bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Esmeralda Peach (Prunus persica) Fruit Yield and Quality Response to Nitrogen Fertilization
Authors: Nava Gilberto , Reisser Júnior Carlos , Parent Léon-Étienne , Brunetto Gustavo , Moura-Bueno Jean Michel , Navroski Renan , Benati Jorge Atílio , Barreto Caroline Farias
Published: January 2022

‘Esmeralda’ is an orange fleshed peach cultivar primarily used for juice extraction and secondarily used for the fresh fruit market. Fruit yield and quality depend on several local environmental and managerial factors, mainly on nitrogen, which must be balanced with other nutrients. Similar to other perennial crops, peach trees show carryover effects of carbohydrates and nutrients and of nutrients stored in their tissues. The aims of the present study are (i) to identify the major sources of seasonal variability in fruit yield and qu Fruit Tree Department of Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL), Pelotas 96010610ality; and (ii) to establish the N dose and the internal nutrient balance to reach high fruit yield and quality. The experiment was conducted from 2014 to 2017 in Southern Brazil and it followed five N treatments (0, 40, 80, 120 and 160 kg N ha−1 year−1). Foliar compositions were centered log-ratio (clr) transformed in order to account for multiple nutrient interactions and allow computing distances between compositions. Based on the feature ranking, chilling hours, degree-days and rainfall were the most influential features. Machine learning models k-nearest neighbors (KNN) and stochastic gradient decent (SGD) performed well on yield and quality indices, and reached accuracy from 0.75 to 1.00. In 2014, fruit production did not respond to added N, and it indicated the carryover effects of previously stored carbohydrates and nutrients. The plant had a quadratic response (p < 0.05) to N addition in 2015 and 2016, which reached maximum yield of 80 kg N ha−1. In 2017, harvest was a failure due to the chilling hours (198 h) and the relatively small number of fruits per tree. Fruit yield and antioxidant content increased abruptly when foliar clrCu was >−5.410. The higher foliar P linearly decreased total titratable acidity and increased pulp firmness when clrP > 0.556. Foliar N concentration range was narrow at high fruit yield and quality. The present results have emphasized the need of accounting for carryover effects, nutrient interactions and local factors in order to predict peach yield and nutrient dosage.
Study on Axial Compression Behavior of Concrete Short Columns Confined by Flax/Glass Fiber Hybrid-Reinforced Epoxy Resin Composites
Authors: Yang Lanjie , Wang Hongguang , Gao Shansong
Published: January 2022

In this study, we aimed to explore the effect of concrete short columns confined by flax/glass fiber hybrid-reinforced epoxy resin (FFRP/GFRP) composites. Taking the same fiber hybrid ratio and different paving orders as parameters, analysis of the axial compressive mechanical properties of eight groups of FFRP/GFRP composite-confined concrete short columns, including one group of flax fiber-reinforced epoxy resin (FFRP) composite-confined concrete short columns and one group of unconstrained concrete short column, was conducted. The effects of different layering sequences on failure modes, load–displacement curves, energy dissipation ductility and the stress–strain relationship of hybrid composite-confined concrete short columns were analyzed. The results show that the axial compression failure modes of FFRP/GFRP composite-confined concrete short columns with the same hybrid ratio and different paving sequences were basically the same, and the CC-H6 group was the most prominent. The ultimate bearing capacity and axial deflection were 91.05% and 11.49% higher than those of the control group (CC-FFRP), and the energy dissipation coefficient was also the largest, at 9.79. The failure trend of the stress–strain curve of the confined concrete short column specimens was basically the same, and the stress and axial strain of the members were increased by 247.9~292.5% and 486.7~701.0%, respectively.
Characterization and Functionality of Cellulose from Pomelo Fruitlets by Different Extraction Methods
Authors: He Chuanbo , Li Hao , Hong Jinling , Xiong Hejian , Ni Hui , Zheng Mingjing
Published: January 2022

Pomelo fruitlets have the potential for extracting cellulose. This study aimed to investigate characterization and functionality of cellulose extracted from pomelo fruitlets by different extraction methods. Cellulose extracted by acidic-alkaline hydrogen peroxide hydrolysis (CAA), alkaline hydrogen peroxide hydrolysis (CA), and ultrasonic assisted alkaline hydrogen peroxide hydrolysis (CUA) were prepared from pomelo fruitlets. The results showed that cellulose CUA had higher yield and purity with higher crystallinity and smaller particle size than those of CAA or CA (p < 0.05). Specifically, the yield of CUA was 82.75% higher than that of CAA, and purity was increased by 26.42%. Additionally, water- and oil-holding capacities of CUA were superior to those of CAA or CA, increasing by 13–23% and 10–18%, respectively. The improvement of water- and oil-holding capacities were highly related to its smaller particle size with increased surface area. The results suggested that ultrasonic assisted alkaline hydrogen peroxide hydrolysis is a promising and efficient method to prepare high-purity cellulose from pomelo fruitlets, and this cellulose is expected to be a food stabilizer and pharmaceutical additive.
Partially Deacetylated and Fibrillated Shrimp Waste-Derived Chitin as Biopolymer Emulsifier for Green Cutting Fluids—Towards a Cleaner Production
Authors: Aguilar-Rosas Oscar , Blanco Stephany , Flores Mariana , Shirai Keiko , Farfan-Cabrera Leonardo Israel
Published: January 2022

Up to date, most metalworking fluids (MWFs) are emulsions made of petroleum-derived oil bases and sodium petroleum sulphonate emulsifiers. They are not readily biodegradable, and their waste is hazardous for users and the environment. Therefore, green MWFs are required for achieving cleaner production processes. Recently, various MWFs have been developed using vegetable oil bases to meet biodegradability to some extent. However, the emulsifier has been scarcely replaced by a green product. This research aims to produce and evaluate Pickering emulsions made of Jatropha oil (JO) and partially deacetylated and fibrillated chitin (PDFC) as emulsifiers at different concentrations. JO is a non-edible biodegradable oil with remarkable lubricity properties, while PDFC is produced by extracting chitin from waste heads and shells of the shrimp species Litopenaeus vannameii, followed by partial deacetylation and further fibrillation, which improves wettability and stabilization. The prepared emulsions were characterized in terms of creaming index and size of emulsion droplets and evaluated as MWFs in actual turning operations of AISI 1018 steel bars via minimum quantity lubrication (MQL) technique. The findings suggest PDFC as a potential eco-friendly emulsifier to form green MWFs with acceptable stability generating low cutting forces and significant workpiece finishing and chips quality.
Forecast Characteristics of Radar Data Assimilation Based on the Scales of Precipitation Systems
Authors: Bae Jeong-Ho , Min Ki-Hong
Published: January 2022

Radar data with high spatiotemporal resolution and automatic weather station (AWS) data are used in the data assimilation experiment to improve the precipitation forecast of a numerical model. The numerical model considered in this study is the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model with double-moment 6-class microphysics scheme (WDM6). We calculated the radar equivalent reflectivity factor using high resolution WRF and compared it with radar observations in South Korea. To compare the precipitation forecast characteristics of the three-dimensional variational (3D-Var) assimilation of radar data, four experiments were performed based on the scales of precipitation systems. Comparison of the 24 h accumulated rainfall with surface observation data, contoured frequency by altitude diagram (CFAD), time–height cross sections (THCS), and vertical hydrometeor profiles was used to evaluate the accuracy of the simulation of precipitation. The model simulations were performed with and without 3D-VAR radar reflectivity, radial velocity and AWS assimilation for two mesoscale convective cases and two synoptic scale cases. The combined effect of the radar and AWS data assimilation experiment improved the location of the precipitation area and rainfall intensity compared to the control run. There is a noticeable scale dependence in the improvement of precipitation systems. Improvements in simulating mesoscale convective systems were larger compared to synoptically driven precipitation systems.
Recent Changes in Groundwater and Surface Water in Large Pan-Arctic River Basins
Authors: Lin Hong , Cheng Xiao , Zheng Lei , Peng Xiaoqing , Feng Wei , Peng Fukai
Published: January 2022

Surface and groundwater in large pan-Arctic river basins are changing rapidly. High-quality estimates of these changes are challenging because of the limits on the data quality and time span of satellite observations. Here, the term pan-Arctic river refers to the rivers flowing to the Arctic Ocean basin. In this study, we provide a new evaluation of groundwater storage (GWS) changes in the Lena, Ob, Yenisei, Mackenzie and Yukon River basins from the GRACE total water storage anomaly product, in situ runoff, soil moisture form models and a snow water equivalent product that has been significantly improved. Seasonal Trend decomposition using Loess was utilized to obtain trends in GWS. Changes in surface water (SW) between 1984 and 2019 in these basins were also examined based on the Joint Research Centre Global Surface Water Transition data. Results suggested that there were great GWS losses in the North American river basins, totaling approximately −219 km3, and GWS gains in the Siberian river basins, totaling ~340 km3, during 2002–2017. New seasonal and permanent SWs are the primary contributors to the SW transition, accounting for more than 50% of the area of the changed SW in each basin. Changes in the Arctic hydrological system will be more significant and various in the case of rapid and continuous changes in permafrost.
Hyperspectral Image Classification Based on 3D Coordination Attention Mechanism Network
Authors: Shi Cuiping , Liao Diling , Zhang Tianyu , Wang Liguo
Published: January 2022

In recent years, due to its powerful feature extraction ability, the deep learning method has been widely used in hyperspectral image classification tasks. However, the features extracted by classical deep learning methods have limited discrimination ability, resulting in unsatisfactory classification performance. In addition, due to the limited data samples of hyperspectral images (HSIs), how to achieve high classification performance under limited samples is also a research hotspot. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes a deep learning network framework named the three-dimensional coordination attention mechanism network (3DCAMNet). In this paper, a three-dimensional coordination attention mechanism (3DCAM) is designed. This attention mechanism can not only obtain the long-distance dependence of the spatial position of HSIs in the vertical and horizontal directions, but also obtain the difference of importance between different spectral bands. In order to extract the spectral and spatial information of HSIs more fully, a convolution module based on convolutional neural network (CNN) is adopted in this paper. In addition, the linear module is introduced after the convolution module, which can extract more fine advanced features. In order to verify the effectiveness of 3DCAMNet, a series of experiments were carried out on five datasets, namely, Indian Pines (IP), Pavia University (UP), Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Salinas Valley (SV), and University of Houston (HT). The OAs obtained by the proposed method on the five datasets were 95.81%, 97.01%, 99.01%, 97.48%, and 97.69% respectively, 3.71%, 9.56%, 0.67%, 2.89% and 0.11% higher than the most advanced A2S2K-ResNet. Experimental results show that, compared with some state-of-the-art methods, 3DCAMNet not only has higher classification performance, but also has stronger robustness.
Improving GNSS/INS Tightly Coupled Positioning by Using BDS-3 Four-Frequency Observations in Urban Environments
Authors: Ma Chun , Pan Shuguo , Gao Wang , Ye Fei , Liu Liwei , Wang Hao
Published: January 2022

Vehicular positioning in urban environments has become a research hotspot in recent years, and global navigation satellite system/inertial navigation system (GNSS/INS) tightly coupled positioning is a commonly used method. With the broadcast of BDS-3 and Galileo four-frequency signals, the multi-frequency and multi-system tightly coupled positioning method provides more possibilities for vehicular positioning in urban environments. At present, most of the studies on multi-frequency and multi-system mainly focus on static or baseline solutions, and there are few studies on the urban dynamic environment. In this paper, based on the triple-frequency GPS/BDS-2/INS tightly coupled positioning model, the BDS-3 four-frequency observation is introduced to conduct a preliminary study on the performance of GPS/BDS-2/BDS-3/INS tightly coupled positioning. Taking into account the positioning accuracy and calculation efficiency of the tightly coupled positioning, single epoch extra-wide-lane/wide-lane (EWL/WL) observation is used to participate in the modeling of tightly coupled positioning. The EWL/WL ambiguity is solved by the geometry-free (GF) method, in which triple-frequency carrier ambiguity resolution (TCAR) and four-frequency carrier ambiguity resolution (FCAR) are used for triple-frequency and four-frequency observations, respectively. Finally, the positioning performance of the tightly coupled method in this paper is evaluated through vehicular experiment. The experimental results show that in the urban dynamic environment, due to the higher quality of the linear combination of BDS-3 four-frequency, the positioning accuracy of the BDS-3/INS tightly coupled was slightly better than that of the triple-frequency BDS-2/INS. Compared with GPS/BDS-2/INS, the GPS/BDS-2/BDS-3/INS tightly coupled positioning accuracy increased by 29.1% and 58.7% in horizontal and vertical directions, respectively, which can realize decimeter positioning accuracy in urban environments.
Pan-Sharpening Based on CNN+ Pyramid Transformer by Using No-Reference Loss
Authors: Li Sijia , Guo Qing , Li An
Published: January 2022

The majority of existing deep learning pan-sharpening methods often use simulated degraded reference data due to the missing of real fusion labels which affects the fusion performance. The normally used convolutional neural network (CNN) can only extract the local detail information well which may cause the loss of important global contextual characteristics with long-range dependencies in fusion. To address these issues and to fuse spatial and spectral information with high quality information from the original panchromatic (PAN) and multispectral (MS) images, this paper presents a novel pan-sharpening method by designing the CNN+ pyramid Transformer network with no-reference loss (CPT-noRef). Specifically, the Transformer is used as the main architecture for fusion to supply the global features, the local features in shallow CNN are combined, and the multi-scale features from the pyramid structure adding to the Transformer encoder are learned simultaneously. Our loss function directly learns the spatial information extracted from the PAN image and the spectral information from the MS image which is suitable for the theory of pan-sharpening and makes the network control the spatial and spectral loss simultaneously. Both training and test processes are based on real data, so the simulated degraded reference data is no longer needed, which is quite different from most existing deep learning fusion methods. The proposed CPT-noRef network can effectively solve the huge amount of data required by the Transformer network and extract abundant image features for fusion. In order to assess the effectiveness and universality of the fusion model, we have trained and evaluated the model on the experimental data of WorldView-2(WV-2) and Gaofen-1(GF-1) and compared it with other typical deep learning pan-sharpening methods from both the subjective visual effect and the objective index evaluation. The results show that the proposed CPT-noRef network offers superior performance in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations compared with existing state-of-the-art methods. In addition, our method has the strongest generalization capability by testing the Pleiades and WV-2 images on the network trained by GF-1 data. The no-reference loss function proposed in this paper can greatly enhance the spatial and spectral information of the fusion image with good performance and robustness.
The Intertwined Well-Being of Children and Non-Human Animals: An Analysis of Animal Control Reports Involving Children
Authors: Campbell Andrew M.
Published: January 2022

The well-being of children and non-human animals (subsequently referred to as animals) is often intertwined. Communities are unlikely to be able to best protect humans from abuse and harm unless they are working to ensure the safety of animals who reside there as well. This study is the first to utilize U.S. animal control report data and narratives to explore how children are involved in cases of animal cruelty. Children engage in abusive acts toward animals, alone, or along with peers and/or adults. Children were found to inflict abuse most often with their hands or feet as opposed to with a weapon or other object. A total of 85% of animal cruelty perpetrated by children was toward a dog or cat. Key differences between how children are involved in acts of cruelty to companion animals compared with acts involving wild animals are described and warrant further study. The cases of animal abuse or neglect reported by children were among the most severe in the study, and often involved an adult perpetrator known to the child. Neighbors rarely report child abuse or intimate partner violence in the United States, but 89% of the animal cruelty cases involving children in this study were reported by a neighbor or passerby. Although children involved in reports as a perpetrator or reporter were most often in early adolescence, children involved in cross-reports between child welfare and animal control were often under the age of 5. Improved cross-reporting and stronger partnerships between human and animal welfare agencies may provide opportunity for earlier intervention and is likely to better many human and animal lives.
An Optimization Model for Highway Work Zones Considering Safety, Mobility, and Project Cost
Authors: Shahin Fadi , Elias Wafa , Rosenfeld Yehiel , Toledo Tomer
Published: January 2022

Highway Work Zones (HWZs) are associated with significant adverse impacts on safety, mobility, and work costs. The objective of this paper is two-fold: First, to quantify the impacts of HWZs on safety, mobility, and work costs. Second, to develop an optimization model to minimize the total costs associated with HWZs by controlling site geometry, Temporary Traffic Control (TTC), and work management. This model implements a location-based schedule within the cost evaluation. A genetic algorithm is used to determine a set of optimal scheduling and decision variables. The performance of the model is demonstrated in a case study. The results reveal that crash costs, which were often ignored or only included indirectly in previous works, are a substantial cost component. Their explicit inclusion in the optimization process significantly affects the total cost and the optimal operations of the HWZ. Furthermore, the inclusion of a location-based schedule in the model is instrumental and affects the optimal solution since all HWZ cost components are affected by the work processes and project duration. Moreover, consideration of the effects of TTC on the optimized function has a substantial influence on the total cost. The model can support transportation agencies and local authorities in mitigating the adverse impacts associated with HWZs.
Stakeholders’ Perceptions of New Digital Energy Management Platform in Municipality of Loulé, Southern Portugal: A SWOT-AHP Analysis
Authors: Gago David , Mendes Paula , Murta Pedro , Cabrita Nuno , Teixeira Margarida Ribau
Published: January 2022

This study aimed to develop a multi-stakeholder analysis to identify the best strategies for the integration of a new Digital Energy Management Platform (DEMP). The municipality of Loulé (South of Portugal) was used as a case study. A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) framework combined with an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework and a TOWS Matrix was employed to analyse the stakeholder’s perceptions to propose strategies for integrating the DEMP. Five focus stakeholder groups were involved. Results showed that stakeholders considered that the positive aspects of DEMP outweigh the negative aspects by approximately 36%. Strengths were ranked with 34.4%, Opportunities with 33.8%, Weaknesses with 20.2%, and Threats with 11.6%. The sequence of factors with the highest overall score by stakeholders was O1(12.7%) > S2(11.1%) > W2(7.4%) > T3(4.1%). Based on stakeholder perceptions, the most suitable strategies were those that use Strengths and Opportunities of the system (SO strategies), and strategies that take advantage of Opportunities while dealing with Weaknesses (WO strategies), achieving a prevalence compared with the other strategies of 34% and 27%, respectively. Therefore, the participation process involving stakeholders’ groups in the implementation and monitoring of the DEMP provided an action plan and consensus capable of meeting the environmental and municipal energy management challenges.
A Smart eCook Battery-Charging System to Maximize Electric Cooking Capacity on a Hybrid PV/Diesel Mini-Grid
Authors: Keddar Shafiqa , Strachan Scott , Galloway Stuart
Published: January 2022

In this paper, eCook batteries are considered to be synonymous with those electric cooking devices (eCook), such as electric pressure cookers, induction cookers, hotplates or rice cookers, that can be connected to and supplied from a battery, which may or may not be fully integrated within the device. Connecting many eCook batteries can have an impact on the operation of a hybrid photovoltaic (PV)/diesel mini-grid network unless managed appropriately. The network could experience voltage fluctuations, system power losses and increased peak demand if all or most of the connected eCook batteries charge during a relatively “narrow” window of sunlight hours. Hence, this paper focuses on maximizing the number of eCook devices accommodated by the mini-grid, in keeping with increased consumer uptake, by regulating the charging rate (C-rate) of the eCook batteries themselves. The impact of varying the C-rate on the network constraints is assessed through a range of contextualized case studies. This entailed modeling an innovative smart eCook battery management system (EBMS) that actively monitors the state of the grid and decides on the eCook’s battery C-rate set-point required to address the network constraints. The results demonstrate that the EBMS can alleviate the impact of conventional eCook battery charging on the mini-grid network, as well as increase the quality of the charging service.
Synthesis of Autonomous Vehicle Guideline for Public Road-Testing Sustainability
Authors: Abu Bakar Amirul Ibrahim , Abas Mohd Azman , Muhamad Said Mohd Farid , Tengku Azhar Tengku Azrul
Published: January 2022

Autonomous vehicles have the potential to reduce the risk of accidents as they eliminate the element of human error from driving. Lack of attention, poor judgement, or physical limitations may lead to road incidents. Thus, the development and deployment of autonomous vehicles should be a priority. However, before being publicly available, autonomous vehicles must be tested to ensure their viability and safety by conducting public road testing. Autonomous vehicles have been designed and tested since the early 1900s; however, deployment of fully autonomous vehicles on public roads only started in the 2000s. Numerous countries have developed guidelines for public road testing, but those rules are not uniform, and discrepancies occur between nations. Issues such as vehicular safety, registrations, authority, insurance, cybersecurity, and infrastructures weigh differently in each country. Synthesizing these diverse national regulations into global guidelines would promote the safety and sustainability of autonomous vehicle testing and benefit all parties interested in autonomous vehicles.
The Impact of Foreign Trade and Urbanization on Poverty Reduction: Empirical Evidence from China
Authors: Wang Xingying , Yan Hongli , E Libin , Huang Xiaoyun , Wen Haizhen , Chen Yan
Published: January 2022

Poverty eradication is a worldwide development challenge, and China’s poverty reduction experience, evident in its sustainable development strategy, is receiving increasing attention. China has achieved high economic growth and success in poverty reduction over the past 40 years, since its reform and opening up. China’s experience can provide lessons for other countries, however, the situation of poverty in China is still severe, and the remaining people experiencing that condition have long been in a state where income poverty, capability poverty, and intergenerational transfer of poverty coexist. This requires systematic poverty reduction in multiple fields such as the following: population, production, consumption, capital, technology, finance and taxation, education, health care and environment. Foreign trade and urbanization are the best ways to implement poverty reduction. Despite the fruitful results of international studies, the impact of foreign trade, urbanization and their synergistic effects on poverty reduction have not been fully considered. Therefore, by selecting, as panel data, the urbanization rate, foreign trade dependence, and multiple dimensions of poverty indicators of different provinces in China from 2000 to 2017, this paper establishes regression models to study the poverty reduction effects of urban and rural areas. This is accomplished by focusing on three dimensions: poverty gap; income level and gap; and the numbers of under-insurance and guaranteed expenditure, in terms of both imports and exports, respectively. The paper not only considers the synergistic effects of foreign trade and urbanization on poverty reduction, but also investigates the heterogeneity of poverty reduction effects between urban and rural areas. The research results can be applied not only to poverty reduction policy formulation in China, but they can also provide empirical lessons for other developing countries with large urban-rural disparities. Therefore, the study has important implications for both poverty reduction theory development and poverty reduction policy formulation.
Challenges in the Governance of Community-Managed Forests in Ethiopia: Review
Authors: Yami Mastewal , Mekuria Wolde
Published: January 2022

A large proportion of the rural population in Ethiopia depends on community-managed forests for food security and livelihoods. However, the government and development partners have paid little attention to the governance challenges which limit the contributions of community-managed forests to food security and livelihoods. Also lacking is a synthesis of evidence relating to the requirements for improved governance to support the efforts of decision makers and practitioners. This paper attempts to review and synthesize the available evidence with the aim of identifying the requirements to achieve improved governance in community-managed forests. The results revealed that failure to devise benefit-sharing mechanisms which consider the heterogeneity of rural communities was prevalent. Interference of local authorities and elite capture in decision-making processes of forest and landscape restoration also compromised the willingness of rural communities to engage in collective action. Requirements such as the identification of the needs of specific categories of communities and enabling of the negotiation of diverse interests in the design and implementation of interventions could improve the governance of community-managed forests. Developing management plans and business model scenarios which balance the ecological and socio-economic goals at a local level in collaboration with rural communities is important to improve the governance of community-managed forests. There is also a need to revisit the practice of evaluating the performance of community-managed forests almost exclusively based on the goals of climate change adaptation and mitigation and biodiversity conservation.
Resilience and Sustainability of the Water Sector during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Goldin Jacqueline , Nhamo Luxon , Ncube Bongani , Zvimba John Ngoni , Petja Brilliant , Mpandeli Sylvester , Nomquphu Wandile , Hlophe-Ginindza Samkelisiwe , Greeff-Laubscher Mariska Riana , Molose Virginia , Lottering Shenelle , Liphadzi Stanley , Naidoo Dhesigen , Mabhaudhi Tafadzwanashe
Published: January 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented socio-economic changes, ushering in a “new (ab)normal” way of living and human interaction. The water sector was not spared from the effects of the pandemic, a period in which the sector had to adapt rapidly and continue providing innovative water and sanitation solutions. This study unpacks and interrogates approaches, products, and services adopted by the water sector in response to the unprecedented lockdowns, heralding novel terrains, and fundamental paradigm shifts, both at the community and the workplace. The study highlights the wider societal perspective regarding the water and sanitation challenges that grappled society before, during, after, and beyond the pandemic. The premise is to provide plausible transitional pathways towards a new (ab)normal in adopting new models, as evidenced by the dismantling of the normal way of conducting business at the workplace and human interaction in an era inundated with social media, virtual communication, and disruptive technologies, which have transitioned absolutely everything into a virtual way of life. As such, the novel approaches have fast-tracked a transition into the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), with significant trade-offs to traditional business models and human interactions.
Continuous Pest Surveillance and Monitoring Constitute a Tool for Sustainable Agriculture: Case of Xylella fastidiosa in Morocco
Authors: El Handi Kaoutar , Hafidi Majida , Sabri Miloud , Frem Michel , El Moujabber Maroun , Habbadi Khaoula , Haddad Najat , Benbouazza Abdellatif , Abou Kubaa Raied , Achbani El Hassan
Published: January 2022

Climate and trade changes are reshaping the cartographic distribution of lethal pervasive pathogens. Among serious emerging challenges is Xylella fastidiosa (Xf), a xylem-limited phytopathogenic bacterium that produces losses and damages to numerous crops of high economic and agronomic importance. Lately, this grave quarantine pathogen has expended its distribution by arriving to several European countries and infecting both wild and cultivated plants, and no cure has been identified so far. Countries without current outbreaks like Morocco, need to monitor theirs crops frequently because detecting diseases in the early stages may reduce the huge losses caused by Xf. For that purpose, inspections were managed in different regions in Morocco from March 2020 to July 2021 to assess the presence of Xf in several growing areas of vulnerable economic crops (i.e., almond, citrus and olive). To extend the likelihood of detection, hosts have been inspected and sampled randomly over different environments including symptomatic and asymptomatic plants. Each sample was screened for the existence of Xf by using the DAS-ELISA commercial kit, while, further analyses were carried out for doubtful samples, by PCR. Results of both tests did not show any positive sample in the investigated areas. This finding is an update on the Xf situation in Morocco and confirms that this country is still a free territory from this bacterium, at least in the monitored regions.
The Application of Hospital Safety Index for Analyzing Primary Healthcare Center (PHC) Disaster and Emergency Preparedness
Authors: Lestari Fatma , Paramitasari Debby , Kadir Abdul , Firdausi Nobella Arifannisa , Fatmah  , Yani Hamid Achir , Suparni  , EL-Matury Herlina J. , Wijaya Oktomi , Ismiyati Avinia
Published: January 2022

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the primary healthcare center (PHC) as a whole-of-society approach to health that aims at ensuring the highest possible level of health and well-being and their equitable distribution by focusing on people’s needs as early as possible along the continuum from health promotion and disease prevention to treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care, and as close as feasibly possible to people’s everyday environment. PHCs are expected to remain operational when disasters occur. This study aimed to assess the PHC disaster preparedness level in Indonesia using The Hospital Safety Index (HSI) from WHO/PAHO. Eleven PHCs located in four provinces in Indonesia, i.e., Jakarta, Yogyakarta, North Sumatera, and West Java, were selected. Data were collected through interviews, focus-group discussions (FGDs), observations, and document reviews. The parameters assessed were all types of hazards, structural or construction safety, nonstructural safety, and functional attributes. The results show that the overall score of HSI for PHCs in Jakarta (0.674) and North Sumatera (0.752) fell into the “A” category, meaning that these PHCs would likely remain operational in the case of disasters. Meanwhile, the overall HSI scores for PHCs in West Java (0.601) and Yogyakarta (0.602) were between 0.36 and 0.65, or in “B” category, meaning that these PHCs would be able to recover during disasters but several services would be exposed to danger. The results suggested that there are several gaps that need urgent interventions to be applied for the structural safety of buildings, water supply systems, fuel storage, disaster committee organization, furniture and fittings, offices and storage equipment, as well as increasing the capacity of workers through a structured and systematic training framework for disaster readiness. The results from this study can be used for prioritizing budgets and resource allocation, cost planning, providing specific solutions for local and national government, and efforts to achieve disaster risk reduction.
Components of Education 4.0 in 21st Century Skills Frameworks: Systematic Review
Authors: González-Pérez Laura Icela , Ramírez-Montoya María Soledad
Published: January 2022

Responsive educational proposals to develop skills to meet the demands of Industry 4.0 have become imperative to guarantee inclusive, equitable, and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, also reducing the negative impact of COVID-19 and the major post-pandemic social issues. This article analyzes which components of Education 4.0 have been considered in 21st century skills frameworks and identifies the teaching and learning methods and key stakeholders impacted. We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) with research questions to highlight studies that address 21st century frameworks worldwide, identifying which teaching-–earning strategies contain 4.0 components, their learning dimensions, and the targeted stakeholders. The findings allowed us to identify opportunities to create or improve 21st century skills frameworks with the required Education 4.0 components to develop future skills. Our study revealed the absence of these frameworks for teachers and schools. Most are oriented toward students, developing competencies through the dimensions of character, meta-learning, and linking active learning teaching strategies. This work presents studies incorporating innovative educational practices and the core Education 4.0 components. It concludes with a reflection on creating educational models to develop complex-reasoning competencies and auto-systemic thinking to support problem-solving and address social needs.
The Effect of Proactive Personality on Creativity: The Mediating Role of Feedback-Seeking Behavior
Authors: Chae Heesun , Park Jisung
Published: January 2022

While the effects of a proactive personality on creativity have been well established, the behavioral mechanism underlying this relationship remains poorly understood. This study suggests the salience of the mediating mechanism of feedback-seeking behavior in explaining the process by which proactive individuals can perform creative outcomes. Specifically, based on the two axes—the types (inquiry vs. monitoring) and the methods (frequency vs. breadth)—this study proposes that four methods of feedback-seeking behavior (frequency of feedback inquiry, breadth of feedback inquiry, frequency of feedback monitoring, and breadth of feedback monitoring) mediate the relationship between the proactive personality and creativity. The results, which are based on data collected from 367 individuals across Korean companies, reveal that the proactive personality has a significant indirect effect on creativity via two methods only: frequency of inquiry and frequency of monitoring. Finally, this study represents a theoretical and practical contribution to academic research on creativity and proactivity in the workplace.
Five-Year Development Plans of Renewable Energy Policies in Iran: A Content Analysis
Authors: Dehhaghi Somayeh , Choobchian Shahla , Ghobadian Barat , Farhadian Homayon , Viira Ants-Hannes , Stefanie Horatiu Ioan , Van Passel Steven , Azadi Hossein
Published: January 2022

Renewable energy (RE) policies can play an effective role in the development of renewable resources. The main goal of this paper was to conduct a content analysis on RE development policies in Iran’s five-year National Development Plan (NDP) by investigating upstream national documents. To achieve the goal, 29 upstream documents related to RE were identified and analyzed through a systematic literature review. Then, a qualitative content analysis was applied to analyze the documents. The results showed that Iran’s current RE policies need to be reviewed, reformed, and strengthened. For example, lack of sufficient attention to renewable heat and fuel was one of the deficiencies of RE policies in Iran’s five-year NDP. The decentralization of policymaking in the unified organization was also one of the weaknesses in the policymaking process of the RE. Iran can develop sustainable and clean RE policies by using sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, wave, and tidal power. The paper concludes that, although RE policies have the potential for development in Iran due to environmental, social, and economic advantages, they could face some infrastructural, managerial, socio-cultural, and economic challenges. Accordingly, effective and innovative policymaking is required to meet such challenges.
Contested Visions for Transformation—The Visions of the Green New Deal and the Politics of Technology Assessment, Responsible Research and Innovation, and Sustainability Research
Authors: Schneider Christoph , Wilke Niko , Lösch Andreas
Published: January 2022

Societal transformations are contested. The goals and visions of transformations, as well as the means and strategies to achieve them, are born in political conflict and power constellations. Which transformations are seen as desirable and possible by democratic majorities changes throughout history. This is the political reality where research for transformations finds itself. Technology assessment (TA), responsible research and innovation (RRI), and sustainability research (SR) are a part of such contestations. They engage in envisioning, debating, analyzing, and evaluating different visions of and options for the future. In this article we turn to visions of the future as a key aspect of societal contestation and the shaping of interfaces between research for transformations and society. Based on the approach of vision assessment developed in TA, we situate TA, RRI, and SR within visions of research and social order. We argue that in these politicized times it is increasingly necessary to understand how research relates to larger visions of society and the contested nature of transformations. We turn to one of the major contemporary visions for societal transformation: The Green New Deal (GND). This vision imagines a large-scale transformation of society and the economy towards sustainability and justice and is currently debated in major political institutions and social movements. It presents an ongoing case of the “making of the future”, which is highly relevant for TA, RRI, and SR. We show how this vision is creating new knowledge and social arrangements and how it is opening up new possibilities for transformational research. The article discusses the implications that a possible further impact of GND visions in politics may have for TA, RRI, and SR, and, relatedly, how expertise and insights from TA, RRI, and SR could significantly add to the GND debate.
Intersection Signal Timing Optimization: A Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithm
Authors: Zhang Xinghui , Fan Xiumei , Yu Shunyuan , Shan Axida , Fan Shujia , Xiao Yan , Dang Fanyu
Published: January 2022

The rapid motorization of cities has led to the increasingly serious contradiction between supply and demand of road resources, and intersections have become the main bottleneck of traffic congestion. In general, capacity and delay are often used as indicators to improve intersection efficiency, but auxiliary indicators such as vehicle emissions that contribute to sustainable traffic development also need to be considered. It is necessary to evaluate intersection traffic efficiency through multiple measures to reflect different aspects of traffic, and these measures may conflict with each other. Therefore, this paper studies a multi-objective urban traffic signal timing problem, which requires a reasonable signal timing parameter under a given traffic flow condition, to better take into account the traffic capacity, delay and exhaust emission index of the intersection. Firstly, based on the traffic flow as the basic data, combined with the traffic flow description theory and exhaust emission estimation rules, a multi-objective model of signal timing problem is established. Secondly, the target model is solved and tested by the genetic algorithm of non-dominated sorting framework. It is found that the Pareto solution set of traffic indicators obtained by NSGA-III has a larger domain. Finally, the search mechanism of evolutionary algorithm is essentially unconstrained, while the actual traffic signal timing problem is constrained by traffic environment. In order to obtain a better signal timing scheme, this paper introduces the method of combining hybrid constraint strategy and NSGA-III framework, abbreviated as HCNSGA-III. The simulation experiment was carried out based on the same target model. The simulated results were compared with the actual scheme and the timing scheme obtained in recent research. The results show that the indices of traffic capacity, delay and exhaust emission obtained by the proposed method have more obvious advantages.
Assessing the Food Safety and Quality Assurance System during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Authors: Wang Shumei
Published: January 2022

This study aims to develop and test a methodological approach to assess the system of food quality and safety in the COVID-19 pandemic. To achieve the study objectives, a multi-country research project was implemented with 425 enterprises from Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Belarus. The application of the developed methodological approach resulted in comparable assessments of the various criteria of the food safety and quality assurance system in supply chains. This makes it possible to implement continuous monitoring of the state of the food safety and quality assurance system in the enterprises. In addition, the study identified critical weaknesses in the safety system, including a very low level of assessment by enterprises of the impact of WHO advisory protocols. This greatly increases the risks associated with food safety in the COVID-19 pandemic. Urgent action is required to increase the confidence of food supply chain actors in WHO recommendations and national food safety and quality protocols. The conducted assessments showed that a significant proportion of enterprises did not implement a food safety system. One out of five of the respondents claimed to have implemented safety systems at an enterprise in accordance with the standards recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative. Only 2% declared the introduction of HACCP at an enterprise, which is logical given the high mistrust of WHO recommendations. The proposed approach can be used in the real sector of the economy to monitor the food safety and quality assurance system in the supply chain at the regional, sectoral and national levels.
Vindication of Linking Social Capital Capacity to Urban Agriculture: A Paradigm of Participation Based on Social Empowerment in Klang Valley, Malaysia
Authors: Nazuri Nur Shuhamin , Rosnon Mohd Roslan , Ahmad Nobaya , Suhaimi Siti Shazwani Ahmad , Sharifuddin Juwaidah , Wijekoon Rusitha
Published: January 2022

With the rise of urbanization, the Malaysian government faces a tough challenge in ensuring food and nutrition security, especially for the disadvantaged urban populations. Urban agriculture (UA) seems to be a feasible approach to be undertaken by the government to overcome urban food insecurity. In distinguishing UA as a vital element of sustainable urban development, the primary challenge is to develop effective programs that engage urban dwellers and organizations through good design and implementation. Additionally, empowering communities through UA programs is challenging. Hence, the major aim of this study is to ascertain the assigned and underlying values of UA participation amongst communities that contribute to aspects of community social empowerment in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The dataset for the study was taken from the respondents (180) who were the participants of UA community programs authorized by the Department of Agriculture in Klang Valley area, and a Structural Equation Modelling using Partial Least Square (PLS-SEM) was utilized to integrate the interdependencies between multiple variables. The findings revealed the important role of participation in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of UA programs to ensure success. Participation should be seen through the roles of agencies, NGOs, and communities in order to build a strong network crucial to the enhancement of social empowerment among participants of UA programs.
Combined Remaining Life Prediction of Multiple Bearings Based on EEMD-BILSTM
Authors: Zhan Yujie , Sun Song , Li Xiangong , Wang Fuqi
Published: January 2022

To improve the accuracy of a symmetrical structural rolling bearing life prediction under noise interference, a multi-bearing life prediction method combining Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) and Bi-directional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) is proposed. First, EEMD is proposed to decompose the original vibration signal to obtain a finite number of Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF), and the IMFs are further filtered by combining the correlation criterion and kurtosis criterion. Then, the time domain features and frequency domain features of the reconstructed signal are filtered by monotonicity index to obtain the set of features containing key information. Finally, the BiLSTM network is trained on the filtered features set, and the method is proved to accurately predict the remaining life of rolling bearings under different operating conditions through rolling bearing full-life experiments, and the effectiveness of the method is verified by comparing the prediction results with several main recurrent neural networks.