Forecasting land use and land cover change as a tool for optimising adaptation to climate change: Examples of selected Second-Tier Cities of the V4 Group

Second-tier cities are an important element in the socio-economic development of each country, including V4 countries. The result is a dynamic change in land use/cover patterns. The article analyses the possibility of using Markov chains to predict changes in land use. The results show that it is possible to use the Markov chains method in proper decision-making in land-use policy, which is combined with the stimulation of sustainable land use. The research results show that Markov chains can be an important tool to guide cities’ climate policies and build their capacity to adapt to climate change

THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON THE SIZE AND STRUCTURE OF POPULATIONS IN BIG CITIES

The commencement of the 21st century was marked by a greater intensity of depopulation processes in Poland. From the demographic perspective, a decline in the population number is an outcome of the interaction of two factors: a negative natural increase and a negative balance of migration that may work separately or in tandem. When the level of the natural increase falls, migration, especially its balance, gains importance as a factor influencing the population size. In the early 21st century, population flows played a significant role in the growth of the populations in Warsaw, Krakow, and Wroclaw, whereas Poznań and Łódź saw an accelerated population loss. The purpose of the study was to assess the direct impact of migra- tion on the growth of populations in big Polish cities, as well as its indirect impact revealing itself through increased birth rates from migrants. The analysis spans the years 2002-2017 and uses data from publica- tions of the Central Statistical Office (Demographic Yearbooks) and from the Demografia database (http:// demografia.stat.gov.pl/bazademografia/).Początek XXI wieku charakteryzuje się większą intensywnością procesów wyludniania w Pol- sce. Z perspektywy demograficznej spadek liczby ludności jest wynikiem interakcji dwóch czynników: ujemnego przyrostu naturalnego i ujemnego salda migracji, które mogą działać osobno lub razem. Kiedy poziom przyrostu naturalnego jest bliski wartości lub ujemny, migracje zyskują na znaczeniu jako czynnik wpływający na wielkość populacji. Na początku XXI wieku przepływy ludności odgrywały znaczącą rolę we wzroście populacji w Warszawie, Krakowie i Wrocławiu, ale w Poznaniu i Łodzi przyspieszyły utratę mieszkańców. Celem badania była ocena bezpośredniego wpływu migracji na wzrost liczby ludności w du- żych polskich miastach, a także jej pośredniego wpływu ujawniającego się poprzez wzrost liczby urodzeń wśród migrantów. Analiza obejmuje lata 2002–2017 i wykorzystuje dane z publikacji Głównego Urzędu Statystycznego (Roczniki demograficzne) oraz z bazy danych Demografia (http://demografia.stat.gov.pl/ bazademografia/). &nbsp

Przemiany demograficzne we współczesnych miastach

Publikacja finansowana ze środków funduszy norweskich oraz środków krajowych w ramach projektu „EkoMiasto. Kształcenie na rzecz zrównoważonego, inteligentnego i partycypacyjnego rozwoju miast” (FSS/2014/HEI/W/0081)

Silicon-based photonic crystals fabricated using proton beam writing combined with electrochemical etching method

A method for fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) silicon nanostructures based on selective formation of porous silicon using ion beam irradiation of bulk p-type silicon followed by electrochemical etching is shown. It opens a route towards the fabrication of two-dimensional (2D) and 3D silicon-based photonic crystals with high flexibility and industrial compatibility. In this work, we present the fabrication of 2D photonic lattice and photonic slab structures and propose a process for the fabrication of 3D woodpile photonic crystals based on this approach. Simulated results of photonic band structures for the fabricated 2D photonic crystals show the presence of TE or TM gap in mid-infrared rang

The Data Mining OPtimization Ontology

The Data Mining OPtimization Ontology (DMOP) has been developed to support informed decision-making at various choice points of the data mining process. The ontology can be used by data miners and deployed in ontology-driven information systems. The primary purpose for which DMOP has been developed is the automation of algorithm and model selection through semantic meta-mining that makes use of an ontology-based meta-analysis of complete data mining processes in view of extracting patterns associated with mining performance. To this end, DMOP contains detailed descriptions of data mining tasks (e.g., learning, feature selection), data, algorithms, hypotheses such as mined models or patterns, and workflows. A development methodology was used for DMOP, including items such as competency questions and foundational ontology reuse. Several non-trivial modeling problems were encountered and due to the complexity of the data mining details, the ontology requires the use of the OWL 2 DL profile. DMOP was successfully evaluated for semantic meta-mining and used in constructing the Intelligent Discovery Assistant, deployed at the popular data mining environment RapidMiner

Land use and soil characteristics affect soil organisms differently from above-ground assemblages

Background: Land-use is a major driver of changes in biodiversity worldwide, but studies have overwhelmingly focused on above-ground taxa: the effects on soil biodiversity are less well known, despite the importance of soil organisms in ecosystem functioning. We modelled data from a global biodiversity database to compare how the abundance of soil-dwelling and above-ground organisms responded to land use and soil properties. Results: We found that land use affects overall abundance differently in soil and above-ground assemblages. The abundance of soil organisms was markedly lower in cropland and plantation habitats than in primary vegetation and pasture. Soil properties influenced the abundance of soil biota in ways that differed among land uses, suggesting they shape both abundance and its response to land use. Conclusions: Our results caution against assuming models or indicators derived from above-ground data can apply to soil assemblages and highlight the potential value of incorporating soil properties into biodiversity models.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC): NE/L002515/1 and NE/M014533/1. European Union funding: 81794

Fifth European Dirofilaria and Angiostrongylus Days (FiEDAD) 2016

Peer reviewe

Familial hypercholesterolaemia in children and adolescents from 48 countries: a cross-sectional study

Background: Approximately 450 000 children are born with familial hypercholesterolaemia worldwide every year, yet only 2·1% of adults with familial hypercholesterolaemia were diagnosed before age 18 years via current diagnostic approaches, which are derived from observations in adults. We aimed to characterise children and adolescents with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia (HeFH) and understand current approaches to the identification and management of familial hypercholesterolaemia to inform future public health strategies. Methods: For this cross-sectional study, we assessed children and adolescents younger than 18 years with a clinical or genetic diagnosis of HeFH at the time of entry into the Familial Hypercholesterolaemia Studies Collaboration (FHSC) registry between Oct 1, 2015, and Jan 31, 2021. Data in the registry were collected from 55 regional or national registries in 48 countries. Diagnoses relying on self-reported history of familial hypercholesterolaemia and suspected secondary hypercholesterolaemia were excluded from the registry; people with untreated LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) of at least 13·0 mmol/L were excluded from this study. Data were assessed overall and by WHO region, World Bank country income status, age, diagnostic criteria, and index-case status. The main outcome of this study was to assess current identification and management of children and adolescents with familial hypercholesterolaemia. Findings: Of 63 093 individuals in the FHSC registry, 11 848 (18·8%) were children or adolescents younger than 18 years with HeFH and were included in this study; 5756 (50·2%) of 11 476 included individuals were female and 5720 (49·8%) were male. Sex data were missing for 372 (3·1%) of 11 848 individuals. Median age at registry entry was 9·6 years (IQR 5·8-13·2). 10 099 (89·9%) of 11 235 included individuals had a final genetically confirmed diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolaemia and 1136 (10·1%) had a clinical diagnosis. Genetically confirmed diagnosis data or clinical diagnosis data were missing for 613 (5·2%) of 11 848 individuals. Genetic diagnosis was more common in children and adolescents from high-income countries (9427 [92·4%] of 10 202) than in children and adolescents from non-high-income countries (199 [48·0%] of 415). 3414 (31·6%) of 10 804 children or adolescents were index cases. Familial-hypercholesterolaemia-related physical signs, cardiovascular risk factors, and cardiovascular disease were uncommon, but were more common in non-high-income countries. 7557 (72·4%) of 10 428 included children or adolescents were not taking lipid-lowering medication (LLM) and had a median LDL-C of 5·00 mmol/L (IQR 4·05-6·08). Compared with genetic diagnosis, the use of unadapted clinical criteria intended for use in adults and reliant on more extreme phenotypes could result in 50-75% of children and adolescents with familial hypercholesterolaemia not being identified. Interpretation: Clinical characteristics observed in adults with familial hypercholesterolaemia are uncommon in children and adolescents with familial hypercholesterolaemia, hence detection in this age group relies on measurement of LDL-C and genetic confirmation. Where genetic testing is unavailable, increased availability and use of LDL-C measurements in the first few years of life could help reduce the current gap between prevalence and detection, enabling increased use of combination LLM to reach recommended LDL-C targets early in life

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis