bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) wheat module for California
Authors: George Nicholas Alexander , de Jesus Pedro Cuamba Helio , Lundy Mark E. , Bennett Sarita Jane 
Published: February 2024

Context Computer-based crop simulation models are important tools for agricultural research and management. APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) is commonly used around the world but has not been widely validated in North America. Aims The objective of this work was to evaluate the reliability of APSIM for simulating wheat production in California, with the aim of providing guidance for future field research aimed at model calibration and validation. Methods Environmental and management data from state-wide wheat variety trials of common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) were used to parameterise the APSIM-Wheat module (ver. 7.10 r4220). Simulated yield and protein data were compared with observed field trial results to test the reliability of APSIM simulations. Key results The most reliable simulation of grain yield had a root-mean-square error of 1040 kg/ha and normalised root-mean-square error of 16% relative to actual field data. Preliminary calibration of the model for Californian wheat varieties did not improve simulation accuracy or precision. Conclusions The accuracy or precision of the simulations was comparable to that of other tests of the APSIM-Wheat module in environments where it has not been previously calibrated but was considered too low to be reliable. The lack of reliability was due to the poor representation of local Californian wheat genotypes by existing APSIM cultivars, as well as possible lack of precision and accuracy of field data. Implications APSIM could be a valuable tool for wheat research and management in California; however, further research is needed to generate suitable field data for model calibration and validation.
Controlled synthesis of NO in an atmospheric pressure plasma by suppressing NO destruction channels by plasma catalysis
Authors: Yu S , Vervloedt S C L , Keudell A von 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
NO synthesis using plasma catalysis is analyzed in a parallel-plate atmospheric pressure RF plasma from N2/O2 admixed to helium exposed to Fe and Pt catalysts on a SiO2 support. The NO
x
species are measured by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy in a multi-pass cell. The trends in species densities can be well explained by air chemistry reactions, where NO’s progressive oxidation occurs with increasing oxygen admixture and ozone generation. The sequence can be controlled by the state of the surface that preferentially quenches O3 and allows for an optimum NO production. The maximum production of NO is found at 70% N2/(N2+O2) mixture ratio at 120 ∘C using sandblasted glass, with a conversion rate of 0.085%.
Magneto-acousto-electrical tomography using nonlinearly frequency-modulated ultrasound
Authors: Cheng Zhizhuo , Sun Zhishen , Wang Jianfei , Jia Kebin 
Published: February 2024

Abstract

Objective. In this study, nonlinearly frequency-modulated (NLFM) ultrasound was applied to magneto-acousto-electrical tomography (MAET) to increase the dynamic range of detection. Approach. Generation of NLFM signals using window function method—based on the principle of stationary phase—and piecewise linear frequency modulation method—based on the genetic algorithm—was discussed. The MAET experiment systems using spike, linearly frequency-modulated (LFM), or NLFM pulse stimulation were constructed, and three groups of MAET experiments on saline agar phantom samples were carried out to verify the performance—respectively the sensitivity, the dynamic range, and the longitudinal resolution of detection—of MAET using NLFM ultrasound in comparison to that using LFM ultrasound. Based on the above experiments, a pork sample was imaged by ultrasound imaging method, spike MAET method, LFM MAET method, and NLFM MAET method, to compare the imaging accuracy. Main results. The experiment results showed that, through sacrificing very little main-lobe width of pulse compression or equivalently the longitudinal resolution, the MAET using NLFM ultrasound achieved higher signal-to-interference ratio (and therefore higher detection sensitivity), lower side-lobe levels of pulse compression (and therefore larger dynamic range of detection), and large anti-interference capability, compared to the MAET using LFM ultrasound. Significance. The applicability of the MAET using NLFM ultrasound was proved in circumferences where sensitivity and dynamic range of detection were mostly important and slightly lower longitudinal resolution of detection was acceptable. The study furthered the scheme of using coded ultrasound excitation toward the clinical application of MAET.
Automated target placement for VMAT lattice radiation therapy: enhancing efficiency and consistency
Authors: Deufel Christopher , Dodoo Christopher , Kavanaugh James , Finley Randi , Lang Karen , Sorenson Kasie , Spreiter Sheri , Brooks Jamison , Moseley Douglas , Ahmed Safia K , Haddock Michael G , Ma Daniel , Park Sean S , Petersen Ivy A , Owen Dawn W , Grams Michael P 
Published: February 2024

Abstract

Objective. An algorithm was developed for automated positioning of lattice points within volumetric modulated arc lattice radiation therapy (VMAT LRT) planning. These points are strategically placed within the gross tumor volume (GTV) to receive high doses, adhering to specific separation rules from adjacent organs at risk (OARs). The study goals included enhancing planning safety, consistency, and efficiency while emulating human performance. Approach. A Monte Carlo-based algorithm was designed to optimize the number and arrangement of lattice points within the GTV while considering placement constraints and objectives. These constraints encompassed minimum spacing between points, distance from OARs, and longitudinal separation along the z-axis. Additionally, the algorithm included an objective to permit, at the user’s discretion, solutions with more centrally placed lattice points within the GTV. To validate its effectiveness, the automated approach was compared with manually planned treatments for 24 previous patients. Prior to clinical implementation, a failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) was conducted to identify potential shortcomings. Main results. The automated program successfully met all placement constraints with an average execution time (over 24 plans) of 0.29 ±0.07 min per lattice point. The average lattice point density (# points per 100 c.c. of GTV) was similar for automated (0.725) compared to manual placement (0.704). The dosimetric differences between the automated and manual plans were minimal, with statistically significant differences in certain metrics like minimum dose (1.9% versus 1.4%), D5% (52.8% versus 49.4%), D95% (7.1% versus 6.2%), and Body-GTV V30% (20.7 c.c. versus 19.7 c.c.). Significance. This study underscores the feasibility of employing a straightforward Monte Carlo-based algorithm to automate the creation of spherical target structures for VMAT LRT planning. The automated method yields similar dose metrics, enhances inter-planner consistency for larger targets, and requires fewer resources and less time compared to manual placement. This approach holds promise for standardizing treatment planning in prospective patient trials and facilitating its adoption across centers seeking to implement VMAT LRT techniques.
Assessing the value and sensitivity of ecosystem services based on land use in the middle and lower reaches of the Shiyang River
Authors: Tao Hu , Hu Guanglu , Fan Yalun , Bai Yuanru , Liu Peng , Zhou Chengqian 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
In response to increasing ecological and environmental challenges in arid areas, it is of great significance to investigate the ecosystem service value (ESV), accompanying the changes in ecological sensitivity for the protection of ecologically vulnerable areas. Our analysis seeks to elucidate the ESV and ecological sensitivity changes in the middle and lower reaches of the Shiyang River to determine the trends and influencing factors of ESV under changing land use patterns. The key findings include: (1) From 1995 to 2020, the ESV in the study area witnessed fluctuations, culminating in an overall decline of 1.249 × 108 yuan. (2) In 2020, sensitivity coefficients (CSs) for ESV were as follows: 0.4335 for grassland, 0.2586 for farmland, and 0.1170 for unused land within the study area. Furthermore, coefficients of improved cross-sensitivity (CICSs) for the reciprocal transformation of farmland, grassland, and unused land were 1.10, 1.18, and 1.54, respectively, indicating the pivotal role of the three land types in driving ESV fluctuations.
Topological stability of spin textures in Si/Co-doped helimagnet FeGe
Authors: Guang Yao , Fujishiro Yukako , Tanaka Aito , Peng Licong , Kaneko Yoshio , Kanazawa Naoya , Tokura Yoshinori , Yu Xiuzhen 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Element substitutions with magnetic or non-magnetic atoms are known to significantly impact the magnetic structure and related transport properties of magnets. To clarify the change of magnetic structure of B20-type magnets with element doping, we conduct real-space observations of spin textures and their temperature (T)-magnetic field (H) phase diagrams of a helimagnet FeGe with partially substituting Fe and Ge with Co and Si, respectively. The helical period (λ) changes dramatically by the element doping: λ increases by 147% to 103 nm in 30% Co-doped FeGe, whereas it decreases by around 70% to 49 nm in 30% Si-doped FeGe, compared to the λ =70 nm in FeGe. Upon applying the magnetic field normally to (001), (110), and (111) thin plates of both FeSi0.3Ge0.7 and Fe0.7Co0.3Ge, the hexagonal skyrmion crystal (SkX) state emerges. The magnetic phase diagrams observed through the real-space imaging reveal that (1) the SkX can extend to a larger T-H window by reducing the sample thickness or by cooling the sample under specific magnetic fields from temperatures above the transition temperature (TC
); (2) the stability of the SkX phase differs between Si-doped and Co-doped FeGe: the SkX phase is most unstable in the (111) FeSi0.3Ge0.7, while it remains robust in the (111) Fe0.7Co0.3Ge. These differences indicate distinct anisotropic behavior in FeGe with magnetic (Co) and non-magnetic-element (Si) dopants.
The Sobol’ sequence is not quasi-uniform in dimension 2
Authors: Goda Takashi 
Published: February 2024

Are common quasi-Monte Carlo sequences quasi-uniform? While this question remains widely open, in this short note, we prove that the two-dimensional Sobol’ sequence is not quasi-uniform. This result partially answers an unsolved problem of Sobol’ and Shukhman [Math. Comput. Simulation 75 (2007), pp. 80–86] in a negative manner.
A life and death of attention
Authors: Rozelle-Stone A. Rebecca 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter provides a brief biography of Simone Weil, highlighting major events and milestones in her life, including her familial background, the influence of her brother and burgeoning mathematician André on her intellectual development, her health issues and concerns with physical and moral purity, her education and philosophical influences, her teaching and activist work, and the manner of her death. A famous exchange with Simone de Beauvoir is detailed, as well as the impact of her famous teacher Alain. As the title of this chapter suggests, her life (including her death) was one of intense attention, especially to classes of people who had been marginalized, neglected, or exploited. This account of her life showcases an uncompromising thinker who viewed her own existence and self as a stain on the beauty of the world, such that she saw her vocation as necessarily focused on continual self-denial and self-displacement, no matter what degree of suffering this entailed, in order to make space for truth.
Religion
Authors: Rozelle-Stone A. Rebecca 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter demonstrates that Weil was undoubtedly a religious and arguably a Christian thinker, even if she was wary of institutionalized religion. However, religiosity is capable of transcending institution, so resistance to the organizations and collectivisms of religion did not prevent Weil from affirming the beauty, truth, and goodness that arise from various religions, especially Christianity. Desiring the transcendent and absolute good is the foundation for Weil’s notion of religiosity. She thought that religion is, at its core, a promise of God that anyone who sincerely contemplates and desires the supernatural can be wholly transformed. Therefore, this chapter examines Weil’s unique Christian understanding and mystical experiences; her approach to the problem of evil and related concepts like decreation; the inspirations provided by other religious traditions, like Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as her notorious antipathy towards Judaism; and, finally, her endorsement of a certain form of atheism as a means of religious purification.
Ethics
Authors: Rozelle-Stone A. Rebecca 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Deriving from her religious-metaphysical views, Weil’s ethics centres on the practice of attending to particular others and to the world at large. Her particular approach to moral questions reflects a new kind of ethical theory, one that appears to bring together divergent elements of Kantian deontology (duty-based ethics) and later contemporary care ethics, but which cannot be entirely framed by either of these. This chapter serves to highlight her ethical philosophy and expands on themes such as: her concept of the void and its relation to the self; her notion of evil and its relation to illusion; her understanding of goodness and its connection to attentiveness; and her description of a kind of moral education which gives people a pragmatic avenue for engaging in the cultivation of attention. For her, there is essentially one moral choice presented to humans at any given time: persons can consent to the forces of the natural world and be governed by mechanical necessity and the moral gravity it entails, or they can sincerely desire the absent Good. Only the latter can be characterized as attention, the basis of ethics in her view.
Beauty
Authors: Rozelle-Stone A. Rebecca 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter explores Weil’s aesthetic philosophy, following from an understanding of her attentive ethics examined in the previous chapter. Here, the focus shifts to what attention to the ‘things of this world’—including the natural world and works of art—reveals. Central to these explorations are Weil’s notions of metaxu, beauty, the precarity of existence, creaturely vulnerability, and necessity. One of the important points to emerge from discussion of these concepts is the need to orient ourselves within and towards the things of this world with consciousness of limitations, relations, and conditions. Yet, as we have seen, our attentiveness is constituted by a hunger for the eternal and the true, so there is a simultaneous attraction to and restlessness with earthly beauty insofar as they conceal and partially reveal true beauty. Weil calls these objects of our direct attention and love metaxu, a word which conveys their status as intermediaries between our longing for the eternal and the good/beautiful itself. Following a more detailed account of Weil’s idea of metaxu, this chapter examines two categories of earthly beauty—art and nature—and what they tell us about her aesthetic theory, as well as the kind of attentive disposition that is cultivated via encounters with such beauty.
Weil in the present and future
Authors: Rozelle-Stone A. Rebecca 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
The final chapter in this short book focuses on the continuing legacy of Simone Weil, both in terms of thinkers whose ideas have been shaped by her writings (highlighting Emmanuel Levinas, Iris Murdoch, Susan Sontag, and Anne Carson) and some of the contemporary crises which could benefit from reflection on her work. Some of the current global challenges raised and indirectly addressed by Weil’s philosophy include: growing authoritarianism, political and personal violence, pseudo-religious ideologies like the prosperity gospel, neoliberal values, the mechanization and technologization of everyday life, and deepening social-economic asymmetries. These crises find their roots in an admixture of late capitalist values tinged with nationalist-religious fervour alongside a sweeping (if unconscious) nihilism that prepares the path for tyrants, violence, and destruction of communities and the world at large. In her own time, Weil diagnosed many of these present ills and identified their root causes, noting our resentment of necessary limits, our propensity towards self-centredness and void-filling, and the ways in which we create dangerously powerful idols by conferring absolute values onto what is merely relative and temporal.
The volcanic menace
Authors: McGuire Bill 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Volcanoes are one of the ways that our planet dissipates the colossal amounts of heat coming from its interior. There may be as many as 2,000 active volcanoes, more than 500 of which have erupted since 1800, and around 70 of which are in eruption every year. The magma that feeds eruptions is formed in the asthenosphere, which is located in the uppermost mantle. The viscosity of magma is controlled by the silica content, higher levels of which making them stickier. Silica-rich eruptions tend to be more explosive and form domes or steep-sided stratovolcanoes. Relatively silica-poor eruptions are typically effusive (lava-forming) and build gently sloping shield volcanoes. Eruptions can occur at a range of scales—measured by the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI)—right up to so-called super-eruptions that can excavate giant craters known as calderas and plunge our world into volcanic winter. Volcanoes can kill in any number of ways, the deadliest being the hurricane blasts of gas and ash known as pyroclastic flows, and the volcanic mudflows termed lahars. The effects of large explosive eruptions on the global climate can also result in many indirect deaths due to harvest failure and famine. On the plus side, no volcano erupts without warning signs, so—provided a volcano is being monitored—eruptions can be predicted in time for evacuation.
Storm force
Authors: McGuire Bill 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
At the most basic level, windstorms involve the anomalously rapid movement of batches of air in the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, which is measured on the Beaufort Wind-force Scale. Windstorms have always been with us. Now, however, they are being supercharged by global heating so that their potential for destruction and loss of life is progressively escalating. Hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones form in the tropics, taking their energy from the warm seas. Hurricanes are classified by wind speed using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. The most powerful category 5 storms have sustained wind speeds of 252 kilometres or more and can cause immense destruction and loss of life. Storms in the tropics are capable of rapid intensification, turning an inoffensive blow into a raging tempest within a matter of hours. The greatest storm threats at mid-latitudes are extra-tropical cyclones, the most powerful of which are characterized by hurricane-force wind speeds, and can also be extremely destructive. Like hurricanes, extra-tropical cyclones can intensify rapidly via a process known as explosive cyclogenesis. Both tropical and extra-tropical storms can also cause damage and take lives due to accompanying heavy rain and flooding, blizzards and ice storms, and coastal storm surges. In continental areas, most notably across the United States, tornadoes also pose a major—if localized—threat. On the Enhanced Fujita Scale used to measure their intensity, the most powerful EF5 tornadoes have wind speeds of 320 kilometres an hour or more, and can obliterate entire communities.
Existential threats and systemic shocks
Authors: McGuire Bill 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Global geophysical events have the potential to wipe out not only our civilization, but the whole of humanity. Fortunately, only one event would be up to the job, a c.10 kilometre wide asteroid impact like the one that terminated the dinosaurs. At the moment, nothing like this is on the cards, although there are thousands of Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs), some with the potential to bring about a cosmic winter and global famine if they did hit us. Most Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs) are being tracked, so it looks as if we are okay for now. There are, however, other geophysical events that could seriously impact global society and its economy. These include a volcanic super-eruption capable of bringing a volcanic winter lasting years, and a North Atlantic mega-tsunami caused by a future Canary Island volcano collapse. A so-called strategic earthquake, striking at one of the global command and control centres—notably Tokyo, New York, or the San Francisco region—would also have the potential to bring the global economy to its knees, at least temporally. While considering such threats, however, it is critical that we never forget that we are already at the centre of a global geophysical event—climate breakdown brought about by global heating arising from humankind’s carbon-polluting activities. It is now practically impossible for us to stay this side of a 1.5°C global average temperature rise (since pre-industrial times), so that all-pervasive climate change that will affect everyone and insinuate itself into every aspect of our lives is now all but certain.
The Gulag
Authors: Barenberg Alan 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
A vast system of prisons, camps, and exile settlements, the Gulag was one of the defining institutions of the Stalinist Soviet Union and one of the most heinous examples of mass incarceration in the twentieth century. Combining the functions of a standard prison system with the goal of isolating and punishing alleged enemies of the Soviet regime, it stretched throughout the Soviet Union, from central Moscow to the farthest reaches of Siberia. From its creation in 1930 to its partial dismantling in the mid-1950s, approximately 25 million people passed through the Gulag. Prisoners and exiles were forced to work in brutal conditions, and millions perished. Although the majority of prisoners and exiles were released after Stalin’s death, this was not an end to their struggles. Survivors attempted to reintegrate themselves into a Soviet political, social, and economic system that was hardly welcoming. Although some former prisoners wrote or spoke about their experiences in the years and decades after release, it was not until after the collapse of the Soviet Union that a full reckoning became possible. The Gulag: A Very Short Introduction examines the Gulag and its legacies based on prisoner testimony, archival sources, and the very latest scholarship. It follows three themes: the close connections between the world of the Gulag and the Soviet Union at large; the diverse identities of prisoners and exiles and how this affected their experiences; and the long-term legacies of the Gulag.