A Study of Green Infrastructure in European Cities: Opportunities and possibilities: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Green infrastructure (GI) is generally defined as a network of natural and semi-natural regions that has been sensitively developed and managed to provide an array of ecosystem services and improve people’s well-being. Across Europe, the notion of GI has had a robust association with the the impacts of climate change, multifunctionality, and green growth; this is especially true over the past ten years, from 2012 to 2022. This has resulted in a broad-based agenda on policy and research with vast differences, targeting a variety of themes and cultures. The systematic review and meta-analysis conducted in this paper present an up-to-date review of the main attributes of GI-related research and the implications for the member states within the European Union (EU). GI-related concepts, thematic clusters, and the main priorities within the research were considered in our review. Due to the ambiguity of the definition of GI, a broad diversity of research goals and published output are discussed. It was also seen that green spaces situated within urban areas and their related ecosystem services are the most common topics in the literature. Based on this, we recommend that an in-depth integration of the goals pertaining to nature conservation be conducted to understand how GI may pertain towards sustainable transitions in and outside the city

The microbial ecology of a sustainable, long-term lentil-wheat rotation

Non-Peer Reviewe

Risk factors for nosocomial pneumonia comparing adult critical-care populations

The purpose of the study was to examine risk factors for nosocomial pneumonia in the surgical and medical/respiratory intensive care unit (ICU) populations. In a public teaching hospital, all cases of nosocomial pneumonia in the surgical and medical/respiratory ICUs (n = 20, respectively) were identified by prospective surveillance during a 5-yr period from 1987-1991. Each group of ICU cases was compared with 40 ICU control patients who did not acquire pneumonia, and analyzed for 25 potential risk factors. Surgical ICU patients were found to have consistently higher rates of nosocomial pneumonia than medical ICU patients (RR = 2.2). The strongest predictor for nosocomial pneumonia in both the surgical and medical/respiratory ICU groups was found to be prolonged mechanical ventilation (> 1 d) resulting in a 12-fold increase in risk over nonventilated patients. APACHE III score was found to be predictive of nosocomial pneumonia in the surgical ICU population, but not in the medical/respiratory ICU population. We conclude that certain groups deserve special attention for infection control intervention. Surgical ICU patients with high APACHE scores and receiving prolonged mechanical ventilation may be at the greatest risk of acquiring nosocomial pneumonia of all hospitalized patients

The Wisconsin-IIASA Set of Energy/Environment (WISE) Models for Regional Planning and Management: An Overview

This report presents an overview of the analytical framework and quantitative methods used in the IIASA case studies on Regional Energy/Environment Management and Planning. Its purpose is to summarize the structure of the models, to provide a complete listing of the sources of more detailed model and data descriptions, and to indicate how the models are integrated to provide a foundation for regional energy/environment policy maker analysis. The audience for the report includes managers, planners, technical advisors, and modelers. The set of models used in the research project encompasses socioeconomic links to the energy system; energy demand in the residential, industrial, commercial/service, agricultural and transportation sectors; the energy supply sector, environmental impacts associated with the energy system; and policy makers' preferences. The report gives a brief description of the purpose and general structure of each model, data requirements, examples of input and output, and model limitations. As a whole, the models integrate information about energy flows in a region to simulate the energy system and its relationship to other regional variables, e.g., demographic and economic trends and the environment

Enhancement of the magnetic anisotropy of nanometer-sized Co clusters: influence of the surface and of the inter-particle interactions

We study the magnetic properties of spherical Co clusters with diameters between 0.8 nm and 5.4 nm (25 to 7500$ atoms) prepared by sequential sputtering of Co and Al2O3. The particle size distribution has been determined from the equilibrium susceptibility and magnetization data and it is compared to previous structural characterizations. The distribution of activation energies was independently obtained from a scaling plot of the ac susceptibility. Combining these two distributions we have accurately determined the effective anisotropy constant Keff. We find that Keff is enhanced with respect to the bulk value and that it is dominated by a strong anisotropy induced at the surface of the clusters. Interactions between the magnetic moments of adjacent layers are shown to increase the effective activation energy barrier for the reversal of the magnetic moments. Finally, this reversal is shown to proceed classically down to the lowest temperature investigated (1.8 K).Comment: 13 figures submitted to Phys. Rev.

Tune in to your emotions: a robust personalized affective music player

The emotional power of music is exploited in a personalized affective music player (AMP) that selects music for mood enhancement. A biosignal approach is used to measure listeners’ personal emotional reactions to their own music as input for affective user models. Regression and kernel density estimation are applied to model the physiological changes the music elicits. Using these models, personalized music selections based on an affective goal state can be made. The AMP was validated in real-world trials over the course of several weeks. Results show that our models can cope with noisy situations and handle large inter-individual differences in the music domain. The AMP augments music listening where its techniques enable automated affect guidance. Our approach provides valuable insights for affective computing and user modeling, for which the AMP is a suitable carrier application

Planck 2015 results. XXVII. The Second Planck Catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich Sources

We present the all-sky Planck catalogue of Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources detected from the 29 month full-mission data. The catalogue (PSZ2) is the largest SZ-selected sample of galaxy clusters yet produced and the deepest all-sky catalogue of galaxy clusters. It contains 1653 detections, of which 1203 are confirmed clusters with identified counterparts in external data-sets, and is the first SZ-selected cluster survey containing > $10^3$ confirmed clusters. We present a detailed analysis of the survey selection function in terms of its completeness and statistical reliability, placing a lower limit of 83% on the purity. Using simulations, we find that the Y5R500 estimates are robust to pressure-profile variation and beam systematics, but accurate conversion to Y500 requires. the use of prior information on the cluster extent. We describe the multi-wavelength search for counterparts in ancillary data, which makes use of radio, microwave, infra-red, optical and X-ray data-sets, and which places emphasis on the robustness of the counterpart match. We discuss the physical properties of the new sample and identify a population of low-redshift X-ray under- luminous clusters revealed by SZ selection. These objects appear in optical and SZ surveys with consistent properties for their mass, but are almost absent from ROSAT X-ray selected samples

Search for a W' boson decaying to a bottom quark and a top quark in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

Results are presented from a search for a W' boson using a dataset corresponding to 5.0 inverse femtobarns of integrated luminosity collected during 2011 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in pp collisions at sqrt(s)=7 TeV. The W' boson is modeled as a heavy W boson, but different scenarios for the couplings to fermions are considered, involving both left-handed and right-handed chiral projections of the fermions, as well as an arbitrary mixture of the two. The search is performed in the decay channel W' to t b, leading to a final state signature with a single lepton (e, mu), missing transverse energy, and jets, at least one of which is tagged as a b-jet. A W' boson that couples to fermions with the same coupling constant as the W, but to the right-handed rather than left-handed chiral projections, is excluded for masses below 1.85 TeV at the 95% confidence level. For the first time using LHC data, constraints on the W' gauge coupling for a set of left- and right-handed coupling combinations have been placed. These results represent a significant improvement over previously published limits.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters B. Replaced with version publishe