Access to urban green spaces in Hannover: An exploration considering age groups, recreational nature qualities and potential demand.

City dwellers' accessibility of urban green spaces (UGS) has recently gained immense interest in research and policy. Related scientific studies thus far have focused primarily on spatial distances, largely missing considerations of UGS qualities. We analysed the entire UGS setting of Hannover considering the recreational nature quality and potential demands to identify age-appropriate green spaces by applying a geographic information system analysis of several data sets. Additionally, we assessed the accessibility of UGS for different age groups, varying recreational nature qualities, and potential demands. Results indicate that children and elderly people have poor access to UGS that offers age-related requirements to enable unrestricted nature-based recreation. Nature quality and age-related requirements play a significant role in the assessment of UGS for recreation and accessibility. We conclude that detected vulnerabilities regarding age-related recreation in cities are anchors to mainstream the issue and enhance future planning practices and research.

Functional age estimation through neonatal motion characterization using continuous video recordings.

The follow-up of the development of the premature baby is a major component of its clinical care since it has been shown that it can reveal a pathology. However, no method allowing an automated and continuous monitoring of this development has been proposed. Within the framework of the Digi-NewB European project, our team wishes to offer new clinical indices qualifying the maturation of newborns. In this study, we propose a new method to characterize motor activity from video recordings. For this purpose, we have chosen to characterize the motion temporal organization by drawing inspiration from sleep organization. Thus, we propose a fully automatic process allowing to extract motion features and to combine them to estimate a functional age. By investigating two datasets, one of 28.5 hours (manually annotated) from 33 newborns and one of 4,920 hours from 46 newborns, we show that the proposed approach is relevant for monitoring in clinical routine and that the extracted features reflect the maturation of preterm newborns. Indeed, a compact and interpretable model using gestational age and three motion features (mean duration of intervals with motion, total percentage of time spent in motion and number of intervals without motion) was designed to predict post-menstrual age of newborns and showed an admissible mean absolute error of 1.3 weeks. While the temporal organization of motion was not studied clinically due to a lack of technological means, these results open the door to new developments, new investigations and new knowledge on the evolution of motion in newborns.

Preterm Newborn Presence Detection in Incubator and Open Bed Using Deep Transfer Learning.

Video-based motion analysis recently appeared to be a promising approach in neonatal intensive care units for monitoring the state of preterm newborns since it is contact-less and noninvasive. However it is important to remove periods when the newborn is absent or an adult is present from the analysis. In this paper, we propose a method for automatic detection of preterm newborn presence in incubator and open bed. We learn a specific model for each bed type as the camera placement differs a lot and the encountered situations are different between both. We break the problem down into two binary classifications based on deep transfer learning that are fused afterwards: newborn presence detection on the one hand and adult presence detection on the other hand. Moreover, we adopt a strategy of decision intervals fusion in order to take advantage of temporal consistency. We test three deep neural network that were pre-trained on ImageNet: VGG16, MobileNetV2 and InceptionV3. Two classifiers are compared: support vector machine and a small neural network. Our experiments are conducted on a database of 120 newborns. The whole method is evaluated on a subset of 25 newborns including 66 days of video recordings. In incubator, we reach a balanced accuracy of 86%. In open bed, the performance is lower because of a much wider variety of situations whereas less data are available.

Deep transfer learning for video-based detection of newborn presence in incubator.

Preterm newborns are prone to late-onset sepsis, leading to a high risk of mortality. Video-based analysis of motion is a promising non-invasive approach because the behavior of the newborn is related to his physiological state. But it is needed to analyze only images where the newborn is solely present in incubator. In this context, we propose a method for video-based detection of newborn presence. We use deep transfer learning: bottleneck features are extracted from a pre-trained deep neural network and then a classifier is trained with these features on our database. Moreover, we propose a strategy that allows to take advantage of temporal consistency. On a database of 11 newborns with 56 days of video recordings, the results show a balanced accuracy of 80%.

Quiet Sleep Organization of Very Preterm Infants Is Correlated With Postnatal Maturation.

Background: Sleep is an important determinant of brain development in preterm infants. Its temporal organization varies with gestational age (GA) and post-menstrual age (PMA) but little is known about how sleep develops in very preterm infants. The objective was to study the correlation between the temporal organization of quiet sleep (QS) and maturation in premature infants without severe complications during their neonatal hospitalization. Methods: Percentage of time spent in QS and average duration of time intervals (ADI) spent in QS were analyzed from a cohort of newborns with no severe complications included in the Digi-NewB prospective, multicentric, observational study in 2017-19. Three groups were analyzed according to GA: Group 1 (27-30 weeks), Group 2 (33-37 weeks), Group 3 (>39 weeks). Two 8-h video recordings were acquired in groups 1 and 2: after birth (T1) and before discharge from hospital (T2). The annotation of the QS phases was performed by analyzing video recordings together with heart rate and respiratory traces thanks to a dedicated software tool of visualization and annotation of multimodal long-time recordings, with a double expert reading. Results are expressed as median (interquartile range, IQR). Correlations were analyzed using a linear mixed model. Results: Five newborns were studied in each group (160 h of recording). Median time spent in QS increased from 13.0% [IQR: 13-20] to 28.8% [IQR: 27-30] and from 17.0% [IQR: 15-21] to 29.6% [IQR: 29.5-31.5] in Group 1 and 2, respectively. Median ADI increased from 54 [IQR: 53-54] to 288 s [IQR: 279-428] and from 90 [IQR: 84-96] to 258 s [IQR: 168-312] in Group 1 and 2. Both groups reach values similar to that of group 3, respectively 28.2% [IQR: 24.5-31.3] and 270 s [IQR: 210-402]. The correlation between PMA and time spent in QS or ADI were, respectively 0.73 (p < 10-4) and 0.46 (p = 0.06). Multilinear analysis using temporal organization of QS gave an accurate estimate of PMA (r 2 = 0.87, p < 0.001). Conclusion: The temporal organization of QS is correlated with PMA in newborns without severe complication. An automated standardized continuous behavioral quantification of QS could be interesting to monitor during the hospitalization stay in neonatal units.

High carbon storage in carbon-limited trees.

The concentrations of nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) in plant tissues are commonly used as an indicator of total plant carbon (C) supply; but some evidence suggests the possibility for high NSC concentrations during periods of C limitation. Despite this uncertainty, NSC dynamics have not been investigated experimentally under long-term C limitation. We exposed saplings of 10 temperate tree species differing in shade tolerance to 6% of ambient sunlight for 3 yr to induce C limitation, and also defoliated one species, Carpinus betulus, in the third season. Growth and NSC concentrations were monitored to determine C allocation. Shade strongly reduced growth, but after an initial two-fold decrease, NSC concentrations of shaded saplings recovered to the level of unshaded saplings by the third season. NSC concentrations were generally more depleted under shade after leaf flush, and following herbivore attacks. Only under shade did artificial defoliation lead to mortality and depleted NSC concentrations in surviving individuals. We conclude that, irrespective of shade tolerance, C storage is maintained under prolonged shading, and thus high NSC concentrations can occur during C limitation. Yet, our results also suggest that decreased NSC concentrations are indicative of C limitation, and that additional leaf loss can lead to lethal C shortage in deep shade.

Living on next to nothing: tree seedlings can survive weeks with very low carbohydrate concentrations.

The usage of nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) to indicate carbon (C) limitation in trees requires knowledge of the minimum tissue NSC concentrations at lethal C starvation, and the NSC dynamics during and after severe C limitation. We completely darkened and subsequently released seedlings of two deciduous and two evergreen temperate tree species for varying periods. NSCs were measured in all major organs, allowing assessment of whole-seedling NSC balances. NSCs decreased fast in darkness, but seedlings survived species-specific whole-seedling starch concentrations as low as 0.4-0.8% per dry matter (DM), and sugar (sucrose, glucose and fructose) concentrations as low as 0.5-2.0% DM. After re-illumination, the refilling of NSC pools began within 3 wk, while the resumption of growth was delayed or restricted. All seedlings had died after 12 wk of darkness, and starch and sugar concentrations in most tissues were lower than 1% DM. We conclude that under the applied conditions, tree seedlings can survive several weeks with very low NSC reserves probably also using alternative C sources like lipids, proteins or hemicelluloses; lethal C starvation cannot be assumed, if NSC concentrations are higher than the minimum concentrations found in surviving seedlings; and NSC reformation after re-illumination occurs preferentially over growth.