Promoting the sustainable development of resource-based cities is of great significance to the ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin. Combining the environmental status and economic development, we objectively evaluate the ecological safety level of resource-based cities in the Yellow River Basin, compare and analysis the main factors affecting the ecological safety of different resource-based cities, and formulate precise and differentiated ecological safety protection measures in river basins to achieve high-quality development. Taking the Yellow River Basin as an example, this paper analyses the ecological level of the Yellow River Basin based on the theory of sustainable development, calculates the ecological safety level of 30 resource-based cities in the Yellow River Basin from 2006 to 2020 by TOPSIS model, and makes convergence analysis by classification. Through the DID empirical test of sustainable development planning policy on ecological safety factors, distinguish the development characteristics of different resource-based cities. The results show that: (1) the ecological safety level of resource-based cities in the Yellow River Basin is generally developing well, and there are differences among different types of resource-based cities; (2) the kinetic energy of sustainable development of resource-based cities in the Yellow River Basin is mainly industrial transformation, and the power of science and technology is insufficient; (3) local governments pay limited attention to environmental protection, and the sustainable development planning of resource-based cities in 2013 mainly promotes the adjustment of industrial structure of resource-based cities.

The study is devoted to analyzing the economic sustainability of the town of Amherst, MA. The city's top employer and core enterprise is the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with over 32,000 students and almost 2,000 staff members. Based on a literature review, a hypothesis was put forward that a university city should have a high level of economic sustainability. To assess economic sustainability, the USCESI Index was developed. It evaluates sustainability in three groups of parameters: society, economy, and ecology. The first group includes the level of racial diversity, the level of education of the population, and the access to medical services. The second group consists of the Gini coefficient by income level, the median cost of housing, and the unemployment rate. The environmental situation is assessed according to the Air Quality Index developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. For comparison, the town of Braintree, MA, was taken. The USCESI was calculated for both locations. The analysis showed that both Amherst and Braintree have a high degree of economic sustainability. However, it was revealed that proximity to a significant economic center has a more powerful positive impact on economic sustainability than the location of a large university.

Contamination by microplastics (MP) in aquatic ecosystems is largely due to the release of millions of these particles from treated effluents from Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTP). Due to the lack of policies and regulations that establish criteria for the control and elimination of MP from WWTP effluents, this research evaluated the presence of MP for particle sizes of 38 and 150 µm in influents and effluents from three WWTP in the port of Acapulco, Mexico. Using optical microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) techniques, the MP detected were polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). MP removal efficiencies of 82.5 to 98.7% (38 µm) and 86.8 to 97.5% (150µm) were obtained; the MP average daily emissions to the receiving bodies of these three WWTPs were in the ranges of 9.5 x 106 - 4.70 x 108 particles and the annual emissions in the range of 3.05 x 109 - 1.72 x 1011 particles. This work reveals the urgency of implementing regulatory policies to avoid the continuous emission of MP to aquatic ecosystems from WWTPs in Acapulco, Mexico.

With the rise of serious problems of urbanization and climate change, the call for intelligent and sustainable urban development is increasing nowadays. Therefore, smart cities have become a hot topic in academia, industry, and politics, resulting in the emergency of numerous smart city programs and projects. This study selected 26 evaluation frameworks proposed in recent years or large-scale research projects that have lasted for many years and analyzed and compared them from the 7 aspects of generalizability, comprehensiveness, availability, flexibility, scientific, transparency, and interpretability. The result indicates that the current smart city evaluation framework still needs to be upgraded and updated. These standards can not only guide the development direction and hotspot of the future smart city evaluation model but also serve as a guide for model demanders to test results and an effective tool to verify the framework designed by themselves.

When we discuss migration and compare national trends, the topic most commonly centers on undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. However, there is also considerable variation in internal migration patterns, with differences found between and within nations. Many factors shape whether, why, and where people relocate. Over the last few decades, the world's two largest economies - the United States and China - have seen domestic migration changes happening in opposite directions. China has become increasingly mobile and experienced urbanization. In contrast, the U.S. has seen a steady decline in the rate at which its population relocates, with cities experiencing net migration losses as citizens leave for suburbs. This paper examines these trends using data from the last decade to compare the two nations in areas of internal migration, urbanization, housing, social mobility, and economic growth.

Cities consume over 75% of natural resources, produce over 50% of global waste and emit 60 - 80% of greenhouse gases. The scenario that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will live in cities, highlights how cities are still responsible of the growing consumption characterized by linear economy processes, with the production of various types of waste. In this unsustainable framework, the Circular Economy offers the opportunity to shape the urban system by means of rethinking the possibility to produce and use goods and services exploring new ways to ensure long-term prosperity. The Circular City paradigm contains in fact all the principles of the Circular Economy: recovery, recycling and sharing. In particular, Circular City also introduces actions related to the development of renewable energy communities, use of green materials, CO2 absorption approaches and Proximity Cities. The aim of this work is to develop a methodology to build a composite index (Circular City Index) capable of measuring the degree of implementation of urban policies that enable the territory to initiate an ecological transition of public assets. The city of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) represents the case study to apply circular urban policies in public properties, for civil and military use.

As bread is the most consumed food by Tunisian population and the major source of salt, a pilot experience of salt reduction in bread has already begun in Bizerte city. Salt analysis in bread collected from Bizerte city was realized with Volhard titration method. Application of the “salt reduction programme” allowed a gradual decrease of salt content in bread by 35 % during three years without detection by Tunisian consumers. A final salt concentration of 1.1 ± 0.1 g/100 g was then achieved. The establishment of an effective salt reduction strategy with lifestyle education is needed to reduce hypertension that is the first cause of death in Tunisia.

Madrid Nuevo Norte (Madrid New North) is an urban redevelopment program applied in the city of Madrid in Spain. In relevance with this, the aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, the project examines if Nuevo Norte project is aligned with the principles of sustainability. Secondly, the paper investigates the impact of Nuevo Norte on the application of city marketing strategies in Madrid. For that purposes, questionnaires were distributed through Internet in 122 urban developers and planners located in the Spanish capital. The results indicated that overall, Nuevo Norte contributes in the sustainable development of Madrid; however, concerns were identified regarding the budget and the timeline of the project. In addition, NNMP provides significant opportunities to local authorities to implement sustainable city marketing strategies, aiming to improve the competitiveness and the quality of life in the city of Madrid. To this end, it seems that city marketing, through the construction of Mega projects, should sift to sustainability, ensuring a better life for local residents and communities in general. The research is expected to assist local authorities in Spain to harness the potential of mega projects, such as Nuevo Norte, in designing city marketing strategies and to promote Madrid in an international context as a city that gives emphasis in urban sustainability.

This paper aims to determine the insecticidal activity of Panyawan (Tinospora rumphii) leaf extract against American cockroach (Periplaneta americana). A quantitative experimental research design was employed in the study. Cockroach strains were collected through trapping and hand catch methods. Panyawan leaf was collected and extracted to achieve seven different concentrations. The concentrations and controls were tested against the strains through the standard contact glass jar bioassay. Results revealed that the shortest knock-down time was achieved by the positive control at 1.08 minutes while the Extracts of Panyawan leaf reported a 1.42 to 20.25 minutes knock-down time. Probit Regression reported that the lethal concentration 50 of Panyawan leaf extract was 15.836%. One-Way ANOVA revealed that there is a significant difference in the knock-down times of cockroaches when exposed to different Panyawan leaf extract concentrations, negative and positive controls (p<0.01). Homogeneous subsets derived from Post Hoc Test using Tukey’s Honest Significant Difference reported that there is no significant difference between positive control and Extract 100% (p>0.01).

The coexistence of human beings and environmental sustainability becomes individually and even globally concerned issue. In addition to environment issues, people also encounter negative issues of infectious diseases, gap between rich and poor, violence in society, uneven resource distribution, people’s health decline, and population structure aging, which would affect the sustainable development of cities. When taking sustainable development from the world to cities, it appears sustainable cities. The goal of a healthy city is to pursue the sustainability of a city. Aiming at residents in Shanghai, total 360 copies of questionnaire are distributed, and 277 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 77％. The research results conclude that 1.“safety” is the most emphasized dimension, followed by “convenience & prosperity”, “sustainable ecology”, “vitality & health”, and “culture friendly” and 2.security, Internet city, pollution control, space use, and inheritance education are top five indicators, among 15 evaluation indicators. According to the results, suggestions are proposed to provide the government with correct, objective, and simply understandable healthy city indicators and sustainable development indicators for the appropriate planning and review of the administration objectives to enhance the public awareness of healthy city and the participation. It would stop the worsening of environment and promote residents’ health and the sustainable development of cities to have the city and the public moving towards healthy development.

By analyzing the urban landscape, this investigation focuses on commercial typologies in historical urban areas and its relationship with the urban landscape and its heritage values. Trade plays an essential role in historical urban areas, both in the past and in the present, since it is part of the urban landscape—creating it and modifying it, but also preserving it. Historical protected urban areas contain diverse elements reflecting the impacts of commercial activities that have existed in cities throughout history. At present, the urban landscape of commercial activity is made up of a multiplicity of typologies and formats which interact with the historical landscape and its values, using them to strengthen its strategies of attraction, differentiation, and sales. Shop owners contribute to the preservation of historic urban areas by maintaining the commercial functions within them. Therefore, we affirm that the role of commercial activity in the preservation of urban protected areas is essential. However, further research is needed because this aspect has not been addressed in depth by the scientific community specializing in the management of cultural heritage.

The goal of the paper is to investigate the expected participation and mentality of smart citizens in smart cities. The key question is the role of the human factor in smart environments globally studied through a research corpus of the mainstream summaries, trend reports, white papers and visions of business – governmental – university research co- operations. Foremost, a short review of the changing scholarly trends is presented as a theoretical framework. Concerning its key ideas, the corpus based findings are recapped and analysed by content networks and the most referred city strategies. Besides, a critical approach reveal further required factors and risks to investigate. The ultimate goal is to understand how the smart city landscape is shaped by citizen-based strategies, open data, empowerment and responsibility. Accordingly, the paper closes with theoretical, practical and metaphor-based recommendations to support the business and political decision making, and also, the emerging scholarly trends in the context of upcoming technological-structural changes.

A key concern in an ageing society is citizens’ mobility. As populations age, disability impairments can affect active ageing, health-related wellbeing and quality of life. In this paper, we present the on-going research project SeriousGiggle—Game-based learning for triggering active ageing. Its goal is to assess the potential of game-based learning for active ageing and contribute to a sense of wellbeing and quality of life. It also seeks to improve the mobility of older adults by creating a set of journey plans with route guidance that are rated in terms of safety, community support, environment and age-friendliness. Drawn on our field work with 33 co-designers, 40 end users and 10 semi-structured interviews with Subject Matter Experts, we identify a set of necessary design requirements to an Age-friendly Playable City. This study recommends the use of gamification and playful techniques to engage the end-users to provide information about local traffic signs, pavement conditions, wayfinding and, therefore, help to create route guidance and walking assistance that are personalized to older adults’ context in terms of location, travel fitness, mobility impairments and motivations.

Green open spaces (GOS) are well known to be vital to enhancing the standard of living conditions in urban environments. The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is important to have at least nine square meters per citizen. The European Environment Agency (EEA) stipulates that 5000 square meters of green space will be reachable within 300 meters to residents. GOS pattern in Kyrenia Region is not adequate or successful in that regard. The process of urban planning has been neglected in the Kyrenia region and these areas have lost their significance and value. This research evaluates the level of accessibility of green spaces in Kyrenia Region. Three urban areas, Kyrenia, Karavas and Agios Epiktitos have been analyzed within this framework. In order to do that, GOS areas and their pattern are researched by deploying geographical information analysis. Accessibility to these areas is measured by using Euclidean and network distance analysis based on 300, 800 and 5000 meters. Mainly, Euclidean distance and network distance methods are measured from building units and results showing accessibility values are constructed. According to the results, network accessibility is very low within the study region. Additionally, Kyrenia, Karavas and Agios Epiktitos have shortage in GOS per capita. To offer effective strategies for urban planning, the factors influencing the accessibility and also the usage of GOS are addressed.

The southeast of Spain is one of the most arid and desertification-prone areas in continental Europe, with climate change contributing to this situation. Climatic conditions affect the availability of water in the plant structures of wild species, facilitating the onset and/or spread of forest fires and increasing aridity. The Region of Murcia, in southeastern Spain, has small forest stands of gall oak (Quercus faginea) with relict value. It is of interest to investigate the situation of these stands, allowing us to know about their distribution and their evolution in the face of climate change. For this purpose, previous dasometric, available from a specific stand, studies are considered to be contrasted with current data, individual trees were geolocated, and distribution maps of contrasting environmental conditions were created. In general, gall oak has been observed to be distributed up to 1200 m altitude, especially in shady areas and embedded valleys and north-northeast orientations. Importantly, there was a positive evolution of the vegetative development, with increments in the number of trees during the study period, despite some negative affections in specific areas due to climate change.

Stevia rebaudiana (Bert.) is a natural sweetener with diterpenic glycosides, offering 300 times more sweetness than sucrose, and boasting low-calorie content, along with medicinal and therapeutic properties. To address a limited genetic diversity, a germplasm bank comprising 115 segregated lines of stevia was established in Colombia. Notwithstanding, the fungus Athelia rolfsii adversely impacted key stevia lines, leading to wilting and plant mortality. For this reason our study aimed to explore the biocontrol potential of native strains of Trichoderma spp., isolated from productive lots in Colombia's Cordoba department, as a solution to manage A. rolfsii. Soil samples underwent serial dilution technique (103 conidia.mL-1) to obtain Trichoderma spp. isolates, which were thoroughly morphologically and molecularly characterized. A total five native strains were identified through sequencing the PCR products using universal ITS primers, and comparisons with the GENBANK database confirmed their identity (OK310695.1, ON237703.1, ON238106.1, ON237737.1, and ON237923.1). Their biocontrol efficacy against A. rolfsii was evaluated using the dual culture technique. Remarkably, all strains exhibited significant biocontrol capacity against the A. rolfsii isolate INVEPAR-05 (OK271308.1), except for Trichoderma viride INVEPAR-T10 (ON237923.1). These findings suggest that Trichoderma spp. could be a potential option to manage the fungus in stevia.

We aimed to evaluate the effect of hypoxia caused by different levels of chronic carbon monoxide (CO) exposure via total AgNOR area/total nuclear area (TAA/TNA) ratio and mean AgNOR number on rat brain tissue. Eighteen Albino Wistar adult male rats were randomly divided into three groups (control as group A, 1000ppm and 3000ppm concentration of CO gas exposed as group B and C, respectively). CO gas was chronically given as 30 min a day during seven days. Statistically significant differences were found among the groups for both mean AgNOR number (χ2=12.051, p=0.002) and TAA/TNA (χ2=12.316, p=0.002), respectively. When the two groups are compared in terms of TAA/TNA ratio, statistically significant differences were detected between control and 1000ppm (Z=-2.882, p=0.004), between control and 3000 ppm (Z=-2.882, p=0.004) for TAA/TNA ratio. Statistically significant differences were found between control and 1000 ppm (Z=-2.882, p=0.004), between control and 3000 ppm (Z=-2.887, p=0.004) for mean AgNOR number. It is important to determine new markers with high sensitivity and easy to apply in order to determine the effect of toxication in different organs and tissues (especially brain tissues) that are chronically exposed to carbon monoxide intoxication. It seems that AgNOR may be used for this purpose.

The current study was planned to simulate runoff due to the snowmelt in the Lidder River catchment of Himalayan region under climate change scenarios. A basic degree-day model, Snowmelt-Runoff Model (SRM) was utilized to assess the hydrological consequences of change in climate. The SRM model performance during the calibration and validation was assessed using volume difference (Dv) and coefficient of determination (R2). The Dv was found as 11.7, -10.1, -11.8, 1.96, and 8.6 during 2009-2014, respectively, while the R2 is 0.96, 0.92, 0.95, 0.90, and 0.94, respectively. The Dv and R2 values indicating that the simulated snowmelt runoff has a close agreement with the observed value. The simulated findings were also assessed under the different scenarios of climate change: a) increases in precipitation by +20 %, b) temperature rise of +2 °C, and c) temperature rise of +2 °C with a 20 % increase in snow cover. In scenario "b", the simulated results showed that runoff increased by 53 % in summer (April–September). In contrast, the projected increased discharge for scenarios "a" and "c" was 37 % and 67 %, respectively. In high elevation data-scarce mountain environments, the SRM is efficient in forecasting future water supplies due to the snowmelt runoff.

Polarisation analysis in the mid-infrared fingerprint region was carried out on thin (∼1μm) Si and SiO2 films evaporated via glancing angle deposition (GLAD) method at 70∘ to the normal. Synchrotron-based infrared microspectroscopic measurements were carried out on the Infrared Microspectroscopy (IRM) beamline at Australian Synchrotron. Specific absorption bands, particularly Si-O-Si stretching vibration, was found to follow the angular dependence of ∼cos2θ, consistent with the absorption anisotropy. This unexpected anisotropy stems from the enhanced absorption in nano-crevices, which have orientation following the cos2θ angular dependence as revealed by Fourier transforming the image of the surface of 3D columnar films and numerical modeling of light field enhancement by sub-wavelength nano-crevices.

Abstract: The probability of existence or not of local extinctions of six species of carnivorous mammals was analyzed by ordering the species composition in nested subsets in 7 fragments of forest habitats in the Coastal Mountains in the Araucanía Region, in southern Chile. Nested Temperature Calculator (NTC) and BINMATNEST computer programs were used to process the results. The first software provided a temperature in the archipelago of 28.21 degree Celsius, whereas the second program showed a nesting temperature of 16.58 degree Celsius. The computer software used in this study suggest that there is no nesting pattern at the level species composition of carnivorous mammal assemblage in the evaluated area, which may be due to the habitat use characteristics of the different carnivorous mammals studied here.

In this paper, we discuss optical properties of the topologically charged rotating black hole. We study the horizon, the photon region, the shadow of the black hole and other observables. The results show that in addition to the black hole spin parameter $a$, the other two parameters, five-dimensional mass parameter $\beta$ and electric charge $q$, are also found to affect the horzion, the photon region and the black hole shadow. In a certain range, with the increase of the three parameters, the horizon distance, shape of the photon region and the black hole shadow will all shrink. Moreover, with the increase of these three parameters, the distortion parameter $\delta_{s}$ gradually increases, while the peak of the black hole energy emission rate decreases.

A deep review of the existing literature on the culpeo ecology is carried out, using scientific articles, book chapters and web resources. For information published before 1988, the synthesis made by a previous report was used. For subsequent information, bibliographic searches were carried out through the main servers, considering all of the generic names used to define the species so far. From this update, new general patterns on ecology, behavior and conservation concerns about culpeos are described. Gaps in current knowledge have been identified and new lines of research are proposed.Most of the studies focused on diet, conflicts with the species in livestock areas, and on the use of space and habitat. We found an incomplete, poor justification for all of the proposed subspecies and their supposed geographical distribution, as well as a scarcity of studies on genetic issues, population dynamics and conservation concerns. It is remarkable that vast regions in South America holding culpeos lacked basic information on the species.Diet studies describe a marked trend towards resources selection at the local level, which supports the view of the culpeo as a facultative trophic specialist. In addition, it has been confirmed that in the high Andes the culpeo is also a top predator that may regulate carnivorous communities, as well as that in arid environments culpeos can act as important seed dispersers. The assessment of the conservation status of the species differs among regions, although there is no sufficient information to reach clear conclusions in most cases. Even so, in Ecuador and Colombia the species has been listed as ‘Vulnerable’. Direct persecution and habitat alteration are considered to be the most important threats that the species is facing in many countries, although other risk factors such as climate change could also have serious consequences for the canid at the global scale.

An endemic pear species spreads in one region of western Georgia, Adjara, called Khechechuri. Pears are dietary source of bioactive components such as polyphenols and triterpenic acid. In addition to its gastronomic value, the aim of the article was to examine and compare phenolic compounds, flavonoids, catechins, phenolic acids, and antioxidant activities in five species of Khechechuri collected from various regions in Adjara region: Adjaristskali, Merisi, Dandalo, Shuakhevi, and Khulo. Five fruit parts, the skin, edible pulp, the whole pear (skin + pulp), juice and the pomace were analyzed and the results were compared. Our study revealed that the amount of total phenolic content found in the skin of West Georgian pear types was as much as 4650 mg/kg. Also, the pear pomace showed significant amount of total phenolic content in all species of Khechechuri. In addition, in all species of Khechechuri pears, flavonoids were found, except in the fruit juice.

The present paper aims to elucidate the impact of climate change on the availability and security of water and energy in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA Region). The region is particularly challenged by a number of factors including a large variability of bio-geographical characteristics, extreme population growth over the last few decades and substantial societal and economical transitions as well as armed conflicts in some of the countries of the region. Anticipated changes in climate conditions will exacerbate the challenges with regard to providing sufficient amounts of water and energy to the communities in the region. Impacts of climate change will materialize as an increasing number of heat waves, primarily in urban structures and the decline in water availability as a result of enhanced droughts and a growing numbers of dry spells. The interrelationships between energy and water and their mutual dependencies are addressed by the Water-Energy-Nexus concept. With regard to the challenges addressed here, Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean are a particular point in case. Mitigation and adaptation strategies include enhanced efficiency of energy and water use, integrated technology assessments regarding electricity generation and the production of potable water and electricity through concentrated solar power.

In the northern Fennoscandian Shield, a vanadium mineralization occurs in the Paleoproterozoic Pechenga–Imandra-Varzuga (PIV) riftogenic structure. It is localized in sulfide ores hosted by sheared basic and ultrabasic metavolcanics in the Pyrrhotite Ravine and Bragino areas and was formed at the latest stages of the Lapland-Kola orogeny 1.90–1.86 Ga ago. An additional formation of vanadium minerals derived from contact metamorphism and metasomatism produced by the Devonian Khibiny alkaline massif in the Pyrrhotite Ravine area. Vanadium forms its own rare minerals (karelianite, coulsonite, kyzylkumite, goldmanite, mukhinite, etc.), as well as it can be an isomorphic admixture in rutile, ilmenite, crichtonite group, micas, chlorites, etc. Vanadium originated from two sources: (1) basic and ultrabasic volcanics initially enriched in vanadium and (2) metasomatizing fluids that circulated along shear zones. The crystallization of vanadium and vanadium-bearing minerals was accompanied by chromium and scandium mineralization. Vanadium mineralization in Paleoproterozoic formations throughout the world is briefly considered. The simultaneous development of vanadium, chromium and scandium mineralizations is a unique feature of the Kola sulfide ores. In other regions sulfide ores contain only two of these three mineralizations produced by one ore-forming process.

As human activities of the countries in the East Asia have been remarkably expanding over recent decades, various problems in relation to ships, such as oil spill and many other coastal marine pollution, are continuously occurring in the coastal region. In order to conserve marine resources and prepare for possible ship accidents in advance, the need for efficient ship management is increasing over time. Multi-satellite, multi-sensor, multi-wavelength or multi-frequency observations make it possible to monitor a variety of vessels in the coastal region. This study presents the results of ship detection methodology applied to multi-spectral satellite images in the seas around Korean Peninsula based on optical, hyperspectral, and microwave remote sensing. To detect ships from hyperspectral images with a few hundreds of spectral channels, spectral matching algorithms are used to investigate similarity between the spectra and in-situ measurements. In the case of SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) images, the Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) algorithm is used to discriminate the vessels from backscattering coefficients of Sentinel-1 SAR and ALOS-2 PALSAR2 images. The present ship detection methods can be extensively utilized for optical, hyperspectral, and SAR images for comprehensive coastal management purposes toward perpetual sustainability in the future.

POH (Peri Orbital Hyperpigmentation) represents a minor clinical entity that attracts immense aesthetic damages and it generates social integration difficulties. This review focuses on the etiopathogenic causes of this entity, differentiating and reclassifying this defect as having, on the one hand, genetic causes of melanic hyperproduction – for Fitzpatrick cutaneous phototypes IV and V – and, on the other hand, both genetic and acquired vascular causes, in individuals with light-coloured skin phototypes. Hence, there is a big difference in the field of pathogenic treatment, for the two entities. In addition, this study notes the direct relationship between skin aging and POH, especially for aquired vascular causes. In this reasoning, other aesthetic deficiencies of the skin in the palpebral area should be also considered, like: blepharochalasis, wrinkles, the anatomical causes of the lower eyelid shading, symmetrical or asymmetric suborbital oedema. All of these issues will complicate the therapeutic decision and subsidiary, the pharmaceutical advice. In this context, the review shows the guidelines for a honest councelling of the patients, pointing the efficiency limit for the topical pharmaceutical medication (depigmentants, exfoliants) versus the necessity of minimally invasive or/ and surgical treatments (in blefarochalasis).

The city-port involves a decisive reality for the economic development of the territories and nations, capable of significantly influencing the conditions of well-being and quality of life, and of making the Circular City Model operational, preserving and enhancing seas and marine resources in a sustainable way, through the construction of appropriate production and consumption models, with attention to relations with the urban and territorial system. The Circular Economy paradigm identifies the ideal context in the city-port to rethink traditional development models and make ports driver areas for the regeneration of the city and metropolitan territories, in compliance with the EU Directive 2014/89 which considers maritime spatial planning as a tool for public authorities and stakeholders to achieve an integrated approach, promoting the development of maritime and coastal economies and the sustainable use of resources. The paper, starting from these assumptions, presents an adaptive decision-making process for the strategies development of the Naples (Italy) commercial port, aimed at re-establishing a sustainable city-port relationship and making operative Circular Economy principles.

Physical inactivity, highly dependent on community and environmental conditions, is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide. The objective of Every Walk You Take initiative was to co-design and test a mHealth intervention prototype (mobile app) to promote active living, and to identify barriers and facilitators for active living in individuals older than 55 years. Community stakeholders that included citizen scientists, teachers, researchers, health professionals and policy makers, familiar with the social and economic burden of aging in developed societies, codesigned the prototype. The app functionalities included recommendations on healthy routes in the city (parks, pedestrian lanes and streets) according to environmental variables (air quality and climate) and personal preferences (route difficulty, distance and geolocalization); and the collection of ecological momentary assessments (pictures and voice notes) to identify the barriers and facilitators to perform the routes. The prototype was tested in a pilot study in two deprived neighbourhoods of Barcelona. A total of 21 citizen scientists [mean age=67 (standard deviation=7)], 86% of them female collected, during two 7-day cycles, 112 comments and 48 pictures describing the barriers and facilitators for active living. The negative impact of dirty or damaged roads on citizen scientists’ motivation to engage in physical activity was highly reported as a barrier indicating that city infrastructure directly influences the public's inclination towards adopting active lifestyles. However, citizen scientists highlighted murals and urban green spaces they encountered, which made their walks more enjoyable and stimulating, as facilitators for active living. Every Walk You Take initiative constitutes the foundation for the development of novel models of health surveillance to address gaps in the current research landscape of active living. Moreover, the increased health literacy of the individuals ensures that they are more conscious about the role of physical activity in healthy ageing.

Persistent land subsidence or uplift can cause serious latent hazards to urban infrastructure. To thoroughly investigate the causes and impacts of land surface deformation, this study examines the case of Wuxi City, focusing on the land fluctuation patterns in the region following the enforcement of the groundwater abstraction prohibition policy in 2005. This research utilizes the PS-InSAR technique to quantify land surface deformations in the Wuxi region from November 2015 to June 2023 and analyzes 100 SAR images to obtain comprehensive spatiotemporal evolution data of the land surface. Furthermore, this study conducts an in-depth analysis of the effects of various factors, including groundwater, precipitation, and soil geology, on the characteristics of land surface deformation. It pioneers the application of the GARCH (Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity) model to analyze the time-series displacement in the study area and innovatively introduces the "amplitude factor" index to assess land surface fluctuations. This study investigates the recent land surface deformation patterns and mechanisms in Wuxi City. By integrating the "amplitude factor", it provides a scientific foundation for future urban development and disaster mitigation strategies in Wuxi City, offering valuable insights for related research.

Globalization, knowledge economy, information technology advancements, and the rise of learning societies contribute to the concept of a learning city. The study examines the economic indicators of Yazd city, Iran, in the context of learning city development. A descriptive-analytical approach with a survey method and cluster sampling was employed. Data analysis involved Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test, single-sample T-test, simple linear regression, and Kendall's W test. The normality test confirmed data normality. The T-test indicated that experts perceived the current state of most variables in Yazd as undesirable. Regression analysis revealed a significant positive association between the economic index and independent variables. Kendall's W test prioritized areas based on economic indicators, with the top 7 and bottom 5 areas identified for focused interventions. The study emphasizes the need to prioritize areas within Yazd based on their economic indicators. This prioritization informs strategies for enhancing social and legal aspects of Yazd's transformation into a learning city. Further research should explore effective methods to cultivate a full-fledged learning environment in the city.

Mountain ecosystems are crucial for global biodiversity conservation. However, their landscape features are constantly changing owing to urban expansion. Understanding the relationships between biotic communities and landscape features is essential for biodiversity conservation. This study aimed to examine the effect of land-cover type on avian communities in Lishui, a mountainous urban area in eastern China. Avian surveys were conducted using a total of 168 line transects across different land-cover types once per season from December 2019 to January 2021. We assessed the diversity of bird communities by calculating various metrics at both taxonomic and functional levels. Among the land-cover types measured, woodland, built-up land, cultivated land, and water bodies significantly influenced bird community diversity and composition. Species richness, species abundance, and functional richness were negatively correlated with the proportion of woodland but positively correlated with the proportion of non-natural land cover, such as built-up and cultivated land. In contrast, functional evenness was positively correlated with the proportion of woodland and grassland but negatively correlated with the proportion of non-natural land cover. Land-cover type also exhibited significant correlations with avian functional characteristics such as diet, foraging strata, and body mass, thereby influencing the overall community structure. Our results indicated that mountainous landscape patterns substantially affect avian communities. Different land-cover types possess varying resource endowments that affect the distribution of avian species. Therefore, urban landscape planning in mountainous areas should carefully consider the various functions provided to organisms by different types of land cover to promote biodiversity.

Colleges and universities play a crucial role in fostering innovation, making it essential to explore effective strategies for promoting innovation at the institutional policy level. This paper focuses on the establishment of intellectual property (IP) model cities as a starting point and conducts an empirical analysis using innovation data from 234 cities and 942 colleges and universities between 2007 and 2017. By constructing a multi-temporal double-difference model, this study reveals that the establishment of IP model cities effectively fosters innovation in colleges and universities. Further analysis demonstrates that this promotion effect is particularly significant in the western region, key cities, key colleges and universities, as well as in the fields of invention and utility model patents. These conclusions withstand a series of robustness tests, confirming their validity. In terms of the underlying mechanisms, it is found that the national IP pilot city policy has a substantial impact on university innovation by promoting research and development (R&D) investment and strengthening innovation cooperation. The insights provided by this study offer valuable policy recommendations for leveraging the innovation potential of the IP model city policy, thereby driving economic transformation, upgrading, and fostering innovation development in China.

This paper aims to analyze the intellectual structure and research fronts in application information security in smart cities to identify research boundaries, trends, and new opportunities in the area. It applies bibliometric analyses to identify the main authors and their influences on the information security and smart city area. Moreover, this analysis focuses on journals indexed in Scopus databases. The results indicate that there is an opportunity for further advances in the adoption of information security policies in government institutions. Moreover, the production indicators presented herein are useful for the planning and implementation of information security policies, and the knowledge of the scientific community about smart cities. The bibliometric analysis provides support for the visualization of the leading research technical collaboration networks among authors, co-authors, countries, and research areas. The methodology offers a broader view of the application information security in smarty city areas and makes it possible to assist new research that may contribute to further advances. The smart city topic has been receiving much attention in recent years, but to the best of our knowledge, there is no research on reporting new possibilities for advances. Therefore, this article may contribute to an emerging body of literature that explores the nature of application information security and smart city research productivity to assist researchers in better understanding the current emerging of the area.

The safety of a pedestrian crossing may depend on infrastructure, vehicular and pedestrian traffic characteristics. This research portrays the safety challenges caused by vehicles on crosswalk in the City of Kigali. Through observing the stopping of drivers in pedestrian crossing events, the study aims to evaluate driver’s behaviors against traffic flow parameters. 10 collection sites were finally selected purposively and randomly to suit observations for data recording. A total of 10,259 crossing events were recorded within 280 hours. Statistical analysis, tests and Binary logistic regression model were used to evaluate the behaviors. Sadly,82.4% drivers violate crosswalks, endangering crossing. Motorcyclists exhibit the most aggressive behavior. Car drivers are relatively less aggressive,60% managed to brake in the events. Buses and bicycles share a negligible collective of 2%, being aggressive and would not stop. Cars are 10.389 times more likely to stop compared to bicycles. Having more vehicles in a row is safer to cross, for each unit increase on the vehicle density scale, there were 1.956 more chances that every driver would stop.13% to 21% of traffic variables predict the variance in stopping behaviors model.

Phytoseiidae inhabit a wide range of herbs, shrubs and trees. Aesculus hippocastanum is an important ornamental tree in Europe and is likely reservoir of these mites. We therefore assessed the species composition and the spatial and seasonal variability in the abundance of Phytoseiidae in city parks in South Bohemia, Czech Republic. Leaf samples were randomly collected from horse chestnut tree branches at eight sites, five times during the vegetation season in 2013. The mites were collected by washing technique and mounted on slides for identification. In total, 13,903 specimens of phytoseiid mites were found, and eight species were identified: Amblyseius andersoni, Euseius finlandicus, Kampimodromus aberrans, Neoseiulella tiliarum, Phytoseilus macropilis, Paraseiulus talbii, Paraseiulus triporus and Typhlodromus (Typhlodromus) pyri. Paraseiulus talbii and P. macropilis were recorded on the leaves of horse chestnut trees for the first time in the Czech Republic in this study. The predominant species was E. finlandicus (96.25%). The number of mites per compound leaf was, on average, 2.53, 10.40, 23.54, 11.59 and 9.27 on the sampling dates in each month between May and September, respectively. The mite density was significantly affected by the sampling site and date.

Transportation, environmental conditions, quality of human life within smart cities, and system infrastructure have all needed practical and dependable smart solutions as urbanization has accelerated in recent years. In addition, the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) provides access to a plethora of cutting-edge, all-encompassing apps for smart cities, all of which contribute significantly to lowering energy consumption and other negative environmental impacts. For smart cities to meet the challenge of using less energy, the authors of this research article suggest planning and implementing an integrated power and heat architecture that puts renewable energy infrastructure and energy-storage infrastructure at the top of the list. To address these issues, we describe a smart proposed NEOSRD architecture that uses a distributed smart area domain to optimize renewable demand energy in a smart city across a wide area network. The energy requirements of desalination procedures are negligible when compared to the total local energy consumption and transportation, a feat accomplished by the proposed NEOSRD system. Here, the computational model shows how the established system is a valuable response to our problems and a cost-effective strategy for creating smarter structural elements that cut down on overall smart cities' energy costs.

The shrimp industry in the Philippines play a vital role in the local and national economy through exports with markets abroad such as in South Korea, Japan, the USA, and others. This study aimed to describe the various cultural and operational characteristics of small-holder and commercial shrimp farms (P. vannamei) in the Davao region. It also evaluated the current risks and challenges faced by the shrimp farmers. A semi-structured questionnaire that focused on shrimp farmers, and operators in the region was used to collect data with N=41 farmers and operator. The results showed that respondents were engaged in small-holder farming activities which had an average yield of 10 tons/ha. On the other hand, the commercial farms that operate intensively had an average yield of 24 tons/ha. Most small-holder operators used electric generator machines to conduct aeration in their farms using paddlewheels and blowers. For the commercial farms, more paddlewheels and blowers were employed per pond compared to small-holder farms. Generally, the income of a farm was related to the yield of farms or the number of fries rather than social factors or size of farms cultivated. In terms of input costs, feeds were found to have the highest input costs, followed by the fry, fuel, labor, and others (fertilizers and water treatment chemicals). Most of the farmers mentioned that they are affected by diseases such as white spot syndrome (60%), black gills (35%), and red tail (5%). They perceived that the main contamination come from the water source (31%). The main threats mentioned are declining shrimp prices in the market, source of fry, water disposal, and overstocking, and water quality. Based on this study, farmers should follow good shrimp aquaculture practices and there is a need for them to regularly monitor their water quality.

The prevalence of overweight/obesity in the adult population in the Philippines has doubled in the past 20 years. Zumba exercise has recently been implemented throughout the Philippines. However, there is scarce information on the effects of Zumba on obesity and Zumba participants’ characteristics in the Philippines. This study described the current practice of Zumba in the Philippines, along with the practitioners’ characteristics, and identified factors associated with Zumba participation. In this observational, cross-sectional study, a structured questionnaire was used to survey 10 Zumba locations in September 2019. Anthropometric measurements of participants were assessed. Respondents included 171 women (88.6%) and 22 men (11.4%), with a mean (±SD) age of 44.1 (± 8.9) years. All respondents answered that Zumba was enjoyable, and some answered “very enjoyable.” Determinants of frequent participation were as follows: being older than the mean age of participants, starting Zumba to enjoy dancing, starting Zumba not to lose weight, shopping mall location, and participation fee required. “To enjoy dance” being a motivation for Zumba practice was identified as a determinant of frequent participation, rather than “to lose weight.” The element of “enjoyable” may strongly influence continuation and frequent participation of Zumba exercise in the Philippines.

The city of Lisbon, has any other capital of a European country, has a large number of issues while managing the waste and recycling containers spread throughout the city. This document presents the results of a study promoted by the Lisbon City Council for trialing LPWAN technology on the waste management vertical under the Lisbon Smart City initiative. Current waste management is done using GSM sensors, and the aim is to use LPWAN to reduce the costs, improve range and reduce provisioning times when changing the communications provider. After an initial study, LoRa was selected as the LPWAN of choice for the trials. The study is composed of multiple use cases at different distances, types of recycling waste containers, placements (underground and surface) and different kinds of waste level measurement LoRa sensors, deployed in order to assess the impact of the different use cases on the LoRa sensor usage. The results shown that the underground waste containers present the most difficult challenge, where the container itself imposes attenuation levels of 26dB on the link budget. The results promoted the deployment of a city wide LoRa network available to all departments inside the Lisbon City Council, and considering the network capacity the network, the network is also available to citizens to be used freely.

Smart city infrastructure has a significant impact on improving the quality of humans life. However, a substantial increase in the urban population from the last few years is posing challenges related to resource management, safety, and security. In order to ensure safe mobility and security in the smart city environment, this paper proposes a novel Artificial Intelligence (AI) based approach empowering the authorities to better visualize the threats and to help them identify the highly-reported crime zones yielding greater predictability of crime hot-spots in a smart city. To this end, it first investigates the Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (HDBSCAN) to detect the hot-spots that have a higher risk of crimes to be committed. Second, for crime prediction, Seasonal Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) exploited in each dense crime region to predict the number of crimes in the future with spatial and temporal information. The proposed HDBSCAN and SARIMA based crime prediction model is evaluated on ten years of crime data (2008-2017) for New York City (NYC). The accuracy of the model is measured by considering different time period scenarios i.e. (a) year-wise, i.e., for each year and (b) for the whole period of ten years, using an 80:20 ratio where 80\% data was used for training and 20\% data was used for testing. The proposed approach outperforms with an average Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 11.47.

According to the changed operative conditions due to lockdown and successive reopening a number of facts can be analysed. The main effects have been detected on: mobility, environment, social media and people flows. While in this first report only mobility, transport and environment are reported. The analysis performed identified a strong reduction of the mobility and transport activities, and in the pollutants. The mobility reduction has been assessed to be quite coherent with respect to what has been described by Google Global mobility report. On the other hand, in this paper a number of additional aspects have been put in evidence providing detailed aspects on mobility and parking that allowed us to better analyze the impact of the reopening on an eventual revamping of the infection. To this end, the collected data from the field have been compared from those of google and some considerations with respect to the Imperial college Report 20 have been derived. For the pollutant aspects, a relevant reduction on most of them has been measured and rationales are reported.

Populaces are prominent indicators of livability in creating ‘street life’ for cities and public spaces. Evaluating people’s experiences is significant in creating a city liveliness and urban heritage trail. The exploration of design strategies that could allow them to integrated and connected with other spaces in the context of city and heritage as well as creating a social life among them. The measuring variables are people’s experience on the spaces; thus, create the pattern of behavior, which cause spaces liveliness, using Kuala Lumpur Heritage Trail as an example of pedestrian priority streets, city environment and heritage value. The aim of this research is to evaluate people’s experiences and analyze their behavior towards the urban street design within cities environment and Malaysia heritage values. The analyzed review comprising on the livability of the street in the context of interrelation between behavioral patter of people and the preferences of urban heritage. Hence, this paper will give an understanding of how people experiences the presence of urban streets and heritage values, thus, bringing liveliness to the streets.

Can the smart city provide a new perspective for public and academic libraries? How does the smart city impact the libraries as cultural and scientific assets? And how can libraries contribute to the development of the smart city? An overview of recent library models, like the learning center or the green library, reveals affinities with the concept of the smart city, especially regarding the central role of information and the integration of technology, people and institution. From this observation, the paper develops the outline of a new concept of the smart library which can be described on four dimensions, i.e. smart services, smart people, smart place and smart governance. However, the smart library concept does not constitute a unique model or project but a process, a way how to get things done, less linear, less structured, more creative and innovative. Also, smartness may not be a solution for all library problems.

Site environments and instrumental characteristics of carbon dioxide (CO₂) measurements operated by local governments in the Kanto Plain, the center of which is Tokyo were summarized for this study. The observation sites were classified into environments of three types: urban, suburban, and woodland. Based on a few decades of accumulated hourly data, the diurnal and seasonal variations of CO₂ concentrations were analyzed as a composite of anomalies from annual means recorded for each site. In urban areas, the highest concentrations appear before midnight in winter. The second peak corresponds to the morning rush hour and strengthening of the inversion layer. Suburban areas can be characterized as having the highest concentration before dawn and the lowest concentration during the daytime in summer in association with the activation of respiration and photosynthesis of vegetation. In these areas, concentration peaks also appear during the morning rush hour. Woodland areas show background features, with the highest concentration in early spring: higher than the global background by about 5 ppmv.

A total of 281 coleopteran species from 41 families were recorded from different sites of an abandoned cut-over peatland designated as the Carbon Measurement Supersite in Kaliningrad Oblast. This beetle assemblage is considered as a baseline (pre-impact) faunal assemblage for the further investigations during the ‘before-after’ (BA) or ‘before-after control-impact’ (BACI) study on a peatland that is planned to be rewetted. The spontaneously revegetated peatland has a less specialised beetle assemblage than at an intact raised bog. Tyrphobiontic species are completely absent from the peatland, while some tyrphophiles (5.3% of the total beetle fauna) are still found as remnants of the former raised bog communities. The predominant coenotic coleopteran group is tyrphoneutral generalists from various non-bog habitats (72.9%). The species composition is associated witho the structure vegetation of the disturbed peatland (fragmentary Sphagnum cover, lack of open habitats, and widespread birch coppice or tree stand), which does not correspond to that of a typical European raised bog. The sampled coleopteran assemblage is divided into several relative ecological groups, whose composition and peculiarities are discussed separately. Possible responses to the rewetting measurements in different coleopteran groups are predicted and briefly discussed. A complex assemblage of stenotopic peatland-specialised tyrphophiles (15 spp.) and the most abundant tyrphoneutral generalists (31 spp.) were assigned as indicators for the environmental monitoring of peatland development.

Vegetation Net Primary Productivity (NPP) plays a crucial role in terrestrial carbon sinks and the global carbon cycle. Investigating the spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region can furnish a solid scientific foundation for green, low-carbon, and sustainable development in China, as well as a reference for other rapidly urbanizing regions. This study focuses on the YRD region as an illustration and utilizes the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA model) to quantify NPP in this region from 2000 to 2018. Investigation into the spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors was conducted using Theil–Sen Median Trend Analysis and Scenario Analysis. The results indicate that (1) the NPP in the YRD region from 2000 to 2018 exhibited pronounced spatial differentiation characteristics, typically exhibiting a spatial distribution pattern of being high in the south and low in the north, high in the west and low in the east. Additionally, the expansion of built-up areas and the reduction of cultivated land have the potential to reduce NPP in the YRD region. Moreover, the influence of LUCC is anticipated to be relatively limited compared to that of climate change. Furthermore, changes in precipitation were found to be positively correlated with changes in NPP, with the effect being relatively more pronounced. The correlation between temperature and NPP demonstrated spatial differentiation, with a mainly positive correlation in the central and southern parts of the YRD and a mainly negative correlation in the northern part. Changes in solar radiation had a negative correlation with changes in NPP. Based on these results, it is recommended that local governments strictly enforce urban development boundaries and manage the disorderly expansion of built-up areas, enhance the regional irrigation infrastructure, and address air pollution, so as to ensure the necessary conditions for the growth of vegetation, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and control regional temperature rise.

Abstract: Community forests are being promoted in Togo as an alternative to the degradation of protected areas and as a means of restoring forest landscapes. The present study is carried out within Kouampante Community Forest (KCF) in Ogaro (Togo, West Africa). It intends to contribute to the sustainable management of KCF. Specially, it aims at: (i) mapping forest ecosystems and analysing their dynamic and (ii) characterising the floristic diversity of the KCF. Forest ecosytems are mapped and their dynamic evaluated based on Google Earth images of 2010 and 2020. The floristic and silvicultural analyses are based on inventories carried out in 13 plots of 1,000 m² each. The KCF is made up mainly by tree/shrub savannahs (58.73%) and croplands/fallow (41.27%) in 2010. These two land use types have undergone changes over the period. In 2020, the KCF had two land use types: tree/shrub savannahs (84.30%) and croplands/fallows (15.70%). The flora census consisted of 59 species grouped in 6 families. The most important plant species are Detarium microcarpum and Vitellaria paradoxa. The Fabaceae were the most abundant and diversified families, followed by the Combretaceae. The demographic structure showed a high abundance of individuals with small diameter and height. This indicates the possibility of a rapid restoration of the native vegetation. Protecting the forest from anthropogenic threats could be crucial for achieving the desired objective.

Previously, pseudomyogenic hemangioendothelioma (PMHE) is regarded as epithelioid sarcoma-like hemangioendothelioma due to significant histologic overlapping and diffuse cytokeratin expression since the first description in 1992. After considerable controversy and long-term debating, it is currently defined as a distinct intermediate malignant, rarely metastasizing neoplasm with vascular/endothelial differentiation in nature. PMHE is characterized by young age (typically < 40 years old) and extremity location (approximately ~80%) with t(7:19) SERPINE1-FOSB fusion as the most common molecular alteration. Here we reported a 59-year-old male presenting with multifocal lesions, including right temporalis muscle, right frontoparietal calvarium, right pterygoid muscles, and right mandibular condyle. Histologic examination of the lesion from right temporal mass revealed a multinodular biphasic lesion composed of sheets and fascicles of elongated spindle cells, and epithelioid small round to ovoid cells infiltrating into the adjacent skeletal muscle admixed with abundant neutrophilic infiltration. No rhabdomyoblast-like cells, prominent nuclear pleomorphism and mitosis were identified. IHC staining showed that the tumor cells were diffusely and strongly positive for FOSB, pan-cytokerain (AE1/AE3), CD31, ERG, and molecular testing further demonstrated a t(9:19) EGFL7::FOSB fusion mRNA. This constellation of morphological, IHC and molecular findings was consistent with the diagnosis of PMHE. This is the first reported case of multiple PMHEs with EGFL7::FOSB fusion in a patient aged more than 50 years old in the head and neck area. Since the vast majority of the differential diagnoses of PMHE are high-grade malignancies with aggressive clinical behavior and PMHE is rarely reported in the head and neck region, awareness of this tumor will avoid misdiagnosis and over-treatments of this entity.

Olive orchards cover over 10 million hectares worldwide, with production techniques undergoing significant changes in the past three decades. The traditional rainfed approach, involving minimal inputs, has given way to irrigated super-intensive systems with higher planting density, in-creased productivity, greater use of fertilizers and phytopharmaceuticals, and total mechaniza-tion. Its impact on soil chemical properties remains a topic of great debate and no definitive consensus has been reached. Our main objective was to examine the different effects of traditional olive orchards and super-intensive ones on soil chemistry over a decade. We collected and ana-lyzed 1500 soil samples from an irrigation perimeter in southern Portugal in 2003 and 2013. Our findings indicate that compared to traditional olive orchards, super-intensive ones show, in a decade, a significant decrease in soil organic matter (less 22.8% - p<0.001) and an increase in so-dization (more 33.8% of Ext Na - p<0.001) highlighting the importance of monitoring this factor for soil fertility. In comparison to other irrigated crops in the region, super-intensive olive orchards promote a significant soil acidification (from 7.12 to 6.58), whereas the pH values of the other crops increase significantly (more 3.3%, 13.5%, 3.0% in corn, tomato and cereals, respectively). Mainly because organic matter levels decrease, soil acidification and soil sodization we can un-derline that hedgerow olive orchards can affect soil characteristics negatively when compared with traditional ones.

Mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs) are a group of illnesses transmitted by mosquitoes and can be caused by bacteria, viruses, or parasites. These diseases represent a significant global burden of infectious diseases, including morbidity and mortality. This systematic review delves into the multifaceted factors contributing to the spread of mosquito-borne diseases (MBDs) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Following PRISMA guidelines, a thorough analysis of peer-reviewed articles from May 1990 to Jan 2023 was conducted, highlighting the interplay of population, environmental, disease, and mosquito factors in disease transmission and prevalence. The review incorporated 31 studies that revealed a complex relationship between various risk factors and the presence of MBDs. Significant associations were observed with age, certain occupations, environmental conditions such as rainfall and temperature, sanitation practices, specific pathogen variants, clinical symptoms, and Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Conversely, gender, socioeconomic status, educational status, and certain sanitation-related factors showed inconsistent association with the spread of MBDs. The review underscores the need for targeted interventions, including vector control, improved sanitation, and educational campaigns to mitigate the spread of MBDs in the MENA region. This review could guide research studies to address data gaps and assist in developing effective surveillance programs in the MENA region. This work emphasizes the need for region-specific public health strategies and further research to understand and curb the burden of these diseases effectively.

Folk residence in the cold region of Northeast China is an important part of China's traditional folk residence, with significant geographical representation. In this paper, we take the residential compounds of villages and towns in the cold region of Northeast China as the research object, summarize four typical layout forms of residential compounds of villages and towns in the cold region of Northeast China, simulate the wind environment of compounds of different layout forms in winter by using the computer numerical simulation software Fluent, and then analyze and evaluate the wind environment of compounds by combining with the evaluation standard of wind speed ratio and considering the area of wind shadows, number of vortices and other factors.

We have used Daphnia cucullata as a model organism for the first time in the four deepest Latvian lakes from the Boreal biogeographical region lakes in order to find the genetic diversity of Daphnia cucullata populations. During the research, the most appropriate microsatellite markers for future genetic studies of Daphnia cucullata populations in Boreal biogeographical region lakes. It was the loci Dgm105 and Dgm101, in which the maximum number of alleles and the maximum number of private alleles were found. The Dgm105 locus had five private alleles (62% of all detected alleles), while the Dgm101 locus had four private alleles (57% of all detected alleles) in these loci. We was determined the observed heterozygosity (Hobs) and the expected heterozygosity (Hexp) level (by Hardy-Weinberg), the number of polymorphic loci, the number of detected alleles in each analyzed microsatellite locus, the average number of alleles at the locus (Na), the average effective number of alleles at the locus (Ne), FST of the population genetic differentiation, the genetic distance (D) (by Nei) and significance (χ2- test) of differences between the levels of observed and expected heterozygosity. It was shown that Daphnia cucullata populations from lakes with a low number of zooplankton taxa (Riča and Geraņimovas-Ilzas) have a higher genetic diversity compared to lakes with a high number of zooplankton taxa (Dridzis and Svente) in lakes. It was found, that Daphnia cucullata populations from lakes Dridzis and Svente have the least genetic distance and these populations form a single genetic group, as confirmed by clustering

Various bat species often occupy the same habitats. Cohabitation should induce different preferences in spatial or trophic components of the bat ecological niche, to reduce their competition. This determines the differences in the trematode fauna of Myotis spp. The purpose of our research was to study the biodiversity of trematodes in syntopic populations of five Myotis species in the Samarskaya Luka National Park. In 2005–2007 we studied 867 bat specimens by the methods of complete helminthological dissection. In total, 11 trematode species were found in Myotis bats. Only three trematode species, Plagiorchis koreanus, Prosthodendrium chilostomum and Parabascus duboisi were revealed in all studied Myotis spp. Prosthodendrium cryptolecithum was recorded for the first time in Russia. Digenean species diversity is higher in Myotis daubentonii and M. dasycneme. The trematode fauna of M. brandtii, M. nattereri and M. mystacinus is less diverse. The determining factor in the infection of bats by trematodes is feeding on semi-aquatic insects, possible second intermediate hosts of these parasites. Our results confirm the data that the ecological niches of the five Myotis species partially overlap. An analysis of the trematode fauna in Myotis spp. showed that in the Samarskaya Luka there may be weak competition for food items among bats.

Solar cosmic rays (SCR) are generated during the primordial energy release in solar flares. This explosive process takes place in the solar corona above the active region. It represents fast release of the magnetic field energy of the current sheet, which is formed near a singular magnetic field line. Solar cosmic rays appear as a result of acceleration of charged particles, mainly protons, by an inductive electric field in the current sheet, equal to the field E=V´B/c near the current sheet. To study the mechanism of solar flares and obtain conditions for stydy SCR acceleration it is necessary to carry out magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation of a flare situation in the solar corona above a real active region. The methods of stabilization were developed which made it possible to solve partially the problem of numerical instabilities. MHD simulations showed complicated configuration near the singular line. Comparison of the results of MHD simulations with observations showed a general agreement of the positions of the current sheets with regions of intense flare radiation. However, there are some problems with the details of such coincidences. The results show the possibility of improving the methods of MHD simulation in order to solve the arisen problems.

Wildfire susceptibility maps display the wildfires occurrence probability, ranked from low to high, under a given environmental context. Current studies in this field often rely on expert knowledge, including or not statistical models allowing to assess the cause-effect correlation. Machine learning (ML) algorithms can perform very well and be more generalizable thanks to their capability of learning from and make predictions on data. Italy is highly affected by wildfires due to the high heterogeneity of the territory and to the predisposing meteorological conditions. The main objective of the present study is to elaborate a wildfire susceptibility map for Liguria region (Italy) by applying Random Forest, an ensemble ML algorithm based on decision trees. Susceptibility was assessed by evaluating the probability for an area to burn in the future considering where wildfires occurred in the past and which are the geo-environmental factors that favor their spread. Different models were compared, including or not the neighboring vegetation and using an increasing number of folds for the spatial-cross validation. Susceptibility maps for the two fire seasons were finally elaborated and validated and results critically discussed highlighting the capacity of the proposed approach to identify the efficiency of fire fighting activities.

Water inrush from coal floor constitutes one of the main disasters in mine construction and mine production, which always brings high risks and losses to the coal mine safe production. As the mining depth of coal fields in North China gradually increased, especially in the complicated structural region, the threat posed by limestone karstic water of coal floor to the safe stoping of mines has become increasingly prominent. In this paper, the Taoyuan coalmine was taken as an example, for which, the directional borehole grouting technology was utilized to reinforce the coal seam floor prior to mining. Also, the factors affecting the grouting effect were analyzed. These were the geological structure, the crustal stress and the range of slurry diffusion. The layout principle of grouting drilling was put forward and the directional drilling structure was designed. The water level observations in the end hole indicated that the target stratum was accurate and reliable. The effect of grouting was validated through the audio frequency electric perspective method and the holedrilling in the track trough. The results demonstrated that the effect of grouting in third limestone and the rock stratum above the third limestone of coal seam floor was apparent. Simultaneously, no water inrush occurred following the actual mining of the working face, which further demonstrated that the grouting reinforcement effect was apparent. The research findings were of high significance for the prevention and control of floor water disaster and water conservation in deep complex structural areas.

Image processing is a field of which its popularity increases and continues and, that grows dynamically with new technologies. Nowadays, image processing finds itself in use in almost every field. One of these uses is undoubtedly in the field of medicine, where diagnosis and treatment planning are made from images and, which is constantly changing with newly developed techniques. Of course, the most important factor in using this so widely in the medical field is the acquisition of images on every medical field. With the help of these images, the complaints can be seen more easily and the doctor can follow a path in the treatment of the disease. In our study, we used the Region Growing segmentation method to detect the intestinal mass. This study compares the area determined by the specialist with the area obtained with the segmentation process and, it is seen that the created software system can be used as an auxiliary system to specialist doctors.

The genus Fritillaria belongs to the widely distributed family Liliaceae. The bulbs of Fritillaria ussuriensis and Fritillaria cirrhosa are valuable herbaceous medicinal ingredients. However, they are still used indiscriminately in herbal medicine. Identification and molecular phylogenic analysis of Fritillaria species is therefore required. Here, we report the complete chloroplast (cp) genome sequences of F. ussuriensis and F. cirrhosa. The two Fritillaria cp genomes were 151,524 and 151,083 bp in length, respectively, including a pair of inverted repeat regions (52,678 and 52,156 bp) separated by a large single copy region (81,732 and 81,390 bp) and small single copy region (17,114 and 17,537 bp). A total of 111 genes in F. ussuriensis and 112 in F. cirrhosa comprised 77 protein-coding genes in F. ussuriensis and 78 in F. cirrhosa, 30 tRNA genes, and four rRNA genes. The gene order, content, and orientation of the two Fritillaria cp genomes exhibited the general structure of flowering plants, and were similar to those of other Fritillaria species. Comparison of the six Fritillaria species’ cp genomes indicated seven highly divergent regions in intergenic spacers and in the matK, rpoC1, rpoC2, ycf1, ycf2, ndhD, and ndhF coding regions. We established the position of the six species through phylogenic analysis. The complete chloroplast genome sequences of two Fritillaria species will be useful genomics resources for identification of Fritillaria species and for studying the phylogenetic relationship among Fritillaria species within the Liliaceae family.

The paper analyses the unused urban spaces in concert with the creative city idea. The research issues are developed as follows. 1. The unused urban places express the city's unsustainability since every urban space has the potential to become such a dead zone. 2. The concept of the creative city covers different creative activities in concert with sustainable development. 3. The unusable urban places result from a modernistic approach that neglects the cultural context, of the city's division into functional zones ignoring integral living intentions and industrial exploitation in the previous city's rims. 4. The Vilnius Sport Palace is an unused space not so much due to the lack of interest, but due to a knot of interests, which politicians cannot cut. The research raises the question of whether the problem of the VSP can be solved by using the idea of the creative city. In terms of the theoretical approach, a comparative analysis is used. Besides literature analyses, the case study is applied. Additionally, the semiotic approach is used. For this purpose, two of Greimas' traditional semiotic squares in combination with Ricoeur's idea of the interpretation's conflict are applied.

The administration and management of urban transport has become an urgent need, in the context of the increasing congestion problems and the environmental and economic damage, resulting from rapid urban expansion witnessed by the Algerian cities in recent times, in order to achieve prosperity and quality of urban life. It became necessary to use the tools of modern technology, which administrative and technical departments are seeking to use primarily to support ways of decision-making and actions required. Boosted by high capabilities in the statistical data and other information is stored, and coordination and tabulation, with the possibility of installation and analysis by operations. Especially against the inability of traditional methods, which have become less able to cope with the changes that led to the urban dynamic currently experienced by urban communities in our country. This research aims to employ geographic information systems in the administration and management of the urban transport network, facing both the population and the local administration of the city of Batna. Which was chosen as a model for major Algerian cities, which is suffering more than ever of transportation bottlenecks, as well as the unintended damage for these networks and other networks. Hence the importance of the subject of our research, which aims to use GIS MapInfo systems as a means to snipe (Data Capture) and storage (Data Storage) and address (Data Processing) and directed by spatial information (Spatial Data) and link them to the descriptive information (Attribute Data). To develop a modern digital data and charts the base of each of these elements of the urban service lines equipment and mechanisms, ... etc. As a tool available to those creating and carrying out urban spaces, as well as decision-makers. It was concluded that the possibilities offered by this system would facilitate the processes of monitoring and management in order to ensure the quality of the service.

This study examined the tourism spatial distribution of nine cities in the Fujian province and assessed the impacts of COVID-19. The modified gravity model found that it was widely dispersed, with uneven and relatively independent tourism development in different cities. The social network analysis showed that tourism connections across cities were significantly reduced after the pandemic. The impacts of brand awareness and transport accessibility on spatial networks were positive in pre-pandemic but became negative during the pandemic. In contrast, tourist volume had negative impacts on spatial networks in pre-pandemic but had positive ones during the pandemic. Tourism resources and market performance had significantly positive impacts in the post-pandemic era. These findings provide advice on tourism recovery and destination management in coping with future critical events. It also contributes to the theoretical gravity framework in tourism and the research scope of the social networks analysis at the city level.

Infrastructure and urban network operators, city users and industrialists are faced with complex issues to ensure the sustainability of the service, maintain, operate and develop their urban sys-tems, while integrating environmental, economic and societal impacts and being resilient to un-expected geopolitical and climatic upheavals. Urban Digital Twins (UDTs), i.e., digital twins for smart cities and territories are considered as promising tools that can enable all stakeholders to collaborate across disciplinary silos and foster digital transformation in urban and territorial pro-jects to ensure sustainability, resilience and increased inventiveness. However, a widely acknowledged challenge to address in the application of UDTs is the lack of interoperability. One significant barrier is the difficulty that stakeholders have in understanding the level of complexity hidden behind this challenge, and thus the adoption of an adequate interoperability technique. This paper proposes a conceptual framework, which is unique for understanding the various lev-els of interoperability required in deploying and using the full potentials of UDTs. We show how such a high-level modeling approach supports the symbolic manipulation of UDTs interoperabil-ity notions and requirements, and thus eases the design of appropriate solutions for large-scale in-teroperable UDTs.

There is currently no set of instruments or procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of cross-sectoral collaboration in the current CFC program. This study aimed to develop a tool for evaluating the cross-sectoral contributions to the CFC program. A paper-based questionnaire was developed by the research team after a preliminary qualitative procedure, and it was subsequently employed to collect data. This process resulted in 17 indicators (41 items) of cross-sectoral collaboration in the development of the CFC in Makassar. These indicators were categorized into five dimensions: governance, administration, autonomy, mutuality, and norms. There were 32 items remaining after several items that were determined not to correspond with the model were eliminated prior to the CFA analysis. According to the CFA results, the five-domain model corresponded to the data with standardized loading factor (SLF)<0.5, indicating that the convergent validity of SLF was acceptable. In addition, these results suggested that the items employed in the tool were really significant in reflecting these five domains. The developed and validated tool was expected to be beneficial in evaluating cross-sectoral collaboration in the CFC program developed in Makassar City. The findings of this study would serve as a benchmark indicator, enabling the assessment process to gauge the significance with which a city is developing with cross-sectoral restriction measures.

Autonomous vehicles (AV)s will transform transport, but public opinion will play a key role in the decision how widely and quickly, they will be adopted. The purpose of the study presented here, was to investigate community’s views on the transition. As a method for primary data collection on public awareness, attitudes, and readiness to use autonomous cars, survey was conducted in Saudi Arabia. Following that, we have used statistical tools to analyse responses. Our findings indicate that the participants are mainly open to use new technology and had favourable attitude towards transition. Ordinal logistic regression model showed a wide variation in public opinion regarding the expected benefits that may accompany the transition, despite an average high score on this factor. Our findings reveal that awareness of AVs' benefits is more positively correlated to the age of participants. Perceived cost, on one side, and convenience, and safety, on the other side, have substantial impact on opinions. Investigation, presented here, shows how AVs are seen in Saudi Arabia. This can guide the development of AVs and deployment in that region.

Due to a shortage of funding and other market challenges, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) have a tough time adopting new technologies. Numerous technological obstacles nega-tively impact the long-term commercial achievement of SMEs. The deployment of Industry 4.0 might resolve several technological challenges. A sustainable city is a difficult structure whose economical, societal, and ecological components interact and compete with one another. There is a dearth of actual methodologies for measuring interaction. The objective of Industry 4.0 is to obtain a better degree of performance effectiveness and profitability, and greater automation. Conse-quently, the purpose of the research is to determine the influence of Industry 4.0 in fostering economic efficiency in small and medium enterprises' sustainability. A Sustainable City using Multi-Criteria Decision Making (SC-MCDM) system is designed in this research to test and achieve sustainable developmental goals. This paper then gives a technique for calculating the interaction between various standards, such as static interactions and dynamical pattern resemblance, as well as the weight variables of every indication generated by the connection. Furthermore, the ap-plication of the suggested technique is proved by assessing the sustainable development goals of twelve Chinese cities within the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) paradigm. From a geographic-temporal viewpoint, spatial variations in city sustainability reveal regional inequalities in sustainability. Indicator scores suggest that the lack of research spending, falling financing in stationary assets, shortage of financial development, and inadequate shared transit are the most significant limiting factors for most communities. Furthermore, the growth of tertiary industries, the improvement of energy performance, the expansion of green areas, and the reduction of pollution emissions are the key driving forces for enhancing sustainability. Compared to other methodologies, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) considers the interplay between conditions, which is an excellent way to assess the sustainability of a city. The experimental findings show the impact of MCDM and sustainability to achieve sustainable development goals.

The biodiversity loss in urban areas has attracted public concern, which is one of the urgent global environmental issues. This study used bibliometric methods to analyze 3351 publications from 1995-2021 that retrieved from the Web of Science and visually represented the state-of-the-art of researches in city biodiversity field. The prolific authors, journals(sources), institutions, and countries are clearly identified. The most cited and influential paper proposed a conceptual framework of associations between urban green space, and ecosystem and human health, and then concluded that green infrastructure could physically and psychologically benefits people by ecosystem services it provides, and make a better socio-economic benefit. The theme hotspots are urbanization, urban ecology, ecosystem services, urban planning, green infrastructure, urban forest and urban park et al. Ingo Kowarik is the most productive author in terms of number of publications. Michael L. McKinney is the most cited authors by the publications in analyzed corpus, who identified how urbanization harms native ecosystems, however, a well ecologically educated population could greatly enhance species richness in all ecosystems. Urban park, garden, fragmented green spaces and green corridor networks could help enhance city biodiversity. In general, the city biodiversity research presents a trend that involves intensive global cooperation, and become more comprehensive.

With the development of society and the economy, the unified planning of architectural style has become a difficult problem in the competition between urban expansion and the protection of tra-ditional buildings in villages and towns. At the same time, it also allows people to re-examine the appearance and quality of life of traditional village buildings. In this paper, the Conditional Gen-erative Adversarial Network (CGAN) is used to construct a method of building facade generation in villages and towns, so as to gradually realize the governance of the style of villages and towns. At the same time, it has also reduced the restoration of the facades of villages and towns and the graphic design of rural tourism products, showing its application value and potential in the field of planning and design. In the research, taking villages and towns in the Wuyishan area of China as an example, the method is used to carry out model training, image generation, and comparison of the derivation results of different assumed building contours and product contours. The research shows that: (1) CGAN can be used to derive and design the facades of conventional civil buildings in villages and towns. (2) In terms of product graphic design, especially the common tourist cultural products fans and water cups, show significant potential. (3) The construction of this method is not only applicable to villages and towns under the World Heritage City, but can be further promoted and used in the future for cities and villages that have a demand for architectural style consistency.

The impacts of climate change on shrimp aquaculture can vary widely and can have environmental and socioeconomic consequences. This study assessed the vulnerability to climate change impacts of selected small-scale shrimp farms of Penaeus vannamei and shrimpfish market vendors in Davao region, Philippines using a modified Fisheries Vulnerability Assessment Tool (FishVool). Shrimp farmers and vendors were interviewed using two separate semi-structured questionnaires. A total of thirty-nine (N=39) shrimp farmers and forty-eight (N=48) market vendors from various market areas within the region were interviewed. Data regarding exposure (E), sensitivity (S), and adaptive capacity (AC) were collected following the FishVool parameters with modifications. Results revealed that overall climate change vulnerability of the shrimp farmers was medium (M), where both exposure and adaptive capacity were low (L) while sensitivity was medium (M). In addition, the shrimp market vulnerability of the various sites examined revealed medium (M) scores for markets in Pantukan, Mabini, Tagum, Maco, Lupon, Davao City, and Digos. But high (H) vulnerability scores for the markets in Panabo and Sta Cruz. Overall, the study provided a better understanding about shrimp farming in relation to climate change impacts and vulnerability and provided information for future shrimp farm management, marketing and climate change adapation in the region.

Background: Gastrointestinal parasitic infections are one of the global health concerns in developing countries like Bangladesh. Among them, Cryptosporidium spp. plays an essential role in causing diarrhea, malnutrition, and poor cognitive function, especially in children. The study was conducted to identify the frequency of cryptosporidium cases and other parasitic agents. Methods: A Cross-sectional observational study was conducted among 219 hospitalized children with diarrhea. The conventional microscopic technique was applied for parasitic detection. A particular staining procedure was performed to identify oocysts of Cryptosporidium spp. And PCR was conducted to determine the SSU rRNA and gp60 gene of Cryptosporidium. Results: Cyst of Giardia, ova of Ascaris lumbricoides (AL), Trichuris trichiura (TT), AL, and TT were identified in 2.3%, 1.4%, 0.5%, and 0.9% samples by wet mount preparation. The distribution of Cryptosporidium spp. was 1.4% and 4.1%, which was detected by the staining method and nested PCR. Factors independently associated with Cryptosporidium infection are unsafe water, lack of regular hand washing, and insufficiency of exclusive breastfeeding. Conclusions: This is the first report to detect the frequency of Cryptosporidium and other intestinal parasites and associated factors in Chattogram city of Bangladesh.

Urban areas have very complex spatial structures. These spatial structures are primarily composed of a complex network of built environments, which evolve rapidly as the cities expand to meet the growing population’s demand and economic development. Therefore, studying the impact of spatial structures on urban heat patterns is extremely important for sustainable urban planning and growth. We investigated the relationship between surface temperature obtained by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER, at 90 m spatial resolution) on the current EOS-Terra platform and different urban components based on the classification of high-resolution QuickBird imagery. We further investigated the relationships between surface temperature and building footprint and land use information acquired from the New York City (NYC) Department of City Planning. The ASTER image reveals fine-scale urban heat patterns in the NYC metropolitan region. The dark and medium-dark impervious surfaces, along with bright surfaces, generate higher surface temperatures. Even with highly reflective urban materials, the presence of impervious materials leads to an increased surface temperature. At the same time, trees and shadows are effective in reducing urban heat. The data aggregated to the census tract reveals high-temperature clusters in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx region of NYC. These clusters are associated with industrial and manufacturing areas and multi-family walk-up buildings as dominant land use. The census tracts with more trees and higher building height variability generate lower surface temperatures, consistent with shadow cast by high-rise buildings and trees. The results of this study can be valuable for urban heat island modeling on the effects of building heights variability and tree shadows on small-scale surface temperature patterns. It can also help identify the risk areas during extreme heat events to protect public health.

Mexico is currently facing important water management challenges. Cities in the country are facing water scarcity and at the same time, they struggle with floods during the raining season. The water sensitive urban design (WSUD) approach has proved to be helpful in tackling urban water challenges such as floods and water scarcity and it is being implemented in cities around the world. The WSUD approach highlights the role of both the water cycle and the water utilities systems, when transitioning towards a water sensitive stage. Therefore, the objective of this research is to analyse the current situation of the water cycle and the water utility (SIAPA). To do so, we have selected the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara (MAG) and proposes a case study approach. Within our case of study, we answer two questions: 1) What are the causes of water scarcity and flooding in the MAG? and 2) What are the proposals to solve these problems under a WSUD approach? By answering these questions, we identified that the water management in the MAG corresponds to a single purpose infrastructure. This type of management does not contribute to solve the problems of water scarcity and floods. The water supply policy is based only on the construction of large dams disregarding the storage and use of rainwater, and reuse of greywater, and water-conservation devices. In order to transition towards a water sensitive stage, a WSUD approach that includes multi-purpose infrastructure should be considered. Such as green roofs, swales, rainwater gardens, infiltration trenches, etc.

This paper aims determine the efficacy of Kamias (Averrhoa bilimbi) fruit as a ripening agent for Cavendish banana (Musa acuminata). A quantitative experimental research design was employed in the study. Unripe Cavendish bananas and Kamias fruits were procured from the local market and the fruits were extracted to three different concentrations. Calcium carbide was used as positive control. Six bunches of unripe bananas were allowed to ripe and labeled according to the type of treatment. Ripe bananas were then subjected to sensory evaluation, titratable acidity and Benedict’s tests. Results showed that the use of Kamias fruit allowed ripening of banana for 76 hours while a 25-75% concentration of Kamias fruit extract allowed ripening for 76-96 hours. The bananas treated with Kamias Extract 75% had the highest level of acceptability and titratable acidity while the bananas treated with Kamias fruit had the highest level of reducing sugar. One-Way MANOVA reported that there is a significant difference in the duration of ripening, level of acceptability, titratable acidity and level of reducing sugar when treated with various ripening agents (p<0.05).

Access to food systems is essential to sustain urban life. In this paper, we discuss the differences concerning accessibility levels to food systems among potential consumers in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The goal was to characterize spatial mismatches regarding food opportunities and identify suitable areas for sustainable food mile solutions, such as non-motorized home delivery and purchase trips. For this, we have spatially related: (i) the population concentration; (ii) the income of households; and (iii) accessibility measures considering both the spatial structure of food retailers and the distance between households and stores, considering the food mile. We have then used spatial statistics and spatial analysis methods to determine the spatial pattern of variables and the cumulative opportunity measure for households. There is great spatial differentiation regarding the accessibility levels of food retailers and the results can be considered to support the development of policy and land use regulation that can stimulate non-motorized and collaborative delivery as an effective last-mile solution.

In order to realize the sustainable utilization of water resources and the sustainable development of economy, the evaluation index system of water use efficiency system and economic development system was constructed. Entropy weight method and comprehensive evaluation method were adopted to determine the index weights and conduct comprehensive evaluation for the two systems. The coupling coordination model was used to calculate the coupling degree, coordination degree and coupling coordination degree of the two systems. The annual coupling stage and coupling coordination intensity of the two systems were analyzed and determined. The results showed that the comprehensive evaluation values of both water use efficiency system and economic development system in Jinan City increased greatly from 2008 to 2017, and showed a changing trend of ups and downs. The two systems were in the antagonistic stage, and were gradually approaching the running-in stage, indicating that they were in the state of common development. The coupling coordination degree of the two systems gradually increased in waves, progressed from the moderately to the highly coordinated coupling. In the future, if the water control path appropriate to Jinan City can be explored actively, the water-saving kinetic energy of economic development can be increased constantly, and the linkage effect between economic development and water resources utilization can be given full play to, the two systems will be in the orbit with the benign interaction and healthy harmonious development.

Abstract: Afghanistan witnessed rapid urbanization in recent decades due to the post-war recovery process. When the war ended in 2001 by fall of Taliban regime, most Afghans refugees returned to urban areas of Afghanistan, especially in Kabul city. Moreover, the rapid urbanization, migration from rural areas, and population growth impacted on Kabul city with the manifestation of informal settlement. The residents of informal settlements suffer social and economic exclusion from the benefit and opportunity of an urban environment. Furthermore, the residents of informal settlements experience disadvantages by geographical marginalization, shortage of basic infrastructure, improper governance framework, vulnerability into the effect of poor environment, and natural disasters. With all the above, the problems of informal settlements are considered enormous challenges for informal residents. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the proper approaches to addressing informal settlement problems in District 13 of Kabul city. To reach the aim of the research, the interview and questionnaires survey used as an instrument in data collection. Consequently, the finding of this paper indicates that through the resident’s preferences, government capacity, and District 13 physical condition there are three approaches which can be implemented and adopted for improvement of informal settlement in District 13 of Kabul city, which is settlement upgrading as the first option, the land readjustment as the second option and urban redevelopment as the last option.

3D city models are being extensively used in applications such as evacuation scenarios and energy consumption estimation. The main standard for 3D city models is the CityGML data model which can be encoded through the CityJSON data format. CityGML and CityJSON use polygonal modelling in order to represent geometries. True topological data structures have proven to be more computationally efficient for geometric analysis compared to polygonal modelling. In a previous study, we have introduced a method to topologically reconstruct CityGML models while maintaining the semantic information of the dataset, based solely on the combinatorial map (C-Map) data structure. As a result of the limitations of C-Map's semantic representation mechanism, the resulting datasets could suffer either from semantic information loss or the redundant repetition of them. In this article, we propose a solution for a more efficient representation of both geometry, topology and semantics by incorporating the C-Map data structure in the CityGML data model and implementing a CityJSON extension to encode the C-Map data. In addition, we provide an algorithm for the topological reconstruction of CityJSON datasets to append them according to this extension. Finally, we apply our methodology to three open datasets in order to validate our approach when applied to real-world data. Our results show that the proposed CityJSON extension can represent all geometric information of a city model in a lossless way, providing additional topological information for the objects of the model.

Smart cities and smart technologies have been incorporated into several axes to increase the comfort of life. The connected building's concept was introduced for this reason. However, it was utilized in power management for better organizing, greater buildings management, and monetary savings. Cars technologies and the number of vehicles are also involved; Nowadays, each house has at least one car. Technological evolution helped to make those cars intelligent and connected. In the latest versions, the majority of those cars were equipped with several sensors, several communication protocols and a principal electrical control unit (ECU), especially for the electric vehicle model. This type of architecture was an essential element in a smart city, thus, it helps to manage power and decide when a vehicle needs to be charged. Based on the smart city concept and using possible network communication between buildings and vehicles, EVs can share their own information related to the powerful experience on a specific path. This information can be gathered in a gigantic database and used for managing the power inside these vehicles. In this field, we propose in this paper a new approach for power management inside an electric vehicle based on bi-communication between vehicles and buildings. The proposed approach is founded on two essential parts; the first is related to vehicles’ classification and buildings’ recommendation according to different car positions. Two algorithms, related to the SVC and neural network was employed in this work for implementing the final process. Different possibilities and situations were discussed for this approach. The proposed method was tested and validated using Simulink/Matlab application. The state of charge of the used battery was compared at the end of this work, for two specified cases, for showing the contribution of this approach.

Logistics in urban areas are currently suffering a radical transformation due to increasingly population concentration and the massive use of cars as the preferred transport mode. These issues have resulted in higher pollution levels in urban environments and traffic congestion impacting the world globally. Facilitating the use of sustainable transport modes is widely regarded as a necessity to cope with these adverse effects on citizens’ life quality. Hence, some regions, as the European Union, are encouraging bus transport firms to make their business models more environmentally and socially sustainable. The aim of this research is thus to explore how practices adopted by urban bus companies can improve cities’ sustainability. With this in mind, a combined Importance Performance Analysis (IPA)-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method was applied. In this way, both environmental and social sustainability effects of developed practices were represented through hierarchical structures separately. Subsequently, importance and performance ratings of practices in each sustainability dimension were estimated, and thus two IPA grids were generated. These grids support managers in the establishment of more effective action plans to improve logistics sustainability in cities. Findings also provide guidance to governments on the practices that should be promoted in future urban mobility plans.

Since smart cities aim at becoming self-monitoring and self-response systems, their deployment relies on close resource monitoring through large-scale urban sensing. The subsequent gathering of massive amounts of data makes essential the development of event filtering mechanisms that enable the selection of what is relevant and trustworthy. Due to the rise of mobile event producers, location information has become a valuable filtering criterion as it not only offers extra information on the event described but also enhances trust on the producer. Implementing mechanisms that validate the quality of location information becomes then imperative. The lack of such strategies in cloud architectures compels the adoption of new communication schemes for IoT-based urban services. To serve the demand for location verification in urban event-based systems (DEBS), we have designed three different fog architectures that combine proximity and cloud communication. Moreover, we have successfully assessed their performance using network simulations with realistic urban traces.

As a part of the proposed article, the authors presented comprehensive data analysis for movement data that comes from a positioning system based on ultra-wide band (UWB) technology. For purpose of this article, a test was carried out during which the car equipped with cruise control overcame the given path at a speed from 10 km/h to 60 km/h. The obtained motion models (information about position) have been filtered through a series of filters - from fundamentals filters with a variable window (median, moving average, Savitzky-Golay filter), through more complex ones like the Wiener or Kalman filter. As a result, the authors proposed a form of data analysis and filtration depending on the speed of the moving object. In addition, the maximum accuracy that can be obtained for a given traffic model was also determined. The whole research proves that it is possible to use a system based on UWB technology in positioning objects for urban applications - smart city, in industry 4.0 applications as well as for positioning autonomous vehicles in urban applications, such as well as on highways to maintain cohesion of convoys vehicles.

The relationship between city size, coastal land use and air temperature rise with distance from coast during summer day is analyzed using the meso-scale Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) model in five coastal cities in Japan with different sizes and coastal land use (Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima and Sendai) and inland cities in Germany (Berlin, Essen and Karlsruhe). Air temperature increased as distance from the coast increased, reached its maximum, and then decreased slightly. In Nagoya and Sendai, the number of urban land use in coastal areas is less than the other three cities, where air temperature is a little lower. As a result, air temperature difference between coastal and inland urban area is small and the curve of air temperature rise is smaller than those in Tokyo and Osaka. In Sendai, air temperature in the inland urban area is the same as in the other cities, but air temperature in the coastal urban area is a little lower than the other cities, due to about one degree lower sea surface temperature influenced by the latitude. In three German cities, the urban boundary layer may not develop sufficiently because the fetch distance is not enough.

This paper presents a research carried out in the city of Chillan, a medium size city located on the southern limit of the Chilean Mediterranean domain, at 36º 36`s south latitude. Chillán provides a good representative example of warm summers in central and southern Chilean cities. Five public spaces were selected, representing different typologies and relating to different urban background conditions. Users in these public spaces were observed, counted and photographed five times a day (12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 hours, local time) during a heat wave event in the summer of 2016, while meteorological parameters were established at different points within the public space. The variables evaluated were impervious surfaces, Skyview factor, H/W, azimuth, shadow and radiation. Local public environmental management should pay attention to the complex relations between urban climate, public spaces and thermal comfort since they affect the quality of life of the most vulnerable sectors of the population. This is particularly important given the increasing episodes of high temperatures and intense heat waves occurred in the city of Chillán in recent summers, which are related to urban heat islands and climate change.

Few-shot object detection (FSOD) aims to address the challenge of requiring a substantial amount of annotations for training in conventional object detection, which is very labor-intensive. However, existing few-shot methods achieve high precision with the sacrifice of time-consuming for exhaustive fine-tuning, or take poor performance in novel-class adaptation. We presume the major reason is that the valuable correlation feature among different categories is insufficiently exploited, hindering the generalization of knowledge from base to novel categories for object detection. In this paper, we propose Few-Shot object detection via Correlation-RPN and Transformer Encoder-Decoder (CRTED), a novel training network to learn object-relevant features of inter-class correlation and intra-class compactness while suppressing object-agnostic features in the background with limited annotated samples. And we also introduce a 4-way tuple-contrast training strategy to positively activate the training progress of our object detector. Experiments over two few-shot benchmarks (Pascal VOC, MS-COCO) demonstrate that, our proposed CRTED without further fine-tuning can achieve comparable performance with current state-of-the-art fine-tuned works. The codes and pre-trained models will be released.

One of the main factors that influence the fertility of cattle in grazing systems in hot tropical climates is heat stress. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of season, breed, hormonal and physiological condition on the quantity and quality of cumulus-oocyte complexes (COCs) and embryos produced in vitro, from Romosinuano (RM) and Tropical Milking (TM) donors. Three ovum pick-up and in vitro fertilization (OPU-IVF) were performed, one per season; hot dry (HD; 10, 10), hot humid (HH; 9, 9) and fresh dry (FD; 7, 10) in RM and LT donors. Serum levels of cortisol, insulin and glucose were measured, in addition to heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR) and rectal temperature (RT). Effect of season x genotype interaction (p≤0.05) was observed in all COCs variables and only in cleavage embryos (CLI) (p≤0.05). Body weight (BW) affected all COCs variables (p≤0.01), except unviable (UNV) although affected degenerated embryos (DEG) (p≤0.01) and total blastocysts (BLAST) (p≤0.01). Cow age only affected viable COCs (VIAB) (p ≤ 0.05), code one blastocysts (BC1) and BLAST (p≤0.01). Cortisol affected total COCs (COCsT), VIAB and total matured in vitro (TMIV) (p≤0.01), as well as CLI, BC1 (p≤0.01) and BLAST (p≤0.05). Insulin affected COCsT (p≤0.01), UNV (p≤0.05), denuded oocytes (DE) (p≤0.01), BC1 and code two blastocysts (BC2) (p≤0.01). Glucose affected all COCs variables (p≤0.01), except UNV and all embryo variables except BC2. HR affected COCsT, DE, TMIV (p≤0.01), CLI, BLAST and DEG (p≤0.05). RR affected COCsT, UNV, VIAB, CLI (p≤0.05), BC1, BLAST and DEG (p≤0.01). RT only affected DE, VIAB (p≤0.01) and BLAST (p≤0.05). The seasonal climatic year variation of Veracruz and changes in physiological and hormonal variables have diverse effects on the cumulus-oocyte complexes and embryos produced by RM and TM donors.

Permafrost covers about 23% ~ 25% of the land in the northern hemisphere, mainly in Russia, Canada, Alaska, Northeast and Qinghai Tibet Plateau (QTP) in China. Many engineering especially the transportation has been in the permafrost regions above. Under the action of highways construction and global warming, permafrost under infrastructures is degraded and causes serious damage. Two phases closed thermosyphon (TPCT) is a widely accepted green countermeasure against the problem in permafrost regions. Although it has been applied to prevent permafrost degradation, their application presents significant challenges on account of the stronger endothermic action of asphalt pavement. This paper focused on the thermosyphon technology and application in the permafrost. Moreover, the article highlighted the excellent working performance of the TPCT that improving the stability of the infrastructures and prevent it degrading due its excellent efficiency of heat transfer. The industrial applications of the TPCT were also summarized, along with their limitations. Finally, the results reported in this paper can provide a valuable guidance for the design of the TPCT and construction of the permafrost regions in the future.

Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) is recognized for its numerous health benefits attributed to its rich phenolic components. NMR has emerged as a prevalent technique for precisely identifying these compounds. Among Mediterranean countries, Greece stands as the third-largest producer of olives, with the Epirus region notably advancing in olive cultivation, contributing significantly to the dynamic growth of the region. In this study, an NMR method was employed based on the acquisition of an 1H NMR spectrum along with the multiple resonant suppression in order to increase the sensitivity. Using the above method, 198 samples of extra virgin olive oil, primarily sourced from the Epirus region were analyzed and both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of phenolic compounds were acquired. In addition, we examined the effect of various factors, such as, variety, harvest month and region origin on the phenolic compounds’ concentration. The results revealed an average total phenolic content of 246 mg/kg, closely approaching the EU health claim limit of 250 mg/kg. Approximately 15% of the samples were confidently characterized as high-phenolic olive oil. The highest concentrations were observed in Thesprotia samples, with several Lianolia variety exceeding the total phenolic content of 400 mg/kg. Statistical tests demonstrated a significant influence of the olive variety and the month of fruit harvest on phenolic component concentration, followed by the region of origin. A very strong correlation was noted between the total phenolics content and the levels of oleocanthal and oleacein, with a correlation coefficient (r) of 0.924. Upon optimization of all factors affecting olive oil quality, the majority of EVOO from the Epirus region have the potential to be characterized as high in phenolic content.

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a hematologic malignancy characterized by progressive accumulation of a rare population of CD5+ B lymphocytes in peripheral blood, bone marrow and lymphoid tissues. CLL exhibits remarkable clinical heterogeneity, with some patients presenting with indolent disease and others progressing rapidly to aggressive CLL. The significant heterogeneity of CLL underscores the importance of identifying novel prognostic markers. Recently, the RAS-related gene RRAS2 has emerged as both a driver oncogene and a potential marker for CLL progression, with higher RRAS2 expression associated with poorer disease prognosis. Although missense somatic mutations in the coding sequence of RRAS2 have not been described in CLL, this study reports the frequent detection of three somatic mutations in the 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) affecting positions +26, +53, and +180 downstream of the stop codon in the mRNA. An inverse relationship was observed between these three somatic mutations and RRAS2 mRNA expression, which correlated with lower blood lymphocytosis and better prognosis. These findings highlight the importance of RRAS2 overexpression in CLL development and prognosis and point to somatic mutations in its 3'UTR as novel mechanistic clues. Our results may contribute to the development of targeted therapeutic strategies and improved risk stratification for CLL patients.

Towards better understanding of factors controlling carbon (C) exchange between inland waters and atmosphere, we addressed inorganic carbon cycle in semi-arid lakes of Central Eurasia, subjected to strong impact of on-going climate change. For this, we assessed the hydrochemical vari-ability and quantified its control on formation of authigenic carbonate minerals, occurring within the upper layer of sediments in 43 semiarid lakes located in the southwest of Western Siberia (Central Eurasia). Based on measurements of pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), cationic and anionic composition, dissolved organic and inorganic C, as well as textural and mineralogical characterization of bottom sediments using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, we demonstrate that lake water pH and TDS are primarily controlled by both lithological and climatic context of the lake watershed. We have not revealed any direct relationships between lake morphology and water chemistry. The most common authigenic carbonates scavenging atmospheric CO2 in the form of insoluble minerals in lake sediments were calcite, aragonite, Mg-calcite, dolomite and hydro-magnesite. The calcite was the most common component, aragonite mainly appears in lakes with sediments enriched in gastropod shells or artemia cysts, while hydromagnesite was most common in lakes with high Mg/Ca molar ratios, as well at high DIC concentrations. The relationships between mineral formation and water chemistry established in this study can be generalized to a wide suite of arid and semi-arid lakes in order to characterize current status of inorganic C cycle and predict its possible modification under on-going climate warming such as water temperature rise and change of hydrological connectivity, primary productivity and nutrient regime.

In this study, based on frost formation data provided by Harbin Meteorological Bureau, combined with geographical factors, temperature and population density, linear fitting, Mann-Kendall mutation test, pettitt method and sliding T test were used to analyze the spatio-temporal variation characteristics of frost date in Harbin Municipality and the effects of geographical factors, temperature and population density on frost regularity. The results showed that (1) The earliest year of FSD appeared was 1966 and 1967, on the 255th, i.e., August 18th, and the latest was 283 days, i.e., October 10th, 2006. The earliest year in which the FED appeared was April 24th of 2015, the 114th day of that year, and the latest was April 21st of 1974, the 141st day of that year. The year with the most frost was 2012, with 161 days, and the year with the shortest was 1966, with 123 days. (2) Throughout the study period, FSD increased by 7.8 days at a rate of -1.27d/10a, FED increased by 10.9 days at a rate of 1.77d/10a, and FFS increased by 18.9 days at a rate of 3.05d/10a. The tendency rate of FSD and FFS at each site in Harbin showed an increasing trend. For FED, the tendency rate of some sites showed an increasing trend. In general, FSD showed a delayed trend, FED showed an advanced trend, and FFS showed a prolonged trend. Using the method of unary linear regression, FSD of each site showed an increasing trend, FFS showed an increasing trend, and FED showed a decreasing trend in general. (3) Throughout the study period, FSD was mutated in 2000, and the arrival time of it in the study area averaged the 265th, i.e., September 22nd, and after that, the arrival time of it changed to the 272nd, i.e., September 29th of that year. FED was mutated in 2006, and the arrival time of it in the study area averaged 128th, i.e., April 8th. After the mutation, the arrival time of FED changed to 121st, i.e., April 1st of that year. FFS was mutated in 2004. Before the mutation, with an average arrival time of 137days in the study area .But after that, the time changed to 150 days.(4) FSD and FFS in Harbin Municipality were negatively correlated with latitude and positively correlated with temperature, while FED was positively correlated with latitude and negatively correlated with temperature. The FSD, FED and FFS in the central part of Harbin Municipality were the earliest, the latest and the longest, respectively, so the Pearson correlation coefficient method and the influence of longitude could not be reflected in the multiple regression. Several factors were judged by grey correlation analysis method. The longitude is significantly related to FSD, FED and FFS.

Deforestation is an important environmental problem in México and a key promoter of regional climate change through modifying the surface albedo. The objective of this research was to characterize the impact of deforestation and land use changes on surface albedo (α) and climate patterns in the Municipality of Tapalpa, Jalisco, México between the years 2014 and 2021. The main land cover types are coniferous forests (CF), oak and gallery woodlands (OGW), and annual agriculture (AA); which represent more than 88% of the regional territory (1066.03 km2). We used 2014 and 2021 Landsat 8 OLI images with topographic and atmospheric correction, in order to develop an inventory of albedo values for each land cover type in both time scenarios. Albedo images were generated by using the equation proposed by Liang in 2001, which is based on the reflectance of the bands 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7. Differences in albedo values were calculated between the years 2014 and 2021, and those differences were correlated with variations in climate parameters, for which we used climate data derived from the WRF model. In addition, the different land use changes found were classified in terms of triggers for increasing or decreasing surface albedo. Results showed that between 2014 and 2021, at least 38 events of land use change or deforestation occurred, with albedo increments between 1 and 11%, which triggered an average increment of 0.57% of the regional surface albedo in comparison to 2014 scenario. From 2014 to 2021, the albedo for CF, OGW, and AA, increased significantly (p&lt;0.001; Mann-Whitney U Test) by 79, 12, and 9%, respectively. In addition, the regional albedo increment was found to be significant and negatively correlated (p&lt;0.01 Spearman’s coefficient) with relative humidity (RH), maximum temperature (Tmax), minimum temperature (Tmin), and diurnal thermal range (DTR). The decrease in the regional values of relative humidity in 2021, occurred even when in that year the annual precipitation levels were higher than those of 2014, hence, reinforcing the fact of a possible climatic effect of the regional albedo changes. Conversion of CF and OGW into AA, perennial agriculture (PA), or grassland (GR) always yielded an albedo increment, whilst the conversion of AA to irrigation agriculture or PA triggered a decrease in albedo, and finally, the pass from GR or AA to protected agriculture caused albedo increase or decrease, depending on the greenhouse covers materials. Reducing deforestation of CF and OGW, conversion of AA or GR into PA, and selecting adequate greenhouse covers could help to mitigate regional climate change.

Urban vitality, understood as a key factor for the achievement of cities’ sustainability, shows a strong relationship with urban morphology. The city theorist Jane Jacobs suggested morphologi-cal aspects to promote vital cities already in the 1960s, which remain valid in the present. How-ever, few studies in the Andean region quantitatively exemplify this. This paper aims to test the measurement of urban vitality in a neighborhood of Quito, Ecuador, called La Mariscal, inte-grating Jacobs’ approach. In particular, three urban vitality indexes are evaluated with the appli-cation of GIS software using cadastral data obtained from the municipality and field data col-lection. Results show that the context-based previous knowledge and the scale of analysis are es-sential factors in the configuration of dimensions, indicators, and spatial representation of any urban vitality index. In the study area land use mixture, contact opportunity, and accessibility dimensions are fundamental. Regarding indicators, the incorporation of the informal small-scale commerce, the quality of sidewalks, the street slope, and the good-conditioned street furniture is recommended. Finally, a hybrid representation (raster and vectorial) is suggested to precisely measure urban vitality at a block scale. Altogether, by providing a comparative approach, we in-tend to bring a useful framework for researchers and planners to study urban vitality in Andean cities.

Exploring the relationship between cereal yield and remotely sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is of great importance to decision-makers and agricultural stakeholders. In this study, an approach based on the Pearson correlation coefficient and linear regression method is carried out to reveal the relationship between cereal yield and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) NDVI data in the Fez-Meknes region of Morocco. The results obtained show strong correlations reaching 0.70 to 0.89 between NDVI and grain yield. The linear regression model explains 58 to 79% of the variability in yield in regional provinces marked by the importance of cereal cultivation, and 51 to 53% in the mountainous provinces with less agricultural land devoted to major cereals. The regression slopes indicate that a 0.1 increase in NDVI results in an expected increase in grain yield of 4.9 to 8.7 quintals (q) per ha, with an average of 6.8 q/ha throughout the Fez-Meknes region. RMSE ranges from 2.12 to 4.96 q/ha. These results are promising in terms of early yield forecasting based on MODIS NDVI data.

The purposes of this study are to analyze the groundwater quality of Ogallala Aquifer and evaluate the hydrological characteristics in the southern High Plains region of the Permian Basin, Texas. Levels of chloride, fluoride, nitrate, pH, selenium, and total dissolved solids (TDS) were analyzed through the years 1990-2016. A total of 133 wells were collected from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) which is an open database by the US government. Statistical analysis was utilized to evaluate the groundwater quality and propose trends. The average levels of the contaminants were compared to their respective Maximum Contaminant Levels (MCL) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Potential human health risks that each contaminant possesses were described. Possible sources of each contaminant were discussed with oil/gas activities, agricultural practices, and other human actions impact its conditions. This research provides important information for groundwater quality of Ogallala aquifer and contributes on understanding the response to development in the Permian Basin, Texas.

This paper discusses the preliminary results of archaeological surveys conducted in the Juuku Region of north-central Kyrgyzstan on the south side of Lake Issyk kul. Our goal was to document ancient and contemporary agropastoral systems over a four millenia time period. During the surveys about 350 loci were identified as settlements, burial mounds, graves, single artifact finds, and artifact scatters (ceramic). The areas of Juuku Valley survey included two discrete polygons: Polygon 1, Lower Juuku at 1750 to 1950 m asl in elevation and Polygon 2, Chak Juuku or Upper Eastern Branch Juuku Valley at 2060 to 2100 m asl in elevation. Three radiometric dates and preliminary archaeobotanical studies were conducted at three exposed profile cuts. The methods included here are: (1) pedestrian surveys; (2) use of digital maps (Google Earth, Encarta); (3) placing archaeological loci within known chronological time periods; (4) AMS dating of charcoal samples collected from profile deposits; and (5) preliminary identification of plant remains found from archaeobotanical samples. The results of our research represent the first step toward inventorying and interpreting archaeological data in the Juuku Valley derived from field studies.

In early 2020 from April to early June, the metropolitan area of Sydney as well as the rest of New South Wales (NSW, Australia) experienced a period of lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19 virus in the community. The effect of reducing anthropogenic activities including transportation had an impact on the urban environment in term of air quality which is shown to have improved for a number of pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxides (NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO), based on monitoring data on ground and from satellite. Besides primary pollutants CO and NOx emitted from mobile sources, PM2.5 (primary and secondary) and secondary ozone (O3) during the lockdown period will also be analysed using both air quality data and modelling method. The results show that NO2, CO and PM2.5 levels decreased during the lockdown, but O3 instead increased. The change in the concentration levels however are small considering the large reduction in traffic volume of ~30%. By estimate the decrease in traffic volume in Sydney region, the corresponding decrease in emission input to the WRF-CMAQ (Weather Research and Forecasting - Community Multiscale Air Quality Modeling System) air quality model is then used to estimate the effect of lockdown on the air quality especially CO, NO2, O3 and PM2.5 in the Greater Metropolitan Region (GMR) of Sydney. COVID-19 lockdown period is an ideal case to study the effect of motor vehicle and mobile source contribution to air pollutants such as those listed above in the GMR.

Molecular identification via Internal Transcribed Spacer region (nrDNA-ITS) sequencing of Fusarium spp. isolates from wheat originated from Stara Zagora region, were performed for the first time in Bulgaria. А total of 60 wheat samples (Triticum aestivum) were morphologically identified at the genus level as Fusarium spp. in advance. The rDNA-ITS region of all isolates was successfully amplified and the PCR products obtained were directly sequenced. After a comparison of detected sequences with NCBI database, members of three different fungal genera (Fusarium, Chaetomium, and Alternaria) were identified. Among Fusarium isolates, the F. tricinctum was prevailing, followed by F. poae. A total of three isolate F. proliferatum, F. graminearum and F. equiseti were presented with a single probe. The lowest genetic distance (0.004) was detected between F. tricinctum isolates. On the base of genetic distances, fungal isolates were grouped in two main clusters – one comprising F. tricinctum isolates and F. proliferatum, and second including F. equiseti, F. graminearum and F. poae. It could be concluded that the rDNA-ITS genome region of the genus Fusarium may be used as a suitable marker of early detection, accurate and reliable identification of Fusarium spp. contamination of wheat. The timely and accurate information would assist in the selection of appropriate approaches for control of fusarium infections and possible mycotoxins contamination of agricultural production.

Calandrinia compressa Schrad. ex DC (Prodr. 3: 359. 1828) is the name currently widely applied to a polymorphic annual species of Calandrinia sect. Calandrinia endemic to the Chilean Floristic Region. A total of ten validly published heterotypic names plus six horticultural designations (and orthographic variants thereof) have been considered at some point as taxonomically the same as C. compressa. Two additional heterotypic taxa and their synonyms and two other designations possibly refer to this species. Two other taxa sometimes referred to this species are excluded. I treat here a total of 77 distinct nomenclaturally valid names and invalid designations and variants thereof. The type of one of the valid and legitimate names, Calandrinia pilosiuscula DC (Rev. Portulac. 9. 1827), is judged here to be taxonomically the same as the type of C. compressa. Because of its chronological priority, Calandrinia pilosiuscula DC must be accepted as the correct name for Calandrinia compressa Schrad. ex DC when the two are considered taxonomic synonyms. Here, the taxonomic history of this taxon is articulated and, where possible, types are identified and/or designated. The natural and anthropogenic history of the species is summarized critically in a theoretical context.

It is widely discussed that growth of GDP has a vague impact on environmental pollution due to the emissions of carbon dioxide from consumed fossil fuels in production, transportation and power generation, and creation of required instruments to control environmental pollution as well. Due to the fact that environmental pollution can be a reason of mortality increase in a society, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between economic growth, fossil fuel consumption, mortality (from cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease) and environmental pollution using Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimation technique in the case of CIS member states over the period of 1993-2018. The major results revealed CO2 emissions in in the region of CIS have a positive effect on increase of mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease. In regards to fossil fuel consumption, the estimation proved that this variable affects mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease positively. In addition, we found effect of economic growth, population growth and inflation rate positively, while any improvement in human development index (HDI) has a negative effect on increase of mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory disease in the CIS region. It is recommended that the CIS member states carry out different policies to improve energy transition indicating movement from fossil fuel energy sources to renewable ones. Moreover, we recommend the CIS member states to enhance various policies for easy access to the electricity from green sources and increase of renewable supply through improved technologies, sustainable economic growth, and increase of using green source in daily social life.

The problem of identifying functional regions in an urban setting has been approached in literature using two general methodologies: top-down, encoding expert knowledge on urban planning and design (e.g. into patterns) and using that knowledge for identification, and bottom-up, relying on crowdsourcing and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) to train learning models, using techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Both approaches have their advantages but also face important limitations, with knowledge-based approaches being criticized for scalability and transferability issues and data-driven approaches for lacking interpretability and depending heavily on data quality. To mitigate these disadvantages, we propose a novel framework that fuses data and knowledge in three different ways: functional regions identified from individual approaches are evaluated against each other, knowledge from patterns is used to adjust learning model results and topic models are used to adjust pattern-based results. The proposed methodologies are demonstrated through the use case of identifying shopping-related functional regions in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Results show that the combination of results from knowledge-based and data-driven techniques can help uncover discrepancies between the two different approaches and smoothen inaccuracies caused by the limitations of each approach.