ALBERT

Description: Cold regions, including high-latitude and high-altitude landscapes, are experiencing profound environmental changes driven by global warming. With the advance of earth observation technology, remote sensing has become increasingly important for detecting, monitoring, and understanding environmental changes over vast and remote regions. This paper provides an overview of recent achievements, challenges, and opportunities for land remote sensing of cold regions by (a) summarizing the physical principles and methods in remote sensing of selected key variables related to ice, snow, permafrost, water bodies, and vegetation; (b) highlighting recent environmental nonstationarity occurring in the Arctic, Tibetan Plateau, and Antarctica as detected from satellite observations; (c) discussing the limits of available remote sensing data and approaches for regional monitoring; and (d) exploring new opportunities from next-generation satellite missions and emerging methods for accurate, timely, and multi-scale mapping of cold regions.

Description: More than half of the global land area undergoes seasonal frozen and thawed conditions that constrain eco-hydrological processes. The freeze-thaw (FT) retrieval from satellite microwave remote sensing detects landscape changes between frozen and non-frozen conditions due to the strong dependence of surface microwave emissions on liquid water abundance. We conducted an assessment of the latest version (R16) of the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Level 3 FT (L3_FT) global product. The L3_FT product provides a global FT classification with 3-day mean temporal fidelity derived using SMAP L-band (1.4 GHz) microwave brightness temperature (Tb) retrievals. The R16 product uses both normalized polarization ratio (NPR) and single channel vertically-polarized Tb (FT-SCV) algorithms to obtain FT retrievals over land areas where frozen temperatures are a significant ecological constraint. The L3_FT product is generated in a standard global grid with similar grid cell resolution (36-km) as the SMAP radiometer footprint. An enhanced 9-km global grid L3_FT product is also produced from optimally interpolated SMAP Tb retrievals. The resulting L3_FT products span a larger domain and longer period (2015–present) than earlier product releases. The L3_FT 36-km results showed a respective global mean annual FT classification accuracy of approximately 78 and 90 percent for descending (AM) and ascending (PM) orbit observations in relation to independent surface air temperature-based FT estimates from ~5000 global weather stations. The FT accuracy was lower in areas with greater terrain complexity, open water and vegetation cover; where the combined land cover factors explained 29–53% of the variability in the SMAP FT global accuracy. The L3_FT 9-km product showed an apparent enhancement of FT spatial patterns, but with ~4% lower accuracy than the 36-km product; the lower 9-km accuracy was attributed to stronger degradation from land cover heterogeneity, particularly in coastal areas, and artifact noise introduced from the spatial interpolation of SMAP Tb retrievals. Selected regional applications indicated product utility in capturing anomalous frost events over Australia and seasonal thaw and spring onset patterns over Alaska. Overall, the L3_FT global accuracy meets or exceeds the FT product science requirements established by the mission, while enabling studies of dynamic FT and water mobility constraints influencing hydrological and ecosystem processes, and global water-carbon-energy cycle linkages.

Description: Negative experiences of care may act as a deterrent to current and/or future utilization of facility-based health services. To examine the situation in Tanzania, we conducted a sub-analysis of a cross-sectional household survey conducted in April 2016 in the Mara and Kagera regions of Tanzania. The sample included 732 women aged 15–49 years who had given birth in a health facility during the previous two years. Log binomial regression models were used to investigate the association between women’s experiences of care during childbirth and the receipt of early postnatal checks before discharge. Overall, 73.1% of women reported disrespect and abuse, 60.1% were offered a birth companion, 29.1% had a choice of birth position, and 85.5% rated facility cleanliness as good. About half of mothers (46.3%) and newborns (51.4%) received early postnatal checks before discharge. Early postnatal checks for both mothers and newborns were associated with no disrespect and abuse (RR: 1.23 and 1.14, respectively) and facility cleanliness (RR: 1.29 and 1.54, respectively). Early postnatal checks for mothers were also associated with choice of birth position (RR: 1.18). The results suggest that a missed opportunity in providing an early postnatal check is an indication of poor quality of the continuum of care for mothers and newborns. Improved quality of care at one stage can predict better care in subsequent stages.

Description: This paper aims to reveal the relationship between cooperation, trust, and sustainability, and to uncover whether cooperation, trust, and sustainability is nested within collaboration in shipper–shipping company relationships. Structural equation modeling identified that cooperation has a positive effect on trust, which partially mediates the impact of cooperation on sustainability. Sub-constructs of cooperation included transparency, fairness, and mutuality. Fairness is the prime antecedent of trust, and developing fairness can create more effective and high-quality relationships among firms. A fuller theoretical model reveals how inter-firm cooperation may progress to collaboration, and why transparency does not necessarily lead to trust.

Description: Proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) using porous metallic foam flow-field plates have been demonstrated as an alternative to conventional rib and channel designs, showing high performance at high currents. However, the transport of liquid product water through metal foam flow-field plates in PEMFC conditions is not well understood, especially at the individual pore level. In this work, ex-situ experiments are conducted to visualise liquid water movement within a metal foam flow-field plate, considering hydrophobicity, foam pore size and air flow rate. A two-phase numerical model is then developed to further investigate the fundamental water transport behaviour in porous metal foam flow-field plates. Both the experimental and numerical work demonstrate that unlike conventional PEMFC channels, air flow rate does not have a strong influence on water removal due to the high surface tensions between the water and foam pore ligaments. A hydrophobic foam was seen to transport liquid water away from the initial injection point faster than a hydrophilic foam. In ex-situ tests, liquid water forms and maintains a random preferential pathway until the flow-field edge is reached. These results suggest that controlled foam hydrophobicity and pore size is the best way of managing water distribution in PEMFCs with porous flow-field plates.

Description: In this work, we investigate the generalized Hyers-Ulam stability of the Apollonius type additive functional equation in modular spaces with or without Δ 2 -conditions. We study the same problem in fuzzy Banach spaces and β -homogeneous Banach spaces. We show the hyperstability of the functional equation associated with the Jordan triple product in fuzzy Banach algebras. The obtained results can be applied to differential and integral equations with kernels of non-power types.