Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vegetation history, diversity patterns, and climate change across the Triassic/Jurassic boundary

Abstract High-resolution palynological data sets from shallow marine Triassic-Jurassic (Tr/J) boundary beds of two principal sections in Europe (Hochalplgraben in Austria and St. Audrie's Bay in the United Kingdom) were analyzed to reconstruct changes in vegetation, biodiversity, and climate. In Hochalplgraben, a hardwood gymnosperm forest with conifers and seed ferns is replaced by vegetation with dominant ferns, club mosses and liverworts, which concurs with an increased diversification of spore types during the latest Rhaetian. Multivariate statistical analysis reveals a trend to warmer and wetter conditions across the Tr/J boundary in Hochalplgraben. The vegetation changes in St. Audrie's Bay are markedly different. Here, a mixed gymnosperm forest is replaced by monotonous vegetation consisting mainly of Cheirolepidiaceae (80–100%). This change is caused by a transition to a warmer and more arid climate. The observed diversity decrease in St. Audrie's Bay affirms this interpretation. Although both sections show major vegetation changes, neither of them demonstrates a distinctive floral mass extinction. A compilation of Tr/J boundary sections across the world demonstrates the presence of Cheirolepidiaceae-dominated forests in the Pangaean interior and increases in abundance of spore-producing plants adjacent to the Tethys Ocean. We propose that the non-uniform vegetation changes reflected in the Tr/J palynological records are the result of environmental changes caused by Central Atlantic Magmatic Province volcanism. The increase in greenhouse gases caused a warmer climate and an enhanced thermal contrast between the continent and the seas. Consequently, the monsoon system got stronger and induced a drier continental interior and more intensive rainfall near the margins of the Tethys Ocean.
Geomagnetic effect on the neutral temperature of the F region during the magnetic storm of September 1969

A spherical Fabry-Perot interferometer on Ogo 6 (launched June 5, 1969) gives the profile of the 6300-A oxygen line in the dayglow at different altitudes between 200 and 320 km. The temperature of the neutral components of the atmosphere is deduced from these measurements with an accuracy of ±65°K. The results presented in this paper correspond to the storm period September 25 to October 5, 1969. During this period a severe geomagnetic storm occurred. The temperature measurements show a very strong effect in the two polar regions, while the equatorial regions present a smooth temperature variation.
Modelling the past and the future fate of the Amazonian forest

© The Royal Society 2005. All rights reserved. This chapter contrasted HadCM3LC simulations of Amazonian forest at the Last Glacial Maximum (21 kya) and a Younger Dryas-like period (13-12 kya) with predicted responses of future warming to provide estimates of the climatic limits under which the Amazon forest remains relatively stable. Simulations indicate that despite lower atmospheric CO2 concentrations and increased aridity during the LGM, Amazonia remains mostly forested, and that the cooler climate of the Younger Dryas-like period in fact causes a trend towards increased above-ground carbon balance relative to today. The vegetation feedbacks responsible for maintaining forest integrity in past climates (i.e. decreased evapotranspiration and reduced photorespiration) cannot be maintained in the future. Although elevated atmospheric CO2 contributes to a positive enhancement of plant carbon and water balance, decreased stomatal conductance and increased plant and soil respiration cause a positive feedback that amplifies localised drying and climate warming. The Amazonian forest appears to be presently near its critical resiliency threshold, and even minor climate warming may be sufficient to promote deleterious feedbacks on forest integrity.
Subducted continental margin imaged i n the Carpathians of Czechoslovakia

Deep seismic-reflection data across the frontal part of the Carpathian arc image subducted European continental crust beneath the thick accretionary wedge of the Neogene west Carpathian arc. The upper continental crust of the lower plate is depressed with high curvature to a depth off about 25 km below the arc, but the corresponding Moho appears to be nearly horizontal. Flow within the lower crust may account for strain mismatch between the two parts of the subductiog continent, although the subdued relief on the Moho may partly have evolved after subduction ceased, perhaps owing to a gabbro-eclogite phase change in a mafic lower crust.
Recent Advances in Polarimetric and Interferometric Radar Remote Sensing

POLSAR) sensing and so is Repeat-Pass Polarimetric-Interferometric SAR (RP-DIFF-POL-IN-SAR) stress-change assessment by air/high-altitude/space-borne SAR sensor deployment. Provided fully polarimetric SAR information can be made available, a plethora of novel POLSAR matrix decomposition methods can be implemented for recovering rather precise scattering contributions from isolated and distributed scattering scenarios, and so can rather exact environmental changes from consecutive repeat-pass observations at 1 m resolution from air and from space. With the recent launches of the fully polarimetric satellites JAXA-ALOS (PAL-SAR-L), the DLR TerraSAR-X and of RADASAT-2 (C), a new era in space imaging of the terrestrial terrain and ocean surfaces has arrived providing unforeseen advantages. Whereas in the past, POLSAR applications were focused mainly on information product gathering for agriculture, forestry and the fisheries, little emphasis was placed on demonstrating its full capacity also for the assessment of natural habitats and especially wetlands. Specifically, we are now able to demonstrate how seasonal changes and features of vegetation in natural habitats, shallow vegetated lakes and wetlands can be recovered under worst weather conditions and at day and during night at most distant and often inaccessible hidden sites, where migrating birds rest. Land cover monitoring is one of the most potential applications of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (POLSAR) sensing and so is Repeat-Pass Polarimetric- Interferometric SAR (RP-DIFF-POL-IN-SAR) stress-change assessment by air/high-altitude/spaceborne SAR sensor deployment. Provided fully polarimetric SAR information can be made available, a plethora of novel POLSAR matrix decomposition methods can be implemented for recovering rather precise scattering contributions from isolated and distributed scattering scenarios, and so can rather exact environmental changes from consecutive repeat-pass observations at 1 m resolution from air and from space.
Planktonic foraminifera in the Arctic: potentials and issues regarding modern and quaternary populations

Calcareous microfossils are widely used by paleoceanographers to investigate past sea-surface hydrology. Among these microfossils, planktonic foraminifera are probably the most extensively used tool (e.g. [1] for a review), as they are easy to extract from the sediment and can also be used for coupled geochemical (e.g; δ18O, δ13C, Mg/Ca) and paleo-ecological investigations. Planktonic foraminifera are marine protists, which build a calcareous shell made of several chambers which reflect in their chemistry the properties of the ambient water-masses. Planktonic foraminifera are known to thrive in various habitats, distributed not only along a latitudinal gradient, but also along different water-depth intervals within surface waters (0-1000 m). Regarding their biogeographical distribution, planktonic foraminifera assemblages therefore mirror different water-masses properties, such as temperature, salinity and nutrient content of the surface water in which they live. The investigation of the specific composition of a fossil assemblage (relative abundances) is therefore a way to empirically obtain (paleo)information on past variations of sea-surface hydrological parameters. This paper focuses on the planktonic foraminifera record from the Arctic domain. This polar region records peculiar sea-surface conditions, with the influence of nearly perennial sea-ice cover development. This has strong impact on living foraminifera populations and on the preservation of their shells in the underlying sediments.
Estimate House Price Using Machine Learning

The House Price Index (HPI) is commonly used to estimate the changes in housing prices. The sale price of the house is correlated with many other factors like geographical location, size of the house, age of the house, the area and population of the neighborhood etc. There has been a considerably large number of datasets released in the literature of various locations to explore the correlation of the sale price of houses with their corresponding features. However, all the features don’t affect the sale price in equal proportion. Some features strongly correlate with each other and, while some features don’t carry any importance or are probably redundant. As a result, to explore various impacts of features on sales prices, we performed a detailed data analysis on the original house dataset. This report also comprehensively validates multiple steps of data analysis with supporting statistics and visualizations to provide an optimistic result of various features and their impact on the sales price of houses.
Decline in Global Solar Radiation with Increased Horizontal Visibility in Germany between 1964 and 1990

Abstract A statistically significant decrease in mean annual global solar radiation between 1964 and 1990 under completely overcast skies was found at five out of eight studied locations in Germany. A decrease of global solar radiation is also evident in partly cloudy conditions. The mean annual cloud cover fraction and sunshine duration did not significantly change, while the visually assessed mean annual horizontal visibility increased at six of the eight stations. The authors’ findings point to a decrease of the cloud transmissivity, which in turn could be explained by an increased frequency of multilevel cloudiness, changing cloud types, or by indirect aerosol effects on clouds. The decreasing trend of global solar radiation in clear skies was most expressed at high and intermediate solar zenith angles, whereas a slight increase of global radiation was found at low sun zenith angles. A decline of the diffuse component of the global radiation over time was also detected. It is shown that the observed c.
A Review on Speech Recognition for Under-Resourced Languages

Fundamental speech recognition technologies for high-resourced languages are currently successful to build high-quality applications with the use of deep learning models. However, the problem of “borrowing” these speech recognition technologies for under-resourced languages like Vietnamese still has challenges. This study reviews fundamental studies on speech recognition in general as well as speech recognition in Vietnamese, an under-resourced language in particular. Then, it specifies the urgent issues that need current research attention to build Vietnamese speech recognition applications in practice, especially the need to build an open large sentence-labeled speech corpus and open platform for related research, which mostly benefits small individuals/organizations who do not have enough resources.
SPATIAL AND SEASONAL VARIABILITY IN THE COMPONENTS OF THE RIVER HEAT BUDGET

Detailed hydrometeorological measurements have been used to establish the components of the river heat budget for 495 days covering 18 study periods and 11 study reaches in the Exe Basin, Devon, UK. Averaging the results across the whole data-set indicates that net radiation, friction, sensible heat transfer, condensation and bed conduction contributed 56.0, 22.2, 13.2, 5.8 and 2.8%, respectively, to the non-advective energy gains, whereas net radiation, evaporation, sensible heat exchange and bed conduction accounted for 48.6, 30.4, 10.6 and 10.4%, respectively, of the non-advective heat losses. Precipitation falling on the river channel had little impact on the river heat budgets, but energy advected in groundwater accounted for an average 5% of the heat storage in the river. The magnitude and importance of the river heat budget components were found to be variable in space and time. The influence of channel morphology, valley topography, riparian vegetation, substratum nature and hydrological conditions, especially the effects of river regulation, promoted inter-reach variability in the make up of the heat budget and caused significant differences in energy fluxes at a local scale. Heat budget components also exhibited considerable differences between seasons and varied from day to day for individual reaches. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Pion Detection Using Single Photon Avalanche Diodes

We present the first reported use of a CMOS-compatible single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) array for the detection of high-energy charged particles, specifically pions, using the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The results confirm the detection of incident high-energy pions at 120 GeV, minimally ionizing, which complements the variety of ionizing radiation that can be detected with CMOS SPADs.
EMERGENT TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM FOR PUERTO RICO AND THE VIRGIN ISLANDS

A tsunami warning system has been under development for the Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands (PRVI) region since 2000 as part of the Puerto Rico Tsunami Warning and Mitigation Program (PRTWMP). This system is in response to the historical tsunamis which have impacted Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and the potential for tsunamis to affect the region in the future. This emergent warning system has five thrust areas: definition of the tsunami scenarios, tsunami detection, tsunami protocol, communication, dissemination and education. The detection capabilities of the system are based on the detection of potentially tsunamigenic earthquakes by the Puerto Rico Seismic Network (PRSN) and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC). A protocol to respond to a potential tsunami has been developed. The messages would be broadcast through the Civil Emergency Alert System of the San Juan Field Office of the U. S. National Weather Service in coordination with the Puerto Rico Seismic Network and the Puerto Rico State Emergency Management Agency. Educational initiatives have been taken so that the threatened population is aware of the hazards and can respond effectively in case of a tsunami.
Fentanyl‐induced respiratory depression in rodents is inhibited by bioabsorbable, subcutaneous naltrexone implants at 3.5 months

The aim of this study is to determine if extended‐release, bioabsorbable, subcutaneous naltrexone (NTX) implants inhibit respiratory depression after an IV injection of fentanyl. Bioabsorbable implants fabricated from two different release‐controlling polymers, poly‐D‐L‐lactide (PDLLA) and polycaprolactone (PCL), alone (placebo) or containing NTX, were subcutaneously implanted in Sprague Dawley rats. After 3.5 months of implantation, the rodents were administered an IV bolus of fentanyl through the tail vein. The placebo implant rats received a dose of 4 micrograms (mcg) ‐ (10 mcg/kg/dose), while the NTX implanted animals received a dose of 8 mcg (20 mcg/kg/dose). The minimum active dose of fentanyl that caused a > 50 ± 2% depression in the respiration rate in the placebo implanted rodents was 4 mcg. The respiration rate of the placebo implanted rats dropped from 208 ± 14 breaths/minute at predose, to 84 ± 12 breaths/minute (p = 0.0003) at 2 min. In contrast, all NTX implanted animals easily tolerated twice the dose of 8 mcg of fentanyl without any significant reduction in respiration rate. The mean respiration rate = increased from 164 ± 22 breaths/minute at predose to 178 ± 17 breaths/minute (p = 0.24) at 2 min. The mean plasma concentrations of NTX, 3.5 months after implantation, ranged from 7.4 (±1.1) ng/mL to 80.3 (±37.5) ng/mL. Bioabsorbable implants containing NTX effectively blocked fentanyl‐induced respiratory depression in rodents as compared with placebo implants, 3.5 months after implantation.
Condylar Positional Changes in Skeletal Class II and Class III Malocclusions after Bimaxillary Orthognathic Surgery

Orthognathic surgery is indicated to modify the position of the maxillomandibular structure; changes in the mandibular position after osteotomy can be related to changes in the position of the mandibular condyle in the articular fossa. The aim of this study was to determine changes produced in the mandibular condyle 6 months after orthognathic surgery. A cross-sectional study was conducted that included subjects who had undergone bimaxillary orthognathic surgery to treat dentofacial deformity of Angle class II (group CII) or Angle class III (group CIII). Standardized images were taken using cone-beam computed tomography 21 days before surgery and 6 months after surgery; measurement scales were used to identify the condylar position and its relations with the anterior, superior, and posterior joint spaces. The results were analyzed using the Shapiro–Wilk and Student’s t-tests, while considering a value of p < 0.05 as indicating a significant difference. Fifty-two joints from 26 patients, with an average age of 27.9 years (±10.81), were analyzed. All subjects in both group CII and group CIII showed a significant change in the anterior, superior, and posterior joint spaces. However, postoperative changes in the position of the condyle in the articular fossa were not significant in the anteroposterior analysis. We conclude that orthognathic surgery causes changes in the sagittal position of the mandibular condyle in subjects with mandibular retrognathism and prognathism.
Microbiological quality and metal levels in wells and boreholes water in some peri-urban communities in Kumasi, Ghana

Many communities in Kumasi, Ghana, are increasingly dependent on boreholes and hand dug wells. The aim of this study was to examine the drinking water suitability of 6 wells and 3 boreholes in periurban communities in Kumasi, between December 2003 and January 2005. Total coliforms, faecal coliforms and enterococci were enumerated using the standard most probable number method and membrane filtration methods. The heavy metals in the water samples were determined using the atomic absorption spectrometry method. Overall, significantly higher bacterial counts were recorded during the wet (rainy) season compared to the dry (harmattan) season. Faecal coliforms counts (FCC) in 3 borehole samples ranged between 3 x 101 and 3.5 x 107 per 100 ml (geometric means 1.82, 1.75 and 2.8 x 104) while mean numbers of enterococci were 103-105 times lower. The range and geometric means of FCC was similar in samples from wells but levels of enterococci were 8 times higher than in boreholes. Manganese and iron levels were well within the WHO standards for all 9 sites but lead levels except for one site (Boadi) were all higher than the WHO standard. A brief sanitation survey at each site suggested that wells and boreholes were frequently cited near latrines, refuse tips and other social amenities, and in the vicinity of domestic or grazing animals. In Kumasi, the water from shallow wells and boreholes, upon which the local communities depend is of poor quality. The data are being used to advise the local government. An integrated approach is required to minimise faecal pollution of wells and boreholes within peri-urban communities.
Transpressional tectonics along the Karakoram fault zone, northern Ladakh: constraints on Tibetan extrusion

Abstract The Tibetan plateau north of the Himalaya has approximately double normal crustal thickness (60–75 km) and has been homogeneously shortened since the India-Asia collision at 60–50 Ma ago, yet, with minimal erosion rates, has almost no middle or deep crustal rocks exposed at the surface. In the Karakoram range, west of Tibet, early Tertiary crustal thickening and regional metamorphism resulted in Miocene crustal melting producing the Baltoro monzogranite-leucogranite batholith. Late Tertiary transpression along the western margin of the Tibetan plateau, caused by the continued northward penetration of India into Asia, led to exhumation of migmatites in the Pangong range and Baltoro-type granites along the Karakoram fault. Detailed studies of the Karakoram fault zone in northern Ladakh, India, show that Baltoro-type two-mica ± garnet leucogranites, intruded 21–18.0 Ma ago, have been offset a maximum of 150 km right-laterally. Average slip rates since 18.0 ± 0.6 Ma (2σ) are 8.3 mm/a. 40Ar/39Ar mica cooling ages are 11.3 Ma on both sides of the main (southwestern) strand of the fault, suggesting that most of the exhumation of the Pangong migmatites and leucogranites must have occurred between 18.0 and 11.3 Ma. During this time, at slip rates of 8.3 mm/a the rocks would have moved horizontally right-laterally for c. 56 km and been exhumed by c. 20 km vertically during transpression, using the measured 20° plunge of lineations. The high exhumation rate (3.0 mm/a) and amount of erosion (20 km) inferred between 18.0 and 11.3 Ma may also reflect the partitioning between an early transpressional strain associated with crustal thickening and exhumation of the Pangong deep crustal migmatites and leucogranites, and a later dominantly dextral strike-slip phase of fault motion along the central part of the Karakoram fault from c. 11 to 0 Ma. This timing may also coincide with the initiation of the N-S aligned normal faults and E-W extension in southern Tibet. We suggest that the relatively minor dextral offset (150 km) and the young age of initiation on this bounding fault do not support the model of large-scale extrusion of Tibetan crust, but they suggest instead that deformation of Tibet was taken up predominantly by crustal thickening.
Harmfulness of exotic weeds in China and for their management

Exotic weeds have caused serious harm to crop production, orchards, lawns, natural environment and biodiversity in China. This is closely related to certain characteristics of the exotic weeds and to lack of environmental resistance. To manage exotic weeds, measures should be taken in two aspects: one is prevention of introduction of exotic weeds, and the other is control of existing ones. In the former aspect, measures that should be taken include: 1) reinforcing plant quarantine; 2) establishing a risk assessment system for introduction of exotic plants, and 3) encouraging the utilization of native plants. In the latter aspect, the following comprehensive measures should be taken: 1) controlling ecological destruction; 2) conducting biological control of exotic weeds; 3) using economic plants as habitat displacement control agents, and 4) conducting utilization of exotic weeds.