Concurrent hetero-/homo-geneous electrocatalysts to bi-phasically mediate sulfur species for lithium-sulfur batteries

Expediting redox kinetics of sulfur species on conductive scaffolds with limited charge accessible surface is considered as an imperative approach to realize energy-dense and power-intensive lithium-sulfur(Li-S)batteries.In this work,the concept of concurrent hetero-/homo-geneous electrocatalysts is proposed to simultaneously mediate liquid-solid conversion of lithium polysulfides(LiPSs)and solid lithium disulfide/sulfide(Li_(2)S_(2)/Li_(2)S)propagation,the latter of which suffers from sluggish reduction kinetics due to buried conductive scaffold surface by extensive deposition of Li_(2)S_(2)/Li_(2)S.The selected model material to verify this concept is a two-in-one catalyst:carbon nanotube(CNT)scaffold supported iron-cobalt(Fe-Co)alloy nanoparticles and partially carbonized selenium(C-Se)component.The Fe-Co alloy serves as a heterogeneous electrocatalyst to seed Li_(2)S_(2)/Li_(2)S through sulphifilic active sites,while the C-Se sustainably releases soluble lithium polyselenides and functions as a homogeneous electrocatalyst to propagate Li_(2)S_(2)/Li_(2)S via solution pathways.Such bi-phasic mediation of the sulfur species benefits reduction kinetics of LiPS conversion,especially for the massive Li_(2)S_(2)/Li_(2)S growth scenario by affording an additional solution directed route in case of conductive surface being largely buried.This strategy endows the Li-S batteries with improved cycling stability(836 mA h g^(-1)after 180 cycles),rate capability(547 mA h g^(-1)at 4 C)and high sulfur loading superiority(2.96 mA h cm^(-2)at 2.4 mg cm^(-2)).This work hopes to enlighten the employment of bi-phasic electrocatalysts to dictate liquid-solid transformation of intermediates for conversion chemistry batteries.

Sentiment Analysis of Low-Resource Language Literature Using Data Processing and Deep Learning

Sentiment analysis, a crucial task in discerning emotional tones within the text, plays a pivotal role in understandingpublic opinion and user sentiment across diverse languages.While numerous scholars conduct sentiment analysisin widely spoken languages such as English, Chinese, Arabic, Roman Arabic, and more, we come to grapplingwith resource-poor languages like Urdu literature which becomes a challenge. Urdu is a uniquely crafted language,characterized by a script that amalgamates elements from diverse languages, including Arabic, Parsi, Pashtu,Turkish, Punjabi, Saraiki, and more. As Urdu literature, characterized by distinct character sets and linguisticfeatures, presents an additional hurdle due to the lack of accessible datasets, rendering sentiment analysis aformidable undertaking. The limited availability of resources has fueled increased interest among researchers,prompting a deeper exploration into Urdu sentiment analysis. This research is dedicated to Urdu languagesentiment analysis, employing sophisticated deep learning models on an extensive dataset categorized into fivelabels: Positive, Negative, Neutral, Mixed, and Ambiguous. The primary objective is to discern sentiments andemotions within the Urdu language, despite the absence of well-curated datasets. To tackle this challenge, theinitial step involves the creation of a comprehensive Urdu dataset by aggregating data from various sources such asnewspapers, articles, and socialmedia comments. Subsequent to this data collection, a thorough process of cleaningand preprocessing is implemented to ensure the quality of the data. The study leverages two well-known deeplearningmodels, namely Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN), for bothtraining and evaluating sentiment analysis performance. Additionally, the study explores hyperparameter tuning tooptimize the models’ efficacy. Evaluation metrics such as precision, recall, and the F1-score are employed to assessthe effectiveness of the models. The research findings reveal that RNN surpasses CNN in Urdu sentiment analysis,gaining a significantly higher accuracy rate of 91%. This result accentuates the exceptional performance of RNN,solidifying its status as a compelling option for conducting sentiment analysis tasks in the Urdu language.

Security and Privacy in Solar Insecticidal Lamps Internet of Things:Requirements and Challenges

Solar insecticidal lamps(SIL) can effectively control pests and reduce the use of pesticides. Combining SIL and Internet of Things(IoT) has formed a new type of agricultural IoT,known as SIL-IoT, which can improve the effectiveness of migratory phototropic pest control. However, since the SIL is connected to the Internet, it is vulnerable to various security issues.These issues can lead to serious consequences, such as tampering with the parameters of SIL, illegally starting and stopping SIL,etc. In this paper, we describe the overall security requirements of SIL-IoT and present an extensive survey of security and privacy solutions for SIL-IoT. We investigate the background and logical architecture of SIL-IoT, discuss SIL-IoT security scenarios, and analyze potential attacks. Starting from the security requirements of SIL-IoT we divide them into six categories, namely privacy, authentication, confidentiality, access control, availability,and integrity. Next, we describe the SIL-IoT privacy and security solutions, as well as the blockchain-based solutions. Based on the current survey, we finally discuss the challenges and future research directions of SIL-IoT.

SDGSAT-1: Capabilities for Monitoring and Evaluating SDG Indicators

SDGSAT-1,the world's first science satellite dedicated to assisting the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda,has been operational for over two and a half years.It provides valuable data to aid in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals internationally.Through its Open Science Program,the satellite has maintained consistent operations and delivered free data to scientific and technological users from 88 countries.This program has produced a wealth of scientific output,with 72 papers,including 28 on data processing methods and 44 on applications for monitoring progress toward SDGs related to sustainable cities,clean energy,life underwater,climate action,and clean water and sanitation.SDGSAT-1 is equipped with three key instruments:a multispectral imager,a thermal infrared spectrometer,and a glimmer imager,which have enabled ground-breaking research in a variety of domains such as water quality analysis,identification of industrial heat sources,assessment of environmental disaster impacts,and detection of forest fires.The precise measurements and ongoing monitoring made possible by this invaluable data significantly advance our understanding of various environmental phenomena.They are essential for making well-informed decisions on a local and global scale.Beyond its application to academic research,SDGSAT-1 promotes global cooperation and strengthens developing countries'capacity to accomplish their sustainable development goals.As the satellite continues to gather and distribute data,it plays a pivotal role in developing strategies for environmental protection,disaster management and relief,and resource allocation.These initiatives highlight the satellite's vital role in fostering international collaboration and technical innovation to advance scientific knowledge and promote a sustainable future.

Spatial and temporal variation of water clarity in typical reservoirs in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region observed by GF 1-WFV satellite data

Rapidly monitoring regional water quality and the changing trend is of great practical and scientific significance,especially for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei(BTH)region of China where water resources are relatively scarce and inland water bodies are generally small.The remote sensing data of the GF 1 satellite launched in 2013 have characteristics of high spatial and temporal resolution,which can be used for the dynamic monitoring of the water environment in small lakes and reservoirs.However,the water quality remote sensing monitoring model based on the GF 1 satellite data for lakes and reservoirs in BTH is still lacking because of the considerable differences in the optical characteristics of the lakes and reservoirs.In this paper,the typical reservoirs in BTH-Guanting Reservoir,Yuqiao Reservoir,Panjiakou Reservoir,and Daheiting Reservoir are taken as the study areas.In the atmospheric correction of GF 1-WFV,the relative radiation normalized atmospheric correction was adopted after comparing it with other methods,such as 6 S and FLAASH.In the water clarity retrieval,a water color hue angle based model was proposed and outperformed other available published models,with the R 2 of 0.74 and MRE of 31.7%.The clarity products of the four typical reservoirs in the BTH region in 2013-2019 were produced using the GF 1-WFV data.Based on the products,temporal and spatial changes in clarity were analyzed,and the main influencing factors for each water body were discussed.It was found that the clarity of Guanting,Daheiting,and Panjiakou reservoirs showed an upward trend during this period,while that of Yuqiao Reservoir showed a downward trend.In the influencing factors,the water level of the water bodies can be an important factor related to the water clarity changes in this region.

Development of Spectral Features for Monitoring Rice Bacterial Leaf Blight Disease Using Broad-Band Remote Sensing Systems

As an important rice disease, rice bacterial leaf blight (RBLB, caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv.oryzae), has become widespread in east China in recent years. Significant losses in rice yield occurred as a result ofthe disease’s epidemic, making it imperative to monitor RBLB at a large scale. With the development of remotesensing technology, the broad-band sensors equipped with red-edge channels over multiple spatial resolutionsoffer numerous available data for large-scale monitoring of rice diseases. However, RBLB is characterized by rapiddispersal under suitable conditions, making it difficult to track the disease at a regional scale with a single sensorin practice. Therefore, it is necessary to identify or construct features that are effective across different sensors formonitoring RBLB. To achieve this goal, the spectral response of RBLB was first analyzed based on the canopyhyperspectral data. Using the relative spectral response (RSR) functions of four representative satellite or UAVsensors (i.e., Sentinel-2, GF-6, Planet, and Rededge-M) and the hyperspectral data, the corresponding broad-bandspectral data was simulated. According to a thorough band combination and sensitivity analysis, two novel spectralindices for monitoring RBLB that can be effective across multiple sensors (i.e., RBBRI and RBBDI) weredeveloped. An optimal feature set that includes the two novel indices and a classical vegetation index was formed.The capability of such a feature set in monitoring RBLB was assessed via FLDA and SVM algorithms. The resultdemonstrated that both constructed novel indices exhibited high sensitivity to the disease across multiple sensors.Meanwhile, the feature set yielded an overall accuracy above 90% for all sensors, which indicates its cross-sensorgenerality in monitoring RBLB. The outcome of this research permits disease monitoring with different remotesensing data over a large scale.

ABMRF:An Ensemble Model for Author Profiling Based on Stylistic Features Using Roman Urdu

This study explores the area of Author Profiling(AP)and its importance in several industries,including forensics,security,marketing,and education.A key component of AP is the extraction of useful information from text,with an emphasis on the writers’ages and genders.To improve the accuracy of AP tasks,the study develops an ensemble model dubbed ABMRF that combines AdaBoostM1(ABM1)and Random Forest(RF).The work uses an extensive technique that involves textmessage dataset pretreatment,model training,and assessment.To evaluate the effectiveness of several machine learning(ML)algorithms in classifying age and gender,including Composite Hypercube on Random Projection(CHIRP),Decision Trees(J48),Na飗e Bayes(NB),K Nearest Neighbor,AdaboostM1,NB-Updatable,RF,andABMRF,they are compared.The findings demonstrate thatABMRFregularly beats the competition,with a gender classification accuracy of 71.14%and an age classification accuracy of 54.29%,respectively.Additional metrics like precision,recall,F-measure,Matthews Correlation Coefficient(MCC),and accuracy support ABMRF’s outstanding performance in age and gender profiling tasks.This study demonstrates the usefulness of ABMRF as an ensemble model for author profiling and highlights its possible uses in marketing,law enforcement,and education.The results emphasize the effectiveness of ensemble approaches in enhancing author profiling task accuracy,particularly when it comes to age and gender identification.

An Approach to Detect Structural Development Defects in Object-Oriented Programs

Structural development defects essentially refer to code structure that violates object-oriented design principles. They make program maintenance challenging and deteriorate software quality over time. Various detection approaches, ranging from traditional heuristic algorithms to machine learning methods, are used to identify these defects. Ensemble learning methods have strengthened the detection of these defects. However, existing approaches do not simultaneously exploit the capabilities of extracting relevant features from pre-trained models and the performance of neural networks for the classification task. Therefore, our goal has been to design a model that combines a pre-trained model to extract relevant features from code excerpts through transfer learning and a bagging method with a base estimator, a dense neural network, for defect classification. To achieve this, we composed multiple samples of the same size with replacements from the imbalanced dataset MLCQ1. For all the samples, we used the CodeT5-small variant to extract features and trained a bagging method with the neural network Roberta Classification Head to classify defects based on these features. We then compared this model to RandomForest, one of the ensemble methods that yields good results. Our experiments showed that the number of base estimators to use for bagging depends on the defect to be detected. Next, we observed that it was not necessary to use a data balancing technique with our model when the imbalance rate was 23%. Finally, for blob detection, RandomForest had a median MCC value of 0.36 compared to 0.12 for our method. However, our method was predominant in Long Method detection with a median MCC value of 0.53 compared to 0.42 for RandomForest. These results suggest that the performance of ensemble methods in detecting structural development defects is dependent on specific defects.

Remote sensing of quality traits in cereal and arable production systems:A review

Cereal is an essential source of calories and protein for the global population.Accurately predicting cereal quality before harvest is highly desirable in order to optimise management for farmers,grading harvest and categorised storage for enterprises,future trading prices,and policy planning.The use of remote sensing data with extensive spatial coverage demonstrates some potential in predicting crop quality traits.Many studies have also proposed models and methods for predicting such traits based on multiplatform remote sensing data.In this paper,the key quality traits that are of interest to producers and consumers are introduced.The literature related to grain quality prediction was analyzed in detail,and a review was conducted on remote sensing platforms,commonly used methods,potential gaps,and future trends in crop quality prediction.This review recommends new research directions that go beyond the traditional methods and discusses grain quality retrieval and the associated challenges from the perspective of remote sensing data.

Chained Dual-Generative Adversarial Network:A Generalized Defense Against Adversarial Attacks

Neural networks play a significant role in the field of image classification.When an input image is modified by adversarial attacks,the changes are imperceptible to the human eye,but it still leads to misclassification of the images.Researchers have demonstrated these attacks to make production self-driving cars misclassify StopRoad signs as 45 Miles Per Hour(MPH)road signs and a turtle being misclassified as AK47.Three primary types of defense approaches exist which can safeguard against such attacks i.e.,Gradient Masking,Robust Optimization,and Adversarial Example Detection.Very few approaches use Generative Adversarial Networks(GAN)for Defense against Adversarial Attacks.In this paper,we create a new approach to defend against adversarial attacks,dubbed Chained Dual-Generative Adversarial Network(CD-GAN)that tackles the defense against adversarial attacks by minimizing the perturbations of the adversarial image using iterative oversampling and undersampling using GANs.CD-GAN is created using two GANs,i.e.,CDGAN’s Sub-ResolutionGANandCDGAN’s Super-ResolutionGAN.The first is CDGAN’s Sub-Resolution GAN which takes the original resolution input image and oversamples it to generate a lower resolution neutralized image.The second is CDGAN’s Super-Resolution GAN which takes the output of the CDGAN’s Sub-Resolution and undersamples,it to generate the higher resolution image which removes any remaining perturbations.Chained Dual GAN is formed by chaining these two GANs together.Both of these GANs are trained independently.CDGAN’s Sub-Resolution GAN is trained using higher resolution adversarial images as inputs and lower resolution neutralized images as output image examples.Hence,this GAN downscales the image while removing adversarial attack noise.CDGAN’s Super-Resolution GAN is trained using lower resolution adversarial images as inputs and higher resolution neutralized images as output images.Because of this,it acts as an Upscaling GAN while removing the adversarial attak noise.Furthermore,CD-GAN has a modular design such that it can be prefixed to any existing classifier without any retraining or extra effort,and 2542 CMC,2023,vol.74,no.2 can defend any classifier model against adversarial attack.In this way,it is a Generalized Defense against adversarial attacks,capable of defending any classifier model against any attacks.This enables the user to directly integrate CD-GANwith an existing production deployed classifier smoothly.CD-GAN iteratively removes the adversarial noise using a multi-step approach in a modular approach.It performs comparably to the state of the arts with mean accuracy of 33.67 while using minimal compute resources in training.

Combining RUSLE model and the vegetation health index to unravel the relationship between soil erosion and droughts in southeastern Tunisia

Droughts and soil erosion are among the most prominent climatic driven hazards in drylands,leading to detrimental environmental impacts,such as degraded lands,deteriorated ecosystem services and biodiversity,and increased greenhouse gas emissions.In response to the current lack of studies combining drought conditions and soil erosion processes,in this study,we developed a comprehensive Geographic Information System(GIS)-based approach to assess soil erosion and droughts,thereby revealing the relationship between soil erosion and droughts under an arid climate.The vegetation condition index(VCI)and temperature condition index(TCI)derived respectively from the enhanced vegetation index(EVI)MOD13A2 and land surface temperature(LST)MOD11A2 products were combined to generate the vegetation health index(VHI).The VHI has been conceived as an efficient tool to monitor droughts in the Negueb watershed,southeastern Tunisia.The revised universal soil loss equation(RUSLE)model was applied to quantitatively estimate soil erosion.The relationship between soil erosion and droughts was investigated through Pearson correlation.Results exhibited that the Negueb watershed experienced recurrent mild to extreme drought during 2000–2016.The average soil erosion rate was determined to be 1.8 t/(hm2•a).The mountainous western part of the watershed was the most vulnerable not only to soil erosion but also to droughts.The slope length and steepness factor was shown to be the most significant controlling parameter driving soil erosion.The relationship between droughts and soil erosion had a positive correlation(r=0.3);however,the correlation was highly varied spatially across the watershed.Drought was linked to soil erosion in the Negueb watershed.The current study provides insight for natural disaster risk assessment,land managers,and stake-holders to apply appropriate management measures to promote sustainable development goals in fragile environments.

Automatic Clustering of User Behaviour Profiles for Web Recommendation System

Web usage mining,content mining,and structure mining comprise the web mining process.Web-Page Recommendation(WPR)development by incor-porating Data Mining Techniques(DMT)did not include end-users with improved performance in the obtainedfiltering results.The cluster user profile-based clustering process is delayed when it has a low precision rate.Markov Chain Monte Carlo-Dynamic Clustering(MC2-DC)is based on the User Behavior Profile(UBP)model group’s similar user behavior on a dynamic update of UBP.The Reversible-Jump Concept(RJC)reviews the history with updated UBP and moves to appropriate clusters.Hamilton’s Filtering Framework(HFF)is designed tofilter user data based on personalised information on automatically updated UBP through the Search Engine(SE).The Hamilton Filtered Regime Switching User Query Probability(HFRSUQP)works forward the updated UBP for easy and accuratefiltering of users’interests and improves WPR.A Probabilistic User Result Feature Ranking based on Gaussian Distribution(PURFR-GD)has been developed to user rank results in a web mining process.PURFR-GD decreases the delay time in the end-to-end workflow for SE personalization in various meth-ods by using the Gaussian Distribution Function(GDF).The theoretical analysis and experiment results of the proposed MC2-DC method automatically increase the updated UBP accuracy by 18.78%.HFRSUQP enabled extensive Maximize Log-Likelihood(ML-L)increases to 15.28%of User Personalized Information Search Retrieval Rate(UPISRT).For feature ranking,the PURFR-GD model defines higher Classification Accuracy(CA)and Precision Ratio(PR)while uti-lising minimum Execution Time(ET).Furthermore,UPISRT's ranking perfor-mance has improved by 20%.

Multivariate Aggregated NOMA for Resource Aware Wireless Network Communication Security

NonorthogonalMultiple Access(NOMA)is incorporated into the wireless network systems to achieve better connectivity,spectral and energy effectiveness,higher data transfer rate,and also obtain the high quality of services(QoS).In order to improve throughput and minimum latency,aMultivariate Renkonen Regressive Weighted Preference Bootstrap Aggregation based Nonorthogonal Multiple Access(MRRWPBA-NOMA)technique is introduced for network communication.In the downlink transmission,each mobile device’s resources and their characteristics like energy,bandwidth,and trust are measured.Followed by,the Weighted Preference Bootstrap Aggregation is applied to recognize the resource-efficient mobile devices for aware data transmission by constructing the different weak hypotheses i.e.,Multivariate Renkonen Regression functions.Based on the classification,resource and trust-aware devices are selected for transmission.Simulation of the proposed MRRWPBA-NOMA technique and existing methods are carried out with different metrics such as data delivery ratio,throughput,latency,packet loss rate,and energy efficiency,signaling overhead.The simulation results assessment indicates that the proposed MRRWPBA-NOMA outperforms well than the conventional methods.

Performance releaser with smart anchor learning for arbitrary‐oriented object detection

Arbitrary‐oriented object detection is widely used in aerial image applications because of its efficient object representation.However,the use of oriented bounding box aggravates the imbalance between positive and negative samples when using one‐stage object detectors,which seriously decreases the detection accuracy.We believe that it is the anchor learning strategy(ALS)used by such detectors that needs to take the responsibility.In this study,three perspectives on ALS design were summarised and ALS—Performance Releaser with Smart Anchor Learning(PRSAL)was proposed.Performance Releaser with Smart Anchor Learning is a dynamic ALS that utilises anchor classification ability as an equivalent indicator to anchor box regression ability,this allows anchors with high detection potential to be filtered out in a more reasonable way.At the same time,PRSAL focuses more on anchor potential and it is able to automatically select a number of positive samples that far exceed that of other methods by activating anchors that previously had a low spatial overlap,thereby releasing the detection performance.We validate the PRSAL using three remote sensing datasets—HRSC2016,DOTA and UCAS‐AOD as well as one scene text dataset—ICDAR 2013.The experimental results show that the proposed method gives substantially better results than existing models.

Formation of an Original Database and Development of Innovative Deep Learning Algorithms for Detecting Face Impersonation in Online Exams

The issue related to the risk of identity impersonation, where one person can be replaced by another in online exam surveillance systems, poses challenges. This study focuses on the effectiveness of detecting attempts of identity impersonation through face substitution during online exams, with the aim of ensuring the integrity of assessments. The goal is to develop facial recognition algorithms capable of precisely detecting these impersonations, training them on a tailored database rather than biased generic data. An original database of student faces has been created. An algorithm leveraging advanced deep learning techniques such as depthwise separable convolution has been developed and evaluated on this database. We achieved very high levels of precision, reaching an accuracy rate of 98% in face detection and recognition.

Earth observation big data for climate change research

Earth observation technology has provided highly useful information in global climate change research over the past few decades and greatly promoted its development,especially through providing biological,physical,and chemical parameters on a global scale.Earth observation data has the 4V features(volume,variety,veracity,and velocity) of big data that are suitable for climate change research.Moreover,the large amount of data available from scientific satellites plays an important role.This study reviews the advances of climate change studies based on Earth observation big data and provides examples of case studies that utilize Earth observation big data in climate change research,such as synchronous satelliteeaerialeground observation experiments,which provide extremely large and abundant datasets; Earth observational sensitive factors(e.g.,glaciers,lakes,vegetation,radiation,and urbanization); and global environmental change information and simulation systems.With the era of global environment change dawning,Earth observation big data will underpin the Future Earth program with a huge volume of various types of data and will play an important role in academia and decisionmaking.Inevitably,Earth observation big data will encounter opportunities and challenges brought about by global climate change.

A Cluster-Based Method for Marine Sensitive Object Extraction and Representation

Within the context of global change, marine sensitive factors or Marine Essential Climate Variables have been defined by many projects, and their sensitive spatial regions and time phases play significant roles in regional sea-air interactions and better understanding of their dynamic process. In this paper, we propose a cluster-based method for marine sensitive region extraction and representation. This method includes a kernel expansion algorithm for extracting marine sensitive regions, and a field-object triple form, integration of object-oriented and field-based model, for representing marine sensitive objects. Firstly, this method recognizes ENSO-related spatial patterns using empirical orthogonal decomposition of long term marine sensitive factors and correlation analysis with multiple ENSO index. The cluster kernel, defined by statistics of spatial patterns, is initialized to carry out spatial expansion and cluster mergence with spatial neighborhoods recursively, then all the related lattices with similar behavior are merged into marine sensitive regions. After this, the Field-object triple form of < O, A, F > is used to represent the marine sensitive objects, both with the discrete object with a precise extend and boundary, and the continuous field with variations dependent on spatial locations. Finally, the marine sensitive objects about sea surface temperature are extracted, represented and analyzed as a case of study, which proves the effectiveness and the efficiency of the proposed method.

Detection of Internal Leaf Structure Deterioration Using a New Spectral Ratio Index in the Near-Infrared Shoulder Region

Spectral reflectance in the near-infrared （NIR） shoulder （750-900 nm） region is affected by internal leaf structure, but it has rarely been investigated. In this study, a dehydration treatment and three paraquat herbicide applications were conducted to explore how spectral reflectance and shape in the NIR shoulder region responded to various stresses. A new spectral ratio index in the NIR shoulder region （NSRI）, defined by a simple ratio of reflectance at 890 nm to reflectance at 780 nm, was proposed for assessing leaf structure deterioration. Firstly, a wavelength-independent increase in spectral reflectance in the NIR shoulder region was observed from the mature leaves with slight dehydration. An increase in spectral slope in the NIR shoulder would be expected only when water stress developed sufficiently to cause severe leaf dehydration resulting in an alteration in cell structure. Secondly, the alteration of leaf cell structure caused by Paraquat herbicide applications resulted in a wavelength-dependent variation of spectral reflectance in the NIR shoulder region. The NSRI in the NIR shoulder region increased significantly under an herbicide application. Although the dehydration process also occurred with the herbicide injury, NSRI is more sensitive to herbicide injury than the water-related indices （water index and normalized difference water index） and normalized difference vegetation index. Finally, the sensitivity of NSRI to stripe rust in winter wheat was examined, yielding a determination coefficient of 0.61, which is more significant than normalized difference vegetation index （NDVI）, water index （WI） and normalized difference water index （NDWI）, with a determination coefficient of 0.45, 0.36 and 0.13, respectively. In this study, all experimental results demonstrated that NSRI will increase with internal leaf structure deterioration, and it is also a sensitive spectral index for herbicide injury or stripe rust in winter wheat.

Flue gas analysis for biomass and coal co‑fring in fuidized bed:process simulation and validation

Coal-conversion technologies,although used ubiquitously,are often discredited due to high pollutant emissions,thereby emphasizing a dire need to optimize the combustion process.The co-fring of coal/biomass in a fuidized bed reactor has been an efcient way to optimize the pollutants emission.Herein,a new model has been designed in Aspen Plus®to simultaneously include detailed reaction kinetics,volatile compositions,tar combustion,and hydrodynamics of the reactor.Validation of the process model was done with variations in the fuel including high-sulfur Spanish lignite,high-ash Ekibastuz coal,wood pellets,and locally collected municipal solid waste(MSW)and the temperature ranging from 1073 to 1223 K.The composition of the exhaust gases,namely,CO/CO_(2)/NO/SO_(2)were determined from the model to be within 2%of the experimental observations.Co-combustion of local MSW with Ekibastuz coal had fue gas composition ranging from 1000 to 5000 ppm of CO,16.2%–17.2%of CO_(2),200–550 ppm of NO,and 130–210 ppm of SO_(2).A sensitivity analysis on co-fring of local biomass and Ekibastuz coal demonstrated the optimal operating temperature for fuidized bed reactor at 1148 K with the recommended biomass-to-coal ratio is 1/4,leading to minimum emissions of CO,NO,and SO_(2).

Monitoring cyanobacteria-dominant algal blooms in eutrophicated Taihu Lake in China with synthetic aperture radar images

Monitoring algal blooms by optical remote sensing is limited by cloud cover.In this study,synthetic aperture radar(SAR) was deployed with the aim of monitoring cyanobacteria-dominant algal blooms in Taihu Lake in cloudy weather.The study shows that dark regions in the SAR images caused by cyanobacterial blooms damped the microwave backscatter of the lake surface and were consistent with the regions of algal blooms in quasi-synchronous optical images,confirming the applicability of SAR for detection of surface blooms.Low backscatter may also be associated with other factors such as low wind speeds,resulting in interference when monitoring algal blooms using SAR data alone.After feature extraction and selection,the dark regions were classified by the support vector machine method with an overall accuracy of 67.74%.SAR can provide a reference point for monitoring cyanobacterial blooms in the lake,particularly when weather is not suitable for optical remote sensing.Multi-polarization and multi-band SAR can be considered for use in the future to obtain more accurate information regarding algal blooms from SAR data.