Design of an internal quad-band antenna for mobile phones

This letter presents the design of a compact Planar Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA) suitable for cellular telephone applications. The quarter-wavelength antenna combines the use of a slot, shorted parasitic patches and capacitive loads to achieve multiband operation. The commercial electromagnetic software IE3D is used to design and optimize the structure. The resulting antenna can operate from 880 to 960 MHz and 1710 to 2170 MHz covering GSM, DCS, PCS, and UMTS standards with a VSWR better than 2.5. Good agreement is found between simulated and measured results.     

The carbon balance of Africa: synthesis of recent research studies

The African continent contributes one of the largest uncertainties to the global CO(2) budget, because very few long-term measurements are carried out in this region. The contribution of Africa to the global carbon cycle is characterized by its low fossil fuel emissions, a rapidly increasing population causing cropland expansion, and degradation and deforestation risk to extensive dryland and savannah ecosystems and to tropical forests in Central Africa. A synthesis of the carbon balance of African ecosystems is provided at different scales, including observations of land-atmosphere CO(2) flux and soil carbon and biomass carbon stocks. A review of the most recent estimates of the net long-term carbon balance of African ecosystems is provided, including losses from fire disturbance, based upon observations, giving a sink of the order of 0.2 Pg C yr(-1) with a large uncertainty around this number. By comparison, fossil fuel emissions are only of the order of 0.2 Pg C yr(-1) and land-use emissions are of the order of 0.24 Pg C yr(-1). The sources of year-to-year variations in the ecosystem carbon-balance are also discussed. Recommendations for the deployment of a coordinated carbon-monitoring system for African ecosystems are given.     

Compact internal multiband antenna for mobile phone and WLAN standards

A novel internal planar inverted-F antenna (PIFA) suitable for handset terminals is presented. The structure combines shorted parasitic patches, capacitive loads and slots to achieve multiband operation. This compact antenna operates in the GSM, DCS, PCS, UMTS, HIPERLAN/2 and IEEE 802.11a bands within 2.5:1 voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) and with good efficiency.     

Surface urban heat island across 419 global big cities

Urban heat island is among the most evident aspects of human impacts on the earth system. Here we assess the diurnal and seasonal variation of surface urban heat island intensity (SUHII) defined as the surface temperature difference between urban area and suburban area measured from the MODIS. Differences in SUHII are analyzed across 419 global big cities, and we assess several potential biophysical and socio-economic driving factors. Across the big cities, we show that the average annual daytime SUHII (1.5 ± 1.2 °C) is higher than the annual nighttime SUHII (1.1 ± 0.5 °C) (P < 0.001). But no correlation is found between daytime and nighttime SUHII across big cities (P = 0.84), suggesting different driving mechanisms between day and night. The distribution of nighttime SUHII correlates positively with the difference in albedo and nighttime light between urban area and suburban area, while the distribution of daytime SUHII correlates negatively across cities with the difference of vegetation cover and activity between urban and suburban areas. Our results emphasize the key role of vegetation feedbacks in attenuating SUHII of big cities during the day, in particular during the growing season, further highlighting that increasing urban vegetation cover could be one effective way to mitigate the urban heat island effect.