Impacts of Flash Flood on Ground Water Quality: Case Study of Central River Region, The Gambia

Floods rank as one of the most common natural calamities, impacting the lives of millions across the globe. With ongoing population growth and expanding water and land usage, the potential for contamination and human disturbances to negatively impact water bodies continues to rise globally. This paper aims to comprehensively analyze the repercussions of floods on the groundwater quality of a region called CRR in the Gambia, during the July 2022 flood event. The focus lies on exploring the change in water quality parameters of twelve water samples from wells and boreholes through laboratory analysis of eight parameters such as pH, turbidity, temperature, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, nitrate, iron, sulfate, and microbial proliferation. The laboratory analysis results of the physiochemical parameters such as turbidity, and iron exceeded the safe drinking water standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO) in about 60% of the sites and fecal coliform presence in 75 % of the samples. The other parameters varied differently across all sites. However, most of the values are observed to be more prominent at the open well than borehole. The Water Quality Index (WAWQI) score also shows that 1 site has excellent water quality, 25%, has good quality and 25% has fair quality. The rest of the sites which make up 42% of the samples, are all of poor quality and unsuitable for drinking purposes. The results provide a crucial groundwork for subsequent studies targeting the water quality in this area.&nbsp

Detection of 12426 SB2 candidates in the LAMOST-MRS, using a binary spectral model

We use an updated method for the detection of double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2) using $v \sin{i}$ values from spectral fits. The method is applied to all spectra from LAMOST-MRS. Using this method, we detect 12426 SB2 candidates, where 4321 are already known and 8105 are new discoveries. We check their spectra manually to minimise possible false positives. We also detect several cases of contamination of the spectra by solar light. Additionally, for candidates with multiple observations we compute mass ratios with systemic velocities and determine Keplerian orbits. We present an updated catalogue of all SB2 candidates together with additional information for some of them in separate data tables.Comment: accepted in MNRAS 2023-10-16. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2207.0699

Promoted Electronic Coupling of Acoustic Phonon Modes in Doped Semimetallic MoTe2

As a prototype of the Weyl superconductor, layered molybdenum telluride (MoTe2) encompasses two semimetallic phases (1T_prime and Td) which differentiate from each other via a slight tilting of the out-of-plane lattice. Both phases are subjected to serious phase mixing which complicates the analysis of its origin of superconductivity. Herein, we explore the electron-phonon coupling (EPC) of the monolayer semimetallic MoTe2, without phase ambiguity under this thickness limit. Apart from the hardening or softening of phonon modes, the strength of the EPC can be strongly modulated by doping. Specifically, longitudinal and out-of-plane acoustic modes are significantly activated for electron doped MoTe2. This is ascribed to the presence of rich valley states and equispaced nesting bands which are dynamically populated under charge doping. Through comparing the monolayer and bilayer MoTe2, the strength of EPC is found to be less likely to depend on thickness for neutral samples but clearly promoted for thinner samples with electron doping, while for hole doping, the strength alters more significantly with the thickness than doping. Our work explains the puzzling issue of the doping sensitivity of the superconductivity in semimetallic MoTe2 and establishes the critical role of activating acoustic phonons in such low-dimensional materials

Skeleton-of-Thought: Large Language Models Can Do Parallel Decoding

This work aims at decreasing the end-to-end generation latency of large language models (LLMs). One of the major causes of the high generation latency is the sequential decoding approach adopted by almost all state-of-the-art LLMs. In this work, motivated by the thinking and writing process of humans, we propose "Skeleton-of-Thought" (SoT), which guides LLMs to first generate the skeleton of the answer, and then conducts parallel API calls or batched decoding to complete the contents of each skeleton point in parallel. Not only does SoT provide considerable speed-up (up to 2.39x across 11 different LLMs), but it can also potentially improve the answer quality on several question categories in terms of diversity and relevance. SoT is an initial attempt at data-centric optimization for efficiency, and reveal the potential of pushing LLMs to think more like a human for answer quality.Comment: Technical report, work in progres

A Clinical Report of Two Cases of Cryptogenic Brain Abscess and a Relevant Literature Review

Brain abscess, a severe intracranial infectious disease, refers to the parenchyma abscess caused by local infection or remote spread. Recently, advancements in modern medicine, especially the wide application of antimicrobial drugs, have contributed to the gradual decrease in the prevalence of this disease. However, cases of cryptogenic brain abscess that feature an unknown origin and atypical symptoms are rising. In this retrospective study, we report and analyze two cases of cryptogenic brain abscess. The first patient was a 30-year-old healthy man who was admitted to our hospital due to 1 week of headache and 3 days of headache aggravation, accompanied by nausea and vomiting. Head MRI shows a circular space-occupying as well as apparently enhanced DWI signals were observed in the right parietal lobe, and the ring wall manifested an apparent increase in signal intensity after enhancement. The patient was diagnosed as a brain abscess before operation and given craniotomy. The postoperative pathology confirmed brain abscess and recovered well after surgery. The second patient was a 45-year-old healthy woman who was hospitalized in a local hospital due to symptoms of headache and right limb weakness for 1 week. Head MRI shows a circular space-occupying lesion in the left basal ganglia, and the ring wall manifested an apparent increase in signal intensity after enhancement. The patient was suspected of glioma at the local hospital and was transferred to our hospital. Twelve hours after hospitalization, the patient was suspected of developing cerebral palsy and thus underwent emergency surgery including lesion resection in the left basal ganglia, resection of the polus temporalis, and a decompressive craniotomy. Postoperative pathology confirmed brain abscess. The patient was eventually conscious, but left the right limb hemiplegia. Hence, when a patient develops the classical triad of fever, headache, and focal neurologic deficits, the possibility of brain abscess should be investigated. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to minimize various complications and the number of deaths

Design and synthesis of active heparan sulfate-based probes

A chemoenzymatic approach for synthesizing heparan sulfate oligosaccharides with a reactive diazoacetyl saccharide residue is reported. The resultant oligosaccharides were demonstrated to serve as specific inhibitors for heparan sulfate sulfotransferases, offering a new set of tools to probe the structural selectivity for heparan sulfate-binding proteins

Estimation of the Relationship Between Remotely Sensed Anthropogenic Heat Discharge and Building Energy Use

This paper examined the relationship between remotely sensed anthropogenic heat discharge and energy use from residential and commercial buildings across multiple scales in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. The anthropogenic heat discharge was estimated with a remote sensing-based surface energy balance model, which was parameterized using land cover, land surface temperature, albedo, and meteorological data. The building energy use was estimated using a GIS-based building energy simulation model in conjunction with Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration survey data, the Assessor's parcel data, GIS floor areas data, and remote sensing-derived building height data. The spatial patterns of anthropogenic heat discharge and energy use from residential and commercial buildings were analyzed and compared. Quantitative relationships were evaluated across multiple scales from pixel aggregation to census block. The results indicate that anthropogenic heat discharge is consistent with building energy use in terms of the spatial pattern, and that building energy use accounts for a significant fraction of anthropogenic heat discharge. The research also implies that the relationship between anthropogenic heat discharge and building energy use is scale-dependent. The simultaneous estimation of anthropogenic heat discharge and building energy use via two independent methods improves the understanding of the surface energy balance in an urban landscape. The anthropogenic heat discharge derived from remote sensing and meteorological data may be able to serve as a spatial distribution proxy for spatially-resolved building energy use, and even for fossil-fuel CO2 emissions if additional factors are considered