Behaviour in public open spaces: A systematic review of studies with quantitative research methods

Public open spaces are important assets that play a significant role in city lives, based on which a great number of behaviour-based studies are being conducted. These studies often use one or more case studies to observe people's preferences and usage habits and to investigate their influencing factors such as outdoor thermal comfort, environmental conditions, urban configuration, and local settings. Because the subject is complex and falls within the purview of multiple academic disciplines, it is a challenging task to understand the current status and development trends of existing studies. To fill this gap, this article presents a systematic review of quantitative evidence-based behaviour studies in public open spaces. Following the PRISMA method and searching using eight academic search engines, full texts of 116 research articles have been included for this review. The main contributions of this review are that: (1) it proposed a relatively complete system that categorizes people's behaviour in public open spaces; (2) it introduced outdoor subjective influencing procedure including behaviour, feeling and health impacts; (3) the review illustrated the distribution of existing research as well as research trends; and finally (4) the article also timely discussed the influence of the COVID-19 on people's behaviour in public open spaces. The authors consider this article to be useful as it can facilitate further behaviour-based studies in public open spaces. With a robust classification and future trend discussion of factors associated, fellow researchers, urban designers, city managers, and policymakers are easier to integrate and use the knowledge learned

Influence of maturity on bruise detection of peach by structured multispectral imaging

Peaches are easily bruising during all stages of postharvest handling, maturity can affect the characteristics and detection of bruising, which is directly related to the quality and shelf life of peach. The main objective of this research was to investigate the effect of maturity on the early detection of postharvest bruising in peach based on structured multispectral imaging (S-MSI) system. The S-MSI data was measured for bruised peaches, followed by microstructural (CLSM), and biochemical (oxidative browning-related enzyme activities, gene expression, and phenolic compound metabolism) measurements. As the maturity increases, the external impact stress could further induce the accumulation of phenolics through the phenylpropane pathway and pulp oxidative browning, resulting in more pronounced external damage; and the spectral reflectance value of bruised peach was getting smaller, and the spectral waveform gradually flattened out. Three characteristic bands of 781, 824, 867 nm were selected from structured spectra (669–955 nm) related to bruising. The watershed algorithm was adopted for bruise detection, the detection rates for bruised peaches based on three maturity levels (S1–S3) were 91–92%, 90.71–97.43%, and 97.14–99.86%, respectively. This research demonstrated that S-MSI system coupled with watershed algorithm, can enhance our capability of detecting the early bruised peaches of different maturity levels

MicroRNA-133b Negatively Regulates Zebrafish Single Mauthner-Cell Axon Regeneration through Targeting tppp3 in Vivo

Axon regeneration, fundamental to nerve repair, and functional recovery, relies on rapid changes in gene expression attributable to microRNA (miRNA) regulation. MiR-133b has been proved to play an important role in different organ regeneration in zebrafish, but its role in regulating axon regeneration in vivo is still controversial. Here, combining single-cell electroporation with a vector-based miRNA-expression system, we have modulated the expression of miR-133b in Mauthner-cells (M-cells) at the single-cell level in zebrafish. Through in vivo imaging, we show that overexpression of miR-133b inhibits axon regeneration, whereas down-regulation of miR-133b, promotes axon outgrowth. We further show that miR-133b regulates axon regeneration by directly targeting a novel regeneration-associated gene, tppp3, which belongs to Tubulin polymerization-promoting protein family. Gain or loss-of-function of tppp3 experiments indicated that tppp3 was a novel gene that could promote axon regeneration. In addition, we observed a reduction of mitochondrial motility, which have been identified to have a positive correlation with axon regeneration, in miR-133b overexpressed M-cells. Taken together, our work provides a novel way to study the role of miRNAs in individual cell and establishes a critical cell autonomous role of miR-133b in zebrafish M-cell axon regeneration. We propose that up-regulation of the newly founded regeneration-associated gene tppp3 may enhance axonal regeneration

Black Heart Detection in White Radish by Hyperspectral Transmittance Imaging Combined with Chemometric Analysis and a Successive Projections Algorithm

Radishes with black hearts will lose edible value and cause food safety problems, so it is important to detect and remove the defective ones before processing and consumption. A hyperspectral transmittance imaging system with 420 wavelengths was developed to capture images from white radishes. A successive-projections algorithm (SPA) was applied with 10 wavelengths selected to distinguish defective radishes with black hearts from normal samples. Pearson linear correlation coefficients were calculated to further refine the set of wavelengths with 4 wavelengths determined. Four chemometric classifiers were developed for classification of normal and defective radishes, using 420, 10 and 4 wavelengths as input variables. The overall classifying accuracy based on the four classifiers were 95.6%–100%. The highest classification with 100% was obtained with a back propagation artificial neural network (BPANN) for both calibration and prediction using 420 and 10 wavelengths. Overall accuracies of 98.4% and 97.8% were obtained for calibration and prediction, respectively, with Fisher's linear discriminant analysis (FLDA) based on 4 wavelengths, and was better than the other three classifiers. This indicated that the developed hyperspectral transmittance imaging was suitable for black heart detection in white radishes with the optimal wavelengths, which has potential for fast on-line discrimination before food processing or reaching storage shelves