BACKGROUND One challenge in assessing the health effects of human exposure to air pollution in epidemiologic studies is the lack of widespread historical air pollutant monitoring data with which to characterize past exposure levels. OBJECTIVES Given the availability of long-term economic data, we relate economic activity levels to patterns in vehicle-related particulate matter (PM) over a 30-...

Capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere ("air capture") in an industrial process has been proposed as an option for stabilizing global CO(2) concentrations. Published analyses suggest these air capture systems may cost a few hundred dollars per tonne of CO(2), making it cost competitive with mainstream CO(2) mitigation options like renewable energy, nuclear power, and carbon dioxide captur...

1. Human sex ratio at birth at the population level has been suggested to vary according to exogenous stressors such as wars, ambient temperature, ecological disasters and economic crises, but their relative effects on birth sex ratio have not been investigated. It also remains unclear whether such associations represent environmental forcing or adaptive parental response, as parents may produc...

One of the most important methods of transporting natural gas in Iran and other parts of the world is the utilization of a network of pipelines. Compression station and turbo compressor units play an important role in gas supply through pipelines. One of the primary concerns in these units is the reduction of fuel consumption. By cooling of exhaust gas from the source station, the pressure ...

This paper develops a novel power harvesting system to harvest ambient RF energy to power a wireless sensor. Harvesting ambient RF energy is a very difficult task as the power levels are extremely weak. Simulation results show zero threshold MOSFETs are essential in the RF to DC conversion process. 0.5VDC at the output of the RF to DC conversion stage is the minimum voltage which must be achiev...

Despite the advances made in various new technologies, application of these technologies for agriculture still remains a formidable task, as it involves integration of diverse domains for monitoring the different process involved in agricultural management. Advances in ambient intelligence technology represents one of the most powerful technology for increasing the yield of agricultural crops a...