Extracting and analyzing semantic relatedness between cities using news articles

News articles capture a variety of topics about our society. They reflect not only the socioeconomic activities that happened in our physical world, but also some of the cultures, human interests, and public concerns that exist only in the perceptions of people. Cities are frequently mentioned in news articles, and two or more cities may co-occur in the same article. Such co-occurrence often suggests certain relatedness between the mentioned cities, and the relatedness may be under different topics depending on the contents of the news articles. We consider the relatedness under different topics as semantic relatedness. By reading news articles, one can grasp the general semantic relatedness between cities; yet, given hundreds of thousands of news articles, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to manually read them. This paper proposes a computational framework which can ‘read’ a large number of news articles and extract the semantic relatedness between cities. This framework is based on a natural language processing model and employs a machine learning process to identify the main topics of news articles. We describe the overall structure of this framework and its individual modules, and then apply it to an experimental dataset with more than 500,000 news articles covering the top 100 US cities spanning a 10-year period. We perform exploratory visualizations of the extracted semantic relatedness under different topics and over multiple years. We also analyze the impact of geographic distance on semantic relatedness and find varied distance decay effects. The proposed framework can be used to support large-scale content analysis in city network research.     

Seasonal mixing from intermittent flow drives concentration-discharge behaviour in a stream affected by coal mine drainage

Abandoned mining operations continue to severely degrade many ecosystems worldwide by releasing acidic water and/or heavy metals into surface and groundwater. Contaminant concentrations in affected streams vary with discharge in patterns that reflect both geochemical reactions and variable mixing of contaminated and non-contaminated waters. However, controls on concentration-discharge (C-Q) patterns remain unclear, particularly for constituents that experience changing solubility across redox and pH gradients. Understanding the C-Q behaviour of contaminants aids in predicting both downstream transport and effects on aquatic life under variable flow. Here, we examined the C-Q behaviours of non-reactive (Na, K, Ca, Mg, Cl⁻) and reactive (Fe, Mn, Al, H⁺, SO₄²⁻) solutes in a stream contaminated with acid mine drainage in northeastern Ohio, USA. Concentration-discharge patterns at the watershed outlet primarily reflected mixing of contaminated baseflow with intermittent inputs of high pH water draining from a passive limestone treatment system into the stream. The treatment system acted as an ephemeral tributary that mitigated contamination in the stream by diluting solutes, raising pH, and driving metal precipitation, but only when flow was present during wet seasons. Consequently, AMD-derived reactive solutes (H⁺, Fe, Mn, Al) decreased with increasing stream discharge while relatively conservative solutes (e.g., Ca, Mg, K, Na) decreased only slightly or were chemostatic. This study highlights both the unique C-Q patterns of reactive solutes when compared to those of non-reactive solutes and the potential for intermittent streams to control C-Q behaviour in headwater catchments.     

The magnitude of the palaeomagnetic field in Iceland between 2 and 6 Myr ago

Summary. Sixty-eight palaeomagnetic field magnitude values have been determined from a sequence of Icelandic lavas, ranging from 2 to 6 Myr in age. The results indicate large and rapid changes in the palaeomagnetic dipole field and provide a mean value of the palaeomagnetic field magnitude in Iceland for this period.     

A Method for the Exploratory Analysis of Airline Networks

The airline industry in the United States has experienced significant changes in the spatial configuration of networks since the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Attempts have been made to study the structure of the hub-and-spoke network in the airline industry, but no efficient methodology has been available. This paper describes an exploratory approach to analyzing the spatial configuration of airline networks. Flight frequencies and numbers of passengers from published schedules of six U.S. domestic airlines (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and USAir) are used in this study. The analytic components in the exploratory system include the examination of network connectivity and network autocorrelation in a dynamic mapping environment. The results of the analyses show both the overall spatial patterns of airline networks and the hierarchical hubbing structures.     

An application of factor analysis to basic volcanic rock geochemistry

Factors analysis is useful for studying the interrelationships of trace and major elements in sets of rock analyses. Its application to basic volcanic rocks show various features: (i) the principal factors relate to variation among mineral components; (ii) the behaviour of K is similar to that of Rb, Ba, Sr and in some cases P, W, Tl also; (iii) the coherence of Tl with K and Rb is often masked by a secondary effect depending on petrography; (iv) in some rock-groupings Li and H₂O^? are closely associated; (v) an unexpected association is Na, P and Sr; (vi) factor-scores can be used to discriminate alkalic from subalkalic basalts, using various element combinations.     

A new radiocarbon chronology of Baumkirchen,stratotype for the onset of the Upper Würmian in the Alps

The start of the Upper Würmian in the Alps was marked by massive fluvioglacial aggradation prior to the arrival of the Central Alpine glaciers. In 1984, the Subcommission on European Quaternary Stratigraphy defined the clay pit of Baumkirchen (in the foreland of the Inn Valley, Austria) as the stratotype for the Middle to Upper Würmian boundary in the Alps. Key for the selection of this site was its radiocarbon chronology, which still ranks among the most important datasets of this time interval in the Alps. In this study we re‐sampled all available original plant specimens and established an accelerator mass spectrometry chronology which supersedes the published 40‐year‐old chronology. The new data show a much smaller scatter and yielded slightly older conventional radiocarbon dates clustering at ca. 31 ¹⁴C ka BP. When calibrated using INTCAL13 the new data suggest that the sampled interval of 653–681 m in the clay pit was deposited 34–36 cal ka BP. Using two new radiocarbon dates of bone fragments found in the fluvioglacial gravel above the banded clays allows us to constrain the timing of the marked change from lacustrine to fluvioglacial sedimentation to ca. 32–33 cal ka BP, which suggests a possible link to the Heinrich 3 event in the North Atlantic. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Oxygen and hydrogen isotope compositions as indicators of granite genesis in the New England Batholith,Australia

Oxygen and hydrogen isotope studies of a number of granite suites and mineral separates from the New England Batholith indicate that O¹⁸ can be used to discriminate the major granite protoliths. The granite suites previously subdivided on the basis of mineralogical and geochemical criteria into S-type (sedimentary) and I-type (igneous) have O¹⁸ values consistently higher in the S-type granites (10.4–12.5) than in the spatially related I-type plutons (7.7–9.9). There appears to be a systematic variation in O¹⁸ from the most S-type to the most I-type granites, the dividing point between the two occuring at O¹⁸ equal to 10. A group of leucocratic granites that form about half of the batholith and difficult to classify mineralogically and geochemically is found to have low O¹⁸ values (6.4–8.1), suggesting an affinity to the most I-type granites. A single leucogranite pluton with minor muscovite has a O¹⁸ of 9.6 which is significantly higher than other leucogranites indicating a different origin perhaps involving amphibole fractionation.The behavior of D in the plutonic rocks is much less systematic than O¹⁸. Excluding samples collected adjacent to major faults, the D values show a rough positive correlation with water content similar to, but less pronounced than, the trend previously observed in the Berridale Batholith, southeastern Australia. This relation is considered to reflect an interaction between meteoric water and the granites, the largest effect being observed in samples with the least amount of water. Of note is the generally lower D values of the upper Paleozoic New England Batholith compared with the Silurian Berridale Batholith. This difference may be related to a near equatorial paleolatitude of 22 °S in the Silurian and near polar paleolatitudes in the late Carboniferous that have been inferred for these regions. Granite samples collected from near major faults, and one ignimbrite sample of rhyodacite composition, have very low D values (less than –120) suggesting a much greater degree of interaction with meteoric water.     

The identification of organic input sources of sediments from the santa catalina basin using factor analysis

Individual neutral lipids, including hydrocarbons, ketones, alcohols, sterols, keto-ols and diols have been analysed from eight horizons in a sediment core taken from the Santa Catalina Basin, Calif. Variations in the concentration of individual lipid components between sites are studied using factor analysis to determine their inputs. Several sources of organic material are postulated from the composition of hypothetical factors, including methanogenic bacteria, higher plants and algae including coccolithophores, dinoflagellates and diatoms. Sources for long chain keto-ols and diols and a C₃₅ bicyclic alkene are suggested as methanogenic bacteria and algae respectively.     

构造楔形体的识别与勘探——以准噶尔盆地南缘为例

构造楔形体的形成需要两个条件,一是两条相互连接的断层,二是这两条断层的位移传递方向相反。当反向传递的位移量切割了上覆地层,通常在楔形体前翼形成具指示意义的背斜构造,此类背斜可作为判断深部构造楔形体存在的直接依据。准噶尔盆地南缘3排背斜内带的构造楔形体模式非常典型,并表现为“混序”的特征。在山前深部楔形体沿侏罗系西山窑组煤层向北扩展过程中,部分位移量沿构造楔顶部的反冲断层向南消减,并切割上覆地层形成第一排背斜带,另一部分位移量则继续向北传递,在断坡位置引发褶皱变形,形成第二排和第三排背斜带。在总位移量保持稳定的前提下,这3排背斜带在走向上的此消彼长反映了位移量在南、北两个方向上的转换。准噶尔盆地南缘第二、三排背斜带中-新生界内部发育多个小型的构造楔形体,这些互相叠置的楔形构造横向延伸不大,但有可能构成独立的成藏系统,具有不同的油气水特征,从而造成同一个背斜带不同部位的含油气性迥异。在油气勘探中应通过加强地震采集、处理和解释攻关,力求精细刻画各个楔形构造在三维空间的展布,再针对已落实的楔形体展开钻探。