Determining trade-off between sustainable yield and baseflow in the Kulnura - Mangrove Mountain aquifer system using simulation optimisation modelling

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering.The public water supply in the Gosford-Wyong area of New South Wales is reliant on streams that originate in elevated sandstone country. About half of the stream flow is believed to be baseflow from the sandstone aquifer system in the Kulnura - Mangrove Mountain area. At the same time as the population is growing steadily on the coast, there is increased demand for groundwater for horticultural, agricultural and industrial purposes along the sandstone ridges. Hence, good groundwater management is critical, to ensure that stream baseflow is not jeopardised. A management model that couples a simulation model with an optimisation model has been developed for the Kulnura-Mangrove Mountain aquifer system to evaluate the trade-offs between increased aquifer yields and baseflow reduction. The project has been successful in developing trade-off curves for sustainable yield versus reduction in baseflow. It is believed that this is the first time that rigorous trade-off curves for sustainable yield have been developed for a stream-aquifer system in Australia. The objectives of this research were to determine the sustainable yield(s) of the aquifer system in relation to extraction limits from both groundwater and surface water; to determine the magnitude, distribution and dynamics of baseflow to the streams which drain the Kulnura - Mangrove Mountain aquifer; to determine groundwater entitlement limits that would preserve baseflow to streams in order to facilitate groundwater allocation policy; and to explore how groundwater extraction limits would change for tolerable reductions in baseflow. The simulation model is necessarily coarse, with 500 m spatial resolution, as replication of a very large regional aquifer was required. Given the wide variation in vertical relief in the area, approximately 400 metres, it was necessary to divide the vertical profile into 30 layers. Otherwise, it would not have been possible to track the many baseflow-receiving creeks that descend from high elevations to the sea. The calibration results of the simulation model show that the model performs very well in representing the values and the patterns of groundwater level for both steady state and transient conditions, is able to reproduce large vertical hydraulic gradients between aquifer layers, and also replicates baseflow reasonably well. The optimisation model was developed with the objective of preserving stream baseflow within tolerable limits while maximising the pumping rates from the aquifer system. Constraints were designed in terms of hydraulic gradient, with reduction tolerance ranges from 0.1 % to 10 %. Conversion from hydraulic gradient reduction to baseflow reduction was achieved by running reported optimal production patterns through the model in simulation mode. This work differs from that of previous researchers in not making a pre-emptive assumption of linearity between groundwater pumping and stream baseflow. A very large optimisation problem has been solved in this study, consisting of up to 5700 decision variables and 8000 constraints. The study has been successful in generating trade-off curves that will provide a scientific basis for government / community decisions on responsible water allocation between computing users

LE DÉVELOPPEMENT DES COMPÉTENCES LANGAGIÈRES CHEZ LES ENFANTS JUMEAUX: UNE EXPÉRIMENTATION PRATIQUE

The language of children is very impressive for those interested in linguistics, especially when it comes to twins living in the same social environment. In our case, having two twins (a boy and a girl) invited us, as a linguist and didactics, to observe their language development closely and analyze the difference in communicative competence during the first five years of their life. The results of comparison between the boy’s and girl’s language show that it is not only the social milieu that influences the language progress of the child but there is also the attention that the child gives to his language and the importance that he attributes to linguistic communication which plays a key role in the development of his linguistic skills: phonetic, semantic, syntactic or even pragmatic.The language of children is very impressive for those interested in linguistics, especially when it comes to twins living in the same social environment. In our case, having two twins (a boy and a girl) invited us, as a linguist and didactics, to observe their language development closely and analyze the difference in communicative competence during the first five years of their life. The results of comparison between the boy’s and girl’s language show that it is not only the social milieu that influences the language progress of the child but there is also the attention that the child gives to his language and the importance that he attributes to linguistic communication which plays a key role in the development of his linguistic skills: phonetic, semantic, syntactic or even pragmatic

L'évaluation en langue étrangère : entre la certification et la compétence

L'évaluation constitue un élément très important dans le monde de l'enseignement/apprentissage même en dehors de l'école. Les enseignants suivent souvent des formations sur la méthodologie de l'enseignement, mais on insiste très peu sur l'évaluation. Cette dernière occupe beaucoup les apprenants car ils cherchent enfin de compte à avoir un certificat pour valider leur qualification. Mais est-ce que le certificat est vraiment indicatif sur la qualité de l'enseignement et du niveau de son titulaire ? Beaucoup d'établissements scolaires, voire des enseignants, pratiquent dans le monde de l'enseignement des langues ce que nous appelons "l'enseignement guidé". Ils aident les apprenants à passer une épreuve plus qu'avoir des compétences langagières, car les établissements et les entreprises exigent en fin de compte un certificat. La standardisation et la mondialisation des certificats sont importantes pour l'égalité des chances, mais néfastes sur la qualité et l'objectif de l'enseignement  Assessment is a very important element in the teaching / learning world even outside of school. Teachers often receive training in teaching methodology, but little emphasis is placed on assessment. The evaluation occupies a lot of learners because they are finally looking for a certificate to prove their qualification. But is the certificate really indicative of the quality of education and the level of its holder? Many schools, and even teachers, practice what we call "guided teaching. They help learners pass an evaluation more than having language skills, as institutions and businesses require a certificate. The standardization and globalization of certificates is important for equal opportunities, but detrimental to the quality of educational objective. It is obvious that we can't ignore the assessment, but it is very important that institutions, like the CEFR, which deal with the criteria for the assessment and certification offer languages ​​really think about quality and the communicative objective rather than globalization and the standardization of levels and certificates. Mot-clés: épreuve, enseignement, évaluation, certificat, langue

Can COVID 19 present like appendicitis?

Coronavirus disease -19 is a novel pandemic contagious respiratory infection that frequently presents with fever and dry cough. However, it can present with other rare symptoms. As this disease is a new disease, the full picture of the disease presentation is not yet clear, and it might present with symptoms and signs of other common diseases. Here, we report a 40 year old female who presented with acute onset nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite and vague abdominal pain as a clinical picture of appendicitis, but her CT abdomen image showed normal appendix, bilateral patchy peripheral lung basal consolidation, and ground-glass attenuation, so she was tested for coronavirus disease-19, which was positive

Context-based personalization of web services composition and provisioning

This paper presents an approach that aims at personalizing Web services composition and provisioning using context. Composition addresses the situation of a user\u27s request that cannot be satisfied by any available service, and thus requires the combination of several Web services. Provisioning focuses on the deployment of Web services according to users\u27 preferences. A Web service is an accessible application that other applications and humans can discover and trigger. Context is the information that characterizes the interactions between humans, applications, and the surrounding environment. Web services are subject to personalization if there is a need of accommodating users\u27 preferences during service performance and outcome delivery. To be able to track personalization in terms of what happened, what is happening, and what might happen three types of context are devised, and they are referred to as user-, Web service-, and resource-context

Bauxite mining and refinery: investigating prospective red mud management strategies

The bauxite or aluminum industry continues to play an important role in the global economy. However, efforts are still needed in the sector in order to meet the objective of the millennium for sustainability. Serious environmental and health concerns are raised at every stage of the industry starting from the bauxite preliminary exploration to the mining activities as well as the alumina refining process. In addition to the excessive energy requirement, huge amounts of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide (CO2) and perfluorocarbon gases (PFCs) are emitted. Besides, large superficies of lands and forests are destroyed every year. Red mud obtained from alumina processing is among the world's biggest industrial wastes characterized by high alkalinity (about 2 to 3 g L-1). Based on the type of bauxite, the waste might contain some radioactive and hazardous elements. The high iron content in bauxite and red mud is also source of various environmental and social issues. Run out of red mud and dust emission are potential sources of ground and surface water severe pollution and public health issues. This review briefly describes the potential environmental and health risks associated with bauxite mining and its transformation processes into alumina. An outline of the available environmental management strategies is given with a focus on those associated with the bauxite residue

Statistical Modelling Optimisation of Cellulase Enzyme Immobilisation on Functionalised Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Empty Fruit Bunches Degradation

Abstract: Cellulase obtained from the fermentation of sewage treatment plant sludge (STP) by Trichoderma-reesei RUT C-30 was covalently immobilised on functionalised multi-wall carbon nanotubes. Statistical optimisation using the Plackett-Burman design method was implemented to identify parameters with significant effects on the process of immobilisation. The results obtained from this Plackett-Burman design show that three parameters have a significant effect on immobilisation: pH, temperature, and N-ethyl-N-(3-dimethyl aminopropyl) carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) concentration. Based on our Plackett-Burman design results, these parameters were further optimised using a face-centred central composite design. The resulting optimum conditions for cellulase immobilisation, as determined by face-centred central composite design, were pH 4.5, 30°C, and 1 mL of 10mg/mL EDC. The amount of immobilised cellulase was approximately 98% using these optimum conditions. The resulting MWCNT-cellulase composite was further characterized by FTIR and SEM. The FTIR spectrum of MWCNT-cellulase composite showed an amide group peak (O = C-NH) corresponding to cellulase enzyme, which confirms that immobilisation took place

SDF2Net: Shallow to Deep Feature Fusion Network for PolSAR Image Classification

Polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) images encompass valuable information that can facilitate extensive land cover interpretation and generate diverse output products. Extracting meaningful features from PolSAR data poses challenges distinct from those encountered in optical imagery. Deep learning (DL) methods offer effective solutions for overcoming these challenges in PolSAR feature extraction. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) play a crucial role in capturing PolSAR image characteristics by leveraging kernel capabilities to consider local information and the complex-valued nature of PolSAR data. In this study, a novel three-branch fusion of complex-valued CNN, named the Shallow to Deep Feature Fusion Network (SDF2Net), is proposed for PolSAR image classification. To validate the performance of the proposed method, classification results are compared against multiple state-of-the-art approaches using the airborne synthetic aperture radar (AIRSAR) datasets of Flevoland and San Francisco, as well as the ESAR Oberpfaffenhofen dataset. The results indicate that the proposed approach demonstrates improvements in overallaccuracy, with a 1.3% and 0.8% enhancement for the AIRSAR datasets and a 0.5% improvement for the ESAR dataset. Analyses conducted on the Flevoland data underscore the effectiveness of the SDF2Net model, revealing a promising overall accuracy of 96.01% even with only a 1% sampling ratio

ConvAttentionNet: a high-performance model for efficient and accurate PolSAR data classification

This paper presents ConvAttentionNet, a lightweight and high performing deep learning model developed for accurate and efficient classification of Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (PolSAR) imagery. The proposed architecture combines multiscale convolutional mixer blocks with a directional convolution based attention mechanism to effectively capture spatial features and suppress background noise. Designed to address the challenges of limited labeled data and computational constraints, ConvAttentionNet achieves superior performance while maintaining a compact model size. Experimental results on three benchmark datasets (Flevoland, San Francisco, and Oberpfaffenhofen) demonstrate that ConvAttentionNet consistently outperforms state of the art CNN based, transformer based, and wavelet based models. It achieves an overall accuracy (OA) of 97.24% and a Kappa coefficient of 96.98 on the Flevoland dataset using only 1% of the training data. These results confirm the model’s robustness, label efficiency, and generalization capabilities, making it a practical solution for operational remote sensing scenarios with limited computational resources. The source code for this work will be publicly available at: https://github.com/aj1365/ConvAttentionNet