for solving them with increased accuracy. While pointing out the increasing importance of data assimilation in determining the initial state to allow a deterministic forecast, it also shows the limits of this approach, leading to the developments of probabilistic forecast methods. At the same time it gives a general outline of the evolution of the scientific electronic computers, which provided the scientists with the necessary computing power to use ever more complex models. Finally it stresses the need for cooperation between the meteorological services in order to build high performance numerical weather prediction systems francaisCet article donne un apercu historique des techniques qui ont servi a la construction des modeles de prevision numerique du temps et des principaux jalons qui ont marque l'evolution de cette discipline au cours des cinquante dernieres annees. Apres un rappel des travaux majeurs qui ont contribue a la reussite de l'experience de Charney, Fjortoft et von Neumannen 1950, on tente de montrer la logique qui a preside au choix des divers systemes d'equations et des techniques numeriques utilisees pour les resoudre avec une precision toujours accrue. Tout en soulignant l'importance croissante de l'assimilation des donnees meteorologiques pour la determination d'un etat initial conduisant a une prevision deterministe, on montre egalement les limitations de cette approche, qui ont mene au developpement des methodes de prevision probabiliste. Parallelement, on presente les grandes lignes de l'evolution des ordinateurs scientifiques, qui ont apporte aux meteorologistes la puissance de calcul necessaire pour mettre en œuvre des modeles de prevision numerique de plus en plus complexes. Enfin, on insiste sur la necessite de la cooperation entre services meteorologiques pour construire des systemes de prevision numerique performants.
Microbiological Comparison of Core and Groundwater Samples Collected from a Fractured Basalt Aquifer with that of Dialysis Chambers Incubated In Situ

Microorganisms associated with basalt core were compared to those suspended in groundwater pumped from the same well in the eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer (Idaho, USA). Two wells located at different distances from the source of a mixed-waste plume in the fractured basalt aquifer were examined. In the well more distal from the plume source, an array of dialysis chambers filled with either deionized water or crushed basalt was equilibrated to compare the microorganisms collected in this fashion with those from core and groundwater samples collected in a traditional manner from the same well. The samples were characterized to determine the total amount of biomass, presence of specific populations or physiological groups, and potential community functions. Microorganisms and their activities were nearly undetectable in core and groundwater collected from the well farthest from the plume source and substantially enriched in both core and groundwater from the well closest to the plume source. In both wells, differences (statistically significant for some measures) were found between bacteria associated with the cores and those suspended in the groundwater. Significantly higher populations were found in the basalt- and water-filled dialysis chambers incubated in the open well compared with core and groundwater samples, respectively. For a given parameter, the variation among dialysis chambers incubated at different depths was much less than the high variation observed among core samples. Analyses on selected basalt- and water-filled dialysis chamber samples suggested that these two communities were compositionally similar but exhibited different potential functions. Documented knowledge of cell physiological changes associated with attachment and potential differences between attached and unattached communities in aquifers indicate that careful consideration should be given to the type of sample media (i.e., core, groundwater, substrata incubated in a well) used to represent a subsurface environment.