Beyond food swamps and food deserts: Exploring urban Australian food retail environment typologies

Objective: ‘Food deserts’ and ‘food swamps’ are food retail environment typologies associated with unhealthy diet and obesity. This study aimed to identify more complex food retail environment typologies and examine temporal trends. Design: Measures of food retail environment accessibility and relative healthy food availability were defined for small areas (SA2s) of Melbourne, Australia from a census of food outlets operating in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2016. SA2s were classified into typologies using a two-stage approach: 1) SA2s were sorted into 20 clusters according to accessibility and availability; 2) clusters were grouped using evidence-based thresholds. Setting: This study was set in Melbourne, the capital city of the state of Victoria, Australia. Subjects: Food retail environments in 301 small areas (Statistical Area 2) located in Melbourne in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2016. Results: Six typologies were identified based on access (low, moderate and high) and healthy food availability including one where zero food outlets were present. Over the study period SA2s experienced an overall increase in accessibility and healthiness. Distribution of typologies varied by geographic location and area-level socioeconomic position. Conclusion: Multiple typologies with contrasting access and healthiness measures exist within Melbourne and these continue to change over time, the majority of SA2s were dominated by the presence of unhealthy relative to healthy outlets; with SA2s experiencing growth and disadvantage having the lowest access and to a greater proportion of unhealthy outlets.

Annexins Bridging the Gap: Novel Roles in Membrane Contact Site Formation

Membrane contact sites (MCS) are specialized small areas of close apposition between two different organelles that have led researchers to reconsider the dogma of intercellular communication via vesicular trafficking. The latter is now being challenged by the discovery of lipid and ion transfer across MCS connecting adjacent organelles. These findings gave rise to a new concept that implicates cell compartments not to function as individual and isolated entities, but as a dynamic and regulated ensemble facilitating the trafficking of lipids, including cholesterol, and ions. Hence, MCS are now envisaged as metabolic platforms, crucial for cellular homeostasis. In this context, well-known as well as novel proteins were ascribed functions such as tethers, transporters, and scaffolds in MCS, or transient MCS companions with yet unknown functions. Intriguingly, we and others uncovered metabolic alterations in cell-based disease models that perturbed MCS size and numbers between coupled organelles such as endolysosomes, the endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, or lipid droplets. On the other hand, overexpression or deficiency of certain proteins in this narrow 10–30 nm membrane contact zone can enable MCS formation to either rescue compromised MCS function, or in certain disease settings trigger undesired metabolite transport. In this “Mini Review” we summarize recent findings regarding a subset of annexins and discuss their multiple roles to regulate MCS dynamics and functioning. Their contribution to novel pathways related to MCS biology will provide new insights relevant for a number of human diseases and offer opportunities to design innovative treatments in the future.

The Spatial Variation of Acoustic Water Column Data and Its Relationship with Reef-Associated Fish Recorded by Baited Remote Underwater Stereo-Videos off the Western Australia Coast

Spatially explicit information on coral fish species abundance and distribution is required for effective management. Nonextractive techniques, including echosounders and video census, can be particularly useful in marine reserves where the use of extractive methods is restricted. This study aimed to investigate the possibility of combining echosounders and baited remote underwater stereo-videos (stereo-BRUVs) in providing more holistic information on the distribution of demersal and semidemersal reef-associated fish. The spatial distribution of fish biomass was assessed using both methods in two small areas, one in Cockburn Sound (CS), a temperate body of water, and the other in the tropical waters of the Ningaloo Marine Park (NMP). The results showed high correlations between the acoustic and stereo-BRUV data in CS, suggesting the potential use of both for a better estimation of biomass in the area. The results for the NMP showed weaker correlations between the two datasets and highlighted the high variability of the system. Further studies are required, but our initial findings suggest a potential benefit of combining both techniques in the reef-associated fish distribution assessment.

Diurnal variation of cloudiness during southwest monsoon season using I NSAT-IB radiance data

An attempt has been made to study the diurnal variation of convective clouds. For this study 3 hourly full resolution infrared data of INSAT-IB have been used for the monsoon season (Jun-Sep) of 1987-89. The area of study extends from 35°N to 25°S and 40oE to l00oE, which is subdivided into small areas of 2.5x 2.5 Lat./Long. Mean temperature and the fractional area covered by clouds colder than a given threshold temperature over each sub area are the parameters used for this study. Two threshold temperatures. namely 265°K & 235oK are chosen to represent convective clouds and deep convective clouds respectively. Using the three hourly observations, times of maximum and minimum convective activity are also obtained. Maximum convective activity is observed over head Bay of Bengal at about noon and this maximum migrates westward onto land till midnight and swings back to oceanic area by morning. This eastwest oscillation is less over equatorial regions (open ocean).

Applying the combination of GIS tools with upgraded structural and morphological methods for studying neotectonics

Structural and geomorphological methods are often applied to the search for small oil-producing structures. Morphometric analysis of digital elevation models has proved to be the most informative one. Morphometric surfaces can be used to evaluate the direction and amplitude of vertical movements, to outline local and regional neotectonic structures and assess their petroleum saturation. This paper shows how to enhance the traditional morphometric analysis with GIS (geographic information systems) tools. A manifold increase in the efficiency of morphometric analysis takes it to a qualitatively new level. Setting specific parameters for some geoprocessing tools (for example, stream network tools) can be very important when studying local structures in small areas. In case of large territories, the output result is almost independent of the calculation errors. The improved technique proposed in this paper was tested on a large territory located in the Volga region. As a result, high-order morphometric surfaces were obtained, which was not possible before. In addition, a statistically significant relationship was discovered between morphometric surfaces and distribution of oil deposits, which can be considered a reliable prospecting indicator in the Volga-Ural petroleum province. Keywords: neotectonics; structural and morphological methods; geoinformation systems; hydrocarbon potential assessment.

E-Skin Development and Prototyping via Soft Tooling and Composites with Silicone Rubber and Carbon Nanotubes

The strategy of embedding conductive materials on polymeric matrices has produced functional and wearable artificial electronic skin prototypes capable of transduction signals, such as pressure, force, humidity, or temperature. However, these prototypes are expensive and cover small areas. This study proposes a more affordable manufacturing strategy for manufacturing conductive layers with 6 × 6 matrix micropatterns of RTV-2 silicone rubber and Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNT). A novel mold with two cavities and two different micropatterns was designed and tested as a proof-of-concept using Low-Force Stereolithography-based additive manufacturing (AM). The effect SWCNT concentrations (3 wt.%, 4 wt.%, and 5 wt.%) on the mechanical properties were characterized by quasi-static axial deformation tests, which allowed them to stretch up to ~160%. The elastomeric soft material’s hysteresis energy (Mullin’s effect) was fitted using the Ogden–Roxburgh model and the Nelder–Mead algorithm. The assessment showed that the resulting multilayer material exhibits high flexibility and high conductivity (surface resistivity ~7.97 × 104 Ω/sq) and that robust soft tooling can be used for other devices.

IMPROVEMENT OF HYDROPON INSTALLATIONS

Hydroponics is a promising area of development of modern agriculture, which provides long-term cultivation of basic vegetables and greenery in small areas with minimal consumption of water and fertilizers. This technology allows you to get a fairly large harvest of fresh vegetables within large cities, including office and residential premises. Entrepreneurs and researchers are paying close attention to developing more efficient hydroponics methods and equipment to implement them in order to reduce usable space, save water, nutrients and increase air supply and plant capacity. Several hydroponics systems are known: static solution culture, continuous flow solution (NFT) culture, deep water culture, passive irrigation, underwater and drainage irrigation systems, wastewater drainage system, deep-water fertilized culture, rotary system, aeroponics, wick system. The first three of the above methods were used commercially and industrially. The system of static culture solution does not provide the necessary saturation of plant roots with air. With the implementation of the method of continuous solution culture, minor buffering is possible due to interruptions in the flow (power outage), flooding of water in some canals, in addition, there are restrictions on the maximum length of canals (12 - 15 m). The system of deep-water culture on an industrial scale is used mainly for growing lettuce. Other mentioned systems are not efficient enough in terms of commercial use. The improved hydroponic installations presented in the article were developed taking into account the following requirements: universality of use (possibility of growing different types of plants); harmonization of optimal supply of crops with water, nutrients, light and air; maximum use of space; increasing the area for each plant and maintaining its stems and shoots. Also in the article the equation for definition of the basic parameters of the developed installations is given.

Quantification of green areas

The monitoring of green areas has been researched and analyzed by several surveys, however it is not trivial to find data with reliable accuracy and precision. There are well-defined and widely used methodologies for the classification of large area images, but in the case of small areas some authors recommend the analog analysis of aerial photos for classification. However, the acquisition of high definition aerial images is not inexpensive. In addition to being a fully manual and labor intensive classification. The present work proposes a methodology for the collection of a quantitative historical database using remote sensing techniques and Digital images, using the NDVI as a comparison criterion. In this work, free images of the Landsat-5, Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellites were used to verify if it is possible to extract reliable information from areas considered small to use the classification supervised by the maximum likelihood method using the ENVI 5.1 software.

Floquet Spectral Almost-Periodic Modulation of Massive Finite and Infinite Strongly Coupled Arrays: Dense-Massive-MIMO, Intelligent-Surfaces, 5G, and 6G Applications

In this study, we introduce a new formulation based on Floquet (Fourier) spectral analysis combined with a spectral modulation technique (and its spatial form) to study strongly coupled sublattices predefined in the infinite and large finite extent of almost-periodic antenna arrays (e.g., metasurfaces). This analysis is very relevant for dense-massive-MIMO, intelligent-surfaces, 5G, and 6G applications (used for very small areas with a large number of elements such as millimeter and terahertz waves applications). The numerical method that is adopted to model the structure is the method of moments simplified by equivalent circuits MoM GEC. Other numerical methods (such as the ASM-array scanning method and the windowing Fourier method) used this analysis in their kernel to treat periodic and pseudo-periodic (or quasi-periodic) arrays.