• Rural Digital Europe

Medical microrobots (MRs) have been demonstrated for a variety of non-invasive biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, and assisted fertilization, among others. However, most of these demonstrations have been carried out in

Thermal inertia is a volume property and shows the resistance power of the material against changes in its temperature. The thermal inertia of a surficial feature of interest cannot be directly measured. Hence, a proper modelling is required for its estimation. The objective of the project is to develop a technique to generate thermal inertia images using available National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite data to detect thermal anomalies and oilfield signature over a known producing basin. The Brahmaputra valley in Upper Assam is selected for this study. NOAA-Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) thermal data were converted to temperature, based on the look-up table (LUT) given in the NOAA-AVHRR CD and by using split-window atmospheric attenuation correction models. The thermal inertia imagery is constructed with the help of the albedo imagery generated from the daytime and with the knowledge of the surface temperature change between the daytime and night-time data. The ...

[1] We present a statistical analysis of thunderstorm radio frequency and optical data from the FORTE satellite to examine the relationship of strong radio frequency pulsed emissions to more conventional signals from lightning. The study is built on a FORTE database of intracloud pulsed radio signals from storms whose geolocation is provided either by coincidence with the FORTE optical imager or by coincidence with ground-based lightning-detection arrays. We show statistically that intracloud radio emissions with peak power >40 kW in the FORTE low band (26–48 MHz) have unique characteristics compared to weaker emissions, including: occurring either in isolation or at the start of leader progression but never within a progressing leader; occurring without light emission detectable by FORTE; sometimes occurring in association with a rapid (10 μs) relaxation of the electric charge; and being followed by an upward progressing leader in the cases where a leader is initiated. These strong intracloud radio pulses appear to be associated with an intracloud discharge process that is physically distinct from conventional leader progression.

The cork forests are one the most interesting forest ecosystems in the Mediterranean area. Their distribution and ecological characteristics have undergone a significant transformation after the significant changes following the development and establishment of agricultural crops. Currently, only a few stands, which survive in hard to reach places, prove the wide spread distribution of this species was also in the recent past. This study describes the stand structure of some cork forests in Calabria region (southern Italy). In order, to characterize the vertical structure Latham index has been applied, while for the description of the horizontal distribution NBSI group indices has been used. Detailed surveys on dead wood were also conducted determining the occurring volume and its decay stage according to the decay classes system proposed by Hunter. The aim of this study is to provide guidelines for sustainable management of cork forests, improving and promoting the structural complexity and functional efficiency of these forest stands.

Catfish farming is one of the fields of business that is still popular today. Cultivation of catfish is a business solution that can be done by anyone. An important factor in the success of catfish farming is to maintain the quality of the pond water in order to keep it good and to provide feed that is carried out regularly. Each type of fish has different characteristics to pond water conditions. In the cultivation of catfish in tarpaulins, the air temperature must be maintained at 20-32 oC, then the pH of the air is good for catfish between 5.5-7.5. If the temperature and pH conditions are outside the specified values, the farmer must replace the fish pond water. Internet of Things (IoT) is a concept where devices can be connected and exchange data with each other through the internet network. In this study, the application of the Internet of Thing (IoT) There are several components used including NodeMCU, pH Sensor, Temperature Sensor, Ultrasonic Sensor, Relay, Pump, Servo Motor and Telegram Bot used for the interface. The fuzzy method used to measure water quality in catfish tarpaulin ponds is based on pH and temperature. The output of this research is a pump control that functions to replace or fill pool water.

With the increasing competition for fresh water, there is a growing reliance on the abstraction of groundwater for irrigated agriculture. Groundwater irrigation demand has been growing steadily over the past decades, for many reasons including the unreliability of the traditional large canal schemes, and the increasing need of farmers to manage their own irrigation applications. In addition, unpredictability in climate has forced some farmers, particularly in semi-arid areas, to exploit groundwater, in order to combat drought. The increasing overexploitation of important aquifers around the world, as well as groundwater contamination must be of concern to water resource planners and managers. Groundwater is a finite resource, and little is being done to accurately map, assess, monitor and regulate groundwater development for agriculture. Unconstrained and unregulated groundwater development is already impacting negatively on agricultural growth in over 111 million ha of irrigated lands, and innumerable livelihoods that rely on groundwater. Any attenuation of growth will make it more difficult to feed 9 billion people by 2050. A more proactive and integrated approach to groundwater governance, management and protection, built upon sound technical, institutional, legal, socio-economic and environmental principles is required. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The land use in China has an important impact on environment and the Chinese economic development. The sustainable development has been recognized as the key element to keep China's development with success in the future. This paper uses ecological footprint and biological capacity as indicators to measure regional sustainable degree of land use. The ecological footprint and the biological capacity of land use in Chongqing municipality with 28 million populations have been calculated from 1999 to 2007. The ecological footprint and the biological capacity of land use in Chongqing municipality had obvious changed from 1999 to 2007. The change degree of ecological footprint affected by land use is more prominent than the change degree of biological capacity. The fossil energy land possesses the most proportion, which exceeds 58% in average. The cropland is also an important effect to ecological footprint, which achieves to 35% in proportion. The results from the research can inform the Chongqing municipality government in more detail enhances the land protection in the balance of urban development with society, ecology, environment and resource.

Recent computational models of color vision demonstrate that it is possible to achieve exact color constancy over a limited range of lights and surfaces described by a low-dimensional linear model. For smooth reflectance spectra the different spectral bands have a significant degree of correlation. Any spectral reflectance distribution can be approximated to a specified degree of accuracy as a weighted sum of basis functions. Reflectance spectra of hyperspectral images of the natural scenes are supposed to represent the real world better than any certain classes of natural and man-made spectral reflectance data sets such as rocks, leaves, Munsell chips, etc. The characteristics of the spectra will be important to understand the spectral properties of the object reflectance and the representation of spectral images by linear models. In this study sets of hyperspectral images have been analyzed by principal-component analysis (PCA) method for spectral encoding.