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Temporal Variability of the Northern Infrared Aurora of Jupiter as Captured by JWST
Get PDFWe present near-infrared observations of the northern aurora of Jupiter using the NIRSpec instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope, mapping emissions from H+3 and CH4 across the polar region. The data were acquired over a period of ~4 hr, providing a temporally averaged view of these emissions. From the H+3 spectra we derive the temperature of the upper atmosphere and H+3 ion densities. Temperatures are elevated along the main auroral oval at both dawn and dusk, though the highest temperatures recorded were poleward of the main oval at dawn, approaching 1500 K. The highest ion densities were observed dusk-ward of the main oval, closely correlating with the observed H+3 radiance. Using overlapping individual observations (or dithers) we investigate the temporal variability of the temperatures, which we found change too fast to represent wholesale changes to the vertical temperature structure of the upper atmosphere. Instead, these fast changes are likely connected to variable electron precipitation energies, which produce H+3 at different altitudes that sample different parts of the thermospheric temperature profile. The 3.3 μm CH4 fundamental and hotband emissions are brightest at 210°W close to the pole, which has been seen previously. However, we also see emission along the main oval, suggesting excitation of this non-LTE emission by direct precipitation. Lastly, we suggest that the CH4 band ratios can be used to trace the penetration depth of the precipitating electrons, and therefore their energies
Connections to trees in the countryside:Exploring public perceptions of agroforestry as a future land management system in England
Get PDFAgroforestry is increasingly recognised as an approach to deliver multi-functional land use and provide a range of ecosystem services. In England, rural agroforestry is an important part of the government’s net-zero strategy. However, the adoption rate is lower than the policy targets with agroforestry currently accounting for around 1% of the total agricultural area in rural England. Significant landscape change is therefore yet to emerge. To ensure sustainable benefits and be socially acceptable, landscape changes should take into account stakeholder preferences. This study explores people’s connections with trees in the countryside and their perceptions of benefits and risks associated with increased agroforestry in England. We report the results of focus group discussions involving 32 people across two economically, geographically, and agronomically contrasting regions of England (Northumberland/Tyne and Wear in the Northeast, and Thames Valley in the Southeast). The participants articulated an appreciation and enjoyment of established trees in the landscape and referred to social, emotional, and physical connections. Agroforestry systems were seen as generally positive, providing more ecosystem services than disservices. The participants associated a number of environmental and social benefits with the increase in tree cover in the countryside. However, they also stressed the need to ensure that the right tree is planted in the right place so that agroforestry does not negatively impact on the landscape. Our results suggest that there is public support for increased agroforestry adoption, but the incentive schemes should be carefully designed to reflect stakeholder preferences and values and maximize public benefits.</p
Construction and As-Built Performance of a Miscanthus Straw Bale House
Get PDFHouses constructed using straw bales have typically been built from wheat, rice, or barley straw, depending on local availability. Miscanthus is a perennial biomass crop with a high lignocellulose content that is grown on agriculturally marginal land. We describe the construction and as-built performance of what we believe to be the world’s first Miscanthus straw bale building. We describe the practical differences in working with the material that arise due to the slightly different physical properties of the baled material. The moisture content of the walls 17 months after construction was 11.3 ± 0.5% (pre-construction 10.72 ± 0.4% n.s.d). The in situ U value of the wall was 0.162 W/m2K, which compares to a reported U value of 0.189 W/m2K in wheat straw bale buildings of comparable wall thickness. Given the greater resistance of Miscanthus to biodegradation than wheat straw, its wider use as a construction material should be considered
Fusion of multi-source data and artificial intelligence for land subsidence evaluation
No full textExcessive groundwater extraction in Iran, especially in the Neyshabur region, has led to widespread land subsidence (LS), posing a serious threat to the environment and infrastructure. This study aims to investigate LS and assess the consistency of multi-source data to improve the accuracy and reliability of the results through data fusion. The datasets include Sentinel-1 satellite images (2014 to 2020), global positioning system (GPS) time series, precision leveling, gravity recovery and climate experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on GRACE-FO satellite data, and piezometric well data. The results show that the maximum LS rate in Neyshabur is 21 ± 2 cm per year, consistent with other observations. The linear trend in the GPS data is -8 cm per year, and the maximum value recorded by precision leveling is -15 cm per year. The annual decrease in groundwater storage was 0.13 km³, and the maximum water table decline recorded in piezometric wells was 2.5 m/year. The correlation between GPS and leveling data exceeds 0.9. To assess the LS risk, an index was developed using optimization algorithms including genetic algorithm (GA), genetic programming (GP), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and firefly algorithm (FA). The correlations of these methods with the data are 0.80, 0.82, 0.73 and 0.65, respectively, with GP showing the highest agreement. These results confirm the high capability of combining multi-source data and artificial intelligence in monitoring and sustainable water management.</p
Advancing Sustainability and Resilience in Vulnerable Rural and Coastal Communities Facing Environmental Change with a Regionally Focused Composite Mapping Framework
Get PDFRural and coastal communities in areas of socio-economic deprivation face increasing exposure to compound climate-related hazards, including flooding, erosion and extreme heat. Effective adaptation planning in these contexts requires approaches that integrate physical hazard modelling with measures of social vulnerability in a transparent and reproducible way. This study develops and applies the Adaptive and Resilient Rural-Coastal Communities in Lincolnshire (ARRCC-L) framework, a sequential process combining data collation, two-dimensional hydraulic simulation using LISFLOOD-FP, and composite vulnerability mapping. The framework is versioned and protocolised to support replication, and is applied to Lincolnshire, UK, integrating UKCP18 climate projections, high-resolution flood models, infrastructure accessibility data and deprivation indices to generate multi-scenario flood exposure assessments for 2020–2100. The findings demonstrate how open, reproducible modelling can underpin inclusive stakeholder engagement and inform equitable adaptation strategies. By situating hazard analysis within a socio-economic context, the ARRCC-L framework offers a transferable decision support tool for embedding resilience considerations into regional planning, supporting both local adaptation measures and national risk governance.</p
HPMF:Hypergraph-guided Prototype Mining Framework for Few-Shot Object Detection in Remote Sensing Images
Get PDFFew-shot object detection (FSOD) within remote sensing imagery has achieved great advancements in recent years. However, most existing methods are facing one key challenge while handling remote sensing images: many unlabeled instances in few-shot images are treated as background, which tends to degrade the generalization of the trained model severely. This paper presents HPMF, a Hypergraph-guided Prototype Mining Framework that addresses the challenge through joint optimization from three perspectives. The first is Hierarchical Reference Mining (HRM) which constructs a class-instance dual-driven prototype space that enables mining the unlabeled instances via cross-hierarchical similarity fusion. The second is a Robust Pseudo-box Estimator (RPE) that generates high-quality pseudo bounding boxes for the HRM-mined instances via adaptive density clustering and multi-statistic aggregation. The third is a Hypergraph-Guided Decoder (HGD) that introduces hypergraphs into the transformer decoder for group semantic modeling, enhancing high-order semantic association and similarity of instance features, thereby further improving the mining performance of the HRM module. Extensive experiments under various settings show that the proposed HPMF outperforms state-of-the-art methods consistently across multiple widely adopted remote-sensing FSOD benchmarks such as DIOR, NWPU-VHR10 v2, and HRRSD.</p
Equestrian Road Safety:A review of the literature and where next
Get PDFIntroduction:Equestrian road safety is a growing concern in the UK, with an estimated 1.5 million horse riders regularly using public roads. Despite the number of users and their vulnerability, research in this area remains limited and fragmented. This review aims to summarize the current knowledge on equestrian road safety, identify key themes, and highlight gaps in understanding and policy.Method:Due to the heterogeneity and paucity of research, a systematic review approach was deemed unsuitable. Instead, a narrative review was conducted using academic literature, government collision data, and incident reports from the British Horse Society. Fourteen key studies were reviewed, including surveys, focus groups, video/image responses, and field studies involving riders and, to a lesser extent, drivers.Results:Themes identified include: the prevalence and underreporting of road incidents involving horses; primary causes such as close or fast vehicle passing and road rage; a well-established safety culture among riders; and knowledge gaps among drivers regarding horse behaviour. Current statistics significantly underestimate the issue, with discrepancies between official data and grassroots reporting. Design limitations in road infrastructure, inadequate driver understanding, and restricted off-road access all contribute to elevated risks for horse riders.Discussion:Horse riders are recognized as vulnerable road users with unique needs and risks. Protective behaviours such as helmet and high-visibility gear usage are common, yet should not be viewed as complete solutions. Drivers’ hazard perception and empathy toward horse riders remain limited. Infrastructure and policy fail to accommodate equestrian needs, contributing to marginalization. Promoting inclusive design, such as multi-use paths and better connectivity of off-road routes, is critical to improving safety and encouraging participation in equestrian activities.Conclusion:There is a pressing need for improved data collection, inclusive infrastructure, and educational interventions targeting driver behaviour toward horse riders. Without these measures, equestrianism risks further marginalisation in transport planning. Horses, as sentient beings and road users, warrant dedicated consideration in road safety policy. A fully inclusive approach to activ
Running on empty:Locomotor compensation preserves fish schooling under hypoxia and informs principles for bioinspired swarms
No full textEnvironmental stressors such as hypoxia challenge the balance between individual physiological performance and the coordination required for collective behaviors like schooling. Here, we investigate how glass catfish (Kryptopterus vitreolus) modulate locomotor and group-level behavior across a gradient of oxygen saturation (95%-20%) while swimming steadily at a constant cruising speed. We found that tailbeat frequency decreased significantly with declining oxygen (p < 0.0001), alongside reductions in wave speed (p = 0.007). Tailbeat amplitude, by contrast, increased significantly under hypoxia (p < 0.0001), and posterior segment angles showed a slight, non-significant increase, consistent with modestly greater tail bending. Despite these changes, the Strouhal number remained fairly constant, and waveform topology was conserved. School structure, including nearest-neighbor distance and distance to the center of the school, remained stable across oxygen treatments, but with significant variation across individual schools. A clear behavioral threshold was observed below 25% oxygen saturation, beyond which coordinated schooling deteriorated. These findings demonstrate that glass catfish employ internally coordinated, energetically economical kinematic adjustments to preserve group cohesion under metabolic constraint. This strategy highlights a decentralized mechanism for sustaining collective behavior near physiological limits and offers biologically-grounded insights relevant to energy-aware coordination in bioinspired swarms.</p
Degradation of brown coal and 1-methylnaphthalene by a Micrococcus luteus isolate:Investigation of a novel aromatic degradation gene cluster containing paa genes
Get PDFAims To identify novel brown coal-degrading bacteria, and elucidate the biochemical pathways involved in brown coal degradation. Methods and results Four bacterial isolates were identified from the surface of Indonesian brown coal, which can utilize naphthalene and 1-methylnaphthalene as carbon sources for growth. The genome sequence of the best-performing Micrococcus luteus K1 strain was determined. A novel aromatic degradation gene cluster was identified, containing several paa genes normally involved in phenylacetic acid degradation, and also containing genes found on aromatic meta-cleavage pathways. 1-Naphthoic acid was generated from 1-methylnaphthalene by M. luteus K1 whole cell biotransformation, and was also utilized as a growth substrate by M. luteus K1. Recombinant ligase PaaK from the new gene cluster was shown to activate either phenylacetic acid or 1-naphthoic acid to their respective CoA esters, consistent with 1-naphthoyl CoA being an intermediate on the pathway. From metabolite analysis and annotation of the gene cluster, a new 1-methylnaphthalene degradation pathway was proposed, via a benzene oxide-oxepin ring opening. Recombinant mono-oxygenase and extradiol catechol dioxygenase enzymes from the gene cluster were expressed, showing activities consistent with the later steps of the proposed pathway. Conclusions A new M. luteus K1 isolate was identified as a brown coal degrader, whose genome contains an unusual aromatic degradation cluster containing paa genes. This cluster is hypothesized to be responsible for 1-methylnaphthalene degradation
First Steps Toward a Runtime Analysis When Starting With a Good Solution
Get PDFThe mathematical runtime analysis of evolutionary algorithms traditionally regards the time an algorithm needs to find a solution of a certain quality when initialized with a random population. In practical applications it may be possible to guess solutions that are better than random ones. We start a mathematical runtime analysis for such situations. We observe that different algorithms profit to a very different degree from a better initialization. We also show that the optimal parameterization of an algorithm can depend strongly on the quality of the initial solutions. To overcome this difficulty, self-adjusting and randomized heavy-tailed parameter choices can be profitable. Finally, we observe a larger gap between the performance of the best evolutionary algorithm we found and the corresponding black-box complexity. This could suggest that evolutionary algorithms better exploiting good initial solutions are still to be found. These first findings stem from analyzing the performance of the evolutionary algorithm and the static, self-adjusting, and heavy-tailed genetic algorithms on the OneMax benchmark. We are optimistic that the question of how to profit from good initial solutions is interesting beyond these first examples.</p