On the design of secure primitives for real world applications

This editorial paper provides an overview of new advances on hardware security challenges and promising solutions for real world applications. It first presents the increasing hardware vulnerabilities with the emergence of diverse computing platforms. Then, it details the technical challenges, research opportunities, and potential solutions to cyber-attacks on -physical- devices.     

Dewatered alum sludge: a potential adsorbent for phosphorus removal.

Alum sludge refers to the by-product from the processing of drinking water in water treatment works. In this study, groups of batch experiments were designed to identify the characteristics of dewatered alum sludge for phosphorus adsorption. Air-dried alum sludge (moisture content 10.2%), which was collected from a water treatment works in Dublin, was subjected to artificial P-rich wastewater adsorption tests using KH2PO4 as a model P source. Adsorption behaviours were investigated as a function of amount and particle size of alum sludge, pH of solution and adsorption time. The results have shown that pH plays a major role not only in the adsorption process but also in the adsorption capacity. With regard to adsorption capacity, this study reveals the Langmuir adsorption isotherm being the best fit with experimental data (R2 = 0.98-0.99). The maximum adsorption capacities range from 0.7 to 3.5 mg-P/g when the pH of the synthetic P solution was varied from 9.0 to 4.3, accordingly. The outcome of this study indicated that alum sludge is suitable for use as an adsorbent for removal of phosphate from wastewater.     

Public and private attitudes towards “green” electricity: the case of Swedish wind power

There exists a political goal in Sweden and elsewhere to increase the use of renewable energy and wind power seems to be a favourable choice from an environmental perspective. However, although the public generally expresses a positive attitude towards wind power, the experience often shows that specific wind power projects face resistance from the local population. This paper analyses the attitudes towards wind power among the electricity consumers as well as the foundations of these attitudes. Results are based on a postal survey that was sent out to 1000 Swedish house owners. According to the results, the public is generally positive towards wind power. The probability of finding an average individual in support of wind power decreases with age and income. People with an interest in environmental issues are, however, more likely to be positive towards wind power than the average respondent and the results do not support the NIMBY-hypothesis. In addition, people that are more inclined to express public preferences are also more likely to be positive towards wind electricity than people who are less inclined to do so. These results imply, for instance, that the potential of markets for “green” electricity may be limited, other support schemes is thus required if the politically stated goal to increase wind power capacity is to be fulfilled.     

Forest park landscape pattern system based on FPGA and GIS system

Perceptual scenes and scene swing surveys are the ideas for reminding local and wooded area park executives and scene placement. The maximum precise analysis of panorama visualization, forest park landscapes, planning of essential scenic spots, and visualization and safety of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) cost tools is primarily based on management and historical data. Visual impacts and cultural, historical past adjustments to are expecting visual and natural landscapes. By deciding on points from a panorama attitude, intervention calls for vital signs and symptoms of safety. Among them, studies are being carried out in many towns around the arena. Geographic Information System (GIS) depends simply on noticeable assessment and is remembered for the social legacy plan. The Gate Array (FPGA) and Geographic Information System (GIS) are analyzed based on the panorama in every place within the painting's framework. In these activities, landscape planning is proposed thru the development of scientific Piedmont. Turin is conducting a few research. From a global attitude, the version suggests that these packages reduce the capability use of the era.     

Range map superresolution-inpainting,and reconstruction from sparse data

Range images often suffer from issues such as low resolution (LR) (for low-cost scanners) and presence of missing regions due to poor reflectivity, and occlusions. Another common problem (with high quality scanners) is that of long acquisition times. In this work, we propose two approaches to counter these shortcomings. Our first proposal which addresses the issues of low resolution as well as missing regions, is an integrated super-resolution (SR) and inpainting approach. We use multiple relatively-shifted LR range images, where the motion between the LR images serves as a cue for super-resolution. Our imaging model also accounts for missing regions to enable inpainting. Our framework models the high resolution (HR) range as a Markov random field (MRF), and uses inhomogeneous MRF priors to constrain the solution differently for inpainting and super-resolution. Our super-resolved and inpainted outputs show significant improvements over their LR/interpolated counterparts. Our second proposal addresses the issue of long acquisition times by facilitating reconstruction of range data from very sparse measurements. Our technique exploits a cue from segmentation of an optical image of the same scene, which constrains pixels in the same color segment to have similar range values. Our approach is able to reconstruct range images with as little as 10% data. We also study the performance of both the proposed approaches in a noisy scenario as well as in the presence of alignment errors.     

Genome-wide genetic diversity may help identify fine-scale genetic structure among lake whitefish spawning groups in Lake Erie

In Lake Erie, lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis supported lucrative fisheries before populations were decimated by overfishing and water quality degradation. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in lake whitefish and management of the fishery they support. Lake whitefish spawn on several reefs throughout Lake Erie, but the relative recruitment dynamics and contributions of spawning groups to the fishery are not well understood. Modern high-throughput sequencing approaches offer new opportunities to census population diversity and to identify subtle differences among closely related populations. We used high-throughput sequencing data to evaluate the genetic structure and diversity of lake whitefish collected opportunistically across broad spatial scales in Lake Erie. Using RAD-capture (Rapture), we sequenced and genotyped individuals (N = 88) from the west, central, and east basin of Lake Erie at 120,268 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Lake whitefish from Niagara and Crib Reefs (west basin) diverged from the three collections. Interestingly, these were the only lake whitefish collected during the act of spawning (late November), and all other fish were collected pre-spawn (August-early November). These results suggest that some lake whitefish spawning reefs may be reproductively isolated, though definition of these groups into stocks will require more intentional sampling during the act of spawning.     

Efficiency of acetic acid and formic acid as a catalyst in catalytical and mechanocatalytical pretreatment of barley straw

In this study, the potential of organic acids (formic acid, acetic acid) in a catalytical and mechanocatalytic conversion of lignocellulosic barley straw to valuable sugars is explored using sulfuric acid as a reference. Acid-catalyzed hydrolysis has been carried out with acid-impregnated samples as well as unmodified barley straw. In the mechanocatalytical approach, pretreatment consists of impregnation with the acid catalyst and mechanical treatment by ball milling following chemical hydrolysis. Straw samples and residues were analyzed by Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FT-IR) whereas hydrolysate analysis was based on total reducing sugar (TRS) determination following the DNS method and capillary electrophoresis (CE) analysis. The results indicated that acetic acid and formic acid are rather mild acids yielding low TRS levels compared to the reference acid. Mechanocatalytical pretreatment slightly increased TRS yields, but not significantly. Strikingly, sulfuric acid showed an efficient conversion efficiency yielding almost 45% of TRS. Furthermore, this study provided evidence for the acetylation of straw components when acetic acid was used as catalyst. Alkali hydrolysis induced the de-esterification, but revealed no significant increase of TRS yields.     

A population-based iterated greedy algorithm for the delimitation and zoning of rural settlements

In this paper we present a Population-Based Iterated Greedy (PBIG) algorithm for delimiting and zoning rural settlements. Each cadastral plots is allocated to a category (traditional–historical, common or none) considering restrictions such as the characteristics of the existing edifications and the building density. Since the problem has multiple solutions, heuristic search algorithms, as PBIG, are a good strategy to solve it. Besides the resolution of the problem according to the requirements of the laws, our work explores also new methods of delimitation. The comparison between both types of solutions can help to improve the current methodology. The algorithm, implemented using the Java programming language and integrated into an open-source GIS software, has been tested in rural settlements with different morphological characteristics, providing adjustable solutions to the specific needs of each rural settlement.     

An examination of the temporal effects of environmental cues on pedestrians' feelings of safety

Although plans are made with people as the target, plan-making processes in most instances are dominated by top-down approaches, giving very little regard to how people perceive or feel about the cities they live in. The perceptions urban areas trigger and how these cause behavioural changes reflect the implications of planning and decision-making upon them. Prior studies indicate that environmental factors can trigger affective reactions in people. Thus, throughout this study, it was attempted to understand how environmental factors affect University students' perceptions of safety, which were quantified on the basis of their arousal, i.e. the calmness or stress felt, and walking speeds. Data on arousal were captured in real-time by a technically-sound, low-cost device assembled using free and open source software and hardware. The study could demarcate and rank the areas perceived to be “safe” and “unsafe” by the University students in real-time using the assembled device and identify which environmental factors have the most significant influence on their perception of safety. This study introduces the chance to determine unconscious reactions of people by triangulating data gathered by several measurement techniques that are directly measured in the field, which can be served as useful inputs for urban planning. Furthermore, the study confirms the value of the real-time sensing device as a tool beyond traditional methods in understanding feelings of safety in environmental settings.     

Affective Experience Measurement in Outdoor Environment via Machine Visual Cognition

Outdoor environments with quality landscapes can benefit people’s physical and mental health. Real-time assessment on individuals’ environmental affective experience can improve the scientism in measuring the quality of outdoor environments. Existing measurement methods are often insufficient for the cases of a larger site area or sample size. The machine visual cognition of Artificial Intelligence can realize the recognition of facial expressions and the changes in video images, which supports high-precision and long-cycle measurements on individuals’ affective experience in outdoor environments. Taking an urban community square as the study site, this research simultaneously collects participants’ facial data from video images and their electrodermal activity data, wherein Convolutional Neural Network algorithm model is trained with a deep learning algorithm, i.e. codec–SVM optimized model, whose reliability is tested through an additional experiment. The research reveals that: 1) The accuracy rate of the main and additional experiments in measuring individuals’ affective experience is 82.01% and 65.08%, respectively; 2) The additional experiment verifies the application potential of the codec–SVM optimized model; And 3) the model works more effective for outdoor scenarios with varying usage behaviors and open views. Therefore, machine visual cognition can be used for emotion measurement in a larger site area or sample size and contributes to the effectiveness of landscape optimization efforts, especially as an instrumental tool to study the affective experience of the ones who have communication or reading disability. The findings also demonstrate the model’s great potential in building Smart Cities with refined public services.