Analyzing the Impact of Scene Transitions on Indoor Camera Localization through Scene Change Detection in Real-Time

Real-time indoor camera localization is a significant problem in indoor robot navigation and surveillance systems.The scene can change during the image sequence and plays a vital role in the localization performance of robotic applications in terms of accuracy and speed.This research proposed a real-time indoor camera localization system based on a recurrent neural network that detects scene change during the image sequence.An annotated image dataset trains the proposed system and predicts the camera pose in real-time.The system mainly improved the localization performance of indoor cameras by more accurately predicting the camera pose.It also recognizes the scene changes during the sequence and evaluates the effects of these changes.This system achieved high accuracy and real-time performance.The scene change detection process was performed using visual rhythm and the proposed recurrent deep architecture,which performed camera pose prediction and scene change impact evaluation.Overall,this study proposed a novel real-time localization system for indoor cameras that detects scene changes and shows how they affect localization performance.

The Impacts of Flood and Local Communities’ Coping Strategies along the River Gambia

Flood disasters as Climate change hazards are common in developing countries, particularly in communities along the river Gambia. Local communities, for instance, had their local coping strategies that enabled them to stay in their communities even amid these ordeals, and climate change disaster threats. This work strives to understand flood impacts and the local peoples’ adaptation or coping strategies along the River Gambia basin. A community-based cross-sectional research study of 422 research participants of which 294 are males (69.7%) and females 128 (30.3%), and a focus group discussion of 10 groups which comprised 5 female groups and 5 male groups respectively found that 98.6% of the households experienced floods in their community, and 70.6% experienced flood in their houses, 2.1% have impending flood information and 88.4% do not know evacuation centres. The majority of the households had some local coping strategies, but they acknowledged their insufficient effectiveness. The result also shows that the impact of floods on farmlands, roads, buildings, and livestock was greatly felt. Coping strategies such as sandbags, raised elevations, contour bonds, dikes, and buildings on highlands were all found to be common mechanisms the local people used. The study opines that floods affect communities, but the effects vary depending on individual assets.

Impact of Wetland Change on Local Climate in Semi-arid Zone of Northeast China

Wetlands are sensitive to climate change, in the same time, wetlands can influence climate. This study analyzed the spa- rio-temporal characteristics of wetland change in the semi-arid zone of Northeast China from 1985 to 2010, and investigated the impact of large area of wetland change on local climate. Results showed that the total area of wetlands was on a rise in the study area. Although natural wetlands （marshes, riparians and lakes） decreased, constructed wetlands （rice fields） increased significantly, and the highest in- crease rate in many places exceeded 30%. Anthropogenic activities are major driving factors for wetland change. Wetland change pro- duced an impact on local climate, mainly on maximum temperature and precipitation during the period of May-September. The increase （or decrease） of wetland area could reduce （or increase） the increment of maximum temperature and the decrement of precipitation. The changes in both maximum temperature and precipitation corresponded with wetland change in spatial distribution. Wetland change played a more important role in moderating local climate compared to the contribution of woodland and grassland changes in the study area. Cold-humid effect of wetlands was main way to moderating local climate as well as alleviating climatic wanning and drying in the study area, and heterogeneity of underlying surface broadened the cold-humid effect of wetlands.

Forest cover change and its effects on the livelihood of the dependent local people:the case of Sesheke district of Zambia

Objective-To investigate forest cover change in Masese Local Forest Reserve and its effects on the livelihoods of the dependent communities;to establish the occurrence of forest cover change in Masese Local Forest Reserve;to determine the extent of forest cover change in Masese from 1990to 2005;to determine the tree species that have been affected by forest cover change in Masese; and to assess the effects of forest cover change on the livelihoods of the dependent communities. Methods-Interviews and questionnaire were conducted with a proportion of 36households from Maondo and 84households from Mulimambango settlements.Scenes of landsat images of 1990,2000, 2005and Earth Google image for Masese were used for map analysis.Also remote sensing was used to analyze landsat images and Google image to detect forest and non-forest classes.Results and Conclusion-Forest cover change has adverse implication on the provision of wood forest products and nonwood forest products to the dependent local communities.The declining status of dominant Baikiaea Forest that has exploitable species for building materials and fuel wood has affected the livelihoods of the dependent local communities.There is also increased cost and shortage of fire wood and building materials due to deforestation in Masese Forest Reserve.

Damage detection of frames using the increment of lateral displacement change

The method proposed in this paper is based on the fact that the damage in different types of structural members has distinctive influence on the structural stiffness. The intrinsic mechanical property of the structure is tapped and fully utilized for damage detection. The simplified model of the flexibility of frames treats the individual storeys as springs in series and the frame as an equivalent column. It fully considers the main deformation of all beams and columns in the frame. The deformation property of the simplified model accorded well with that of the actual frame model. The obtained increment of lateral displacement change (IOLDC) at the storey level was found to be very sensitive to the local damage in the frame. A damage detection method is pro- posed using the IOLDCs as the damage identification parameters. Numerical examples demonstrate the potential applicability of this method.

Study of Local Structural Changes on Air Cooling at the End of Rotor Windings for Variable Speed Pumped Storage Generator-Motor

The shrink fit retaining ring is currently the easiest to install and the most widely used end fixed for structure AC excitation variable speed generator-motor rotor end windings.However,the current research on the effect of high strength sealing on the ventilation and heat dissipation performance of the end is not enough.In this paper,based on the actual structural parameters and periodic symmetry simplification,the three-dimensional coupled calculation model of fluid field and temperature field is established.After solving the fluid and thermal equations,the influence of the length of rotor support block,the height of rotor support block,and the number of rotor support block on the fluid flow and temperature distribution in the rotor end region of generator-motor is studied using the finite volume method.The rheological characteristics of the air in the rotor domain,such as velocity and inter-winding flow,are analyzed.The law of temperature variation with local structure in the computational domain is studied.The variation law of cooling medium performance inside the large variable speed power generator motor is revealed.

Local perceptions of the conversion of cropland to forestland program in Jiangxi, Shaanxi, and Sichuan, China

Numerous land-use policies have been implemented in China in recent decades for ecological restoration and conservation to reduce environmental disasters and promote environmental sustainability.Many of these policies follow a top-down approach to implementation and as such,emphasize the hierarchical control within government structures.An understanding of local perceptions of land-use policies is important if the disconnect between policy makers and the target population is to be reduced and if program support is to improve.This study aimed to help improve local implementation,attitude toward,and engagement by examining the influence of socio-economic characteristics on the target population’s(local farmers)perception of the conversion of cropland to forestland program(CFPP)land use policy in Jiangxi,Sichuan,and Shaanxi provinces.It uses logistical regression models,with robust aspects of perception including confidence,support,transparency,prospects,fairness,and willingness to participate.Results indicate that social aspects as well as economic aspects are most important in influencing farmers’perceptions towards the CFPP.The farmers who have received technical support,rural male habitants,educated,and non-middle-aged farmers exhibit more positive perceptions of the program and are much more likely to support it,whereas farmers without any technical support or formal education,and female and middle-aged farmers are less likely to support the program.Importantly,this study also reveals the differences in responses,experiences and perceptions of the farmers living across different provinces.These empirical results provide insight into the influence of socio-economic characteristics on the perception of farmers towards land-use policies,which has important implications for designing targeted policy instruments and increasing farmer support for these policies.This knowledge can be harnessed and further evaluated in future research to improve citizen engagement,support,and understanding in order to help ecological restoration and conservation objectives be more effectively achieved.

Climate Change Impacts, Local Knowledge and Coping Strategies in the Great Ruaha River Catchment Area, Tanzania

Climate change has profound implications for managing freshwater resources and species dependent on those resources. Water is an essential component of the life support system of the earth, and a basic resource for socio-economic development. The Great Ruaha River Catchment Area is a dynamic and complex ecosystem requiring inclusion climate change adaptation in the management of the freshwater and natural resources available to reduce the severity of climate change impacts. Rainfall has decreased considerably during the last 10 - 30 years, and characterised by high interannual variability, seasonal shifts and variable seasonal distribution with unpredictable onset and ending of rains and shortened growing seasons. Temperature has increased considerably during this period causing increased evapotranspiration losses and incidences of pest and diseases. The freshwater of Ruaha River and it tributaries are vulneable to changing climate, such as drought, which can negatively impact on the livelihoods of the people through de- creased crop and livestock production, and on local biodiversity. The changing climate has had negative impacts on, among other aspects, land use and water shortages for irrigation, livestock and domestic uses. This has compelled riparian communities in the catchment to devises coping strategies including practicing irrigation to provide supplementary water to crops, using drought tolerant crop varieties, rationing of irrigation water in farmlands, wetland cultivation, and diversification to non-agricultural activities. Despite the existence of many indicators used for local climate forecasting, there are limitations to local adaptation, including among others, poverty, institutional aspects and limited integration of climate adaptation in various sectors. The bulk of indigenous knowledge could be integrated into formal adaptation planning, and may be important components of environmental conservation at the local level.

Climate Change and Geochemistry May Explain the Finding of Marine Cyanobacteria in a Continental Saline Lake

1 Introduction Alkaline Lake Khilganta located in a steppe zone of South Siberia(N 50°42’535,E 115°06’086)is unique among adjacent lakes because of a development of a thick(up to 3 cm)cyanobacterial mat dominated by

Qualification of Soft Costs of the US Federal Guidance When Considering Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Effects of Climate Change in NEPA Reviews

A notice by the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ) was published on December 14, 2014 regarding the revised “Draft Guidance for Federal Departments and Agencies on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Effects of Climate Change in NEPA Reviews”. The review of this 2014 draft guidance suggested increased analysis, work, review and approvals required by the State Department of Transportation (DOT) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) working with and on behalf of local public agencies (LPAs) in order to authorize and obligate roadway projects funded with federal-aid money. All federal-aid-funded roadway projects require a NEPA analysis to be done on the action (project) and an environmental clearance document to be obtained prior to finalizing the design. The 2014 draft guidance may complicate an already lengthy and often critical path activity for roadway projects requiring NEPA documentation.

Primary localized gastric amyloidosis:A scoping review of the literature from clinical presentations to prognosis

Localized gastric amyloidosis(LGA)is a rare disease characterized by abnormal extracellular deposition of amyloid protein restricted to the stomach and it is confirmed by positive results of Congo red staining.Over decades,only a few cases have been reported and studies or research focusing on it are few.Although LGA has a low incidence,patients may suffer a lot from it and require proper diagnosis and management.However,the pathology of LGA remains unknown and no overall review of LGA from its presentations to its prognosis has been published.Patients with LGA are often asymptomatic or manifest atypical symptoms,making it difficult to differentiate from other gastrointestinal diseases.Here,we report the case of a 70-year-old woman with LGA and provide an overview of case reports of LGA available to us.Based on that,we conclude current concepts of clinical manifestations,diagnosis,treatment,and prognosis of LGA,aiming at providing a detailed diagnostic procedure for clinicians and promoting the guidelines of LGA.In addition,a few advanced technologies applied in amyloidosis are also discussed in this review,aiming at providing clinicians with a reference of diagnostic process.With this review,we hope to raise awareness of LGA among the public and clinicians.

Perception of Post-Secondary Students on Environmental Practices in Selected Communities in the Philippines: Implications to Climate Change Action

Climate change contributes to disasters in the Philippines. Most human activities have had negative consequences on the environment, exacerbating global warming. Humans contribute to climate change and global warming by burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees, engaging in improper waste disposal, using electricity, and driving a car. This study assessed the environmental practices of communities in Nueva Ecija, Philippines, and their implications for climate change. Respondents were selected using convenient sampling. A questionnaire delivered online was used to elicit their responses then analyzed the data using SPSS. This study revealed that most post-secondary students do not litter but sometimes burn their trash in an open dump. Most of them used LPG as their primary source of fuel for cooking. Rice production is always the same as producing food waste in food production. Garden waste was sometimes produced. Plastic containers are commonly produced as recyclable wastes. They often dispose of wastes in controlled and regulated open dumpsites by their municipality or city. Due to the pandemic, special wastes like face masks and face shields are disposed of daily. Generally, despite no littering behavior, the respondents never burned their trash or threw it on any body of water. They perceived to disagree that these daily community activities contribute to climate change. Lastly, less than half of them affirmed that there are initiative programs at the barangay level to lessen and eliminate community activities that cause climate change.

A Local Reference Frame Construction Method Based on the Signed Surface Variation

A fast local reference frame(LRF)construction method based on the signed surface variation is proposed,which can adapt to the real-time applications such as self-driving,face recognition,object detection.The z-axis of the LRF is generated based on the concavity of the local surface of keypoint.The x-axis is constructed by the weighted vector sum of a set of projection vectors of the local neighborhoods around keypoint.The performance of the proposed LRF is evaluated on six standard datasets and compared with six state-of-the-art LRF construction methods(e.g.,BOARD,FLARE,SHOT,RoPS and TOLDI).Experimental results validate the high repeatability,robustness,universality and time efficiency of our method.

The role of soil in structure response of a building damaged by the 26 December 2018 earthquake in Italy

Local soil conditions can significantly modify the seismic motion expected on the soil surface.In most cases,the indications concerning the influence of the underlying soil provided by the in-force European and Italian Building Codes underestimate the real seismic amplification effects.For this reason,numerical analyses of the local seismic response(LSR)have been encouraged to estimate the soil filtering effects.These analyses are generally performed in free-field conditions,ignoring the presence of superstructures and,therefore,the effects of dynamic soil-structure interaction(DSSI).Moreover,many studies on DSSI are characterised by a sophisticated modelling of the structure and an approximate modelling of the soil(using springs and dashpots at the foundation level);while others are characterised by a sophisticated modelling of the soil and an approximate modelling of the structure(considered as a simple linear elastic structure or a single degree of freedom system).This paper presents a set of finite element method(FEM)analyses on a fully-coupled soil-structure system for a reinforced concrete building located in Fleri(Catania,Italy).The building,designed for gravity loads only,was severely damaged during the 26 December 2018 earthquake.The soil was modelled considering an equivalent visco-elastic behaviour,while the structure was modelled assuming both the visco-elastic and visco-inelastic behaviours.The comparison made between the results of the FEM analyses and the observed damage is valuable.

Local Climate Change Induced by Urbanization on a South China Sea Island

The South China Sea is a hotspot for regional climate research.Over the past 40 years,considerable improvement has been made in the development and utilization of the islands in the South China Sea,leading to a substantial change in the land-use of the islands.However,research on the impact of human development on the local climate of these islands is lacking.This study analyzed the characteristics of local climate changes on the islands in the South China Sea based on data from the Yongxing Island Observation Station and ERA5 re-analysis.Furthermore,the influence of urbanization on the local climate of the South China Sea islands was explored in this study.The findings revealed that the 10-year average temperature in Yongxing Island increased by approximately 1.11℃from 1961 to 2020,and the contribution of island development and urbanization to the local warming rate over 60 years was approximately 36.2%.The linear increasing trend of the annual hot days from 1961–2020 was approximately 14.84 days per decade.The diurnal temperature range exhibited an increasing trend of 0.05℃per decade,whereas the number of cold days decreased by 1.06days per decade.The rapid increase in construction on Yongxing Island from 2005 to 2021 led to a decrease in observed surface wind speed by 0.32 m s^(-1)per decade.Consequently,the number of days with strong winds decreased,whereas the number of days with weak winds increased.Additionally,relative humidity exhibited a rapid decline from 2001 to 2016 and then rebounded.The study also found substantial differences between the ERA5 re-analysis and observation data,particularly in wind speed and relative humidity,indicating that the use of re-analysis data for climate resource assessment and climate change evaluation on island areas may not be feasible.

Socioenvironmental Drivers of Farmers’ Perceptions of Climate Change Risk in Agroforestry Parklands of West Atacora in Benin (West Africa)

Throughout the world, climate change is threatening the human population. In West Africa, smallholder farmers in indigenous agricultural societies typically hold considerable knowledge. Therefore, this study was conducted in West Atacora of Benin Republic to assess the drivers of farmers’ perceptions of climate change risk. We used a random sampling technique to select 360 households’ heads who were interviewed regarding different climate change risks perception. Binomial logistic regression was used to assess the drivers of farmers’ perceptions of climate change risks. The results showed that the farmers in drier areas had a higher perception of the global risk of climate change than those in humid areas. The same trend was observed for the seven different individual’s climate change risk investigated. The study identified also membership of farm organizations as main sociodemographic characteristic that explains farmers’ perception of climate change risk perception. These findings are helpful tools to sensitize the local people on climate change risk and cope with the risk in agricultural lands.

On Characterization of Nonuniform Tight Wavelet Frames on Local Fields

In this article, we introduce a notion of nonuniform wavelet frames on local fields of positive characteristic. Furthermore, we gave a complete characterization of tight nonuniform wavelet frames on local fields of positive characteristic via Fourier transform. Our results also hold for the Cantor dyadic group and the Vilenkin groups as they are local fields of positive characteristic.

Rays’ Change of Directions between Inertial Frames and Stellar Aberration

The path of a light’s signal is one and the same in the universal space regardless of the inertial frame by which it is identified. However, only one frame can be taken stationary and identified with the universal space while all other frames are moving. The direction of the path of a light’s pulse in a moving frame is determined in terms of its direction in the stationary one;the result is utilized to explain stellar aberration and show that the tilted direction in the moving frame depends only on its velocity. The aberration increment vector is introduced and employed to determine the apparent position of a star at each point of the earth orbit. Aberration in an earth satellite relative to the geocentric frame is presented. The direction’s change of a light beam between graded inertial frames promotes explaining aberration in an earth’s satellite in parallel to stellar aberration on earth.

AN ALGORITHM OF LOCAL PREDICTION FOR CHAOTIC SEQUENCES WITH VARIABLE FRAME LENGTH

According to the issues that the predict errors of chaotic sequences rapidly accumulated in multi-step forecasting which affects the predict accuracy, we proposed a new predict algorithm based on local modeling with variable frame length and interpolation points. The core idea is that, using interpolation method to increase the available sample data, then modeling the chaos dynamics system with least square algorithm which based on the Bernstein polynomial to realize the forecasting. We use the local modeling method, looking for the optimum frame length and interpolation points in every frame to improve the predict peformance. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can improve the predictive ability effectively, decreasing the accumulation of iterative errors in multi-step prediction.

A Conceptual Deficiency for the Use of Christoffel Connection in Gravity Theories

Christoffel connection (or Levi-Civita affine connection) did not enter gravity as an axiom of minimal length for the free fall of particles (where anyway length action is not defined for massless particles), nor out of economy, but from the weak equivalence principle (gravitational force is equivalent to acceleration according to Einstein) together with the identification of the local inertial frame with the local Lorentz one. This identification implies that the orbits of all particles are given by the geodesics of the Christoffel connection. Here, we show that in the presence of only massless particles (absence of massive particles), the above identification is inconsistent and does not lead to any connection. The proof is based on the existence of projectively equivalent connections and the absence of proper time for null particles. If a connection derived by some kinematical principles for the particles is to be applied in the world, it is better for these principles to be valid in all relevant spacetime rather than different principles to give different connections in different spacetime regions. Therefore, our result stated above may imply a conceptual insufficiency of the use of the Christoffel connection in the early universe where only massless particles are expected to be present (whenever at least some notions, like orbits, are meaningful), and thus of the total use of this connection. If in the early universe, the notion of a massive particle, which appears latter in time, cannot be used, in an analogous way in a causally disconnected high-energy region (maybe deep interior of astrophysical objects or black holes), the same conclusions could be extracted if only massless particles are present.