96 research outputs found

    Characteristics of direct human impacts on the rivers Karun and Dez in lowland south-west Iran and their interactions with earth surface movements

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    Two of the primary external factors influencing the variability of major river systems, over river reach scales, are human activities and tectonics. Based on the rivers Karun and Dez in south-west Iran, this paper presents an analysis of the geomorphological responses of these major rivers to ancient human modifications and tectonics. Direct human modifications can be distinguished by both modern constructions and ancient remnants of former constructions that can leave a subtle legacy in a suite of river characteristics. For example, the ruins of major dams are characterised by a legacy of channel widening to 100's up to c. 1000 m within upstream zones that can stretch to channel distances of many kilometres upstream of former dam sites, whilst the legacy of major, ancient, anthropogenic river channel straightening can also be distinguished by very low channel sinuosities over long lengths of the river course. Tectonic movements in the region are mainly associated with young and emerging folds with NW–SE and N–S trends and with a long structural lineament oriented E–W. These earth surface movements can be shown to interact with both modern and ancient human impacts over similar timescales, with the types of modification and earth surface motion being distinguishable. This paper examines the geomorphological evidence and outlines the processes involved in the evolution of these interactions through time. The analysis shows how interactions between earth surface movements and major dams are slight, especially after ancient dam collapse. By contrast, interactions between earth surface movements and major anthropogenic river channel straightening are shown to be a key factor in the persistence of long, near-straight river courses. Additionally, it is suggested that artificial river development, with very limited river channel lateral migration, may promote incision across an active fold at unusually long distances from the fold “core” and may promote markedly increased sinuosity across a structural lineament

    Facilitating the analysis of COVID-19 literature through a knowledge graph

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    At the end of 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) of the outbreak of a new strain of the coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2, which struck humanity by an unprecedented disaster a few months later. In response to this pandemic, a publicly available dataset was released on Kaggle which contained information of over 63,000 papers. In order to facilitate the analysis of this large mass of literature, we have created a knowledge graph based on this dataset. Within this knowledge graph, all information of the original dataset is linked together, which makes it easier to search for relevant information. The knowledge graph is also enriched with additional links to appropriate, already existing external resources. In this paper, we elaborate on the different steps performed to construct such a knowledge graph from structured documents. Moreover, we discuss, on a conceptual level, several possible applications and analyses that can be built on top of this knowledge graph. As such, we aim to provide a resource that allows people to more easily build applications that give more insights into the COVID-19 pandemic

    EcoDaLo : federating advertisement targeting with linked data

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    A key source of revenue for the media and entertainmentdomain isad targeting: serving advertisements to a select set of visitorsbased on various captured visitor traits. Compared to global media com-panies such as Google and Facebook that aggregate data from varioussources (and the privacy concerns these aggregations bring), local compa-nies only capture a small number of (high-quality) traits and retrieve anunbalanced small amount of revenue. To increase these local publishers’competitive advantage, they need to join forces, whilst taking the visi-tors’ privacy concerns into account. The EcoDaLo consortium, located in Belgium and consisting of Adlogix, Pebble Media, and Roularta MediaGroup as founding partners, aims to combine local publishers’ data without requiring these partners to share this data across the consortium.Usage of Semantic Web technologies enables a decentralized approachwhere federated querying allows local companies to combine their captured visitor traits, and better target visitors, without aggregating alldata. To increase potential uptake, technical complexity to join this consortium is kept minimal, and established technology is used where possible. This solution was showcased in Belgium which provided the participating partners valuable insights and suggests future research challenges. Perspectives are to enlarge the consortium and provide measurable impact in ad targeting to local publishers

    An ecosystem for linked humanities data

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    The main promise of the digital humanities is the ability to perform scholar studies at a much broader scale, and in a much more reusable fashion. The key enabler for such studies is the availability of suciently well described data. For the eld of socio-economic history, data usually comes in a tabular form. Existing eorts to curate and publish datasets take a top-down approach and are focused on large collections. This paper presents QBer and the underlying structured data hub, which address the long tail of research data by catering for the needs of individual scholars. QBer allows researchers to publish their (small) datasets, link them to existing vocabularies and other datasets, and thereby contribute to a growing collection of interlinked datasets.We present QBer, and evaluate our rst results by showing how our system facilitates two use cases in socio-economic history

    Molybdenum geochemistry in a seasonally dysoxic Mo-limited lacustrine ecosystem

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    Lakes are important for storage of the essential micronutrient molybdenum (Mo) during its transfer from the continents to the oceans, but little is known about the major sources and sinks for Mo in lacustrine ecosystems. We studied Mo cycling in Castle Lake, a small subalpine lake in the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains of Northern California underlain primarily by mafic and ultramafic rocks where primary productivity is limited by Mo bioavailability. The deeper water of the lake becomes dysoxic (9–90 μM dissolved oxygen) during the summer. This study was undertaken to identify the sources of Mo to Castle Lake and establish a Mo budget. We measured Mo concentrations in a suite of bulk solids (lake sediments, soils and bedrock) and aqueous samples (sediment porewaters, soil runoff, spring waters, snow and ice) from Castle Lake and its watershed. Lake sediments have elevated Mo (7–36 ppm) compared to soils and bedrock (0.2–2 ppm) and Mo/Al values were nearly two orders of magnitude higher than the crustal abundance. Sediment porewaters had higher Mo (4–15 nM) than lake water (2–4 nM), soil runoff (0.1–6.2 nM), snowmelt (⩽0.1 nM), lake ice (0.3–2.2 nM) and local spring waters (0.03–2.72 nM). Bulk lake sediments had negative δ^(98/95)Mo values, ranging from −0.5 to −1.0‰ (±0.1). We used the numerical model PROFILE to estimate the net reaction rate of Mo in the porewater. Model calculations ruled out diagenesis as a source of Mo to lake sediments; diagenetic Mo always represented ⩽5% of the total Mo content in sediment. We also ruled out dissolved Mo inputs from groundwater and watershed inflow as important sources of Mo. Two whole-lake experimental Mo additions in the 1960’s could have contributed a sizeable amount of Mo to the lake sediments, but only over a short period. Atmospheric deposition of anthropogenic Mo from extensive copper smelting that occurred south of Castle Lake from 1896 to 1919 and from major Californian urban centers today were negligible Mo sources. Mo flux from the sediments (0.4–0.5 nmol cm^(−2) yr^(−1)) was roughly equal to Mo fluxes from surface inflow and outflow, whereas Mo burial fluxes were significantly higher (11.5 nmol cm^(−2) yr^(−1)). Because dissolved Mo fluxes were minimal, and atmospheric Mo deposition was estimated to be a minor source of Mo (<1 nmol cm^(−2) yr^(−1)), the largest source of Mo is non-detrital particulate matter (∼12 nmol cm^(−2) yr^(−1)), likely a mixture of organic matter and Fe–Mn oxyhydroxides as supported by Mo isotopic data

    Resilience in education: An example from primary school in Fiji and technical vocational education and training

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    In the Pacific, the capacity of curriculum writers for integrating the content of climate change into their curricula and/or taught Resilience [Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) & Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)] in education is limited. This paper described the findings of a 2018 study on the integration of climate change into primary and secondary schools’ curricula and taught resilience in education in TVET. It involves teachers (n = 30) from Kadavu and Levuka islands, curriculum writers and editors from the Ministry of Education, GIZ, SPC, and USP—in Fiji. An exploratory design was used to explore the curricula for Fiji and the EU PacTVET project at SPC. Information was collected from workshops and training events, interviews and project documents. Using BEKA (Benchmarking, Evidencing, Knowing, Applying) and the concept of ako (e.g. to study or educate), a model of climate change and resilience in education was designed as part of this research to help Pacific schools with their curricula. These results indicate how behavioural changes may shape Resilience, thus placing them in a better position to achieve the UNFCCC, the SDGs, the Sendai Framework and the Framework for Resilient Development in the Pacific (FRDP) targets and objectives by 2030 and beyond

    Artistas sobre outras Obras

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    Na edição 29 da revista Estúdio são publicadas catorze escritas por artistas sobre outros artistas. É oportunidade para uma reflexão sobre o “rasgar retórico” do artista, a proposta feita entre as possibilidades discursivas, dentro de condicionantes. São as constantes do dispositivo que conforma as formulações. Ao mesmo tempo a relação com as matérias, com a utensilagem, é pensada, enquanto mediação com a natureza, sujeita a uma “formalidade molecular” que as máquinas amplificam. O seu autor usa o corpo que lhe cabe na geração dos vivos, herdeiro de sucessos e modelado por insucessos: é um corpo que sobra. Corpo que consegue proceder a uma economia, seja objetual, seja simbólica, iniciando-se um equilíbrio discursivo que nos atravessa.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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