Inelastic neutron scattering study of crystalline electric field excitations in the caged compounds NdT2Zn20 (T = Co, Rh, and Ir)

We have measured crystalline electric field (CEF) excitations of Nd3+ ions in the two-channel Kondo lattice candidates NdT2Zn20 (T = Co, Rh, and Ir) by means of inelastic neutron scattering (INS). In the INS measurements at 5 K, dispersionless excitations were observed at 3.8 and 7.2 meV for T = Co, 3.1 and 5.8 meV for T = Rh, and 3.0 and 5.3 meV for T = Ir. Analyses of the temperature dependence of the INS spectra confirm that the CEF ground states are the Gamma 6 doublet, that is a requisite for manifestation of the magnetic two-channel Kondo effect. For T = Co, a shoulder was observed at 7.7 meV close to the CEF excitation peak centered at 7.2 meV. The shoulder is attributed to a bound state of the CEF and low-lying optical phonon excitations.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Assimilation of SMAP products for improving streamflow simulations over tropical climate region — is spatial information more important than temporal information?

Streamflow is one of the key variables in the hydrological cycle. Simulation and forecasting of streamflow are challenging tasks for hydrologists, especially in sparsely gauged areas. Coarse spatial resolution remote sensing soil moisture products (equal to or larger than 9 km) are often assimilated into hydrological models to improve streamflow simulation in large catchments. This study uses the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) technique to assimilate SMAP soil moisture products at the coarse spatial resolution of 9 km (SMAP 9 km), and downscaled SMAP soil moisture product at the higher spatial resolution of 1 km (SMAP 1 km), into the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to investigate the usefulness of different spatial and temporal resolutions of remotely sensed soil moisture products in streamflow simulation and forecasting. The experiment was set up for eight catchments across the tropical climate of Vietnam, with varying catchment areas from 267 to 6430 km2 during the period 2017–2019. We comprehensively evaluated the EnKF-based SWAT model in simulating streamflow at low, average, and high flow. Our results indicated that high-spatial resolution of downscaled SMAP 1 km is more beneficial in the data assimilation framework in aiding the accuracy of streamflow simulation, as compared to that of SMAP 9 km, especially for the small catchments. Our analysis on the impact of observation resolution also indicates that the improvement in the streamflow simulation with data assimilation is more significant at catchments where downscaled SMAP 1 km has fewer missing observations. This study is helpful for adding more understanding of performances of soil moisture data assimilation based hydrological modelling over the tropical climate region, and exhibits the potential use of remote sensing data assimilation in hydrology

The mindsponge concept and the bayesvl R package by 2021

We review the progress of the Mindsponge concept and the bayesvl R package in scientific research from 2018 to 2021

FTKHUIM: A fast and efficient method for mining top-k high-utility itemsets

High-utility itemset mining (HUIM) is an important task in the field of knowledge data discovery. The large search space and huge number of HUIs are the consequences of applying HUIM algorithms with an inappropriate user-defined minimum utility threshold value. Determining a suitable threshold value to obtain the expected results is not a simple task and requires spending a lot of time. For common users, it is difficult to define a minimum threshold utility for exploring the right number of HUIs. On the one hand, if the threshold is set too high then the number of HUIs would not be enough. On the other hand, if the threshold is set too low, too many HUIs will be mined, thus wasting both time and memory. The top-k HUIs mining problem was proposed to solve this issue, and many effective algorithms have since been introduced by researchers. In this research, a novel approach, namely FTKHUIM (Fast top k HUI Mining), is introduced to explore the top-k HUIs. One new threshold-raising strategy called RTU, a transaction utility (TU)-based threshold-raising strategy, has also been shown to rapidly increase the speed of top-k HUIM. The study also proposes a global structure to store utility values in the process of applying raising-threshold strategies to optimize these strategies. The results of experiments on various datasets prove that the FTKHUIM algorithm achieves better results with regard to both the time and search space needed.Web of Science1110480510478

A Multinational Data Set of Game Players' Behaviors in a Virtual World and Environmental Perceptions

Video gaming has been rising rapidly to become one of the primary entertainment media, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Playing video games has been reported to associate with many psychological and behavioral traits. However, little is known about the connections between game players' behaviors in the virtual environment and environmental perceptions. Thus, the current data set offers valuable resources regarding environmental worldviews and behaviors in the virtual world of 640 Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) game players from 29 countries around the globe. The data set consists of six major categories: 1) socio-demographic profile, 2) COVID-19 concern, 3) environmental perception, 4) game-playing habit, 5) in-game behavior, and 6) game-playing feeling. By making this data set open, we aim to provide policymakers, game producers, and researchers with valuable resources for understanding the interactions between behaviors in the virtual world and environmental perceptions, which could help produce video games in compliance with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals

ONE STEP SYNTHESIS OF WATER-DISPERSIBLE CoFe2O4 MAGNETIC NANOPARTICLES USING TRIETHYLENETETRAMINE AS SOLVENT AND STABILISING LIGAND

Magnetic CoFe2O4 nanoparticles were synthesised by one step synthetic method through thermal decomposition of Co and Fe precursors in triethylenetetramine solvent at high temperature. The advantage of this method is the ability to make monodisperse nanoparticles with high water-dispersibility and stability. The particle size can be tuned in the range of 7-11.3 nm by varying synthetic conditions. The obtained particles with small DLS size (less than 21 nm) are ready to disperse and stable in aqueous solution for weeks without any surface modification