Large Periods Of Time Research Articles

Safety of Minimizing Intensity of Follow-up on Active Surveillance for Clinical Stage I Testicular Germ Cell Tumors

BackgroundWe have recommended active surveillance as the preferred management option for clinical stage I (CSI) testicular germ cell tumors (GCTs) since 1980. Over time, the recommended intensity of surveillance has decreased; however, the impact on relapse detection has not been investigated. ObjectiveTo examine relapse rate, time to relapse, extent of disease, and burden of treatment at relapse across decreasing surveillance intensity over time. Design, setting, and participantsCSI GCT patients under active surveillance from 1981 to 2021 were included in this study. Outcome measurements and statistical analysisThrough four major iterations in both nonseminomatous (NSGCT) and seminoma surveillance schedules, visit frequency, blood testing, and imaging have been decreased successively. Low-dose, noncontrast computed tomography (CT) scans were adopted in 2011. Categorical variables and time to relapse were compared using chi-square and Fisher’s exact or Kruskal-Wallis test, respectively. Results and limitationsA total of 1583 consecutive patients (942 with seminoma and 641 with NSGCT) were included. In seminoma, chest x-rays were reduced from 13 to one and CT scans were reduced from 20 to ten. Relapse rate, time to relapse, N or M category, and International Germ Cell Cancer Collaborative Group (IGCCCG) classification did not change. In NSGCT, chest x-rays were reduced from 27 to zero and CT scans were reduced from 11 to five. Relapse rate (from 46.2% to 21.2%, p = 0.002) and the median time to relapse (from 6.54 to 4.47 mo, p = 0.025) decreased. No difference in relapsed disease burden was identified by N, M, and S category or IGCCCG classification. Treatment burden at relapse and GCT cancer deaths remained similar for seminoma and NSGCT. Limitations include the retrospective design and large time period covered. ConclusionsDespite considerable reductions in surveillance intensity, we did not observe an increase in disease extent, treatment burden, or GCT cancer deaths upon relapse. These results support that our current lower-intensity active surveillance schedules are safe for managing CSI GCT. Patient summaryOur current reduced-intensity surveillance schedules for clinical stage I germ cell tumors appear to be safe.

Late stage coarsening kinetics induced by a phase-dependent mobility: A phase field study of FeCr in the spinodal regime

An efficient algorithm is presented in this work to compute the late stage coarsening kinetics within the phase-field framework. Microstructures resulting from off-critical quenches over large time periods have been simulated in the FeCr system, which exhibits substantial variations in atomic mobilities between the Fe-matrix and Cr-rich precipitates. To understand the impact of such a phase-dependent mobility on the microstructure, 2D simulations have been performed in the spinodal regime using a constant, symmetric, and phase-dependent mobility. Detailed analyses of these simulations highlight the fact that the more realistic situation where atomic mobility is non-uniform induces a competition between coalescence and coarsening of precipitates. We use these simulations to shed light upon previously published numerical and experimental results.

Modulation of pulse profile as a signal for phase transitions in a pulsar core

ABSTRACT We calculate detailed modification of pulses from a pulsar arising from the effects of phase transition induced density fluctuations on the pulsar moment of inertia. We represent general statistical density fluctuations using a simple model where the initial moment of inertia tensor of the pulsar (taken to be diagonal here) is assumed to get random additional contributions for each of its component which are taken to be Gaussian distributed with certain width characterized by the strength of density fluctuations ϵ. Using sample values of ϵ, (and the pulsar deformation parameter η) we numerically calculate detailed pulse modifications by solving Euler’s equations for the rotational dynamics of the pulsar. We also give analytical estimates which can be used for arbitrary values of ϵ and η. We show that there are very specific patterns in the perturbed pulses which are observable in terms of modulations of pulses over large time periods. In view of the fact that density fluctuations fade away eventually leading to a uniform phase in the interior of pulsar, the off-diagonal components of MI tensor also vanish eventually. Thus, the modification of pulses due to induced wobbling (from the off-diagonal MI components) will also die away eventually. This allows one to distinguish these transient pulse modulations from the effects of any wobbling originally present. Further, the decay of these modulations in time directly relates to relaxation of density fluctuations in the pulsar giving valuable information about the nature of phase transition occurring inside the pulsar.

Simplifying Small Area Estimation With rFIA: A Demonstration of Tools and Techniques

The United States (US) Department of Agriculture Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program operates the national forest inventory of the US. Traditionally, the FIA program has relied on sample-based approaches—permanent plot networks and associated design-based estimators—to estimate forest variables across large geographic areas and long periods of time. These approaches generally offer unbiased inference on large domains but fail to provide reliable estimates for small domains due to low sample sizes. Rising demand for small domain estimates will thus require the FIA program to adopt non-traditional estimation approaches that are capable of delivering defensible estimates of forest variables at increased spatial and temporal resolution, without the expense of collecting additional field data. In light of this challenge, the development of small area estimation (SAE) methods—estimation techniques that support inference on small domains—for FIA data has become an active and highly productive area of research. Yet, SAE methods remain difficult to apply to FIA data, due in part to the complex data structures and survey design used by the FIA program. Herein, we present the potential of rFIA, an open-source R package designed to increase the accessibility of FIA data, to simplify the application of a broad suite of SAE methods to FIA data. We demonstrate this potential via two case studies: (1) estimation of contemporary county-level forest carbon stocks across the conterminous US using a spatial Fay-Herriot model; and (2) temporally-explicit estimation of multi-decadal trends in merchantable wood volume in Washington County, Maine using a Bayesian multi-level model. In both cases, we show the application of SAE techniques offers considerable improvements in precision over FIA's traditional, post-stratified estimators. Finally, we offer a discussion of the potential role that rFIA and other open-source tools might play in accelerating the adoption of SAE techniques among users of FIA data.

Holocene Genetic Evolution of Pig (Sus scrofa) on Romanian Territory in a European Time and Space Frame

Romanian territory represents a key point in the dispersal of domestic pigs into Europe, due to its geographical position. Our study gathers a high number of samples from different archaeological sites on Romanian territory in order to establish a more accurate chronological view of the spread of domestic pig into Europe and to investigate the possibility of a local domestication process. Approximately 200 samples from 45 archaeological sites on Romanian territory, covering a large period of time, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, were subjected to DNA analysis. The sequencing of a short fragment from the D-loop region of the mitochondrial DNA identified a different prevalence of domestic pig genetic signature between two periods of time: the Neolithic period and the Early Bronze Age–Middle Ages period. While the Neolithic period is characterized by the presence of domestic pigs with a Near-Eastern signature, during the Early Bronze Age–Middle Ages period this genetic signature is replaced with a European one. Two European and two Near-Eastern signatures were described for all the analysed samples, each of them prevailing within the wild, respectively domestic Sus scrofa. The data also revealed the introgression process as a form of domestication in Romanian territory.

The Clinical Outcomes of Operative Treatment Versus Conservative Treatment for Dancer's Fractures: Protocol for a Retrospective Cohort Study.

BackgroundFifth metatarsal fractures are one of the most common foot fractures, and 11% to 25% of such fractures are Dancer’s fractures (distal spiral fractures). Conservative therapy while wearing a cast and operative treatment have been used as preferred modes of treatment in the limited literature available. However, we often see healing problems, such as delayed union and nonunion, when Dancer’s fractures are treated nonoperatively, resulting in a need for secondary intervention. In our institution, treatment has changed over the years from predominantly conservative treatment to mostly operative treatment. To investigate whether our hypothesis holds true that primary surgical treatment is beneficial, a retrospective study was designed.ObjectiveThe objective of the study is to compare differences between outcomes (delayed union and nonunion) of conservative and operative treatments for Dancer’s fractures.MethodsA retrospective comparative cohort study will be conducted in a level II trauma center (Zaandam Medical Center). Patients who experienced a Dancer’s fracture in the period of 2012 to 2021 will be included and divided into 2 cohorts—the conservative (2012-2015) and operative (2016-2021) treatment cohorts. The primary outcome will be the differences in percentages of delayed union and nonunion between the two groups. The secondary outcomes will be the percentage of primary conservative treatment failure, the need for secondary operative treatment, complications (infection and hardware failure), and functional outcomes. If 118 patients are included in each group, sufficient power is expected to be reached, depending on the age distribution of patients. The percentages of delayed union and nonunion among the two groups will be calculated and statistically compared via chi-square statistics. A logistic regression analysis will be used to investigate possible associations between patient characteristics and failed conservative treatment. A Mann-Whitney U test will be used to compare functional outcomes between groups. An independent, 2-tailed t test will be used to compare mean 12-Item Short Form Survey scores if they are normally distributed, and a Wilcoxon rank sum test will be used if they are nonnormally distributed.ResultsIn total, 2134 potentially relevant health insurance codes have been extracted from the hospital’s register. We expect to find a total of 236 Dancer’s fractures in this data set.ConclusionsOur study has limitations due to it being a single-center study and data collection being performed retrospectively. However, it covers a large time period and may provide the possibility to show treatment outcome differences (delayed union and nonunion, complications, and functional outcomes) in 2 reasonably large cohorts (conservative and operative treatment cohorts), which has not been done before in literature on Dancer’s fractures. If our hypothesis that surgery is beneficial for Dancer’s fractures is proven true by our study, we plan to further corroborate it by conducting a prospective randomized controlled trial.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)PRR1-10.2196/37171

Characterizing and correcting phase biases in short-term, multilooked interferograms

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is widely used to measure deformation of the Earth's surface over large areas and long time periods. A common strategy to overcome coherence loss in long-term interferograms is to use multiple multilooked shorter interferograms, which can cover the same time period but maintain coherence. However, it has recently been shown that using this strategy can introduce a bias (also referred to as a “fading signal”) in the interferometric phase. We isolate the signature of the phase bias by constructing “daisy chain” sums of short-term interferograms of different length covering identical 1-year time intervals. This shows that the shorter interferograms are more affected by this phenomenon and the degree of the effect depends on ground cover types; cropland and forested pixels have significantly larger bias than urban pixels and the bias for cropland mimics subsidence throughout the year, whereas forests mimics subsidence in the spring and heave in the autumn. We, propose a method for correcting the phase bias, based on the assumption, borne out by our observations, that the bias in an interferogram is linearly related to the sum of the bias in shorter interferograms spanning the same time. We tested the algorithm over a study area in western Turkey by comparing average velocities against results from a phase linking approach, which estimates the single primary phases from all the interferometric pairs, and has been shown to be almost insensitive to the phase bias. Our corrected velocities agree well with those from a phase linking approach. Our approach can be applied to global compilations of short-term interferograms and provides accurate long-term velocity estimation without a requirement for coherence in long-term interferograms.

Terrain deformation measurements from optical satellite imagery: The MPIC-OPT processing services for geohazards monitoring

Measuring terrain deformation over several spatial and temporal scales is relevant for many applications in Earth Sciences (i.e. active faults, volcanoes, landslides or glaciers understanding). The growing volume of freely available data represents nowadays a challenge in terms of storage capacity and computing resources which, together with the complexity of the processing (code parameterization, combination of the image sequences, co-registration of the images) may prevent the exploitation of long time series. We propose here a new version of the Multiple-Pairwise Image Correlation toolbox for processing OPTical images (MPIC-OPT). The toolbox proposes an end-to-end solution to compute the horizontal sub-pixel ground deformation time series from large Sentinel-2 datasets. In addition to time series inversion, several corrections and filtering options are integrated to reduce the noise and improve the accuracy and precision of the measurements. In particular, an automatic jitter correction based on wavelet filtering is proposed. Moreover, the MPIC-OPT service is deployed on the Tier 1.5 High-Performance Computing cluster (e.g. Datacentre/EOST-A2S) of the University of Strasbourg and is accessible on-line through the ESA Geohazards Exploitation Platform (GEP) and the ForM@Ter Solid Earth computing infrastructure with a user-friendly environment to query the satellite data catalogues, parameterize the processing and visualize the outputs. We test the performances of MPIC-OPT on several use cases: the measurement of the co-seismic ground deformation of the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence (USA), of the rapid motion of the Slumgullion landslide (USA) and of the glaciers of the Mont-Blanc massif (France/Italy). We show that the results of MPIC-OPT are in agreement with in-situ data. The jitter correction significantly improves the precision (RMSEjitter=0.3m vs. RMSEnojitter=0.5m) and the accuracy (RMSEjitter=0.3m vs. RMSEnojitter=1.3m) of the measurement of the co-seismic displacement of the Rigdecrest seismic deformation. We show that the precision and accuracy of the terrain deformation estimation depend mainly on the correlation threshold and the temporal matching range parameters and we quantify and discuss their impacts. This work opens new perspectives to monitor automatically surface displacements/velocities of natural hazards over large scales and large periods of time.

Ancient and modern genomics of the Ohlone Indigenous population of California

SignificanceCalifornia supports a high cultural and linguistic diversity of Indigenous peoples. In a partnership of researchers with the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, we studied genomes of eight present-day tribal members and 12 ancient individuals from two archaeological sites in the San Francisco Bay Area, spanning ∼2,000 y. We find that compared to genomes of Indigenous individuals from throughout the Americas, the 12 ancient individuals are most genetically similar to ancient individuals from Southern California, and that despite spanning a large time period, they share distinctive ancestry. This ancestry is also shared with present-day tribal members, providing evidence of genetic continuity between past and present Indigenous individuals in the region, in contrast to some popular reconstructions based on archaeological and linguistic information.

Effect of storage temperature and time on the behavior of Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, and background microbiota on whole fresh avocados (Persea americana var Hass)

Avocados are popular fruits; however, contamination of whole fresh avocados and avocado products with foodborne pathogens has raised concern about their safety. Recalls and import alerts of avocado products due to contamination with Listeria monocytogenes cause important economic losses. The behavior of Salmonella, L. monocytogenes, and background microbiota on whole fresh avocados at 5 and 25 °C as affected by temperature and time of storage was investigated. Whole fresh avocados were inoculated by immersion in suspensions containing six rifampicin-resistant strains of Salmonella or L. monocytogenes, and stored at 5 °C for 48 d, or at 25 °C for 11 d. At selected sampling times, avocados were removed from storage and pathogens enumerated. The log counts of both pathogens at each temperature were fitted to the Weibull distribution nonlinear model to estimate kinetic parameters including the time for the first 1-log reduction (δ), the shape of the curve (ρ), and the time for two (2-D) and three (3-D) log reductions. Salmonella and L. monocytogenes initial populations (approx. 7 log CFU/avocado) decreased during storage at 5 and 25 °C; L. monocytogenes mean counts were higher than those observed for Salmonella (P < 0.05). L. monocytogenes showed a lower rate of decline at 5 °C when compared to Salmonella. In general, the ability of both pathogens to survive on the surface of avocados stored at room temperature was similar. Salmonella and L. monocytogenes counts decline over time on the epicarp of whole avocados; however, if the initial number of cells is large enough, the pathogens could be present for large periods of time. Simultaneously, psychrotrophic microorganisms (PM), aerobic plate count (APC), coliforms (C) and yeasts/molds (Y/M) were enumerated from non-inoculated avocados stored at 5 and 25 °C. Initial mean counts for PM, APC, C and Y/M ranged from 6.1 to 6.6 log CFU/avocado and showed no change (P > 0.05) during storage at both temperatures. Good agricultural and handling practices from farm to fork are crucial to prevent or minimize contamination of whole avocados; otherwise, if large numbers of pathogens contaminate the fruit, they could survive and be transferred to the pulp, or to other ready to eat foods, representing a risk for consumers.

Economic value of regional spearfishing competitions

Large-scale surveys have been used to estimate the value of recreational fishing over large areas and time periods in the past, but there is a lack of information regarding the value of smaller event based recreational fishing activities. Using the travel-cost method, we estimate the overall value generated by two regional spearfishing competitions in eastern Australia and the adjusted value per competitor. The 2021 Bluewater Classic was valued between $32,874 and $39,492 AUD, with past values up to $100,364. The 2021 Eden 3-way Championships was valued between $102,461 and $118,747. On a per-competitor basis, the adjusted mean expenditure was between $1,090 and $1,649. Both competitions generated substantial economic activity within the towns that hosted them, as we estimated that localised expenditure constituted 60 – 71% of a competition’s overall value. These estimates demonstrate the value of recreational competitions for regional areas and the importance for economic surveys to consider smaller events.

Does sustainable financial inclusion and energy efficiency ensure green environment? Evidence from B.R.I.C.S. countries

Continuous rise in a global economy with a 3–4% annual growth rate poses a severe risk to environmental sustainability due to high energy demand. Since the Paris climate accord, countries worldwide have implemented numerous strategies to attain the target of carbon neutrality. With the rising environmental challenges, it is important to consider global financial inclusion (F.I.) policies. This study uses panel data for the B.R.I.C.S. countries to investigate the impact of F.I. and energy efficiency in limiting trade adjusted emissions (T.A.E.) taking technological innovation and trade as control variables. This study uses panel data consisting small sample size and large time period; therefore, keeping in mind the potential econometric problems, this study uses AMG method, which can efficiently deal with endogeneity problems and small sample bias. We find a positive impact of F.I. and energy efficiency on CO2 emissions. Moreover, we find that technological innovation, exports and output amplify CO2 emissions.

Minimum Energy Adaptive Load Sharing of Parallel Operated Compressors

Compressors operating in parallel are widely used in compressor stations on natural gas pipelines to address the required flow demands. This paper presents a design of a new control structure and a load sharing optimal adaptive controller for multiple compressors connected in parallel and equipped with variable speed drives. The load sharing optimization (LSO) controller computes the split factor to distribute the flow among the compressors which depends on the current operating conditions, with the optimization&#x0027;s objective being to minimize the total energy consumption. In addition, the compressor maps are continuously updated to account for any changes due to external and untraceable factors resulting in an enhancement of the LSO. The presented control structure includes a common single controller for parallel compressors, which eliminates the need for loop-decoupling. Thus, ensuring a better stability and a faster dynamics with respect to the flow or pressure process variable. The proposed control structure and the adaptive LSO performance is evaluated through simulations and a lab hardware setup. The results show an improvement of more than 4&#x0025; in the total energy consumption compared to an equal load sharing scheme and more than 2.5&#x0025; compared to the equal distance to surge industrial scheme. This efficiency improvement leads to significant energy cost saving over large periods of time.

Interactions between hydrated cement pastes and aggressive ammonium: experimental batches characterization

Agricultural and food industries concrete facilities face chemically aggressive conditions that can damage their microstructure and reduce their lifespan. They are particularly exposed to ammonium-rich environments from natural microbial activity. The poorly crystalline mineralogy of hydrated cement pastes, the compositional variability of the phases and their reactivity make the geochemical behaviour of such materials difficult to investigate and predict over both large periods of time and wide variety of chemical compositions. This work aims (i) to assess the stability of the cement phases involved in ammonium-rich conditions as well as to identify the alteration products, and (ii) to understand the mechanisms and intensity of alteration. To do this, experiments were carried out both on OPC paste powder and on monolithic OPC pastes, degraded by an ammonium nitrate solution in semi-batch conditions. The powder was gradually added to the aggressive solution while the monoliths were immersed for 16 weeks in regularly renewed solution. The pH and the concentration of the chemical elements in solution were monitored over the experiments. The microstructural, chemical and mineralogical changes of the samples were analysed by scanning electron microscopy, electron probe micro-analysis and X-Ray diffraction and showed phenomena of dissolution, leaching and carbonation.

Simple Method to Extract Lake Ice Condition From Landsat Images

Ice plays key roles in regulating hydrological, ecological, biogeochemical, and socioeconomic functions of lakes. Long-term <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> lake ice phenological records indicate that lake ice is trending toward later freeze-up, earlier breakup, and a shorter ice duration. Parallel to study of lake ice using <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> records and process-based models, satellite remote sensing can expand our understanding of lake ice change over large spatial scales. However, most remote sensing studies have focused on large lakes or short periods of time, which may not robustly represent changes over multidecadal time periods or in the much more numerous small lakes. Here, we present a random forest model, Sensitive Lake Ice Detection (SLIDE), to accurately extract ice conditions from Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI images. We trained the model using a manually labeled lake ice dataset (1089 labeled areas over 995 lakes globally). Our results show that our model achieves accurate classification between ice/snow and water (accuracy: 97.8%, kappa coefficient: 95.5%). Comparing Landsat-derived ice cover with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> ice conditions, we show that our model produces less bias, lower RMSE, and higher kappa than does the Landsat snow/ice flag from the quality assessment band. This is especially true during the transitional period surrounding the ice on and off dates reported from <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">in situ</i> (mean bias −7.3% from our model, −17.3% from the Landsat quality band). Our results demonstrate the feasibility of mining the rich Landsat archive to study lake ice dynamics and of better flagging ice-affected lake observations.

Herbarium macroalgae specimens reveal a rapid reduction of thallus size and reproductive effort related with climate change

Understanding and forecasting the effects of climate changes on vulnerable species are leading concerns for ecologists and conservation biologists. Herbaria are invaluable for use in long-term data series, and one of the few available methods for quantifying biodiversity changes over large periods of time. Gelidium canariense is an endemic and habitat-forming macroalga of the Canary Islands that coexists with two other habitat-forming Gelidiales: G. arbuscula and Pterocladiella capillacea. This study assesses long-term changes in thallus size and reproductive effort of all specimens deposited in the Herbarium of Universidad de La Laguna of these three Gelidiales species. Also assessed were the effects of seawater temperature and increased incident light on net primary production (NPP), and the effects of extreme desiccation conditions on the relative water content and NPP of the three Gelidiales species. The length of the thallus of the endemic species G. canariense was halved during the past 40 years. The shortening of the thallus coincided with a significant decrease in the number of reproductive structures in both Gelidium species. These morphological changes coincide with a significant increase of the sea surface temperature, air temperature above sea surface and ultraviolet radiation in the studied area. The experiments have revealed the deleterious effects of extreme desiccation and extreme irradiance on all three species. Hence, these results suggest that air temperature and irradiance are related with these morphological changes over time in the habitat-forming Gelidium species and that are most likely compromising the survival of their populations which are already declining.

The spatial-temporal coupling pattern of grain yield and fertilization in the North China plain

CONTEXTKnowing the spatial-temporal relationship of historical grain yield and fertilization in various regions provides a solid base for promoting rational fertilization strategies. However, the interaction pattern between grain yield and fertilization over large areas and long time periods from the spatial-temporal coupling perspective has been rarely explored. OBJECTIVEThis study focused on the spatial-temporal coupling pattern of grain yield and fertilization in the North China Plain to propose reasonable fertilization strategies referring to practical experience and to increase grain yield while preserving the agricultural system. METHODSUsing the North China Plain as an example, we applied a method integrating global spatial autocorrelation, geographically weighted regression, and geodetector to reveal the spatial-temporal coupling relationship between grain yield and fertilization based on data from 1990 to 2015. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSGrain yield consistently increased but differed significantly among prefecture-level cities. Of cities with a rice, wheat, and corn yield, 49.09%, 45.46% and 47.27%, respectively, were below the average in the North China Plain. The application rates of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) fertilizers first increased and then decreased, especially N fertilizer. The N:P2O5:K2O ratio developed from 1:0.31:0.08 to 1:0.38:0.22. The cities' application rates of N, P, and K fertilizer were 49.09%, 54.55%, and 63.64% lower than the average in the North China Plain, respectively. The effects of N, P, and K fertilizers on rice, wheat, and corn yields differed significantly among cities and along with time changing. The combined application of N fertilizer with P or K fertilizer was better than that of a single fertilizer, depending on the crop. The uneven regional grain yield and fertilization in the North China Plain indicated that a significant increase in grain production can be achieved by promoting grain yield in low-yielding areas through regionally balanced fertilization. For this purpose, an enhanced formulated fertilization strategy based on on-site and time-specific soil testing should be applied, considering the crop variety, climate, and irrigation. SIGNIFICANCEThis paper highlights the significance of formulating reasonable fertilization strategies through understanding spatial-temporal patterns between fertilization and grain yield. Our findings emphasize the importance of rationally balanced fertilization based on on-site and time-specific soil testing; such a strategy could be beneficial for securing food safety while maintaining the sustainability of the agriculture system.

UNEMPLOYMENT IN SLOVAKIA DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Labour market developments have been on a positive trend in recent years. Employment and unemployment were not projected to change significantly. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic halted this trend. The labour market, the economies of countries and their governments have been exposed to new challenges. In our paper, we focus on the evolution of employment and unemployment in the first to third waves of the pandemic in the Slovak Republic. We focus on a time series analysis of labour market developments by education, last occupation and sectors of industry. The above analysis may serve to further investigate this issue in the future and to track developments over a larger time period.

Mapping MMS Observations of Solitary Waves in Earth's Magnetic Field

AbstractElectrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) are a type of nonlinear time‐domain plasma structure (TDS) generally defined by bipolar electric fields and propagation parallel to the local magnetic field. Formation mechanisms for TDSs in the magnetosphere have been studied extensively and are associated with plasma boundary layers and the braking of bursty bulk flows (BBFs). However, the rapid timescales over which these TDSs occur (&lt;2 ms) make them infeasible to count by eye over large time periods. Furthermore, high‐cadence data are not always available. The Solitary Wave Detector (SWD) on NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission quantifies the occurrence and amplitude of TDS throughout the constellation's orbit; analysis of burst (65 kS/s) parallel electric field data indicates that the SWD captures approximately 60% of all bipolar TDS encountered in the tail region, enabling large‐scale examination of their occurrence. Maps of TDS occurrence rates during several years of the MMS mission were generated from SWD data, showing enhanced TDS density in the tail region between 6 and 9 Re; enhance occurrence in or near shocks; and an unexpected enhancement in the dawn side of the tail and in the radiation belt.

Bulk Processing of Multi-Temporal Modis Data, Statistical Analyses and Machine Learning Algorithms to Understand Climate Variables in the Indian Himalayan Region.

Studies relating to trends of vegetation, snowfall and temperature in the north-western Himalayan region of India are generally focused on specific areas. Therefore, a proper understanding of regional changes in climate parameters over large time periods is generally absent, which increases the complexity of making appropriate conclusions related to climate change-induced effects in the Himalayan region. This study provides a broad overview of changes in patterns of vegetation, snow covers and temperature in Uttarakhand state of India through bulk processing of remotely sensed Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, meteorological records and simulated global climate data. Additionally, regression using machine learning algorithms such as Support Vectors and Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) network is carried out to check the possibility of predicting these environmental variables. Results from 17 years of data show an increasing trend of snow-covered areas during pre-monsoon and decreasing vegetation covers during monsoon since 2001. Solar radiation and cloud cover largely control the lapse rate variations. Mean MODIS-derived land surface temperature (LST) observations are in close agreement with global climate data. Future studies focused on climate trends and environmental parameters in Uttarakhand could fairly rely upon the remotely sensed measurements and simulated climate data for the region.