Big Disparities Research Articles

Large language models reveal big disparities in current wildfire research

Contemporary fire-human-climate nexus has led to a surge in publication numbers across diverse research disciplines beyond the capability of experts from a single discipline. Here, we employed a generalized large language model to capture the dynamics of wildfire research published between 1980 and 2022. More than 60,000 peer-reviewed papers were scanned and analyzed. Through integrating geographical metadata extracted by the artificial intelligence and satellite wildfire datasets, we found large disparities in geographic patterns and research themes. The hottest spot of wildfire research is western United States, accounting for 15% of publications but only 0.5% of global burnt area, while the world’s most widely burnt region, like Siberia and Africa are largely underrepresented by contemporary publications. Similar discrepancies are found between the fuel of wildfire and its ignition and climatic drivers, between socioeconomic development and wildfire mitigation, raising concerns on sustainable wildfire managements and calling for further artificial intelligence-aided transdisciplinary collaborations.

Mutualistic dinoflagellates with big disparities in ribosomal DNA variation may confound estimates of symbiont diversity and ecology in the jellyfish Cotylorhiza tuberculata

Mutualistic dinoflagellates with big disparities in ribosomal DNA variation may confound estimates of symbiont diversity and ecology in the jellyfish Cotylorhiza tuberculata

Income disparity, perceptions of inequality, and public tolerance

In the process of rapid transition, high income inequality and high public tolerance for inequality coexist in China. This phenomenon and its empirical and theoretical conundrum require exploration and explanation. With data from the 2013 Chinese General Social Survey, this article identifies and tests two forms of income inequality and their impacts on public tolerance. Analytical results of the mediating effect of “social context–subject perception” suggest that objective income inequality and perceived inequality have different effects on public tolerance. The statistical data consistently show that objective income inequality has no direct impact on public tolerance. But the larger the perceived inequality, the less it is tolerated. Meanwhile, actual big disparities are not accurately perceived by individuals. The existence of “perception bias” and contextual segmentation effects makes it easier for individuals to “capture” income disparity at the district and county level rather than at the provincial level, and at the current time rather than in the past. The misperception of objective inequality manifests differently among subgroups. Women and urban residents, as well as groups of medium education level, high income, and a high degree of access to information, are often more sensitive to income inequality. There is also an inverted U-shaped relationship between age and perceived income inequality. The results point to the heterogeneous effects of distribution structure and localization of individual perceptions as the key to explaining the paradox between high income inequality and high public tolerance of inequality. In other words, it is due to status-structure constraints and temporal-spatial conditions that the majority of citizens see the current income disparity as being within its tolerable limits. The implication of this study is that one should not take the public tolerance of the status quo lightly but make greater effort to optimize the localized income distribution structure.

Big disparities in CH4 emission patterns from landfills between the United States and China and their behind driving forces

Waste is the bridge linking resource consumption and greenhouse gas generation, and waste landfills are the main anthropogenic source of methane (CH4). The United States (US)–China Joint Glasgow Declaration and the Global Methane Pledge are committed to reducing tractable CH4 emissions; however, differences between the involved countries as well as their generation forecast processes have hampered cooperation. In this study, we provide a deep insight into CH4 emissions from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills and identify the disparities in CH4 emissions with local socio-economic conditions. The US and China, the world's two largest economies, generated approximately 3.73 and 1.48 million tonnes of CH4 from 1248 to 1955 landfills in 2012 using the FOD/bottom-up method, with corresponding 26.93 and 11.94 kg per tonne waste and emission value from each landfill ranging between 100 and 105 and 10−5–105 tonnes. The spatial distribution was also quantified and compared with national, state/province, and urban agglomeration perspectives based on historical MSW variations (1990–2015) to clarify the triangular relationship between the economic situation, waste properties, and landfill CH4 emissions. High-density CH4 emission regions spatially overlapped with highly developed urban agglomerations, positively correlated with the local gross domestic product (GDP) and population (p < 0.01), with more emissions generated per thousand US dollars in the US (0.25 tonnes) than in China (0.16 tonnes). The US tertiary industry and China's secondary industry contributed to high CH4 emissions from the waste sector. The increase in tertiary industry might reduce the waste sector's CH4 emissions. This study will help to understand this new triangular relationship and predict future patterns of CH4 emissions.

Deep neural network based single pixel prediction for unified video coding

Classical video prediction methods exploit directly and shallowly the intra-frame, inter-frame and multi-view similarities within the video sequences; the proposed video prediction methods indirectly and intensively transform the frame correlations into nonlinear mappings by using a general deep neural network (DNN) with single output node. Traditional DNN based video prediction algorithms wholly and coarsely forecast the next frame, but the proposed video prediction algorithms severally and precisely anticipate single pixel of future frame in order to achieve high prediction accuracy and low computation cost. First of all, general DNN based prediction algorithms for intra-frame coding, inter-frame coding and multi-view coding are presented respectively. Then, general DNN based prediction algorithm for unified video coding is raised, which relies on the preceding three prediction algorithms. It is evaluated by simulation experiments that the proposed methods hold better performance than state of the art High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) in peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and bit per pixel (BPP) in the situation of low bitrate transmission. It is also verified by experimental results that the proposed general DNN architecture possesses higher prediction accuracy and lower computation load than those of conventional DNN architectures. It is further testified by experimental results that the proposed methods are very suitable for multi-view videos with small correlations and big disparities.

Light Field Reconstruction Using Shearlet Transform.

In this article we develop an image based rendering technique based on light field reconstruction from a limited set of perspective views acquired by cameras. Our approach utilizes sparse representation of epipolar-plane images (EPI) in shearlet transform domain. The shearlet transform has been specifically modified to handle the straight lines characteristic for EPI. The devised iterative regularization algorithm based on adaptive thresholding provides high-quality reconstruction results for relatively big disparities between neighboring views. The generated densely sampled light field of a given 3D scene is thus suitable for all applications which require light field reconstruction. The proposed algorithm compares favorably against state of the art depth image based rendering techniques and shows superior performance specifically in reconstructing scenes containing semi-transparent objects.

River water quality index for Morocco using a fuzzy inference system

BackgroundThe aim of this work is to propose a new river water quality index using fuzzy logic. The proposed fuzzy index combines quality indicators’ prescribed thresholds extracted mainly from the Moroccan and the Quebec water legislations. The latter is reputed for its strict water quality assessment. The proposed index combines six indicators, and not only does it exhibit a tool that accounts for the discrepancy between the two base indices, but also provides a quantifiable score for the determined water quality. These classifications with a membership grade can be of a sound support for decision-making, and can help assign each section of a river a gradual quality sub-objective to be reached.ResultsTo demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach, the new index was used to classify water quality in a number of stations along the basins of Bouregreg-Chaouia and Zizi-Rhéris. The obtained classifications were then compared to the conventional physicochemical water quality index currently in use in Morocco. The results revealed that the fuzzy index provided stringent classifications compared to the conventional index in 41% and 33% of the cases for the two basins respectively. These noted exceptions are mainly due to the big disparities between the different quality thresholds in the two standards, especially for fecal coliform and total phosphorus.ConclusionsThese large disparities put forward an argument for the Moroccan water quality legislation to be upgraded to align water and environmental assessment methods with other countries in order to mitigate the risks of failing to achieve a good ecological status.

시청자의 불편감을 유발하는 스테레오 3D 영상 콘텐츠 요소 분석

본 논문에서는 3D 스테레오 콘텐츠를 시청할 때 시청자의 불편감을 유발하는 요인들을 정성적으로 분석한다. 이를 위해 실제 3D 스테레오 콘텐츠를 시청하면서 불편감을 느끼는 곳을 표시하는 주관적 평가 실험을 수행하여 불편감을 느끼는 위치와 불편감 정도에 대한 데이터를 얻고, 그 콘텐츠에서 다양한 요인들에 대한 정량적인 데이터를 추출하여, 두 세트의 데이터를 대상으로 실제 불편감을 느끼게 하는 요인들을 분석한다. 분석대상은 시차의 크기와 시차변화의 크기를 비롯하여, 콘텐츠의 내용, 정황이나 상황, 화면의 움직임, 카메라의 위치와 움직임, 색상, 화면밝기 등이다. 기존 연구는 시청자의 불편감을 유발하는 개개 요인들에 대해 다루어 왔는데, 본 논문에서는 단일 요인보다는 그 요인들의 복합적인 작용에 더욱 초점을 맞춘다. 즉, 지금까지 주로 다루어왔던 큰 시차뿐만 아니라 불편감을 유발하는 크고 작은 요인들과 그 복합요인이 어느 정도의 불편감을 느끼는지를 분석한다. This paper qualitatively analyzes the stereo 3D content factors causing viewer's discomfort. For this, we perform a subjective test that each subject strokes a specific key whenever he or she feels discomfort during watching stereo 3D contents. Also we extract the quantitative values of the factors in the 3D contents to obtain the temporal changes of the factors. Those two sets of data are used to analyze the contents to find the content factors which cause viewer's discomfort. The factors to be considered are the amount and the frequency of the disparity change, story of the contents, situation or environments of a scene, movement and position of the image or camera, color and luminance information as well as disparities themselves. Most researches have dealt with each factor causing viewer's discomfort but this paper focuses on the composite factors rather than each of them. That is, this paper deals with the various strong and weak factors and their composites causing viewer's discomfort in addition to the big disparities which have been mostly so far.

Wpływ zbyt małych i zbyt dużych nierówności płac na wzrost gospodarczy

In political economics coexist two thoughts of income (earnings) inequalities. First, motivating, which postulates bigger earnings inequalities and second, egalitarian, which postulates less earnings inequalities. In the earlier research we tried to reconcile these two thoughts. We confirmed the appearance of optimum, for economic growth, earnings inequalities (Gini index, 28%). From this perspective, both too little and too big earnings inequalities had equally a negative impact on growth. Now we’re putting one hypothesis that too little and too big inequalities cause different waste of economic effectiveness. On one hand, when inequalities are less than the optimum ones, their increase causes considerable economic growth. Then the whole of society accept the increase of earnings inequalities. On the other hand, when inequalities are too big, their downfall gives less economic profits. Demands of poor people to reduce too big disparities in earnings can be corrected by the necessity of using differential work and level of education. The research was conducted for Poland for period 1970–2006 on the economic growth model.

Are ‘digital natives’ really digitally competent?—A study on Chinese teenagers

AbstractLiterature review has found that despite the considerable attention focused on ‘digital natives’, few studies have carefully investigated the characteristics of this group. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the debate on digital natives by providing a ‘piece of evidence’ on the digital competence status of a group of Chinese teenagers (ninth grade students) randomly selected from the Jiangdong District in Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province. An Instant Digital Competence Assessment (iDCA) tool, developed by a research group from the University of Florence, was adopted as the measurement tool for the study. Quantitative research was employed and the research design for the study was descriptive in nature. Data analysis results found that the majority of the participating ninth grade students (n = 317) had personal computers (PCs) and the Internet available at home and the average period of time owing a PC was about 5 years. The iDCA results indicated that (1) participants' overall performance in the iDCA was just ‘pass’ rather than ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, which might imply that digital natives in China are not necessarily digitally competent; (2) there were big disparities among participants as regards their digital competence; (3) participants' digital competence differed depending on their schools and their ages; (4) participants' digital competence was not significantly influenced by such factors as having a PC or not, having the Internet or not at home, frequency of computers and Internet use. On the basis of the findings, the study concluded by highlighting the role of education in improving teenagers' digital competence and by recommending the development of well‐designed teaching and learning materials for the Chinese K‐12 school system.

The Function of the Township Enterprises and the Regional Disparities in China

In China, there are big disparities in economy between eastern region, middle and western region. It is said that, the big disparities are caused mainly by non-state-owned enterprises, especially township enterprises. Whether this conclusion is correct or not, let us take a deep look on it.It fact, until 1979, the state-owned enterprises in former developed region take up to 39% of the country's state-owned industry, about two times of that in the former undeveloped region. In contrast to this situation, the non-state-owned industry, about one and half times of that in the former developed region. Moreover, from 1979-1994, the non-state-owned enterprises increased by 22.2% in former developed region, this figure ranks the top in China. However, in former developed region, the non-state-owned enterprises only increased by 2.9% about the half of the average increasing rate all over the country. Furthermore, considering of the contribution of the industry development to economy. In the former developed region, the development of the state-owned enterprises contribute 17.5% only. Contrary to this figure, in the former undeveloped region, the development of the non-state-owned enterprises contribute about 53%.Then, whether the development of the non-state-owned township enterprises has played the major role in former the big disparities between eastern, middle and western regions in China? Subsequently, whether the development of the non-state-owned township enterprises is the key factor that causes the big disparities of the revenue in eastern, middle and western regions in China?In this study, I analyzed the relationship between the regional disparities and the development of the township enterprises in the later 80′ Also, I discussed the importance of the development of the township enterprises in reducing the regional disparities. This paper is divided into five parts. Part one: the overview of the township enterprises in China. Part two: analysis of the regional disparities. Part three: the status of the township enterprises in different regions. Part four: relationships between the development of the township enterprises and the regional differences. Part five: conclusion.

An Assessment of Collision Strengths for Lithium and Lithium-Like Ions

In this paper electron impact collision strengths for atomic lithium and lithium-like ions (up to Z = 28) are intercompared and assessed by taking account of available experimental and theoretical results. A selection of these experimental and theoretical data is presented graphically as plots of effective collision strengths υ, that is, averages of collision strengths over Maxwellian electron velocity distributions, against reduced temperature kT/E0 (where E0 is the excitation threshold energy). The agreement among the various theoretical results is generally much closer than the errors quoted for the experimental results so the final assessment is largely determined by the theoretical values. An important need to improve the experimental methods is identified. Only a few of the theoretical calculations include the effect of resonances and these show that this omission can lead to big disparities in the threshold (low temperature) region. It appears that data for ions for which specific calculations are not available can be derived satisfactorily by interpolation from available and neighboring material. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for the most reliable values and suggestions for work to improve on the current situation.