A new fracture permeability model of CBM reservoir with high-dip angle in the southern Junggar Basin, NW China

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the National Major Research Program for Science and Technology of China (2016ZX05043-001), the National Natural Science Fund of China (grant nos. 41602170 and 41772160), the Royal Society International Exchanges-China NSFC Joint Project (grant nos. 4161101405 and RG13991-10), and Key Research and Development Projects of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (2017B03019-01).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Impact of wild prey availability on livestock predation by snow leopards

The fieldwork was supported by Fondation Segré-Whitley Fund for Nature, Conservation Leadership Programme and National Geographic Young Explorer fund. These grants supported K.R.S., Y.V.B. and C.M. Laboratory analysis was supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. This grant supported U.R., V.C., Y.V.B., K.R.S. and C.M. Data Dryad Repository. (http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8p689)An increasing proportion of the world’s poor is rearing livestock today, and the global livestock population is growing. Livestock predation by large carnivores and their retaliatory killing is becoming an economic and conservation concern. A common recommendation for carnivore conservation and for reducing predation on livestock is to increase wild prey populations based on the assumption that the carnivores will consume this alternative food. Livestock predation, however, could either reduce or intensify with increases in wild prey depending on prey choice and trends in carnivore abundance. We show that the extent of livestock predation by the endangered snow leopard Panthera uncia intensifies with increases in the density of wild ungulate prey, and subsequently stabilizes. We found that snow leopard density, estimated at seven sites, was a positive linear function of the density of wild ungulates—the preferred prey—and showed no discernible relationship with livestock density. We also found that modelled livestock predation increased with livestock density. Our results suggest that snow leopard conservation would benefit from an increase in wild ungulates, but that would intensify the problem of livestock predation for pastoralists. The potential benefits of increased wild prey abundance in reducing livestock predation can be overwhelmed by a resultant increase in snow leopard populations. Snow leopard conservation efforts aimed at facilitating increases in wild prey must be accompanied by greater assistance for better livestock protection and offsetting the economic damage caused by carnivores.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

EMIL: Extracting Meaning from Inconsistent Language

Developments in formal and computational theories of argumentation reason with inconsistency. Developments in Computational Linguistics extract arguments from large textual corpora. Both developments head in the direction of automated processing and reasoning with inconsistent, linguistic knowledge so as to explain and justify arguments in a humanly accessible form. Yet, there is a gap between the coarse-grained, semi-structured knowledge-bases of computational theories of argumentation and fine-grained, highly-structured inferences from knowledge-bases derived from natural language. We identify several subproblems which must be addressed in order to bridge the gap. We provide a direct semantics for argumentation. It has attractive properties in terms of expressivity and complexity, enables reasoning by cases, and can be more highly structured. For language processing, we work with an existing controlled natural language (CNL), which interfaces with our computational theory of argumentation; the tool processes natural language input, translates them into a form for automated inference engines, outputs argument extensions, then generates natural language statements. The key novel adaptation incorporates the defeasible expression ‘it is usual that’. This is an important, albeit incremental, step to incorporate linguistic expressions of defeasibility. Overall, the novel contribution of the paper is an integrated, end-to-end argumentation system which bridges between automated defeasible reasoning and a natural language interface. Specific novel contributions are the theory of ‘direct semantics’, motivations for our theory, results with respect to the direct semantics, an implementation, experimental results, the tie between the formalisation and the CNL, the introduction into a CNL of a natural language expression of defeasibility, and an ‘engineering’ approach to fine-grained argument analysis

Root morphology and seed and leaf ionomic traits in a Brassica napus L. diversity panel show wide phenotypic variation and are characteristic of crop habit

Background: Mineral nutrient uptake and utilisation by plants are controlled by many traits relating to root morphology, ion transport, sequestration and translocation. The aims of this study were to determine the phenotypic diversity in root morphology and leaf and seed mineral composition of a polyploid crop species, Brassica napus L., and how these traits relate to crop habit. Traits were quantified in a diversity panel of up to 387 genotypes: 163 winter, 127 spring, and seven semiwinter oilseed rape (OSR) habits, 35 swede, 15 winter fodder, and 40 exotic/unspecified habits. Root traits of 14 d old seedlings were measured in a ‘pouch and wick’ system (n = ~24 replicates per genotype). The mineral composition of 3–6 rosette-stage leaves, and mature seeds, was determined on compost-grown plants from a designed experiment (n = 5) by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Results: Seed size explained a large proportion of the variation in root length. Winter OSR and fodder habits had longer primary and lateral roots than spring OSR habits, with generally lower mineral concentrations. A comparison of the ratios of elements in leaf and seed parts revealed differences in translocation processes between crop habits, including those likely to be associated with crop-selection for OSR seeds with lower sulphur-containing glucosinolates. Combining root, leaf and seed traits in a discriminant analysis provided the most accurate characterisation of crop habit, illustrating the interdependence of plant tissues. Conclusions: High-throughput morphological and composition phenotyping reveals complex interrelationships between mineral acquisition and accumulation linked to genetic control within and between crop types (habits) in B. napus. Despite its recent genetic ancestry (<10 ky), root morphology, and leaf and seed composition traits could potentially be used in crop improvement, if suitable markers can be identified and if these correspond with suitable agronomy and quality traits

Automation bias with a conversational interface: user confirmation of misparsed information

We investigate automation bias for confirming erroneous information with a conversational interface. Participants in our studies used a conversational interface to report information in a simulated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) task. In the task, for flexibility and ease of use, participants reported information to the conversational agent in natural language. Then, the conversational agent interpreted the user’s reports in a human- and machine-readable language. Next, participants could accept or reject the agent’s interpretation. Misparses occur when the agent incorrectly interprets the report and the user erroneously accepts it. We hypothesize that the misparses naturally occur in the experiment due to automation bias and complacency because the agent interpretation was generally correct (92%). These errors indicate some users were unable to maintain situation awareness using the conversational interface. Our results illustrate concerns for implementing a flexible conversational interface in safety critical environments (e.g., military, emergency operations)

Intelligent classification of coal structure using multinomial logistic regression, random forest and fully connected neural network with multisource geophysical logging data

Acknowledgments This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 42130806, 41922016 and 41830427).Peer reviewe

Evaluation of the Nursing Handoff Process from Emergency Department to In-Patient Unit

Handoff, or transition in care, is known to be a danger point in the patient care process for a long time. Ineffective communication during handoff is one of the most common identified cause of catastrophic or sentinel events in hospitals (The Joint Commission, 2015). Emergency department (ED) to in-patient unit handoff is particularly vulnerable to medical errors due to high workload, time constraints, different approaches to patient care, and lack of established relationships between care providers (Ong & Coiera, 2011; Hilligoss & Cohen, 2012). The purpose of this project was to examine and review a current process of ED to in-patient unit handoff report, to foresee possible process improvement in favor of patient care quality and safety as well as to measure nurses’ satisfaction with current communication of care in one of the hospitals in the Bay Area. A comprehensive assessment of the organization, direct observations of the interunit handoff process as well as nursing staff interviews were conducted to establish a baseline understanding of the current state of the process at the hospital. A total of 75 Registered nurses from ED and four internal medicine units were interviewed in a course of three weeks and a total of 12 interunit handoffs were observed. A few issues in structure, process, and outcomes of handoffs were identified, such as difference in unit culture, lack of teamwork and understanding between units, lack of knowledge of available tools, as well as operational failures. After thorough review of published literature on current evidence best practices in interunit handoff, a few potential interventions were identified to improve the process. One of them is a modified ED Summary Report form based on SBAR format. The form will provide a framework for communication, along with that, it will potentially eliminate redundancy in current practice and confusion between the nurses. It will also potentially increase patient safety and nurse satisfaction