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An estimation of Network Rail soil carbon stocks based on data from disused rail lines
No full textThe rapid expansion of the rail network in the 19th century created nearly 30,000 km of Technosol corridors across Great Britain (GB). Today, the GB railway estate covers over 51,000 ha and is managed by Network Rail Infrastructure Limited. A base line estimate of the soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is required to support Net Zero objectives. For this study 338 cores from 87 sites were collected from disused railway lines as an accessible proxy to the active network. Technosols are often excluded from soil carbon accounting and there are no estimates of railway soil carbon stocks. Our analysis of soil cores revealed a mean (±SD) SOC concentration (SOCc) of 5.0 % (±3.7), corresponding to an average SOC density of 49.7 t ha−1 (±27.8) to a depth of 30 cm. Significant factors affecting SOCc included parent material, bulk density, moisture and soil texture while habitat and climate had less influence. Railway-specific factors such as structure, construction and abandonment dates had minimal impact. Mixed effects linear modelling explained 55 % of the SOCc variation (R2 = 0.55). With no soil data available for the working railways, a reduced-factor general linear model, incorporating underlying bedrock, adjacent soil type and habitat (R2 = 0.19), was used to produce an initial SOC density map for the active rail network This gave an average carbon density for the Network Rail estate of 29.7 t ha−1 and a total soil carbon stock of 1.52 million tonnes (±6430). This is significantly lower than natural soils and many other technosols and suggests that these immature soils have the potential to sequester more carbon, assisted by appropriate land and vegetation management
Essays on the economics of migration
Get PDFThis thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of migration’s diverse impacts across low-income (16 African countries), upper-middle-income (T¨urkiye), and high-income (the United Kingdom) settings, focusing on health, political dynamics, and labor market outcomes. Recognizing the inherent endogeneity and reverse causality in migration studies, this research employs a range of econometric techniques, including instrumental variable (IV) methods and two-way fixed effect models, to establish causal relationships. Chapter 2 investigates the political consequences of refugee presence in 16 Sub-Saharan African countries, leveraging UNHCR refugee data and Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA) data, and finds that inclusive refugee policies enhance incumbent support and reduce electoral competition by improving access to public services and stimulating local economies, as evidenced by Afrobarometer survey data. Chapter 3 examines the health implications of the Syrian refugee influx on Turkish children under five, utilizing the Turkish Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) and an IV approach to address endogenous refugee settlement. Findings reveal a positive impact on children’s anthropometric measures, driven by increased maternal time, particularly among low-educated mothers. Chapter 4 explores the pay-health nexus in the UK, using the Understanding Society Survey (USS) and a Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) approach to demonstrate that high pay significantly improves physical and mental health. This chapter also examines the heterogeneous effects of gig work and multiple job holding on health, using quantile regression, and analyzes the generational differences in health outcomes among migrant populations. The thesis highlights the importance of inclusive migration policies and strategic aid distribution in maximizing positive spillovers for host communities, while also addressing health inequalities through improved pay and job conditions. It underscores the need for context-specific policies that facilitate migrant integration and ensure equitable outcomes, contributing to a deeper understanding of migration’s complex socioeconomic impacts
Neural representations of grasp congruence during the emergence of precision grasping
Get PDFGrasping is a fundamental skill that enables people to interface with and explore objects around them. The emergence of precision (thumb‐to‐forefinger) grasping during infancy represents a developmental shift in this skill and has been linked to more advanced action perception, particularly in detecting action incongruencies. In this study, ERPs known to be elicited in response to action were studied in 9‐ and 11.5‐month‐old infants as they watched whole‐hand and precision grasping actions congruent or incongruent with a target object. Components related to attentional (Nc, P400) and semantic (N400) processes were examined to determine whether infants' perception of grasp is based on attention and recognition, on higher‐level representations of action, or a mix of these two levels of processing. Effects of congruence were found for the P400 and the N400. The P400 effect was greater among the older age group. Infants' ability to produce a precision grip did not significantly affect their ERPs in response to actors' incongruent versus congruent grasps, which would have been expected if recognition of incongruous grasping actions were based on motor experience. Results indicate that infant ERPs differ between grasps that are congruent or incongruent with the form of a target object via multiple cognitive processes
Euclid : Early Release Observations - Unveiling the morphology of two Milky Way globular clusters out to their periphery
No full textAs part of the Euclid Early Release Observations (ERO) programme, we analysed deep, wide-field imaging from the VIS and NISP instruments of two Milky Way globular clusters (GCs), namely NGC 6254 (M10) and NGC 6397, to look for observational evidence of their dynamical interaction with the Milky Way. We searched for such an interaction in the form of structural and morphological features in the clusters’ outermost regions, which would be suggestive of the development of tidal tails on scales larger than those sampled by the ERO data. From our multi-band photometric analysis, we obtained deep and well-behaved colour–magnitude diagrams that, in turn, enabled an accurate membership selection. The surface brightness profiles built from these samples of member stars are the deepest ever obtained for these two Milky Way GCs, reaching down to ∼30.0 mag/arcsec2, which is ∼1.5 mag/arcsec2 lower than before. The investigation of the two-dimensional density map of NGC 6254 reveals an elongated morphology of the cluster peripheries in the direction and with the amplitude predicted by N-body simulations of the cluster’s dynamical evolution, at high statistical significance. We interpret this as strong evidence for the first detection of tidally induced morphological distortion around this cluster. The density map of NGC 6397 reveals a slightly elliptical morphology, in agreement with previous studies, which requires further investigation on larger scales to be properly interpreted. This ERO project thus demonstrates the power of Euclid in studying the outer regions of GCs at an unprecedented level of detail, thanks to the combination of the large field of view, high spatial resolution, and depth enabled by the telescope. Our results highlight the future Euclid survey as the ideal dataset for investigating GC tidal tails and stellar streams
First study of neutrino angle reconstruction using quasielastic like interactions in MicroBooNE
Get PDFWe investigate the expected precision of the reconstructed neutrino direction using a {\nu}{\mu}-argon quasielastic-like event topology with one muon and one proton in the final state and the reconstruction capabilities of the MicroBooNE liquid argon time projection chamber. This direction is of importance in the context of DUNE sub-GeV atmospheric oscillation studies. MicroBooNE allows for a data-driven quantification of this resolution by investigating the deviation of the reconstructed muon-proton system orientation with respect to the well-known direction of neutrinos originating from the Booster Neutrino Beam with an exposure of 1.3 x 1021 protons on target. Using simulation studies, we derive the expected sub-GeV DUNE atmospheric-neutrino reconstructed simulated spectrum by developing a reweighting scheme as a function of the true neutrino energy. We further report flux-integrated single- and double-differential cross section measurements of charged-current {\nu}{\mu} quasielastic-like scattering on argon as a function of the muon-proton system angle using the full MicroBooNE data sets. We also demonstrate the sensitivity of these results to nuclear effects and final state hadronic reinteraction modeling
Isotherms, Thermodynamics and Regeneration Studies of CO 2 Adsorption on Activated Carbon Impregnated With Waste‐Sourced Natural Amino Acids
No full textThis study investigated the CO2 adsorption isotherms, thermodynamic properties and regeneration efficiency of palm shell activated carbon (AC) impregnated with waste‐sourced natural amino acids from egg white (EW), namely, ACEW‐30. Initially, the performance of ACEW‐30 was compared with AC impregnated with fresh EW and synthetic amino acids using fixed‐bed adsorption system. The results revealed that ACEW‐30 prepared from waste sources demonstrated comparable performance with other adsorbents tested, suggesting its potential for waste valorisation. Afterwards, the data were fitted to various adsorption isotherm models, namely, Langmuir, Freundlich, Sips, Toth, Dubinin–Radushkevich and Temkin, to characterise the adsorbate‐adsorbent interaction between CO2 molecules and ACEW‐30 at different adsorption temperatures (25–50°C) and CO2 partial pressures (0.15–0.30 vol.%). The isotherm results were used to evaluate thermodynamic properties using Van't Hoff and Clausius–Clapeyron equations. The effect of regeneration conditions (desorption temperatures and nitrogen purging flow rate) have also been investigated prior to cyclic adsorption–desorption experiments. Overall findings indicate that CO2 adsorption on ACEW‐30 was best fitted to Freundlich isotherm, spontaneous and exothermic in nature. The isosteric heat of adsorption was within 20–24 kJ/mol, suggesting that the adsorption mechanism lies within the intermediate region between purely physical and purely chemical. Remarkably, the results obtained from regeneration studies reveal that ACEW‐30 exhibited high regeneration stability at 25°C and 800 mL/min purging flow rate, with more than 87% efficiency even after 20 cyclic adsorption–desorption
LLaFS++ : Few-Shot Image Segmentation With Large Language Models
Get PDFDespite the rapid advancements in few-shot segmentation (FSS), most of existing methods in this domain are hampered by their reliance on the limited and biased information from only a small number of labeled samples. This limitation inherently restricts their capability to achieve sufficiently high levels of performance. To address this issue, this paper proposes a pioneering framework named LLaFS++, which, for the first time, applies large language models (LLMs) into FSS and achieves notable success. LLaFS++ leverages the extensive prior knowledge embedded by LLMs to guide the segmentation process, effectively compensating for the limited information contained in the few-shot labeled samples and thereby achieving superior results. To enhance the effectiveness of the text-based LLMs in FSS scenarios, we present several innovative and task-specific designs within the LLaFS++ framework. Specifically, we introduce an input instruction that allows the LLM to directly produce segmentation results represented as polygons, and propose a region-attribute corresponding table to simulate the human visual system and provide multi-modal guidance. We also synthesize pseudo samples and use curriculum learning for pretraining to augment data and achieve better optimization, and propose a novel inference method to mitigate potential oversegmentation hallucinations caused by the regional guidance information. Incorporating these designs, LLaFS++ constitutes an effective framework that achieves state-of-the-art results on multiple datasets including PASCAL-5 i, COCO-20 i, and FSS-1000. Our superior performance showcases the remarkable potential of applying LLMs to process few-shot vision tasks
EMTReK Model for Advance Care Planning in Long-Term Care : Qualitative Findings from mySupport Study
No full textBackground/Objectives: Conversations about end-of-life care or advance care planning are often difficult and emotionally challenging to initiate. Tailoring messages to the specific audiences can make these sensitive discussions more manageable and effective. The Evidence-based Model for the Transfer and Exchange of Research Knowledge (EMTReK), compromising six core components (message, stakeholders, processes, context, facilitation, and evaluation) offers a structured framework for research dissemination and knowledge transfer in palliative and long-term care settings. Knowledge translation bridges research and practice, with its effectiveness depending on stakeholder engagement, tailored communication, and systematic application of evidence in policy and practice. This study explores stakeholder perspectives on a dementia care intervention, using EMTReK as an analytical framework to examine how knowledge transfer and exchange (KTE) actions were implemented across long-term care settings. Methods: A qualitative analysis was conducted on primary data comprising case narratives from multinational research groups involved in the “Caregiver Decision Support” (mySupport) study (2019–2023). Teams from Canada, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom evaluated the mySupport intervention through interviews, with analysis guided by components of the EMTReK model. Results: Facilitated Family Care Conferences were found to be effective mechanisms for supporting knowledge transfer and intervention uptake in dementia care across nursing homes in Europe and Canada. Despite challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Family Care Conferences adapted through stakeholder engagement, interactive learning, and innovative communication methods. Using EMTReK as an analytical framework, the research team identified key elements that contributed to successful implementation, including the importance of flexibility to accommodate local contexts. Conclusions: The transnational application of the EMTReK model for advance care planning in long-term dementia care highlights the importance of tailored, culturally relevant knowledge translation strategies, which, despite challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, were successfully implemented through local adaptations and diverse dissemination methods, emphasising the need for further research on their impact on resident and family outcomes
