Spatiotemporal Thermal Variations in Moroccan Cities: A Comparative Analysis.

This study examines the Land Surface Temperature (LST) trends in eight key Moroccan cities from 1990 to 2020, emphasizing the influential factors and disparities between coastal and inland areas. Geographically weighted regression (GWR), machine learning (ML) algorithms, namely XGBoost and LightGBM, and SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) methods are utilized. The study observes that urban areas are often cooler due to the presence of urban heat sinks (UHSs), more noticeably in coastal cities. However, LST is seen to increase across all cities due to urbanization and the degradation of vegetation cover. The increase in LST is more pronounced in inland cities surrounded by barren landscapes. Interestingly, XGBoost frequently outperforms LightGBM in the analyses. ML models and SHAP demonstrate efficacy in deciphering urban heat dynamics despite data quality and model tuning challenges. The study's results highlight the crucial role of ongoing urbanization, topography, and the existence of water bodies and vegetation in driving LST dynamics. These findings underscore the importance of sustainable urban planning and vegetation cover in mitigating urban heat, thus having significant policy implications. Despite its contributions, this study acknowledges certain limitations, primarily the use of data from only four discrete years, thereby overlooking inter-annual, seasonal, and diurnal variations in LST dynamics.

Capturing urban heat island formation in a subtropical city of China based on Landsat images: implications for sustainable urban development.

Land use/cover change is the main driving force of urban expansion which influences human-environment interactions. Generally, the formation of urban heat islands (UHIs) can be referred to as a negative "by-product" of urbanization. In the context of rapid urbanization, the present paper aims to capture the landscape changes and three patterns of urban expansion (i.e., infill, extension, and leapfrog), and provide a better understanding of the formation of the surface urban heat island (SUHI) in Dongguan, China, during the past 20+ years. Urban land increased from 28.87 × 103 ha in 1994 to 78.89 × 103 ha in 2005 and 101.05 × 103 ha in 2015, with a compound annual urban growth rate of 9.57% (1994-2005) and 2.51% (2005-2015), respectively. Based on the mean land surface temperature difference (Δ mean LST) between urban land (UL) and green space (GS), the SUHI intensity (SUHII) increased from 1.46 °C in 1994 to 2.32 °C in 2005 and 3.83 °C in 2015 in Dongguan. Overall, the Δ mean LST of urban areas increased from 2.61 °C (1994-2005) to 4.78 °C (2005-2015). The Δ mean LST between the city center and its surrounding areas decreased from 1994 to 2015, and the Δ mean LST between the city center and the suburbs gradually increased, primarily in 2015. In particular, both dense urban and the infill pattern of urban expansion had high mean LSTs in Dongguan, thus having negative impacts on sustainable urban development. The limited green space and open land should be strictly controlled or prohibited for transformation in urban areas. Particularly in dense regions, green roofs, green areas, and urban renewal actions could be considered for mitigating the urban heat island effect.

Measuring sustainability based upon various perspectives: a case study of a hill station in Southeast Asia.

A hill station is a town or city situated in mountain regions in the tropics founded during the western colonization in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hill stations have moderate temperatures, and are known for their relatively good natural environments, which generate valuable ecosystem services that benefit the local population. However, rapid urbanization threatens the sustainability of these areas. This study evaluates the sustainability of the urbanization process of Baguio City, a hill station city in Southeast Asia and the summer capital of the Philippines, by determining the relationship between its velocity of urbanization and velocity of urban sustainability based upon various perspectives. From an equal weight perspective (of the triple bottom line of sustainability components, namely environmental, social, and economic) and a pro-economic perspective, the results revealed that the urbanization of Baguio City has been moving toward a "sustainable urbanization." However, from the environmental and eco-sustainable human development perspectives, the results indicated that it has been moving toward an "unsustainable urbanization." The paper discusses the implications of the findings for the planning of sustainable development for Baguio City, including some critical challenges in sustainability assessment and the applicability of the framework used for future sustainability assessments of the other hill stations in Southeast Asia.

DNA sequence and analysis of human chromosome 8.

The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium (IHGSC) recently completed a sequence of the human genome. As part of this project, we have focused on chromosome 8. Although some chromosomes exhibit extreme characteristics in terms of length, gene content, repeat content and fraction segmentally duplicated, chromosome 8 is distinctly typical in character, being very close to the genome median in each of these aspects. This work describes a finished sequence and gene catalogue for the chromosome, which represents just over 5% of the euchromatic human genome. A unique feature of the chromosome is a vast region of approximately 15 megabases on distal 8p that appears to have a strikingly high mutation rate, which has accelerated in the hominids relative to other sequenced mammals. This fast-evolving region contains a number of genes related to innate immunity and the nervous system, including loci that appear to be under positive selection--these include the major defensin (DEF) gene cluster and MCPH1, a gene that may have contributed to the evolution of expanded brain size in the great apes. The data from chromosome 8 should allow a better understanding of both normal and disease biology and genome evolution.

Spread of COVID-19 in Zambia: An assessment of environmental and socioeconomic factors using a classification tree approach.

The global pandemic emergent from SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) has continued to cause both health and socio-economic challenges worldwide. However, there is limited information on the factors affecting the dynamics of COVID-19, especially in developing countries, including African countries. In this study, we have focused on understanding the association of COVID-19 cases with environmental and socioeconomic factors in Zambia - a sub-Saharan African country. We used Zambia's district-level COVID-19 data, covering 18 March 2020 (i.e., from first reported cases) to 17 July 2020. Geospatial approaches were used to organize, extract and establish the dataset, while a classification tree (CT) technique was employed to analyze the factors associated with the COVID-19 cases. The analyses were conducted in two stages: (1) the binary analysis of occurrences of COVID-19 (i.e., COVID-19 or No COVID-19), and (2) a risk level analysis which grouped the number of cases into four risk levels (high, moderate, low and very low). The results showed that the distribution of COVID-19 cases in Zambia was significantly influenced by the socioeconomic factors compared to environmental factors. More specifically, the binary model showed that distance to the airport, population density and distance to the town centres were the most combination influential factors, while the risk level analysis indicated that areas with high rates of human immuno-deficient virus (HIV) infection had relatively high chances of having many COVID-19 cases compared to areas with low HIV rates. The districts that are far from major urban establishments and that experience higher temperatures have lower chances of having COVID-19 cases. This study makes two major contributions towards the understanding of COVID-19 dynamics: (1) the methodology presented here can be effectively applied in other areas to understand the association of environmental and socioeconomic factors with COVID-19 cases, and (2), the findings from this study present the empirical evidence of the relationship between COVID-19 cases and their associated environmental and socioeconomic factors. Further studies are needed to understand the relationship of this disease and the associated factors in different cultural settings, seasons and age groups, especially as the COVID-19 cases increase and spread in many countries.

Scenario-based modelling for urban sustainability focusing on changes in cropland under rapid urbanization: A case study of Hangzhou from 1990 to 2035.

China is undergoing rapid urbanization, which has brought great pressure on croplands throughout the country, especially in fast developing cities, such as Hangzhou. In this study, an attempt was made to monitor and model the cropland dynamics of Hangzhou from 1990 to 2035. The spatial-temporal changes in the cropland were discussed based on the land cover maps along with urban-rural gradient analysis. After understanding the spatial-temporal patterns of cropland changes, the cellular automata-Markov model was employed using the historical land cover maps and other explanatory data to perform a scenario-based simulation. Accordingly, three scenarios, namely spontaneous scenario (SS), protected area ensuring scenario (PAES), and optimal agriculture developing scenario (OADS), were designed for simulating the cropland distribution in 2035. The monitoring results showed that during 1990-2015, the cropland area decreased 1512.46km2 under rapid urbanization. Areas at a distance of 12km from the city center experienced maximum cropland loss. Among all the spatial metrics, aggregation index of the cropland exhibited the highest correlation with the distance to the city center (r=0.77 in 2015), thereby suggesting an obvious trend in aggregation along the urban-rural gradient. The modelling results reported that under PAES and OADS, the study area could gain 81.76km2 and 255.14km2 more cropland, respectively, than that under SS in 2035. Thus, policies applied in PAES and OADS would be effective for cropland protection.

Bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles on ecosystem services.

This paper presents global research trends involving highly cited articles on ecosystem services from 1981 to 2017 based on a bibliometric analysis of such articles from the SCI-E and SSCI databases of the Web of Science. The analysis revealed that there were 132 highly cited articles, most of which were published between 2005 and 2014. Based on author keywords, the term ecosystem services was strongly linked to biodiversity. The top three journals in terms of total number of highly cited articles published were Ecological Economics, PNAS, and Ecological Indicators. Despite ranking sixth overall, Science ranked first in both impact factor and total citations per article. The US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden were the top five most productive and cooperative countries in the world based on total number of highly cited articles and co-authorship network, respectively. The US was highly connected to Canada, the Netherlands, China and the UK. Stockholm University and Stanford University were the most productive institutions in Europe and North America, respectively. Stanford University is associated with many scholars in the field of ecosystem services research because of the InVEST model. Robert Costanza was the most prolific and highly cited author, the latter being largely due to the first valuation of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital, he and his co-authors published in 1997 in Nature. Terrestrial, urban, and forest ecosystems were the top types of ecosystems assessed. Regulating and provisioning services were the major ecosystem services studied. Quantitative and qualitative assessments were the main research focus. Most of these highly cited studies on ecosystem services are done on areas geographically located in North America and Europe.

The future of Southeast Asia's forests.

While Southeast Asia's forests play important roles in biodiversity conservation and global carbon (C) balance, the region is also a deforestation hotspot. Here, we consider the five shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) to portray a range of plausible futures for the region's forests, employing a state-of-the-art land change modelling procedure and remotely sensed data. We find that by 2050 under the worst-case scenario, SSP 3 (regional rivalry/a rocky road), the region's forests would shrink by 5.2 million ha. The region's aboveground forest carbon stock (AFCS) would decrease by 790 Tg C, 21% of which would be due to old-growth forest loss. Conversely, under the best-case scenario, SSP 1 (sustainability/taking the green road), the region is projected to gain 19.6 million ha of forests and 1651 Tg C of AFCS. The choice of the pathway is thus critical for the future of the region's forests and their ecosystem functions and services.

Effects of landscape composition and pattern on land surface temperature: An urban heat island study in the megacities of Southeast Asia.

Due to its adverse impacts on urban ecological environment and the overall livability of cities, the urban heat island (UHI) phenomenon has become a major research focus in various interrelated fields, including urban climatology, urban ecology, urban planning, and urban geography. This study sought to examine the relationship between land surface temperature (LST) and the abundance and spatial pattern of impervious surface and green space in the metropolitan areas of Bangkok (Thailand), Jakarta (Indonesia), and Manila (Philippines). Landsat-8 OLI/TIRS data and various geospatial approaches, including urban-rural gradient, multiresolution grid-based, and spatial metrics-based techniques, were used to facilitate the analysis. We found a significant strong correlation between mean LST and the density of impervious surface (positive) and green space (negative) along the urban-rural gradients of the three cities, depicting a typical UHI profile. The correlation of impervious surface density with mean LST tends to increase in larger grids, whereas the correlation of green space density with mean LST tends to increase in smaller grids, indicating a stronger influence of impervious surface and green space on the variability of LST in larger and smaller areas, respectively. The size, shape complexity, and aggregation of the patches of impervious surface and green space also had significant relationships with mean LST, though aggregation had the most consistent strong correlation. On average, the mean LST of impervious surface is about 3°C higher than that of green space, highlighting the important role of green spaces in mitigating UHI effects, an important urban ecosystem service. We recommend that the density and spatial pattern of urban impervious surfaces and green spaces be considered in landscape and urban planning so that urban areas and cities can have healthier and more comfortable living urban environments.

Voltammetric behavior of the transfer of mono- and polyammonium ions across a phospholipid monolayer at the nitrobenzene/water interface.

The influence of a phospholipid, dipalmitoyl phosphatidylcholine, layer at a nitrobenzenelwater interface on the transfer of tetraethylammonium ion and a polyammonium anti-fungus agent, poly[(dimethylimino)(2-oxo-1,2-ethanediyl)imino1,6-hexanediylimino (1-oxo-1,2-ethanediyl)(dimethylimino)-1,6-hexanediyl] ion, across the interface was studied by normal pulse voltammetry. When the phospholipid was adsorbed to form a monolayer at the nitrobenzenelwater interface by its addition to the organic phase, the half-wave potential in the current vs. potential curves for the transfer of tetraethylammonium ion did not change, but the limiting current was significantly decreased at certain sampling times, indicating a retarding effect of the layer on the ion-transfer. On the other hand, in the current vs. potential curves for the transfer of the polyammonium ion, no significant change in either the half-wave potential or the limiting current was observed upon adding the phospholipid, indicating that the polyammonium ion can easily permeate through the phospholipid layer. The results suggest a new application of the voltammetric technique to the study of cell membrane permeability to polyionic bioactive compounds.

Voltammetric study of the transfer of fluoride ion at the nitrobenzene / water interface assisted by tetraphenylantimony.

The transfer of F- ion assisted by an organometallic complex cation tetraphenylantimony (TPhSb+) across the polarized nitrobenzene / water (NB / W) interface has been studied by means of ion-transfer voltammetry. A well-defined voltammetric wave was observed within the potential window at the NB / W interface when tetraphenylantimony tetrakis(4-chlorophenyl) borate and F- ion were present in NB and W, respectively. The voltammogram can be interpreted as being due to the reversible transfer of F- ion assisted by the formation of the TPhSbF complex through the coordination of F- to Sb atom in NB. The formal formation constant of TPhSbF in NB has been determined to be 10(1.95 +/- 0.2 M(-1). No voltammetric wave due to the TPhSb(+)-assisted transfer of other anions such as Cl-, Br, I-, NO3-, CH3COO- and H2PO4(-) ions has been observed within the potential window.

Voltammetric study of the transfer of polyammonium ions at nitrobenzene / water interface.

The transfer of polyammonium ions, poly[(dimethylimino)-1,6-hexanediyl] (n = 140, n being the degree of polymerization) ion and poly[(dimethylimino)(2-oxo-1,2-ethanediyl)imino-alpha,omega-alkanediylimino(1-oxo-1,2-ethanediyl)(dimethylimino)-alpha',omega'-alkanediyl] ([-N+ (CH3)2CH2CONH(CH2)x NHCOCH2N+ (CH3)2(CH2)y-]n, x = 2, 3, 4, or 6, y = 3 or 6, and n = 30-130) ions, at a polarizable nitrobenzene / water interface has been studied by normal pulse voltammetry and cyclic voltammetry. Despite the polydispersity of the preparations, by normal pulse voltammetry, an S-shaped current-potential curve with a well-defined limiting current, and, by cyclic voltammetry, a pair of anodic and cathodic peak currents due to the transfer of polyammonium ions across the interface were observed within the potential window. The voltammetric behavior is described. Also, the effect of ion-pair formation of the polyammonium ions with supporting electrolyte anions in nitrobenzene- and water-phases on the half-wave or midpoint potential of the ion-transfer, and the relation between the structure of the polyammonium ions and the transfer potentials are discussed.

The DNA sequence of medaka chromosome LG22.

We report the genomic DNA sequence of a single chromosome (linkage group 22; LG22) of the small teleost fish medaka (Oryzias latipes) as a first whole chromosome sequence from a non-mammalian vertebrate. The order and orientation of 633 protein-coding genes were deduced from 18,803,338 bp of DNA sequence, providing the opportunity to analyze chromosome evolution of vertebrate genomes by direct comparison with the human genome. The average number of genes in the "conserved gene cluster" (CGC), a strict definition of "synteny" at the sequence basis, between medaka and human was 1.6. These and other data suggest that approximately 38.8% of pair-wise gene relationships would have been broken from their common ancestor in the human and medaka lineages and further imply that approx 20,000 (15,520-23,280) breaks would have occurred from the entire genome of the common ancestor. These breaks were generated mainly by intra-chromosomal shufflings at a specific era in the vertebrate lineage. These precise comparative genomics allowed us to identify the pieces of ancient chromosomes of the common vertebrate ancestor and estimate chromosomal evolution in the vertebrate lineage.

Comparative genomics of medaka and fugu.

A small freshwater fish medaka (Oryzias latipes) has been one of the most attractive experimental systems for research in genetics and developmental biology. We have formed an international consortium Medaka Genome Initiative (MGI) to collect and share various information and resources on medaka. The MGI has set an ambitious goal aiming at the complete sequencing of the medaka genome and as a feasibility study we have begun sequencing one particular chromosome, linkage group 22 (LG22) of approximately 22 Mb in size. Initial sequence analysis revealed unique features of the medaka genome in comparison to fugu genome.

Metal-organic thin-film transistor (MOTFT) based on a bis(o-diiminobenzosemiquinonate) nickel(II) complex.

The semiconducting film based on bis(o-diiminobenzosemiquinonate) nickel(II) complex showed uniaxial orientation structure along the normal to the substrate and good p-type metal-organic thin-film transistor (MOTFT) character.