Netherlands Germany Research Articles

Cold Chain Food and COVID-19 Transmission Risk: From the Perspective of Consumption and Trade

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), political and academic circles have focused significant attention on stopping the chain of COVID-19 transmission. In particular outbreaks related to cold chain food (CCF) have been reported, and there remains a possibility that CCF can be a carrier. Based on CCF consumption and trade matrix data, here, the “source” of COVID-19 transmission through CCF was analyzed using a complex network analysis method, informing the construction of a risk assessment model reflecting internal and external transmission dynamics. The model included the COVID-19 risk index, CCF consumption level, urbanization level, CCF trade quantity, and others. The risk level of COVID-19 transmission by CCF and the dominant risk types were analyzed at national and global scales as well as at the community level. The results were as follows. (1) The global CCF trade network is typically dominated by six core countries in six main communities, such as Indonesia, Argentina, Ukraine, Netherlands, and the USA. These locations are one of the highest sources of risk for COVID-19 transmission. (2) The risk of COVID-19 transmission by CCF in specific trade communities is higher than the global average, with the Netherlands–Germany community being at the highest level. There are eight European countries (i.e., Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Britain, Italy, and Poland) and three American countries (namely the USA, Mexico, and Brazil) facing a very high level of COVID-19 transmission risk by CCF. (3) Of the countries, 62% are dominated by internal diffusion and 23% by external input risk. The countries with high comprehensive transmission risk mainly experience risks from external inputs. This study provides methods for tracing the source of virus transmission and provides a policy reference for preventing the chain of COVID-19 transmission by CCF and maintaining the security of the global food supply chain.

Downscaling land surface temperature: A framework based on geographically and temporally neural network weighted autoregressive model with spatio-temporal fused scaling factors

Downscaling land surface temperatures (LST) from satellite imagery is essential for many fine-scale applications. However, the accuracy of the downscaling is often limited by different environmental and geographical conditions. In this work, a novel LST downscaling framework is proposed to improve the accuracy, especially for heterogeneous areas with varying land covers and complex terrains. The framework focuses on downscaling the MODIS LST from 1 km to 100 m, using the proposed geographically and temporally neural network weighted autoregression (GTNNWAR) model with spatio-temporal fused scaling factors derived from Landsat 8 imagery and digital surface models (DSM). To tackle the issues of the non-stationarity of the scaling factors in heterogenous areas, a region-adaptive parameterization approach is first applied. Then, the GTNNWAR invokes a two-stage deep neural network to estimate the regression coefficients, resulting in the adaption of varying weights for the scaling factors to raise the prediction performance. Moreover, the GTNNWAR is incorporated with a spatial autoregressive model which intakes the neighbor effects so that the overall accuracy can be further improved. Prior to the actual downscaling with the GTNNWAR, a filter-based fusion method is applied to ensure the spatio-temporal consistency of scaling factors is high enough for the neural networks to converge. The results suggest that the proposed framework exhibits high accuracy at the boundaries of different land covers and complex terrains. Compared with several other downscaling algorithms in three case study areas (Beijing and Zhangye in China, Netherlands–Germany in Europe), the proposed framework outperforms with a 28% improved R-squared (R2) and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.02 K. In addition, the downscaled LST has R2 over 0.63 for the UAV observations (Guangdong). It is concluded that the proposed framework has high reliability and robustness to provide LST datasets with high spatio-temporal resolutions in a wide range of land types.

Data interoperability software solution for emergency reaction in the Europe Union

Abstract. Emergency management becomes more challenging in international crisis episodes because of cultural, semantic and linguistic differences between all stakeholders, especially first responders. Misunderstandings between first responders makes decision making slower and more difficult. However, spread and development of networks and IT-based emergency management systems (EMSs) have improved emergency responses, which have become more coordinated. Despite improvements made in recent years, EMSs have not still solved problems related to cultural, semantic and linguistic differences which are the real cause of slower decision making. In addition, from a technical perspective, the consolidation of current EMSs and the different formats used to exchange information offers another problem to be solved in any solution proposed for information interoperability between heterogeneous EMSs in different contexts. To overcome these problems, we present a software solution based on semantic and mediation technologies. EMERGency ELements (EMERGEL) (Fundacion CTIC and AntwortING Ingenieurbüro PartG, 2013), a common and modular ontology shared by all the stakeholders, has been defined. It offers the best solution to gather all stakeholders' knowledge in a unique and flexible data model, taking into account different countries' cultural and linguistic issues. To deal with the diversity of data protocols and formats, we have designed a service-oriented architecture for data interoperability (named DISASTER: Data Interoperability Solution At STakeholders Emergency Reaction) providing a flexible extensible solution to solve the mediation issues. Web services have been adopted as specific technology to implement this paradigm that has the most significant academic and industrial visibility and attraction. Contributions of this work have been validated through the design and development of a cross-border realistic prototype scenario, actively involving both emergency managers and emergency-first responders: the Netherlands–Germany border fire.

Intraspecific variation of seed floating ability in Sparganium emersum suggests a bimodal dispersal strategy

Water-mediated spread of seeds (hydrochory) plays an important role in the dispersal of aquatic plants. In this study we investigate intraspecific variation in floating ability and germination capacity of Sparganium emersum seeds in relation to seed mass, within three natural populations along the Rur River (the Netherlands–Germany). Our results suggest that S. emersum produces two types of seeds: (i) short-floating seeds (SFS) that sink within 4 weeks (approximately 71% of all seeds), and (ii) long-floating seeds (LFS) that float at least for 6 months (approximately 28% of all seeds). Our study further shows that short-floating seeds display a significantly higher germination (%) (SFS = 89.9% vs LFS = 32.6%), a faster germination rate (SFS = 8.71 ± 3.3 vs LFS = 9.32 ± 3.1 days to germination) and a higher mean seed mass (SFS = 15.17 ± 4.5 vs LFS = 11.25 ± 3.8 mg), compared to long-floating seeds. It is argued that the production of these two types of seeds by S. emersum plants, each type with a different potential for water-mediated dispersal, represents a bimodal hydrochoric dispersal strategy.

Renaissance Intertheater and the Staging of Nobody

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, English companies of strolling players initiated a remarkable form of cultural interaction between England the Continent. Leaving their own theaters struggling against religious opposition, outbreaks of the plague, internecine competition, these nomadic performers took sail in expectation of a better life abroad, as far from London as Paris, Stockholm, Warsaw. Many were bound ultimately for the courts of German princes, but most began their journey by crossing the North Sea to the port cities of the Netherlands. In defense of their travels, the actors contrasted the perils of home life with the prospects of Low Countries to roar in: We can be bankrupts on this side, they asserted, and gentlemen of a company beyond sea: be burst at London, pieced up in Rotterdam. The sea is a purger, at sea must our fortunes take physic.' The passage to Europe, the players hoped, would restore their health wealth thereby vindicate the theatrical profession itself. As it happened, their hopes were quite successfully realized, into the second half of the seventeenth century their companies remained profitable, their performances renowned. In the history of cultural relations between England Europe, especially the Netherlands Germany, the episode of the strolling players was an unexampled success. Yet it is a success that modern scholarship has been little interested in explaining. This is not to say that the phenomenon has been ignored; on the contrary, the last century a half has witnessed a steady recovery of information about the wanderings of these English comedians. They were first treated by Ludwig Tieck in his Deutsches Theater of 1817, though Tieck's sources remained unpublished until

Testing for a nonlinear relationship among fundamentals and exchange rates in the ERM

We employ two nonparametric nonlinear testing methodologies, namely a nonparametric nonlinear cointegration approach and a nonlinear Granger causality approach, to test for a nonlinear relationship between macroeconomic fundamentals and exchange rates for two country-pairs, namely the Netherlands–Germany and France–Germany. The results suggest that there is nonlinear cointegration among money, output and exchange rates for Netherlands–Germany, which can be interpreted as evidence of a long-run nonlinear relationship. For France–Germany, we fail to find evidence of nonlinear cointegration, but we find nonlinear Granger causality from French money to the FFr/DM exchange rate. These findings may be interpreted as evidence of a dynamic nonlinear relationship and are consistent with the German dominance hypothesis. On the basis of estimated fractional ARIMA models, we rejected the hypothesis that these nonlinearities are due to bubbles.

Seismic hazard assessments for two test areas ? ?Southern Italy? and ?Belgium?The Netherlands?Germany?

Within the activity of the ESC Subcommission 8 ‘Engineering Seismology’, Project TERESA, seismic hazard calculations have been performed for two areas of a different earthquake activity. Fundamental seismological data (earthquake catalogues, macroseismic observations and maps) and some additional geological information were analyzed and processed to prepare inputs for hazard computations. Great attention has been paid to verifying the reliability of the input data. Seismic hazards obtained for five sites of the region of high seismic activity (Sannio-Matese, southern Italy) and six sites of the region of low seismic activity (Brabant Massif and northern Rhine, Belgium—The Netherlands—Germany) are presented and discussed.