ALBERT

Description: The disposal of industrial paper mill sludge waste is a big issue and has a great importance all over the world. A study was conducted to determine the chemical properties of recycled paper mill sludge (RPMS) and assess its possibilities for land application. RPMS samples were collected from six different paper mills in Malaysia and analyzed for physical and chemical properties, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, 13C-NMR spectra and for the presence of dioxins/furans. The RPMS was dewatered, sticky with a strong odour, an average moisture of 65.08%, pH 7.09, cation exchange capacity (CEC) 14.43 cmol (+) kg–1, N 1.45, P 0.18, K 0.12, Ca 0.82, Mg 0.73, Na 0.76 and Al, 1.38%. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals levels were below the standard Class 2 limits. The dioxin and furan were in below the standard concentration of Class 1. The most prominent peak in the 13C-NMR spectra of RPMS was centered at 31 ppm, proving the presence of methylene (-CH2) groups in long aliphatic chains, with lipids and proteins. The signal at 89 ppm and highly shielded shoulder at 83 ppm were due to presence of cellulose carbon C-4, and the peak at 63 and 65 ppm was due to the cellulose carbon spectrum. The RPMS therefore contains significant amount of nutrients with safe levels of heavy metals and PAHs for environment and can be used as a fertilizer and soil amendment for land application.

Description: Doctor-shopping has caused an increase in medical expense, potential to receive duplicate medications, and suffer adverse drug reactions. We carried out a population-based retrospective study aimed at examining the user patterns of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) ambulatory care in Taiwan. We retrieved complete TCM ambulatory visit datasets for the year 2007 from the National Health Insurance database in Taiwan. We defined the patients whose distribution of TCM physician numbers scored more than 97.5 percent (more than, or equal to, five TCM physicians) within one year as TCM doctor-shoppers. In total, 6,596,814 subjects (28.9%) paid TCM visits during that year. All 177,728 subjects (2.69%) who visited more than five (including) TCM physicians were classified as TCM shoppers. The most prevalent diagnostic grouping was upper respiratory infections (44.7%) and sprains and strains (44.0%). Men had a lower odds ratio (OR) among TCM shoppers than women (OR = 0.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.93–0.96). Younger people were less likely to be TCM shoppers than other people were. The ORs of TCM shoppers were higher among veterans and low-income patients (OR = 1.29 (1.23–1.35), and 1.33 (1.27–1.41)). In conclusion, health education on the potential of drug interactions and iatrogenic health risks incurred from doctor-shopping should be addressed to those high-risk patients.

Description: Day-to-day variability and stability of children’s physical activity levels across days of the week are not well understood. Our aims were to examine the day-to-day variability of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), to determine factors influencing the day-to-day variability of MVPA and to estimate stability of MVPA in children. The sample comprises 686 Portuguese children (10 years of age). MVPA was assessed with an accelerometer, and BMI was computed from measured height and weight. Daily changes in MVPA and their correlates (gender, BMI, and maturity) were modeled with a multilevel approach, and tracking was calculated using Foulkes & Davies γ. A total of 51.3% of boys and 26.2% of girls achieved 60 min/day of MVPA on average. Daily MVPA was lower during the weekend (23.6% of boys and 13.6% of girls comply with the recommended 60 min/day of MVPA) compared to weekdays (60.8% and 35.4%, boys and girls, respectively). Normal weight children were more active than obese children and no effect was found for biological maturation. Tracking is low in both boys (γ = 0.59 ± 0.01) and girls (γ = 0.56 ± 0.01). Children’s MVPA levels during a week are highly unstable. In summary, boys are more active than girls, maturation does not affect their MVPA, and obese children are less likely to meet 60 min/day of MVPA. These results highlight the importance of providing opportunities for increasing children’s daily MVPA on all days of week, especially on the weekend.

Description: Since the late 1970s, the Chinese government has initiated ecological restoration programs in the Three North Shelter Forest System Project (TNSFSP) area. Whether accelerated climate change will help or hinder these efforts is still poorly understood. Using the updated and extended AVHRR NDVI3g dataset from 1982 to 2011 and corresponding climatic data, we investigated vegetation variations in response to climate change. The results showed that the overall state of vegetation in the study region has improved over the past three decades. Vegetation cover significantly decreased in 23.1% and significantly increased in 21.8% of the study area. An increase in all three main vegetation types (forest, grassland, and cropland) was observed, but the trend was only statistically significant in cropland. In addition, bare and sparsely vegetated areas, mainly located in the western part of the study area, have significantly expanded since the early 2000s. A moisture condition analysis indicated that the study area experienced significant climate variations, with warm-wet conditions in the western region and warm-dry conditions in the eastern region. Correlation analysis showed that variations in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were positively correlated with precipitation and negatively correlated with temperature. Ultimately, climate change influenced vegetation growth by controlling the availability of soil moisture. Further investigation suggested that the positive impacts of precipitation on NDVI have weakened in the study region, whereas the negative impacts from temperature have been enhanced in the eastern study area. However, over recent years, the negative temperature impacts have been converted to positive impacts in the western region. Considering the variations in the relationship between NDVI and climatic variables, the warm–dry climate in the eastern region is likely harmful to vegetation growth, whereas the warm–wet conditions in the western region may promote vegetation growth.

Description: In this paper, we propose a distributed data-gathering scheme using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) working as a mobile sink to gather data from a randomly distributed underwater sensor network where sensor nodes are clustered around several cluster headers. Unlike conventional data-gathering schemes where the AUV visits either every node or every cluster header, the proposed scheme allows the AUV to visit some selected nodes named path-nodes in a way that reduces the overall transmission power of the sensor nodes. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to investigate the performance of the proposed scheme compared with several preexisting techniques employing the AUV in terms of total amount of energy consumption, standard deviation of each node’s energy consumption, latency to gather data at a sink, and controlling overhead. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme not only reduces the total energy consumption but also distributes the energy consumption more uniformly over the network, thereby increasing the lifetime of the network.

Description: three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D-IC) structure with a significant scale mismatch causes difficulty in analytic model construction. This paper proposes a simulation technique to introduce an equivalent material composed of microbumps and their surrounding wafer level underfill (WLUF). The mechanical properties of this equivalent material, including Young’s modulus (E), Poisson’s ratio, shear modulus, and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), are directly obtained by applying either a tensile load or a constant displacement, and by increasing the temperature during simulations, respectively. Analytic results indicate that at least eight microbumps at the outermost region of the chip stacking structure need to be considered as an accurate stress/strain contour in the concerned region. In addition, a factorial experimental design with analysis of variance is proposed to optimize chip stacking structure reliability with four factors: chip thickness, substrate thickness, CTE, and E-value. Analytic results show that the most significant factor is CTE of WLUF. This factor affects microbump reliability and structural warpage under a temperature cycling load and high-temperature bonding process. WLUF with low CTE and high E-value are recommended to enhance the assembly reliability of the 3D-IC architecture.

Description: Nanoporous metals (NPMs) have proven to be all-round candidates in versatile and diverse applications. In this decade, interest has grown in the fabrication, characterization and applications of these intriguing materials. Most existing reviews focus on the experimental and theoretical works rather than the numerical simulation. Actually, with numerous experiments and theory analysis, studies based on computer simulation, which may model complex microstructure in more realistic ways, play a key role in understanding and predicting the behaviors of NPMs. In this review, we present a comprehensive overview of the computer simulations of NPMs, which are prepared through chemical dealloying. Firstly, we summarize the various simulation approaches to preparation, processing, and the basic physical and chemical properties of NPMs. In this part, the emphasis is attached to works involving dealloying, coarsening and mechanical properties. Then, we conclude with the latest progress as well as the future challenges in simulation studies. We believe that highlighting the importance of simulations will help to better understand the properties of novel materials and help with new scientific research on these materials.

Description: Congestion pricing strategy has been recognized as an effective countermeasure in the practical field of urban traffic congestion mitigation. In this paper, a bi-level programming model considering carbon dioxide emission is proposed to mitigate traffic congestion and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The objective function of the upper level model is to minimize the sum of travel costs and the carbon dioxide emissions costs. The lower level is a multi-modal transportation network equilibrium model. To solve the model, the method of successive averages (MSA) and the shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA) are introduced. The proposed method and algorithm are tested through the numerical example. The results show that the proposed congestion pricing strategy can mitigate traffic congestion and reduce carbon emissions effectively.

Description: Multispectral, as well as multi-temporal, satellite images, coupled with measurements, in situ, have been widely applied to the water quality monitoring of reservoirs. However, the spatial resolutions of the current multispectral satellite imageries are inadequate for trophic state mapping of small reservoirs which merely cover several hectares. Moreover, the temporal gap between effective satellite imaging and measurements, in situ, is usually a few days or weeks; this time lag hampers the establishment of regression models between band ratios and water quality parameters. In this research, the RGB and NIR sensors carried on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) were applied to the trophic state mapping of Tain-Pu reservoir, which is one of the small reservoirs in Kinmen, Taiwan. Due to the limited sampling points and the uncertainty of water fluidity, the average method and the matching pixel-by-pixel (MPP) method were employed to search for the optimal regression models. The experimental results indicate that the MPP method can lead to better regression models than the average method, and the trophic state maps show that the averages of Chl-a, TP, and SD are 179.7 μg·L−1, 108.4 μg·L−1, and 1.4 m, respectively.

Description: In this study, a methodology for glacier elevation reconstruction from Digital Elevation Model (DEM) time series (tDEM) is described for modeling the evolution of glacier elevation and estimating related volume change, with focus on medium-resolution and noisy satellite DEMs. The method is robust with respect to outliers in individual DEM products. Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand are used as test cases based on 31 Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) DEMs and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) DEM. We obtained a mean surface elevation lowering rate of −0.51 ± 0.02 m·a−1 and −0.09 ± 0.02 m·a−1 between 2000 and 2014 for Fox and Franz Josef Glacier, respectively. The specific volume difference between 2000 and 2014 was estimated as −0.77 ± 0.13 m·a−1 and −0.33 ± 0.06 m·a−1 by our tDEM method. The comparably moderate thinning rates are mainly due to volume gains after 2013 that compensate larger thinning rates earlier in the series. Terminus thickening prevailed between 2002 and 2007.

Description: The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology combing multi-temporal X-band SAR images (TerraSAR-X) with continuous ground thetaprobe measurements, for the retrieval of surface soil moisture and texture at a high spatial resolution. Our analysis is based on seven radar images acquired at a 36° incidence angle in the HH polarization, over a semi-arid site in Tunisia (North Africa). The soil moisture estimations are based on an empirical change detection approach using TerraSAR-X data and ground auxiliary thetaprobe network measurements. Two assumptions were tested: (1) roughness variations during the three-month radar acquisition campaigns were not accounted for; (2) a simple correction for temporal variations in roughness was included. The results reveal a small improvement in the estimation of soil moisture when a correction for temporal variations in roughness is introduced. By considering the estimated temporal dynamics of soil moisture, a methodology is proposed for the retrieval of clay and sand content (expressed as percentages) in soil. Two empirical relationships were established between the mean moisture values retrieved from the seven acquired radar images and the two soil texture components over 36 test fields. Validation of the proposed approach was carried out over a second set of 34 fields, showing that highly accurate clay estimations can be achieved. Maps of soil moisture, clay and sand percentages at the studied site are derived.

Description: In close-range photogrammetry, images are difficult to acquire and organize primarily because of the limited field of view (FOV) of digital cameras when long focal lenses are used to measure large targets. To overcome this problem, we apply a scanning photography method that acquires images by rotating the camera in both horizontal and vertical directions at one station. This approach not only enlarges the FOV of each station but also ensures that all stations are distributed in order without coverage gap. We also conduct a modified triangulation according to the traits of the data overlapping among images from the same station to avoid matching all images with one another. This algorithm synthesizes the images acquired from the same station into synthetic images, which are then used to generate a free network. Consequently, we solve the exterior orientation elements of each original camera image in the free network and perform image matching among original images to obtain tie points. Finally, all original images are combined in self-calibration bundle adjustment with control points. The feasibility and precision of the proposed method are validated by testing it on two fields using 300 and 600 mm lenses. The results confirm that even with a small amount of control points, the developed scanning photogrammetry can steadily achieve millimeter scale accuracy at distances ranging from 40 m to 250 m.

Description: We investigated the synergetic effect between light-emitting diode (LED) lighting efficiency and building energy savings in heating and cooling using an alternative thermal operating system (ATOS) of indoor LED lighting integrated with the ventilation system of a building as an active cooling device. The heat generated from LED lighting and the indoor lighting illuminance were experimentally determined. The indoor heat gains in cooling and heating periods were determined using measurement data; the annual energy savings of an office building in heating and cooling were calculated through simulation. The LED lighting illuminance increased by approximately 40% and the lighting contribution for indoor heat gain was 7.8% in summer, while 69.8% in winter with the ATOS. Consequently, the annual total energy use of the office building could be reduced by 5.9%; the energy use in cooling and heating was reduced by 18.4% and 3.3%, respectively.

Description: The microbiological sanitary quality and safety of leafy greens and strawberries were assessed in the primary production in Belgium, Brazil, Egypt, Norway and Spain by enumeration of Escherichia coli and detection of Salmonella, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli (STEC) and Campylobacter. Water samples were more prone to containing pathogens (54 positives out of 950 analyses) than soil (16/1186) and produce on the field (18/977 for leafy greens and 5/402 for strawberries). The prevalence of pathogens also varied markedly according to the sampling region. Flooding of fields increased the risk considerably, with odds ratio (OR) 10.9 for Salmonella and 7.0 for STEC. A significant association between elevated numbers of generic E. coli and detection of pathogens (OR of 2.3 for STEC and 2.7 for Salmonella) was established. Generic E. coli was found to be a suitable index organism for Salmonella and STEC, but to a lesser extent for Campylobacter. Guidelines on frequency of sampling and threshold values for E. coli in irrigation water may differ from region to region.

Description: The objective of this research is to provide a standardized platform to monitor and predict indicators of people with traumatic brain injury using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, and analyze its potential benefits for people with disabilities, health centers and administrations. We developed a platform that allows automatic standardization and automatic graphical representations of indicators of the status of individuals and populations. We used data from 730 people with acquired brain injury performing periodic comprehensive evaluations in the years 2006–2013. Health professionals noted that the use of color-coded graphical representation is useful for quickly diagnose failures, limitations or restrictions in rehabilitation. The prognosis system achieves 41% of accuracy and sensitivity in the prediction of emotional functions, and 48% of accuracy and sensitivity in the prediction of executive functions. This monitoring and prognosis system has the potential to: (1) save costs and time, (2) provide more information to make decisions, (3) promote interoperability, (4) facilitate joint decision-making, and (5) improve policies of socioeconomic evaluation of the burden of disease. Professionals found the monitoring system useful because it generates a more comprehensive understanding of health oriented to the profile of the patients, instead of their diseases and injuries.

Description: Objectives: In 2005, China acceded to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), the foundation for the global fight against tobacco. Certain cities in China have established local regulations to control tobacco use ahead of national policy; however, without the enforcement of statutory law, some of these regulations are merely lip service. The aim of the study was to assess the effects of city policy on smoking prevalence and on second-hand smoke (SHS) exposure status among non-smokers in Changchun City. Methods: A cross-sectional survey covering a multiple-stage, representative sample of the urban population aged ≥15 years was conducted between 1 Dec 2013 and 31 Jan 2014. The WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed the questionnaires used, which included demographic characteristics, smoking behaviors and SHS exposure status. Results: Overall cigarette smoking prevalence was 23.5%; daily cigarette smoking prevalence was 21.2%. Smoking prevalence and cigarettes consumed per day was higher among men (p 〈 0.05) and those aged 45–64 years (p 〈 0.05). Among current smokers, 8.1% planned to quit within 12 months; 53.4% had no intention of quitting. Overall SHS exposure prevalence was 41.9% (workplace) and 34.1% (at home) over the previous 30 days. The weighted workplace SHS exposure prevalence increased with age. Conclusions: The high proportion of smokers with no intention of quitting and the high level of SHS exposure may constitute one of the most significant barriers to successful smoking cessation in the city. A continued drive to promote full implementation of the WHO FCTC is still needed.

Description: Contemporary ecological models of health prominently feature the natural environment as fundamental to the ecosystem services that support human life, health, and well-being. The natural environment encompasses and permeates all other spheres of influence on health. Reviews of the natural environment and health literature have tended, at times intentionally, to focus on a limited subset of ecosystem services as well as health benefits stemming from the presence, and access and exposure to, green infrastructure. The sweeping influence of green infrastructure on the myriad ecosystem services essential to health has therefore often been underrepresented. This survey of the literature aims to provide a more comprehensive picture—in the form of a primer—of the many simultaneously acting health co-benefits of green infrastructure. It is hoped that a more accurately exhaustive list of benefits will not only instigate further research into the health co-benefits of green infrastructure but also promote consilience in the many fields, including public health, that must be involved in the landscape conservation necessary to protect and improve health and well-being.

Description: There is growing evidence of climate change affecting infectious disease risk in Western Europe. The call for effective adaptation to this challenge becomes increasingly stronger. This paper presents the results of a survey exploring Dutch expert perspectives on adaptation responses to climate change impacts on infectious disease risk in Western Europe. Additionally, the survey explores the expert sample’s prioritization of mitigation and adaptation, and expert views on the willingness and capacity of relevant actors to respond to climate change. An integrated view on the causation of infectious disease risk is employed, including multiple (climatic and non-climatic) factors. The results show that the experts consider some adaptation responses as relatively more cost-effective, like fostering interagency and community partnerships, or beneficial to health, such as outbreak investigation and response. Expert opinions converge and diverge for different adaptation responses. Regarding the prioritization of mitigation and adaptation responses expert perspectives converge towards a 50/50 budgetary allocation. The experts consider the national government/health authority as the most capable actor to respond to climate change-induced infectious disease risk. Divergence and consensus among expert opinions can influence adaptation policy processes. Further research is necessary to uncover prevailing expert perspectives and their roots, and compare these.

Description: Cigarette butts (tobacco product waste (TPW)) are the single most collected item in environmental trash cleanups worldwide. This brief descriptive study used an online survey tool (Survey Monkey) to assess knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs among individuals representing the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA) about this issue. The FCA has about 350 members, including mainly non-governmental tobacco control advocacy groups that support implementation of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Although the response rate (28%) was low, respondents represented countries from all six WHO regions. The majority (62%) have heard the term TPW, and nearly all (99%) considered TPW as an environmental harm. Most (77%) indicated that the tobacco industry should be responsible for TPW mitigation, and 72% felt that smokers should also be held responsible. This baseline information may inform future international discussions by the FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP) regarding environmental policies that may be addressed within FCTC obligations. Additional research is planned regarding the entire lifecycle of tobacco’s impact on the environment.

Description: The aim of this study was to assess the correlation between blood lead levels and both serum uric acid and hyperuricemia in adult residents living within an area of China with lead pollution.  We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 2120 subjects (1180 of whom were male) between the ages of 20 and 75 years who had undergone health examinations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a lead-polluted area of China between January 2013 and August 2014. Blood lead was positively correlated with serum uric acid in both males (r = 0.095, p = 0.001) and females (r = 0.134, p 〈 0.001). Multivariate linear regression analysis demonstrated that for males, blood lead (p = 0.006), age (p = 0.001), current smoking (p = 0.012), education (p = 0.001), triglycerides (TG) (p 〈 0.001), and serum creatinine (p 〈 0.001) were independently associated with serum uric acid. For females, blood lead (p 〈 0.001), body mass index (BMI) (p = 0.009), and TG (p 〈 0.001) were independently associated with serum uric acid. After multiple adjustments, blood lead was significantly associated with a higher prevalence of hyperuricemia when female subjects were categorized into quartiles (for the highest quartile vs. the lowest quartile, odds ratio (OR) = 2.190; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.106–4.338; p = 0.025); however, no such association was observed for male subjects. Continuous lead exposure has an independent impact on serum uric acid for both males and females, although this impact is more pronounced for females than for males. Lead exposure is significantly associated with hyperuricemia for females but not for males.

Description: Rice farming in Northeast China is crucially important for China’s food security and sustainable development. A key challenge is how to optimize nitrogen (N) management to ensure high yield production while improving N use efficiency and protecting the environment. Handheld chlorophyll meter (CM) and active crop canopy sensors have been used to improve rice N management in this region. However, these technologies are still time consuming for large-scale applications. Satellite remote sensing provides a promising technology for large-scale crop growth monitoring and precision management. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of using FORMOSAT-2 satellite images to diagnose rice N status for guiding topdressing N application at the stem elongation stage in Northeast China. Five farmers’ fields (three in 2011 and two in 2012) were selected from the Qixing Farm in Heilongjiang Province of Northeast China. FORMOSAT-2 satellite images were collected in late June. Simultaneously, 92 field samples were collected and six agronomic variables, including aboveground biomass, leaf area index (LAI), plant N concentration (PNC), plant N uptake (PNU), CM readings and N nutrition index (NNI) defined as the ratio of actual PNC and critical PNC, were determined. Based on the FORMOSAT-2 imagery, a total of 50 vegetation indices (VIs) were computed and correlated with the field-based agronomic variables. Results indicated that 45% of NNI variability could be explained using Ratio Vegetation Index 3 (RVI3) directly across years. A more practical and promising approach was proposed by using satellite remote sensing to estimate aboveground biomass and PNU at the panicle initiation stage and then using these two variables to estimate NNI indirectly (R2 = 0.52 across years). Further, the difference between the estimated PNU and the critical PNU can be used to guide the topdressing N application rate adjustments.

Description: Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) is a state of the art technology to assess forest aboveground biomass (AGB). To date, methods developed to relate Lidar metrics with forest parameters were built upon the vertical component of the data. In multi-layered tropical forests, signal penetration might be restricted, limiting the efficiency of these methods. A potential way for improving AGB models in such forests would be to combine traditional approaches by descriptors of the horizontal canopy structure. We assessed the capability and complementarity of three recently proposed methods for assessing AGB at the plot level using point distributional approach (DM), canopy volume profile approach (CVP), 2D canopy grain approach (FOTO), and further evaluated the potential of a topographical complexity index (TCI) to explain part of the variability of AGB with slope. This research has been conducted in a mountainous wet evergreen tropical forest of Western Ghats in India. AGB biomass models were developed using a best subset regression approach, and model performance was assessed through cross-validation. Results demonstrated that the variability in AGB could be efficiently captured when variables describing both the vertical (DM or CVP) and horizontal (FOTO) structure were combined. Integrating FOTO metrics with those of either DM or CVP decreased the root mean squared error of the models by 4.42% and 6.01%, respectively. These results are of high interest for AGB mapping in the tropics and could significantly contribute to the REDD+ program. Model quality could be further enhanced by improving the robustness of field-based biomass models and influence of topography on area-based Lidar descriptors of the forest structure.

Description: This paper presents a rigorous validation of five widely used global land cover products, i.e., GLCC (Global Land Cover Characterization), UMd (University of Maryland land cover product), GLC2000 (Global Land Cover 2000 project data), MODIS LC (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer Land Cover product) and GlobCover (GLOBCOVER land cover product), and a national land cover map GLCD-2005 (Geodata Land Cover Dataset for year 2005) against an independent reference data set over China. The land cover reference data sets in three epochs (1990, 2000, and 2005) were collected on a web-based prototype system using a sampling-based labeling approach. Results show that, in China, the highest overall accuracy is observed in GLCD-2005 (72.3%), followed by MODIS LC (68.9%), GLC2000 (65.2%), GlobCover (57.7%) and GLCC (57.2%), while UMd has the lowest accuracy (48.6%); all of the products performed best in representing “Trees” and “Others”, well with “Grassland” and “Cropland”, but problematic with “Water” and “Urban” across China in general. Moreover, in respect of GLCD-2005, there are significant accuracy differences across seven geographical locations of China, ranging from 46.3% in the Southwest, 77.5% in the South, 79.2% in the Northwest, 80.8% in the North, 81.8% in the Northeast, 82.6% in the Central, to 89.0% in the East. This study indicates that a regionally focused land cover map would in fact be more accurate than extracting the same region from a globally produced map.

Description: This study proposes a method to recognize façades from large-scale urban scenes based on multi-level image features utilizing a recently developed oblique aerial photogrammetry technique. The method involves the use of multi-level image features, a bottom-up feature extraction procedure to produce regions of interest through monoscopic analysis, and then a coarse-to-fine feature matching strategy to characterise and match the regions in a stereoscopic model. Feature extraction from typical urban Manhattan scenes is based on line segments. Windows are re-organised based on the spatial constraints of line segments and the homogeneous structure of the spectrum. Façades as regions of interest are successfully constructed with a remarkable single edge and evidence from windows to get rid of occlusion. Feature matching is hierarchically performed beginning from distinctive facades and regularly distributed windows to the sub-pixel point primitives. The proposed strategy can effectively solve ambiguity and multi-solution problems in the complex urban scene matching process, particularly repetitive and poor-texture façades in oblique view.

Description: In this study, an algorithm to retrieve the gravimetric vegetation water content (GVWC, %) of corn was developed. First, the method for obtaining the optical depth from L-band (1.4 GHz) bi-angular, dual-polarized brightness temperatures (TB) for short vegetation was investigated. Then, the quantitative relationship between the corn optical depth, corn GVWC and corn leaf area index (LAI) was constructed. Finally, using the Polarimetric L-band Microwave Radiometer (PLMR) airborne data in the 2012 Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER) project, the Global Land Surface Satellite (GLASS) LAI product, the height and areal density of the corn stalks, the corn GVWC was estimated (corn GLASS-GVWC). Both the in situ measured corn GVWC and the corn GVWC retrieved based on the in situ measured corn LAI (corn LAINET-GVWC) were used to validate the accuracy of the corn GLASS-GVWC. The results show that the GVWC retrieval method proposed in this study is feasible for monitoring the corn GVWC. However, the accuracy of the retrieval results is highly sensitive to the accuracy of the LAI input parameters.

Description: As the fifth largest freshwater lake in China, Lake Chaohu has drawn increasing attention due to the decline in water quality and the occurrence of massive algal blooms. We applied an algae pixel-growing algorithm to MODIS Terra or Aqua data (2100 images) to characterize surface floating algae bloom dynamics from 2000 to 2013 with respect to meteorological and lake nutrient conditions. The results show an increase in surface algal bloom coverage, frequency, and duration with a trend toward earlier bloom formation. Importantly, spatial and temporal patterns in the historically less compromised eastern and middle lake areas show that water quality conditions are deteriorating. This has occurred at the same time as lake management has made a catchment scale effort to reduce impact. Our results show that nutrient concentrations were not the main driver of inter-annual bloom variations. Local meteorological conditions, in particular wind speed and temperature, played an important role in the dynamics of floating algal bloom. This highlights the important challenges for lake management.

Description: Burn severity metrics and classification have yet to be tested for many eastern U.S. deciduous vegetation types, but, if suitable, would be valuable for documenting and monitoring landscape-scale restoration projects that employ prescribed fire treatments. Here we present a performance analysis of the Composite Burn Index (CBI) and its relationship to spectral data (differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) and its relative form (RdNBR)) across an oak woodland - grassland landscape in southwestern Oklahoma, USA. Correlation and regression analyses were used to compare CBI strata, assess models describing burn severity, and determine thresholds for burn severity classes. Confusion matrices were used to assess burn severity classification accuracy. Our findings suggest that dNBR and RdNBR, thresholded using total CBI, can produce an accurate burn severity map in oak woodlands, particularly from an initial assessment period. Lower accuracies occurred for burn severity classifications of grasslands and raises questions related to definitions and detection of burn severity for grasslands, particularly in transition to more densely treed structures such as savannas and woodlands.

Description: Capacitive-type transduction is now widely used in MEMS microphones. However, its sensitivity decreases with reducing size, due to decreasing air gap capacitance. In the present study, we proposed and developed the Electret Gate of Field Effect Transistor (ElGoFET) transduction based on an electret and FET (field-effect-transistor) as a novel mechanism of MEMS microphone transduction. The ElGoFET transduction has the advantage that the sensitivity is dependent on the ratio of capacitance components in the transduction structure. Hence, ElGoFET transduction has high sensitivity even with a smaller air gap capacitance, due to a miniaturization of the transducer. A FET with a floating-gate electrode embedded on a membrane was designed and fabricated and an electret was fabricated by ion implantation with Ga+ ions. During the assembly process between the FET and the electret, the operating point of the FET was characterized using the static response of the FET induced by the electric field due to the trapped positive charge at the electret. Additionally, we evaluated the microphone performance of the ElGoFET by measuring the acoustic response in air using a semi-anechoic room. The results confirmed that the proposed transduction mechanism has potential for microphone applications.

Description: The internet and associated Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are diffusing at an astounding pace. As data centers (DCs) proliferate to accommodate this rising demand, their environmental impacts grow too. While the energy efficiency of DCs has been researched extensively, their water footprint (WF) has so far received little to no attention. This article conducts a preliminary WF accounting for cooling and energy consumption in DCs. The WF of DCs is estimated to be between 1047 and 151,061 m3/TJ. Outbound DC data traffic generates a WF of 1–205 liters per gigabyte (roughly equal to the WF of 1 kg of tomatos at the higher end). It is found that, typically, energy consumption constitues by far the greatest share of DC WF, but the level of uncertainty associated with the WF of different energy sources used by DCs makes a comprehensive assessment of DCs’ water use efficiency very challenging. Much better understanding of DC WF is urgently needed if a meaningful evaluation of this rapidly spreading service technology is to be gleaned and response measures are to be put into effect.

Description: This study investigated the capability of a biosurfactant produced by a novel strain of Bacillus salmalaya to enhance the biodegradation rates and bioavailability of organic contaminants. The biosurfactant produced by cultured strain 139SI showed high physicochemical properties and surface activity in the selected medium. The biosurfactant exhibited a high emulsification index and a positive result in the drop collapse test, with the results demonstrating the wetting activity of the biosurfactant and its potential to produce surface-active molecules. Strain 139SI can significantly reduce the surface tension (ST) from 70.5 to 27 mN/m, with a critical micelle concentration of 0.4%. Moreover, lubricating oil at 2% (v/v) was degraded on Day 20 (71.5). Furthermore, the biosurfactant demonstrated high stability at different ranges of salinity, pH, and temperature. Overall, the results indicated the potential use of B. salmalaya 139SI in environmental remediation processes.

Description: Objective: To evaluate the outcome of 80 pregnant women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and explore the risk factors for lupus flare, obstetric complications and fetal loss. Methods: 83 pregnancies in 80 women were divided into three groups. Group A: patients in remission for > 6 months before pregnancy, proteinuria 〈 0.5 g per day, without renal failure and discontinuation of cytotoxic drugs for > one year; Group B: patients with SLE disease activity in the six months before pregnancy; Group C: patients with new onset SLE during pregnancy. Results: In group A, 76.47% pregnancies achieved full-term deliveries and 80.39% achieved live born infants. In group B and C, the outcome was poor. Among 62 patients (64 pregnancies) diagnosed as SLE before pregnancy, SLE flares occurred in 27 (42.19%) pregnancies. SLE disease activity in the six months before pregnancy was significantly associated with lupus flare (OR 5.00, 95% CI 1.14–21.87, p = 0.03) and fetal loss. New onset lupus during pregnancy was independently associated with obstetric complications (OR 7.22, 95% CI 2.14–24.38, p = 0.001). Conclusions: The current study confirmed the previous report that SLE should be considered a high risk of pregnancy. If pregnancy is planned after remission for > 6 months, the favorable outcome can be achieved.

Description: As countries become increasingly urbanized, understanding how urban areas are changing within the landscape becomes increasingly important. Urbanized areas are often the strongest indicators of human interaction with the environment, and understanding how urban areas develop through remotely sensed data allows for more sustainable practices. A Landsat satellite sensor which is a remote sensing platform, with its ability to analyze global data, rapidly present itself as being an invaluable tool for studying the growth of urban areas. In this study, we present the virtual geo-library as the geovisualization tools to provide the analytical studies of the urbanization process in Malang City, East Java, Indonesia, using images derived from Landsat sensor family (1989 to 2014). We provide a dynamic geovisualization through virtual geo-library, where users could understand and get valuable scientific information (e.g., urban area changes and land use transformation in higher land). This system is also equipped with the tools to enable users to create automatic cartographic maps and print the results out as a digital pdf format file.

Description: Purpose: To determine the epidemiological characteristics of work-related eye injury in representative southwest region of China. Methods: Patients with eye injuries treated at the Ninth People’s Hospital of Chongqing from 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2014 were included in the current study. All patients completed a comprehensive examination and interview. Demographic characteristics and injury details were recorded. The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) and Birmingham Eye Trauma Terminology (BETT) were used. Results: The average age of eye injury patients was 37.52 years and the majority were male. Among the 1055 total patients, approximately 42.9% of the injuries were work-related. The highest proportion of occupational eye trauma was observed in the group between 36 and 45 years of age. Occupational ocular trauma occurred more frequently in summer, with most from 16:00 to 18:00. Metal was the most common injury cause. Foreign body on external eye was the most common diagnosis. Workers in the manufacturing industry without pre-work safety training or eye protection were far more likely to suffer from occupational ocular trauma than those with training and protection. Conclusions: This study provides insight into the epidemiological characteristics of occupational ocular trauma in southwest region of China. The current findings might be considered as a baseline for future research on regional work-related eye injuries. Our findings will provide valuable information for further development of preventive strategies.

Description: Three isostructural metal-organic frameworks, (MOFs), [Fe(OH)(1,4-NDC)] (1), [Al(OH)(1,4-NDC)] (2), and [In(OH)(1,4-NDC)] (3) have been synthesized hydrothermally by using 1,4-naphthalene dicarboxylate (1,4-NDC) as a linker. The MOFs were characterized using various techniques and further used as precursor materials for the synthesis of metal/metal oxide nanoparticles inserted in a carbon matrix through a simple thermal conversion method. The newly synthesized carbon materials were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis, powder X-ray diffraction and BET analysis. The results showed that the MOF-derived carbon composite materials maintained the morphology of the original MOF upon carbonization, and confirmed the insertion of metal/metal oxide particles in the carbon matrix.

Description: In this research, monocrystalline gallium oxide (Ga2O3) nanobelts were synthesized through oxidation of metal gallium at high temperature. An electronic device, based on an individual Ga2O3 nanobelt on Pt interdigital electrodes (IDEs), was fabricated to investigate the electrical characteristics of the Ga2O3 nanobelt in a dry atmosphere at room temperature. The current-voltage (I-V) and I/V-t characteristics show the capacitive behavior of the Ga2O3 nanobelt, indicating the existence of capacitive elements in the Pt/Ga2O3/Pt structure.

Description: The synthesis of pure and well dispersed lutetium aluminum garnet (LuAG) powder is crucial and important for the preparation of LuAG transparent ceramics. In this paper, high purity and well dispersed LuAG powders have been synthesized via co-precipitation method with lutetium nitrate and aluminum nitrate as raw materials. Ammonium hydrogen carbonate (AHC) was used as the precipitant. The influence of aging time, pH value, and dripping speed on the prepared LuAG powders were investigated. It showed that long aging duration (>15 h) with high terminal pH value (>7.80) resulted in segregation of rhombus Lu precipitate and Al precipitate. By decreasing the initial pH value or accelerating the dripping speed, rhombus Lu precipitate was eliminated and pure LuAG nano powders were synthesized. High quality LuAG transparent ceramics with transmission >75% at 1064 nm were fabricated using these well dispersed nano LuAG powders.

Description: The objective of this study is to numerically investigate the convective heat transfer of water-based Al2O3 nanofluids flowing through a square cross-section duct with a constant heat flux under laminar flow conditions. The effects of nanoparticle concentration and Peclet number on the heat transfer characteristics of Al2O3-water nanofluids are investigated. The nanoparticle diameter is 25 nm and six particle concentrations (0.2, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, and 2.5 vol.%) are considered. The numerical results show that the heat transfer coefficients and Nusselt numbers of Al2O3-water nanofluids increase with increases in the Peclet number as well as particle volume concentration. The heat transfer coefficient of nanofluids is increased by 25.5% at a particle volume concentration of 2.5% and a Peclet number of 7500 as compared with that of the base fluid (pure water). It is noteworthy that at the same particle volume concentration of 2.5%, the enhancement of the convective heat transfer coefficient of Al2O3-water nanofluid (25.5%) is much higher than that of the effective thermal conductivity (9.98%). Thus, the enhancement of the convective heat transfer cannot be solely attributed to the enhancement of the effective thermal conductivity. Additionally, the numerical results coincide well with the published experimental data.

Description: Damping characterizes the energy dissipation capacity of materials and structures, and it is affected by several external factors such as vibrating frequency, stress history, temperature, and stress amplitude. This study investigates the relationship between the damping and the stress amplitude of environment-friendly recycled aggregate concrete (RAC). First, a function model of a member’s loss factor and stress amplitude was derived based on Lazan’s damping-stress function. Then, the influence of stress amplitude on the loss tangent of RAC was experimentally investigated. Finally, parameters used to determine the newly derived function were obtained by numerical fitting. It is shown that the member’s loss factor is affected not only by the stress amplitude but also by factors such as the cross section shapes, boundary conditions, load types, and loading positions. The loss tangent of RAC increases with the stress amplitude, even at low stress amplitude. The damping energy exponent of RAC is not identically equal to 2.0, indicating that the damping is nonlinear. It is also found that the energy dissipation capacity of RAC is superior to that of natural aggregate concrete (NAC), and the energy dissipation capacity can be further improved by adding modified admixtures.

Description: Corrugated steel web with inherent high out-of-plane stiffness has a promising application in configuring large span highway bridge girders. Due to the irregularity of the configuration details, the local stress concentration poses a major fatigue problem for the welded flange plates of high strength low alloy structural steels. In this work, the methods of applying CFRP laminate and shot peening onto the surfaces of the tension flanges were employed with the purpose of improving the fatigue strength of such configuration details. The effectiveness of this method in the improvement of fatigue strength has been examined experimentally. Test results show that the shot peening significantly increases hardness and roughness in contrast to these without treatment. Also, it has beneficial effects on the fatigue strength enhancement when compared against the test data of the joints with CFRP strengthening. The stiffness degradation during the loading progress is compared with each treatment. Incorporating the stress acting on the constituent parts of the CFRP laminates, a discussion is made regarding the mechanism of the retrofit and related influencing factors such as corrosion and economic cost. This work could enhance the understanding of the CFRP and shot peening in repairing such welded details and shed light on the reinforcement design of welded joints between corrugated steel webs and flange plates.

Description: This paper reports on a study of the modelling, validation and analysis of an integrated 1 MW (electrical output) tri-generation system energized by solar energy. The impact of local climatic conditions in the Mediterranean region on the system performance was considered. The output of the system that comprised a parabolic trough collector (PTC), an organic Rankine cycle (ORC), single-effect desalination (SED), and single effect LiBr-H2O absorption chiller (ACH) was electrical power, distilled water, and refrigerant load. The electrical power was produced by the ORC which used cyclopentane as working fluid and Therminol VP-1 was specified as the heat transfer oil (HTO) in the collectors with thermal storage. The absorption chiller and the desalination unit were utilize the waste heat exiting from the steam turbine in the ORC to provide the necessary cooling energy and drinking water respectively. The modelling, which includes an exergetic analysis, focuses on the performance of the solar tri-generation system. The simulation results of the tri-generation system and its subsystems were produced using IPSEpro software and were validated against experimental data which showed good agreement. The tri-generation system was able to produce about 194 Ton of refrigeration, and 234 t/day distilled water.

Description: We present a brief overview of some key concepts in the theory of generalized complex manifolds. This new geometry interpolates, so to speak, between symplectic geometry and complex geometry. As such it provides an ideal framework to analyze thermodynamical fluctuation theory in the presence of gravitational fields. To illustrate the usefulness of generalized complex geometry, we examine a simplified version of the Unruh effect: the thermalising effect of gravitational fields on the Schroedinger wavefunction.

Description: In modern industrial processes, it is easier and less expensive to configure alarms by software settings rather than by wiring, which causes the rapid growth of the number of alarms. Moreover, because there exist complex interactions, in particular the causal relationship among different parts in the process, a fault may propagate along propagation pathways once an abnormal situation occurs, which brings great difficulty to operators to identify its root cause immediately and to take proper actions correctly. Therefore, causality detection becomes a very important problem in the context of multivariate alarm analysis and design. Transfer entropy has become an effective and widely-used method to detect causality between different continuous process variables in both linear and nonlinear situations in recent years. However, such conventional methods to detect causality based on transfer entropy are computationally costly. Alternatively, using binary alarm series can be more computational-friendly and more direct because alarm data analysis is straightforward for alarm management in practice. The methodology and implementation issues are discussed in this paper. Illustrated by several case studies, including both numerical cases and simulated industrial cases, the proposed method is demonstrated to be suitable for industrial situations contaminated by noise.

Description: Community detection in a complex network is an important problem of much interest in recent years. In general, a community detection algorithm chooses an objective function and captures the communities of the network by optimizing the objective function, and then, one uses various heuristics to solve the optimization problem to extract the interesting communities for the user. In this article, we demonstrate the procedure to transform a graph into points of a metric space and develop the methods of community detection with the help of a metric defined for a pair of points. We have also studied and analyzed the community structure of the network therein. The results obtained with our approach are very competitive with most of the well-known algorithms in the literature, and this is justified over the large collection of datasets. On the other hand, it can be observed that time taken by our algorithm is quite less compared to other methods and justifies the theoretical findings.

Description: The wide field of view (WFV) is an optical imaging sensor on-board the Gao Fen 1 (GF-1). The WFV lacks an on-board calibrator, so on-orbit radiometric calibration is required. Zhong et al. proposed a method for cross-calibrating the charge-coupled device on-board the Chinese Huan Jing 1 (HJ-1/CCD) that can be applied to the GF-1/WFV. However, the accuracy is limited because of the wider radiometric dynamic range and the higher spatial resolution of the GF-1/WFV. Therefore, Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery with a radiometric resolution similar to that of the GF-1/WFV and DEM extracted from ZY-3 three-line array panchromatic camera (TLC) with a higher spatial resolution were used. A calibration site with uniform surface material and a natural topographic variation was selected, and a model of this site’s bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) was developed. The model has excellent agreement with the real situation, as shown by the comparison of the simulations to the actual OLI surface reflectance. Then, the model was used to calibrate the WFV. Compared with the TOA reflectance from synchronized Landsat-8/OLI images, all errors calculated with the calibration coefficients retrieved in this paper are less than 5%, much less than the errors calculated with the calibration coefficients given by the China Centre for Resource Satellite Data and Application (CRESDA).

Description: Context aware applications, which can adapt their behaviors to changing environments, are attracting more and more attention. To simplify the complexity of developing applications, context aware middleware, which introduces context awareness into the traditional middleware, is highlighted to provide a homogeneous interface involving generic context management solutions. This paper provides a survey of state-of-the-art context aware middleware architectures proposed during the period from 2009 through 2015. First, a preliminary background, such as the principles of context, context awareness, context modelling, and context reasoning, is provided for a comprehensive understanding of context aware middleware. On this basis, an overview of eleven carefully selected middleware architectures is presented and their main features explained. Then, thorough comparisons and analysis of the presented middleware architectures are performed based on technical parameters including architectural style, context abstraction, context reasoning, scalability, fault tolerance, interoperability, service discovery, storage, security & privacy, context awareness level, and cloud-based big data analytics. The analysis shows that there is actually no context aware middleware architecture that complies with all requirements. Finally, challenges are pointed out as open issues for future work.

Description: Recyclable concrete pavement was made from fly ash and crushed limestone sand and gravel as aggregates so that the concrete pavement could be recycled to raw materials for cement production. With the aim to use as much fly ash as possible for the sustainable development of society, while achieving adequate strength development, pavement concrete having a cement-replacement ratio of 40% by mass was experimentally investigated, focusing on the strength development at an early age. Limestone powder was added to improve the early strength; flexural strength at two days reached 3.5 MPa, the minimum strength for traffic service in Japan. The matured fly ash concrete made with a cement content of 200 kg/m3 achieved a flexural strength almost equal to that of the control concrete without fly ash. Additionally, Portland cement made from the tested fly ash concrete was tested to confirm recyclability, with the cement quality meeting the Japanese classification of ordinary Portland cement. Limestone-based recyclable fly ash concrete pavement is, thus, a preferred material in terms of sustainability.

Description: In our study, one-dimensional PbI2/polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) composition fibers have been prepared by using PbI2 and PVP as precursors dissolved in N,N-dimethylformamide via a electrospinning process. Dipping the fibers into CH3NH3I solution changed its color, indicating the formation of CH3NH3PbI3, to obtain CH3NH3PbI3/PVP composite fibers. The structure, morphology and composition of the all as-prepared fibers were characterized by using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy.

Description: Social media data have emerged as a new source for detecting and monitoring disaster events. A number of recent studies have suggested that social media data streams can be used to mine actionable data for emergency response and relief operation. However, no effort has been made to classify social media data into stages of disaster management (mitigation, preparedness, emergency response, and recovery), which has been used as a common reference for disaster researchers and emergency managers for decades to organize information and streamline priorities and activities during the course of a disaster. This paper makes an initial effort in coding social media messages into different themes within different disaster phases during a time-critical crisis by manually examining more than 10,000 tweets generated during a natural disaster and referencing the findings from the relevant literature and official government procedures involving different disaster stages. Moreover, a classifier based on logistic regression is trained and used for automatically mining and classifying the social media messages into various topic categories during various disaster phases. The classification results are necessary and useful for emergency managers to identify the transition between phases of disaster management, the timing of which is usually unknown and varies across disaster events, so that they can take action quickly and efficiently in the impacted communities. Information generated from the classification can also be used by the social science research communities to study various aspects of preparedness, response, impact and recovery.

Description: Building Information Models (e.g., IFC) and virtual 3D city models (e.g., CityGML) are revolutionising the way we manage information about our cities. However, the main focus of these models is on the physical and functional characteristics of urban properties and facilities, which neglects the legal and ownership aspects. In contrast, cadastral data models, such as the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM), have been developed for legal information management purposes and model legal objects such as ownership boundaries without providing correspondence to the object’s physical attributes. Integration of legal and physical objects in the virtual 3D city and cadastral models would maximise their utility and flexibility to support different applications that require an integrated resource of both legal and physical information, such as urban space management and land development processes. The aim of this paper is to propose a data model that supports both legal and physical information of urban environments. The methodology to develop this data model is to extend the core cadastral data model and integrate urban features into the data model. The outcome of the research can be utilised to extend the current data models to increases their usability for different applications that require both legal and physical information.

Description: Taking photographs with a commercially available digital camera is an efficient and objective method for determining the green fractional vegetation cover (FVC) for field validation of satellite products. However, classifying leaves under shadows in processing digital images remains challenging and results in classification errors. To address this problem, an automatic shadow-resistant algorithm in the Commission Internationale d’Eclairage L*a*b* color space (SHAR-LABFVC) based on a documented FVC estimation algorithm (LABFVC) is proposed in this paper. The hue saturation intensity (HSI) is introduced in SHAR-LABFVC to enhance the brightness of shaded parts of the image. The lognormal distribution is used to fit the frequency of vegetation greenness and to classify vegetation and the background. Real and synthesized images are used for evaluation, and the results are in good agreement with the visual interpretation, particularly when the FVC is high and the shadows are deep, indicating that SHAR-LABFVC is shadow resistant. Without specific improvements to reduce the shadow effect, the underestimation of FVC can be up to 0.2 in the flourishing period of vegetation at a scale of 10 m. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is expected to improve the validation accuracy of remote sensing products.

Description: Few techniques for guaranteeing a network lifetime have been proposed despite its great impact on network management. Moreover, since the existing schemes are mostly dependent on the combination of disparate parameters, they do not provide additional services, such as real-time communications and balanced energy consumption among sensor nodes; thus, the adaptability problems remain unresolved among nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). To solve these problems, we propose a novel fuzzy logic model to provide real-time communication in a guaranteed WSN lifetime. The proposed fuzzy logic controller accepts the input descriptors energy, time and velocity to determine each node’s role for the next duration and the next hop relay node for real-time packets. Through the simulation results, we verified that both the guaranteed network’s lifetime and real-time delivery are efficiently ensured by the new fuzzy logic model. In more detail, the above-mentioned two performance metrics are improved up to 8%, as compared to our previous work, and 14% compared to existing schemes, respectively.

Description: We propose an autonomous self-aware and adaptive fault-tolerant routing technique (ASAART) for wireless sensor networks. We address the limitations of self-healing routing (SHR) and self-selective routing (SSR) techniques for routing sensor data. We also examine the integration of autonomic self-aware and adaptive fault detection and resiliency techniques for route formation and route repair to provide resilience to errors and failures. We achieved this by using a combined continuous and slotted prioritized transmission back-off delay to obtain local and global network state information, as well as multiple random functions for attaining faster routing convergence and reliable route repair despite transient and permanent node failure rates and efficient adaptation to instantaneous network topology changes. The results of simulations based on a comparison of the ASAART with the SHR and SSR protocols for five different simulated scenarios in the presence of transient and permanent node failure rates exhibit a greater resiliency to errors and failure and better routing performance in terms of the number of successfully delivered network packets, end-to-end delay, delivered MAC layer packets, packet error rate, as well as efficient energy conservation in a highly congested, faulty, and scalable sensor network.

Description: The development of public transit systems that are accessible and safe for everyone, including people with special needs, is an objective that is justified from the civic and economic points of view. Unfortunately, public transit services are conceived for people who do not have reduced physical or cognitive abilities. In this paper, we present an intelligent public transit system by highway with the goal of facilitating access and improving the safety of public transit for persons with special needs. The system is deployed using components that are commonly available in transport infrastructure, e.g., sensors, mobile communications systems, and positioning systems. In addition, the system can operate in non-urban transport contexts, e.g., isolated rural areas, where the availability of basic infrastructure, such as electricity and communications infrastructures, is not always guaranteed. To construct the system, the principles and techniques of Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence have been employed. To illustrate the utility of the system, two cases of services rendered by the system are described: the first case involves a surveillance system to guarantee accessibility at bus stops; the second case involves a route assistant for blind people.

Description: An accurate performance analysis on the MDL criterion for source enumeration in array processing is presented in this paper. The enumeration results of MDL can be predicted precisely by the proposed procedure via the statistical analysis of the sample eigenvalues, whose distributive properties are investigated with the consideration of their interactions. A novel approach is also developed for the performance evaluation when the source number is underestimated by a number greater than one, which is denoted as “multiple-missed detection”, and the probability of a specific underestimated source number can be estimated by ratio distribution analysis. Simulation results are included to demonstrate the superiority of the presented method over available results and confirm the ability of the proposed approach to perform multiple-missed detection analysis.

Description: As society has developed, the number of vehicles has increased and road conditions have become complicated, increasing the risk of crashes. Therefore, a service that provides safe vehicle control and various types of information to the driver is urgently needed. In this study, we designed and implemented a real-time traffic information system and a smart camera device for smart driver assistance systems. We selected a commercial device for the smart driver assistance systems, and applied a computer vision algorithm to perform image recognition. For application to the dynamic region of interest, dynamic frame skip methods were implemented to perform parallel processing in order to enable real-time operation. In addition, we designed and implemented a model to estimate congestion by analyzing traffic information. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated using images of a real road environment. We found that the processing time improved by 15.4 times when all the proposed methods were applied in the application. Further, we found experimentally that there was little or no change in the recognition accuracy when the proposed method was applied. Using the traffic congestion estimation model, we also found that the average error rate of the proposed model was 5.3%.

Description: Due to their image-based nature, “contextual” approaches are very attractive to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) from remotely-sensed land surface temperature (LST) data. Their application is however limited to highly heterogeneous areas where the soil and vegetation temperature endmembers (Tends) can be observed at the thermal sensor resolution. This paper aims to develop a simple theoretical approach to estimate Tends independently from LST images. Soil Tends are simulated by a soil energy balance model forced by meteorological data. Vegetation Tends are obtained from soil Tends and air temperature. Model-derived soil Tends are first evaluated with in situ measurements made over an irrigated area in Morocco. The root mean square difference (RMSD) between modeled and ground-based soil Tends is estimated as 2.4 ºC. Model-derived soil Tends are next compared with the soil Tends retrieved from 90-m resolution ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) data collected over two irrigated areas in Mexico and Spain. Such a comparison reveals a strong consistency between model-derived and high-resolution image-based soil Tends. A recent contextual ET model (SEB-1S) is then applied to 90-m resolution and to 1-km resolution (aggregated) ASTER data using the model-derived or image-based Tends as the input. The RMSD between 90-m resolution SEB-1S and in situ ET is estimated as 65 and 82 W-m2, and the RMSD between 1-km resolution SEB-1S and aggregated SEB-1S ET is estimated as 78 and 56 W-m2 for the image-based and model-derived Tends, respectively. In light of the above results, Tends should be estimated a priori when contextual models are applied to low resolution images. Moreover, the consistency over highly heterogeneous areas between model-derived and high-resolution image-based Ten

Description: Foot pathologies can negatively influence foot function, consequently impairing gait during daily activity, and severely impacting an individual’s quality of life. These pathologies are often painful and correspond with high or abnormal plantar pressure, which can result in asymmetry in the pressure distribution between the two feet. There is currently no general consensus on the presence of asymmetry in able-bodied gait, and plantar pressure analysis during gait is in dire need of a standardized method to quantify asymmetry. This paper investigates the use of plantar pressure asymmetry for pathological gait diagnosis. The results of this study involving plantar pressure analysis in fifty one participants (31 healthy and 20 with foot pathologies) support the presence of plantar pressure asymmetry in normal gait. A higher level of asymmetry was detected at the majority of the regions in the feet of the pathological population, including statistically significant differences in the plantar pressure asymmetry in two regions of the foot, metatarsophalangeal joint 3 (MPJ3) and the lateral heel. Quantification of plantar pressure asymmetry may prove to be useful for the identification and diagnosis of various foot pathologies.

Description: In this paper, we present the development of an infrastructure-less indoor location system (ILS), which relies on the use of a microphone, a magnetometer and a light sensor of a smartphone, all three of which are essentially passive sensors, relying on signals available practically in any building in the world, no matter how developed the region is. In our work, we merge the information from those sensors to estimate the user’s location in an indoor environment. A multivariate model is applied to find the user’s location, and we evaluate the quality of the resulting model in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Our experiments were carried out in an office environment during summer and winter, to take into account changes in light patterns, as well as changes in the Earth’s magnetic field irregularities. The experimental results clearly show the benefits of using the information fusion of multiple sensors when contrasted with the use of a single source of information.

Description: Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) have been widely used for microgrid control. Generally, BESS control systems are based on proportional-integral (PI) control techniques with the outer and inner control loops based on PI regulators. Recently, model predictive control (MPC) has attracted attention for application to future energy processing and control systems because it can easily deal with multivariable cases, system constraints, and nonlinearities. This study considers the application of MPC-based BESSs to microgrid control. Two types of MPC are presented in this study: MPC based on predictive power control (PPC) and MPC based on PI control in the outer and predictive current control (PCC) in the inner control loops. In particular, the effective application of MPC for microgrids with multiple BESSs should be considered because of the differences in their control performance. In this study, microgrids with two BESSs based on two MPC techniques are considered as an example. The control performance of the MPC used for the control microgrid is compared to that of the PI control. The proposed control strategy is investigated through simulations using MATLAB/Simulink software. The simulation results show that the response time, power and voltage ripples, and frequency spectrum could be improved significantly by using MPC.

Description: A three-step iterative method with fifth-order convergence as a new modification of Newton’s method was presented. This method is for finding multiple roots of nonlinear equation with unknown multiplicity m whose multiplicity m is the highest multiplicity. Its order of convergence is analyzed and proved. Results for some numerical examples show the efficiency of the new method.

Description: Nutrient inputs from rivers play an important role in lake eutrophication. To compare the forms characteristics of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) in rivers flowing through rural and urban areas, water samples were collected seasonally from five urban rivers and six rural rivers flowing to Lake Chaohu, China. Higher total phosphorus (TP), particulate phosphorus (PP), soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), and dissolved nonreactive phosphorus (DNP) concentrations and SRP/TP percentages were observed in urban rivers than in rural rivers, and PP/TP and DNP/TP ratios were lower in urban rivers than in rural rivers. The concentrations of total nitrogen (TN) and all N forms other than dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) were significantly higher in urban rivers than in rural rivers. NH4+/TN levels were higher in urban rivers, whereas PN/TN and DON/TN ratios were significantly lower in urban rivers compared with rural rivers. NO3−/TN and NO2−/TN levels were similar between the two groups of rivers. TP, BD-P, and NaOH-P levels in urban river surface sediments were significantly higher than those in rural rivers. NaOH-P/TP ratios were significantly elevated in urban rivers, whereas HCl-P/TP and Res-P/TP ratios were significantly lower compared with rural rivers. Urban rivers have transferred large quantities of NH4+ and SRP into Lake Chaohu, resulting in higher TP and TN levels and NH4+/TN and SRP/TP ratios. Decreasing the input of NH4+ and SRP into urban rivers is a high priority for mitigating eutrophication and algal blooms in Lake Chaohu.

Description: The loss of global biological diversity continues despite on-going conservation efforts. Agriculture is the major terrestrial land use in Europe and any conservation efforts to protect biological diversity must address sustainable use of these food production systems. Using Ireland, within the European Union policy framework, as an example, the declines in farmland birds are discussed. The opportunities afforded to farmland bird conservation as a result of the recent reform to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are outlined. The potential for revised and refined CAP, specifically agri-environment schemes, to deliver benefits for biodiversity and for farmland bird species within Irish agricultural ecosystems is explored. Despite all the efforts to date and the significant resources invested in implementing agri-environment measures and schemes, few attempts have been made to collect monitoring and surveillance data with which to quantitatively assess the effectiveness of schemes, and measures that are designed to assist in the recovery of farmland biodiversity, including bird species, in Ireland.

Description: Published evidence on the impact of the integration of International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs) for breastfeeding promotion is growing, but still relatively limited. Our study aims at evaluating the effects of adding an IBCLC for breastfeeding support in a mother and child hospital environment. We conducted a prospective study in the maternity ward of our maternal and child health Institute, recruiting 402 mothers of healthy term newborns soon after birth. The 18-month intervention of the IBCLC (Phase II) was preceded (Phase I) by data collection on breastfeeding rates and factors related to breastfeeding, both at hospital discharge and two weeks later. Data collection was replicated just before the end of the intervention (Phase III). In Phase III, a significantly higher percentage of mothers: (a) received help to breastfeed, and also received correct information on breastfeeding and community support, (b) started breastfeeding within two hours from delivery, (c) reported a good experience with the hospital staff. Moreover, the frequency of sore and/or cracked nipples was significantly lower in Phase III. However, no difference was found in exclusive breastfeeding rates at hospital discharge or at two weeks after birth.

Description: Currently, use and disposal of plastic by consumers through waste management activities in Ghana not only creates environmental problems, but also reinforces the notion of a wasteful society. The magnitude of this problem has led to increasing pressure from the public for efficient and practical measures to solve the waste problem. This paper analyses the impact of plastic use and disposal in Ghana. It emphasizes the need for commitment to proper management of the impacts of plastic waste and effective environmental management in the country. Sustainable Solid Waste Management (SSWM) is a critical problem for developing countries with regards to climate change and greenhouse gas emission, and also the general wellbeing of the populace. Key themes of this paper are producer responsibility and management of products at end of life. The paper proposes two theatrical recovery models that can be used to address the issue of sachet waste in Ghana.

Description: The determinations of heat collection rate and heat loss coefficient are crucial for the evaluation of in service water-in-glass evacuated tube solar water heaters. However, the direct determination requires complex detection devices and a series of standard experiments, which also wastes too much time and manpower. To address this problem, we propose machine learning models including artificial neural networks (ANNs) and support vector machines (SVM) to predict the heat collection rate and heat loss coefficient without a direct determination. Parameters that can be easily obtained by “portable test instruments” were set as independent variables, including tube length, number of tubes, tube center distance, heat water mass in tank, collector area, final temperature and angle between tubes and ground, while the heat collection rate and heat loss coefficient determined by the detection device were set as dependent variables respectively. Nine hundred fifteen samples from in-service water-in-glass evacuated tube solar water heaters were used for training and testing the models. Results show that the multilayer feed-forward neural network (MLFN) with 3 nodes is the best model for the prediction of heat collection rate and the general regression neural network (GRNN) is the best model for the prediction of heat loss coefficient due to their low root mean square (RMS) errors, short training times, and high prediction accuracies (under the tolerances of 30%, 20%, and 10%, respectively).

Description: Due to its relatively high availability and low cost, location-based social network (LBSN) (e.g., Foursquare) data (a popular type of volunteered geographic information) seem to be an alternative or complement to survey data in the study of travel behavior and activity analysis. Illustrating this situation, recently, a number of studies attempted to use LBSN data (e.g., Foursquare check-ins) to investigate patterns of human travel and activity. Of particular note is that compared to other individual-level characteristics of users, such as age, profession, education, income and so forth, gender is relatively highly available in the profiles of Foursquare users. Moreover, considering gender differences in travel and activity analysis is a popular research topic and is helpful in better understanding the changes in women’s roles in family, labor force participation, society and so forth. Therefore, this paper empirically investigates how gender influences the travel and activity patterns of active local Foursquare users in New York City. Empirical investigations of gender differences in travel and activity patterns are conducted at both the individual and aggregate level. The empirical results reveal that there are gender differences in the travel and activity patterns of active local users in New York City at both the individual and aggregate level. Finally, the results of the empirical study and the extent to which LBSN data can be exploited to produce travel diary data are discussed.

Description: Novel, low density structures which combine biologically-based fibers with clay aerogels are produced in an environmentally benign manner using water as solvent, and no additional processing chemicals. Three different reinforcing fibers, silk, soy silk, and hemp, are evaluated in combination with poly(vinyl alcohol) matrix polymer combined with montmorillonite clay. The mechanical properties of the aerogels are demonstrated to increase with reinforcing fiber length, in each case limited by a critical fiber length, beyond which mechanical properties decline due to maldistribution of filler, and disruption of the aerogel structure. Rather than the classical model for reinforced composite properties, the chemical compatibility of reinforcing fibers with the polymer/clay matrix dominated mechanical performance, along with the tendencies of the fibers to kink under compression.

Description: Epitaxial ultra-thin oxide films can support large percent level strains well beyond their bulk counterparts, thereby enabling strain-engineering in oxides that can tailor various phenomena. At these reduced dimensions (typically 〈 10 nm), contributions from the substrate can dwarf the signal from the epilayer, making it difficult to distinguish the properties of the epilayer from the bulk. This is especially true for oxide on oxide systems. Here, we have employed a combination of hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) and angular soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) to study epitaxial VO2/TiO2 (100) films ranging from 7.5 to 1 nm. We observe a low-temperature (300 K) insulating phase with evidence of vanadium-vanadium (V-V) dimers and a high-temperature (400 K) metallic phase absent of V-V dimers irrespective of film thickness. Our results confirm that the metal insulator transition can exist at atomic dimensions and that biaxial strain can still be used to control the temperature of its transition when the interfaces are atomically sharp. More generally, our case study highlights the benefits of using non-destructive XAS and HAXPES to extract out information regarding the interfacial quality of the epilayers and spectroscopic signatures associated with exotic phenomena at these dimensions.

Description: The Earth’s surface net radiation controls the energy and water exchanges between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere, and can be derived from satellite observations. The ability to monitor the net surface radiation over large areas at high spatial and temporal resolution is essential for many applications, such as weather forecasting, short-term climate prediction or water resources management. The objective of this paper is to derive the net surface radiation in the shortwave domain at high temporal (half-hourly) and spatial resolution (~1 km) using visible imagery from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES). The retrieval algorithm represents an adaptation to GOES data of a standard algorithm initially developed for the NASA-operated Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) scanner. The methodology relies on: (1) the estimation of top of atmosphere shortwave radiation from GOES spectral measurements; and (2) the calculation of net surface shortwave (SW) radiation accounting for atmospheric effects. Comparison of GOES-retrieved net surface shortwave radiation with ground-measurements at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Surface Radiation (SURFRAD) stations yields very good agreement with average bias lower than 5 W·m−2 and root mean square difference around 70 W·m−2. The algorithm performance is usually higher over areas characterized by low spatial variability in term of land cover type and surface biophysical properties. The technique does not involve retrieval and assessment of cloud properties and can be easily adapted to other meteorological satellites around the globe.

Description: The realization of the Internet of Things greatly depends on the information communication among physical terminal devices and informationalized platforms, such as smart sensors, embedded systems and intelligent networks. Playing an important role in information acquisition, sensors for stereo capture have gained extensive attention in various fields. In this paper, we concentrate on promoting such sensors in an intelligent system with self-assessment capability to deal with the distortion and impairment in long-distance shooting applications. The core design is the establishment of the objective evaluation criteria that can reliably predict shooting quality with different camera configurations. Two types of stereo capture systems—toed-in camera configuration and parallel camera configuration—are taken into consideration respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed evaluation criteria can effectively predict the visual perception of stereo capture quality for long-distance shooting.

Description: Autonomous vehicles require highly reliable navigation capabilities. For example, a lane-following method cannot be applied in an intersection without lanes, and since typical lane detection is performed using a straight-line model, errors can occur when the lateral distance is estimated in curved sections due to a model mismatch. Therefore, this paper proposes a localization method that uses GPS/DR error estimation based on a lane detection method with curved lane models, stop line detection, and curve matching in order to improve the performance during waypoint following procedures. The advantage of using the proposed method is that position information can be provided for autonomous driving through intersections, in sections with sharp curves, and in curved sections following a straight section. The proposed method was applied in autonomous vehicles at an experimental site to evaluate its performance, and the results indicate that the positioning achieved accuracy at the sub-meter level.

Description: A novel sensing device for fire detection in domestic environments is presented. The fire detector uses a combination of several sensors that not only detect smoke, but discriminate between different types of smoke. This feature avoids false alarms and warns of different situations. Power consumption is optimized both in terms of hardware and software, providing a high degree of autonomy of almost five years. Data gathered from the device are transmitted through a wireless communication to a base station. The low cost and compact design provides wide application prospects.

Description: Lipid multilayer gratings are recently invented nanomechanical sensor elements that are capable of transducing molecular binding to fluid lipid multilayers into optical signals in a label free manner due to shape changes in the lipid nanostructures. Here, we show that nanointaglio is suitable for the integration of chemically different lipid multilayer gratings into a sensor array capable of distinguishing vapors by means of an optical nose. Sensor arrays composed of six different lipid formulations are integrated onto a surface and their optical response to three different vapors (water, ethanol and acetone) in air as well as pH under water is monitored as a function of time. Principal component analysis of the array response results in distinct clustering indicating the suitability of the arrays for distinguishing these analytes. Importantly, the nanointaglio process used here is capable of producing lipid gratings out of different materials with sufficiently uniform heights for the fabrication of an optical nose.

Description: Broadband Power Line Communications (PLC) have taken advantage of the research advances in multi-carrier modulations to mitigate frequency selective fading, and their adoption opens up a myriad of applications in the field of sensory and automation systems, multimedia connectivity or smart spaces. Nonetheless, the use of these multi-carrier modulations, such as Wavelet-OFDM, requires a highly accurate symbol timing estimation for reliably recovering of transmitted data. Furthermore, the PLC channel presents some particularities that prevent the direct use of previous synchronization algorithms proposed in wireless communication systems. Therefore more research effort should be involved in the design and implementation of novel and robust synchronization algorithms for PLC, thus enabling real-time synchronization. This paper proposes a symbol timing estimator for broadband PLC based on cross-correlation with multilevel complementary sequences or Zadoff-Chu sequences and its efficient implementation in a FPGA; the obtained results show a 90% of success rate in symbol timing estimation for a certain PLC channel model and a reduced resource consumption for its implementation in a Xilinx Kyntex FPGA.

Description: In the smart grid, measurement devices may be compromised by adversaries, and their operations could be disrupted by attacks. A number of schemes to efficiently and accurately detect these compromised devices remotely have been proposed. Nonetheless, most of the existing schemes detecting compromised devices depend on the incremental response time in the attestation process, which are sensitive to data transmission delay and lead to high computation and network overhead. To address the issue, in this paper, we propose a low-cost remote memory attestation scheme (LRMA), which can efficiently and accurately detect compromised smart meters considering real-time network delay and achieve low computation and network overhead. In LRMA, the impact of real-time network delay on detecting compromised nodes can be eliminated via investigating the time differences reported from relay nodes. Furthermore, the attestation frequency in LRMA is dynamically adjusted with the compromised probability of each node, and then, the total number of attestations could be reduced while low computation and network overhead can be achieved. Through a combination of extensive theoretical analysis and evaluations, our data demonstrate that our proposed scheme can achieve better detection capacity and lower computation and network overhead in comparison to existing schemes.

Description: It is known that cardiac and respiratory rhythms in electrocardiograms (ECGs) are highly nonlinear and non-stationary. As a result, most traditional time-domain algorithms are inadequate for characterizing the complex dynamics of the ECG. This paper proposes a new ECG sensor card and a statistical-based ECG algorithm, with the aid of a reduced binary pattern (RBP), with the aim of achieving faster ECG human identity recognition with high accuracy. The proposed algorithm has one advantage that previous ECG algorithms lack—the waveform complex information and de-noising preprocessing can be bypassed; therefore, it is more suitable for non-stationary ECG signals. Experimental results tested on two public ECG databases (MIT-BIH) from MIT University confirm that the proposed scheme is feasible with excellent accuracy, low complexity, and speedy processing. To be more specific, the advanced RBP algorithm achieves high accuracy in human identity recognition and is executed at least nine times faster than previous algorithms. Moreover, based on the test results from a long-term ECG database, the evolving RBP algorithm also demonstrates superior capability in handling long-term and non-stationary ECG signals.

Description: We provide an entropy analysis for light storage and light retrieval. In this analysis, entropy extraction and reduction in a typical light storage experiment are identified. The spatiotemporal behavior of entropy is presented for D1 transition in cold sodium atoms. The governing equations are the reduced Maxwell field equations and the Liouville–von Neumann equation for the density matrix of the dressed atom.

Description: Alkaline-earth metallic dopant can improve the performance of anatase TiO2 in photocatalysis and solar cells. Aiming to understand doping mechanisms, the dopant formation energies, electronic structures, and optical properties for Be, Mg, Ca, Sr, and Ba doped anatase TiO2 are investigated by using density functional theory calculations with the HSE06 and PBE functionals. By combining our results with those of previous studies, the HSE06 functional provides a better description of electronic structures. The calculated formation energies indicate that the substitution of a lattice Ti with an AEM atom is energetically favorable under O-rich growth conditions. The electronic structures suggest that, AEM dopants shift the valence bands (VBs) to higher energy, and the dopant-state energies for the cases of Ca, Sr, and Ba are quite higher than Fermi levels, while the Be and Mg dopants result into the spin polarized gap states near the top of VBs. The components of VBs and dopant-states support that the AEM dopants are active in inter-band transitions with lower energy excitations. As to optical properties, Ca/Sr/Ba are more effective than Be/Mg to enhance absorbance in visible region, but the Be/Mg are superior to Ca/Sr/Ba for the absorbance improvement in near-IR region.

Description: The Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission was initiated in 2009 with the goal of acquiring global soil moisture data over land using multi-angular L-band radiometric measurements. Specifically, surface soil moisture was estimated using the L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) radiative transfer model. This study evaluated the applicability of this model to the Heihe River Basin in Northern China for specific underlying surfaces by simulating brightness temperature (BT) with the L-MEB model. To analyze the influence of a ground sampling strategy on the simulations, two resampling methods based on ground observations were compared. In the first method, the simulated BT of each point observation was initially acquired. The simulations were then resampled at a 1 km resolution. The other method was based on gridded data with a resolution of 1 km averaged from point observations, such as soil moisture, soil temperature, and soil texture. The simulated BTs at a 1 km resolution were then obtained using the L-MEB model. Because of the large variability in soil moisture, the resampling method based on gridded data was used in the simulation. The simulated BTs based on the calibrated parameters were validated using airborne L-band data from the Polarimetric L-band Multibeam Radiometer (PLMR) acquired during the HiWATER project. The root mean square errors (RMSEs) between the simulated results and the PLMR data were 6 to 7 K for V-polarization and 3 to 5 K for H-polarization at different angles. These results demonstrate that the model effectively represents agricultural land surfaces, and this study will serve as a reference for applying the L-MEB model in arid regions and for selecting a ground sampling strategy.

Description: While occurrences of wavelike motion in the stable boundary layer due to the presence of a significant restoring buoyancy force are rarely disputed, their modalities and interaction with turbulence remain a subject of active research. In this work, the characteristics of gravity waves and their impact on flow statistics, including turbulent fluxes, are presented using data collected above an Antarctic Ice sheet during an Austral Summer. Antarctica is an ideal location for exploring the characteristics of gravity waves because of persistent conditions of strong atmospheric stability in the lower troposphere. Periods dominated by wavelike motion have been identified by analysing time series measured by fast response instrumentation. The nature and characteristic of the dominant wavy motions are investigated using Fourier cross-spectral indicators. Moreover, a multi-resolution decomposition has been applied to separate gravity waves from turbulent fluctuations in case of a sufficiently defined spectral gap. Statistics computed after removing wavy disturbances highlight the large impact of gravity waves on second order turbulent quantities including turbulent flux calculations.

Description: Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used to monitor the environment, and sensors in WSNs are usually power constrained. Because inner-node communication consumes most of the power, efficient data compression schemes are needed to reduce the data transmission to prolong the lifetime of WSNs. In this paper, we propose an efficient data compression model to aggregate data, which is based on spatial clustering and principal component analysis (PCA). First, sensors with a strong temporal-spatial correlation are grouped into one cluster for further processing with a novel similarity measure metric. Next, sensor data in one cluster are aggregated in the cluster head sensor node, and an efficient adaptive strategy is proposed for the selection of the cluster head to conserve energy. Finally, the proposed model applies principal component analysis with an error bound guarantee to compress the data and retain the definite variance at the same time. Computer simulations show that the proposed model can greatly reduce communication and obtain a lower mean square error than other PCA-based algorithms.

Description: Monitoring ocean waves plays a crucial role in, for example, coastal environmental and protection studies. Traditional methods for measuring ocean waves are based on ultrasonic sensors and accelerometers. However, the Global Positioning System (GPS) has been introduced recently and has the advantage of being smaller, less expensive, and not requiring calibration in comparison with the traditional methods. Therefore, for accurately measuring ocean waves using GPS, further research on the separation of the wave signals from the vertical GPS-mounted carrier displacements is still necessary. In order to contribute to this topic, we present a novel method that combines complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD) with a wavelet threshold denoising model (i.e., CEEMD-Wavelet). This method seeks to extract wave signals with less residual noise and without losing useful information. Compared with the wave parameters derived from the moving average skill, high pass filter and wave gauge, the results show that the accuracy of the wave parameters for the proposed method was improved with errors of about 2 cm and 0.2 s for mean wave height and mean period, respectively, verifying the validity of the proposed method.

Description: Here, we provide an overview of the content of the Special Issue on “Human-computer interaction in smart environments”. The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight technologies and solutions encompassing the use of mass-market sensors in current and emerging applications for interacting with Smart Environments. Selected papers address this topic by analyzing different interaction modalities, including hand/body gestures, face recognition, gaze/eye tracking, biosignal analysis, speech and activity recognition, and related issues.

Description: The adsorption of the proteins CD13, mucin and bovine serum albumin on VLGXE-Au and YNGRT-Au interfaces was monitored by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy in the presence of [Fe(CN)6]3−/4−. The hydrophobicity of the Au surface was tailored using specific peptides, blocking agents and diluents. The combination of blocking agents (ethanolamine or n-butylamine) and diluents (hexanethiol or 2-mercaptoethanol) was used to prepare various peptide-modified Au surfaces. Protein adsorption onto the peptide-Au surfaces modified with the combination of n-butylamine and hexanethiol produced a dramatic decrease in the charge transfer resistance, Rct, for all three proteins. In contrast, polar peptide-surfaces induced a minimal change in Rct for all three proteins. Furthermore, an increase in Rct was observed with CD13 (an aminopeptidase overexpressed in certain cancers) in comparison to the other proteins when the VLGXE-Au surface was modified with n-butylamine as a blocking agent. The electrochemical data indicated that protein adsorption may be modulated by tailoring the peptide sequence on Au surfaces and that blocking agents and diluents play a key role in promoting or preventing protein adsorption. The peptide-Au platform may also be used for targeting cancer biomarkers with designer peptides.

Description: According to the increasing worldwide attention to energy and the environmental performance of the building sector, building energy demand should be minimized by considering all energy uses. In this regard, the development of building components characterized by proper values of thermal transmittance, thermal capacity, and radiative properties is a key strategy to reduce the annual energy need for the microclimatic control. However, the design of the thermal characteristics of the building envelope is an arduous task, especially in temperate climates where the energy demands for space heating and cooling are balanced. This study presents a novel methodology for optimizing the thermo-physical properties of the building envelope and its coatings, in terms of thermal resistance, capacity, and radiative characteristics of exposed surfaces. A multi-objective approach is adopted in order to optimize energy performance and thermal comfort. The optimization problem is solved by means of a Genetic Algorithm implemented in MATLAB®, which is coupled with EnergyPlus for performing dynamic energy simulations. For demonstration, the methodology is applied to a residential building for two different Mediterranean climates: Naples and Istanbul. The results show that for Naples, because of the higher incidence of cooling demand, cool external coatings imply significant energy savings, whereas the insulation of walls should be high but not excessive (no more than 13–14 cm). The importance of high-reflective coating is clear also in colder Mediterranean climates, like Istanbul, although the optimal thicknesses of thermal insulation are higher (around 16–18 cm). In both climates, the thermal envelope should have a significant mass, obtainable by adopting dense and/or thick masonry layers. Globally, a careful design of the thermal envelope is always necessary in order to achieve high-efficiency buildings.

Description: In recent years, global climate change has altered precipitation patterns, causing uneven spatial and temporal distribution of precipitation that gradually induces precipitation polarization phenomena. Taiwan is located in the subtropical climate zone, with distinct wet and dry seasons, which makes the polarization phenomenon more obvious; this has also led to a large difference between river flows during the wet and dry seasons, which is significantly influenced by precipitation, resulting in hydrological drought. Therefore, to effectively address the growing issue of water shortages, it is necessary to explore and assess the drought characteristics of river systems. In this study, the drought characteristics of northern Taiwan were studied using the streamflow drought index (SDI) and Markov chains. Analysis results showed that the year 2002 was a turning point for drought severity in both the Lanyang River and Yilan River basins; the severity of rain events in the Lanyang River basin increased after 2002, and the severity of drought events in the Yilan River basin exhibited a gradual upward trend. In the study of drought severity, analysis results from periods of three months (November to January) and six months (November to April) have shown significant drought characteristics. In addition, analysis of drought occurrence probabilities using the method of Markov chains has shown that the occurrence probabilities of drought events are higher in the Lanyang River basin than in the Yilan River basin; particularly for extreme events, the occurrence probability of an extreme drought event is 20.6% during the dry season (November to April) in the Lanyang River basin, and 3.4% in the Yilan River basin. This study shows that for analysis of drought/wet occurrence probabilities, the results obtained for the drought frequency and occurrence probability using short-term data with the method of Markov chains can be used to predict the long-term occurrence probability of drought/wet events.

Description: Proper lighting is vital to improve, from an artistic point of view, the surface expanse and decorative detailing of architectural heritage buildings considered valuable. When properly lit, monumental buildings can become to onlookers an essential part of the city. Nowadays, for design planners dealing with the improvement of buildings, whose architectural design should be valorized, the real challenge is to combine the lighting artistic requirements with scrupulous economic management in order to limit the energy demand and to respect the environment. For these reasons, this case study examines the lighting of the monumental façade and the cloister of St. Peter in Chains situated in the Faculty of Engineering of Sapienza University of Rome. The present lighting installation, characterized by metal halides, compact fluorescent and halogen lamps, is compared with an alternative scenario presenting LED lamps and scenographic lighting of the monumental façade. Such comparison is based on the evaluation of the lighting levels for different visual tasks and on energy and maintenance issues; the first analysis was performed through the software DIALux Evo 4.0, whereas the second was performed using ecoCALC. This study leads to the conclusion that the lighting levels of the solution presenting LED lamps are better than those of the present solution, and they comply with current standards. Finally, the higher costs of LED lamp installations and the scenographic lighting of the monumental façade are balanced by lower maintenance costs, with a payback period of seven years.

Description: Customer expectations can be extremely nebulous. This research identifies the demographic segmentations and their respective expectations for the spa market. Interviews were conducted and a subsequent questionnaire was employed to gather the voice of the customer and assess the expectations of spa clientele. All of the data was collected from luxury spas in Hawaii, and consisted of respondents from all over the world. Results of the survey suggest that while men want more tangible benefits of a spa, women prefer the experiential qualities of peace and rejuvenation. Additionally, those of lower to middle income focus on the atmosphere more than wealthier clients, who are looking for more long term spa benefits, such as a more youthful appearance.

Description: Any World Heritage Cultural Landscape requires a clear boundary for administration. One of the administrative goals is sustainability. There is no widely identified way to demarcate the boundary of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape. This paper aims to explore a methodology framework to provide a holistic perspective for demarcating boundaries for a World Heritage Cultural Landscape. Honghe Hani Rice Terraces (HHRT) in Yunnan Province is a new World Heritage Cultural Landscape in China. We use it as a research area to illustrate the methodology framework. The framework of methodology is constructed based on four scales of a human-environment system identified by Anne Buttimer. It is used to describe the level of the sustainability of local economy, social organization, natural environment and people’s understanding of the human-environment. Four types of boundaries were investigated in this area. They are the boundary of Malizhai River Basin, the boundary of local water-allocation organization, the boundary of the economic network and the perceptual boundary of the human-environment system. With a comprehensive perspective, we integrated the four types of boundaries to judge the boundary of the core area of HHRT by three criteria, they are: Environmental sustainability, social justice, and the ability to create a new human-environment system. We conclude that some parts of the boundary of the core area of HHRT do not fit the criteria of sustainable development.

Description: Securing communications in wireless sensor networks is increasingly important as the diversity of applications increases. However, even today, it is equally important for the measures employed to be energy efficient. For this reason, this publication analyzes the suitability of various cryptographic primitives for use in WSNs according to various criteria and, finally, describes a modular, PKI-based framework for confidential, authenticated, secure communications in which most suitable primitives can be employed. Due to the limited capabilities of common WSN motes, criteria for the selection of primitives are security, power efficiency and memory requirements. The implementation of the framework and the singular components have been tested and benchmarked in our testbed of IRISmotes.

Description: Recently, the cross-layer design for the wireless sensor network communication protocol has become more and more important and popular. Considering the disadvantages of the traditional cross-layer routing algorithms, in this paper we propose a new fuzzy logic-based routing algorithm, named the Balanced Cross-layer Fuzzy Logic (BCFL) routing algorithm. In BCFL, we use the cross-layer parameters’ dispersion as the fuzzy logic inference system inputs. Moreover, we give each cross-layer parameter a dynamic weight according the value of the dispersion. For getting a balanced solution, the parameter whose dispersion is large will have small weight, and vice versa. In order to compare it with the traditional cross-layer routing algorithms, BCFL is evaluated through extensive simulations. The simulation results show that the new routing algorithm can handle the multiple constraints without increasing the complexity of the algorithm and can achieve the most balanced performance on selecting the next hop relay node. Moreover, the Balanced Cross-layer Fuzzy Logic routing algorithm can adapt to the dynamic changing of the network conditions and topology effectively.

Description: The growth morphology and structure of ceria nano-islands on a stepped Au(788) surface has been investigated by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and low-energy electron diffraction (LEED). Within the concept of physical vapor deposition, different kinetic routes have been employed to design ceria-Au inverse model catalysts with different ceria nanoparticle shapes and arrangements. A two-dimensional superlattice of ceria nano-islands with a relatively narrow size distribution (5 ± 2 nm2) has been generated on the Au(788) surface by the postoxidation method. This reflects the periodic anisotropy of the template surface and has been ascribed to the pinning of ceria clusters and thus nucleation on the fcc domains of the herringbone reconstruction on the Au terraces. In contrast, the reactive evaporation method yields ceria islands elongated in [01-1] direction, i.e., parallel to the step edges, with high aspect ratios (~6). Diffusion along the Au step edges of ceria clusters and their limited step crossing in conjunction with a growth front perpendicular to the step edges is tentatively proposed to control the ceria growth under reactive evaporation conditions. Both deposition recipes generate two-dimensional islands of CeO2(111)-type O–Ce–O single and double trilayer structures for submonolayer coverages.

Description: A state-of-health (SOH) estimation method for electric vehicles (EVs) is presented with three main advantages: (1) it provides joint estimation of cell’s aging states in terms of power and energy (i.e., SOHP and SOHE)—because the determination of SOHP and SOHE can be reduced to the estimation of the ohmic resistance increase and capacity loss, respectively, the ohmic resistance at nominal temperature will be taken as a health indicator, and the capacity loss is estimated based on a mechanistic model that is developed to describe the correlation between resistance increase and capacity loss; (2) it has wide applicability to various ambient temperatures—to eliminate the effects of temperature on the resistance, another mechanistic model about the resistance against temperature is presented, which can normalize the resistance at various temperatures to its standard value at the nominal temperature; and (3) it needs low computational efforts for on-board application—based on a linear equation of cell’s dynamic behaviors, the recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithm is used for the resistance estimation. Based on the designed performance and validation experiments, respectively, the coefficients of the models are determined and the accuracy of the proposed method is verified. The results at different aging states and temperatures show good accuracy and reliability.

Description: Producing domestic hot water (DHW) with a ground source heat pump (GSHP) is challenging due to the high temperature (HT) of DHW. There are many studies proving the better performance of cascade heat pumps compared to single-stage heat pumps when the difference between the condensing and the evaporation temperature is large. In this system approach study, different GSHP arrangements are described and computationally compared. A two-stage heat pump arrangement is introduced in which water tanks of the heating system are utilized for warming up the DHW in two stages. It is shown that the electricity consumption with this two-stage system is approximately 31% less than with the single-stage heat pump and 12% less than with the cascade system. Further, both low temperature (LT) and HT heat pumps can run alone, which is not common in cascade or other two-stage heat pumps. This is advantageous because the high loads of the space heating and DHW production are not simultaneous. Proper insulation of the DHW and recirculation pipe network is essential, and drying towel rails or other heating coils should be avoided when aiming for a high efficiency. The refrigerants in the calculations are R407C for the LT heat pump and R134a for the HT heat pump. Investment costs are excluded from calculations.

Description: Due to an oversight by the authors there is a correction necessary in this publication [1]. We would like to change the word “phase” to “step” throughout the manuscript. We apologize for any inconvenience caused to readers.[...]

Description: Spartina alterniflora is one of the most hazardous invasive plant species in China. Monitoring the changes in dominant plant species can help identify the invasion mechanisms of S. alterniflora, thereby providing scientific guidelines on managing or controlling the spreading of this invasive species at Jiuduansha Wetland in Shanghai, China. However, because of the complex terrain and the inaccessibility of tidal wetlands, it is very difficult to conduct field experiments on a large scale in this wetland. Hence, remote sensing plays an important role in monitoring the dynamics of plant species and its distribution on both spatial and temporal scales. In this study, based on multi-spectral and high resolution (〈10 m) remote sensing images and field observational data, we analyzed spectral characteristics of four dominant plant species at different green-up phenophases. Based on the difference in spectral characteristics, a decision tree classification was built for identifying the distribution of these plant species. The results indicated that the overall classification accuracy for plant species was 87.17%, and the Kappa Coefficient was 0.81, implying that our classification method could effectively identify the four plant species. We found that the area of Phragmites australi showed an increasing trend from 1997 to 2004 and from 2004 to 2012, with an annual spreading rate of 33.77% and 31.92%, respectively. The area of Scirpus mariqueter displayed an increasing trend from 1997 to 2004 (12.16% per year) and a decreasing trend from 2004 to 2012 (−7.05% per year). S. alterniflora has the biggest area (3302.20 ha) as compared to other species, accounting for 51% of total vegetated area at the study region in 2012. It showed an increasing trend from 1997 to 2004 and from 2004 to 2012, with an annual spreading rate of 130.63% and 28.11%, respectively. As a result, the native species P. australi was surrounded and the habitats of S. mariqueter were occupied by S. alterniflora. The high proliferation ability and competitive advantage for S. alterniflora inhibited the growth of other plant species and we anticipate a continuous expansion of this invasive species at Jiuduansha Wetland. Effective measures should be taken to control the invasion of S. alterniflora.

Description: To solve the problem of coverage performance assessment, this study proposes an evaluation method based on the trajectory of the target, which is applicable to universal sensor networks, including both heterogeneous and homogeneous sensor networks. Different from the traditional Voronoi algorithm, the proposed Improved Coverage Force Division (ICFD) plans a coverage force division map whichscales the qualitative coverage performancebasedon both covering intensities andlocations of the nodes. Furthermore, the Trajectory-based Evaluating Schedule (TES) is responsible for solving the quantitative coverage evaluationproblem by measuringthe resulting trajectories’ Balance Values (BVs). A model of weak-point ranking conjoined in consideration of coverage force and distance can guide future deployment to compensate coverage. Comparative trials using the greedy algorithm, Voronoi algorithm, and the proposed TES verify that TES achieves the approximate results for two-stage and multistage heterogeneous sensor networks with acceptable difference and lower complexity, and it is superior to the Voronoi algorithm in homogeneous sensor networks interms of breaking the four-point circle block.

Description: Pyroelectric harvesters convert time-dependent temperature variations into electric current. The appropriate geometry of the pyroelectric cells, coupled with the optimal period of temperature fluctuations, is key to driving the optimal load resistance, which enhances the performance of pyroelectric harvesters. The induced charge increases when the thickness of the pyroelectric cells decreases. Moreover, the induced charge is extremely reduced for the thinner pyroelectric cell when not used for the optimal period. The maximum harvested power is achieved when a 100 μm-thick PZT (Lead zirconate titanate) cell is used to drive the optimal load resistance of about 40 MΩ. Moreover, the harvested power is greatly reduced when the working resistance diverges even slightly from the optimal load resistance. The stored voltage generated from the 75 μm-thick PZT cell is less than that from the 400 μm-thick PZT cell for a period longer than 64 s. Although the thinner PZT cell is advantageous in that it enhances the efficiency of the pyroelectric harvester, the much thinner 75 μm-thick PZT cell and the divergence from the optimal period further diminish the performance of the pyroelectric cell. Therefore, the designers of pyroelectric harvesters need to consider the coupling effect between the geometry of the pyroelectric cells and the optimal period of temperature fluctuations to drive the optimal load resistance.

Description: The accuracy of different workflows using Structure-from-Motion and Multi-View-Stereo techniques (SfM-MVS) is tested. Twelve point clouds of the Corral del Veleta rock glacier, in Spain, were produced with two different software packages (123D Catch and Agisoft Photoscan), using Low Dynamic Range images and High Dynamic Range compositions (HDR) for three different years (2011, 2012 and 2014). The accuracy of the resulting point clouds was assessed using benchmark models acquired every year with a Terrestrial Laser Scanner. Three parameters were used to estimate the accuracy of each point cloud: the RMSE, the Cloud-to-Cloud distance (C2C) and the Multiscale-Model-to-Model comparison (M3C2). The M3C2 mean error ranged from 0.084 m (standard deviation of 0.403 m) to 1.451 m (standard deviation of 1.625 m). Agisoft Photoscan overcome 123D Catch, producing more accurate and denser point clouds in 11 out 12 cases, being this work, the first available comparison between both software packages in the literature. No significant improvement was observed using HDR pre-processing. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the geometrical accuracy of 3D models obtained using LDR and HDR compositions are compared. These findings may be of interest for researchers who wish to estimate geomorphic changes using SfM-MVS approaches.

Description: This study investigated the spatiotemporal variation of vegetation growth and the influence of climatic drivers from 1982 to 2011 across China using datasets from the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and climatic drivers. Long term trends, significance and abrupt change points of interannual NDVI time series were analyzed. We applied both simple regression and multi-regression models to quantify the effects of climatic drivers on vegetation growth and compare their relative contributions. Results show that on average, the growing season NDVI significantly increased by 0.0007 year