Biomorphometry of Automeris liberia Cramer (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) in oil palm in the Amazon

Automeris liberia Cramer are found in South America, with documented sightings in Ecuador, Peru, some regions of Mexico and, more recently, the Brazilian Amazon. These moths cause damage to several plant species. We designed an experiment to study the biology and morphometry of A. liberia in the laboratory and provide information for the management of the pest in oil palm cultivation in the Brazilian Amazon. Caterpillars for rearing were collected from commercial areas of oil palm cultivation, where they cause defoliation of the plant. They were fed a natural diet of oil palm leaves of the Tenera variety and observed from second generation onwards. Sex, behavior, posture, mass, body length, wingspan, body diameter, sex ratio, average growth ratio, and antenna were quantified. The embryonic stage lasted 14 days, followed by seven larval instar stages over 36 days. The pupal stage lasted 21 days. Adults had a longevity of 4.5 and 6 days and a total biological cycle of 78.5 and 80 days, for males and females, respectively. The growth ratio was 1.49. The antennae showed sexual dimorphism, with bipectinate morphology in males and filiform in females. In the adult stage, morphological variables were evaluated (body length, thoracic diameter, wingspan, forewing length, forewing height, hindwing length, hindwing height, antenna length, number of antennomeres, and body mass), and they showed significant differences between males and females (Newman-Keuls test, P < 0.05).

Sustainable Green Growth in Developing Economies

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiated by Chinese government could be regarded as a systematic framework for promoting economic cooperation and development among the countries along the Belt and Road and China. This paper attempts to analyze economic and environmental performance in 61 developing countries along Belt and Road. An additive total factor productivity growth measure allows aggregating contributions of individual countries along the BRI to construct a reasonable measure. Both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered. The growth in the total factor productivity is decomposed with respect to the economic and environmental contributions. The annual average growth rate of green productivity is 3.1% and the disparity of economic and environmental performance could be observed among countries. Some countries show robust economic growths while environmental performance slows down green growth. This indicates that developing economies should pay attention to environmental impacts and promote sustainable development by sharing emission reduction technologies.

Application and Analysis of Education and Teaching Mode Based on 5G and Smart Technology

The development of information technology has brought tremendous changes to our country’s education. Based on the 5G + Internet, the article proposes a brand-new intelligent education model and proposes an ST analysis method, which mainly studies the teacher and students in the classroom. Class performance, based on Yebes network, proposed a learning decision method and application. The research results of the article show the following: (1) The article compares the monthly test scores of three variables under two different teaching modes. The results show that the performance of the online teaching mode is generally better than that of the traditional teaching mode, and the performance of the experimental class has increased more, with an average growth score of 4.83, indicating that there are significant differences in students’ learning and cognitive abilities under different teaching models. (2) The article compares the students’ knowledge mastery under two different teaching modes. The results show that under the traditional teaching mode, the students’ knowledge mastery is low, and the complete mastery rate is only 15%. In the network multimedia teaching mode, the students’ knowledge mastery rate has been greatly improved, the complete mastery rate is as high as 45%, and the students’ mastery of knowledge has been extremely improved, indicating that the network multimedia teaching mode can stimulate students’ learning interest more, improve learning efficiency. (3) Studying the differences in the source of curriculum resources of three different types of teachers, and the results show that the proportion of curriculum resources downloaded through the Internet is the largest; in the investigation of the impact of multimedia teaching on the classroom, the cooperation rate of students when multimedia teaching is not used, classroom practice accuracy and classroom completion rate are low, but after using multimedia teaching, students’ cooperation rate and classroom practice accuracy rate have been greatly improved, among which the accuracy rate of the experimental class is as high as 62.4%, and the students’ thinking ability is also good. Great improvement.

Diameter distribution model development of tropical hybrid Eucalyptus clonal plantations in Sumatera, Indonesia: A comparison of estimation methods

Background: Effective forest management and planning often requires information about the distribution of volume by size and product classes. Size-class models describe the diameter distribution and provide information by diameter class, such as the number of trees, basal area, and volume per unit of area. A successful diameter-distribution model requires high flexibility yet robust prediction of its parameters. To our knowledge, there are no studies regarding diameter distribution models for Eucalyptus hybrids in Indonesia. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare different recovery methods for predicting parameters of the 3-parameter Weibull distribution for characterising diameter distributions of Eucalyptus hybrid clone plantations, on Sumatera Island of Indonesia. Methods: The parameter recovery approach was proposed to be compatible with stand-average growth and yield models developed based on the same data. Three approaches where compared: moment-based recovery, percentile-based prediction and hybrid methods. The ultimate goal was to recover Weibull parameters from future stand attributes, which were predicted from current stand attributes using regression models. Results: In this study, the moment method was found to give the overall lowest mean error-index and Kolmogorov– Smirnov (KS) statistic, followed by the hybrid and percentile methods. The moment-based method better fit long tails on both sides of the distribution and exhibited slightly greater flexibility in describing plots with larger variance than the other methods. Conclusions: The Weibull approach appeared relatively robust in determining diameter distributions of Eucalyptus hybrid clone plantation in Indonesia, yet some refinements may be necessary to characterize more complex distributions.

A striking growth of CO2 emissions from global cement industry driven by new facilities in emerging countries

Global industrialization and urbanization processes enabled a diverse cement production boom over the past three decades, as cement is the most important building construction material. Consequently, the cement industry is the second-largest industrial CO2 emitter (~25% of global industrial CO2 emissions) globally. In this study, the Global Cement Emission Database, which encompasses anthropogenic CO2 emissions of individual production units worldwide for 1990-2019, was developed. A recently developed unit-level China Cement Emission Database is then applied to override China’s data and the combination of two database is used to reveal the unit characteristics of CO2 emissions and ages for global cement plants, assess large disparities in national and regional CO2 emissions, growth rates and developmental stages from 1990-2019, and identify key emerging countries of carbon emissions and commitment. This study finds that globally, CO2 emissions from the cement industry have increased from 0.86 Gt in 1990 to 2.46 Gt in 2019 (increasing by 186%). More importantly, the large CO2 emissions and the striking growth rates from those emerging countries, including most of developing countries in Asia and the Middle East and Africa, are clearly identified. For example, the Middle East and Africa, including mostly developing or underdeveloped countries, only represented 0.07 Gt CO2 in 1990 (8.4% of the total), in contrast to 0.26 Gt (10.4% of the total) CO2 in 2019, which is a 4.5% average growth rate during 1990-2019. Further, the intensive expansion of large and new facilities since 2005 in Asia and the Middle East and Africa has resulted in heavy commitment (90.1% of global commitment in 2019), and mitigation threats in the future considering their increasing emissions (national annual growth rate can be up to >80%) and growing infrastructure construction (~50% of clinker capacity operating ≤10 years). Our results highlight the cement industry’s development and young infrastructure in emerging economies; thus, future increasing cement demand and corresponding carbon commitment would pose great challenges to future decarbonization and climate change mitigation.

Spatial Distribution and Regional Difference of Environmental Efficiency Based on Carbon Reduction Goals: Evidence From China

China will strive to achieve carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutralization by 2060 cooperating with the system dominated by carbon intensity control and supplemented by total carbon emission control. This paper analyzes the environmental efficiency index of China; the empirical results show that the average growth rate is 4.5% from 2006 to 2017. A further decomposition of changes on scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency indicates that the pure technical efficiency maintains a long-term growth, and scale efficiency shows a fluctuant tendency. The abovementioned changes show that various methods in China such as industrial structure adjustment and promotion of the development of high and new technologies have obtained a certain effect. From the perspectives of regional differences, the average changes of environmental efficiency in eastern, central, and western regions as well as most of provinces and cities are all on the increase. On the space layout, a trend has been presented that the average changes in central regions exceed those in eastern regions, while the average changes in western regions are comparatively lower than those in eastern regions.

THE POTENTIAL OF TOURIST AND RECREATIONAL CLUSTERS IN EUROPEAN SPACE

Assessment of the potential of tourist and recreational clusters and objects of tourist activity remains relevant and still underdeveloped direction in tourism. The article aims to consider the peculiarities of the formation of the regional protentional of tourist and recreational clusters of the member state of the European Union. The methodological paradigm of the formation of potential of tourist and recreational clusters and a technique of its estimation based on systematics of tools and components, which essentially expand a network of the tourist and recreational industry, are substantiated. Methods of hierarchical classification were used. Results and interpretation of the study consists of the components of the competitiveness index for determining the regional level of potential of tourist and recreation clusters in countries in the areas of travel and tourism are presented. Indicators of competitiveness of the regional potential of tourist and recreational clusters are determined. The indicator of the integrated level of efficiency of the formation of regional protentional of tourist and recreational clusters offered. The number of tourists and recreational clusters on the EU member states has been determined. The share of regional potential of tourism and recreation clusters in terms of their total contribution to national income is calculated, as well as the average growth of national income from the projected value of regional potential of tourists and recreation clusters in EU member states.

Comparative Study on Flora Characteristics and Species Diversity on Dam Slopes for Sustainable Ecological Management: Cases of Eight Dams in Korea

Dams are gray infrastructure, providing various benefits such as flood control, water supply, and power generation. In order to create the next generation of infrastructure that explores how nature can act as infrastructure to meet development and ecological sustainability, artificial plantings have been attempted on dam slopes in Korea since 2000. As the planted trees are now stabilized to form a forest, it is time to study the floral characteristics and functions for effective ecological management and the safety of the dams. In this study, we investigated and analyzed flora in the slopes of eight dams in Korea. The comparative study of the whole flora in both the planted zones of the slopes of dams and left and right forests of dams revealed that the number of plant species was higher in the planted zones than in the left and right forests of the same size area. The plant family containing the greatest number of species in the slopes was Asteraceae, followed by Poaceae, Fabaceae, and Rosaceae. Currently, the community structures and families in the slopes of dams exhibit the characteristics of habitats in the initial stage of vegetation succession. Our investigation of planted species and immigration species in the slopes revealed that the latter comprised 89.9%. An average of 34.4% of species were interacting with the dam slope and the left and right forests. The species diversity index on dam slopes showed a tendency to be higher as the number of planted species increased and the period time increased. Average growth heights of planted trees were identified as 0.5–1.6 m for the shrubs layer, 3.5–4.5 m for the small trees layer, and 6.0–7.2 m for the trees layer. The heights of major trees, including Pinus densiflora, Quercus spp., Prunus sargentii, Styrax japonicus, and Cornus controversa, were similar to or higher than those of their counterparts in natural forests. As a result, dam slopes were similar to natural forests, having potential as habitats for various flora. To harmoniously maintain the ecological health and safety of water resource facilities of the slopes of dams, however, it is necessary to conduct periodic and various investigations on changes of the flora and growth of trees, and actively manage them.

Growth Kinetics of Single Polymer Particles in Solution via Active-Feedback 3D Tracking

The ability to directly observe chemical reactions at the single-molecule and single-particle level has enabled the discovery of behaviors otherwise obscured by the ensemble averaging in bulk measurements. However powerful, a common restriction of these studies to date has been the absolute requirement to surface tether or otherwise immobilize the chemical reagent/reaction of interest. This constraint arose from a fundamental limitation of conventional microscopy techniques, which could not track molecules or particles rapidly diffusing in three dimensions, as occurs in solution. However, much chemistry occurs in the solution phase, leaving single-particle/-molecule analysis of this critical area of science beyond the scope of available technology. Here we report the first solution-phase studies and measurements of any chemical reaction at single-particle/-molecule level in freely diffusing solution. During chemical reaction, freely diffusing polymer particles (D ~ 10-12 m2/s) yielded single-particle 3D trajectories and real-time volumetric images that were analyzed to extract the growth rates of individual particles. These volumetric images show that the average growth rate is a poor representation of the true underlying variability in polymer-particle growth behavior. These data revealed statistically significant populations of faster- and slower-growing particles at different depths in the sample, showing emergent heterogeneity while particles are still in the solution phase. These results go against the prevailing premise that chemical processes freely diffusing in solution will exhibit uniform kinetics. These new understandings of mechanisms behind polymer growth variations bring about an exciting opportunity to control particle-size and plausibly molecular weight polydispersity by the rational design of conditions to dictate spatial growth gradients. We anticipate that these studies will launch a new field of solution-phase, nonensemble-averaged measurements of chemical reactions.

The Effect of Global Financial Crisis and Ethiopian Monetary Policy Measures: Review on the pre-and post-crisis scenario

Policymakers and leaders usually fail to grasp a sound lesson from the eco- nomic hurdles and crises countries face. This paper, thus, is intended to review and articulate the causes and effects of the global financial crisis, and how the Ethiopian monetary policy reacted and mitigated the crisis. The data for the analysis were collected from various sources including IMF, World Bank, National Bank of Ethiopia, and research articles from 2003 to 2019. The review reveals that even during the crisis in 2009, Ethiopia was among the top five fastest-growing countries in the world by an average of 10.5%, which is twice the average growth of Sub-Sahara African countries (5 %). It had become the seventh-largest economy in Africa and the 69th in the world with a GDP PPP of 118.2$ Billion as of 2013. Some of the main reasons for the con- tinued growth of the country amid crisis could be the desynchronization of the country’s financial market with the international financial market, an insig- nificant share of mortgage loans in domestic financial sector services, and high-level government-led infrastructure investment coupled with China’s economic alliance. However, the significant effect of the crisis was observed in the country’s exports, remittance, and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). To shun the related inflationary effect, the government increased the minimum deposit interest rate, reserve, and liquidity requirements, and reinstated the credit restrictions. Also, the immediate alert was given to commercial banks to give proper attention in managing credit risk and reducing non-performing loans to below 5% and overdraft facilities. Given the above-mentioned facts, the monetary policy measures were effective to stabilize the economy & sus- tain the growth. In the end, the offshoots & setbacks of the unsynchronized financial market, government-led investment & fettered mortgage loans are addressed, and the way forward is marked out.