Forest governance and REDD+ in Central Africa: towards a participatory model to increase stakeholder involvement in carbon markets

Forests play a significant role in the global carbon budget, and can help to mitigate climate change impacts. Tropical forests which experience high rates of deforestation and forest degradation are particularly important, as they are the most active in winter. Based on academic research into global environmental policies in Central Africa, this study finds that REDD+ policies can succeed when there is a carbon market mechanism that increases participation by developing countries, with better integration of forest management and community forestry. Incentives should be based on an appropriate baseline, accurate carbon stocks and fluxes estimation, a suitable silvicultural system and regular monitoring.     

Prediction of Generation of High- and Low-Angle Grain Boundaries (HAGB and LAGB) During Severe Plastic Deformation

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - It is well known that a balance between the generation of low-angle and high-angle grain boundaries (LABG and HAGB) is achieved in materials undergoing...     

Molecular Mechanisms of Taste Recognition: Considerations about the Role of Saliva

The gustatory system plays a critical role in determining food preferences and food intake, in addition to nutritive, energy and electrolyte balance. Fine tuning of the gustatory system is also crucial in this respect. The exact mechanisms that fine tune taste sensitivity are as of yet poorly defined, but it is clear that various effects of saliva on taste recognition are also involved. Specifically those metabolic polypeptides present in the saliva that were classically considered to be gut and appetite hormones (i.e., leptin, ghrelin, insulin, neuropeptide Y, peptide YY) were considered to play a pivotal role. Besides these, data clearly indicate the major role of several other salivary proteins, such as salivary carbonic anhydrase (gustin), proline-rich proteins, cystatins, alpha-amylases, histatins, salivary albumin and mucins. Other proteins like glucagon-like peptide-1, salivary immunoglobulin-A, zinc-α-2-glycoprotein, salivary lactoperoxidase, salivary prolactin-inducible protein and salivary molecular chaperone HSP70/HSPAs were also expected to play an important role. Furthermore, factors including salivary flow rate, buffer capacity and ionic composition of saliva should also be considered. In this paper, the current state of research related to the above and the overall emerging field of taste-related salivary research alongside basic principles of taste perception is reviewed.     

Visual Interestingness Prediction: A Benchmark Framework and Literature Review

International Journal of Computer Vision - In this paper, we report on the creation of a publicly available, common evaluation framework for image and video visual interestingness prediction. We...     

Alcoholism detection based on Hu moment invariants of event-related potentials

Diagnostic efforts to identify alcoholism are frequently subjective; however, recent technological advances have allowed the automated assessment of objective signals. To improve the performance of the automated classification of patients with alcohol dependence (AD) and controls, we analyzed features of event-related potentials (ERPs) in 72 subjects with AD and 42 controls while the subjects underwent three different visual oddball tasks. In addition to such commonly used morphological features (MFs) as time-domain amplitude and latency components as well as discrete wavelet transform coefficient entropies (WEs), we analyzed Hu moment invariants (HMIs) in this study. Smaller P3 and P2 amplitudes, longer latencies, lower WE values, and lower HMI values were observed for AD subjects relative to those observed for controls. We used a Naïve Bayes algorithm to compare classification accuracies among MFs, WEs, HMIs, combinations of MFs/WEs, and combinations of all three characteristics. We found that HMIs improved the classification accuracy by 17%. Our findings demonstrated that a combined feature analysis of ERPs obtained during a visual oddball task can be a useful and discriminative tool for diagnostic purposes in alcoholism and that HMIs show promise for improving the objective diagnosis of alcoholism and similar diseases.     

Performance of a CO2 sorbent for indoor air cleaning applications: Effects of environmental conditions,sorbent aging,and adsorption of co-occurring formaldehyde

Indoor air cleaning systems that incorporate CO₂ sorbent materials enable HVAC load shifting and efficiency improvements. This study developed a bench-scale experimental system to evaluate the performance of a sorbent under controlled operation conditions. A thermostatic holder containing 3.15 g sorbent was connected to a manifold that delivered CO₂-enriched air at a known temperature and relative humidity (RH). The air stream was also enriched with 0.8-2.1 ppm formaldehyde. The CO₂ concentration was monitored in real-time upstream and downstream of the sorbent, and integrated formaldehyde samples were collected at different times using DNPH-coated silica cartridges. Sorbent regeneration was carried out by circulating clean air in countercurrent. Almost 200 loading/regeneration cycles were performed in the span of 17 months, from which 104 were carried out at reference test conditions defined by loading with air at 25°C, 38% RH, and 1000 ppm CO₂, and regenerating with air at 80°C, 3% RH and 400 ppm CO₂. The working capacity decreased slightly from 43-44 mg CO₂ per g sorbent to 39-40 mg per g over the 17 months. The capacity increased with lower loading temperature (in the range 15-35°C) and higher regeneration temperature, between 40 and 80°C. The CO₂ capacity was not sensitive to the moisture content in the range 6-9 g/m³, and decreased slightly when dry air was used. Loading isothermal breakthrough curves were fitted to three simple adsorption models, verifying that pseudo-first-order kinetics appropriately describes the adsorption process. The model predicted that equilibrium capacities decreased with increasing temperature from 15 to 35°C, while adsorption rate constants slightly increased. The formaldehyde adsorption efficiency was 80%-99% in different cycles, corresponding to an average capacity of 86 ± 36 µg/g. Formaldehyde was not quantitatively released during regeneration, but its accumulation on the sorbent did not affect CO₂ adsorption.     

Effect of sieved fractionation on the physical,flow and hydration properties of Boscia senegalensis Lam., Dichostachys glomerata Forssk. and Hibiscus sabdariffa L. powders

Food Science and Biotechnology - This study aimed at evaluating the effect of successive grinding and sieving processes on the physicochemical properties of powders obtained from Boscia...