Beaver-Driven Peatland Ecotone Dynamics: Impoundment Detection Using Lidar and Geomorphon Analysis

This investigation focused on remotely detecting beaver impoundments and dams along the boreal-like peatland ecotones enmeshing Cranberry Glades Botanical Area, a National Natural Landmark in mountainous West Virginia, USA. Beaver (Castor spp.) are renowned for their role as ecosystem engineers. They can alter local hydrology, change the ratios of meadow to woodland, act as buffers against drought and wildfire, and influence important climate parameters such as carbon retention and methanogenesis. The Cranberry Glades (~1000 m a.s.l.) occupy ~300 ha, including ~40 ha of regionally rare, open peatlands. Given the likely historical role of beaver activity in the formation and maintenance of peatland conditions at Cranberry Glades, monitoring of recent activity may be useful in predicting future changes. We analyzed remotely sensed data to identify and reconstruct shifting patterns of surface hydrology associated with beaver ponds and dams and developed a novel application of geomorphons to detect them, aided by exploitation of absences and errors in Lidar data. We also quantified decadal-timescale dynamics of beaver activity by tallying detectable active impoundments between 1990–2020, revealing active/fallow cycles and changing numbers of impoundments per unit area of suitable riparian habitat. This research presents both a practical approach to monitoring beaver activity through analysis of publicly available data and a spatiotemporal reconstruction of three decades of beaver activity at this rare and imperiled “Arctic Island” of the southern High Alleghenies.

Teachers' Successful Information and Communication Technology Integration in Primary School

Despite extensive research on ICT integration among teachers, limited knowledge was given to understand the successful integration of ICT among teachers. For those purposes, a single-case study aimed to explain the successful integration of ICT by teachers into teaching in one national primary school in Malaysia. Data were collected using multi-method of data collection including in-depth interviews, non-participants observations, and document analysis. The results discovered three models that lead to teachers' successful ICT integration in teaching, explaining how the interactions between the contradictions, causes of contradictions, and resolutions of contradictions have hindered or influenced the teachers to integrate ICT in their teaching. The findings indicate the activity system of department and school (prior activities) influencing activity system of the classroom (recent activity), led to the successful integration of ICT by teachers in teaching.

Authenticity on the Fringe: A Bottom-Up Approach to the Study of the True Self

The quest for authenticity is a potent existential striving. Authenticity is commonly defined as the extent to which a person knows, and lives in accordance with their "true self." We propose that people can also infer whether they are being authentic from ambient feelings of fluency, or the subjective feeling of ease that corresponds to one's immediate experience, mental processing, or physical action. We report findings from four studies and a meta-analysis that support this view. Study 1 shows that experienced fluency during one’s most recent activity predicts authentic feelings independently of other relevant variables. In Study 2, participants’ recalled experiences of authenticity were also those that felt fluent. Study 3 was a pre-registered compliment to Study 2, and shows that participants' recalled experiences of fluency were also those that felt authentic. In a pre-registered Study 4, participants who generated self-defining attributes under cognitive load reported greater difficulty doing so and subsequently lower authenticity. Other attempts to manipulate fluency, reported in the Supplement, were successful in doing so, but did not produce reliable main effects on authenticity. Nevertheless, a robust correlation between self-reported fluency and authenticity was found in these studies. In Study 5, we meta-analyze this fluency-authenticity link using all relevant data collected during this project. We discuss how our phenomenological approach to authenticity can integrate, but also update, recent theorizing about the nature of authenticity and how this model can be used to further speculate about who and what can be authentic.

Aspectual pairing and aspectual classes in Abui

This paper describes the aspectual classes in Abui, a Papuan language of the Timor-Alor-Pantar family. Abui innovated a system of aspectual stem pairing, realized by consonant mutation, vowel grading, and rime mutation. Although stem pairing is widespread (about 61% of the verbs alternate), about 38% of our 1,330 verb sample are unpaired and immutable. Abui verbal stems combine with aspectual affixes, adverbs and auxiliary verbs, whose distribution is used here together with the stem types to describe aspectual classes, which are understood as lexicalizations of transitional possibilities of lexical items (e.g. inchoative-stative vs. inchoative-gradual.inchoative-stative). The paper takes the bidimensional approach to aspect distinguishing between properties associated with the perfective-imperfective system and other aspectual marking (cf. Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 2002. Recent activity in the theory of aspect: accomplishments, achievements, or just non-progressive state? Linguistic Typology 6(2). 199–271). Combining the features of both types of aspectual marking, we construct in a bottom-up fashion the aspectual classes in Abui and also show that these may be further refined if contextual features such as valency or degree of change (affectedness) were included. A characteristic feature of the Abui system is the elaborate system of stative-inchoative verbs sensitive to scalar and change properties (e.g. instant vs. gradual). Abui telic verbs show sensitivity to the properties of the resulting state and are formally associated with stem alternation.

Dynamic Group Recommendation Algorithm Based on Member Activity Level

The rapid development of social networks has led to an increased desire for group entertainment consumption, making the study of group recommender systems a hotspot. Existing group recommender systems focus too much on member preferences and ignore the impact of member activity level on recommendation results. To this end, a dynamic group recommendation algorithm based on the activity level of members is proposed. Firstly, the algorithm predicts the unknown preferences of members using a time-series-oriented rating prediction model. Secondly, considering the dynamic change of member activity level, the group profile is generated by designing a sliding time window to investigate the recent activity level of each member in the group at the recommended moment, and preference is aggregated based on the recent activity level of members. Finally, the group recommendations are generated based on the group profile. The experimental results show that the algorithm in this paper achieves a better recommendation result.

Fatigue

Fatigue is the most frequent, complex, multidimensional, and debilitating symptom in patients with advanced life-limiting diseases. In cancer patients, it is defined as ‘distressing persistent, subjective sense of physical, emotional, and/or cognitive tiredness or exhaustion related to cancer or cancer treatment that is not proportional to recent activity and interferes with usual functioning’. In the majority of patients receiving palliative care, the aetiology of fatigue is multifactorial. The most common factors associated with fatigue include anorexia/cachexia, pain, anxiety, depression, shortness of breath, sleep disturbances, anaemia, and inflammation. Routine screening for fatigue is essential for optimal assessment of fatigue. Initial management should aim towards identification and treatment of the reversible/underlying causes However, if there are no reversible causes identified or if the fatigue is not responsive to specific treatments, symptomatic treatment should be considered.

A Normal Faults System in the Monte Nerone area and its significance in the recent seismo-tectonic setting of the Northern Umbria-Marche Apennines (Italy)

The faults system mapped in the northern Marche Apennines, the NW sector of Monte Nerone, Italy, shows many indications of recent activity. This area has been affected by some strong historical earthquakes, such as the Cagli earthquake of 1781, similar to seismic events close by affecting the southern Marche, Umbria, Lazio, and Abruzzi areas in recent years, we focused our investigation on this sector. The original field mapping work integrated with seismic and subsurface data suggests very similar genesis and kinematics to those of the recent seismic events in the south of Marche region. In addition, this interpretation could also attest the extensional tectonic activity affecting the whole Adriatic side of the watershed backbone of this sector of the Apennines, with probable inversion of involved previous compressional features, such as thrust ramps.

Eat MO beef : effects of regional labeling on Missouri consumers' beef preferences

With recent activity suggesting a desire to increase Missouri's meat processing capacity, it is necessary to provide consumer data for industry consideration. The objective of this research is to empirically measure Missouri consumers' willingness-to-pay for various beef attributes and how this varies by age and location of respondents. Through a statewide survey and discrete choice analysis, this study found statistically significant premiums for all three variables under consideration: Missouri grown, local, and USDA prime. Of these, local demanded the highest premium across all demographics with a maximum of 2.23 [dollars] per pound of top loin steak. These premiums are indicative of value-added opportunities, but do not account for additional processing costs incurred and therefore do not guarantee increased profitability.

Using Dirichlet Marked Hawkes Processes for Insider Threat Detection

Malicious insiders cause significant loss to organizations. Due to an extremely small number of malicious activities from insiders, insider threat is hard to detect. In this paper, we present a Dirichlet Marked Hawkes Process (DMHP) to detect malicious activities from insiders in real-time. DMHP combines the Dirichlet process and marked Hawkes processes to model the sequence of user activities. Dirichlet process is capable of detecting unbounded user modes (patterns) of infinite user activities, while for each detected user mode, one set of marked Hawkes processes is adopted to model user activities from time and activity type (e.g., WWW visit or send email) information so that different user modes are modeled by different sets of marked Hawkes processes. To achieve real-time malicious insider activity detection, the likelihood of the most recent activity calculated by DMHP is adopted as a score to measure the maliciousness of the activity. Since the majority of user activities are benign, those activities with low likelihoods are labeled as malicious activities. Experimental results on two datasets show the effectiveness of DMHP.

A perspective on corrosion of multi-principal element alloys

Metallic alloys are critical to essentially all advanced technologies and engineered systems. The well-documented impact of corrosion (and oxidation) of alloys, remains a significant industrial and economic challenge, year on year. Recent activity in the field of metallurgy has revealed a class of metallic alloys, termed multi principal element alloys (MPEAs) that present unique physical properties. Such MPEAs have in many instances also demonstrated a high resistance to corrosion – which may permit the broader use of MPEAs as corrosion resistant alloys (CRAs) in harsh environments. Herein, the progress in MPEA research to date, along with prospects and challenges, are concisely reviewed—with potential future lines of research elaborated.