2,245 research outputs found
The Urban Toolkit: A Grammar-based Framework for Urban Visual Analytics
While cities around the world are looking for smart ways to use new advances
in data collection, management, and analysis to address their problems, the
complex nature of urban issues and the overwhelming amount of available data
have posed significant challenges in translating these efforts into actionable
insights. In the past few years, urban visual analytics tools have
significantly helped tackle these challenges. When analyzing a feature of
interest, an urban expert must transform, integrate, and visualize different
thematic (e.g., sunlight access, demographic) and physical (e.g., buildings,
street networks) data layers, oftentimes across multiple spatial and temporal
scales. However, integrating and analyzing these layers require expertise in
different fields, increasing development time and effort. This makes the entire
visual data exploration and system implementation difficult for programmers and
also sets a high entry barrier for urban experts outside of computer science.
With this in mind, in this paper, we present the Urban Toolkit (UTK), a
flexible and extensible visualization framework that enables the easy authoring
of web-based visualizations through a new high-level grammar specifically built
with common urban use cases in mind. In order to facilitate the integration and
visualization of different urban data, we also propose the concept of knots to
merge thematic and physical urban layers. We evaluate our approach through use
cases and a series of interviews with experts and practitioners from different
domains, including urban accessibility, urban planning, architecture, and
climate science. UTK is available at urbantk.org.Comment: Accepted at IEEE VIS 2023. UTK is available at http://urbantk.or
Stimulating technological innovation through incentives: Perceptions of Australian and Brazilian firms
Innovation has been the main driver of economic growth as it plays an increasingly central role in firm performance. Incentivising innovation by governments is essential to stimulate investment by companies, covering part of their R&D costs, and minimising their financial risks. There is, however, limited understanding of how innovation incentives are perceived by the companies. This paper examines the perceptions of technology firms, and the views of key actors about public incentive schemes for innovation in Australia and Brazil. The study finds that: (a) Direct incentives are perceived as critical for increasing innovation capabilities of firms; (b) Where tax incentive and infrastructure development schemes are the most preferred incentive programs among the firms; (c) However, despite the former two findings, effectiveness of existing incentive programs has been marginal in fostering innovation significantly in the studied countries. These findings imply that Australian and Brazilian governments should further focus on the design, promotion, and delivery methods of the innovation support mechanisms.</p
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Experimental investigation of the air-fuel charging process in a four-valve supercharged two-stroke cycle GDI engine
Fuel consumption standards imposed in several countries for the next years have prompted the development of hybrid passenger cars with ever smaller internal combustion engines. In such powertrain, fuel consumption is as important as engine packaging and power density, so two-stroke engines may be an option due to their higher combustion frequency compared to four-stroke engines. Therefore, the present research investigates the air–fuel charging process of an overhead four-valve direct injection supercharged engine operating in the two-stroke cycle. The optimum start of fuel injection was evaluated for commercial gasoline by means of indicated and combustion efficiencies where a trade-off was found between early and late fuel injections. By advancing the injection timing, more fuel was prone to short circuit to the exhaust during the valve overlap, while late injections resulted in poor charge preparation. The gas exchange parameters, i.e. charging and trapping efficiencies, were obtained from seventy operating points running at fuel-rich conditions. The Benson–Brandham mixing-displacement scavenging model was then fit to the experimental data with a coefficient of determination better than 0.95. With such model, the air trapping and charging efficiencies could be estimated solely based on the scavenge ratio and exhaust lambda, regardless of the engine load, speed, or air/fuel ratio employed. Further twenty-five different lean-burn testing points were tested to certify the proposed methodology applied to the poppet valve two-stroke engine. The in-cylinder lambda was calculated and found different from the exhaust lambda due to mixing between burned gases and intake air during the scavenging process
Cuidado de enfermagem oncológico na ótica do cuidador familiar no contexto hospitalar
Male-Produced Aggregation Pheromones of the Cerambycid Beetles Xylotrechus colonus and Sarosesthes fulminans
Adults of both sexes of the cerambycid beetles Xylotrechus colonus (F.) and Sarosesthes fulminans (F.) were attracted to odors produced by male conspecifics in olfactometer bioassays. Analyses of headspace volatiles from adults revealed that male X. colonus produced a blend of (R)- and (S)-3-hydroxyhexan-2-one and (2 S,3 S)- and (2R,3R)-2,3-hexanediol, whereas male S. fulminans produced (R)-3-hydroxyhexan-2-one and (2 S,3R)-2,3-hexanediol. All of these compounds were absent in the headspace of females. Two field bioassays were conducted to confirm the biological activity of the synthesized pheromones: (1) enantiomerically enriched pheromone components were tested singly and in species-specific blends and (2) four-component mixture of racemic 3-hydroxyhexan-2-one plus racemic 2-hydroxyhexan-3-one and the four-component blend of the stereoisomers of 2,3-hexanediols were tested separately and as a combined eight-component blend. In these experiments, adult male and female X. colonus were captured in greatest numbers in traps baited with the reconstructed blend of components produced by males, although significant numbers were also captured in traps baited with (R)-3-hydroxyhexan-2-one alone or in blends with other compounds. Too few adult S. fulminans were captured for a statistical comparison among treatments, but all were caught in traps baited with lures containing (R)-3-hydroxyhexan-2-one. In addition to these two species, adults of two other species of cerambycid beetles, for which pheromones had previously been identified, were caught: Neoclytus a. acuminatus (F.) and its congener Neoclytus m. mucronatus (F.). Cross-attraction of beetles to pheromone blends of other species, and to individual pheromone components that are shared by two or more sympatric species, may facilitate location of larval hosts by species that compete for the same host species
Cork oak vulnerability to fire: the role of bark harvesting, tree characteristics and abiotic factors
Forest ecosystems where periodical tree bark harvesting is a major economic activity may be particularly vulnerable to
disturbances such as fire, since debarking usually reduces tree vigour and protection against external agents. In this paper
we asked how cork oak Quercus suber trees respond after wildfires and, in particular, how bark harvesting affects post-fire
tree survival and resprouting. We gathered data from 22 wildfires (4585 trees) that occurred in three southern European
countries (Portugal, Spain and France), covering a wide range of conditions characteristic of Q. suber ecosystems. Post-fire
tree responses (tree mortality, stem mortality and crown resprouting) were examined in relation to management and
ecological factors using generalized linear mixed-effects models. Results showed that bark thickness and bark harvesting are
major factors affecting resistance of Q. suber to fire. Fire vulnerability was higher for trees with thin bark (young or recently
debarked individuals) and decreased with increasing bark thickness until cork was 3–4 cm thick. This bark thickness
corresponds to the moment when exploited trees are debarked again, meaning that exploited trees are vulnerable to fire
during a longer period. Exploited trees were also more likely to be top-killed than unexploited trees, even for the same bark
thickness. Additionally, vulnerability to fire increased with burn severity and with tree diameter, and was higher in trees
burned in early summer or located in drier south-facing aspects. We provided tree response models useful to help
estimating the impact of fire and to support management decisions. The results suggested that an appropriate
management of surface fuels and changes in the bark harvesting regime (e.g. debarking coexisting trees in different years or
increasing the harvesting cycle) would decrease vulnerability to fire and contribute to the conservation of cork oak
ecosystemsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
B chromosomes in a population of Astyanax eigenmanniorum (Characiformes, Characidae) from the Araguari River Basin (Uberlândia, MG, Brazil)
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