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Abstract: Terrestrial groundwater travels through subterranean estuaries before reaching the sea. Groundwater‐derived nutrients drive coastal water quality, primary production, and eutrophication. We determined how dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), dissolved inorganic phosphorus (DIP), and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) are transformed within subterranean estuaries and estimated submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) nutrient loads compiling > 10,000 groundwater samples from 216 sites worldwide. Nutrients exhibited complex, nonconservative behavior in subterranean estuaries. Fresh groundwater DIN and DIP are usually produced, and DON is consumed during transport. Median total SGD (saline and fresh) fluxes globally were 5.4, 2.6, and 0.18 Tmol yr−1 for DIN, DON, and DIP, respectively. Despite large natural variability, total SGD fluxes likely exceed global riverine nutrient export. Fresh SGD is a small source of new nutrients, but saline SGD is an important source of mostly recycled nutrients. Nutrients exported via SGD via subterranean estuaries are critical to coastal biogeochemistry and a significant nutrient source to the oceans.

Effective data management plays a key role in oceanographic research as cruise-based data, collected from different laboratories and expeditions, are commonly compiled to investigate regional to global oceanographic processes. Here we describe new and updated best practice data standards for discrete chemical oceanographic observations, specifically those dealing with column header abbreviations, quality control flags, missing value indicators, and standardized calculation of certain properties. These data standards have been developed with the goals of improving the current practices of the scientific community and promoting their international usage. These guidelines are intended to standardize data files for data sharing and submission into permanent archives. They will facilitate future quality control and synthesis efforts and lead to better data interpretation. In turn, this will promote research in ocean biogeochemistry, such as studies of carbon cycling and ocean acidification, on regional to global scales. These best practice standards are not mandatory. Agencies, institutes, universities, or research vessels can continue using different data standards if it is important for them to maintain historical consistency. However, it is hoped that they will be adopted as widely as possible to facilitate consistency and to achieve the goals stated above.

Syntheses of carbonate chemistry spatial patterns are important for predicting ocean acidification impacts, but are lacking in coastal oceans. Here, we show that along the North American Atlantic and Gulf coasts the meridional distributions of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and carbonate mineral saturation state (Ω) are controlled by partial equilibrium with the atmosphere resulting in relatively low DIC and high Ω in warm southern waters and the opposite in cold northern waters. However, pH and the partial pressure of CO2 (pCO2) do not exhibit a simple spatial pattern and are controlled by local physical and net biological processes which impede equilibrium with the atmosphere. Along the Pacific coast, upwelling brings subsurface waters with low Ω and pH to the surface where net biological production works to raise their values. Different temperature sensitivities of carbonate properties and different timescales of influencing processes lead to contrasting property distributions within and among margins.

As the proportion of the population comprising the elderly cohort increases, so too does the demand for medical care for long-term conditions among this demographic. The advent of information technology and artificial intelligence has prompted a crucial examination of the potential of smart medical technology and equipment to enhance the quality of long-term care and the operational efficiency of long-term care facilities. The introduction of smart healthcare into long-term care is influenced by a few factors, and expert opinions often exhibit ambiguity and subjectivity in the evaluation process. As Z-numbers are capable of adequately expressing the ambiguity of expert assessments and the degree of certainty associated with them, they are employed in this study to convey the opinions of the experts. Furthermore, the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method is an effective approach to analyzing the relationships between factors. Consequently, this study integrates the Z-numbers and DEMATEL methods for empirical analysis. The present study focuses on two long-term care institutions with different natures as empirical subjects. The findings of the study indicate that Institution A identifies the "Internet of Things" as the most pivotal key factor, whereas Institution B deems "Smart clinics and urgent care centers" to be the most crucial key factor. The analysis demonstrates that three factors—global positioning systems, telemedicine, and electronic medical records—are all regarded as significant influencing factors for different long-term care institutions. Consequently, the analytical model of this study is not only theoretically sound but also effective in identifying the key factors and importance of introducing smart healthcare into long-term care institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of low fertility has been negatively impacted on the social structure of the educational environment in Taiwan. To increase the learning effectiveness of students became the most important issue for the Universities in Taiwan. Due to the subjective judgment of evaluators and the attributes of influenced factors are always fuzzy, it is not easy to measure the learning effectiveness by using the crisp values for the qualitative factors. In additional, the negative behaviors or the infrequent learning data (rare item sets) cannot easily excavate from educational database. Therefore, a systematic mining method is proposed here by combining fuzzy set theory with data mining technology to explore the key factors of learning effectiveness from the infrequent data. A case study implemented in this paper and showed that the proposed method can effectively find the important factors and valuable patterns from the survey data. The results of this paper can provide the important information for teachers to help students increase the learning effectiveness. Finally, the conclusions are addressed at the end of this paper.

The shallow-water hydrothermal vents (SVs) located off Kueishan (KS) Island, Taiwan, are one of the world's most intensively studied vent systems. It has long been known that white vents (WVs) and yellow vents (YVs) differ in the color and composition of the vent plumes. The endemic vent crabs (Xenograpsus testudinatus) are abundant in both vent types, and ovigerous females migrate to the vent periphery with a distance of 100–200 m to release their offspring. However, most research on the vent crabs was associated with WV or unspecified vent areas. To increase our knowledge of the crabs dwelling in other vent types, we compared the feeding habits of the vent crabs living in WV and YV with 2 sampling months. Specifically, we examined the benthic community of WV and YV, the isotopic niche width, and protein expression patterns of the crabs from the two vents at a distance of 100 m and sampled in July and August 2010. The coverage of sessile organisms and low-mobility fauna in WV was more abundant than in YV, based on the survey in August 2010. The δ13 C and δ15 N values of crabs differed spatially and temporally (multivariate analysis of variance test; p<0.05). The niche width of the vent crabs from YV-August (0.88 ‰ 2) narrowed substantially compared to the rest, i.e., YV-July (2.94 ‰ 2), WV-July (2.88 ‰ 2), and WV-August (3.62 ‰ 2 ; p<0.05), respectively. Based on the protein expression patterns, the vent crabs exhibited three groups, i.e., WV-July and YV-July, WV-August, and YV-August, respectively. Our results indicated that the dwelling crabs were associated with their living vent, and within-vent variability was more noticeable in YV compared to WV. We suggested that vent crabs inhabit their resident vent. Even at a scale of meters, trans-vent movement is probably rare as an adaptation to minimize predation risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustainable development of society depends on the reliable supply of electricity while keeping impacts on the environment to a minimum. A 951 MWe nuclear power plant in the semi-enclosed Nanwan Bay at the southern tip of Taiwan began operating in May 1984. Part of the bay is in Kenting National Park, which is known for its coral reefs and abundant marine life; thus, thermal pollution from the cooling water discharge is a great concern. Fortunately, the bay opens south to face the Luzon Strait, where the world's strongest internal tides are generated. Because the bay is deep enough, internal waves bring up cold deep water and reduce the surface temperature by as much as 10 °C for a few hours every day. These internal waves and topographically generated upwelling also bring nutrients to the euphotic layer from the depths, but the upwelled waters quickly leave the bay along with the cooling water. As a result, a thermal plume with a temperature of 1 °C or higher than the ambient temperature only covers 1 km. By way of comparison, El Niño—Southern Oscillation- or Pacific Decadal Oscillation-related interannual variations in temperature are as high as 5 °C. The rapid turnover of the upwelled waters also helps to prevent heat released by the power plant from accumulating and diminishes the thermal stress, thus sustaining corals and other marine life forms. Typhoons, even hundreds of kilometers away, could also induce the upwelling of cold subsurface water. Consecutive typhoons have been observed to reduce the water surface temperature by up to 10 °C for two weeks or longer. Furthermore, the currents are such that the thermal plume flows out of the bay most of the time. All of these factors make the surface waters in the bay about 0.5 °C cooler than the waters outside of the bay, despite the operation of a nearby nuclear power plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other high-latitude seas, the subpolar Bering and Okhotsk Seas in the northernmost Pacific Ocean changed rapidly from 1998 to 2018. The sea surface temperature (SST) increased by 0.62 and 0.41 °C/decade, respectively, much higher than the global rate of 0.108 °C/decade from 2000 until 2015. Despite this rapid warming, the chlorophyll content did not change significantly in the Bering Sea but increased by 0.047 μg/L/decade in the Okhotsk Sea. The Secchi disk depth (SDD) increased by 0.43 and 0.46 m/decade, respectively. Similar to other warm bodies of water, the SST of the subtropical/tropical South China Sea (SCS) also began rising, by 0.089 °C/decade, albeit more slowly than the global average. The chlorophyll content increased at 0.15 μg/L/decade from 1998 to 2006 but decreased by 0.11 μg/L/decade between 2007 and 2018. The SDD increased by 0.29 m/decade between 1998 and 2018. Although the SDD increased in all three seas, the chlorophyll concentration was maximum around 2006–2009, reflecting different phytoplankton responses to seawater warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]