Understanding the Complexity of Water Supply System Governance: A Proposal for a Methodological Framework

The question of how the complexity of water governance may be understood beyond a heuristic concept remains unanswered. In this paper, we propose a Water Governance Complexity Framework to address the complexity of water governance. Through a literature review, rapid surveys, and 79 semi-structured interviews, we propose how this framework may be operationalized using different proxies and by applying it to the case of the water supply system for domestic use in Oaxaca, Mexico. In places such as the rural communities of Oaxaca, where the state plays a partially absent role in the water supply, we found legal pluralism and diverse formal and informal stakeholders in a multi-level structure. At the local level, four modes of governance were identified, resulting from seven institutional change trajectories. These trajectories result from linear (alignment) and non-linear (resistance and adaptation) interactions between local, state, and national institutions over different periods. We provide a pragmatic framework to understand complexity through the organization and historical configurations of water governance that may be applied globally, providing a necessary starting point and solid foundation for the creation of new water policies and law reforms or transitions to the polycentric governance model to ensure the human right to water and sanitation.

English–Welsh Cross-Lingual Embeddings

Cross-lingual embeddings are vector space representations where word translations tend to be co-located. These representations enable learning transfer across languages, thus bridging the gap between data-rich languages such as English and others. In this paper, we present and evaluate a suite of cross-lingual embeddings for the English–Welsh language pair. To train the bilingual embeddings, a Welsh corpus of approximately 145 M words was combined with an English Wikipedia corpus. We used a bilingual dictionary to frame the problem of learning bilingual mappings as a supervised machine learning task, where a word vector space is first learned independently on a monolingual corpus, after which a linear alignment strategy is applied to map the monolingual embeddings to a common bilingual vector space. Two approaches were used to learn monolingual embeddings, including word2vec and fastText. Three cross-language alignment strategies were explored, including cosine similarity, inverted softmax and cross-domain similarity local scaling (CSLS). We evaluated different combinations of these approaches using two tasks, bilingual dictionary induction, and cross-lingual sentiment analysis. The best results were achieved using monolingual fastText embeddings and the CSLS metric. We also demonstrated that by including a few automatically translated training documents, the performance of a cross-lingual text classifier for Welsh can increase by approximately 20 percent points.

Testing tidal alignment models for anisotropic correlations of halo ellipticities with N-body simulations

ABSTRACT There is a growing interest of using the intrinsic alignment (IA) of galaxy images as a tool to extract cosmological information complimentary to galaxy clustering analysis. Recently, Okumura & Taruya derived useful formulas for the intrinsic ellipticity–ellipticity correlation, the gravitational shear–intrinsic ellipticity correlation, and the velocity–intrinsic ellipticity correlation functions based on the linear alignment (LA) model. In this paper, using large-volume N-body simulations, we measure these alignment statistics for dark-matter haloes in real and redshift space and compare them to the LA and non-linear alignment model predictions. We find that anisotropic features of baryon acoustic oscillations in the IA statistics can be accurately predicted by our models. The anisotropy due to redshift-space distortions (RSDs) is also well described in the large-scale limit. Our results indicate that one can extract the cosmological information encoded in the IA through the Alcock–Paczynski and RSD effects.

Intensive Cultural Resources Survey of the Brushy Creek Sewer Line Phase 3 Project in the City of Ingram, Kerr County, Texas

On behalf of the City of Ingram, Texas, SWCA Environmental Consultants (SWCA) conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of the proposed Brushy Creek Sewer Line Project (Project) in Kerr County, Texas. The approximately 1-mile-long sewer main extension line is being developed by the City of Ingram, a political subdivision of the State of Texas; therefore, the Project requires compliance with the Antiquities Code of Texas (ACT). In addition, the Project will receive federal funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); therefore, the work was conducted to comply with requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). This cultural resources investigation was conducted under ACT Permit No. 9243. The Project begins just south of Winona Street West and terminates just south of Highway 27. The Project Area includes the proposed linear alignment situated within a 25-foot-wide corridor and lies on undeveloped land. Proposed impacts are expected to include widespread surficial modifications with deeper impacts in location of sewer lines. The cultural resources investigation consisted of a background and historical map review, followed by intensive pedestrian survey augmented by shovel testing conducted by SWCA archaeologists. SWCA’s background review determined that there are no known cultural resources within the Project area. SWCA also reviewed a 0.5-mile study area surrounding the proposed Project. This review determined there are a total of five previously conducted surveys and six previously recorded archaeological sites within 0.5 mile of the Project area. None of the six previously recorded sites have been recommended as eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Additionally, no NRHP districts or properties, sites designated as State Antiquities Landmarks, historical markers, cemeteries, or local neighborhood surveys were identified within the Project area or the larger study area. During field investigations conducted on February 4, 2019, SWCA conducted an intensive archaeological pedestrian survey augmented with shovel testing of the Project area. For linear projects, the Texas Historical Commission (THC)/Council of Texas Archaeologists (CTA) survey standards require a minimum of 16 shovel tests per mile with thorough documentation of all exceptions noted (e.g., disturbance, slope, and impervious surfaces). Based on these standards, SWCA exceeded the requirements by excavating a total of 34 shovel tests within the 1-mile Project area. No cultural materials were identified on the ground surface or within any of the shovel tests excavated within the Project area. In accordance with the ACT and with Section 106 of the NHPA (36 Code of Federal Regulations [CFR] 800.4 (b)(1)), SWCA has made a reasonable and good faith effort to identify historic properties within the area of potential effects. SWCA recommends a finding of No Historic Properties Affected per 36 CFR 800. 5(b) and no further archaeological investigation of the current Project area is recommended. No artifacts or samples were collected during this survey. All survey-related documentation will be curated at the Center for Archaeological Research, University of Texas at San Antonio.

Getting in Shape: Word Embedding SubSpaces

Many tasks in natural language processing require the alignment of word embeddings. Embedding alignment relies on the geometric properties of the manifold of word vectors. This paper focuses on supervised linear alignment and studies the relationship between the shape of the target embedding. We assess the performance of aligned word vectors on semantic similarity tasks and find that the isotropy of the target embedding is critical to the alignment. Furthermore, aligning with an isotropic noise can deliver satisfactory results. We provide a theoretical framework and guarantees which aid in the understanding of empirical results.

KiDS+GAMA: Intrinsic alignment model constraints for current and future weak lensing cosmology

We directly constrain the non-linear alignment (NLA) model of intrinsic galaxy alignments, analysing the most representative and complete flux-limited sample of spectroscopic galaxies available for cosmic shear surveys. We measure the projected galaxy position-intrinsic shear correlations and the projected galaxy clustering signal using high-resolution imaging from the Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) overlapping with the GAMA spectroscopic survey, and data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Separating samples by colour, we make no significant detection of blue galaxy alignments, constraining the blue galaxy NLA amplitude AIAB = 0.21−0.36+0.37 to be consistent with zero. We make robust detections (∼9σ) for red galaxies, with AIAR = 3.18−0.46+0.47, corresponding to a net radial alignment with the galaxy density field, and we find no evidence for any scaling of alignments with galaxy luminosity. We provide informative priors for current and future weak lensing surveys, an improvement over de facto wide priors that allow for unrealistic levels of intrinsic alignment contamination. For a colour-split cosmic shear analysis of the final KiDS survey area, we forecast that our priors will improve the constraining power on S8 and the dark energy equation of state w0, by up to 62% and 51%, respectively. Our results indicate, however, that the modelling of red/blue-split galaxy alignments may be insufficient to describe samples with variable central/satellite galaxy fractions.

The dependence of intrinsic alignment of galaxies on wavelength using KiDS and GAMA

The outer regions of galaxies are more susceptible to the tidal interactions that lead to intrinsic alignments of galaxies. The resulting alignment signal may therefore depend on the passband if the colours of galaxies vary spatially. To quantify this, we measured the shapes of galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts from the GAMA survey using deep gri imaging data from the KiloDegree Survey. The performance of the moment-based shape measurement algorithm DEIMOS was assessed using dedicated image simulations, which showed that the ellipticities could be determined with an accuracy better than 1% in all bands. Additional tests for potential systematic errors did not reveal any issues. We measure a significant difference of the alignment signal between the g, r and i-band observations. This difference exceeds the amplitude of the linear alignment model on scales below 2 Mpc h−1. Separating the sample into central/satellite and red/blue galaxies, we find that the difference is dominated by red satellite galaxies.

Acoustic Emissions in Compression of Building Materials: Q-Statistics Enables the Anticipation of the Breakdown Point

In this paper we present experimental results concerning Acoustic Emission (AE) recorded during cyclic compression tests on two different kinds of brittle building materials, namely concrete and basalt. The AE inter-event times were investigated through a non-extensive statistical mechanics analysis which shows that their decumulative probability distributions follow q-exponential laws. The entropic index q and the relaxation parameter q 1=Tq, obtained by fitting the experimental data, exhibit systematic changes during the various stages of the failure process, namely (q; Tq) linearly align. The Tq = 0 point corresponds to the macroscopic breakdown of the material. The slope, including its sign, of the linear alignment appears to depend on the chemical and mechanical properties of the sample. These results provide an insight on the warning signs of the incipient failure of building materials and could therefore be used in monitoring the health of existing structures such as buildings and bridges.

Correction: Non-linear alignment dynamics in suspensions of platelets under rotating magnetic fields

Correction for ‘Non-linear alignment dynamics in suspensions of platelets under rotating magnetic fields’ by Randall M. Erb et al., Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 7604–7609.