Large Footprint Research Articles

Large-area, low-cost, highly durable solar evaporators for sustainable solarizing seawater

Conventional solarizing seawater technology faces significant challenges including a large footprint, time-consuming processes, and inefficient energy utilization. Solar-driven interfacial water evaporation (SIWE) technology, offers a promising approach for sustainable solarizing seawater, facilitating the production of solid salt with reduced time and land requirements. Nevertheless, the urgent challenge lies in the development of low-cost, large-area solar evaporators that are highly salt-resistant and adaptable, enabling efficient and sustainable solar desalination for solid salt production. As such, a large-area, affordable, and highly durable melamine foam/reduced graphene oxide/sodium alginate (MGS) solar evaporator is proposed for continuous solarizing seawater using a simple method of “immersion-crosslinking-reduction”. Among them, hydrophilic melamine foam serves as the supportive framework, immersed with graphene as light absorption material, and hydrophilic sodium alginate polymeric network for fixing graphene sheets and regulating water evaporation enthalpy. As such, MGS solar evaporator can be prepared in a large-area of 0.5 m × 0.5 m at the cost prices as low as $2.91 m−2. The optimized MGS solar evaporator achieves a high water evaporation rate of 2.30 kg m−2h−1 with the photothermal conversion efficiency of 89.2 % under one sun irradiation. In outdoor environments, MGS allows for timely convective/diffusive salt discharge through its macropores, thus allowing for prolonged seawater solarization without obvious solid salt accumulation. Notably, the original seawater can be highly concentrated until all the water evaporates and solid salt precipitates. This developed MGS solar evaporator offers a novel perspective on efficient seawater solarization, conserving both time and land.

Ion Mobility Separations Using Cocentric Architecture.

Ion mobility separations, especially using drift tube ion mobility spectrometers, are usually performed in linear channels, which can have a large footprint when extended to achieve higher resolving powers. In this work, we explored the performance of an ion mobility device with a curved architecture, which can have a more compact form. The cocentric ion mobility spectrometer (CoCIMS) manipulates ions between two cocentric surfaces containing a serpentine track. The mobility separation inside the CoCIMS is achieved using traveling waveforms (TWs). We initially evaluated the device using ion trajectory simulations using SIMION, which indicated that when ions traveled circularly inside the CoCIMS they resulted in similar resolving powers and transmitted m/z range as traveling in a straight path. We then performed experimental validation of the CoCIMS in conjunction with a TOF MS. The CoCIMS was made of two flexible printed circuit board materials folded into cocentric cylinders separated by a gap of 2.8 mm. The device was about 50 mm diameter ×152 mm long and provided 1.846 m of serpentine path length. Three sets of mixtures (Agilent tune mixture, tetraalkylammonium salts, and an eight-peptide mixture) and four traveling waveform profiles (square, sine, triangle, and sawtooth) were used. The sawtooth TW profile produced a slightly higher resolving power for the Agilent tuning mixture and tetraalkylammonium ions. The average resolving power for Agilent tune mixture ions ranged from 37 (using sawtooth TW) to 27 (using square TW). The average resolving powers ranged from 45 (sawtooth TW) to 31 (square TW) for tetraalkylammonium ions. The resolving power of the peptide mixture ions was similar among the four TW profiles and ranged from 51 to 56. The average percent error in TWCCS for the peptide mixture ions was about 0.4%. The new device showed promising results, but improvements are needed to further increase the resolving power.

Evidence of theropod dinosaurs in the upper hauterivian–lower barremian of Jebel Kebar (central Tunisia): Paleobiogeographic implications

The fossil record of Mesozoic dinosaurs in Tunisia has long been thought to be restricted exclusively to the southern part of the country. Although tidal and continental environments have been recognized within Cretaceous formations in central Tunisia based on sedimentological analyses, no skeletal remains ascribable to dinosaurs have been found in these deposits. The hypothesis of a possible land connection between central and southern Tunisia during the Early Cretaceous has not been previously explored due to notable lateral variations in facies, marked by the recurrent occurrence of shallow marine deposits separating these domains. The vertebrate ichnological record in the Central Tunisian Atlas was limited to isolated tridactyl footprints exclusively observed in the Albian Kebar Formation. Here, we report the first dinosaur tracks from the pre-Albian Cretaceous (upper Hauterivian–lower Barremian) of central Tunisia. These tracks consist of large tridactyl footprints left behind by medium to large-sized non-avian theropods. They occur within an extensively fractured dolostone bed and exhibit poor morphological preservation. Besides their dimensions, some tracks show morphological features, including broad digit impressions with some terminating in sharp claw traces, low to moderate mesaxony, and a wide divarication angle of the outer digits, reminiscent of the ichnogenus Megalosauripus. However, due to their poor state of preservation and limited number, we refrain from assigning these tracks to the ichnogeneric level and refer to them as indeterminate eubrontid footprints. The occurrence of theropod tracks in the Lower Cretaceous of central Tunisia confirms the sedimentology-based hypotheses about a temporal emergence of parts of this area, which was probably related to tectonic events. We compile previous biostratigraphic, sedimentological, and paleoichnological data to suggest possible periodic connections between the mainland in the south and the tidal flat environments within the central basins. Additionally, two possible scenarios regarding the biogeographic implications of the Jebel Kebar tracks are discussed. The first scenario suggests that a Gondwanan theropod fauna would have been exploring and residing in newly emerged regions of higher latitudes, whereas the alternative scenario posits the existence of a paleogeographic link between the northern margin of Gondwana and Adria, which would have allowed an interchange of theropod faunas between the two landmasses at least in the early Barremian.

Enhanced Infrared Vision by Nonlinear Up-Conversion in Nonlocal Metasurfaces.

The ability to detect and image short-wave infrared light has important applications in surveillance, autonomous navigation, and biological imaging. However, the current infrared imaging technologies often pose challenges due to large footprint, large thermal noise and inability to augment infrared and visible imaging. Here, infrared imaging is demonstrated by nonlinear up-conversion to the visible in an ultra-compact, high-quality-factor lithium niobate resonant metasurface. Images with high conversion efficiency and resolution quality are obtained despite the strong nonlocality of the metasurface. The possibility of edge-detection image processing augmented with direct up-conversion imaging for advanced night vision applications is furthershown.

Decarbonization as a multilateral political mechanism for carbon regulation

Formulation of the problem. This article is devoted to the analysis of the current state and prospects of the decarbonization project and its role in foreign policy in the process of creating the emissions trading system and the mechanism of the new European system of taxation of imported goods that leave a large carbon footprint (Control Border Adjustment Mechanism, CBAM) (the so-called "carbon border"). The issues raised in this work correspond to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely: the fight against climate change (13 goals), which were adopted by the United Nations in 2015 as a universal call to action to reduce poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people live in peace and prosperity. It was analyzed that the EU institutions (Commission, Council or European Parliament) had the greatest impact on the organizational structure of the European Union emissions trading (STV). Purpose. The purpose of the study is to analyze the role of decarbonization as a multilateral political mechanism of carbon regulation at the border. Methods. Comparative, systemic, institutional research methods are used in the article. Research results. Attempts by the European Parliament to significantly change the decentralized nature of the ETS have failed. Thus, the process of updating the ETS and the mechanism of the new European system of taxation of imported goods that leave a large carbon footprint corresponds to the main provisions of the intergovernmental approach. Decarbonization is a term used to remove or reduce carbon dioxide (СО2) emissions from the atmosphere. Decarbonization is achieved by switching to low-carbon energy sources. The project "Cross-Border Adjustment of the Carbon Tax Upon World Accession" makes it possible to avoid negative consequences for trade and can create a win-win situation - in economic, political and environmental terms. Documents reflecting the positions of the subjects and the course of the legislative process were used as primary materials. The research was conducted on the basis of the process tracking method. The article proves that the decisive confluence in the formation of the ETS design was the member states (the balance of interests and influence of the member states in the Council of the EU). The commission played a significant role as the author of the idea and moderator of compromises. The Commission and the European Parliament have on several occasions successfully blocked or softened Member State amendments that threatened to undermine the substance of emissions trading. Conclusions. As the planet faces rising temperatures and more frequent extreme weather events, it is clear that our current infrastructure practices must evolve. To mitigate and adapt to climate change, sustainable infrastructure is not just an option; it is a necessity.

Characterization of a SiPM-based monolithic neutron scatter camera using dark counts

The Single Volume Scatter Camera (SVSC) Collaboration aims to develop portable neutron imaging systems for a variety of applications in nuclear non-proliferation. Conventional double-scatter neutron imagers are composed of several separate detector volumes organized in at least two planes. A neutron must scatter in two of these detector volumes for its initial trajectory to be reconstructed. As such, these systems typically have a large footprint and poor geometric efficiency. We report on the design and characterization of a prototype monolithic neutron scatter camera that is intended to significantly improve upon the geometrical shortcomings of conventional neutron cameras. The detector consists of a 50 mm×56 mm× 60 mm monolithic block of EJ-204 plastic scintillator instrumented on two faces with arrays of 64 Hamamatsu S13360-6075PE silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). The electronic crosstalk is limited to < 5% between adjacent channels and < 0.1% between all other channel pairs. SiPMs introduce a significantly elevated dark count rate over PMTs, as well as correlated noise from after-pulsing and optical crosstalk. In this article, we characterize the dark count rate and optical crosstalk and present a modified event reconstruction likelihood function that accounts for them. We find that the average dark count rate per SiPM is 4.3 MHz with a standard deviation of 1.5 MHz among devices. The analysis method we employ to measure internal optical crosstalk also naturally yields the mean and width of the single-electron pulse height. We calculate separate contributions to the width of the single-electron pulse-height from electronic noise and avalanche fluctuations. We demonstrate a timing resolution for a single-photon pulse to be (128 ± 4) ps. Finally, coincidence analysis is employed to measure external (pixel-to-pixel) optical crosstalk. We present a map of the average external crosstalk probability between 2×4 groups of SiPMs, as well as the in-situ timing characteristics extracted from the coincidence analysis. Further work is needed to characterize the performance of the camera at reconstructing single- and double-site interactions, as well as image reconstruction.

РОЗРОБКА ЕФЕКТИВНОГО ТА ТОЧНОГО МЕТОДУ ВІДСТЕЖЕННЯ ОБʼЄКТІВ НА ВІДЕО НА МОБІЛЬНИХ ПРИСТРОЯХ

One of the top research topics in computer vision area is visual object tracking. Main goal is to obtain the target object’s location in the first video frame of a given video sequence. The recent innovations of deep neural networks, specifically Siamese networks has significant impact on visual object tracking. In spite of high accuracy and high results in academic benchmarks, there are drawbacks in current state-of-the-art approaches in particular compute-intensive and large memory footprint that cannot satisfy the performance requirements of real-world applications. The aim of this paper is to design a new lightweight framework for resource-efficient and accurate visual object tracking. To add, a new tracker of efficiency benchmark and protocol were introduced. Efficiency is defined in terms of both energy consumption and execution speed on edge devices. New dual template representation for object model adaptation was developed. The first template, static, fixes the original visible appearance and thus prevents deviation and, as a result, failures caused by adaptation. The other is dynamic; the state reflects the current conditions of assembly and the appearance of its object. Unlike STARK, which incorporates additional timing information by introducing a separate estimation prediction head, we introduce parameter-free module similarity as a template update rule optimized from the latest network. We show that the learned convex combination of two patterns is effective for tracking on multiple tests. A lightweight tracker was proposed, which includes functions, dual representation of patterns and pixel-by-pixel merged blocks in its compact network. The resulting FEAR-XS tracker runs at 205 FPS on the iPhone 11, which is 4.2 times faster than LightTrack and 26.6 times faster than Ocean, with high accuracy on many tests – no state-of-the-art tracker is more accurate and faster than any FEAR tracker. In addition, the algorithm is highly energy efficient.

Tetradactyl footprints and plant material from the Jurassic-Cretaceous boundary, Tarapaca Region, Northern Chile

We report new ichnites corresponding to a trackway composed of three tetradactyl pedal footprints and plant remains near Southeastern Guatacondo, Tarapacá Region, within the transition of Majala and Chacarilla Formations (Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous). The fossils were found in the context of a Copper Mining road construction at the PK23 site, Quebrada Blanca Phase 2 project, by the Teck Mining Company Quebrada Blanca S.A.We performed stratigraphical, paleobotanical, and paleoichnological studies, along with the footprint characterization and comparisons by Principal Component Analysis, and Discriminant Analysis of I-II, II-III and III-IV interdigital angles, using a large tetradactyl footprint morphological database of potential producers (dinosaurs, crocodiles, lepidosaurs, and pterosaurs). Additionally, we performed 3D pedal computer modeling kinematic analysis of the Chilesaurus diegosuarezi's 3D tetradactyl foot under two different sedimentary conditions (i.e. hard soil with superficial impression, and soft sediment with a penetrative impression), to test it as a potential trackmaker.The stratigraphic section reveals an association of siliciclastic facies, formed by the intercalation of fine-grained sandstones and wackes, with ripple marks, cross and horizontal lamination, evidencing intermittent moderate to low sedimentation energy.Among the plant material, several organs of the family Cheirolepidiaceae were identified such as, leaves and leafy branches of Brachyphyllum type, Classostrobus pollen cone, ovuliferous scales, and wood fragments related to Cupressinoxylon. The monodominance of Cheirolepidiaceae among the preserved macroflora allows inferring the characteristics of the environment in which the plants lived, highlighting halophytic, and temporarily arid conditions. Evidence as a whole, permits to interpret the depositional environment as an arid deltaic-littoral plain, temporarily covered with an ephemeral water layer associated with a stunted woody vegetation, in which terrestrial vertebrates walked by.Despite the low predictive power of the multivariate analysis, due to the various sources of morphological variability inherent to footprint formation, the PK23 footprints seem to better correspond to Dinosauria or Avialae as the most likely producers, rather than to Lepidosauria or Crocodylia, discarding the dinosaur Chilesaurus due to very low interdigital mediolateral rotation capabilities.

A compact tri-notched flexible UWB antenna based on an inkjet-printable and plasma-activated silver nano ink

The rapid development of ultrawideband (UWB) communication systems has resulted in increasing performance requirements for the antenna system. In addition to a wide bandwidth, fast propagation rates and compact dimensions, flexibility, wearability or portability are also desirable for UWB antennas, as are excellent notch characteristics. Although progress has been made in the development of flexible/wearable antennas desired notch properties are still rather limited. Moreover, most presently available flexible UWB antennas are fabricated using environmentally not attractive subtractive etching-based processes. The usage of facile additive sustainably inkjet printing processes also utilizing low temperature plasma-activated conductive inks is rarely reported. In addition, the currently used tri-notched flexible UWB antenna designs have a relatively large footprint, which poses difficulties when integrated into miniaturized and compact communication devices. In this work, a silver nano ink is used to fabricate the antenna via inkjet printing and an efficient plasma sintering procedure. For the targeted UWB applications miniaturized tri-notched flexible antenna is realized on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate with a compact size of 17.6 mm × 16 mm × 0.12 mm. The antenna operates in the UWB frequency band (2.9–10.61 GHz), and can shield interferences from WiMAX (3.3–3.6 GHz), WLAN (5.150–5.825 GHz) and X-uplink (7.9–8.4 GHz) bands, as well as exhibits a certain of bendability. Three nested "C" slots of different sizes were adopted to achieve notch features. The simulation and test results demonstrate that the proposed antenna can generate signal radiation in the desired UWB frequency band while retaining the desired notch properties and having acceptable SAR values on-body, making it a viable candidate for usage in flexible or wearable communication transmission devices. The research provides a facile and highly efficient method for fabricating flexible/wearable UWB antennas, that is, the effective combination of inkjet printing processing, flexible substrates, low temperature-activated conductive ink and antenna structure design.

Tip of the Spear: Developing Predictive Military Planning Tools Using Hidden Markov Models

The evolution of the modern battlefield is increasingly complex as new technologies emerge. However, the nature of the battlefield still can be explained by Baron De Jomini’s “Grand Tactics.” Military planners’ success is in their ability to develop synergy through layering effects of a complex system at a decisive point on the battlefield. Synergistic effects require subject matter experts (SME) working in planning cells to integrate systems and units in time and space. These planning cells have large footprints and become prioritized in the opposition’s targeting cycle. Without these SMEs, planners are unable to identify the latent variables to achieve the massing of forces at the decisive point. This paper explores the application of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) to enhance existing Correlation of Forces and Means (COFM) calculators as predictive tools in military planning. Current tools focus on a 3 to 1 force ratio for an offensive operation. They get improved through applying a force equivalent factor. The force equivalent factors are scalars that adjust relative combat power from a single main battle tank to a mechanized infantry vehicle. These tools lack the ability to identify the physics of the battlefield in time and space. The utilization of wargames during planning and training provides a venue for serious games to improve planning tools. It allows a visualization of target pairing and dynamics that a linear equation would miss. This study employs scenarios generated in OneSAF, ranging from simple platoon-level ambushes to combined arms maneuver featuring rotary wing assets requiring a shaping effort to ensure favorable COFMs. The focus of the research lies in leveraging HMMs to establish a time-series indicator of success probability using potentially observable data, with an emphasis on communication dynamics. In this study, we examine observable communication by data generated through both visual and direct contact. Through observation of contact from the friendly and opposition forces will provide a predictor of the hidden state of relative advantage, in time and space. With the data generated by the OneSAF simulation, the HMM determines the states of the operation and probability of success while minimizing required presence inside the units.

EWT: Efficient Wavelet-Transformer for single image denoising

Transformer-based image denoising methods have shown remarkable potential but suffer from high computational cost and large memory footprint due to their linear operations for capturing long-range dependencies. In this work, we aim to develop a more resource-efficient Transformer-based image denoising method that maintains high performance. To this end, we propose an Efficient Wavelet Transformer (EWT), which incorporates a Frequency-domain Conversion Pipeline (FCP) to reduce image resolution without losing critical features, and a Multi-level Feature Aggregation Module (MFAM) with a Dual-stream Feature Extraction Block (DFEB) to harness hierarchical features effectively. EWT achieves a faster processing speed by over 80% and reduces GPU memory usage by more than 60% compared to the original Transformer, while still delivering denoising performance on par with state-of-the-art methods. Extensive experiments show that EWT significantly improves the efficiency of Transformer-based image denoising, providing a more balanced approach between performance and resource consumption.

Evaluation of reanalysis soil moisture products using cosmic ray neutron sensor observations across the globe

Abstract. Reanalysis soil moisture products are valuable for diverse applications, but their quality assessment is limited due to scale discrepancies when compared to traditional in situ point-scale measurements. The emergence of cosmic ray neutron sensors (CRNSs) with field-scale soil moisture estimates (∼ 250 m radius, up to 0.7 m deep) is more suitable for the product evaluation owing to their larger footprint. In this study, we perform a comprehensive evaluation of eight widely used reanalysis soil moisture products (ERA5-Land, CFSv2, MERRA2, JRA55, GLDAS-Noah, CRA40, GLEAM and SMAP L4 datasets) against 135 CRNS sites from the COSMOS-UK, COSMOS-Europe, COSMOS USA and CosmOz Australia networks. We evaluate the products using six metrics capturing different aspects of soil moisture dynamics. Results show that all reanalysis products generally exhibit good temporal correlation with the measurements, with the median temporal correlation coefficient (R) values spanning 0.69 to 0.79, though large deviations are found at sites with seasonally varying vegetation cover. Poor performance is observed across products for soil moisture anomalies time series, with R values varying from 0.46 to 0.66. The performance of reanalysis products differs greatly across regions, climate, land covers and topographic conditions. In general, all products tend to overestimate data in arid climates and underestimate data in humid regions as well as grassland. Most reanalysis products perform poorly in steep terrain. Relatively low temporal correlation and high bias are detected in some sites from the west of the UK, which might be associated with relatively low bulk density and high soil organic carbon. Overall, ERA5-Land, CRA40, CFSv2, SMAP L4 and GLEAM exhibit superior performance compared to MERRA2, GLDAS-Noah and JRA55. We recommend that ERA5-Land and CFSv2 could be used in humid climates, whereas SMAP L4 and CRA40 perform better in arid regions. SMAP L4 has good performance for cropland, while GLEAM is more effective in shrubland regions. Our findings also provide insights into directions for improvement of soil moisture products for product developers.

Single-Stage Lateral Anterior-to-Psoas Interbody Fusion and Facet Screws as a Treatment for L5–S1 Adjacent Segment Disease in a Patient With a Long-Segment Construct

Objective: Adjacent segment disease (ASD) occurs in 9% of patients with long-segment lumbar spine fusion and results from the transmission of a greater degree of stress to the segments cranial and caudal to a fused segment. The treatment of symptomatic ASD typically involves extending fusion to the involved segment. Revision and extension of posterior instrumentation bears the disadvantage of involving the exposure and modification of old hardware. Lateral interbody fusion cannot be performed at L5/S1 due to the iliac crest. Anterior lumbar interbody fusion typically still requires flipping the patient to augment the construct posteriorly. Here, we present a method to treat L5/S1 ASD using single-position anterior-to-psoas (ATP) interbody fusion combined with facet screw instrumentation.Methods: An 80-year-old man, who had undergone L2-5 fusion 27 years ago, presented with persistent lower back pain and gait dysfunction with imaging findings of L5/S1 spondylosis and ASD. Under intraoperative computed tomography navigation, left L5/S1 ATP interbody fusion was performed with simultaneous L5/S1 percutaneous facet screw fixation. Results: The abdominal incision was 4.0 cm and the single posterior incision was 1.5 cm long. Blood loss was lower than 10 mL, and the procedure lasted for less than 1.5 hours. The patient was discharged to rehabilitation after 3 days.Conclusion: ATP interbody fusion enabled the placement of an interbody device with a large footprint to promote fusion and reduce the risk of subsidence and pseudoarthrosis. The combined use of interbody fusion and facet screws obviates the need to link to the previous construct.

Elastic, Janus 3D evaporator with arch-shaped design for low-footprint and high-performance solar-driven zero-liquid discharge

Solar-driven zero-liquid discharge (ZLD) is a promising wastewater management strategy for freshwater recovery and solid waste harvesting. However, practical application of the solar-driven ZLD is severely constrained due to its low evaporation efficiency, large footprint, and rapid salt accumulation. Here, we present a Janus arch-shaped solar-driven evaporator (▪) comprising a hydrophobic top photothermal layer for effective light absorption, solar-thermal conversion, and vapor evaporation, which exhibits an evaporation rate of 2.82 kg∙m−2∙h−1 in pure water. The design also includes shapable delignified longitudinal wood (D-L-wood) serving as the hydrophilic bottom water transport layer, which enables dual-directional saltwater transportation and salt crystallization. D-L-wood, with numerous aligned channels, exhibits a low thermal conductivity of 0.04 W·m−1·K−1 along perpendicular direction and can effectively localize heat on the photothermal layer of the evaporator. D-L-wood has excellent hydrophilicity, and the salty water can be transferred quickly along both ends of the wood, providing sufficient salty water for rapid evaporation. The anisotropy of the wood makes the heat transfer quickly along the channel, improving the thermal management ability of the evaporator. Moreover, during vapor evaporation on the hydrophilic-hydrophobic interface, salt is crystallized at the hydrophilic layer, resulting in an enhanced anti-salt performance, a 1.5 folds evaporation rate compared with non-Janus evaporator after 15 h test. Under the conditions of a salt concentration of 3.5 %, a high salt harvest performance of 62.4 g∙m−2∙h−1 can be obtained under AM 1.5 solar irradiation. The arch-shaped design fully utilizes the upper space and effectively reduces evaporator footprint, resulting in an evaporation area to footprint ratio of 1.57:1. The designed evaporator can also be utilized for ZLD treatment of other heavy metal polluted water including Cu2+, CrO42−, Co2+, and so on. Therefore, the Janus-arch-shaped, solar-driven evaporator enables a potentially low-footprint, low-cost, scalable, and practical ZLD strategy for sustainable wastewater treatment.

Challenges and opportunities when moving food production and consumption toward sustainable diets in the Nordics: a scoping review for Nordic Nutrition Recommendations 2023.

The terms 'Nordic countries' or 'The Nordics' include the five countries Denmark, Finland, Island, Norway, and Sweden. This review includes evaluation of the Nordic countries against Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)/World Health Organizations' (WHO) guiding principles for healthy, sustainable diets with respect to environmental impact (principles #9 - #13) and sociocultural aspects (principles #14 - #16). A food systems perspective is taken to summarize and discuss the most important challenges and opportunities for achieving sustainable diets. Food system, food security, self-sufficiency, and resilience perspectives are applied. The information can underpin decisions when developing and implementing Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDG) in the Nordics. None of the Nordic countries are on track to reach the 2030 UN climate and biodiversity goals. We describe how food production, processing, and consumption contribute to these and other environmental challenges, and what kinds of dietary changes/transitions consistent with these goals are required. A major challenge is the high production and consumption of meat and too low consumption of fish, vegetables, and fruits. Meat production is a major source of emissions and, together with farmed fish, heavily dependent on imported feed ingredients, leaving a large land-use and water footprint in exporting countries while domestic land resources are not used optimally. Dietary patterns have changed drastically over the past 50 years, and in large parts of the population, meat consumption has doubled since the 1970s, rendering historic food culture less useful as a basis for present-day recommendations. The Nordics have Europe's lowest use of antibiotics in animal and fish production and have made some progress in reducing food waste along the food chain. A major opportunity is better alignment of food production and consumption based on local or regional production potentials, in conjunction with better and more constructive integration with the global food system while integrating novel technologies to reduce emissions and resource use.

Do investors care about biodiversity?

Abstract This article introduces a new measure of a firm’s negative impact on biodiversity, the corporate biodiversity footprint (CBF), and studies whether it is priced in an international sample of stocks. On average, the CBF does not explain the cross-section of returns between 2019 and 2022. However, a biodiversity footprint premium (higher returns for firms with larger footprints) began emerging in October 2021 after the Kunming Declaration, which capped the first part of the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15). Consistent with this finding, stocks with large footprints lost value in the days after the Kunming Declaration. The launch of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) in June 2021 had a similar effect. These results indicate that investors have started to require a risk premium upon the prospect of, and uncertainty about, future regulation or litigation to preserve biodiversity.

Evaluating Sediment Removal Efficiency of Catch Basin Inserts as a Post-Construction Water Quality Tool on Roadways

Urban areas produce large amounts of stormwater runoff due to vast areas of impervious surfaces. Stormwater inlets, or catch basins, are commonly used for collecting and directing stormwater runoff away from streets and sidewalks. The conveyances used to direct flow to surface waters may be part of a municipal separate storm sewer systems (MS4s). Typically, MS4s redirect runoff without providing a means for removing harmful pollutants. These pollutants are then often discharged directly into local lakes, rivers, and streams, potentially harming native aquatic ecosystems. Post-construction stormwater practices are commonly used to treat runoff from urban areas by reducing the total runoff volume, lowering peak flow rates, and/or removing harmful pollutants from runoff. However, some post construction stormwater practices require large footprints, construction, and maintenance. Catch basin inserts (CBIs) are one type of post-construction best management practice that are installed within existing catch basins and require no additional land use while still providing a means for removing pollutants from stormwater runoff before entering the MS4. However, limited data is available to demonstrate the expected performance of various CBIs to ensure that these practices meet the pollutant removal standards set forth by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The objective of this study was to evaluate the sediment removal capabilities of eight different proprietary CBI products for potential use as a post-construction stormwater practice for Department of Transportation projects. Results indicate that only two basket-type CBIs met the 80% sediment retention benchmark established for the study. While not surpassing the benchmark, three bag-type CBIs did achieve more than 70% sediment retention. The remaining three CBIs (one basket-type, one bag-type, and one cartridge type) fell notably short of the performance benchmark.

Land use and Europe’s renewable energy transition: identifying low-conflict areas for wind and solar development

Continued dependence on imported fossil fuels is rapidly becoming unsustainable in the face of the twin challenges of global climate change and energy security demands in Europe. Here we present scenarios in line with REPowerEU package to identify Renewables Acceleration Areas that support rapid renewable expansion, while ensuring minimal harm to places important for biodiversity and rural communities. We calculated the area needed to meet renewable energy objectives under Business-as-Usual (BAU) and Low-conflict (LCON) development scenarios within each country, providing a broad overview of the potential for renewable energy generation to reduce impacts when development is steered toward lower conflict lands. Our analysis shows that meeting renewable energy objectives would require a network of land-based wind turbines and solar arrays encompassing upwards of 164,789 km2 by 2030 and 445,654 km2 by 2050, the latter roughly equivalent to the land area of Sweden. Our results highlight that BAU development patterns disproportionately target high-conflict land cover types. By 2030, depending on the development pathway, solar and wind development are projected to impact approximately 4,386–20,996 km2 and 65,735–138,454 km2 of natural and agricultural lands, respectively. As renewable energy objectives increase from 2030 to 2050 impacts to natural and agricultural lands also increase, with upwards of 33,911 km2 from future solar development and 399,879 km2 from wind development. Despite this large footprint, low-conflict lands can generate substantial renewable energy: 6.6 million GWh of solar and 3.5 million GWh of wind, 8–31 times 2030 solar objectives and 3–5 times 2030 wind objectives. Given these patterns, we emphasize the need for careful planning in areas with greater impact potential, either due to a larger demand for land area or limited land availability. Top-emitting countries with large renewable energy objectives (Germany, Italy, Poland, France, Spain) and those with limited flexibility in meeting objectives on low-conflict land (Albania, Slovenia, Montenegro, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Finland, Greece, Portugal, and Norway) should be priorities for country-level customizations to guide low-conflict siting and avoid disproportionate impacts on high-value areas.

GMiner++: Boosting GPU-based frequent itemset mining by reducing redundant computations

Frequent itemset mining (FIM) is increasingly important in fundamental data mining techniques. However, the applicability of existing FIM methods is limited, mainly because of their performance. The expected performance improvement is limited owing to the exploitation of only a single thread, despite numerous efficient single-threaded FIM methods being proposed. Numerous parallel FIM methods have been devised using graphic processing units (GPU) or multicore central processing units (CPUs) to overcome the shortcomings of these methods. However, when extracting patterns from large amounts of data, multi-threaded FIM methods exhibit a similar performance tendency to single-threaded FIM methods, because of their large memory footprints and computations. Hence, we propose GMiner++, a memory-efficient GPU-based FIM method equipped with several GPUs. We propose a sub-database of the same size called bit array blocks, which contains pre-calculated bit arrays of F1∪P(IK). These bit arrays are repeatedly exploited during mining tasks using an elegant probabilistic model. GMiner++ can obtain frequent patterns and use several GPUs only by using the bit array blocks and the occurrence update scheme. The proposed method decreased redundant computations using pre-calculated bit arrays with bit array blocks. In addition, GMiner++ does not create intermediate data during mining tasks to increase robustness and reduce memory footprints. Simulation results demonstrate that GMiner++ outperformed existing FIM methods concerning performance and scalability with increasing robustness.

Smart cities and communities in the GCC region: from top-down city development to more local approaches

City planners are seeking ways to incorporate human-centric urban projects that combine smart technology, good infrastructure and people’s perception as well as their participation. Smart city developments are increasingly being applied to smaller scales at which communities can co-design hard infrastructure and the resulting services. Experiences from city projects at this level have produced a plethora of designs, challenges and success factors, particularly from cases in countries with long legacies in city development. In the Gulf Cooperation Council region, young cities and new planned cities house the bulk of the population and face environmental challenges related to urban segregation, urban sprawl and large consumption footprints. The political-economy of this region in terms of central urban planning and government-led economic development offers valuable insights on the limits and challenges in implementing projects related to smart and connected communities (SCC). SCC as a label for smart urban interventions towards more connectedness between hard and soft (human-related) infrastructure can provide opportunities for participatory and sustainable urban planning in the region. This paper analyzes the role of community-level interventions within the smart city policies of Gulf countries. It shows that only few local-level projects exist, while the barriers to large-scale SCC initiatives are related to demographics, community characteristics, technological sophistication, lack of conducive regulations, and the prevalence of central urban planning. The success of local smart city approaches in the Gulf is dependent on public leadership in terms of clearing obstacles, designing broader strategies, and expanding projects to include the residential sector. Considering the potential of SCC projects to enhance the transition to sustainability in the predominantly urban Gulf societies, broader engagement of local governments, utilities, and community-level developers can result in tangible benefits in terms of more sustainable, smart and tailored local services.