scholarly journals Peculiarities of the environmental light pollution in Chernivtsi Region

Author(s):  
А. V. Zhuk ◽  
O. D. Zarochentseva

Introduction. Every year industrial development and economic growth make light pollution worsen on a global scale. It is a well-known fact that artificial outdoor lighting causes destruction of wildlife habitat, impacts circadian rhythms of all living beings, disrupts animal behavior and leads to medical disorders of humans. Over the last decade scientists switched their focus from artificial sky glow over large cities to light pollution of rural landscapes, protected areas and roadways.  The purpose of this paper consists in assessing night-time light emissions over Chernivtsi Region as well as over city of Chernivtsi using satellite measurements. Methods. Measurements of night-time light emissions were obtained with the help of GIS web application Radiance Light Trends and the light trends analysis tool. The application allows examination of changes in light pollution across selected areas since 1992 and performs time-series analysis with fitting an exponential curve into the data set. Results. The trend in light emissions observed by satellites for Chernivtsi Region indicated brightening at the rate of 2.45 % per year from 1992 to 2014, and 2.93 % per year from 2014 to 2021. The marked increase in the intensity of atmospheric light pollution over Chernivtsi Region is largely attributable to urban expansion of district centers, national & international routes and resort complexes. At the same time, the spatial pattern of the light environment over city of Chernivtsi indicated a nearly constant level of aggregate annual light radiance for the last 8 years. A large irregularly shaped "light spot" was detected on the territory of the Prut-Siret interfluve. It crosses the region from the northwest to the southeast and covers the regional center with its suburbs and the national highway H-10. The night light radiance constitutes 47.49∙10-9 mW/cm2 sr in the center of the spot and more than 1∙10-9 mW/cm2 sr at its edges. The highest level of light pollution in Chernivtsi Region was registered in January, and the lowest – in March. Night-time light emission over two most illuminated highways remains relatively constant regardless of the season. Conclusion. The study highlights that despite low population and low economic activity, rural landscapes demonstrate a trend towards increasing brightness of the night sky. The findings provide a quantitative reference for light pollution management in the region and for further research in the area. 

Author(s):  
W. Jiang ◽  
G. He ◽  
Y. Ni

The Protected Areas (PAs) with natural, ecological and cultural value play important role in biological processes, biodiversity and ecosystem service. During the past years of rapid urban expansion in China, the spatial range and intensity of light pollution unprecedented increase. Historically, optical remote sensing and field survey data had been used to reveal that human activities impacted on PAs for individual areas and few papers documented the issue of light pollution impact on PAs at national scale. Here, time series night-time light satellite images of Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) were selected to assess the light pollution impacted on PAs in China. The method we proposed can be effectively applied to assess the impact of light pollution on PAs and the percent of dark PAs decreased by 35.38 % from 1992 to 2012 at nationwide. The trend of light pollution of most PAs in stable, however, light pollution of the local area is increase significantly, especially in northern Xinjiang, Gansu, Xizang, Yunnan, Jiangsu and Shandong. Considering the current status of light pollution encroach into PAs, two strategies of appropriate buffer zone and wide measured for light pollution are also recommend.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqi Tan ◽  
Abby Spangler ◽  
Michael Farid ◽  
Da Peng ◽  
Patrick Cahan

Stem cell engineering is a powerful platform to address numerous challenges in regenerative medicine and developmental biology. Typically, engineered populations are derived by exposing pluripotent stem cells to a series of signaling cues meant to recapitulate developmental milestones, such as the induction of the primitive streak. Morphologic, genetic, transcriptomic, and functional differences between fully differentiated in vivo and engineered populations have long been recognized. However, the correspondence between engineered and native embryonic progenitors has been relatively less well characterized, largely due to their transient and highly heterogenous nature, and therefore many studies have relied on expression of a few canonical markers to ensure that their cells are on the correct path. To address this challenge, we first generated an in vivo gastrulation mouse single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) reference data set and used it to train a collection of computational tools for comparing cell types, states, regulators, and trajectories across studies. Then we used these tools to evaluate a commonly used protocol designed to promote mesoderm derivation, as well as four previously published biomimetic protocols. Finally, we diversified our toolkits to reach a broader scientific community by implementing our primary analysis tool in Python and as an interactive web application.


Heritage ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 1375-1387
Author(s):  
Jiazhen Zhang ◽  
Jeremy Cenci ◽  
Vincent Becue

As the material carrier of industrial heritage, industrial landscape planning integrates industrial heritage, post-industrial, and industrial tourism landscapes. In this study, we define the concept of industrial landscape planning. As a subsystem of urban planning, we study industrial landscape planning by using the theories and methods of urban planning. As an example, we consider Belgium and identify the main categories of industrial landscape planning as industrial heritage landscape and industrial tourism landscape. We use an ArcGIS spatial analysis tool and kernel density calculations and reveal the characteristics of four clusters of industrial heritage spatial layout in Belgium, which match its located industrial development route. Each cluster has unique regional characteristics that were spontaneously formed according to existing social and natural resources. At the level of urban planning, there is a lack of unified re-creation. Urban planning is relatively separated from the protection of industrial heritage in Belgium.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Davies

Synchrotron sources offer high-brilliance X-ray beams which are ideal for spatially and time-resolved studies. Large amounts of wide- and small-angle X-ray scattering data can now be generated rapidly, for example, during routine scanning experiments. Consequently, the analysis of the large data sets produced has become a complex and pressing issue. Even relatively simple analyses become difficult when a single data set can contain many thousands of individual diffraction patterns. This article reports on a new software application for the automated analysis of scattering intensity profiles. It is capable of batch-processing thousands of individual data files without user intervention. Diffraction data can be fitted using a combination of background functions and non-linear peak functions. To compliment the batch-wise operation mode, the software includes several specialist algorithms to ensure that the results obtained are reliable. These include peak-tracking, artefact removal, function elimination and spread-estimate fitting. Furthermore, as well as non-linear fitting, the software can calculate integrated intensities and selected orientation parameters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danying Shao ◽  
Nabeel Ahmed ◽  
Nishant Soni ◽  
Edward P. O’Brien

Abstract Background Translation is a fundamental process in gene expression. Ribosome profiling is a method that enables the study of transcriptome-wide translation. A fundamental, technical challenge in analyzing Ribo-Seq data is identifying the A-site location on ribosome-protected mRNA fragments. Identification of the A-site is essential as it is at this location on the ribosome where a codon is translated into an amino acid. Incorrect assignment of a read to the A-site can lead to lower signal-to-noise ratio and loss of correlations necessary to understand the molecular factors influencing translation. Therefore, an easy-to-use and accurate analysis tool is needed to accurately identify the A-site locations. Results We present RiboA, a web application that identifies the most accurate A-site location on a ribosome-protected mRNA fragment and generates the A-site read density profiles. It uses an Integer Programming method that reflects the biological fact that the A-site of actively translating ribosomes is generally located between the second codon and stop codon of a transcript, and utilizes a wide range of mRNA fragment sizes in and around the coding sequence (CDS). The web application is containerized with Docker, and it can be easily ported across platforms. Conclusions The Integer Programming method that RiboA utilizes is the most accurate in identifying the A-site on Ribo-Seq mRNA fragments compared to other methods. RiboA makes it easier for the community to use this method via a user-friendly and portable web application. In addition, RiboA supports reproducible analyses by tracking all the input datasets and parameters, and it provides enhanced visualization to facilitate scientific exploration. RiboA is available as a web service at https://a-site.vmhost.psu.edu/. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/obrien-lab/aip_web_docker under the MIT license.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujata Rani ◽  
Parteek Kumar

Abstract In this article, an innovative approach to perform the sentiment analysis (SA) has been presented. The proposed system handles the issues of Romanized or abbreviated text and spelling variations in the text to perform the sentiment analysis. The training data set of 3,000 movie reviews and tweets has been manually labeled by native speakers of Hindi in three classes, i.e. positive, negative, and neutral. The system uses WEKA (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis) tool to convert these string data into numerical matrices and applies three machine learning techniques, i.e. Naive Bayes (NB), J48, and support vector machine (SVM). The proposed system has been tested on 100 movie reviews and tweets, and it has been observed that SVM has performed best in comparison to other classifiers, and it has an accuracy of 68% for movie reviews and 82% in case of tweets. The results of the proposed system are very promising and can be used in emerging applications like SA of product reviews and social media analysis. Additionally, the proposed system can be used in other cultural/social benefits like predicting/fighting human riots.


Author(s):  
Tom Gerhard ◽  
Michael Sturm ◽  
Thomas H. Carolus

State-of-the-art wind turbine performance prediction is mainly based on semi-analytical models, incorporating blade element momentum (BEM) analysis and empirical models. Full numerical simulation methods can yield the performance of a wind turbine without empirical assumptions. Inherent difficulties are the large computational domain required to capture all effects of the unbounded ambient flow field and the fact that the boundary layer on the blade may be transitional. A modified turbine design method in terms of the velocity triangles, Euler’s turbine equation and BEM is developed. Lift and drag coefficients are obtained from XFOIL, an open source 2D design and analysis tool for subcritical airfoils. A 3 m diameter horizontal axis wind turbine rotor was designed and manufactured. The flow field is predicted by means of a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation. Two turbulence models were utilized: (i) a standard k-ω-SST model, (ii) a laminar/turbulent transition model. The manufactured turbine is placed on the rooftop of the University of Siegen. Three wind anemometers and wind direction sensors are arranged around the turbine. The torque is derived from electric power and the rotational speed via a calibrated grid-connected generator. The agreement between the analytically and CFD-predicted kinematic quantities up- and downstream of the rotor disc is quite satisfactory. However, the blade section drag to lift ratio and hence the power coefficient vary with the turbulence model chosen. Moreover, the experimentally determined power coefficient is considerably lower as predicted by all methods. However, this conclusion is somewhat preliminary since the existing experimental data set needs to be extended.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document