Incorporating external knowledge has been shown to improve emotion understanding in dialogues by enriching contextual information, such as character motivations, psychological states, and causal relations between events. Filtering and categorizing this information can significantly enhance model performance. In this paper, we present an innovative Emotion Recognition in Conversation (ERC) framework, called the Scene-Speaker Emotion Awareness Network (SSEAN), which employs a dual-strategy modeling approach. SSEAN uniquely incorporates external commonsense knowledge describing speaker states into multimodal inputs. Using parallel recurrent networks to separately capture scene-level and speaker-level emotions, the model effectively reduces the accumulation of redundant information within the speaker’s emotional space. Additionally, we introduce an attention-based dynamic screening module to enhance the quality of integrated external commonsense knowledge through three levels: (1) speaker-listener-aware input structuring, (2) role-based segmentation, and (3) context-guided attention refinement. Experiments show that SSEAN outperforms existing state-of-the-art models on two well-adopted benchmark datasets in both single-text modality and multimodal settings.

For the enhancement of the transient stability of power systems, the key is to define a quantitative optimization formulation with system parameters as decision variables. In this paper, we model the disturbances by Gaussian noise and define a metric named Critical Escape Probability (CREP) based on the invariant probability measure of a linearized stochastic process. CREP characterizes the probability of the state escaping from a critical set. CREP involves all the system parameters and reflects the size of the basin of attraction of the nonlinear systems. An optimization framework that minimizes CREP with the system parameters as decision variables is presented. Simulations show that the mean of the first hitting time when the state hits the boundary of the critical set, that is often used to describe the stability of nonlinear systems, is dramatically increased by minimizing CREP. This indicates that the transient stability of the system is effectively enhanced. It is also shown that suppressing the state fluctuations only is insufficient for enhancing the transient stability. In addition, the famous Braess’ paradox which also exists in power systems is revisited. Surprisingly, it turned out that the paradoxes identified by the traditional metric may not exist according to CREP. This new metric opens a new avenue for the transient stability analysis of future power systems integrated with large amounts of renewable energy.

Modelling and observational techniques are pivotal in aerosol research, yet each approach exhibits inherent limitations. Aerosol observation is constrained by its limited spatial and temporal coverage compared to that of models. On the other hand, models tend to possess higher uncertainties and biases compared to observations. Aerosol data assimilation has gained popularity as it combines the advantages of both methods. Despite numerous studies in this domain, few have addressed the challenges faced in assimilating aerosol data with significant differences in magnitude and degree of freedom between the model state and observations, especially in the vertical direction. These challenges can lead to the preservation - or even the exacerbation - of structural inaccuracies within the assimilation process. This study investigates the sensitivity of dust aerosol data assimilation to the vertical structure of the aerosol profile. We assimilate a variety of dust observations, encompassing ground-based particulate matter (PM10) measurements, and satellite-derived dust optical depth (DOD) data, using the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). The assimilation process is elucidated, detailing the assimilation of raw ground-based and satellite-based observations for an optimized three-dimensional (3D) posterior state. To demonstrate the impact of accurate vs. erroneous prior aerosol vertical profiles on the assimilation result, we select three cases of super dust storms for analysis. Our findings reveal that the assimilation of ground observations would optimize the dust field at the ground in general. However, the vertical structure presents a more complex challenge. When the prior profile accurately reflects the true vertical structure, the assimilation process can successfully preserve this structure. Conversely, if the prior profile introduces an incorrect structure, the assimilation can significantly deteriorate the integrity of the aerosol profile. This is also found in the assimilation of DOD, which exhibits a comparable pattern in its sensitivity to the initial aerosol profile's accuracy.

The Basel Convention Plastic Waste Amendments, implemented in 2021, have the potential to reshape traditional ‘North-to-South' plastic waste trade patterns and their environmental impacts. We analyze plastic waste trade among 21 countries before (2019–2020) and after (2021–2022) the amendments, quantifying environmental impacts from transport and waste treatment using life cycle assessment. We find that post-amendment trade among selected EU and non-EU OECD countries increased to 71 %, up 12 percentage points from pre-amendment period, when half of the trade flowed to non-OECD Asian countries. This shift yielded modest increases of 2 % in climate and 5 % in energy benefits. Further expanding intra-EU-OECD trade could boost climate benefits by up to 12 %, mainly by reducing open burning in non-OECD Asian countries. These findings offer environmental insights into the EU's upcoming ban on plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries, suggesting future trade will likely concentrate among countries with aligned waste shipment rules.

Multimodal emotion recognition (MER) is essential for understanding human emotions from diverse sources such as speech, text, and video. However, modality heterogeneity and inconsistent expression pose challenges for effective feature fusion. To address this, we propose a novel MER framework combining a Dynamic Weighted Graph Convolutional Network (DW-GCN) for feature disentanglement and a Cross-Attention Consistency-Gated Fusion (CACG-Fusion) module for robust integration. DW-GCN models complex inter-modal relationships, enabling the extraction of both common and private features. The CACG-Fusion module subsequently enhances classification performance through dynamic alignment of cross-modal cues, employing attention-based coordination and consistency-preserving gating mechanisms to optimize feature integration. Experiments on the CMU-MOSI and CMU-MOSEI datasets demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance, significantly improving the 𝐴𝐶𝐶7 , 𝐴𝐶𝐶2, and 𝐹1 scores.

In multimodal emotion recognition, disentangled representation learning method effectively address the inherent heterogeneity among modalities. To facilitate the flexible integration of enhanced disentangled features into multimodal emotional features, we propose a task-driven multimodal emotion recognition method TDMER. Its Cross-Modal Learning module promotes adaptive cross-modal learning of features disentangled into modality-invariant and modality-specific subspaces, based on their contributions to emotional classification probabilities. The Task-Contribution Fusion mechanism then assigns controllable weights to the enhanced features according to their task objectives, generating multimodal fusion features that improve the emotion classifier's discriminative ability. The proposed TDMER approach has been evaluated on two widely-used multimodal emotion recognition benchmarks and demonstrated significant performance improvements compared with other state-of the-art methods.

Tools and analysis for improving the small-signal stability of a stochastic power system by optimal power dispatch in each short time horizon, such as five-minute intervals, are provided in this paper. An objective function which characterizes the maximal exit probability from the static stability region (−π/2,π/2) across the phase-angle differences of all power lines is formulated. This objective function is proven to be Lipschitz continuous, nondifferentiable, and nonconvex, with a finite minimum defined over the region of power supply vectors. The formulas of the generalized subgradient and directional derivative of the objective function are provided, and based on these formulas, a two-step algorithm is designed to approximate a minimizer accompanied by the convergence proof: (1) using a projected generalized subgradient method to compute an effective initial vector, and (2) applying the steepest descent method to approximate a local minimizer. The algorithms have been verified using a synthesized power network, demonstrating computational validity and effectiveness in minimizing the maximal exit probability of all power lines.

Speech signals contain rich information, such as textual content, emotion, and speaker identity. To extract these features more efficiently, researchers are investigating joint training across multiple tasks, like Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) and Speaker Verification (SV), aiming to improve performance by decoupling task-specific knowledge. Traditional multitask decoupling methods in SER typically use orthogonalization to increase the distance between parameter vectors in the feature space. In this paper, we introduce a novel Hybrid instance-level Contrastive Decoupling Loss. This method leverages supervised labels to effectively decouple SER and SV. Unlike previous approaches, it is not restricted to dual-stream models with identical architectures and can be easily integrated with leading models for each sub-task. Experimental results show that our proposed Hybrid Contrastive Learning Decoupling (HCLD) method significantly outperforms traditional orthogonal decoupling approaches.

Measurements collected from ground monitoring stations have gained popularity as a valuable data source for evaluating numerical models and correcting model errors through data assimilation. The penalty quantified by simulation minus observations drives both model evaluation and assimilation. However, the penal forces are challenged by the existence of a spatial-scale disparity between model simulations and observations. Chemical transport models (CTMs) divide the atmosphere into grid cells, providing a structured way to simulate atmospheric processes. However, their spatial resolution often does not match the limited coverage of in situ measurements, especially for short-lived air pollutants. Within a broad grid cell, air pollutant concentrations can exhibit significant heterogeneity due to their rapid generation and dissipation. Ground observations with traditional methods (including “nearest search” and “grid mean”) are less representative when compared to model simulations. This study develops a new land-use-based representative (LUBR) observational operator to generate spatially representative gridded observations for model evaluation. It incorporates high-resolution urban–rural land use data to address intra-grid variability. The LUBR operator has been validated to consistently provide insights that align with satellite Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) measurements. It is an effective solution to accurately quantify these spatial-scale mismatches and further resolve them via assimilation. Model evaluations with 2015–2017 NO2 measurements in the study area demonstrate that biases and errors differed substantially when the LUBR and other operators were used, respectively. The results highlight the importance of considering fine-scale urban–rural differences when comparing models and observations, especially for short-lived pollutants like NO2.

We discuss the various performance aspects of parallelizing our transient global-scale groundwater model at 30′′ resolution (30arcsec; °1/41km at the Equator) on large distributed memory parallel clusters. This model, referred to as GLOBGM, is the successor of our 5′ (5arcmin; °1/410km at the Equator) PCR-GLOBWB 2 (PCRaster Global Water Balance model) groundwater model, based on MODFLOW having two model layers. The current version of GLOBGM (v1.0) used in this study also has two model layers, is uncalibrated, and uses available 30′′ PCR-GLOBWB data. Increasing the model resolution from 5′ to 30′′ creates challenges, including increased runtime, memory usage, and data storage that exceed the capacity of a single computer. We show that our parallelization tackles these problems with relatively low parallel hardware requirements to meet the needs of users or modelers who do not have exclusive access to hundreds or thousands of nodes within a supercomputer. For our simulation, we use unstructured grids and a prototype version of MODFLOW 6 that we have parallelized using the message-passing interface. We construct independent unstructured grids with a total of 278 million active cells to cancel all redundant sea and land cells, while satisfying all necessary boundary conditions, and distribute them over three continental-scale groundwater models (168 million - Afro-Eurasia; 77 million - the Americas; 16 million - Australia) and one remaining model for the smaller islands (17 million). Each of the four groundwater models is partitioned into multiple non-overlapping submodels that are tightly coupled within the MODFLOW linear solver, where each submodel is uniquely assigned to one processor core, and associated submodel data are written in parallel during the pre-processing, using data tiles. For balancing the parallel workload in advance, we apply the widely used METIS graph partitioner in two ways: it is straightforwardly applied to all (lateral) model grid cells, and it is applied in an area-based manner to HydroBASINS catchments that are assigned to submodels for pre-sorting to a future coupling with surface water. We consider an experiment for simulating the years 1958-2015 with daily time steps and monthly input, including a 20-year spin-up, on the Dutch national supercomputer Snellius. Given that the serial simulation would require °1/44.5 months of runtime, we set a hypothetical target of a maximum of 16h of simulation runtime. We show that 12 nodes (32 cores per node; 384 cores in total) are sufficient to achieve this target, resulting in a speedup of 138 for the largest Afro-Eurasia model when using 7 nodes (224 cores) in parallel. A limited evaluation of the model output using the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Water Information System (NWIS) head observations for the contiguous United States was conducted. This showed that increasing the resolution from 5′ to 30′′ results in a significant improvement with GLOBGM for the steady-state simulation when compared to the 5′ PCR-GLOBWB groundwater model. However, results for the transient simulation are quite similar, and there is much room for improvement. Monthly and multi-year total terrestrial water storage anomalies derived from the GLOBGM and PCR-GLOBWB models, however, compared favorably with observations from the GRACE satellite. For the next versions of GLOBGM, further improvements require a more detailed (hydro)geological schematization and better information on the locations, depths, and pumping rates of abstraction wells.

This paper describes a neural network cloud masking scheme from PARASOL (Polarization and Anisotropy of Reflectances for Atmospheric Science coupled with Observations from a Lidar) multi-angle polarimetric measurements. The algorithm has been trained on synthetic measurements and has been applied to the processing of 1 year of PARASOL data. Comparisons of the retrieved cloud fraction with MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) products show overall agreement in spatial and temporal patterns, but the PARASOL neural network (PARASOL-NN) retrieves lower cloud fractions. Comparisons with a goodness-of-fit mask from aerosol retrievals suggest that the NN cloud mask flags fewer clear pixels as cloudy than MODIS (∼ 3 % of the clear pixels versus ∼ 15 % by MODIS). On the other hand the NN classifies more pixels incorrectly as clear than MODIS (∼ 20 % by NN, versus ∼ 15 % by MODIS). Additionally, the NN and MODIS cloud mask have been applied to the aerosol retrievals from PARASOL using the Remote Sensing of Trace Gas and Aerosol Products (RemoTAP) algorithm. Validation with AERONET shows that the NN cloud mask performs comparably with MODIS in screening residual cloud contamination in retrieved aerosol properties. Our study demonstrates that cloud masking from multi-angle polarimeter (MAP) aerosol retrievals can be performed based on the MAP measurements themselves, making the retrievals independent of the availability of a cloud imager.

The global trade of plastic waste has raised environmental concerns, especially regarding pollution in waste-importing countries. However, the overall environmental contribution remains unclear due to uncertain treatment shares between handling plastic waste abroad and domestically. Here, we conduct a life cycle assessment of global plastic waste trade in 2022 across 18 countries and six plastic waste types, alongside three “nontrade” counterfactual scenarios. By considering the required cycling rate, which balances importers’ costs and recycling revenues, we find that the trade resulted in lower environmental impacts than treating domestically with the average treatment mix. The trade scenario alone reduced climate change impact by 2.85 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent and mitigated damages to ecosystem quality, human health, and resource availability by 12 species-years, 6200 disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), and 1.4 billion United States dollars (USD in 2013), respectively. These results underscore the significance of recognizing plastic waste trade as a pivotal factor in regulating global secondary plastic production when formulating a global plastics treaty.

Serious fluctuations caused by disturbances may lead to instability of power systems. With the disturbance modeled by a Brownian motion process, the fluctuations are often described by the asymptotic variance at the invariant probability distribution of an associated Gaussian stochastic process. Here, we derive the explicit formula of the variance matrix for the system with a uniform damping-inertia ratio at all the nodes, which enables us to analyze the influences of the system parameters on the fluctuations and investigate the fluctuation propagation in the network. With application to systems with complete graphs and star graphs, it is found that the variance of the frequency at the disturbed node is significantly bigger than those at all the other nodes. It is also shown that adding new nodes may prevent the propagation of fluctuations from the disturbed node to all the others. Finally, it is proven theoretically that larger line capacities accelerate the propagation of the frequency fluctuation and larger inertia of synchronous machines help suppress the fluctuations of the phase differences, however, these acceleration and suppression are quite limited.

Dust storms pose significant risks to health and property, necessitating accurate forecasting for preventive measures. Despite advancements, dust models grapple with uncertainties arising from emission and transport processes. Data assimilation addresses these by integrating observations to rectify model error, enhancing forecast precision. The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) is a widely used assimilation algorithm that effectively optimize model states, particularly in terms of intensity adjustment. However, the EnKF's efficacy is challenged by position errors between modeled and observed dust features, especially under substantial position errors. This study introduces the valid time shifting ensemble Kalman filter (VTS-EnKF), which combines stochastic EnKF with a valid time shifting mechanism. By recruiting additional ensemble members from neighboring valid times, this method not only accommodates variations in dust load but also explicitly accounts for positional uncertainties. Consequently, the enlarged ensemble better represents both the intensity and positional errors, thereby optimizing the utilization of observational data. The proposed VTS-EnKF was evaluated against two severe dust storm cases from spring 2021, demonstrating that position errors notably deteriorated forecast performance in terms of root mean square error (RMSE) and normalized mean bias (NMB), impeding the EnKF's effective assimilation. Conversely, the VTS-EnKF improved both the analysis and forecast accuracy compared to the conventional EnKF. Additionally, to provide a more rigorous assessment of its performance, experiments were conducted using fewer ensemble members and different time intervals.

Accurately forecasting ozone levels that exceed specific thresholds is pivotal for mitigating adverse effects on both the environment and public health. However, predicting such ozone exceedances remains challenging due to the infrequent occurrence of high-concentration ozone data. This research, leveraging data from 57 German monitoring stations from 1999 to 2018, introduces an Enhanced Extreme Instance Augmentation Random Forest (EEIA-RF) approach that significantly improves the prediction of days when the maximum daily 8-hour average ozone concentrations exceed 120μg/m³. A pre-trained machine learning model is used to generate additional high-concentration data, which, combined with selectively reduced low-concentration data, forms a new dataset for training a refined model. This method achieved an improvement of at least 8% in the accuracy of predicting days with ozone exceedances across Germany. Our experiment underscores the approach's value in enhancing atmospheric modeling and supporting public health advisories and environmental policy-making related to ozone pollution.

The environmental impact of traded plastic waste hinges on how it is treated. Existing studies often use domestic or scenario-based recycling rates for imported plastic waste, which is problematic due to differences in recyclability and the fact that importers pay for it. We estimate the minimum required recycling rate (RRR) needed to break even financially by analysing import prices, recycling costs, and the value of recycled plastics across 22 leading importing countries and four plastic waste types during 2013–2022. Here we show that at least 63% of imported plastic waste must be recycled, surpassing the average domestic recycling rate of 23% by 40 percentage points. This discrepancy suggests that recycled plastics volumes from the global North-to-South trade may be underestimated. The country-specific RRR provided could enhance research and policy efforts to better quantify and mitigate the environmental impact of plastic waste trade.

In data assimilation (DA) schemes, the form representing the processes in the evolution models are pre-determined except some parameters to be estimated. In some applications, such as the contaminant solute transport model and the gas reservoir model, the modes in the equations within the evolution model cannot be predetermined from the outset and may change with the time. We propose a framework of sequential DA method named Reversible Jump Ensemble Filter (RJEnF) to identify the governing modes of the evolution model over time. The main idea is to introduce the Reversible Jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) method to the DA schemes to fit the situation where the modes of the evolution model are unknown and the dimension of the parameters is changing. Our framework allows us to identify the modes in the evolution model and their changes, as well as estimate the parameters and states of the dynamic system. Numerical experiments are conducted and the results show that our framework can effectively identify the underlying evolution models and increase the predictive accuracy of DA methods.

Influence maximization (IM) is a very important issue in social network diffusion analysis. The topology of real social network is large-scale, dynamic, and heterogeneous. The heterogeneity, and continuous expansion and evolution of social network pose a challenge to find influential users. Existing IM algorithms usually assume that social networks are static or dynamic but homogeneous to simplify the complexity of the IM problem. We propose a community-based influence maximization algorithm using network embedding in dynamic heterogeneous social networks. We use DyHATR algorithm to obtain the propagation feature vectors of network nodes, and execute k-means cluster algorithm to transform the original network into a coarse granularity network (CGN). On CGN, we propose a community-based three-hop independent cascade model and construct the objective function of IM problem. We design a greedy heuristics algorithm to solve the IM problem with approximation guarantee and use community structure to quickly identify seed users and estimate their influence value. Experimental results on real social networks demonstrated that compared with existing IM algorithms, our proposed algorithm had better comprehensive performance with respect to the influence value, more less execution time and memory consumption, and better scalability.

Atmospheric ammonia has been hazardous to the environment and human health for decades. Current inventories are usually constructed in a bottom-up manner and subject to uncertainties and incapable of reproducing the spatiotemporal characteristics of ammonia emission. Satellite measurements, for example, Infrared Atmospheric Sounder Interferometer (IASI) and Cross-Track Infrared Sounder, which provide global coverage of ammonia distribution, have gained popularity in ammonia emission estimation through data assimilation methods. However, satellite-based emission inversion studies on China are limited. In this study, we propose a four-dimensional ensemble variational-based ammonia emission inversion system to optimize ammonia emissions in China. It was developed by assimilating the IASI ammonia retrievals onboard Meteorological Operational satellite A and B into a chemical transport model Goddard Earth Observing System Chemical model (GEOS-Chem). Monthly inversion experiments were conducted in April, July, and October 2016 to test the performance. The inversion result indicated that the prior inventory from the MEIC model captured ammonia spreads in general; however, it heterogeneously underrated the emission intensity. The increments obtained in the assimilation were as high as 50% in North, East, and Northwest China. The posterior emission inventory presented a regional emission flux consistent with relevant studies. Driven by the optimized source estimate, GEOS-Chem provides superior results than using the prior in the evaluation of the assimilated IASI retrievals and the surface ammonia concentration measured by the ground-based Ammonia Monitoring Network in China.

The synchronization stability of a complex network system of coupled phase oscillators is discussed. In case the network is affected by disturbances, a stochastic linearized system of the coupled phase oscillators may be used to determine the fluctuations of phase differences in the lines between the nodes and to identify the vulnerable lines that may lead to desynchronization. The main result is the derivation of the asymptotic variance matrices of the phase differences which characterizes the severity of the fluctuations. It is found that the cycle space of the graph of the system plays a role in this characterization. With theory of the cycle space, the effect of forming small cycles on the fluctuations is evaluated. It is proven that adding a new line or increasing the coupling strength of a line affects the fluctuations in the lines in any cycle including this line, while it does not affect the fluctuations in the other lines. In particular, if the phase differences at the synchronous state are not changed by these actions, then the affected fluctuations reduce.