Objective analysis and ranking of Hungarian cities, with different classification techniques : part 1 : methodology

Összefoglalás - A tanulmány célja, hogy a magyarországi városokat és megyéket környezetminőségük és környezeti tudatosságuk szintje alapján osztályozza. Ahhoz, hogy ezt a feladatot megoldjuk, kiszámítottuk a „Green Cities Index", illetve a „Green Counties Index" értékeket, melyek alapján a városokat és a megyéket 7 különböző kategória 19 környezeti indikátora segítségével rangsoroltuk. Ezt követően azt a célt tűztük ki, hogy összehasonlítsuk a különböző clusterező eljárásokat a városok és megyék osztályozásában. Az SPSS szoftver segítségével elvégzett clusteranalízis mind a városokra, mind a megyékre 6-6 homogén csoportot eredményezett. Az R-nyelv segítségével végrehajtott clusteranalízis az agnes, a fanny és a pam algoritmusok felhasználásával történt. Summary - The aim of the study was to rank and classify Hungarian cities and counties according to their environmental quality and level of environmental awareness. To accomplish this task, „Green Cities Index" and „Green Counties Index" were calculated that rank cities and counties on the basis of seven different categories of 19 environmental indicators. Furthermore, our aim was to compare different methods in classifying cities and counties. Cluster analysis using SPSS software resulted in 6 homogenous groups for both the cities and the counties. Clustering with R-language was carried out using algorithms agnes, fanny and pam

Energy efficiency for reducing carbon footprint in historic buildings: Comparing case in the UK and Malaysia

Climate changes seem to be one of the controversial conflicts for people in today's world and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which are one of the main reasons for climate changes, will be an appropriate solution for this alien. Buildings are one of the main resources for producing carbon dioxide emissions. For instance, around 40 percent of all carbon dioxide emission in the UK comes from buildings and so buildings especially heritage buildings need to improve their performance to contribute carbon reduction. The main aim of this research is to identify some acceptable and convenient ways for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in heritage buildings for controlling climate changes to some extent. In this paper, a desktop study was conducted to review the techniques and technologies to help us for reducing carbon dioxide emissions in heritage buildings. In this paper, the importance of heritage buildings and their elements such as wall, roof, window, door, floor has discussed and the main reasons for increasing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions have mentioned. In continuing, principles, risks, materials, methods, techniques and technologies for controlling energy loss of historic building elements have expressed. The results indicate that manufactured and transport of building materials will produce a large amount of carbon emissions and so the continued use of historic and heritage buildings can be an accommodative solution for this issue. For instance, in England in 2000 these processes accounted for more than 10 percent of the UK carbon dioxide emissions. It proves that conservation of heritage buildings is important not only for significant value of these buildings, but also for reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. All the methods, techniques and technologies which have discussed in this paper are correspondent solution for the goal of reduction carbon dioxide emissions that produce through the life-cycle of historic buildings

Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages Research

ca. 200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms. [There is ever more research on smart cities and new interdisciplinary approaches proposed on the study of smart cities. At the same time, problems pertinent to communities inhabiting rural areas are being addressed, as part of discussions in contigious fields of research, be it environmental studies, sociology, or agriculture. Even if rural areas and countryside communities have previously been a subject of concern for robust policy frameworks, such as the European Union’s Cohesion Policy and Common Agricultural Policy Arguably, the concept of ‘the village’ has been largely absent in the debate. As a result, when advances in sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) led to the emergence of a rich body of research on smart cities, the application and usability of ICT in the context of a village has remained underdiscussed in the literature. Against this backdrop, this volume delivers on four objectives. It delineates the conceptual boundaries of the concept of ‘smart village’. It highlights in which ways ‘smart village’ is distinct from ‘smart city’. It examines in which ways smart cities research can enrich smart villages research. It sheds light on the smart village research agenda as it unfolds in European and global contexts.

Cartographic source materials and cartographic method of research in the past environment analyses

The article reviews a methodology of using early maps and other cartographic materials in the past environment studies. The application of the cartographic method of research is presented on examples from different research fields, but cases from the Earth Science are analysed deeper – from hydrography, through geomorphology to many aspects of economic geography. What is broadly described is a detection of human interaction with the nature: all traces that are marked by settlement, land use, communication, etc. This paper shows that the past environment, with its ways of use and topology can be recreated using early maps. These materials help finding hidden marks from the past, saved in abandoned orchards, old roads composed into modern network, toponyms storing past spatial relations, etc. It is also shown that analyses of early maps have to be conveyed with great care and responsibility, especially when it comes to geometric properties of old cartographic materials. The Geographic Information System (GIS) is helpful in such a situation, but its use is more profound. In this paper GIS is described as a tool being a great step forward in the applications of cartographic method of research and many examples of such applications in the field of a landscape analyses are given – from simple yet informative numeric outcomes of research to 3D virtual creations of long-gone landscapes

Image of sustainable places

Contemporary moment requires redefinition and attentive attitude towards the phenomenon of place, his image, duration and especially the topic of his sustainability. The fact that all the architectural and urban design practice topical theme of responsibility and sustainability requires that such ideas are put into research focus and questions the concept, design thinking and design, and the planing critically assessed, analyzed and evaluated in the new framework of a paradigm. Images of contemporary place are reflected in images of modern cities, their parts, urban landscapes so they request to review the viability and make her to give new meaning seen in the idea of duration, the identity of place, scale and form.With this work we try to show some of the potential of the concept of sustainability through its basic building elements such as location, nature, time, duration, experience, form, change, and how these elements participate in the context of a new ideology of sustainability. Integrated and sustainable architectural design, which involves the formulation of ideas, concepts, shapes, materials, details and style, consistent with the properties of space on which to build, natural resources, capacities and needs of life processes will reflect, in many ways, to incorporate new process of thinking architecture, places and of its images, as the main impression (duration) of sustainability

Elderly and urban services. A GIS support tool to measure pedestrian accessibility

In all the countries of the industrialized West and in many developing countries, the population aging index is gradually increasing and it is expected that in 2050 one in five people in the world will be over 70 years old and that 64 countries will have a population older than 30% of the entire population. The relationship between the organization of the pedestrian network and the location and distribution of urban activities are important elements for improving accessibility to urban places and services of interest to the elderly. Many scholars are engaged in research aimed at improving the characteristics of the pedestrian network and the characteristics of the built environment that influence the "walkability" at the neighbourhood scale or improving the accessibility in reaching a specific urban service through the transport networks of transport. In this perspective, the purpose of the thesis work is the development of a decision support tool in a GIS environment to classify urban areas according to the levels of pedestrian accessibility for the elderly to urban services. Accessibility levels are defined through the measurement of accessibility built starting from the weight of each characteristic of the pedestrian network (identified through the analysis of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)), from the behaviour of the elderly especially in terms of speed and time distance for the different age groups of the elderly population. The application of the thesis work took place in two territorial contexts: Naples, Italy and Aberdeen, Scotland. The results obtained provide suggestions to local decision makers in the choice of interventions and their priorities to be implemented at the neighbourhood scale to improve the quality of life of the elderly and on the other provide a technical-operational contribution to measure pedestrian accessibility to urban services in other territorial contexts in the GIS environment

Preliminary study in discovering 2-propen-1-one, 1-(2,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-3-(4-methoxyphenyl)- from syzygium aqueum leaves as a tyrosinase inhibitor in food product: experimental and theoretical approach

In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) in combination with central composite rotatable design (CCRD) were performed to optimize the extraction parameters for total phenolic content (TPC) on Syzygium aqueum (S. aqueum) leaves. The effect of operational conditions on the extraction of S. aqueum leaves using carbon dioxide (CO2) on TPC was investigated. The conditions used in the supercritical extraction with CO2 included temperatures of (40-70 °C), pressures (2200-4500 psi) and extraction time (40-100 min). The highest TPC (3.5893 mg GAE/mg) was obtained at optimum conditions of 55 °C, 3350 psi and 70 min. The major compound in the optimized crude extract was2-propen-1-one,1-(2,4Dihydroxyphenyl)-3-(4-methoxyphenyl)- (82.65 %) which was identified by GC-MS. COSMO-RS was introduced to study the σ-profile between CO2 and 2-propen-1-one,1-(2,4-Dihydroxyphenyl)-3-(4methoxyphenyl)-. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to classify major compound which exhibit similar chemical properties with selected control. 2-propen-1-one,1-(2,4-Dihydroxyphenyl)-3-(4methoxyphenyl)- has similar chemical properties with kaempferol as tyrosinase inhibitor. Molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) and molecular docking were plotted to investigate a recognition manner of 2-propen-1-one,1-(2,4-Dihydroxyphenyl)-3-(4-methoxyphenyl)-upon tyrosinase receptor