Search Results (12)

Forests provide a variety of ecosystem services (ESs) that contribute to a society’s wellbeing. ES provision depends on the structure and evolution of forest ecosystems and is influenced by forest management. Society’s increasing need for ESs requires these complex ecological dynamics to be understood and integrated in forest management and planning. We present the decision support system (DSS) Multisilva for multifunctional forest management. The Multisilva DSS is a web-based application that comprises two tools: the Mapping tool and the Simulation tool. The first tool provides spatial statistics and maps of the current provision of ESs at the forest property level. The Simulation tool compares two alternative, user-defined management scenarios over time and returns the biophysical estimations of ESs and the economic costs for each alternative. Multisilva is calibrated for Luxembourg, though it can be adapted for other temperate forest regions. Full article

The need for sleep is universal, and the ability to meet this need impacts the quality of life for patients, families, and caregivers. Although substantial progress has been made in treating rare diseases, many patients have unmet medical sleep needs, and current regulatory policy makes it prohibitively difficult to address those needs medically. This opinion reviews the rare disease experience with sleep disorders and explores potential solutions. First, we provide case profiles for the rare diseases Wilson’s Disease, Angelman Syndrome, and Prader–Willi Syndrome. These profiles highlight challenges in rare disease diagnosis and barriers to pinpointing disease pathophysiology, including biomarkers that intersect with sleep disorders. Second, we transition to a bird’s eye view of sleep disorders and rare diseases by reporting input from a stakeholder discussion with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regarding abnormal sleep patterns in various rare diseases. Last, in response to the profound unmet medical needs of patients with rare diseases and sleep disorders, we propose adapting and using the clinical trial design known as a “basket trial”. In this case, a basket trial would include patients with different rare diseases but the same debilitating symptoms. This research approach has the potential to benefit many rare disease patients who are otherwise left with profound unmet medical needs. Full article

This paper discusses the renewal of the conception of film sound and music following the technological advances of the late 1970s. It analyses the ways in which film sound and music freed themselves from traditional uses and became elements to be designed creatively. The soundtrack composed by Vangelis for Blade Runner (1982) is exceptional in this regard: produced in parallel to the editing of the film, it forged an intimate connection between sound and image. Through the method of reduced listening put forward by Michel Chion in Audio-Vision (2019), this paper scrutinizes the specific ways in which sound shapes the perception of the image and narrative in Blade Runner. The first part of this paper analyses how sounds come to replace music to characterize moods and atmospheres. Ambient sounds create a concrete, sonically dense diegetic world, while music is associated with an abstract, extra-diegetic world where spectators are designated judges. This contrast is thematically relevant and delineates the struggle between humans and replicants; sound and music are used for their metaphorical implications rather than in an effort for realism. The second part discusses the agency of characters through the sonorousness of their voices and bodies. Intonations, pronunciation, and acousmatic sounds anchor characters’ natures as humans or replicants to their bodies. Yet, these bodies are revealed to be mere vessels awaiting definition; in the third part, we explore how sound is used to craft synaesthetic depictions of characters, revealing their existence beyond the human/replicant divide. Full article

Monitoring the ingestion of microplastics (MPs) by marine organisms in the environment is essential for understanding the threats posed by these pollutants. In this study, we assessed, for the first time, the presence of MPs in the digestive tracts of two fish species, Chelon auratus and Sardina pilchardus, as well as a bivalve species, Callista chione, in the Moroccan Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, we calculated the polymeric hazard index (PHI) to verify the hazard level of isolated polymers. The results showed that all species ingested MPs, indicating a high level of MP pollution in this area. The MPs ingested were predominantly small (0.5–1 mm) and had a fiber-like shape. The results showed that PP and PET were the most abundant polymers ingested. The highest occurrence of MPs (100%) was found in C. chione and C. auratus, followed by S. pilchardus (72%). In C. chione, the average number of ingested MPs was 19.19 items per individual, while in C. auratus, the mean abundance of ingested MPs was 16.82 items per individual, and 9.64 items per individual in S. pilchardus. Moreover, the polymer hazard index showed that PET was in hazard level IV, while PP was in level III. Further studies are required in the Moroccan Mediterranean Sea to obtain a better evaluation of the occurrence, distribution, and impacts associated with MP pollution. Full article

This article explores an age-old form of dialogical learning, havruta, which has been employed by Jews throughout the centuries to study the Torah and the Talmud, and evaluates the experiment of extending havruta from a couple of fellow students (haverim) to an international, multi-religious group reading philosophical texts together, and transferring the learning process from the Jewish house of study (in Hebrew: beit ha-Midrash, in German: Lehrhaus) to an online environment. Methodologically, the experiences from the online havruta are brought into a theory-practice feedback loop and are discussed from various theoretical angles: (1) The first section introduces how havruta was conducted traditionally and how Franz Rosenzweig, who in 1920 founded the Frankfurt Lehrhaus and invited Martin Buber to offer lecture courses, advanced havruta. (2) The second section explains how Rosenzweig’s pedagogical principles as distilled from his writings on education are applied and modified in the above-mentioned contemporary online reading group. (3) The third section draws on Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, Juhani Pallasmaa’s architectural theory and Michel Chion’s film theory in order to investigate the epistemological and pedagogical significance of different modes of listening, asking, and responding, and the role of trust for dialogical learning in local and online learning communities. Full article

Anthropogenic noise from navigation is a major contributor to the disturbance of the acoustic soundscape in underwater environments containing noise-sensitive life forms. While previous studies mostly developed protocols for the empirical determination of noise source levels associated with the world’s commercial fleet, this work explores the radiated noise emitted by small recreational vessels that thrive in many coastal waters, such as in the St. Lawrence Estuary beluga population’s summer habitat. Hydrophone-based measurements in the Saguenay River (QC, Canada) were carried out during the summers of 2021 and 2022. Shore-based observations identified 45 isolated transits of small, motorized vessels and were able to track their displacement during their passage near the hydrophone. Received noise levels at the hydrophone typically fell below the hearing audiogram of the endangered St. Lawrence Estuary beluga. Monopole source levels at low frequencies (0.1–≲2 kHz) held on average twice the acoustic power compared to their mid-frequency (≳2–30 kHz) counterparts. The speed over ground of recreational vessel showed a positive correlation with the back-propagated monopole source levels. Estimations of the mid-frequency noise levels based on low-frequency measurements should be used moderately. Full article

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are becoming popular in urban planning and policy making as cost-effective solutions capable of delivering multiple ecosystem services and addressing several societal challenges. So far, however, the cost-effectiveness of urban NBS projects has not been consistently quantified by built environment professionals, who lack user-friendly tools to account for the environmental costs and benefits of NBS. This paper presents a prototype online decision support tool (NBenefit$^®) that calculates the negative and positive environmental impacts, externalities, and financial values of planned urban forests over their entire life cycle. NBenefit$ relies on a modelling framework that combines system dynamics, urban ecology, and life cycle thinking approaches, and it is presented as a visual web-based interface. An online map and a grid of cells is used to map the site of intervention, to delineate the size of the urban forest, and to define variations in abiotic, biotic, and management attributes in each site. Outputs are provided by year, for the entire site and NBS life cycle. The potential value of NBenefit$ as a supporting tool was exemplified with the calculation of 48 urban forest archetypes, a few of which were used to set scenarios for a hypothetical urban forest in Madrid (Spain). The results showcase the impact that decisions taken during the planning, design, or management of an NBS project may have on its long-term performance. Future works will expand the scope of NBenefit$, including other types of urban NBS. Full article

Agent-based models return spatiotemporal information used to process time series of specific parameters for specific individuals called “agents”. For complex, advanced and detailed models, this typically comes at the expense of high computing times and requires access to important computing resources. This paper provides an example on how machine learning and artificial intelligence can help predict an agent-based model’s output values at regular intervals without having to rely on time-consuming numerical calculations. Gradient-boosting XGBoost under GNU package’s R was used in the social-ecological agent-based model 3MTSim to interpolate, in the time domain, sound pressure levels received at the agents’ positions that were occupied by the endangered St. Lawrence Estuary and Saguenay Fjord belugas and caused by anthropomorphic noise of nearby transiting merchant vessels. A mean error of 3.23 ± 3.76(1$\sigma$) dB on received sound pressure levels was predicted when compared to ground truth values that were processed using rigorous, although time-consuming, numerical algorithms. The computing time gain was significant, i.e., it was estimated to be 10-fold higher than the ground truth simulation, whilst maintaining the original temporal resolution. Full article

A key aspect of ocean protection consists in estimating the abundance of marine mammal population density within their habitat, which is usually accomplished using visual inspection and cameras from line-transect ships, small boats, and aircraft. However, marine mammal observation through vessel surveys requires significant workforce resources, including for the post-processing of pictures, and is further challenged due to animal bodies being partially hidden underwater, small-scale object size, occlusion among objects, and distracter objects (e.g., waves, sun glare, etc.). To relieve the human expert’s workload while improving the observation accuracy, we propose a novel system for automating the detection of beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) in the wild from pictures. Our system relies on a dataset named Beluga-5k, containing more than 5.5 thousand pictures of belugas. First, to improve the dataset’s annotation, we have designed a semi-manual strategy for annotating candidates in images with single (i.e., one beluga) and multiple (i.e., two or more belugas) candidate subjects efficiently. Second, we have studied the performance of three off-the-shelf object-detection algorithms, namely, Mask-RCNN, SSD, and YOLO v3-Tiny, on the Beluga-5k dataset. Afterward, we have set YOLO v3-Tiny as the detector, integrating single- and multiple-individual images into the model training. Our fine-tuned CNN-backbone detector trained with semi-manual annotations is able to detect belugas despite the presence of distracter objects with high accuracy (i.e., 97.05 mAP@0.5). Finally, our proposed method is able to detect overlapped/occluded multiple individuals in images (beluga whales that swim in groups). For instance, it is able to detect 688 out of 706 belugas encountered in 200 multiple images, achieving 98.29% precision and 99.14% recall. Full article

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2010 the transport sector was responsible for 23% of the total energy-related CO₂ emissions (6.7 GtCO₂) worldwide. Policy makers in Luxembourg are well-aware of the challenges and are setting ambitious objectives at country level for the mid and long term. However, a framework to assess environmental impacts from a life cycle perspective on the scale of transport policy scenarios, rather than individual vehicles, is lacking. We present a novel framework linking activity-based modeling with life cycle assessment (LCA) and a proof-of-concept case study for the French cross-border commuters working in Luxembourg. Our framework allows for the evaluation of specific policies formulated on the trip level as well as aggregated evaluation of environmental impacts from a life cycle perspective. The results of our proof-of-concept-based case study suggest that only a combination of: (1) policy measures improving the speed and coverage of the public transport system; (2) policy measures fostering electric mobility; and (3) external factors such as de-carbonizing the electricity mix will allow to counteract the expected increase in impacts due to the increase of mobility needs of the growing commuting population in the long term. Full article

The bicentenary of the 1817 Pentrich Revolution provided an opportunity for the composition of a series of soundwalks that, in turn, offer themselves up as a case study in an exposition of spatial bricolage, from the perspective of an interdisciplinary artist working with the medium of locative sound. Informed by Doreen Massey’s definition of space as ‘a simultaneity of stories so far’, the author’s approach involves extracting sounds from the contemporary soundscape and re-introducing them in the form of multi-layered compositions. This article conducts an analysis of the author’s soundwalking practice according to Max van Manen’s formulation of four essential categories of experience through which to consider our ‘lived world’: spatiality, temporality, corporeality, and relationality. Drawing upon theorists whose concerns include cinematic, mobile and environmental sound, such as Chion, Chambers and Schafer, the author proposes the soundwalk as as an expanded form of cinema, with the flexibility to provoke states of immersion was well as critical detachment. A case is made for the application of the medium within the artistic investigation into ecological and socio-political issues alongside aesthetic concerns. Full article