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  • 1
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    Annual Acoustic Presence of Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus) Offshore Eastern Sicily, Central Mediterranean Sea (2016)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2017-04-04
    Description: In recent years, an increasing number of surveys have definitively confirmed the seasonal presence of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in highly productive regions of the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this, very little is yet known about the routes that the species seasonally follows within the Mediterranean basin and, particularly, in the Ionian area. The present study assesses for the first time fin whale acoustic presence offshore Eastern Sicily (Ionian Sea), throughout the processing of about 10 months of continuous acoustic monitoring. The recording of fin whale vocalizations was made possible by the cabled deep-sea multidisciplinary observatory, “NEMO-SN1”, deployed 25 km off the Catania harbor at a depth of about 2,100 meters. NEMO-SN1 is an operational node of the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO) Research Infrastructure. The observatory was equipped with a low-frequency hydrophone (bandwidth: 0.05 Hz–1 kHz, sampling rate: 2 kHz) which continuously acquired data from July 2012 to May 2013. About 7,200 hours of acoustic data were analyzed by means of spectrogram display. Calls with the typical structure and patterns associated to the Mediterranean fin whale population were identified and monitored in the area for the first time. Furthermore, a background noise analysis within the fin whale communication frequency band (17.9–22.5 Hz) was conducted to investigate possible detection-masking effects. The study confirms the hypothesis that fin whales are present in the Ionian Sea throughout all seasons, with peaks in call detection rate during spring and summer months. The analysis also demonstrates that calls were more frequently detected in low background noise conditions. Further analysis will be performed to understand whether observed levels of noise limit the acoustic detection of the fin whales vocalizations, or whether the animals vocalize less in the presence of high background noise.
    Description: Published
    Description: e0141838
    Description: 3A. Ambiente Marino
    Description: JCR Journal
    Description: open
    Keywords: Whales ; Bioacoustics ; Background noise (acoustics) ; Acoustic signals ; Sperm whales ; Vocalization ; Acoustics ; Data acquisition ; 03. Hydrosphere::03.01. General::03.01.08. Instruments and techniques ; 03. Hydrosphere::03.02. Hydrology::03.02.04. Measurements and monitoring ; 03. Hydrosphere::03.02. Hydrology::03.02.07. Instruments and techniques ; 03. Hydrosphere::03.04. Chemical and biological::03.04.99. General or miscellaneous
    Repository Name: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
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    The amyloid precursor protein of Alzheimer’s disease clusters at the organelle/microtubule interface on organelles that bind microtubules in an ATP dependent manner (2016)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0147808, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0147808.
    Description: The amyloid precursor protein (APP) is a causal agent in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease and is a transmembrane protein that associates with membrane-limited organelles. APP has been shown to co-purify through immunoprecipitation with a kinesin light chain suggesting that APP may act as a trailer hitch linking kinesin to its intercellular cargo, however this hypothesis has been challenged. Previously, we identified an mRNA transcript that encodes a squid homolog of human APP770. The human and squid isoforms share 60% sequence identity and 76% sequence similarity within the cytoplasmic domain and share 15 of the final 19 amino acids at the C-terminus establishing this highly conserved domain as a functionally import segment of the APP molecule. Here, we study the distribution of squid APP in extruded axoplasm as well as in a well-characterized reconstituted organelle/microtubule preparation from the squid giant axon in which organelles bind microtubules and move towards the microtubule plus-ends. We find that APP associates with microtubules by confocal microscopy and co-purifies with KI-washed axoplasmic organelles by sucrose density gradient fractionation. By electron microscopy, APP clusters at a single focal point on the surfaces of organelles and localizes to the organelle/microtubule interface. In addition, the association of APP-organelles with microtubules is an ATP dependent process suggesting that the APP-organelles contain a microtubule-based motor protein. Although a direct kinesin/APP association remains controversial, the distribution of APP at the organelle/microtubule interface strongly suggests that APP-organelles have an orientation and that APP like the Alzheimer’s protein tau has a microtubule-based function.
    Description: Research reported in this publication was supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P20GM103430.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 3
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    Influence of environmental variables on Gambierdiscus spp. (Dinophyceae) growth and distribution (2016)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0153197, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153197.
    Description: Benthic dinoflagellates in the genus Gambierdiscus produce the ciguatoxin precursors responsible for the occurrence of ciguatera toxicity. The prevalence of ciguatera toxins in fish has been linked to the presence and distribution of toxin-producing species in coral reef ecosystems, which is largely determined by the presence of suitable benthic habitat and environmental conditions favorable for growth. Here using single factor experiments, we examined the effects of salinity, irradiance, and temperature on growth of 17 strains of Gambierdiscus representing eight species/phylotypes (G. belizeanus, G. caribaeus, G. carolinianus, G. carpenteri, G. pacificus, G. silvae, Gambierdiscus sp. type 4–5), most of which were established from either Marakei Island, Republic of Kiribati, or St. Thomas, United States Virgin Island (USVI). Comparable to prior studies, growth rates fell within the range of 0–0.48 divisions day-1. In the salinity and temperature studies, Gambierdiscus responded in a near Gaussian, non-linear manner typical for such studies, with optimal and suboptimal growth occurring in the range of salinities of 25 and 45 and 21.0 and 32.5°C. In the irradiance experiment, no mortality was observed; however, growth rates at 55μmol photons · m-2 · s-1 were lower than those at 110–400μmol photons · m-2 · s-1. At the extremes of the environmental conditions tested, growth rates were highly variable, evidenced by large coefficients of variability. However, significant differences in intraspecific growth rates were typically found only at optimal or near-optimal growth conditions. Polynomial regression analyses showed that maximum growth occurred at salinity and temperature levels of 30.1–38.5 and 23.8–29.2°C, respectively. Gambierdiscus growth patterns varied among species, and within individual species: G. belizeanus, G. caribaeus, G. carpenteri, and G. pacificus generally exhibited a wider range of tolerance to environmental conditions, which may explain their broad geographic distribution. In contrast, G. silvae and Gambierdiscus sp. types 4–5 all displayed a comparatively narrow range of tolerance to temperature, salinity, and irradiance.
    Description: This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41506137); Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (2015GXNSFCA139003), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U01 EH000421); USFDA (F223201000060C); NOAA NOS through the CiguaHAB program (Cooperative Agreement NA11NOS4780060, NA11NOS4780028); the Lana Vento Trust and VI-EPSCoR Program (NSF award # 346483 & 081441); and a System Fund from Key Laboratory of Environment Change and Resources Use in Beibu Gulf, Ministry of Education (2014BGERLXT01). Support was also provided by the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health through National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant OCE-1314642, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Grant 1-P01-ES021923-014, as well as the China Scholarship Council.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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    Comparative analysis of secretome profiles of manganese(II)-oxidizing Ascomycete fungi (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose.
    Description: Fungal secretomes contain a wide range of hydrolytic and oxidative enzymes, including cellulases, hemicellulases, pectinases, and lignin-degrading accessory enzymes, that synergistically drive litter decomposition in the environment. While secretome studies of model organisms such as Phanerochaete chrysosporium and Aspergillus species have greatly expanded our knowledge of these enzymes, few have extended secretome characterization to environmental isolates or conducted side-by-side comparisons of diverse species. Thus, the mechanisms of carbon degradation by many ubiquitous soil fungi remain poorly understood. Here we use a combination of LC-MS/MS, genomic, and bioinformatic analyses to characterize and compare the protein composition of the secretomes of four recently isolated, cosmopolitan, Mn(II)-oxidizing Ascomycetes (Alternaria alternata SRC1lrK2f, Stagonospora sp. SRC1lsM3a, Pyrenochaeta sp. DS3sAY3a, and Paraconiothyrium sporulosum AP3s5-JAC2a). We demonstrate that the organisms produce a rich yet functionally similar suite of extracellular enzymes, with species-specific differences in secretome composition arising from unique amino acid sequences rather than overall protein function. Furthermore, we identify not only a wide range of carbohydrate-active enzymes that can directly oxidize recalcitrant carbon, but also an impressive suite of redox-active accessory enzymes that suggests a role for Fenton-based hydroxyl radical formation in indirect, non-specific lignocellulose attack. Our findings highlight the diverse oxidative capacity of these environmental isolates and enhance our understanding of the role of filamentous Ascomycetes in carbon turnover in the environment.
    Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov), grant numbers EAR-1249489 and CBET-1336496, both awarded to CMH. Personal support for CAZ was also provided by Harvard University (www.harvard.edu) and by a Ford Foundation (www.fordfoundation.org) Predoctoral Fellowship administered by the National Academies.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 5
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    Potential impacts of offshore wind farms on North Sea stratification (2016)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0160830, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0160830 .
    Description: Advances in offshore wind farm (OWF) technology have recently led to their construction in coastal waters that are deep enough to be seasonally stratified. As tidal currents move past the OWF foundation structures they generate a turbulent wake that will contribute to a mixing of the stratified water column. In this study we show that the mixing generated in this way may have a significant impact on the large-scale stratification of the German Bight region of the North Sea. This region is chosen as the focus of this study since the planning of OWFs is particularly widespread. Using a combination of idealised modelling and in situ measurements, we provide order-of-magnitude estimates of two important time scales that are key to understanding the impacts of OWFs: (i) a mixing time scale, describing how long a complete mixing of the stratification takes, and (ii) an advective time scale, quantifying for how long a water parcel is expected to undergo enhanced wind farm mixing. The results are especially sensitive to both the drag coefficient and type of foundation structure, as well as the evolution of the pycnocline under enhanced mixing conditions—both of which are not well known. With these limitations in mind, the results show that OWFs could impact the large-scale stratification, but only when they occupy extensive shelf regions. They are expected to have very little impact on large-scale stratification at the current capacity in the North Sea, but the impact could be significant in future large-scale development scenarios.
    Description: Funding was provided by the Helmholtz Foundation through the Polar Regions and Coasts in the Changing Earth System II (PACES II) program.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 6
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    Predicting interactions between common dolphins and the pole-and-line tuna fishery in the Azores (2016)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS ONE 11 (2016): e0164107, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0164107.
    Description: Common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) are responsible for the large majority of interactions with the pole-and-line tuna fishery in the Azores but the underlying drivers remain poorly understood. In this study we investigate the influence of various environmental and fisheries-related factors in promoting the interaction of common dolphins with this fishery and estimate the resultant catch losses. We analysed 15 years of fishery and cetacean interaction data (1998–2012) collected by observers placed aboard tuna fishing vessels. Dolphins interacted in less than 3% of the fishing events observed during the study period. The probability of dolphin interaction varied significantly between years with no evident trend over time. Generalized additive modeling results suggest that fishing duration, sea surface temperature and prey abundance in the region were the most important factors explaining common dolphin interaction. Dolphin interaction had no impact on the catches of albacore, skipjack and yellowfin tuna but resulted in significantly lower catches of bigeye tuna, with a predicted median annual loss of 13.5% in the number of fish captured. However, impact on bigeye catches varied considerably both by year and fishing area. Our work shows that rates of common dolphin interaction with the pole-and-line tuna fishery in the Azores are low and showed no signs of increase over the study period. Although overall economic impact was low, the interaction may lead to significant losses in some years. These findings emphasize the need for continued monitoring and for further research into the consequences and economic viability of potential mitigation measures.
    Description: This work was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) and DRCT/SRCTE, though FEDER, the Competitiveness Factors Operational (COMPETE), QREN European Social Fund, the Portuguese Ministry for Science and Education, under research projects TRACE (PTDC/MAR/74071/2006), FCT Exploratory Project (IF/00943/2013/CP1199/CT0001), and MAPCET (M2.1.2/F/012/2011). We acknowledge the support of Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), through the strategic project UID/MAR/04292/2013 granted to MARE. We thank the Azorean Regional Government for funding POPA, the Ship-owners Association and the Association of the Tuna Canning Industries for their support to the program. MJC was supported by a DRCT doctoral grant (M3.1.2/F/008/2009). MAS was supported by POPH, QREN, European Social Fund and Portuguese Ministry for Science and Education, through an FCT Investigator grant (IF/00943/2013).
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 7
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    Light control of G protein signaling pathways by a novel photopigment (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 13 (2018): e0205015, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0205015.
    Description: Channelopsins and photo-regulated ion channels make it possible to use light to control electrical activity of cells. This powerful approach has lead to a veritable explosion of applications, though it is limited to changing membrane voltage of the target cells. An enormous potential could be tapped if similar opto-genetic techniques could be extended to the control of chemical signaling pathways. Photopigments from invertebrate photoreceptors are an obvious choice—as they do not bleach upon illumination -however, their functional expression has been problematic. We exploited an unusual opsin, pScop2, recently identified in ciliary photoreceptors of scallop. Phylogenetically, it is closer to vertebrate opsins, and offers the advantage of being a bi-stable photopigment. We inserted its coding sequence and a fluorescent protein reporter into plasmid vectors and demonstrated heterologous expression in various mammalian cell lines. HEK 293 cells were selected as a heterologous system for functional analysis, because wild type cells displayed the largest currents in response to the G-protein activator, GTP-γ-S. A line of HEK cells stably transfected with pScop2 was generated; after reconstitution of the photopigment with retinal, light responses were obtained in some cells, albeit of modest amplitude. In native photoreceptors pScop2 couples to Go; HEK cells express poorly this G-protein, but have a prominent Gq/PLC pathway linked to internal Ca mobilization. To enhance pScop2 competence to tap into this pathway, we swapped its third intracellular loop—important to confer specificity of interaction between 7TMDRs and G-proteins—with that of a Gq-linked opsin which we cloned from microvillar photoreceptors present in the same retina. The chimeric construct was evaluated by a Ca fluorescence assay, and was shown to mediate a robust mobilization of internal calcium in response to illumination. The results project pScop2 as a potentially powerful optogenetic tool to control signaling pathways.
    Description: This work was funded by Colciencias grant FP44842-010-2015 and Connecticut Fund for Science.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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  • 8
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    Mercury-pollution induction of intracellular lipid accumulation and lysosomal compartment amplification in the benthic foraminifer Ammonia parkinsoniana (2016)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0162401, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0162401.
    Description: Heavy metals such as mercury (Hg) pose a significant health hazard through bioaccumulation and biomagnification. By penetrating cell membranes, heavy metal ions may lead to pathological conditions. Here we examined the responses of Ammonia parkinsoniana, a benthic foraminiferan, to different concentrations of Hg in the artificial sea water. Confocal images of untreated and treated specimens using fluorescent probes (Nile Red and Acridine Orange) provided an opportunity for visualizing the intracellular lipid accumulation and acidic compartment regulation. With increased Hg over time, we observed an increased number of lipid droplets, which may have acted as a detoxifying organelle where Hg is sequestered and biologically inactivated. Further, Hg seems to promote the proliferation of lysosomes both in terms of number and dimension that, at the highest level of Hg, resulted in cell death. We report, for the first time, the presence of Hg within the foraminiferal cell: at the basal part of pores, in the organic linings of the foramen/septa, and as cytoplasmic accumulations.
    Description: The research for this paper was partially made possible by the financial support from the PRIN 2010-2011 Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca (MIUR) (protocollo 2010RMTLYR) to RC. JMB acknowledges support from The Investment in Science Fund at WHOI. BG, JRE, AJ, LZ, and EMP were supported in part by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research, US Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the Mercury Science Focus Area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is managed by UT-Battelle LLC for the DOE under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.
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    Shipboard design and fabrication of custom 3D-printed soft robotic manipulators for the investigation of delicate deep-sea organisms (2018)
    Public Library of Science
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLos One 13 (2018): e0200386, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200386.
    Description: Soft robotics is an emerging technology that has shown considerable promise in deep-sea marine biological applications. It is particularly useful in facilitating delicate interactions with fragile marine organisms. This study describes the shipboard design, 3D printing and integration of custom soft robotic manipulators for investigating and interacting with deep-sea organisms. Soft robotics manipulators were tested down to 2224m via a Remotely-Operated Vehicle (ROV) in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) and facilitated the study of a diverse suite of soft-bodied and fragile marine life. Instantaneous feedback from the ROV pilots and biologists allowed for rapid re-design, such as adding “fingernails”, and re-fabrication of soft manipulators at sea. These were then used to successfully grasp fragile deep-sea animals, such as goniasterids and holothurians, which have historically been difficult to collect undamaged via rigid mechanical arms and suction samplers. As scientific expeditions to remote parts of the world are costly and lengthy to plan, on-the-fly soft robot actuator printing offers a real-time solution to better understand and interact with delicate deep-sea environments, soft-bodied, brittle, and otherwise fragile organisms. This also offers a less invasive means of interacting with slow-growing deep marine organisms, some of which can be up to 18,000 years old.
    Description: This work is supported by NOAA OER Grant # NA17OAR0110083 “Exploration of the Seamounts of the Phoenix Islands Protected Area” to RDR, EEC, TMS and DFG and Schmidt Ocean Institute Grant: “What is the Current State of the Deep-Sea Coral Ecosystem in the Phoenix Island Protected Area?” to EEC, RDR, TMS and DFG; NSF Instrument Development for Biological Research Award # 1556164 to RJW and #1556123 to DFG; the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative of the National Academy of Sciences under award #NAKFI DBS21 to RJW and DFG; and NFS Research Fellowship awarded to KPB (#DGE1144152). It is also supported by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. We are grateful for the support from the National Geographic Society Innovation Challenge (Grant No.: SP 12-14) to RJW and DFG.
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
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    Resonance control of acoustic focusing systems through an environmental reference table and impedance spectroscopy (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 13 (2018): e0207532, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207532.
    Description: Acoustic standing waves can precisely focus flowing particles or cells into tightly positioned streams for interrogation or downstream separations. The efficiency of an acoustic standing wave device is dependent upon operating at a resonance frequency. Small changes in a system’s temperature and sample salinity can shift the device’s resonance condition, leading to poor focusing. Practical implementation of an acoustic standing wave system requires an automated resonance control system to adjust the standing wave frequency in response to environmental changes. Here we have developed a rigorous approach for quantifying the optimal acoustic focusing frequency at any given environmental condition. We have demonstrated our approach across a wide range of temperature and salinity conditions to provide a robust characterization of how the optimal acoustic focusing resonance frequency shifts across these conditions. To generalize these results, two microfluidic bulk acoustic standing wave systems (a steel capillary and an etched silicon wafer) were examined. Models of these temperature and salinity effects suggest that it is the speed of sound within the liquid sample that dominates the resonance frequency shift. Using these results, a simple reference table can be generated to predict the optimal resonance condition as a function of temperature and salinity. Additionally, we show that there is a local impedance minimum associated with the optimal system resonance. The integration of the environmental results for coarse frequency tuning followed by a local impedance characterization for fine frequency adjustments, yields a highly accurate method of resonance control. Such an approach works across a wide range of environmental conditions, is easy to automate, and could have a significant impact across a wide range of microfluidic acoustic standing wave systems.
    Description: This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number R21GM107805 and the NSF under award number (OCE-1130140 and OCE-1131134) to SWG, RJO, and HMS.
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  • 11
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    The good, the bad, and the tiny : a simple, mechanistic-probabilistic model of virus-nutrient colimitation in microbes (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 10 (2015): e0143299, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0143299.
    Description: For phytoplankton and other microbes, nutrient receptors are often the passages through which viruses invade. This presents a bottom-up vs. top-down, co-limitation scenario; how do these would-be-hosts balance minimizing viral susceptibility with maximizing uptake of limiting nutrient(s)? This question has been addressed in the biological literature on evolutionary timescales for populations, but a shorter timescale, mechanistic perspective is lacking, and marine viral literature suggests the strong influence of additional factors, e.g. host size; while the literature on both nutrient uptake and host-virus interactions is expansive, their intersection, of ubiquitous relevance to marine environments, is understudied. I present a simple, mechanistic model from first principles to analyze the effect of this co-limitation scenario on individual growth, which suggests that in environments with high risk of viral invasion or spatial/temporal heterogeneity, an individual host’s growth rate may be optimized with respect to receptor coverage, producing top-down selective pressure on short timescales. The model has general applicability, is suggestive of hypotheses for empirical exploration, and can be extended to theoretical studies of more complex behaviors and systems.
    Description: This work was supported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Charles Vest Presidential Fellowship.
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  • 12
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    AMS radiocarbon dating of large za baobabs (Adansonia za) of Madagascar (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0146977, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0146977 .
    Description: The article reports the radiocarbon investigation of Anzapalivoro, the largest za baobab (Adansonia za) specimen of Madagascar and of another za, namely the Big cistern baobab. Several wood samples collected from the large inner cavity and from the outer part/exterior of the tree were investigated by AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) radiocarbon dating. For samples collected from the cavity walls, the age values increase with the distance into the wood up to a point of maximum age, after which the values decrease toward the outer part. This anomaly of age sequences indicates that the inner cavity of Anzapalivoro is a false cavity, practically an empty space between several fused stems disposed in a ring-shaped structure. The radiocarbon date of the oldest sample was 780 ± 30 bp, which corresponds to a calibrated age of around 735 yr. Dating results indicate that Anzapalivoro has a closed ring-shaped structure, which consists of 5 fused stems that close a false cavity. The oldest part of the biggest za baobab has a calculated age of 900 years. We also disclose results of the investigation of a second za baobab, the Big cistern baobab, which was hollowed out for water storage. This specimen, which consists of 4 fused stems, was found to be around 260 years old.
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  • 13
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    Biochemical mechanisms for geographical adaptations to novel toxin exposures in butterflyfish (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0154208, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0154208
    Description: Some species of butterflyfish have had preyed upon corals for millions of years, yet the mechanism of butterflyfish specialized coral feeding strategy remains poorly understood. Certain butterflyfish have the ability to feed on allelochemically rich soft corals, e.g. Sinularia maxima. Cytochrome P450 (CYP) is the predominant enzyme system responsible for the detoxification of dietary allelochemicals. CYP2-like and CYP3A-like content have been associated with butterflyfish that preferentially consumes allelochemically rich soft corals. To investigate the role of butterflyfish CYP2 and CYP3A enzymes in dietary preference, we conducted oral feeding experiments using homogenates of S. maxima and a toxin isolated from the coral in four species of butterflyfish with different feeding strategies. After oral exposure to the S. maxima toxin 5-episinulaptolide (5ESL), which is not normally encountered in the Hawaiian butterflyfish diet, an endemic specialist, Chaetodon multicinctus experienced 100% mortality compared to a generalist, Chaetodon auriga, which had significantly more (3–6 fold higher) CYP3A-like basal content and catalytic activity. The specialist, Chaetodon unimaculatus, which preferentially feed on S. maxima in Guam, but not in Hawaii, had 100% survival, a significant induction of 8–12 fold CYP3A-like content, and an increased ability (2-fold) to metabolize 5ESL over other species. Computer modeling data of CYP3A4 with 5ESL were consistent with microsomal transformation of 5ESL to a C15-16 epoxide from livers of C. unimaculatus. Epoxide formation correlated with CYP3A-like content, catalytic activity, induction, and NADPH-dependent metabolism of 5ESL. These results suggest a potentially important role for the CYP3A family in butterflyfish-coral diet selection through allelochemical detoxification.
    Description: This work received support from the following sources: Resource Allocation Program of the Agricultural Research Station for UCR to DS; Summer funding by Hilda and George Liebig Environmental Sciences Summer Fellowship and travel grant Albert March Environmental Sciences Scholarship from the University of California, Riverside; and the Chemistry and DMPK CORE of COBRE, P20GM104932 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported the chemistry studies.
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    Smartphone-based distributed data collection enables rapid assessment of shorebird habitat suitability (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: This is an open access article, free of all copyright. The definitive version was published in PLoS ONE 11 (2016): e0164979, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164979.
    Description: Understanding and managing dynamic coastal landscapes for beach-dependent species requires biological and geological data across the range of relevant environments and habitats. It is difficult to acquire such information; data often have limited focus due to resource constraints, are collected by non-specialists, or lack observational uniformity. We developed an open-source smartphone application called iPlover that addresses these difficulties in collecting biogeomorphic information at piping plover (Charadrius melodus) nest sites on coastal beaches. This paper describes iPlover development and evaluates data quality and utility following two years of collection (n = 1799 data points over 1500 km of coast between Maine and North Carolina, USA). We found strong agreement between field user and expert assessments and high model skill when data were used for habitat suitability prediction. Methods used here to develop and deploy a distributed data collection system have broad applicability to interdisciplinary environmental monitoring and modeling.
    Description: This work was supported by the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative through the U.S. Department of the Interior Hurricane Sandy recovery program under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013, and the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal and Marine Geology Program.
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    Strength in numbers : collaborative science for new experimental model systems (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: The work is made available under the Creative Commons CCO public domain dedication.. The definitive version was published in PLoS Biology 16 (2018): e2006333, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006333.
    Description: Our current understanding of biology is heavily based on a small number of genetically tractable model organisms. Most eukaryotic phyla lack such experimental models, and this limits our ability to explore the molecular mechanisms that ultimately define their biology, ecology, and diversity. In particular, marine protists suffer from a paucity of model organisms despite playing critical roles in global nutrient cycles, food webs, and climate. To address this deficit, an initiative was launched in 2015 to foster the development of ecologically and taxonomically diverse marine protist genetic models. The development of new models faces many barriers, some technical and others institutional, and this often discourages the risky, long-term effort that may be required. To lower these barriers and tackle the complexity of this effort, a highly collaborative community-based approach was taken. Herein, we describe this approach, the advances achieved, and the lessons learned by participants in this novel community-based model for research.
    Description: The research efforts, connections, and collaborations described in this paper and protocols.io (https://www.protocols.io/) were supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Marine Microbiology Initiative.
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    Analysis of lung microbiota in bronchoalveolar lavage, protected brush and sputum samples from subjects with mild-to-moderate cystic fibrosis Lung Disease (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS 11 (2016): e0149998, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0149998.
    Description: Individuals with cystic fibrosis (CF) often acquire chronic lung infections that lead to irreversible damage. We sought to examine regional variation in the microbial communities in the lungs of individuals with mild-to-moderate CF lung disease, to examine the relationship between the local microbiota and local damage, and to determine the relationships between microbiota in samples taken directly from the lung and the microbiota in spontaneously expectorated sputum. In this initial study, nine stable, adult CF patients with an FEV1〉50% underwent regional sampling of different lobes of the right lung by bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) and protected brush (PB) sampling of mucus plugs. Sputum samples were obtained from six of the nine subjects immediately prior to the procedure. Microbial community analysis was performed on DNA extracted from these samples and the extent of damage in each lobe was quantified from a recent CT scan. The extent of damage observed in regions of the right lung did not correlate with specific microbial genera, levels of community diversity or composition, or bacterial genome copies per ml of BAL fluid. In all subjects, BAL fluid from different regions of the lung contained similar microbial communities. In eight out of nine subjects, PB samples from different regions of the lung were also similar in microbial community composition, and were similar to microbial communities in BAL fluid from the same lobe. Microbial communities in PB samples were more diverse than those in BAL samples, suggesting enrichment of some taxa in mucus plugs. To our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the microbiota in different regions of the CF lung in clinically stable individuals with mild-to-moderate CF-related lung disease.
    Description: Support from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Research Development Program (STANTO07R0) as a pilot grant to DAH and AA. Research reported in this publication was also supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health to DAH (R01 AI091702 to DAH) and the American Asthma Foundation Scholars Award and CFFT-ASHARE15A0 and R01HL122372 to AA and R01 HL074175 (BAS). The Dartmouth Lung Biology Center and CF Translational Research Core was supported by an Institutional Development Award (IDeA) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P30GM106394 and by the CFF RDP (CFRDP STANTO11R0).
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    Abundance and distribution of sperm whales in the Canary Islands : can sperm whales in the archipelago sustain the current level of ship-strike mortalities? (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS 11 (2016): e0150660, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150660.
    Description: Sperm whales are present in the Canary Islands year-round, suggesting that the archipelago is an important area for this species in the North Atlantic. However, the area experiences one of the highest reported rates of sperm whale ship-strike in the world. Here we investigate if the number of sperm whales found in the archipelago can sustain the current rate of ship-strike mortality. The results of this study may also have implications for offshore areas where concentrations of sperm whales may coincide with high densities of ship traffic, but where ship-strikes may be undocumented. The absolute abundance of sperm whales in an area of 52933 km2, covering the territorial waters of the Canary Islands, was estimated from 2668 km of acoustic line-transect survey using Distance sampling analysis. Data on sperm whale diving and acoustic behaviour, obtained from bio-logging, were used to calculate g(0) = 0.92, this is less than one because of occasional extended periods when whales do not echolocate. This resulted in an absolute abundance estimate of 224 sperm whales (95% log-normal CI 120–418) within the survey area. The recruitment capability of this number of whales, some 2.5 whales per year, is likely to be exceeded by the current ship-strike mortality rate. Furthermore, we found areas of higher whale density within the archipelago, many coincident with those previously described, suggesting that these are important habitats for females and immature animals inhabiting the archipelago. Some of these areas are crossed by active shipping lanes increasing the risk of ship-strikes. Given the philopatry in female sperm whales, replacement of impacted whales might be limited. Therefore, the application of mitigation measures to reduce the ship-strike mortality rate seems essential for the conservation of sperm whales in the Canary Islands.
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    Cisplatin resistant spheroids model clinically relevant survival mechanisms in ovarian tumors (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS 11 (2016): e0151089, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0151089 .
    Description: The majority of ovarian tumors eventually recur in a drug resistant form. Using cisplatin sensitive and resistant cell lines assembled into 3D spheroids we profiled gene expression and identified candidate mechanisms and biological pathways associated with cisplatin resistance. OVCAR-8 human ovarian carcinoma cells were exposed to sub-lethal concentrations of cisplatin to create a matched cisplatin-resistant cell line, OVCAR-8R. Genome-wide gene expression profiling of sensitive and resistant ovarian cancer spheroids identified 3,331 significantly differentially expressed probesets coding for 3,139 distinct protein-coding genes (Fc 〉2, FDR 〈 0.05) (S2 Table). Despite significant expression changes in some transporters including MDR1, cisplatin resistance was not associated with differences in intracellular cisplatin concentration. Cisplatin resistant cells were significantly enriched for a mesenchymal gene expression signature. OVCAR-8R resistance derived gene sets were significantly more biased to patients with shorter survival. From the most differentially expressed genes, we derived a 17-gene expression signature that identifies ovarian cancer patients with shorter overall survival in three independent datasets. We propose that the use of cisplatin resistant cell lines in 3D spheroid models is a viable approach to gain insight into resistance mechanisms relevant to ovarian tumors in patients. Our data support the emerging concept that ovarian cancers can acquire drug resistance through an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition.
    Description: This work was funded by the NIH NCRR supplement grant P41 RR001395-27S1 (J.W.H.), NSF DBI-1005378 “REU Site: Biological Discovery in Woods Hole”, faculty startup funds from the Office of Research at Oklahoma State University (W.C.), and the Mary Kay Foundation (A.S.B.).
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    Multiplexed spectral imaging of 120 different fluorescent labels (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons public domain dedication. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0158495, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0158495.
    Description: The number of fluorescent labels that can unambiguously be distinguished in a single image when acquired through band pass filters is severely limited by the spectral overlap of available fluorophores. The recent development of spectral microscopy and the application of linear unmixing algorithms to spectrally recorded image data have allowed simultaneous imaging of fluorophores with highly overlapping spectra. However, the number of distinguishable fluorophores is still limited by the unavoidable decrease in signal to noise ratio when fluorescence signals are fractionated over multiple wavelength bins. Here we present a spectral image analysis algorithm to greatly expand the number of distinguishable objects labeled with binary combinations of fluorophores. Our algorithm utilizes a priori knowledge about labeled specimens and imposes a binary label constraint on the unmixing solution. We have applied our labeling and analysis strategy to identify microbes labeled by fluorescence in situ hybridization and here demonstrate the ability to distinguish 120 differently labeled microbes in a single image.
    Description: This work was supported by Grant 2007-3- 13 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (to GGB), National Institutes of Health Grant 1RC1-DE020630 from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) (to GGB) and by National Institutes of Health Fellowship 1F31-DE019576 from NIDCR (to AMV).
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    Methanol production by a broad phylogenetic array of marine phytoplankton (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS 11 (2016): e0150820, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150820.
    Description: Methanol is a major volatile organic compound on Earth and serves as an important carbon and energy substrate for abundant methylotrophic microbes. Previous geochemical surveys coupled with predictive models suggest that the marine contributions are exceedingly large, rivaling terrestrial sources. Although well studied in terrestrial ecosystems, methanol sources are poorly understood in the marine environment and warrant further investigation. To this end, we adapted a Purge and Trap Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (P&T-GC/MS) method which allowed reliable measurements of methanol in seawater and marine phytoplankton cultures with a method detection limit of 120 nanomolar. All phytoplankton tested (cyanobacteria: Synechococcus spp. 8102 and 8103, Trichodesmium erythraeum, and Prochlorococcus marinus), and Eukarya (heterokont diatom: Phaeodactylum tricornutum, coccolithophore: Emiliania huxleyi, cryptophyte: Rhodomonas salina, and non-diatom heterokont: Nannochloropsis oculata) produced methanol, ranging from 0.8–13.7 micromolar in culture and methanol per total cellular carbon were measured in the ranges of 0.09–0.3%. Phytoplankton culture time-course measurements displayed a punctuated production pattern with maxima near early stationary phase. Stabile isotope labeled bicarbonate incorporation experiments confirmed that methanol was produced from phytoplankton biomass. Overall, our findings suggest that phytoplankton are a major source of methanol in the upper water column of the world’s oceans.
    Description: This project was solely supported by a grant to TJM from the National Science Foundation (Award# CHE-OCE 1131415).
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    Interspecific hybridization in pilot whales and asymmetric genetic introgression in northern Globicephala melas under the scenario of global warming (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 11 (2016): e0160080, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0160080 .
    Description: Pilot whales are two cetacean species (Globicephala melas and G. macrorhynchus) whose distributions are correlated with water temperature and partially overlap in some areas like the North Atlantic Ocean. In the context of global warming, distribution range shifts are expected to occur in species affected by temperature. Consequently, a northward displacement of the tropical pilot whale G. macrorynchus is expected, eventually leading to increased secondary contact areas and opportunities for interspecific hybridization. Here, we describe genetic evidences of recurrent hybridization between pilot whales in northeast Atlantic Ocean. Based on mitochondrial DNA sequences and microsatellite loci, asymmetric introgression of G. macrorhynchus genes into G. melas was observed. For the latter species, a significant correlation was found between historical population growth rate estimates and paleotemperature oscillations. Introgressive hybridization, current temperature increases and lower genetic variation in G. melas suggest that this species could be at risk in its northern range. Under increasing environmental and human-mediated stressors in the North Atlantic Ocean, it seems recommendable to develop a conservation program for G. melas.
    Description: LM had a PCTI Grant from the Asturias Regional Government, referenced BP 10-004. MAS was supported by a 2013 FCT Investigator contract through POPH, QREN European Social Fund and the Portuguese Ministry for Science and Education. This study was also supported by a grant from the Principality of Asturias (reference: GRUPIN-2014-093).
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    Indoles induce metamorphosis in a broad diversity of jellyfish, but not in a crown jelly (Coronatae) (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 12 (2017): e0188601, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0188601.
    Description: Many animals go through one or more metamorphoses during their lives, however, the molecular underpinnings of metamorphosis across diverse species are not well understood. Medusozoa (Cnidaria) is a clade of animals with complex life cycles, these life cycles can include a polyp stage that metamorphoses into a medusa (jellyfish). Medusae are produced through a variety of different developmental mechanisms—in some species polyps bud medusae (Hydrozoa), in others medusae are formed through polyp fission (Scyphozoa), while in others medusae are formed through direct transformation of the polyp (Cubozoa). To better understand the molecular mechanisms that may coordinate these different forms of metamorphosis, we tested two compounds first identified to induce metamorphosis in the moon jellyfish Aurelia aurita (indomethacin and 5-methoxy-2-methylindole) on a broad diversity of medusozoan polyps. We discovered that indole-containing compounds trigger metamorphosis across a broad diversity of species. All tested discomedusan polyps metamorphosed in the presence of both compounds, including species representatives of several major lineages within the clade (Pelagiidae, Cyaneidae, both clades of Rhizostomeae). In a cubozoan, low levels of 5-methoxy-2-methylindole reliably induced complete and healthy metamorphosis. In contrast, neither compound induced medusa metamorphosis in a coronate scyphozoan, or medusa production in either hydrozoan tested. Our results support the hypothesis that metamorphosis is mediated by a conserved induction pathway within discomedusan scyphozoans, and possibly cubozoans. However, failure of these compounds to induce metamorphosis in a coronate suggests this induction mechanism may have been lost in this clade, or is convergent between Scyphozoa and Cubozoa.
    Description: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (DGE - 1058262; https://www.nsfgrfp.org/general_resources/about) to RRH. Evo-Devo-Eco Network (IOS # 0955517; http://edenrcn.com/) Research Exchange Funds, awarded to RRH. National Science Foundation Rhode Island Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Graduate Research Fellowship to RRH (DEB-1256695; http://web.uri.edu/rinsfepscor/grad-fellowships/). Brown University Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Dissertation Development Grant from the Bushnell Research and Education Fund awarded to RRH.
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    Linking deep convection and phytoplankton blooms in the northern Labrador Sea in a changing climate (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 13 (2018): e0191509, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0191509.
    Description: Wintertime convective mixing plays a pivotal role in the sub-polar North Atlantic spring phytoplankton blooms by favoring phytoplankton survival in the competition between light-dependent production and losses due to grazing and gravitational settling. We use satellite and ocean reanalyses to show that the area-averaged maximum winter mixed layer depth is positively correlated with April chlorophyll concentration in the northern Labrador Sea. A simple theoretical framework is developed to understand the relative roles of winter/spring convection and gravitational sedimentation in spring blooms in this region. Combining climate model simulations that project a weakening of wintertime Labrador Sea convection from Arctic sea ice melt with our framework suggests a potentially significant reduction in the initial fall phytoplankton population that survive the winter to seed the region’s spring bloom by the end of the 21st century.
    Description: KB, LB, PJR and LRL were supported by the Office of Science (BER), U. S. Department of Energy as part of the Regional and Global Climate Modelling (RGCM) Program. SCD acknowledges support from NASA Award NNX15AE65G North Atlantic Aerosol and Marine Ecosystem Study (NAAMES).
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    Prion protein inhibits fast axonal transport through a mechanism involving casein kinase 2 (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 12 (2017): e0188340, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0188340.
    Description: Prion diseases include a number of progressive neuropathies involving conformational changes in cellular prion protein (PrPc) that may be fatal sporadic, familial or infectious. Pathological evidence indicated that neurons affected in prion diseases follow a dying-back pattern of degeneration. However, specific cellular processes affected by PrPc that explain such a pattern have not yet been identified. Results from cell biological and pharmacological experiments in isolated squid axoplasm and primary cultured neurons reveal inhibition of fast axonal transport (FAT) as a novel toxic effect elicited by PrPc. Pharmacological, biochemical and cell biological experiments further indicate this toxic effect involves casein kinase 2 (CK2) activation, providing a molecular basis for the toxic effect of PrPc on FAT. CK2 was found to phosphorylate and inhibit light chain subunits of the major motor protein conventional kinesin. Collectively, these findings suggest CK2 as a novel therapeutic target to prevent the gradual loss of neuronal connectivity that characterizes prion diseases.
    Description: This work was supported by Alzheimer Association New Investigator Research Grant to Promote Diversity NIRGD-11-206379 and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas PIP 112 20150100954 CO (to GP), National Institutes of Health NS066942A and NS096642 (to GM), R01-NS023868 and R01-NS041170 (to STB).
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    Cells containing aragonite crystals mediate responses to gravity in Trichoplax adhaerens (Placozoa), an animal lacking neurons and synapses (2018)
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    Publication Date: 2022-05-26
    Description: © The Author(s), 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in PLoS One 13 (2018): e0190905, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0190905.
    Description: Trichoplax adhaerens has only six cell types. The function as well as the structure of crystal cells, the least numerous cell type, presented an enigma. Crystal cells are arrayed around the perimeter of the animal and each contains a birefringent crystal. Crystal cells resemble lithocytes in other animals so we looked for evidence they are gravity sensors. Confocal microscopy showed that their cup-shaped nuclei are oriented toward the edge of the animal, and that the crystal shifts downward under the influence of gravity. Some animals spontaneously lack crystal cells and these animals behaved differently upon being tilted vertically than animals with a typical number of crystal cells. EM revealed crystal cell contacts with fiber cells and epithelial cells but these contacts lacked features of synapses. EM spectroscopic analyses showed that crystals consist of the aragonite form of calcium carbonate. We thus provide behavioral evidence that Trichoplax are able to sense gravity, and that crystal cells are likely to be their gravity receptors. Moreover, because placozoans are thought to have evolved during Ediacaran or Cryogenian eras associated with aragonite seas, and their crystals are made of aragonite, they may have acquired gravity sensors during this early era.
    Description: This research was supported by the intramural research program of the NIH, NINDS.
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 691: Environmental Health Related Socio-Spatial Inequalities: Identifying “Hotspots” of Environmental Burdens and Social Vulnerability (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Differential exposure to multiple environmental burdens and benefits and their distribution across a population with varying vulnerability can contribute heavily to health inequalities. Particularly relevant are areas with high cumulative burdens and high social vulnerability termed as “hotspots”. This paper develops an index-based approach to assess these multiple burdens and benefits in combination with vulnerability factors at detailed intra-urban level. The method is applied to the city of Dortmund, Germany. Using non-spatial and spatial methods we assessed inequalities and identified “hotspot” areas in the city. We found modest inequalities burdening higher vulnerable groups in Dortmund (CI = −0.020 at p 〈 0.05). At the detailed intra-urban level, however, inequalities showed strong geographical patterns. Large numbers of “hotspots” exist in the northern part of the city compared to the southern part. A holistic assessment, particularly at a detailed local level, considering both environmental burdens and benefits and their distribution across the population with the different vulnerability, is essential to inform environmental justice debates and to mobilize local stakeholders. Locating “hotspot” areas at this detailed spatial level can serve as a basis to develop interventions that target vulnerable groups to ensure a health conducive equal environment.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 693: A Community-Based Study of Quality of Life and Depression among Older Adults (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: The goal of the study was to assess the quality of life (QOL) and depression and provide further insights into the relationship between QOL and depression among community-dwelling elderly Chinese people. Baseline data were collected from 1168 older adults (aged ≥ 60) in a large, prospective cohort study on measurement and evaluation of health-promoting and health-protecting behaviors intervention on chronic disease in different community-dwelling age groups. QOL was assessed using the 26-item, World Health Organization Quality of Life, brief version (WHOQOL-BREF) and depression was assessed using the 30-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The mean WHOQOL-BREF score for all dimensions was approximately 60, with the highest mean value (61.92) observed for social relationships, followed by environment, physical health, and psychological health domains. In this cohort, 26.1% of elderly urban adults met GDS criteria for depression. There were negative correlations between physical health (Odds Ratio (OR) = 0.928, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 0.910–0.946), psychological health (OR = 0.906, 95% CI: 0.879–0.934), environment (OR = 0.966, 95% CI: 0.944–0.989) and depression among elderly people. Those with depression were older, less educated, had a lower monthly income, and were more likely to report insomnia. All WHOQOL-BREF domains, with the exception of the social domain were negatively correlated with depression.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 692: Assessing a New Method for Measuring Fetal Exposure to Mercury: Newborn Bloodspots (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Background: Measuring mercury in newborn bloodspots to determine fetal exposures is a novel methodology with many advantages. Questions remain, however, about its reliability as an estimate of newborn exposure to mercury. Methods: We studied mercury concentrations in paired bloodspots and cord blood from a convenience sample of 48 Minnesota women and infants. Results: The limit of detection for bloodspots was higher than for cord blood (0.7 and 0.3 μg/L in bloodspots and cord blood, respectively) with the result that mercury was detected in only 38% of newborn bloodspots compared to 62% of cord blood samples. The geometric mean mercury concentration in cord blood was 0.6 μg/L. Mercury concentrations were almost uniformly lower in bloodspots than in cord blood (mean ratio (±SD) = 0.85 ± 0.4), their mean value was significantly less than that for the cord blood (p = 0.02), and the two methods were highly correlated (r = 0.82). Conclusion: These preliminary findings indicate that newborn bloodspot mercury measurements have utility; however, until bloodspot analyses are more sensitive, they are likely to underestimate in utero exposure.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    Materials, Vol. 9, Pages 560: Biomineralization of Engineered Spider Silk Protein-Based Composite Materials for Bone Tissue Engineering (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Materials
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-12
    Description: Materials based on biodegradable polyesters, such as poly(butylene terephthalate) (PBT) or poly(butylene terephthalate-co-poly(alkylene glycol) terephthalate) (PBTAT), have potential application as pro-regenerative scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. Herein, the preparation of films composed of PBT or PBTAT and an engineered spider silk protein, (eADF4(C16)), that displays multiple carboxylic acid moieties capable of binding calcium ions and facilitating their biomineralization with calcium carbonate or calcium phosphate is reported. Human mesenchymal stem cells cultured on films mineralized with calcium phosphate show enhanced levels of alkaline phosphatase activity suggesting that such composites have potential use for bone tissue engineering.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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    Minerals, Vol. 6, Pages 71: Enhancement of Biofilm Formation on Pyrite by Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Minerals
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Bioleaching is the mobilization of metal cations from insoluble ores by microorganisms. Biofilms can enhance this process. Since Sulfobacillus often appears in leaching heaps or reactors, this genus has aroused attention. In this study, biofilm formation and subsequent pyrite dissolution by the Gram-positive, moderately thermophilic acidophile Sulfobacillus thermosulfidooxidans were investigated. Five strategies, including adjusting initial pH, supplementing an extra energy source or ferric ions, as well as exchanging exhausted medium with fresh medium, were tested for enhancement of its biofilm formation. The results show that regularly exchanging exhausted medium leads to a continuous biofilm development on pyrite. By this way, multiply layered biofilms were observed on pyrite slices, while only monolayer biofilms were visible on pyrite grains. In addition, biofilms were proven to be responsible for pyrite leaching in the early stages.
    Electronic ISSN: 2075-163X
    Topics: Geosciences
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 580: Evaluating Biosphere Model Estimates of the Start of the Vegetation Active Season in Boreal Forests by Satellite Observations (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: The objective of this study was to assess the performance of the simulated start of the photosynthetically active season by a large-scale biosphere model in boreal forests in Finland with remote sensing observations. The start of season for two forest types, evergreen needle- and deciduous broad-leaf, was obtained for the period 2003–2011 from regional JSBACH (Jena Scheme for Biosphere–Atmosphere Hamburg) runs, driven with climate variables from a regional climate model. The satellite-derived start of season was determined from daily Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) time series of Fractional Snow Cover and the Normalized Difference Water Index by applying methods that were targeted to the two forest types. The accuracy of the satellite-derived start of season in deciduous forest was assessed with bud break observations of birch and a root mean square error of seven days was obtained. The evaluation of JSBACH modelled start of season dates with satellite observations revealed high spatial correspondence. The bias was less than five days for both forest types but showed regional differences that need further consideration. The agreement with satellite observations was slightly better for the evergreen than for the deciduous forest. Nonetheless, comparison with gross primary production (GPP) determined from CO2 flux measurements at two eddy covariance sites in evergreen forest revealed that the JSBACH-simulated GPP was higher in early spring and led to too-early simulated start of season dates. Photosynthetic activity recovers differently in evergreen and deciduous forests. While for the deciduous forest calibration of phenology alone could improve the performance of JSBACH, for the evergreen forest, changes such as seasonality of temperature response, would need to be introduced to the photosynthetic capacity to improve the temporal development of gross primary production.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 579: Distribution of Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in the Tapajós River Basin (Brazilian Amazon) over the Past 40 Years and Relationship with Water Siltation (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: An innovative remote sensing approach that combines land-use change and water quality information is proposed in order to investigate if Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) area extension is associated with water siltation in the Tapajós River Basin (Brazil), containing the largest small-scale gold mining district in the world. Taking advantage of a 40-year period of the multi-satellite imagery archive, the objective of this paper is to build a normalized time-series in order to evaluate the influence of temporal mining expansion on the water siltation data (TSS, Total Suspended Solids concentration) derived from previous research. The methodological approach was set to deliver a full characterization of the ASGM expansion from its initial stages in the early 1970s to the present. First, based on IRS/LISSIII images acquired in 2012, the historical Landsat image database (1973–2001) was corrected for radiometric and atmospheric effects using dark vegetation as reference to create a normalized time-series. Next, a complete update of the mining areas distribution in 2012 derived from the TerraClass Project (an official land-use classification for the Brazilian Amazon) was conducted having IRS/LISSIII as the base map with the support of auxiliary data and vector editing. Once the ASGM in 2012 was quantified (261.7 km2) and validated with photos, a reverse classification of ASGM in 2001 (171.7 km2), 1993 (166.3 km2), 1984 (47.5 km2), and 1973 (15.4 km2) with the use of Landsat archives was applied. This procedure relies on the assumption that ASGM changes in the land cover are severe and remain detectable from satellite sensors for decades. The mining expansion area over time was then combined with the (TSS) data retrieved from the same atmospherically corrected satellite imagery based on the literature. In terms of gold mining expansion and water siltation effects, four main periods of ASGM activities were identified in the study area: (i) 1958–1977, first occurrence of mining activities and low water impacts; (ii) 1978–1993, introduction of low-budget mechanization associated with very high gold prices resulting in large mining area expansion and high water siltation levels; (iii) 1994–2003, general recession of ASGM activities and exhaustion of easy-access gold deposits, resulting in decreased TSS; (iv) 2004 to present, intensification of ASGM encouraged by high gold prices, resulting in an increase of TSS.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 583: Surface Energy Balance of Fresh and Saline Waters: AquaSEBS (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Current earth observation models do not take into account the influence of water salinity on the evaporation rate, even though the salinity influences the evaporation rate by affecting the density and latent heat of vaporization. In this paper, we adapt the SEBS (Surface Energy Balance System) model for large water bodies and add the effect of water salinity to the evaporation rate. Firstly, SEBS is modified for fresh-water whereby new parameterizations of the water heat flux and sensible heat flux are suggested. This is achieved by adapting the roughness heights for momentum and heat transfer. Secondly, a salinity correction factor is integrated into the adapted model. Eddy covariance measurements over Lake IJsselmeer (The Netherlands) are carried out and used to estimate the roughness heights for momentum (~0.0002 m) and heat transfer (~0.0001 m). Application of these values over the Victoria and Tana lakes (freshwater) in Africa showed that the calculated latent heat fluxes agree well with the measurements. The root mean-square of relative-errors (rRMSE) is about 4.1% for Lake Victoria and 4.7%, for Lake Tana. Verification with ECMWF data showed that the salinity reduced the evaporation at varying levels by up to 27% in the Great Salt Lake and by 1% for open ocean. Our results show the importance of salinity to the evaporation rate and the suitability of the adapted-SEBS model (AquaSEBS) for fresh and saline waters.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 582: Extracting Canopy Surface Texture from Airborne Laser Scanning Data for the Supervised and Unsupervised Prediction of Area-Based Forest Characteristics (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Area-based analyses of airborne laser scanning (ALS) data are an established approach to obtain wall-to-wall predictions of forest characteristics for vast areas. The analyses of sparse data in particular are based on the height value distributions, which do not produce optimal information on the horizontal forest structure. We evaluated the complementary potential of features quantifying the textural variation of ALS-based canopy height models (CHMs) for both supervised (linear regression) and unsupervised (k-Means clustering) analyses. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we identified a total of four texture analysis methods that produced rotation-invariant features of different order and scale. The CHMs and the textural features were derived from practical sparse-density, leaf-off ALS data originally acquired for ground elevation modeling. The features were extracted from a circular window of 254 m2 and related with boreal forest characteristics observed from altogether 155 field sample plots. Features based on gray-level histograms, distribution of forest patches, and gray-level co-occurrence matrices were related with plot volume, basal area, and mean diameter with coefficients of determination (R2) of up to 0.63–0.70, whereas features that measured the uniformity of local binary patterns of the CHMs performed poorer. Overall, the textural features compared favorably with benchmark features based on the point data, indicating that the textural features contain additional information useful for the prediction of forest characteristics. Due to the developed processing routines for raster data, the CHM features may potentially be extracted with a lower computational burden, which promotes their use for applications such as pre-stratification or guiding the field plot sampling based solely on ALS data.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1067: A Novel Wearable Device for Food Intake and Physical Activity Recognition (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-12
    Description: Presence of speech and motion artifacts has been shown to impact the performance of wearable sensor systems used for automatic detection of food intake. This work presents a novel wearable device which can detect food intake even when the user is physically active and/or talking. The device consists of a piezoelectric strain sensor placed on the temporalis muscle, an accelerometer, and a data acquisition module connected to the temple of eyeglasses. Data from 10 participants was collected while they performed activities including quiet sitting, talking, eating while sitting, eating while walking, and walking. Piezoelectric strain sensor and accelerometer signals were divided into non-overlapping epochs of 3 s; four features were computed for each signal. To differentiate between eating and not eating, as well as between sedentary postures and physical activity, two multiclass classification approaches are presented. The first approach used a single classifier with sensor fusion and the second approach used two-stage classification. The best results were achieved when two separate linear support vector machine (SVM) classifiers were trained for food intake and activity detection, and their results were combined using a decision tree (two-stage classification) to determine the final class. This approach resulted in an average F1-score of 99.85% and area under the curve (AUC) of 0.99 for multiclass classification. With its ability to differentiate between food intake and activity level, this device may potentially be used for tracking both energy intake and energy expenditure.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1069: Internet of Things: A Review of Surveys Based on Context Aware Intelligent Services (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-12
    Description: The Internet of Things (IoT) has made it possible for devices around the world to acquire information and store it, in order to be able to use it at a later stage. However, this potential opportunity is often not exploited because of the excessively big interval between the data collection and the capability to process and analyse it. In this paper, we review the current IoT technologies, approaches and models in order to discover what challenges need to be met to make more sense of data. The main goal of this paper is to review the surveys related to IoT in order to provide well integrated and context aware intelligent services for IoT. Moreover, we present a state-of-the-art of IoT from the context aware perspective that allows the integration of IoT and social networks in the emerging Social Internet of Things (SIoT) term.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 652: Performance Indicator Framework for Evaluation of Sustainable Tourism in the Taiwan Coastal Zone (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Surrounded by the ocean, Taiwan has been increasingly developing coastal tourism projects. Concerns that negative impacts might be brought about by prosperous tourism have resulted in a recent focus on sustainable tourism. Sustainable tourism involves policies that acknowledge the interdependences among the environment, the community, and the economy. The goal of sustainable tourism is to enhance and protect the environment while satisfying basic human requirements, as well as those of the contemporary and future tourism industries to improve quality of life. On the other hand, unsustainable coastal tourism might undermine the natural environment and society, resulting in air, water, and soil pollution, wildlife habitat disruption, and changes of local community cultural characteristics. Therefore, performance evaluation of coastal tourism, using an indicator framework to facilitate sustainable development and enhance the effectiveness of coastal resources exploitation, is critical. Through a literature review and expert surveys using the methods of the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP), this study builds a performance indicator framework and identifies the key factors affecting the sustainable development of coastal tourism in Taiwan. The results can serve as a reference for the public sector to be used for the sustainable planning and development of coastal tourism.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 650: Forecasting the Allocation Ratio of Carbon Emission Allowance Currency for 2020 and 2030 in China (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Many countries and scholars have used various strategies to improve and optimize the allocation ratios for carbon emission allowances. This issue is more urgent for China due to the uneven development across the country. This paper proposes a new method that divides low-carbon economy development processes into two separate periods: from 2020 to 2029 and from 2030 to 2050. These two periods have unique requirements and emissions reduction potential; therefore, they must involve different allocation methods, so that reduction behaviors do not stall the development of regional low-carbon economies. During the first period, a more deterministic economic development approach for the carbon emission allowance allocation ratio should be used. During the second period, more adaptive and optimized policy guidance should be employed. We developed a low-carbon economy index evaluation system using the entropy weight method to measure information filtering levels. We conducted vector autoregressive correlation tests, consulted 60 experts for the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, and we conducted max-min standardized data processing tests. This article presents first- and second-period carbon emission allowance models in combination with a low-carbon economy index evaluation system. Finally, we forecast reasonable carbon emission allowance allocation ratios for China for the periods starting in 2020 and 2030. A good allocation ratio for the carbon emission allowance can help boost China’s economic development and help the country reach its energy conservation and emissions reduction goals.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 646: Multicriteria Decision Analysis to Develop Effective Sustainable Development Strategies for Enhancing Competitive Advantages: Case of the TFT-LCD Industry in Taiwan (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: In the Internet of Things era, panel displays play a major role in human life, because humans frequently use liquid crystal displays to monitor their electrical devices. The display industry creates remarkable economic output, but every manufacturing process inevitably has some undesirable effects on the environment. With the increasing awareness of environmental protection, balanced development is necessary to address the emerging market trends. However, short-sighted manufacturing corporations that focus solely on financial performance can achieve only short-term profits. The purpose of this study was to develop the most effective sustainable improvement strategies that can enhance competitive advantages in real-world situations. The proposed method combines the balanced scorecard and a new hybrid modified multiple attribute decision-making model which together adopt the DEMATEL technique to construct the influential network relation map and develop the DEMATEL-based ANP with the VIKOR method to deliver strategies that integrate environmental sustainability and competitive advantage. Finally, a real-world case study applying the proposed method to the cases of liquid crystal display manufacturers was conducted. Then, this paper discusses the effective use of natural resources, development of enterprises, and sustainable competitive advantage in this context. Various manufacturers, communities, and stakeholders can benefit from the coopetition solutions explained by the proposed method.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 653: Large-Scale Agricultural Management and Soil Meso- and Macrofauna Conservation in the Argentine Pampas (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Soil is the most basic resource for sustainable agricultural production; it promotes water quality, is a key component of the biogeochemical cycles and hosts a huge diversity of organisms. However, we are not paying enough attention to soil degradation produced by land use. Modern agriculture has been successful in increasing yields but has also caused extensive environmental damage, particularly soil degradation. In the Argentine Pampas, agriculturization reached a peak with the generalized use of the no-till technological package: genetically modified soybeans tolerant to glyphosate, no-till, glyphosate, and inorganic fertilizers. This phenomenon has been widely spread in the country; the no-till package has been applied in large areas and has been used by tenants in a 60%–70% of cultivated lands. Thus, those who were involved in developing management practices may not be the same as those who will face degradation issues related to those practices. Indeed, most evidence reviewed in this paper suggests that the most widely distributed practices in the Pampas region are actually producing severe soil degradation. Biological degradation is particularly important because soil biota is involved in numerous soil processes on which soil functioning relies, affecting soil fertility and productivity. For example, soil meso- and macrofauna are especially important in nutrient cycling and in soil structure formation and maintenance, and they are key components of the network that links microbial process to the scale of fields and landscapes where ecosystem services are produced. However, the knowledge of the impact of different agricultural managements on soil meso- and macrofauna in Pampas agroecosystems is far from conclusive at this stage. The reason for this lack of definite conclusions is that this area has been given less attention than in other parts of the world; the response of soil fauna to agricultural practices is complex and taxa-dependent; and there is a wide variety of practices in the main types of agricultural systems, making generalizations difficult. A review of the existing studies on soil meso- and macrofauna in agroecosystems, revealed that (a) agricultural soils, regardless of farming system, are strongly modified in biological aspects compared to the same soils without human interventions; (b) there are no conclusive results about no-till benefits compared to reduced tillage or conventional tillage; (c) agricultural managements that are alternative to the traditional conventional systems are very poorly represented in research.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Water, Vol. 8, Pages 281: Evaluation of Satellite Precipitation Products with Rain Gauge Data at Different Scales: Implications for Hydrological Applications (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Water
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Rain gauge and satellite-retrieved data have been widely used in basin-scale hydrological applications. While rain gauges provide accurate measurements that are generally unevenly distributed in space, satellites offer spatially regular observations and common error prone retrieval. Comparative evaluation of gauge-based and satellite-based data is necessary in hydrological studies, as precipitation is the most important input in basin-scale water balance. This study uses quality-controlled rain gauge data and prevailing satellite products (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B43, 3B42 and 3B42RT) to examine the consistency and discrepancies between them at different scales. Rain gauges and TRMM products were available in the Poyang Lake Basin, China, from 1998 to 2007 (3B42RT: 2000–2007). Our results show that the performance of TRMM products generally increases with increasing spatial scale. At both the monthly and annual scales, the accuracy is highest for TRMM 3B43, with 3B42 second and 3B42RT third. TRMM products generally overestimate precipitation because of a high frequency and degree of overestimation in light and moderate rain cases. At the daily scale, the accuracy is relatively low between TRMM 3B42 and 3B42RT. Meanwhile, the performances of TRMM 3B42 and 3B42RT are highly variable in different seasons. At both the basin and pixel scales, TRMM 3B43 and 3B42 exhibit significant discrepancies from July to September, performing worst in September. For TRMM 3B42RT, all statistical indices fluctuate and are low throughout the year, performing worst in July at the pixel scale and January at the basin scale. Furthermore, the spatial distributions of the statistical indices of TRMM 3B43 and 3B42 performed well, while TRMM 3B42RT displayed a poor performance.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Water, Vol. 8, Pages 282: An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Tree-Based Models for Multi-Variate Flood Damage Assessment in Australia (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Water
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: Flood is a frequent natural hazard that has significant financial consequences for Australia. In Australia, physical losses caused by floods are commonly estimated by stage-damage functions. These methods usually consider only the depth of the water and the type of buildings at risk. However, flood damage is a complicated process, and it is dependent on a variety of factors which are rarely taken into account. This study explores the interaction, importance, and influence of water depth, flow velocity, water contamination, precautionary measures, emergency measures, flood experience, floor area, building value, building quality, and socioeconomic status. The study uses tree-based models (regression trees and bagging decision trees) and a dataset collected from 2012 to 2013 flood events in Queensland, which includes information on structural damages, impact parameters, and resistance variables. The tree-based approaches show water depth, floor area, precautionary measures, building value, and building quality to be important damage-influencing parameters. Furthermore, the performance of the tree-based models is validated and contrasted with the outcomes of a multi-parameter loss function (FLFArs) from Australia. The tree-based models are shown to be more accurate than the stage-damage function. Consequently, considering more parameters and taking advantage of tree-based models is recommended. The outcome is important for improving established Australian flood loss models and assisting decision-makers and insurance companies dealing with flood risk assessment.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Water, Vol. 8, Pages 283: The Fall and Rise of the Kishon River (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Water
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-10
    Description: This paper recounts the environmental history of a main waterway in Northern Israel—the Kishon, and deploys this history to examine the evolution of Israel water policy as it struggled to bridge the growing gap between its ambitions of development and the realities of its limited water supply. The first part of the paper describes the decay of the Kishon since the early 1950s, and the multiple scientific, political and legal attempts to alleviate its misfortunes, and discusses the reasons for their failings. Some of these reasons were administrative by nature, but the paper suggests a deeper reason, rooted in the ideological core of the infant state that was overwhelmingly concerned with the development of its infrastructure, and invited the pioneering Israeli society to consider the demise of the Kishon as a necessary sacrifice for progress. The second part of the paper describes the late-20th century developments that allowed for the recovery of the ailing river. Changing social mores, the growing importance of environmental politics, the advance of Israel’s water technologies, and an environmental scandal that endowed the rehabilitation of the Kishon with a new political and moral meaning, have all contributed to the rehabilitation of the river. Once a testament for the sacrifices involved in a struggle to create a viable state, the Kishon has become a theater for a confident society that has triumphed in its struggle against nature.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Forests, Vol. 7, Pages 143: Evaluating the Performance of High-Altitude Aerial Image-Based Digital Surface Models in Detecting Individual Tree Crowns in Mature Boreal Forests (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Forests
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Height models based on high-altitude aerial images provide a low-cost means of generating detailed 3D models of the forest canopy. In this study, the performance of these height models in the detection of individual trees was evaluated in a commercially managed boreal forest. Airborne digital stereo imagery (DSI) was captured from a flight altitude of 5 km with a ground sample distance of 50 cm and corresponds to regular national topographic airborne data capture programs operated in many countries. Tree tops were detected from smoothed canopy height models (CHM) using watershed segmentation. The relative amount of detected trees varied between 26% and 140%, and the RMSE of plot-level arithmetic mean height between 2.2 m and 3.1 m. Both the dominant tree species and the filter used for smoothing affected the results. Even though the spatial resolution of DSI-based CHM was sufficient, detecting individual trees from the data proved to be demanding because of the shading effect of the dominant trees and the limited amount of data from lower canopy levels and near the ground.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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    Forests, Vol. 7, Pages 141: Thinning Intensity Affects Soil-Atmosphere Fluxes of Greenhouse Gases and Soil Nitrogen Mineralization in a Lowland Poplar Plantation (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Forests
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Thinning is one of the intensive forest management techniques commonly applied to increase the merchantable timber volume. However, how thinning affects soil–atmospheric fluxes of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is poorly understood. A field experiment with four treatments (CK: unthinned; MB: medium intensity thinning from below; HB: high intensity thinning from below; and HI: high intensity thinning by removing every alternative row of trees) was conducted to assess the impact of thinning regimes on soil–atmospheric fluxes of GHGs (CO2, CH4, and N2O) and soil nitrogen mineralization in a poplar plantation established on a lowland. Thinning significantly increased soil water content and water table in the high thinning treatments (HB and HI) and tended to increase soil temperature (p 〈 0.10). The result of the one-year study showed that estimated annual emissions of CO2 and CH4 were higher in HB and HI than in other treatments, while the highest emission of N2O was in the CK. The thinning treatments increased the annual emission of CO2 by 23%–64% and that of CH4 by 190%–1200%, but decreased that of N2O by 41%–62%. Thinning increased annual N mineralization by 50.3% in HI and 30.1%in HB. Changes in soil temperature and water table drove CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions, while soil water content was the most important factor driving CH4 emission. We conclude that the moderate thinning (MB) regime is the best thinning option to minimize the impact on GHG emissions for lowland poplar plantations with similar conditions to those tested in this study.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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    Forests, Vol. 7, Pages 139: Detecting Local Drivers of Fire Cycle Heterogeneity in Boreal Forests: A Scale Issue (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Forests
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Severe crown fires are determining disturbances for the composition and structure of boreal forests in North America. Fire cycle (FC) associations with continental climate gradients are well known, but smaller scale controls remain poorly documented. Using a time since fire map (time scale of 300 years), the study aims to assess the relative contributions of local and regional controls on FC and to describe the relationship between FC heterogeneity and vegetation patterns. The study area, located in boreal eastern North America, was partitioned into watersheds according to five scales going from local (3 km2) to landscape (2800 km2) scales. Using survival analysis, we observed that dry surficial deposits and hydrography density better predict FC when measured at the local scale, while terrain complexity and slope position perform better when measured at the middle and landscape scales. The most parsimonious model was selected according to the Akaike information criterion to predict FC throughout the study area. We detected two FC zones, one short (159 years) and one long (303 years), with specific age structures and tree compositions. We argue that the local heterogeneity of the fire regime contributes to ecosystem diversity and must be considered in ecosystem management.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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    Forests, Vol. 7, Pages 142: Ecosystem Carbon Stock Loss after Land Use Change in Subtropical Forests in China (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Forests
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Converting secondary natural forests (SFs) to Chinese fir plantations (CFPs) represents one of the most important (8.9 million ha) land use changes in subtropical China. This study estimated both biomass and soil C stocks in a SF and a CFP that was converted from a SF, to quantify the effects of land use change on ecosystem C stock. After the forest conversion, biomass C in the CFP (73 Mg·ha−1) was significantly lower than that of the SF (114 Mg·ha−1). Soil organic C content and stock decreased with increasing soil depth, and the soil C stock in the 0–10 cm layer accounted for more than one third of the total soil C stock over 0–50 cm, emphasizing the importance of management of the top soil to reduce the soil C loss. Total ecosystem C stock of the SF and the CFP was 318 and 200 Mg·ha−1, respectively, 64% of which was soil C for both stands (205 Mg·ha−1 for the SF and 127 Mg·ha−1 for the CFP). This indicates that land use change from the SF to the CFP significantly decreased ecosystem C stock and highlights the importance of managing soil C.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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    Forests, Vol. 7, Pages 144: Erratum: Spatial Patterns of Irradiance and Advanced Reproduction along a Canopy Disturbance Severity Gradient in an Upland Hardwood Stand. Forests 2016, 7, 73 (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Forests
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Due to a mistake during the production process, there was one error in paragraph 3 of the introduction in the original published version [1].[...]
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 699: Compulsory School In- and Outdoors—Implications for School Children’s Physical Activity and Health during One Academic Year (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Regulated school days entail less free-living physical activity (PA) and outdoor stay, which may jeopardize the opportunities for cohesive moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and, by extension, children’s health. The role of outdoor stay during school time for pupils’ free-living PA vs. physical education (PE) and indoor stay was studied during one academic year in 196 pupils aged 7–14 years at four schools in mid-southern Sweden during five consecutive days each in September, March, and May. Actigraph GT3X+ Activity monitors were used. Predictors for PA during school stay were expressed as mean daily accelerometer counts and were measured per season, day, grade, gender, weather, and time outdoors. Overall, free-living PA outdoors generated the highest mean accelerometer counts for moderate and vigorous PA. Outdoor PA and PE, representing 23.7% of the total school time contributed to 50.4% of total mean accelerometer counts, and were the greatest contributors to moderate and vigorous PA. Age and weather impacted PA, with less PA in inclement weather and among older pupils. More time outdoors, at all seasons, would favorably increase school children’s chances of reaching recommended levels of PA.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 700: Emerging Environmental Justice Issues in Nuclear Power and Radioactive Contamination (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Nuclear hazards, linked to both U.S. weapons programs and civilian nuclear power, pose substantial environment justice issues. Nuclear power plant (NPP) reactors produce low-level ionizing radiation, high level nuclear waste, and are subject to catastrophic contamination events. Justice concerns include plant locations and the large potentially exposed populations, as well as issues in siting, nuclear safety, and barriers to public participation. Other justice issues relate to extensive contamination in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and the mining and processing industries that have supported it. To approach the topic, first we discuss distributional justice issues of NPP sites in the U.S. and related procedural injustices in siting, operation, and emergency preparedness. Then we discuss justice concerns involving the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and the ways that uranium mining, processing, and weapons development have affected those living downwind, including a substantial American Indian population. Next we examine the problem of high-level nuclear waste and the risk implications of the lack of secure long-term storage. The handling and deposition of toxic nuclear wastes pose new transgenerational justice issues of unprecedented duration, in comparison to any other industry. Finally, we discuss the persistent risks of nuclear technologies and renewable energy alternatives.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
    Electronic ISSN: 1660-4601
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 702: Factors Associated with the Early Introduction of Complementary Feeding in Saudi Arabia (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Mothers’ instigation of complementary feeding before their infant reaches 6 months old risks shortening their breastfeeding duration, and high morbidity and mortality for their child. Complementary feeding practices require further investigation in Saudi Arabia. The present study aims to evaluate complementary feeding practices, and to establish which factors are associated with the early introduction of complementary feeding in the Saudi Arabian context. Cross-sectional research was conducted with 632 mothers of infants aged between 4 and 24 months attending five primary health care centers (PHCCs) between July and December 2015 in Saudi Arabia. Data on participants’ socio-demographic characteristics and complementary feeding practices were collected via structured questionnaires. A regression analysis identified the factors associated with the early introduction of solid foods, defined as before 17 weeks. 62.5% of the study’s infants received solid foods before reaching 17 weeks old. The maternal factors at higher risk of early introduction of solids were: younger age; Saudi nationality; shorter education; employment within 6 months post-birth; caesareans; not breastfeeding fully for six weeks post-birth, and living in low-income households. Complementary feeding prior to 6 months postpartum was common in Saudi Arabia. Public health interventions are needed to reduce early complementary feeding, focusing on mothers at highest risk of giving solids too early.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 704: Temporal and Spatial Trends in Childhood Asthma-Related Hospitalizations in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil and Their Association with Social Vulnerability (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Introduction: Asthma is a multifactorial disease and a serious public health problem. Environmental factors and poverty are the main determinants of this disease. Objective: To describe the spatial and temporal distribution of asthma-related hospitalizations and identify the areas with the highest prevalence of and vulnerability to severe asthma in a major Brazilian city. Methods: An ecological study of hospitalizations for asthma from 2002 to 2012, in children and adolescents under 15 years of age, living in Belo Horizonte, Southeast Brazil. All events were geocoded by residence address using Hospital Information System data. The socioeconomic vulnerability of residence address was ranked using the Health Vulnerability Index. Raster surfaces were generated and time-series plots were constructed to determine spatial and time trends in the frequency of asthma-related hospitalizations, respectively. Results: Asthma-related hospitalization rates were highest in children aged 0–4 years and in boys. There was a decreasing trend in the number of asthma-related hospitalizations across the study period. Approximately 48% of all hospitalizations were children living in health vulnerable areas. Seasonal trends showed a hospitalization peak in March, April, and May, coinciding with the post-rainy period. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that social and environmental factors may be determinants of disparities in severe asthma.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 698: Ambient Temperature and Stroke Occurrence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Biologically plausible associations exist between climatic conditions and stroke risk, but study results are inconsistent. We aimed to summarize current evidence on ambient temperature and overall stroke occurrence, and by age, sex, and variation of temperature. We performed a systematic literature search across MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science, and GEOBASE, from inception to 16 October 2015 to identify all population-based observational studies. Where possible, data were pooled for meta-analysis with Odds ratios (OR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) by means of the random effects meta-analysis. We included 21 studies with a total of 476,511 patients. The data were varied as indicated by significant heterogeneity across studies for both ischemic stroke (IS) and intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). Pooled OR (95% CI) in every 1 degree Celsius increase in ambient temperature was significant for ICH 0.97 (0.94–1.00), but not for IS 1.00 (0.99–1.01) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) 1.00 (0.98–1.01). Meta-analysis was not possible for the pre-specified subgroup analyses by age, sex, and variation of temperature. Change in temperature over the previous 24 h appeared to be more important than absolute temperature in relation to the risk of stroke, especially in relation to the risk of ICH. Older age appeared to increase vulnerability to low temperature for both IS and ICH. To conclude, this review shows that lower mean ambient temperature is significantly associated with the risk of ICH, but not with IS and SAH. Larger temperature changes were associated with higher stroke rates in the elderly.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 705: Experimental Data Extraction and in Silico Prediction of the Estrogenic Activity of Renewable Replacements for Bisphenol A (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Bisphenol A (BPA) is a ubiquitous compound used in polymer manufacturing for a wide array of applications; however, increasing evidence has shown that BPA causes significant endocrine disruption and this has raised public concerns over safety and exposure limits. The use of renewable materials as polymer feedstocks provides an opportunity to develop replacement compounds for BPA that are sustainable and exhibit unique properties due to their diverse structures. As new bio-based materials are developed and tested, it is important to consider the impacts of both monomers and polymers on human health. Molecular docking simulations using the Estrogenic Activity Database in conjunction with the decision forest were performed as part of a two-tier in silico model to predict the activity of 29 bio-based platform chemicals in the estrogen receptor-α (ERα). Fifteen of the candidates were predicted as ER binders and fifteen as non-binders. Gaining insight into the estrogenic activity of the bio-based BPA replacements aids in the sustainable development of new polymeric materials.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 697: 2,4,6-Tribromophenol Interferes with the Thyroid Hormone System by Regulating Thyroid Hormones and the Responsible Genes in Mice (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: 2,4,6-Tribromophenol (TBP) is a brominated flame retardant (BFR). Based on its affinity for transthyretin, TBP could compete with endogenous thyroid hormone. In this study, the effects of TBP on the thyroid hormone system were assessed in mice. Briefly, animals were exposed to 40 and 250 mg/kg TBP. Thyroid hormones were also administered with or without TBP. When mice were treated with TBP, deiodinase 1 (Dio1) and thyroid hormone receptor β isoform 2 (Thrβ2) decreased in the pituitary gland. The levels of deiodinase 2 (Dio2) and growth hormone (Gh) mRNA increased in response to 250 mg/kg of TBP, and the relative mRNA level of thyroid stimulating hormone β (Tshβ) increased in the pituitary gland. Dio1 and Thrβ1 expression in the liver were not altered, while Dio1 decreased in response to co-treatment with thyroid hormones. The thyroid gland activity decreased in response to TBP, as did the levels of free triiodothyronine and free thyroxine in serum. Taken together, these findings indicate that TBP can disrupt thyroid hormone homeostasis and the presence of TBP influenced thyroid actions as regulators of gene expression. These data suggest that TBP interferes with thyroid hormone systems
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJGI, Vol. 5, Pages 111: Detecting Themed Streets Using a Location Based Service Application (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Various themed streets have recently been developed by local governments in order to stimulate local economies and to establish the identity of the corresponding places. However, the motivations behind the development of some of these themed street projects has been based on profit, without full considerations of people’s perceptions of their local areas, resulting in marginal effects on the local economies concerned. In response to this issue, this study proposed a themed street clustering method to detect the themed streets of a specific region, focusing on the commercial themed street, which is more prevalent than other types of themed streets using location based service data. This study especially uses “the street segment” as a basic unit for analysis. The Sillim and Gangnam areas of Seoul, South Korea were chosen for the evaluation of the adequacy of the proposed method. By comparing trade areas that were sourced from a market analysis report by a reliable agent with the themed streets detected in this study, the experiment results showed high proficiency of the proposed method.
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
    Published by MDPI Publishing on behalf of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).
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    IJGI, Vol. 5, Pages 112: Evaluating Trade Areas Using Social Media Data with a Calibrated Huff Model (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Delimitating trade areas is a major business concern. Today, mobile communication technologies make it possible to use social media data for this purpose. Few studies however, have focused on methods to extract suitable samples from social media data for trade area delimitation. In our case study, we divided Beijing into regular grid cells and extracted activity centers for each social media user. Ten sample sets were obtained by selecting users based on the retail agglomerations they visited and aggregating user activity centers to each grid cell. We calculated distance and visitation frequency attributes for each user and each grid cell. The distance value of a grid cell is the average distance of user activity centers in this grid cell to a retail agglomeration. The visitation frequency of a grid cell refers to the average count of visits to retail agglomerations by user activity centers for a cell. The calculated attribute values of 10 sets were input into a Huff model and the delimitated trade areas were evaluated. Results show that sets obtained by aggregating user activity centers have a better delimitating effect than sets obtained without aggregation. Differences in the distribution and intensity of trade areas also became apparent.
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
    Published by MDPI Publishing on behalf of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).
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    Materials, Vol. 9, Pages 566: A Review of Natural Joint Systems and Numerical Investigation of Bio-Inspired GFRP-to-Steel Joints (2016)
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    In: Materials
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: There are a great variety of joint types used in nature which can inspire engineering joints. In order to design such biomimetic joints, it is at first important to understand how biological joints work. A comprehensive literature review, considering natural joints from a mechanical point of view, was undertaken. This was used to develop a taxonomy based on the different methods/functions that nature successfully uses to attach dissimilar tissues. One of the key methods that nature uses to join dissimilar materials is a transitional zone of stiffness at the insertion site. This method was used to propose bio-inspired solutions with a transitional zone of stiffness at the joint site for several glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) to steel adhesively bonded joint configurations. The transition zone was used to reduce the material stiffness mismatch of the joint parts. A numerical finite element model was used to identify the optimum variation in material stiffness that minimises potential failure of the joint. The best bio-inspired joints showed a 118% increase of joint strength compared to the standard joints.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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    Materials, Vol. 9, Pages 565: Rapeseed and Raspberry Seed Cakes as Inexpensive Raw Materials in the Production of Activated Carbon by Physical Activation: Effect of Activation Conditions on Textural and Phenol Adsorption Characteristics (2016)
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    In: Materials
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: The production of activated carbons (ACs) from rapeseed cake and raspberry seed cake using slow pyrolysis followed by physical activation of the obtained solid residues is the topic of this study. The effect of activation temperature (850, 900 and 950 °C), activation time (30, 60, 90 and 120 min) and agent (steam and CO2) on the textural characteristics of the ACs is investigated by N2 adsorption. In general, higher activation temperatures and longer activation times increase the BET specific surface area and the porosity of the ACs, regardless of the activation agent or raw material. Steam is more reactive than CO2 in terms of pore development, especially in the case of raspberry seed cake. The performance of the ACs in liquid adsorption is evaluated by batch phenol adsorption tests. Experimental data are best fitted by the Freundlich isotherm model. Based on total yield, textural characteristics and phenol adsorption, steam activation at 900 °C for 90 min and CO2 activation at 900 °C for 120 min are found as the best activation conditions. Raspberry seed cake turns out to be a better raw material than rapeseed cake. Moreover, AC from raspberry seed cake produced by steam activation at 900 °C for 90 min performs as well as commercial AC (Norit GAC 1240) in phenol adsorption. The adsorption kinetics of the selected ACs are best fitted by the pseudo-second-order model.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1068: Pansharpening with a Guided Filter Based on Three-Layer Decomposition (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: State-of-the-art pansharpening methods generally inject the spatial structures of a high spatial resolution (HR) panchromatic (PAN) image into the corresponding low spatial resolution (LR) multispectral (MS) image by an injection model. In this paper, a novel pansharpening method with an edge-preserving guided filter based on three-layer decomposition is proposed. In the proposed method, the PAN image is decomposed into three layers: A strong edge layer, a detail layer, and a low-frequency layer. The edge layer and detail layer are then injected into the MS image by a proportional injection model. In addition, two new quantitative evaluation indices, including the modified correlation coefficient (MCC) and the modified universal image quality index (MUIQI) are developed. The proposed method was tested and verified by IKONOS, QuickBird, and Gaofen (GF)-1 satellite images, and it was compared with several of state-of-the-art pansharpening methods from both qualitative and quantitative aspects. The experimental results confirm the superiority of the proposed method.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1076: Exploiting Outage and Error Probability of Cooperative Incremental Relaying in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (2016)
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    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: This paper embeds a bi-fold contribution for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs); performance analysis of incremental relaying in terms of outage and error probability, and based on the analysis proposition of two new cooperative routing protocols. Subject to the first contribution, a three step procedure is carried out; a system model is presented, the number of available relays are determined, and based on cooperative incremental retransmission methodology, closed-form expressions for outage and error probability are derived. Subject to the second contribution, Adaptive Cooperation in Energy (ACE) efficient depth based routing and Enhanced-ACE (E-ACE) are presented. In the proposed model, feedback mechanism indicates success or failure of data transmission. If direct transmission is successful, there is no need for relaying by cooperative relay nodes. In case of failure, all the available relays retransmit the data one by one till the desired signal quality is achieved at destination. Simulation results show that the ACE and E-ACE significantly improves network performance, i.e., throughput, when compared with other incremental relaying protocols like Cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest (CARQ). E-ACE and ACE achieve 69% and 63% more throughput respectively as compared to CARQ in hard underwater environment.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1073: FOG Random Drift Signal Denoising Based on the Improved AR Model and Modified Sage-Husa Adaptive Kalman Filter (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: In order to reduce the influence of fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) random drift error on inertial navigation systems, an improved auto regressive (AR) model is put forward in this paper. First, based on real-time observations at each restart of the gyroscope, the model of FOG random drift can be established online. In the improved AR model, the FOG measured signal is employed instead of the zero mean signals. Then, the modified Sage-Husa adaptive Kalman filter (SHAKF) is introduced, which can directly carry out real-time filtering on the FOG signals. Finally, static and dynamic experiments are done to verify the effectiveness. The filtering results are analyzed with Allan variance. The analysis results show that the improved AR model has high fitting accuracy and strong adaptability, and the minimum fitting accuracy of single noise is 93.2%. Based on the improved AR(3) model, the denoising method of SHAKF is more effective than traditional methods, and its effect is better than 30%. The random drift error of FOG is reduced effectively, and the precision of the FOG is improved.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1071: An Optically-Transparent Aptamer-Based Detection System for Colon Cancer Applications Using Gold Nanoparticles Electrodeposited on Indium Tin Oxide (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: In this paper, a label-free aptamer based detection system (apta-DS) was investigated for detecting colon cancer cells. For this purpose, we employed an aptamer specific to colon cancer cells like HCT116 expressing carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) on their surfaces. Capture aptamers were covalently immobilized on the surface of gold nanoparticles (GNPs) through self-assembly monolayer of 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid (11-MUA) activated with EDC (1-Ethyl-3-[3-dimethylaminopropyl]carbodiimide)/N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS). The cyclic voltammetry (CV) and chronopotentiometry (CP) methods were used for electrodeposition of GNPs on the surface of indium tin oxide (ITO). In this work, the CV method was also used to demonstrate the conjugation of GNPs and aptamers and identify the cancer cell capturing events. Additionally, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) confirmed the deposition of GNPs on ITO and the immobilization of aptamer on the apta-DS. The electrodeposited GNPs played the role of nanoprobes for cancer cell targeting without losing the optical transparency of the ITO substrate. A conventional optical microscope also verified the detection of captured cancer cells. Based on this study’s results relying on electrochemical and optical microscopic methods, the proposed apta-DS is reliable and high sensitive with a LOD equal to 6 cell/mL for colon cancer detection.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1070: Multi-Section Sensing and Vibrotactile Perception for Walking Guide of Visually Impaired Person (2016)
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    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs) improve the mobility of visually-impaired persons, but it is not easy to develop an ETA satisfying all the factors needed for reliable object detection, effective notification, and actual usability. In this study, the authors developed an easy-to-use ETA having the function of reliable object detection and its successful feedback to the user by tactile stimulation. Seven ultrasonic sensors facing in different directions detect obstacles in the walking path, while vibrators in the tactile display stimulate the hand according to the distribution of obstacles. The detection of ground drop-offs activates the electromagnetic brakes linked to the rear wheels. To verify the feasibility of the developed ETA in the outdoor environment, walking tests by blind participants were performed, and the evaluation of safety to ground drop-offs was carried out. From the experiment, the feasibility of the developed ETA was shown to be sufficient if the sensor ranges for hanging obstacle detection is improved and learning time is provided for the ETA. Finally, the light-weight and low cost ETA designed and assembled based on the evaluation of the developed ETA is introduced to show the improvement of portability and usability, and is compared with the previously developed ETAs.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1074: Structural Parameters Calibration for Binocular Stereo Vision Sensors Using a Double-Sphere Target (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Structural parameter calibration for the binocular stereo vision sensor (BSVS) is an important guarantee for high-precision measurements. We propose a method to calibrate the structural parameters of BSVS based on a double-sphere target. The target, consisting of two identical spheres with a known fixed distance, is freely placed in different positions and orientations. Any three non-collinear sphere centres determine a spatial plane whose normal vector under the two camera-coordinate-frames is obtained by means of an intermediate parallel plane calculated by the image points of sphere centres and the depth-scale factors. Hence, the rotation matrix R is solved. The translation vector T is determined using a linear method derived from the epipolar geometry. Furthermore, R and T are refined by nonlinear optimization. We also provide theoretical analysis on the error propagation related to the positional deviation of the sphere image and an approach to mitigate its effect. Computer simulations are conducted to test the performance of the proposed method with respect to the image noise level, target placement times and the depth-scale factor. Experimental results on real data show that the accuracy of measurement is higher than 0.9‰, with a distance of 800 mm and a view field of 250 × 200 mm2.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 660: Determining Sustainable Tourism in Regions (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: The goal of achieving sustainable tourism is now a priority for many tourism planners. It has been suggested that stakeholder analysis is an essential step in determining sustainable tourism in regions, given its highly contextual nature. However, previous research has tended to focus heavily on stakeholders with the assumption that attitudes within groups are homogeneous. This research questions this assumption and in doing so, takes a critical approach by examining attitudes towards sustainable tourism and then assesses whether attitudes align with stakeholder groups. The study was conducted in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, and utilised the Q-methodology to examine attitudes towards sustainable tourism in the Bay of Fires region. The results concur with recent research, which shows that attitudes do not always align with those of stakeholder groups. The critical and reflexive approach suggests that assumptions regarding stakeholder attitudes need to be reviewed and more attention given to people’s contextualised attitudes, rather than the stakeholder group in which they sit.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 635: Comparative Analysis for the Urban Metabolic Differences of Two Types of Cities in the Resource-Dependent Region Based on Emergy Theory (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: Urban metabolism analysis has become a useful and effective tool to explore urban socio-economic processes. In this research, in order to explore the similarities and differences of metabolic characteristics and variation rules of different types of resource-dependent cities, we selected two cities—Taiyuan and Jincheng, the capital and a traditional resource-dependent city of Shanxi province, respectively, as research subjects, we also established an urban metabolic evaluation framework by employing a set of eight emergy-based indicators from socio-economic data from 2007 to 2014, and compared the similarities and discrepancies from the perspectives of metabolic structure, intensity, pressure, and efficiency, and put forward some suggestions for pursuing sustainable development for both cities and pointed out that more types of resource-dependent cities should be incorporated in future research work.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 659: Driving Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Mobile Industry: Evidence from U.S. Wireless Carriers (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-13
    Description: In light of the growing importance of data network quality in the wireless industry, this study analyzes and compares efficiencies in management, service quality, network quality, and market in the 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless industry. For this purpose, a bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) model using representative U.S. wireless carriers as decision making units (DMUs) was designed and conducted, with further verification through the Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon W test, to examine the differences in efficiency distribution. The results indicate that, in terms of efficiency distribution, network quality efficiency and market efficiency belongs to the same group as that which has high management efficiency. Based on these results, this paper suggests implications and strategic guidelines for wireless carriers for improvement in management efficiency.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 668: Economic and Social Sustainable Synergies to Promote Innovations in Rural Tourism and Local Development (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: The role of tourism in rural areas is pivotal for the integration and valorization of territorial resources and it is strengthened by the capacity to promote local community participation in processes of development. The paper addresses the issue by presenting and discussing a case study of a rural area of southern Italy where a territorial network for the development of local tourism has been set up. The innovative initiative aimed, firstly, to facilitate a closer connection between production and consumption by reducing transaction costs and, secondly, to connect local production with quality conscious consumers looking for traditional products. The network project also aimed to create conditions conducive to increasing the competitiveness of the local production chain and tourism sector. The case study shows how the challenge for many rural territories lies in increasing levels of trust and rebuilding social capital as a precondition of developing the tourism sector and fostering socio-economic development as a whole. Traditional institutions, as well as hybrid institutions, with the support of research organizations, can play a key role.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 664: Between Participation and Collective Action—From Occasional Liaisons towards Long-Term Co-Management for Urban Resilience (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: For resilience building, cities need to foster learning and innovation processes among all actors in order to develop transformative capacities of urban governance regimes to manage extraordinary situations as well as continuous change. A close collaboration of urban governmental actors and citizens is, therefore, of high importance. This paper explores two different discourses on urban governance: participation and self-organized collective action for the management of the commons. Both address the involvement of citizens into governance, albeit from different perspectives: on the one hand from the viewpoint of the government, selectively handing some of its power over to citizens, on the other hand from the perspective of citizens who self-organize for a collective management of urban commons. Based on experiences in the Austrian city of Korneuburg, it is argued that the collective action literature may help overcome some of the self-criticisms and shortcomings of the participation discourse. More specifically, Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for the management of the commons provide valuable input to overcome restrictions in thinking about citizen participation and to effectively design institutions for long-term urban co-management.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Symmetry, Vol. 8, Pages 62: Image Region Duplication Forgery Detection Based on Angular Radial Partitioning and Harris Key-Points (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Symmetry
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Region duplication forgery where a part of the image itself is copied and pasted onto a different part of the same image grid is becoming more popular in image manipulation. The forgers often apply geometric transformations such as rotation and scaling operations to make the forgery imperceptible. In this study, an image region duplication forgery detection algorithm is proposed based on the angular radial partitioning and Harris key-points. Two standard databases have been used: image data manipulation and MICC-F220 (Media Integration and Communication Center– of the University of Florence) for experimentation. Experiment results demonstrate that the proposed technique can detect rotated regions in multiples of 30 degrees and can detect region duplication with different scaling factors from 0.8, to 1.2. More experimental results are presented to confirm the effectiveness of detecting region duplication that has undergone other changes, such as Gaussian noise, and JPEG compression.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 658: Eliciting Drivers of Community Perceptions of Mining Projects through Effective Community Engagement (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Sustainable mining has received much attention in recent years as a consequence of the negative impacts of mining and public awareness. The aim of this paper is to provide mining companies guidance on improving the sustainability of their sites through effective community engagement based on recent advances in the literature. It begins with a review of the literature on sustainable development and its relationship to stakeholder engagement. It then uses the literature to determine the dominant factors that affect community perceptions of mining projects. These factors are classified into five categories: environmental, economic, social, governance and demographic factors. Then, we propose a new two-stage method based on discrete choice theory and the classification that can improve stakeholder engagement and be cost-effective. Further work is required to validate the proposed method, although it shows potential to overcome some of the challenges plaguing current approaches.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Symmetry, Vol. 8, Pages 61: Stochastic Cooperative Decision Approach for Studying the Symmetric Behavior of People in Wireless Indoor Location Systems (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Symmetry
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Nowadays, several wireless location systems have been developed in the research world. The goal of these systems has always been to find the greatest accuracy as possible. However, if every node takes data from the environment, we can gather a lot of information, which may help us understand what is happening around our network in a cooperative way. In order to develop this cooperative location and tracking system, we have implemented a sensor network to capture data from user devices. From this captured data we have observed a symmetry behavior in people’s movements at a specific site. By using these data and the symmetry feature, we have developed a statistical cooperative approach to predict the new user’s location. The system has been tested in a real environment, evaluating the next location predicted by the system and comparing it with the next location in the real track, thus getting satisfactory results. Better results have been obtained when the stochastic cooperative approach uses the transition matrix with symmetry.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-8994
    Topics: Mathematics , Physics
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 663: Evaluation Analysis of the CO2 Emission and Absorption Life Cycle for Precast Concrete in Korea (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: To comply with recent international trends and initiatives, and in order to help achieve sustainable development, Korea has established a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction target of 37% (851 million tons) of the business as usual (BAU) rate by 2030. Regarding environmentally-oriented standards such as the IGCC (International Green Construction Code), there are also rising demands for the assessment on CO2 emissions during the life cycle in accordance with ISO (International Standardization Organization’s Standard) 14040. At present, precast concrete (PC) engineering-related studies primarily cover structural and construction aspects, including improvement of structural performance in the joint, introduction of pre-stressed concrete and development of half PC. In the manufacture of PC, steam curing is mostly used for the early-strength development of concrete. In steam curing, a large amount of CO2 is produced, causing an environmental problem. Therefore, this study proposes a method to assess CO2 emissions (including absorption) throughout the PC life cycle by using a life cycle assessment (LCA) method. Using the proposed assessment method, CO2 emissions during the life cycle of a precast concrete girder (PCG) were assessed. In addition, CO2 absorption was assessed against a PCG using conventional carbonation and CO2 absorption-related models. As a result, the CO2 emissions throughout the life cycle of the PCG were 1365.6 (kg-CO2/1 PCG). The CO2 emissions during the production of raw materials among the CO2 emissions throughout the life cycle of the PCG were 1390 (kg-CO2/1 PCG), accounting for a high portion to total CO2 emissions (nearly 90%). In contrast, the transportation and manufacture stages were 1% and 10%, respectively, having little effect on total CO2 emissions. Among the use of the PCG, CO2 absorption was mostly decided by the CO2 diffusion coefficient and the amount of CO2 absorption by cement paste. The CO2 absorption by carbonation throughout the service life of the PC was about 11% of the total CO2 emissions, which is about 16% of CO2 emissions from ordinary Portland cement (OPC) concrete.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 711: Mapping Environmental Inequalities Relevant for Health for Informing Urban Planning Interventions—A Case Study in the City of Dortmund, Germany (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Spatial differences in urban environmental conditions contribute to health inequalities within cities. The purpose of the paper is to map environmental inequalities relevant for health in the City of Dortmund, Germany, in order to identify needs for planning interventions. We develop suitable indicators for mapping socioeconomically-driven environmental inequalities at the neighborhood level based on published scientific evidence and inputs from local stakeholders. Relationships between socioeconomic and environmental indicators at the level of 170 neighborhoods were analyzed continuously with Spearman rank correlation coefficients and categorically applying chi-squared tests. Reclassified socioeconomic and environmental indicators were then mapped at the neighborhood level in order to determine multiple environmental burdens and hotspots of environmental inequalities related to health. Results show that the majority of environmental indicators correlate significantly, leading to multiple environmental burdens in specific neighborhoods. Some of these neighborhoods also have significantly larger proportions of inhabitants of a lower socioeconomic position indicating hotspots of environmental inequalities. Suitable planning interventions mainly comprise transport planning and green space management. In the conclusions, we discuss how the analysis can be used to improve state of the art planning instruments, such as clean air action planning or noise reduction planning towards the consideration of the vulnerability of the population.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 707: Performance Analysis of Stop-Skipping Scheduling Plans in Rail Transit under Time-Dependent Demand (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Stop-skipping is a key method for alleviating congestion in rail transit, where schedules are sometimes difficult to implement. Several mechanisms have been proposed and analyzed in the literature, but very few performance comparisons are available. This study formulated train choice behavior estimation into the model considering passengers’ perception. If a passenger’s train path can be identified, this information would be useful for improving the stop-skipping schedule service. Multi-performance is a key characteristic of our proposed five stop-skipping schedules, but quantified analysis can be used to illustrate the different effects of well-known deterministic and stochastic forms. Problems in the novel category of forms were justified in the context of a single line rather than transit network. We analyzed four deterministic forms based on the well-known A/B stop-skipping operating strategy. A stochastic form was innovatively modeled as a binary integer programming problem. We present a performance analysis of our proposed model to demonstrate that stop-skipping can feasibly be used to improve the service of passengers and enhance the elasticity of train operations under demand variations along with an explicit parametric discussion.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 706: Hazard Prevention Regarding Occupational Accidents Involving Blue-Collar Foreign Workers: A Perspective of Taiwanese Manpower Agencies (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Since 1989, blue-collar foreign workers have been permitted to work in Taiwanese industries. Most blue-collar foreign workers apply for jobs in Taiwan through blue-collar foreign workers’ agencies. Because blue-collar foreign workers are not familiar with the language and culture in Taiwan, in occupational accident education and hazard prevention, the agencies play an important role in the coordination and translation between employees and blue-collar foreign workers. The purpose of this study is to establish the agencies’ role in the occupational accidents education and hazard prevention for blue-collar foreign workers in Taiwan. This study uses a qualitative method—grounded theory—to collect, code, and analyze the data in order to understand the agencies’ role in occupational accident education and hazard prevention for blue-collar foreign workers in Taiwan. The results show that the duty of agencies in occupational accident education and hazard prevention includes selecting appropriate blue-collar foreign workers, communicating between employees and blue-collar foreign workers, collecting occupational safety and health information, assisting in the training of occupational safety and health, and helping blue-collar foreign workers adapt to their lives in Taiwan. Finally, this study suggests seven important points and discusses the implementation process necessary to improve governmental policies. The government and employees should pay attention to the education/training of occupational safety and health for blue-collar foreign workers to eliminate unsafe behavior in order to protect the lives of blue-collar foreign workers.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJGI, Vol. 5, Pages 114: A New Approach to Urban Road Extraction Using High-Resolution Aerial Image (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Road information is fundamental not only in the military field but also common daily living. Automatic road extraction from a remote sensing images can provide references for city planning as well as transportation database and map updating. However, owing to the spectral similarity between roads and impervious structures, the current methods solely using spectral characteristics are often ineffective. By contrast, the detailed information discernible from the high-resolution aerial images enables road extraction with spatial texture features. In this study, a knowledge-based method is established and proposed; this method incorporates the spatial texture feature into urban road extraction. The spatial texture feature is initially extracted by the local Moran’s I, and the derived texture is added to the spectral bands of image for image segmentation. Subsequently, features like brightness, standard deviation, rectangularity, aspect ratio, and area are selected to form the hypothesis and verification model based on road knowledge. Finally, roads are extracted by applying the hypothesis and verification model and are post-processed based on the mathematical morphology. The newly proposed method is evaluated by conducting two experiments. Results show that the completeness, correctness, and quality of the results could reach approximately 94%, 90% and 86% respectively, indicating that the proposed method is effective for urban road extraction.
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
    Published by MDPI Publishing on behalf of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).
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    IJGI, Vol. 5, Pages 115: Automatic Airport Recognition Based on Saliency Detection and Semantic Information (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Effectively identifying an airport from satellite and aerial imagery is a challenging task. Traditional methods mainly focus on the use of multiple features for the detection of runways and some also adapt knowledge of airports, but the results are unsatisfactory and the usage limited. A new method is proposed to recognize airports from high-resolution optical images. This method involves the analysis of the saliency distribution and the use of fuzzy rule-based classification. First, a number of images with and without airports are segmented into multiple scales to obtain a saliency distribution map that best highlights the saliency distinction between airports and other objects. Then, on the basis of the segmentation result and the structural information of airports, we analyze the segmentation result to extract and represent the semantic information of each image via the bag-of-visual-words (BOVW) model. The image correlation degree is combined with the BOVW model and fractal dimension calculation to make a more complete description of the airports and to carry out preliminary classification. Finally, the support vector machine (SVM) is adopted for detailed classification to classify the remaining imagery. The experiment shows that the proposed method achieves a precision of 89.47% and a recall of 90.67% and performs better than other state of the art methods on precision and recall.
    Electronic ISSN: 2220-9964
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geosciences
    Published by MDPI Publishing on behalf of International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 708: Perceived Neighborhood and Home Environmental Factors Associated with Television Viewing among Taiwanese Older Adults (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: This study examined the associations between perceived neighborhood and home environmental factors and excessive television (TV) viewing time among Taiwanese older adults. The sample data was collected by administering computer-assisted telephone interviewers to 980 Taiwanese older adults (aged ≥ 65 years) living in two regions. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to examine the associations between self-reported perceived neighborhood and home environmental attributions and TV viewing time by using logistic regression analyses. The results showed that perceived neighborhood and home environmental factors were associated with excessive TV viewing time (≥2 h/day) after adjusting for potential confounders. Compared with a reference group, older adults who perceived their neighborhoods to have unsafe traffic were more likely to report excessive TV viewing time (OR = 1.36, 95%CI = 1.02–1.82). Older adults who reported having two or more TV sets in the home (OR = 1.77, CI = 1.28–2.44) and having a TV in the bedroom (OR = 1.55, CI = 1.18–2.03) were also more likely to report excessive TV viewing time. Further longitudinal research can confirm these findings, and tailored interventions focusing on the perceptions of neighborhood traffic safety and TV access at home for older adults might be effective means of preventing excessive TV viewing time.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    IJERPH, Vol. 13, Pages 709: Health Impacts from Corn Production Pre-and Post-NAFTA Trade Agreement (1986–2013) (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a powerful methodology for the study of health impacts and public policies. We performed this study to quantitatively explain the potential health impacts on disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) of corn produced in Mexico and imported from the United States of America (U.S.) from 1984 until 2014. The processes are hybrid and organic corn production. The functional unit was defined as 1 ton of corn production. Results indicate a total value of 178,431, 244,175, and 283,426 DALYs of three decades: 1984–1993, 1994–2003, and 2004–2013, of Mexican production; the U.S. production and transport were also calculated, showing values of 29,815, 65,837, and 107,729 for the same three decades. Additionally, DALYs were obtained for the category of human health and climate change by functional unit: 802.31 (1984–1993), 802.67 (1994–2003), and 803.92 (2004–2013), and for imported corn transported to Mexico from the U.S., 859.12 (1984–2013). DALYs on human toxicity were obtained: 99.05 (1984–1993), 99.05 (1994–2003), and 99.04 (2004–2013), and for the corn imported and transported to Mexico from the U.S., 116.25 (1984–2013). Conclusions: Environmental and health impacts in terms of DALYs are higher when corn is imported versus the corn produced in Mexico. Environmental health and nominal corn cultivation and transport impacts have increased as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Mexico needs to redefine its public policies to suffer less of an environmental burden from corn to ensure global environmental health and food security.
    Print ISSN: 1661-7827
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    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering , Medicine
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 590: Analysis and Mapping of the Spectral Characteristics of Fractional Green Cover in Saline Wetlands (NE Spain) Using Field and Remote Sensing Data (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Inland saline wetlands are complex systems undergoing continuous changes in moisture and salinity and are especially vulnerable to human pressures. Remote sensing is helpful to identify vegetation change in semi-arid wetlands and to assess wetland degradation. Remote sensing-based monitoring requires identification of the spectral characteristics of soils and vegetation and their correspondence with the vegetation cover and soil conditions. We studied the spectral characteristics of soils and vegetation of saline wetlands in Monegros, NE Spain, through field and satellite images. Radiometric and complementary field measurements in two field surveys in 2007 and 2008 were collected in selected sites deemed as representative of different soil moisture, soil color, type of vegetation, and density. Despite the high local variability, we identified good relationships between field spectral data and Quickbird images. A methodology was established for mapping the fraction of vegetation cover in Monegros and other semi-arid areas. Estimating vegetation cover in arid wetlands is conditioned by the soil background and by the occurrence of dry and senescent vegetation accompanying the green component of perennial salt-tolerant plants. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was appropriate to map the distribution of the vegetation cover if the green and yellow-green parts of the plants are considered.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 589: Impact of Initial Soil Temperature Derived from Remote Sensing and Numerical Weather Prediction Datasets on the Simulation of Extreme Heat Events (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Extreme heat weather events have received increasing attention and has become of special importance as they can remarkably affect sectors as diverse as public health, energy consumption, water resources, natural biodiversity and agricultural production. In this regard, summer temperatures have become a parameter of essential interest under a framework of a hypothetical increase in the number of intense-heat conditions. Thus, their forecast is a crucial aspect bearing in mind a mitigation of the effects and impacts that these intense-heat situations could produce. The current work tries to reach a better understanding of these sorts of situations that are really common over the Western Mediterranean coast. An extreme heat episode that took place in the Valencia Region in July 2009 is analysed, based on the simulations performed with the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS). This event recorded maximum temperatures exceeding 40 °C amply extended over the region besides reaching minimum temperatures up to 25.92 °C. We examine the role of improved skin and soil temperature (ST) initial conditions in the forecast results by means of different modelling and satellite-derived products. The influence of incorporating the Land Surface Temperature (LST) into RAMS is not found to produce a meaningful impact on the simulation results, independently of the resolution of the dataset used in the initial conditions of the model. In contrast, the introduction of the ST in lower levels, not only the skin temperature, has a more marked decisive effect in the simulation. Additionally, we have evaluated the influence of increasing the number of soil levels to spread deeper underground. This sensitivity experiment has revealed that more soil levels do not produce any meaningful impact on the simulation compared to the original one. In any case, RAMS is able to properly capture the observed patterns in those cases where a Western advection is widely extended over the area of study. This region’s variability in orography and in distances to the sea promotes the development of sea-breeze circulations, thus producing a convergence of two opposite wind flows, a Western synoptic advection and a sea-breeze circulation. As a result, the RAMS skill in those cases where a sea breeze is well developed depends on the proper location of the boundary and convergence lines of these two flows.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 595: Quantifying Live Aboveground Biomass and Forest Disturbance of Mountainous Natural and Plantation Forests in Northern Guangdong, China, Based on Multi-Temporal Landsat, PALSAR and Field Plot Data (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Spatially explicit knowledge of aboveground biomass (AGB) in large areas is important for accurate carbon accounting and quantifying the effect of forest disturbance on the terrestrial carbon cycle. We estimated AGB from 1990 to 2011 in northern Guangdong, China, based on a spatially explicit dataset derived from six years of national forest inventory (NFI) plots, Landsat time series imagery (1986–2011) and Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radars (PALSAR) 25 m mosaic data (2007–2010). Four types of variables were derived for modeling and assessment. The random forest approach was used to seek the optimal variables for mapping and validation. The root mean square error (RMSE) of plot-level validation was between 6.44 and 39.49 (t/ha), the normalized root-mean-square error (NRMSE) was between 7.49% and 19.01% and mean absolute error (MAE) was between 5.06 and 23.84 t/ha. The highest coefficient of determination R2 of 0.8 and the lowest NRMSE of 7.49% were reported in 2006. A clear increasing trend of mean AGB from the lowest value of 13.58 t/ha to the highest value of 66.25 t/ha was witnessed between 1988 and 2000, while after 2000 there was a fluctuating ascending change, with a peak mean AGB of 67.13 t/ha in 2004. By integrating AGB change with forest disturbance, the trend in disturbance area closely corresponded with the trend in AGB decrease. To determine the driving forces of these changes, the correlation analysis was adopted and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) method was used to find a factor rotation that maximizes this variance and represents the dominant factors of nine climate elements and nine human activities elements affecting the AGB dynamics. Overall, human activities contributed more to short-term AGB dynamics than climate data. Harvesting and human-induced fire in combination with rock desertification and global warming made a strong contribution to AGB changes. This study provides valuable information for the relationships between forest AGB and climate as well as forest disturbance in subtropical zones.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 666: Assessing the Impacts of Chinese Sustainable Ground Transportation on the Dynamics of Urban Growth: A Case Study of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge (2016)
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-14
    Description: Although China has promoted the construction of Chinese Sustainable Ground Transportation (CSGT) to guide sustainable development, it may create substantial challenges, such as rapid urban growth and land limitations. This research assessed the effects of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge on impervious surface growth in Cixi County, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China. Changes in impervious surfaces were mapped based on Landsat images from 1995, 2002, and 2009 using a combination of multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) and landscape metrics. The results indicated that the area and density of impervious surfaces increased significantly during construction of the Hangzhou Bay Bridge (2002–2009). Additionally, the bridge and connected road networks promoted urban development along major roads, resulting in compact growth patterns of impervious surfaces in urbanized regions. Moreover, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge promoted the expansion and densification of impervious surfaces in Hangzhou Bay District, which surrounds the bridge. The bridge also accelerated socioeconomic growth in the area, promoting rapid urban growth in Cixi County between 2002 and 2009. Overall, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge is an important driver of urban growth in Cixi County, and policy suggestions for sustainable urban growth should be adopted in the future.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 671: Sustainability of Land Use Promoted by Construction-to-Ecological Land Conversion: A Case Study of Shenzhen City, China (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-15
    Description: Rapid urbanization and rapid urban growth present great challenges to the sustainable utilization of land resources. This paper discusses the on-going process of construction-to-ecological land conversion (CELC) in terms of three aspects: land use, environmental effects, and system responses. CELC is compared to other current land conversion strategies in China. Taking Shenzhen City as an example, this paper introduces five areas in which CELC has been implemented since 2009, including basic farmland protection zones, mining areas, ecological corridors, inefficient industrial zones, and urban villages. This paper argues that Shenzhen’s CELC model can improve the ecological environment, control urban sprawl, and promote sustainable land use and, thus, serve as an example for other cities in China.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 670: Geographical Variation of Climate Change Impact on Rice Yield in the Rice-Cropping Areas of Northeast China during 1980–2008 (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-15
    Description: Northeast China (NEC) is one of China’s major rice production areas and has experienced obvious climate warming over the past three decades, similar to other mid- to high-latitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere. The present study investigates the temporal and spatial impacts of climate warming on rice yield in mid–high latitude regions. In this study, two time series datasets of rice yield and climate records in the NEC, including 178 county sites and 105 climate stations and covering the period from 1980 to 2008, were compiled. From these data, the responses of rice yield to the rice-growing season temperature (GST), growing degree days (GDD), and precipitation (GSP) were estimated using a regression model. The results indicate that rice yield benefits from climate warming in the NEC. GST positively impacted rice yield in 64.6% of the counties, with an increase of approximately 3.65%; GDD positively impacted yield in 64% of the counties, an increase of approximately 3.2%; and GSP negatively impacted rice yield in 68% of the counties, with a decrease of approximately −2.3%. Spatial variation was observed in the climate-rice yield relationships. The statistical relationships of GST and GDD with rice yield were significantly and positively correlated with latitude, longitude, and altitude, while that of GSP and rice yield was significantly and negatively correlated with latitude and longitude and showed a nonsignificant positive correlation with altitude. In summary, climate warming has significantly increased rice yield over the last three decades in the region north of 42°N, east of 122.4°E, and at an elevation of 134–473 m, which covers the majority of the rice-growing areas in the NEC.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Sensors, Vol. 16, Pages 1089: Ultrasonic Sensing of Plant Water Needs for Agriculture (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Sensors
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-15
    Description: Fresh water is a key natural resource for food production, sanitation and industrial uses and has a high environmental value. The largest water use worldwide (~70%) corresponds to irrigation in agriculture, where use of water is becoming essential to maintain productivity. Efficient irrigation control largely depends on having access to reliable information about the actual plant water needs. Therefore, fast, portable and non-invasive sensing techniques able to measure water requirements directly on the plant are essential to face the huge challenge posed by the extensive water use in agriculture, the increasing water shortage and the impact of climate change. Non-contact resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy (NC-RUS) in the frequency range 0.1–1.2 MHz has revealed as an efficient and powerful non-destructive, non-invasive and in vivo sensing technique for leaves of different plant species. In particular, NC-RUS allows determining surface mass, thickness and elastic modulus of the leaves. Hence, valuable information can be obtained about water content and turgor pressure. This work analyzes and reviews the main requirements for sensors, electronics, signal processing and data analysis in order to develop a fast, portable, robust and non-invasive NC-RUS system to monitor variations in leaves water content or turgor pressure. A sensing prototype is proposed, described and, as application example, used to study two different species: Vitis vinifera and Coffea arabica, whose leaves present thickness resonances in two different frequency bands (400–900 kHz and 200–400 kHz, respectively), These species are representative of two different climates and are related to two high-added value agricultural products where efficient irrigation management can be critical. Moreover, the technique can also be applied to other species and similar results can be obtained.
    Electronic ISSN: 1424-8220
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Electrical Engineering, Measurement and Control Technology
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    Sustainability, Vol. 8, Pages 665: SME’s Appropriability Regime for Sustainable Development-the Role of Absorptive Capacity and Inventive Capacity (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-15
    Description: SMEs need to protect their innovation outcomes and increase profits from their innovations in order to make their growth sustainable. The appropriability regime enables SMEs to secure financial returns on their R&D investment so that SMEs can continuously invest in innovation and obtain financial gains. However, the appropriability regime can change the effects of protecting innovation outcomes depending on the capacity of knowledge exploration, especially for SMEs, and previous studies have not discussed these issues. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to explore how the knowledge exploration capacity affects the relationship between different types of appropriability regimes and innovation performance. Multivariate regression is used to analyze the manufacturing SMEs sampled from the Korea Innovation Survey 2007 (KIS 2007). Our results demonstrate that both formal and informal appropriability regimes can improve firm’s innovation performance. Furthermore, although both inventive and absorptive capacity have positive moderating effects on the relationship between the informal appropriability regime and innovation performance, the inventive capacity moderates negatively the relationship between the formal appropriability regime and innovation performance. As a whole, the significance of this paper lies in providing further understanding of the different types of appropriability regimes and knowledge exploration capacity in SMEs.
    Electronic ISSN: 2071-1050
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Water, Vol. 8, Pages 290: Optimization of Upstream Detention Reservoir Facilities for Downstream Flood Mitigation in Urban Areas (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Water
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-15
    Description: A detention reservoir is one of the most effective engineered solutions for flood damage mitigation in urban areas. Detention facilities are constructed to temporarily store storm water and then slowly drain when the peak period has passed. This delayed drainage may coincide with upstream floods and aggravate the flood risk downstream. Optimal operation and design are needed to improve the performance of detention reservoirs for flood reduction. This study couples hydrologic simulation software (EPA-SWMM) with an evolutional optimizer (extraordinary particle swarm optimization, EPSO) to minimize flood damage downstream while considering the inundation risk at the detention reservoir. The optimum design and operation are applied to an urban case study in Seoul, Korea, for historical severe flooding events and designed rainfall scenarios. The optimal facilities outperform the present facilities in terms of flood damage reduction both downstream and in the detention reservoir area. Specifically, the peak water level at the detention pond under optimal conditions is significantly smaller than that of the current conditions. The comparison of the total flooded volume in the whole watershed shows a dramatic reduction of 79% in a severe flooding event in 2010 and around 20% in 2011 and in 180 min designed rainfall scenarios.
    Electronic ISSN: 2073-4441
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Materials, Vol. 9, Pages 573: Residual Tensile Property of Plain Woven Jute Fiber/Poly(Lactic Acid) Green Composites during Thermal Cycling (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Materials
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-15
    Description: This study investigated the residual tensile properties of plain woven jute fiber reinforced poly(lactic acid) (PLA) during thermal cycling. Temperature ranges of thermal cycling tests were 35–45 °C and 35–55 °C. The maximum number of cycles was 103 cycles. The quasi-static tensile tests of jute fiber, PLA, and composite were conducted after thermal cycling tests. Thermal mechanical analyses of jute fiber and PLA were conducted after thermal cycling tests. Results led to the following conclusions. For temperatures of 35–45 °C, tensile strength of composite at 103 cycles decreased 10% compared to that of composite at 0 cycles. For temperatures of 35–55 °C, tensile strength and Young’s modulus of composite at 103 cycles decreased 15% and 10%, respectively, compared to that of composite at 0 cycles. Tensile properties and the coefficient of linear expansion of PLA and jute fiber remained almost unchanged after thermal cycling tests. From observation of a fracture surface, the length of fiber pull out in the fracture surface of composite at 103 cycles was longer than that of composite at 0 cycles. Therefore, tensile properties of the composite during thermal cycling were decreased, probably because of the decrease of interfacial adhesion between the fiber and resin.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1944
    Topics: Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Production Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Traffic Engineering, Precision Mechanics
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    Energies, Vol. 9, Pages 547: Harnessing the Flexibility of Thermostatic Loads in Microgrids with Solar Power Generation (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Energies
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: This paper presents a demand response (DR) framework that intertwines thermodynamic building models with a genetic algorithm (GA)-based optimization method. The framework optimizes heating/cooling schedules of end-users inside a business park microgrid with local distributed generation from renewable energy sources (DG-RES) based on two separate objectives: net load minimization and electricity cost minimization. DG-RES is treated as a curtailable resource in anticipation of future scenarios where the infeed of DG-RES to the regional distribution network could be limited. We test the DR framework with a case study of a refrigerated warehouse and an office building located in a business park with local PV generation. Results show the technical potential of the DR framework in harnessing the flexibility of the thermal masses from end-user sites in order to: (1) reduce the energy exchange at the point of connection; (2) reduce the cost of electricity for the microgrid end-users; and (3) increase the local utilization of DG-RES in cases where DG-RES exports to the grid are restricted. The results of this work can aid end-users and distribution network operators to reduce energy costs and energy consumption.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Entropy, Vol. 18, Pages 252: Three Strategies for the Design of Advanced High-Entropy Alloys (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Entropy
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: High-entropy alloys (HEAs) have recently become a vibrant field of study in the metallic materials area. In the early years, the design of HEAs was more of an exploratory nature. The selection of compositions was somewhat arbitrary, and there was typically no specific goal to be achieved in the design. Very recently, however, the development of HEAs has gradually entered a different stage. Unlike the early alloys, HEAs developed nowadays are usually designed to meet clear goals, and have carefully chosen components, deliberately introduced multiple phases, and tailored microstructures. These alloys are referred to as advanced HEAs. In this paper, the progress in advanced HEAs is briefly reviewed. The design strategies for these materials are examined and are classified into three categories. Representative works in each category are presented. Finally, important issues and future directions in the development of advanced HEAs are pointed out and discussed.
    Electronic ISSN: 1099-4300
    Topics: Chemistry and Pharmacology , Physics
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    Energies, Vol. 9, Pages 551: Artist Photovoltaic Modules (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Energies
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: In this paper, a full-color photovoltaic (PV) module, called the artist PV module, is developed by laser processes. A full-color image source is printed on the back of a protective glass using an inkjet printer, and a brightened grayscale mask is used to precisely define regions on the module where colors need to be revealed. Artist PV modules with 1.1 × 1.4 m2 area have high a retaining power output of 139 W and an aesthetic appearance making them more competitive than other building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products. Furthermore, the installation of artist PV modules as curtain walls without metal frames is also demonstrated. This type of installation offers an aesthetic advantage by introducing supporting fittings, originating from the field of glass technology. Hence, this paper is expected to elevate BIPV modules to an art form and generate research interests in developing more functional PV modules.
    Electronic ISSN: 1996-1073
    Topics: Energy, Environment Protection, Nuclear Power Engineering
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    Forests, Vol. 7, Pages 147: Second-Log Branching in Multiaged Redwood and Douglas-Fir: Influence of Stand, Site, and Silviculture (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
    In: Forests
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-17
    Description: We studied branching in Sequoia sempervirens (Lamb. ex D. Don) Endl. (coast redwood) and Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. menziesii (coast Douglas-fir) because of their commercial value to coastal northern California. We focused on branching in the second log, which constitutes an important part of a tree’s wood volume and potential value. We quantified branch size and branch growth of overstory trees in multiaged stands in Mendocino County, California, in response to topographic, silvicultural, and stand- and tree-related variables. Higher stand density—a measure of competition averaged across the sample plot—did not correlate with size of the largest second-log branch measured but was associated with a smaller average diameter of the largest branches measured on all sides of the study tree. The largest branch measured was smaller when in closer proximity to branches of its immediate neighbor tree. Redwood had larger branches than Douglas-fir but their size was more sensitive to an ecological gradient of soil-moisture deficit. Branches responded differently to individual tree selection harvest of conifers versus herbicide control of hardwoods. Residual conifer branches in harvested plots responded almost immediately with increased growth, but this release was short-lived. Branches in herbicide-treated plots exhibited a delayed release, giving more consistent branch growth throughout two five-year measurement periods after treatment.
    Electronic ISSN: 1999-4907
    Topics: Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Fishery, Domestic Science, Nutrition
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 599: A Merging Framework for Rainfall Estimation at High Spatiotemporal Resolution for Distributed Hydrological Modeling in a Data-Scarce Area (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: Merging satellite and rain gauge data by combining accurate quantitative rainfall from stations with spatial continuous information from remote sensing observations provides a practical method of estimating rainfall. However, generating high spatiotemporal rainfall fields for catchment-distributed hydrological modeling is a problem when only a sparse rain gauge network and coarse spatial resolution of satellite data are available. The objective of the study is to present a satellite and rain gauge data-merging framework adapting for coarse resolution and data-sparse designs. In the framework, a statistical spatial downscaling method based on the relationships among precipitation, topographical features, and weather conditions was used to downscale the 0.25° daily rainfall field derived from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) precipitation product version 7. The nonparametric merging technique of double kernel smoothing, adapting for data-sparse design, was combined with the global optimization method of shuffled complex evolution, to merge the downscaled TRMM and gauged rainfall with minimum cross-validation error. An indicator field representing the presence and absence of rainfall was generated using the indicator kriging technique and applied to the previously merged result to consider the spatial intermittency of daily rainfall. The framework was applied to estimate daily precipitation at a 1 km resolution in the Qinghai Lake Basin, a data-scarce area in the northeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The final estimates not only captured the spatial pattern of daily and annual precipitation with a relatively small estimation error, but also performed very well in stream flow simulation when applied to force the geomorphology-based hydrological model (GBHM). The proposed framework thus appears feasible for rainfall estimation at high spatiotemporal resolution in data-scarce areas.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 601: Kernel Supervised Ensemble Classifier for the Classification of Hyperspectral Data Using Few Labeled Samples (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: Kernel-based methods and ensemble learning are two important paradigms for the classification of hyperspectral remote sensing images. However, they were developed in parallel with different principles. In this paper, we aim to combine the advantages of kernel and ensemble methods by proposing a kernel supervised ensemble classification method. In particular, the proposed method, namely RoF-KOPLS, combines the merits of ensemble feature learning (i.e., Rotation Forest (RoF)) and kernel supervised learning (i.e., Kernel Orthonormalized Partial Least Square (KOPLS)). In particular, the feature space is randomly split into K disjoint subspace and KOPLS is applied to each subspace to produce the new features set for the training of decision tree classifier. The final classification result is assigned to the corresponding class by the majority voting rule. Experimental results on two hyperspectral airborne images demonstrated that RoF-KOPLS with radial basis function (RBF) kernel yields the best classification accuracies due to the ability of improving the accuracies of base classifiers and the diversity within the ensemble, especially for the very limited training set. Furthermore, our proposed method is insensitive to the number of subsets.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 597: How Universal Is the Relationship between Remotely Sensed Vegetation Indices and Crop Leaf Area Index? A Global Assessment (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: Leaf Area Index (LAI) is a key variable that bridges remote sensing observations to the quantification of agroecosystem processes. In this study, we assessed the universality of the relationships between crop LAI and remotely sensed Vegetation Indices (VIs). We first compiled a global dataset of 1459 in situ quality-controlled crop LAI measurements and collected Landsat satellite images to derive five different VIs including Simple Ratio (SR), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), two versions of the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI and EVI2), and Green Chlorophyll Index (CIGreen). Based on this dataset, we developed global LAI-VI relationships for each crop type and VI using symbolic regression and Theil-Sen (TS) robust estimator. Results suggest that the global LAI-VI relationships are statistically significant, crop-specific, and mostly non-linear. These relationships explain more than half of the total variance in ground LAI observations (R2 > 0.5), and provide LAI estimates with RMSE below 1.2 m2/m2. Among the five VIs, EVI/EVI2 are the most effective, and the crop-specific LAI-EVI and LAI-EVI2 relationships constructed by TS, are robust when tested by three independent validation datasets of varied spatial scales. While the heterogeneity of agricultural landscapes leads to a diverse set of local LAI-VI relationships, the relationships provided here represent global universality on an average basis, allowing the generation of large-scale spatial-explicit LAI maps. This study contributes to the operationalization of large-area crop modeling and, by extension, has relevance to both fundamental and applied agroecosystem research.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 598: Glacier Remote Sensing Using Sentinel-2. Part I: Radiometric and Geometric Performance, and Application to Ice Velocity (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: With its temporal resolution of 10 days (five days with two satellites, and significantly more at high latitudes), its swath width of 290 km, and its 10 m and 20 m spatial resolution bands from the visible to the shortwave infrared, the European Sentinel-2 satellites have significant potential for glacier remote sensing, in particular mapping of glacier outlines and facies, and velocity measurements. Testing Level 1C commissioning and ramp-up phase data for initial sensor quality experiences, we find a high radiometric performance, but with slight striping effects under certain conditions. Through co-registration of repeat Sentinal-2 data we also find lateral offset patterns and noise on the order of a few metres. Neither of these issues will complicate most typical glaciological applications. Absolute geo-location of the data investigated was on the order of one pixel at the time of writing. The most severe geometric problem stems from vertical errors of the DEM used for ortho-rectifying Sentinel-2 data. These errors propagate into locally varying lateral offsets in the images, up to several pixels with respect to other georeferenced data, or between Sentinel-2 data from different orbits. Finally, we characterize the potential and limitations of tracking glacier flow from repeat Sentinel-2 data using a set of typical glaciers in different environments: Aletsch Glacier, Swiss Alps; Fox Glacier, New Zealand; Jakobshavn Isbree, Greenland; Antarctic Peninsula at the Larsen C ice shelf.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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    Remote Sensing, Vol. 8, Pages 600: Quantifying the Impacts of Environmental Factors on Vegetation Dynamics over Climatic and Management Gradients of Central Asia (2016)
    MDPI Publishing
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    Publication Date: 2016-07-16
    Description: Currently there is a lack of quantitative information regarding the driving factors of vegetation dynamics in post-Soviet Central Asia. Insufficient knowledge also exists concerning vegetation variability across sub-humid to arid climatic gradients as well as vegetation response to different land uses, from natural rangelands to intensively irrigated croplands. In this study, we analyzed the environmental drivers of vegetation dynamics in five Central Asian countries by coupling key vegetation parameter “overall greenness” derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI time series data, with its possible factors across various management and climatic gradients. We developed nine generalized least-squares random effect (GLS-RE) models to analyze the relative impact of environmental factors on vegetation dynamics. The obtained results quantitatively indicated the extensive control of climatic factors on managed and unmanaged vegetation cover across Central Asia. The most diverse vegetation dynamics response to climatic variables was observed for “intensively managed irrigated croplands”. Almost no differences in response to these variables were detected for managed non-irrigated vegetation and unmanaged (natural) vegetation across all countries. Natural vegetation and rainfed non-irrigated crop dynamics were principally associated with temperature and precipitation parameters. Variables related to temperature had the greatest relative effect on irrigated croplands and on vegetation cover within the mountainous zone. Further research should focus on incorporating the socio-economic factors discussed here in a similar analysis.
    Electronic ISSN: 2072-4292
    Topics: Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying , Geography
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