Search Results (617)

Hyperspectral image (HSI) denoising is a crucial step in image preprocessing as its effectiveness has a direct impact on the accuracy of subsequent tasks such as land cover classification, target recognition, and change detection. However, existing methods suffer from limitations in effectively integrating multi-scale features and adaptively modeling complex noise distributions, making it difficult to construct effective spatial–spectral joint representations. This often leads to issues like detail loss and spectral distortion, especially when dealing with complex mixed noise. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a multi-scale differentiated denoising network based on spatial–spectral cooperative attention (MDSSANet). The network first constructs a multi-scale image pyramid using three downsampling operations and independently models the features at each scale to better capture noise characteristics at different levels. Additionally, a spatial–spectral cooperative attention module (SSCA) and a differentiated multi-scale feature fusion module (DMF) are introduced. The SSCA module effectively captures cross-spectral dependencies and spatial feature interactions through parallel spectral channel and spatial attention mechanisms. The DMF module adopts a multi-branch parallel structure with differentiated processing to dynamically fuse multi-scale spatial–spectral features and incorporates a cross-scale feature compensation strategy to improve feature representation and mitigate information loss. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art methods across several public datasets, exhibiting greater robustness and superior visual performance in tasks such as handling complex noise and recovering small targets. Full article

The present paper deals with an inhabited, creeping mountainous landmass with profound surface deformation that affects the local community. The scope of the paper is to gather surficial and subsurface information in order to understand the parameters of this creeping mass, which is usually affected by several parameters, such as its geometry, subsurface water, and shear zone. Therefore, a combined aerial and surface investigation has been conducted. The aerial investigation involves UAV’s LiDAR acquisition for the terrain model and a comparison of historical aerial photographs for land use changes. The multi-technique surface investigation included resistivity (ERT) and seismic (SRT, MASW) measurements and density determination of geological formations. This combination of methods proved to be fruitful since several aspects of the landslide were clarified, such as water flow paths, the internal geological structure of the creeping mass, and its geometrical extent. The depth of the shear zone of the creeping mass is delineated at the first five to ten meters from the surface, especially from the difference in diachronic resistivity change. Full article

How to promote sustainable development and deal with the actual development demands in economic transformation through land-use planning is crucial for local governments. The urban sustainable development mainly relies on creativity and talents in the digital era, and talents are increasingly attracted by local people-oriented land use. However, the current planning ideology remains at meeting corporate and people’s basic needs rather than specific needs of talents, especially the increasingly emerging digital creatives. To promote the talent agglomeration and sustainable development through land planning, this paper uses micro-celebrities on Bilibili, an influential creative content creation platform among young people in China, as an example to study the geographical distribution of digital creative talents and its relationship with urban amenities by constructing an index system of urban amenities, comprising natural, leisure, infrastructure, and social and institutional amenities. The concept of borrowed amenities is introduced to examine the effects of amenities of surrounding cities. This study demonstrates that micro-celebrities show a stronger preference for amenities compared with other skilled talents. Meanwhile, social and institutional amenities are most crucial. Furthermore, urban leisure represented by green spaces and consumption spaces is also attractive. At the regional scale, with prefecture-level cities as units, the local talents agglomeration is also influenced by the borrowed amenities in the context of regional integration. It indicates that the local land use should consider the characteristics of the surrounding cities. This study provides strategic inspiration that a happy and sustainable city should first be people-oriented and provide sufficient space for consumption, entertainment, and interaction. Full article

This article focuses on the story of a pirogue shipwreck that occurred in early September 2024, less than two miles from the coast of Mbour, about 90 km south of Dakar. It traces an ethnographic account of that tragic event through the lenses of different voices, standpoints, and testimonies from the survivors, the relatives and friends of the victims, and those involved in the organization of both the aborted ocean crossing and the rescue operations in various ways. By situating this extreme story of “potential migrants” among other accounts of migrants who disappeared at sea and of missing pirogues, the focus shifts to the different weights and possibilities of movement when dealing with disappearance and death, the unknown and known facts, addressing that which remains unknown even within this unambiguous and tragic event. Faced with the dense plot of ties at the core of that failed escape, we suggest that the reasons for the shipwreck are excess demand and solidarity, in terms of the impossibility of denying passage onboard the boat to friends, relatives, and neighbors. “On est ensemble” is therefore a way to recognize that there is no clear distinction or distance between captain and passengers, survivors and the dead, or victims and spectators, since in Mbour, everyone perfectly understands both the reasons and the risks, and the reason for the risks, of any illegal attempt to cross sea and land borders towards Europe. Full article

Global changes and society’s development necessitate the improvement of water use and irrigation water saving, which require a set of water management measures to best deal with the necessary changes. This study considers the framework of the change process for water management in the Hetao Irrigation District (HID) of the Yellow River Basin. This paper presents the main measures that have been applied to ensure the sustainability and modernization of Hetao, mitigating water scarcity while maintaining land productivity and environmental value. Several components of modernization projects that have already been implemented are characterized, such as the off-farm canal distribution system, the on-farm surface irrigation, innovative crop and soil management techniques, drainage, and salinity control, including the management of autumn irrigation and advances of drip irrigation at the sector and farm levels. This characterization includes technologies, farmer training, labor needs, energy consumption, water savings, and economic aspects, based on data observed and reported in official reports. Therefore, this study integrates knowledge and analyzes the most limiting aspects in some case studies, evaluating the effectiveness of the solutions used. Full article

Reliable remote sensing-based Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) information is crucial for assessing Earth’s surface activities. Brazil’s agricultural dynamics, including year-round cropping, multiple cropping, and regional climate variability, make LULC monitoring a highly challenging task. The country has thirteen remote sensing-based LULC products specifically tailored for this purpose. However, the differences and the results of these products have not yet been synthesized to provide coherent guidance in assessing their spatio-temporal agricultural dynamics and identifying promising approaches and issues that affect LULC analysis. This review represents the first comprehensive assessment of the advantages, challenges, and limitations, highlighting the main issues when dealing with contrasting LULC maps. These challenges include incompatibility, a lack of updates, non-systematic classification ontologies, and insufficient data to monitor Brazilian LULC information. The consequences include impacts on intercropping estimation, diminished representation or misrepresentation of croplands; temporal discontinuity; an insufficient number of classes for subannual cropping evaluation; and reduced compatibility, comparability, and spectral separability. The study provides insights into the use of these products as primary input data for remote sensing-based applications. Moreover, it provides prospects for enhancing existing mapping efforts or developing new national-level initiatives to represent the spatio-temporal variation of Brazilian agriculture. Full article

The North American Great Lakes offer a dynamic case study of inundated cultural landscapes. These bodies of water and the life around them have never been static. While submerged lands offer avenues for archaeological research, it is essential to first understand that these cultural landscapes have also been flooded with invasive power dynamics through settler colonialism. For example, the land and water systems in Anishinaabe Akiing (the northern Great Lakes) have fundamentally shifted from flourishing life systems to poisoned areas and now struggle to deal with invasive species. When seeking to learn from or otherwise engage Indigenous knowledge, it is essential to work from a perspective that takes all these changes into consideration. There are Indigenous communities who are interested in these inundated landscapes, and in this research, but a pause, naandamo, is needed to ethically consider the ongoing process of settler colonialism and Indigenous perspectives. Here we address ethical considerations for researchers participating in, or interested in participating in, submerged site research. By incorporating settler colonialism as a methodology of understanding, we will provide an ethical starting place for working with Indigenous communities and inundated landscapes. Full article

This paper analyzes “Umbrella Agreements,” a policy tool implemented by the Israeli government across 32 municipalities over the past decade. Introduced in response to a deepening housing crisis, these agreements offered funding for local infrastructure in exchange for municipal consent to large-scale residential development on (mostly) state- managed land. We argue that umbrella agreements rescale the neoliberal mechanism of “planning deals” from the urban to the state (national) scale, expanding their logic to new contexts, and fundamentally transforming the Israeli planning regime. While prevailing theories of neoliberalism emphasize decentralization and privatization through “free market” mechanisms, the Israeli process is characterized by strong state control over land and a concentration of planning powers at the national level as a pre-condition for private housing development. Our analysis yields three main findings. First, upscaling planning deals erodes the state’s regulatory powers while increasing its interest as a direct beneficiary of the capitalist order. Second, these agreements subject market logic to greater political control. Third, this transformation has seriously undermined the democratic and professional characters of the planning system, leading to regressive social consequences. Full article

The electric vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing (FW-VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) combines the advantages of fixed-wing aircraft and multi-rotor aircraft. Based on the cell discharge characteristics and the power system features, this paper proposes a preliminary design and optimization method suitable for electric FW-VTOL UAVs. The purpose of this method is to improve the design accuracy of electric propulsion systems and overall parameters when dealing with the special power and energy requirements of this type of aircraft. The core of this method involves testing the performance data of the cell inside the battery pack, using small-capacity cells as the basic unit for battery sizing, thereby constructing a power battery performance model. Additionally, it establishes optimization design models for propellers and rotors and develops a brushless DC motor performance model based on a first-order motor model and statistical data, ultimately achieving optimized matching of the propulsion system and completing the preliminary design of the entire aircraft. Using a battery discharge model established based on real cell parameters and test data, the impact of the discharge process on battery performance is evaluated at the cell level, reducing the subjectivity of battery performance evaluation compared to the constant power/energy density method used in traditional battery sizing processes. Furthermore, matching the optimization design of power and propulsion systems effectively improves the accuracy of the preliminary design for FW-VTOL UAVs. A design case of a 30 kg electric FW-VTOL UAV is conducted, along with the completion of flight tests. The design parameters obtained using the proposed method show minimal discrepancies with the actual data from the actual aircraft, confirming the effectiveness of the proposed method. Full article

In a world that grew increasingly more foreign, the Marduk priests of Hellenistic Babylon endeavored to maintain their ancient traditions and beliefs. Central to their worldview was the idea that the gods decided the fates of the land and that to ensure their benevolence, temple worship was not only necessary but the primary raison d’être of the priests themselves. However, foreign rule posed significant challenges to the traditional Babylonian temple cult. In this paper, we argue that in response, the Babylonian priests developed new discursive paradigms that sought to influence their future by reinterpreting their past in light of their present. On the one hand, this took the form of traditional models of cuneiform literacy and was developed in texts dealing with history and ritual (Late Babylonian Priestly Literature). On the other hand, the priesthood advanced a new intellectual model that expanded beyond the scope of traditional knowledge and took the form of a mathematical-astronomical paradigm. While there is an apparent tension between both paradigms, we posit that their overarching objectives remained the same: understanding the divinely determined future through the past (and present) and influencing it by ritual action directed towards the divine. Studying this Babylonian model is valuable for understanding parallel epistemological and discursive processes taking place in other ancient Near Eastern temple communities that faced similar challenges under foreign imperial rule. Full article

The preservation of historic irrigation infrastructure is vital for sustainable water management, especially in regions grappling with rural depopulation, land degradation, and wildfire risk. This study presents a rehabilitation framework for the Acequia del Diablo (Teruel, Spain), a centuries-old gravity-fed canal that supported 60 hectares of agriculture and contributed to ecological connectivity. Its deterioration—following landslides in 1992 and water source loss in 2020—has led to land abandonment, biodiversity decline, and increased wildfire vulnerability. The proposed solution, centered on restoring the original intake at the Azud de Fonseca and stabilizing damaged sections, reestablishes water autonomy and integrates heritage conservation into water governance. A multi-criteria analysis identified this gravity-based alternative as the most technically, economically, and environmentally viable. Drawing from precedents in the literature, the conservation and rehabilitation of historical irrigation systems play a crucial role in sustainable water management in rural areas; this initiative offers a replicable model for other Mediterranean and semi-arid areas. However, challenges include engineering complexity in unstable terrain, administrative delays, and long-term maintenance. Despite these, this intervention enhances rural resilience, wildfire prevention, and biodiversity, while aligning with circular economy principles and European Green Deal objectives. Full article

Remote sensing technology plays a crucial role across various sectors, such as meteorological monitoring, city planning, and natural resource exploration. A critical aspect of remote sensing image analysis is land target detection, which involves identifying and classifying land-based objects within satellite or aerial imagery. However, despite advancements in both traditional detection methods and deep-learning-based approaches, detecting land targets remains challenging, especially when dealing with small and rotated objects that are difficult to distinguish. To address these challenges, this study introduces an enhanced model, YOLOv5s-CACSD, which builds upon the YOLOv5s framework. Our model integrates the channel attention (CA) mechanism, CARAFE, and Shape-IoU to improve detection accuracy while employing depthwise separable convolution to reduce model complexity. The proposed architecture was evaluated systematically on the DOTAv1.0 dataset, and our results show that YOLOv5s-CACSD achieved a 91.0% mAP@0.5, marking a 2% improvement over the original YOLOv5s. Additionally, it reduced model parameters and computational complexity by 0.9 M and 2.9 GFLOPs, respectively. These results demonstrate the enhanced detection performance and efficiency of the YOLOv5s-CACSD model, making it suitable for practical applications in land target detection for remote sensing imagery. Full article

Pulmonary disfunction is frequent in repaired congenital heart diseases. Both pulmonary regurgitation and pulmonary stenosis are possible complications over time. In the past, the surgical approach was the only feasible management but exposed the patient to a redo-surgery with its consequent risks. Nowadays, the development of novel devices and techniques has made possible a transcatheter pulmonary valve implantation. The Melody Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve (TPV) (Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis, MN, USA) and the Edwards Sapien XT and S3 Transcatheter Heart Valve (Edwards Lifesciences LLC, Irvine, CA, USA) are balloon-expandable valvular bioprostheses approved for pulmonary position. Venus P-Valve (Venus Medtech, Shanghai, China) and Harmony TPV (Medtronic Inc., Minneapolis, MN, USA) are self-expandable pulmonary valves. Alterra Adaptive Prestent (Edwards Lifesciences LLC, Irvine, CA, USA) is an hourglass self-expandable stent that reduces the size of large right ventricular outflow tracts, creating a suitable landing zone to implant an Edwards Sapien S3 THV 29 mm. Novel stents and percutaneous valves are being planned and experimented with to widen the field of transcatheter approach. The aim of this review is to describe both the current approaches, strategies, and techniques as well as the future perspective to deal with the patients with significant pulmonary stenosis and/or regurgitation. Full article

Remote sensing image change detection is a core task of remote sensing image analysis; its purpose is to identify and quantify land cover changes in different periods. However, when the existing methods deal with complex features and subtle changes in buildings, vegetation, water bodies, roads, and other ground objects, there are often problems of false detection and missing detection, which affect the detection accuracy. To improve the accuracy of change detection, a multi-scale feature fusion network based on difference enhancement (FEDNet) is proposed. The FEDNet consists of a difference enhancement module (DEM) and a multi-scale feature fusion module (MFM). By summing the variation features of two-phase remote sensing images, the DEM enhances pixel-level differences, captures subtle changes, and aggregates features. The MFM fully integrates the multi-stage deep semantic information, which enables better extraction of changing features in complex scenes. Experiments on the LEVIR-CD, CLCD, WHU, NJDS, and GBCNR datasets show that the FEDNet significantly improves the detection efficiency of changes in buildings, cities, and vegetation. In terms of F1 value, IoU (Intersection over Union), precision, and recall rate, the FEDNet is superior to existing methods, which verifies its excellent performance. Full article

Accurate forest monitoring is critical for achieving the objectives of the European Green Deal. While national forest inventories provide consistent information on the state of forests, their temporal frequency is inadequate for monitoring fast-growing species with 15-year rotations when inventories are conducted every 10 years. However, Earth observation (EO) satellite systems can be used to address this challenge. Remote sensing satellites enable the continuous acquisition of land cover data with high temporal frequency (annually or shorter), at a spatial resolution of 10-30 m per pixel. This study focused on northern Spain, a highly productive forest region. This study aimed to improve models for predicting forest variables in forest plantations in northern Spain by integrating optical (Sentinel-2) and imaging radar (Sentinel-1, ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 and TanDEM-X) datasets supported by climatic and terrain variables. Five popular machine learning algorithms were compared, namely kNN, LightGBM, Random Forest, MLR, and XGBoost. The study findings show an improvement in R² from 0.24 when only Sentinel-2 data are used with MultiLinear Regression to 0.49 when XGboost is used with multi-source EO data. It can be concluded that the combination of multi-source datasets, regardless of the model used, significantly enhances model performance, with TanDEM-X data standing out for their remarkable ability to provide valuable radar information on forest height and volume, particularly in a complex terrain such as northern Spain. Full article