The Impact of Landsat Satellite Monitoring on Conservation Biology

Landsat 7s recent malfunctioning will result in significant gaps in long-term satellite monitoring of Earth, affecting not only the research of the Earth science community but also conservation users of these data. To determine whether or how important Landsat monitoring is for conservation and natural resource management, we reviewed the Landsat programs history with special emphasis on the development of user groups. We also conducted a bibliographic search to determine the extent to which conservation research has been based on Landsat data. Conservation biologists were not an early user group of Landsat data because a) biologists lacked technical capacity – computers and software – to analyze these data; b) Landsats 1980s commercialization rendered images too costly for biologists budgets; and c) the broad-scale disciplines of conservation biology and landscape ecology did not develop until the mid-to-late 1980s. All these conditions had changed by the 1990s and Landsat imagery became an important tool for conservation biology. Satellite monitoring and Landsat continuity are mandated by the Land Remote Sensing Act of 1992. This legislation leaves open commercial options. However, past experiments with commercial operations were neither viable nor economical, and severely reduced the quality of monitoring, archiving and data access for academia and the public. Future satellite monitoring programs are essential for conservation and natural resource management, must provide continuity with Landsat, and should be government operated.     

钙钛矿型烯土复合氧化物及其在汽车尾气净化工程中的应用

本文介绍了钙铁矿型烯土复合氧化物的结构特征、制备方法与催化性能；分析了该类氧化物对汽车尾气环境的适应性，并与现有的贵金属催化剂作了比较．     

地球系统科学提出前我国科学界的某些思维

列举了在1988年美国提出"地球系统科学"前我国学者在该领域的某些思维:人与天地相应的观点,东亚大陆磁异常与我国人群健康关系的观点,天地生三位一体的观点,地球表层学的观点以及灾害系统的观点等.这些观点虽不如"地球系统科学"着眼于全球整体,但也包括了很大的系统,且不空洞.     

Effectiveness of Africa's tropical protected areas for maintaining forest cover

The effectiveness of parks for forest conservation is widely debated in Africa, where increasing human pressure, insufficient funding, and lack of management capacity frequently place significant demands on forests. Tropical forests house a substantial portion of the world's remaining biodiversity and are heavily affected by anthropogenic activity. We analyzed park effectiveness at the individual (224 parks) and national (23 countries) level across Africa by comparing the extent of forest loss (as a proxy for deforestation) inside parks to matched unprotected control sites. Although significant geographical variation existed among parks, the majority of African parks had significantly less forest loss within their boundaries (e.g., Mahale Park had 34 times less forest loss within its boundary) than control sites. Accessibility was a significant driver of forest loss. Relatively inaccessible areas had a higher probability (odds ratio >1, p < 0.001) of forest loss but only in ineffective parks, and relatively accessible areas had a higher probability of forest loss but only in effective parks. Smaller parks less effectively prevented forest loss inside park boundaries than larger parks (T = ?2.32, p < 0.05), and older parks less effectively prevented forest loss inside park boundaries than younger parks (F_2,154 = ?4.11, p < 0.001). Our analyses, the first individual and national assessment of park effectiveness across Africa, demonstrated the complexity of factors (such as geographical variation, accessibility, and park size and age) influencing the ability of a park to curb forest loss within its boundaries.     

Modelling and Prediction of Diesel Engine Performance using Relevance Vector Machine

Diesel engines are being increasingly adopted by many car manufacturers today, yet no exact mathematical diesel engine model exists due to its highly nonlinear nature. In the current literature, black-box identification has been widely used for diesel engine modelling and many artificial neural network (ANN) based models have been developed. However, ANN has many drawbacks such as multiple local minima, user burden on selection of optimal network structure, large training data size, and over-fitting risk. To overcome these drawbacks, this article proposes to apply an emerging machine learning technique, relevance vector machine (RVM), to model and predict the diesel engine performance. The property of global optimal solution of RVM allows the model to be trained using only a few experimental data sets. In this study, the inputs of the model are engine speed, load, and cooling water temperature, while the output parameters are the brake-specific fuel consumption and the amount of exhaust emissions like nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide. Experimental results show that the model accuracy is satisfactory even the training data is scarce. Moreover, the model accuracy is compared with that using typical ANN. Evaluation results also show that RVM is superior to typical ANN approach.     

Investigation of Nanoparticle Additives to Biodiesel for Improvement of the Performance and Exhaust Emissions in a Compression Ignition Engine

Worldwide energy demand has been growing steadily during the past five decades and most experts believe that this trend will continue to rise. The amount of emitted harmful emission gases increases in parallel with increasing energy consumption. This increase has forced many countries to take various precautions, and various restrictions on emitted emissions have been carried. In this study, effects of addition of oxygen containing nanoparticle additives to biodiesel on fuel properties and effects on diesel engine performance and exhaust emissions were investigated. Two different nanoparticle additives, namely MgO and SiO₂, were added to biodiesel at the addition dosage of 25 and 50 ppm. Fuel properties, engine performance, and exhaust emission characteristics of obtained modified fuels were examined. As a result of this study, engine emission values NO_x and CO were decreased and engine performance values slightly increased with the addition of nanoparticle additives.     

Experimental study on fire suppression performance of the high pressure water mist in the engine room of an offshore platform

The total flooding application water mist system is a new type of environmentally-friendly fixed extinguishing system. The optimizing design can improve its fire extinguishing performance. At present, the water mist fire extinguishing system in the engine room of the offshore deepwater semi-submersible support platform has not attracted sufficient attention. In this paper, the water mist in the engine room of a deepwater semi-submersible support platform was studied. It contains the effect of water mist on the heat absorption and oxygen insulation of diesel pool fires. The applicable parameters of the water mist fire extinguishing system were also determined. Moreover, based on the shielding of the fire source in the engine room and the different requirements for water mist extinguishing parameters, a hierarchical multi-parameter combined high-pressure water mist fire extinguishing system was proposed. In the full-scale experimental engine room model, according to the fire extinguishing experiments for diesel pool fires with different areas, this kind of hierarchical multi-parameter water mist system is very effective on shielded and non-shielded fires. In addition, it is still effective even in a non-closed environment coupled with smoke exhausting.     

Changes in earth’s dipole

The dipole moment of Earth’s magnetic field has decreased by nearly over the past 150 years and by about 30% over the past 2,000 years according to archeomagnetic measurements. Here, we explore the causes and the implications of this rapid change. Maps of the geomagnetic field on the core–mantle boundary derived from ground-based and satellite measurements reveal that most of the present episode of dipole moment decrease originates in the southern hemisphere. Weakening and equatorward advection of normal polarity magnetic field by the core flow, combined with proliferation and growth of regions where the magnetic polarity is reversed, are reducing the dipole moment on the core–mantle boundary. Growth of these reversed flux regions has occurred over the past century or longer and is associated with the expansion of the South Atlantic Anomaly, a low-intensity region in the geomagnetic field that presents a radiation hazard at satellite altitudes. We address the speculation that the present episode of dipole moment decrease is a precursor to the next geomagnetic polarity reversal. The paleomagnetic record contains a broad spectrum of dipole moment fluctuations with polarity reversals typically occurring during dipole moment lows. However, the dipole moment is stronger today than its long time average, indicating that polarity reversal is not likely unless the current episode of moment decrease continues for a thousand years or more.     

飞机发动机舱灭火剂用量试验验证与优化研究

为提升飞机的安全性,飞机防火系统越来越受到重视。航空防火系统中常用灭火剂Halon 1301会破坏臭氧层、造成环境污染,但至今仍未找到理想的替代品。从优化灭火剂的用量着手,以达到降低污染、减轻飞机重量的目的。目前灭火剂的用量没有结合实际仅依靠理论公式进行计算,为优化灭火剂用量,以某型飞机发动机舱防火系统为例,通过模拟真实环境试验验证不同灭火剂用量下的灭火效果。结果表明优化灭火剂用量后依然能充分地保证灭火效果。     

外源稀土在土壤中各形态的动态变化

在小麦整个生长期内定期测定外源稀土进入土壤后各形态稀土随时间的变化,结果为:外源稀土进入土壤后可交换态稀土含量随时间的延长显著降低,减少的可交换态稀土一部分被小麦吸收,一部分被土壤所吸附,其中在分蘖期减少得最快;根系的分泌活动明显影响土壤中稀土元素的存在形态,铁锰氧化物结合态稀土含量在拔节期前逐渐增加,拔节期后略有下降;碳酸盐结合态稀土含量随时间的延长而降低,但下降幅度较小;有机物结合态与残渣态稀土含量随时间的延长没有发现明显的变化.