Past Reference Research Articles

Ethylenediamine tetramethylenephosphonic acid boosting the electrocatalytic interface construct and proton transfer for high-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells

High-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFCs) show excellent application prospects due to its enhanced tolerance of hydrogen impurity. However, the sluggish electrode kinetics caused by its inefficient electrocatalytic interface and proton transfer severely restricts its performance. To overcome the sluggish electrode kinetics, the ethylenediamine tetramethylenephosphonic acid (EDTMPA) was successfully incorporated into the catalysts layer to regulate the phosphoric acid (PA) distribution to boost the electrocatalytic reaction interface and proton transfer, thus increasing the output power and stability of HT-PEMFCs. The hydrophilic H2PO4− and electron donor N atom of EDTMPA could efficiently decrease the absorption of PA on the catalyst surface and facilitate proton transportation in the membrane electrode, as demonstrated by our experiments. The fuel cell assembled with the prepared membrane electrode shows a high reactivity of 1175 mW cm−2 and excellent stability, which is much better than the past reference report. The results of this work provide new insights into the utilization of small molecules with phosphate groups to enhance phosphate tolerance and proton conduction, and there is also a further improvement in the reactivity, durability, and utilization of the electrocatalysts in HT-PEMFCs.

Notes on Verbal Aspect in Three Vedic Prose Narratives

AbstractThis article summarises the synchronic system of verbal aspect manifest in three Middle Vedic prose narrative texts, investigating the use of various morphological categories with past reference (especially the imperfect, perfect and aorist). I show that the imperfect and perfect are both compatible with multiple aspectual readings (perfective, imperfective and anterior); in the terminology of Dahl (2010), both may have neutral aspect. The aorist is largely restricted to anterior readings but can be perfective. Additionally, I consider the diachronic context of this system, outlining differences from the earlier one visible in the Early Vedic of the Rigveda and discussing the probable diachronic trajectory connecting the two. After commenting on the possibility of characterising the synchronic system within the alternative framework of Altshuler (2014), which lacks the category of neutral aspect, I conclude with notes on the use of the sentential particles ha, nu and vai in the text samples. The first of these seems to be associated with perfective aspect, while the latter two are both associated with anterior aspect.

Climate Change and an Agronomic Journey from the Past to the Present for the Future: A Past Reference Investigation and Current Experiment (PRICE) Study

According to numerous chamber and free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) studies with artificially raised CO2 concentration and/or temperature, it appears that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations ([CO2]) stimulates crop yield. However, there is still controversy about the extent of the yield stimulation by elevating [CO2] and concern regarding the potential adverse effects when temperature rises concomitantly. Here, we tested the effects of natural elevated [CO2] (ca. 120 ppm above the ambient level in 100 years ago) and warming (ca. 1.7–3.2 °C above the ambient level 100 years ago) on rice growth and yield over three crop seasons via a past reference investigation and current experiment (PRICE) study. In 2020–2022, the rice cultivar Tamanishiki (Oryza sativa, ssp. japonica) was grown in Wagner’s pots (1/2000 a) at the experiment fields of Chonnam National University (35°10′ N, 126°53′ E), Gwangju, Korea, according to the pot trial methodology of the reference experiment conducted in 1920–1922. Elevated [CO2] and temperature over the last 100 years significantly stimulated plant height (13.4% on average), tiller number (11.5%), and shoot biomass (10.8%). In addition, elevated [CO2] and warming resulted in a marked acceleration of flowering phenology (6.8% or 5.1 days), potentially leading to adverse effects on tiller number and grain yield. While the harvest index exhibited a dramatic reduction (12.2%), grain yield remained unchanged with elevated [CO2] and warming over the last century. The response of these crop parameters to elevated [CO2] and warming was highly sensitive to sunshine duration during the period from transplanting to heading. Despite the pot-based observations, considering a piecewise response pattern of C3 crop productivity to [CO2] of <500 ppm, our observations demonstrate realistic responses of rice crops to elevated [CO2] (+120 ppm) and moderate warming (+1.7–3.2 °C) in the absence of adaptation measures (e.g., cultivars and agronomic management practices). Hence, our results suggest that the PRICE platform may provide a promising way to better understand and forecast the net impact of climate change on major crops that have historical and experimental archived data, like rice, wheat, and soybean.

Unbounded repetition, habituality, and aspect from a comparative perspective

Abstract This paper addresses the relationship between habituals, including expressions of unbounded repetition, and verbal aspect. It is often assumed that past events that are conceptualized as habitually occurring or repeated in an unbounded way are inherently expressed by imperfective verb forms in languages with verbal aspect. A crosslinguistic analysis is provided of the relationship between habituals and the perfective and imperfective aspect, based on analysis of 36 languages from different language families. It is shown that there is a strong but certainly not absolute association between the imperfective and habitual constructions/expressions of unbounded repetition with past reference. With respect to perfective habituals, some crosslinguistic patterns can be found. It is further argued that any account of the specific aspectual behavior in habituals must take heed of language-specific properties of the aspectual-verbal structure, and that using general, abstract comparative concepts, such as ‘perfective’, ‘imperfective’, or ‘habitual’, is insufficient to explain aspectual usage.

The Difference Between the Optative and the “Modal” Indicative in Homeric Greek: Four Case Studies – Part 2: The Indicative and the εἰ Μή-Clauses

In epic Greek both the optative and the indicative (the so-called “modal indicative”) can be used in contexts where the degree of realization is uncertain or even impossible, while in Attic Greek only the indicative is used. In these two articles I discuss whether there is a difference between the optative and the modal indicative in these contexts and/or if it can be determined which was the original mood. As there are about 1500 optatives and 250 modal indicatives in Homer, it is not possible to discuss them all and, therefore, I focus on the passages in which aorist forms of γιγνώσκω, βάλλωand of ἴδονappear, and those conditional constructions in the Odyssey in which the postposed conditional clause is introduced by εἰμήwith either a “modal” indicative or optative. The corpus comprises 100 forms (80 optatives and 20 indicatives), but in each example I also address the other modal indicatives and optatives in the passages, which adds another 50 forms to the corpus. In this part (part 2) I address the modal indicatives, and discuss the postposed conditional clauses introduced by εἰμήin the Odyssey, both in the indicative and the optative. Subsequently I analyze several instances in which the interpretation depends on the viewpoint of the hearer and the speakers, as what is pos­sible for a speaker might be impossible for the hearer and vice versa. When comparing the data relating to the optative and the indicative, and especially that of the postposed conditional clauses introduced by εἰμή, it can be noted that the indicative has more frequently an exclusively past reference and that it is more often genuinely unreal than the optative, which often combines the notion of the possible, remotely possible and unreal. In my opinion this clearly indicates that the indicative eventually prevailed and replaced the optative because of the past reference.

Exploring the Role of Repertoire in Library Reference Interactions


 
 
 
 Using experience to interpret a user’s information need is embedded in the process of every library reference transaction. Reference workers need to constantly grow and update their base of knowledge to have a deep understanding of a variety of resources and subjects (Miller, 2011). The expert reference worker not only has knowledge of specific subjects and resources, but also has an additional level of professional knowledge regarding the successes and failures of past reference interactions. In other fields, like design, bodies of knowledge iteratively built from previous experiences are known as repertoire. Designers develop repertoire over time by integrating information from previous situations into new ones (Goldschmidt & Porter 2010). Research shows that designers with broader and more diverse repertoires make better design decisions and demonstrate greater expertise (Salmon & Gritzer 1992; Wahl & Baxter 2008). Much like designers, reference workers often deal with problems that are complex and benefit from previous experience and expertise, as well as diverse and individual perspectives built into a reference worker’s personal repertoire. Our research aims to understand how, over time, reference workers collect and reflect on experiences to develop their repertoires to deal with complex inquiries and how diverse and extensive the personal repertory knowledge of reference workers is.
 
 
 

Optimized linear regression control of DC motor under various disturbances

Abstract In this study, an optimized linear regression controller is proposed for velocity control of DC motor. System is tested under disturbances of different types. Step, sinusoidal and trapezoidal functions are used as reference input. A linear single layer network of weights is used to calculate the necessary armature voltage by giving past measured velocity, past reference and certain amount of future reference as inputs. Training data are generated using Proportional Integral (PI) controller parameters which are optimized using particle swarm optimization (PSO). In this first phase of training, pseudo-inverse solution is used to find the coarse parameters of the network. These parameters give suboptimal results with low performance even lower than that of PSO-optimized PI controller. In the second phase of training, parameters of the network are fine-tuned using PSO algorithm again, this time for optimization of network parameters. Quite encouraging results including up to more than 1,500% increase in performance are obtained and reported.

Detection of degraded forests in Guinea, West Africa, based on Sentinel-2 time series by inclusion of moisture-related spectral indices and neighbourhood effect

Unlike deforestation, forest degradation implies a change in forest structure, with no modification in land use; thus, it is subtle and less visible than deforestation. Moreover, forest degradation is a major concern, as the potential for carbon sequestration is reduced. Degradation is related to location, anthropogenic drivers, climate, and forest types, and there is no unique detection methodology to map this phenomenon on a global scale. This study proposes a procedure for detecting degraded forests using Sentinel-2 (S2) multispectral imagery in Guinea, West Africa, and demonstrates that consideration of context improves degraded forest detection. In Guinea, the primary degradation process is selective logging in the massif forest, in addition to forest fragmentation caused by land use change. Monitoring forest degradation using remote sensing methods usually requires significant overhead in terms of photo-interpretation expertise. We proposed an approach to monitoring degradation through a semi-automated classification procedure with minimum photo-interpretation costs. First, the radiometric values of the Sentinel-2 data were explored using a photo-interpreted reference map and ground observations carried out with a local forester. Many of the ground observations found that forests considered as intact in the photo-interpreted reference map were degraded. This suggests photo-interpretation can be affected when investing in a single-date image. Our results showed that radiometric moisture-related indices (canopy water content [CWC], moisture stress index [MSI]), associated with leaf area index (LAI) retrieved from S2 data, were strongly related to the degree of degradation. Second, we improved the mapping of degraded forests through photo-interpretation of S2 data. Third, classification methodologies involving LAI, MSI, and CWC were established, and the results were compared with the improved photo-interpreted map. Two types of classification were compared: standard pixel-based classification and a hybrid method of classification that took contextual information into account by including neighbour pixel values in the algorithm to consider the pixel context, similar to the photo-interpretation methods. The inclusion of neighbour pixels in the semi-automated classification process led to a substantial improvement in the results. When contextual information was included, photo-interpretation of 1.6% of the latest year's data was sufficient to reach an overall accuracy above 85% requiring no use of past reference maps. Our method strongly supports the photo-interpretation procedure for less time-consuming and expensive map production, offering a significant foundation for degraded forest delineation in regions under similar conditions of canopy opening.

The difference between the optative and the “modal” indicative in Homeric Greek: four case studies. Part 1: The optative

In epic Greek both the optative and the indicative (the so-called “modal indicative”) can be used in contexts where the degree of realization is uncertain or even impossible, while in Attic Greek only the indicative is used. In these two articles I discuss whether there is a difference between the optative and the modal indicative in these contexts and/or if it can be determined which was the original mood. As there are about 1500 optatives and 250 modal indicatives in Homer, it is not possible to discuss them all and, therefore, I focus on the passages in which aorist forms of γιγνώσκω, βάλλω and of ἴδον appear, and those conditional constructions in the Odyssey in which the postposed conditional clause is introduced by εἰ μή with either a “modal” indicative or optative. The corpus comprises 100 forms (80 optatives and 20 indicatives), but in each example I also address the other modal indicatives and optatives in the passages, which adds another 50 forms to the corpus. In this part (part 1) I address the optative. First, I provide an overview of the research on the optative in Homeric Greek, discuss the different suggestions for the co-existence of the optative and indicative in these uncertain and/or unreal contexts, explanations which can be summarized into two categories, those assuming that the indicative replaced the optative and those arguing that both moods were original, but had different meanings. Then I explain why this corpus was chosen, prior to the analysis that focuses on two elements, namely the temporal reference (does the mood refer to the past or not) and the degree of possibility (is the action described likely, possible, remotely possible or unlikely/impossible). Initially I consider the optatives with a past reference, then the optatives that could be interpreted as remotely possible or unlikely/impossible (“irrealis” in the terminology of Classical Philology) and conclude by discussing two passages that have been reused in the epics in different contexts with different protagonists and, consequently, with different modal meanings for the same forms. The conclusion of the first part of the article is that the optative was at the most unreal extreme of the irrealis-continuum and could initially refer to the present and future, as well as the past, but that the instances in which there was an exclusive past reference were (very) rare.

Water dynamics and blue-green infrastructure (BGI): Towards risk management and strategic spatial planning guidelines

This work aims to demonstrate the importance of concretely defining blue-green infrastructure (BGI) in non-consolidated urban areas as an active element to achieve integrated risk management and strategic spatial planning guidelines to structure future urban development. BGI is seen as a city's structuring element more than an element integrated into a city. For this, a method is proposed and a demonstration of its application is conducted for the city of Paraty, in Brazil. It starts with a diagnosis of the current situation, maps the conflicts experienced by the city regarding water dynamics, and establishes cause-effect relations. Then, the past reference situation and the future trend situation are evaluated, and, with lessons learned, a future urban occupation alternative is defined, using BGI and river restoration approaches. Finally, the two future situations are compared in terms of environmental enhancement. The analyses are supported by mathematical modelling and a multicriteria index (Urban River Restoration Index). The results indicate that the future trend situation worsens flood risks, while the BGI proposal reduces them, besides improving the watersheds environmental quality and setting strategic spatial planning guidelines. Thus, understanding the role of water in a city is crucial to define a BGI approach focused on delivering urban water management solutions and strategically structuring future urban development, being the water a structural part of the city itself.

Supplemental Material for Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is a Mystery: An Eye-Tracking Investigation of the Processing of Past and Future Time Reference During Sentence Reading

Supplemental Material for Yesterday Is History, Tomorrow Is a Mystery: An Eye-Tracking Investigation of the Processing of Past and Future Time Reference During Sentence Reading

Assessment of CMIP6 Performance and Projected Temperature and Precipitation Changes Over South America

We evaluate the performance of a large ensemble of Global Climate Models (GCMs) from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) over South America for a recent past reference period and examine their projections of twenty-first century precipitation and temperature changes. The future changes are computed for two time slices (2040–2059 and 2080–2099) relative to the reference period (1995–2014) under four Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs, SSP1–2.6, SSP2–4.5, SSP3–7.0 and SSP5–8.5). The CMIP6 GCMs successfully capture the main climate characteristics across South America. However, they exhibit varying skill in the spatiotemporal distribution of precipitation and temperature at the sub-regional scale, particularly over high latitudes and altitudes. Future precipitation exhibits a decrease over the east of the northern Andes in tropical South America and the southern Andes in Chile and Amazonia, and an increase over southeastern South America and the northern Andes—a result generally consistent with earlier CMIP (3 and 5) projections. However, most of these changes remain within the range of variability of the reference period. In contrast, temperature increases are robust in terms of magnitude even under the SSP1–2.6. Future changes mostly progress monotonically from the weakest to the strongest forcing scenario, and from the mid-century to late-century projection period. There is an increase in the seasonality of the intra-annual precipitation distribution, as the wetter part of the year contributes relatively more to the annual total. Furthermore, an increasingly heavy-tailed precipitation distribution and a rightward shifted temperature distribution provide strong indications of a more intense hydrological cycle as greenhouse gas emissions increase. The relative distance of an individual GCM from the ensemble mean does not substantially vary across different scenarios. We found no clear systematic linkage between model spread about the mean in the reference period and the magnitude of simulated sub-regional climate change in the future period. Overall, these results could be useful for regional climate change impact assessments across South America.

Narrative fragmentation and the business cycle

According to Shiller (2017), economic and financial narratives often emerge as a consequence of their virality, rather than their veracity, and constitute an important, but understudied driver of aggregate fluctuations. Using a unique dataset of newspaper articles over the 1950–2019 period and state-of-the-art methods from natural language processing, we characterize the properties of business cycle narratives. Our main finding is that narratives tend to consolidate around a dominant explanation during expansions and fragment into competing explanations during contractions. We also show that the existence of past reference events is strongly associated with increased narrative consolidation.

Perception of Changes in Marine Benthic Habitats: The Relevance of Taxonomic and Ecological Memory

Having a reliable ecological reference baseline is pivotal to understanding the current status of benthic assemblages. Ecological awareness of our perception of environmental changes could be better described based on historical data. Otherwise, we meet with the shifting baseline syndrome (SBS). Facing SBS harmful consequences on environmental and cultural heritage, as well as on conservation strategies, requires combining historical data with contemporary biomonitoring. In the present “era of biodiversity”, we advocate for (1) the crucial role of taxonomy as a study of life diversity and (2) the robust, informative value of museum collections as memories of past ecosystem conditions. This scenario requires taxonomist skills to understand community composition and diversity, as well as to determine ecosystem change trends and rates. In this paper, we focus on six Mediterranean benthic habitats to track biological and structural changes that have occurred in the last few decades. We highlight the perception of biological changes when historical records make possible effective comparisons between past reference situations and current data. We conclude that the better we know the past, the more we understand present (and will understand future) ecosystem functioning. Achieving this goal is intrinsically linked to investing in training new taxonomists who are able to assure intergeneration connectivity to transmit cultural and environmental heritage, a key aspect to understanding and managing our changing ecosystems.

Temporal Anchoring as a Tool for Initial Organizational Structuring

I inductively examine organizational search for initially indeterminate outcomes (i.e., based on novel ideas). Here, how actors search is central to establish organizational structures—instead of being determined by them. I build theory from longitudinal case data that I collected by closely following the emergence of 35 new entrepreneurial ventures over a core period of 2.5 years. I find two contrasting modes of how founders search and development of distinct organizational structures. Both modes originate from how founders mentally anchor to either, future or the past reference points: when anchoring to future reference points, founders searching backwardly to identify related strategies, and create less hierarchical organizational structures, which develop more linearly. Contrary, when anchoring to past reference points, founders search forwardly, pursue opportunistic decisions to meet short-term performance goals, and create more hierarchical organizational structures, which develop more multi-directionally. I provide first insights into the emergence of organizational structure and the role of cognition for organizational search. I highlight the power of founders’ unique mental representations (i.e., new beliefs) to search more specifically in highly uncertain environments, and to achieve more novel outcomes. I contribute by answering central questions about effective strategies in new venture development.

Production and processing of time reference in Moroccan Arabic agrammatism: evidence from a semitic language

ABSTRACT Background Several studies on agrammatic aphasia have suggested a selective deficit in the production and processing of temporal reference to the past. To account for this pattern of performance, the PAst DIscourse LIinking Hypothesis was formulated (PADILIH). The PADILIH assumes an impairment of discourse-linking operations in agrammatic aphasia, which manifests in greater difficulty with reference to the past than to the present and future, which do not rely on D-linking. Aims The first goal of the present study was to examine the validity of the PADILIH, drawing evidence from a morphologically rich Semitic language; Moroccan Arabic (MA). The second goal was to examine whether different experimental manipulations will yield different patterns of performance; hence, suggesting an interaction between task demands and accuracy. Methods & Procedures Five MA agrammatic participants and five non-brain-damaged participants (NBDs) took part in the present study. Production, processing, and comprehension of temporal reference were tested using a number of experimental tasks. For production, a picture description, and a transformational sentence completion were used. For processing, a grammaticality-judgment task was used. For comprehension, a sentence-picture matching task was used. Outcomes & Results NBDs performed at ceiling across all the tasks used. For agrammatic participants, different tasks revealed different patterns of performance. Both findings of the transformational sentence completion and the grammaticality-judgment tasks support the predictions of the PADILIH, in the sense that, at the group level, past reference was more compromised than present and future reference. Picture description data, however, suggested a tendency to supply more verbs in the past form. Comprehension data suggested asymmetries between the present and the future. Conclusion Sentence completion and grammaticality-judgment data provide cross-linguistic support for the PADILIH. To explain the findings of the picture description task, it was proposed that the high number of verbs supplied in the past reflects an economy-of-effort strategy whereby patients omitted present and future markers to avoid cognitive overload. To account for the findings of the comprehension task, it was suggested that the fact that the action denoted by the verb is not overtly displayed in pictures referring to past and future contexts, but rather inferred from the contextual clues, might have given rise to a future deficit as well. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Past Temporal Reference and Remoteness Distinctions in Guajajára

Based on original fieldwork, in this paper I explore and present a formal semantic analysis of past temporal reference in Guajajara, a variety of Tenetehara, a Tupi-Guarani language of Brazil. I ex...

O impacto da referência temporal de passado sobre o uso do pretérito perfeito em Buenos Aires

Este trabalho analisa a variação no uso do perfeito simples (PPS - estudié) e composto (PPC - he estudiado) em Buenos Aires. Nossa hipótese é que o tipo de referência temporal de passado é um fator que incide sobre o uso dessas formas verbais. A partir de um corpus de entrevistas radiofônicas, analisamos os dados tendo em vista os âmbitos temporais de passado absoluto (PA) e antepresente (AP). Como resultado, mesmo com o uso intenso do PPS, identificamos o uso do PPC tanto no PA como no AP, especialmente no AP específico e no AP ampliado.

A multi-scale and GIS-based investigation of climate change effects on urban climate and building energy demand for the city of Stuttgart

This paper presents a multi-scale and GIS-based investigation approach whose goal is to quantify the consequences of a climate change scenario (2041-2050) on the energy demand of buildings by comparison to a past scenario (1991-2000) applied to the city of Stuttgart. Energy simulations are made at building scale while taking into account the surrounding urban microclimates. The investigation method combines 1) numerical modelling using TEB and TRNSYS, 2) design of experiments (DOE) statistical analysis for data pre- and post-processing, and 3) GIS techniques. The outcome of the study is the heating and cooling energy demands summed up at city block level and displayed in 2D GIS maps. The results reveal that i) warmer urban microclimates occur, ii) with less heating and more cooling of buildings required if future versus past reference climate data are used. Spatial differences in the results within the city are found depending on the geometrical and thermal characteristics of the individual city blocks and buildings.

The Present Perfect Puzzle in US-American English: an FDG Analysis

Abstract This paper examines the rare but well-attested combinations of the Present Perfect with definite temporal adverbials denoting past time in US-American English. The goal of this paper is twofold. For one thing, it outlines the disemous analysis FDG proposes for the form have + past participle in its prototypical use, arguing that two different operators can reliably trigger this form, one marking anteriority and one encoding phasal resultativeness. For another, it shows how, via synchronic inferential mechanisms, the Present Perfect may have absorbed discourse pragmatic functions that now permit the felicitous use of definite temporal adverbials together with the Present Perfect in certain contexts. It is argued that this combination has routinized, taking over certain functions typically associated with the Present Perfect in a manner that suggests this development as potentially part of a grammaticalization process. The paper proposes that they are not as such part of the function the Present Perfect encodes, but that they currently represent a switch stage in the development of the US-American Present Perfect. It further suggests that in this switch stage, the combination of the Present Perfect with an adverb specifying past reference can be read as signaling the relationship between two Discourse Acts as justificational or can encompass the temporal specification as a necessary part of the action that is then available for a Resultative reading.