Search Results (6)

Frequent bird strikes during peak migration periods pose a significant risk to aviation safety. Existing prevention methods rely on static historical patterns and lack the ability to adapt to real-time changes. Short-term meteorological fluctuations are crucial in shaping bird migration behavior, influencing both its timing and intensity. Climate change increases the variability of these factors, making predictions more difficult. Simple models may describe migration patterns under stable conditions but struggle to capture the complexity introduced by climate-driven fluctuations. To address this, we propose a model that integrates convolutional neural networks (CNNs), long short-term memory (LSTM) networks, and an attention mechanism, achieving prediction accuracy consistently above 0.9. CNN extracts features, LSTM captures temporal dependencies, and attention assigns weights to important features. Unlike traditional statistical methods, this model transitions from traditional heuristic approaches to data-driven quantitative forecasting, offering insights into migration intensity while accounting for meteorological fluctuations influenced by climate change. Ablation experiments showed that removing the attention mechanism, CNN module, and both components reduced the average prediction accuracy by 3.93%, 8.47%, and 10.96%, respectively. These results demonstrate that bird migration predominantly occurs at night and is significantly influenced by radiation levels and wind conditions. This research incorporates meteorological variability into predictive modeling to develop data-driven strategies for enhancing aviation safety. Additionally, it addresses environmental challenges and promotes sustainable practices by optimizing flight schedules to reduce bird strikes, improve fuel efficiency, and minimize emissions. This approach also contributes to ecological conservation and supports sustainability goals. Full article

China has made significant progress in environmental protection. As the country advances towards modernizing its environmental governance, environmental sociology plays an increasingly crucial role. This study employs a bibliometric analysis of 3867 publications from the Web of Science Core Collection (1972–2023) and CNKI (1990–2023) to reveal the disparities between Chinese and international environmental sociology research, with a particular focus on assessing the contributions of environmental sociology to environmental governance in China. The findings reveal several key insights. The results show a steady increase in global research output, with the United States (42.79%) and the United Kingdom (11.15%) leading in publication volume. While international research has expanded interdisciplinary collaboration, Chinese studies remain highly concentrated. The findings also reveal a growing tension between internationalization and localization in Chinese environmental sociology. Since 2017, publications in international journals have surged, while domestic publications have declined, reflecting scholars’ prioritization of global recognition over local policy engagement. However, language barriers and limited interdisciplinary integration—with over 80% of scholars rooted in philosophy and sociology—restrict the discipline’s ability to address complex governance challenges. Institutional influence remains imbalanced. Renmin University, Hohai University, and the Ocean University of China contribute 42.72% of domestic publications, yet no Chinese institution ranks among the global top 10, and citation impact lags behind leading Western institutions. This contrasts with international research, which tends to focus on global environmental issues, whereas Chinese research emphasizes localized case studies. Our analysis identifies a notable gap in Chinese research’s understanding and study of environmental governance experiences. It is recommended to strengthen the role of environmental sociology throughout the governance process from public opinion collection to policy formulation, policy implementation, dynamic feedback, and post-implementation evaluation. Full article

The consumption of hydrogen could increase by sixfold in 2050 compared to 2020 levels, reaching about 530 Mt. Against this backdrop, the proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) has been a major research area in the field of energy engineering. Several reviews have been provided in the existing corpus of literature on PEMFC, but questions related to their evolutionary nuances and research hotspots remain largely unanswered. To fill this gap, the current review uses bibliometric analysis to analyze PEMFC articles indexed in the Scopus database that were published between 2000–2021. It has been revealed that the research field is growing at an annual average growth rate of 19.35%, with publications from 2016 to 2012 alone making up 46% of the total articles available since 2000. As the two most energy-consuming economies in the world, the contributions made towards the progress of PEMFC research have largely been from China and the US. From the research trend found in this investigation, it is clear that the focus of the researchers in the field has largely been to improve the performance and efficiency of PEMFC and its components, which is evident from dominating keywords or phrases such as ‘oxygen reduction reaction’, ‘electrocatalysis’, ‘proton exchange membrane’, ‘gas diffusion layer’, ‘water management’, ‘polybenzimidazole’, ‘durability’, and ‘bipolar plate’. We anticipate that the provision of the research themes that have emerged in the PEMFC field in the last two decades from the scientific mapping technique will guide existing and prospective researchers in the field going forward. Full article

India is endowed with a lot of solar radiation as a result of its location. The Indian government therefore intends to maximize the usage of its solar energy resources through the development of solar power plants across the country. The concentrated solar power plant (CSP) is one of the technologies that rely on solar energy for its electricity generation. The type of condenser model in the CSP technology has the potential to affect its techno-economic viability. In this paper, a 100 MW solar tower power plant (STPP) with two different condenser models, i.e., the dry-cooled STPP and wet-cooled STPP models, are studied using the System Advisor Model (SAM) at six different geographical areas in India. The study employed the optimization of the thermal energy storage and the solar field size to identify the minimum levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for all six locations. Results from the simulation show that the LCOE will range between 13 and 17 cents/kWh under the optimization conditions for the STPP dry-cooled condenser model, while that of the wet-cooled condenser model will range between 12.40 and 12.96 USD cents/kWh for the study locations. It was also observed that the optimized solar multiple (SM) for the dry-cooled STPP model ranges between 1.4 and 1.8, whereas that of the wet-cooled model ranges between 1 and 1.8. The study identified Bhopal as the best location for installing the STPP plant for both condenser models. In addition, this paper also discusses major potential barriers and government policies that are needed to develop CSP technologies in India. The outcome of the study is expected to help both government and other stakeholders in decision making and policy formulation for the sector. Full article

Energy recovery from waste presents a promising alternative for several countries, including Ghana, which has struggled with unsustainable waste treatment methods and an inadequate power supply for several decades. The current study adopts a comprehensive multi-criteria decision-making approach for the selection of an optimal waste-to-energy (WtE) technology for implementation in Ghana. Four WtE technologies are evaluated against twelve selection criteria. An integrated AHP-fuzzy TOPSIS method is applied to estimate the criteria’s weights and rank the WtE alternatives. From the AHP results, technical criteria obtained the highest priority weight, while social criteria emerged as the least important in the selection process. The overall ranking order of WtE technologies obtained by fuzzy TOPSIS is as follows: anaerobic digestion > gasification > pyrolysis > plasma gasification. The sensitivity analysis indicates highly consistent and sturdy results regarding the optimal selection. This study recommends adopting a hybrid system of anaerobic digestion and gasification technologies, as this offers a well-balanced system under all of the evaluation criteria compared to the standalone systems. The results of the current study may help the government of Ghana and other prospective investors select a suitable WtE technology, and could serve as an index system for future WtE research in Ghana. Full article

The first part of the current review highlights the evolutionary nuances and research hotspots in the field of nanoparticles in low carbon fuels. Our findings reveal that contribution to the field is largely driven by researchers from Asia, mainly India. Of the three biofuels under review, biodiesel seems to be well studied and developed, whereas studies regarding vegetable oils and alcohols remain relatively scarce. The second part also reviews the application of nanoparticles in biodiesel/vegetable oil/alcohol-based fuels holistically, emphasizing fuel properties and engine characteristics. The current review reveals that the overall characteristics of the low carbon fuel–diesel blends improve under the influence of nanoparticles during combustion in diesel engines. The most important aspect of nanoparticles is that they act as an oxygen buffer that provides additional oxygen molecules in the combustion chamber, promoting complete combustion and lowering unburnt emissions. Moreover, the nanoparticles used for these purposes exhibit excellent catalytic behaviour as a result of their high surface area-to-volume ratio—this leads to a reduction in exhaust pollutants and ensures an efficient and complete combustion. Beyond energy-based indicators, the exergy, economic, environmental, and sustainability aspects of the blends in diesel engines are discussed. It is observed that the performance of the diesel engine fuelled with low carbon fuels according to the second law of efficiency improves under the influence of the nano-additives. Our final part shows that despite the benefits of nanoparticles, humans and animals are under serious threats from the highly toxic nature of nanoparticles. Full article