Urban expansion has significant effects on forest loss and fragmentation. Previous studies mostly focused on how the amount of developed land affected forest loss and fragmentation, but neglected the impacts of its spatial pattern. This paper examines the effects of both the amount and spatial pattern of urban expansion on forest loss and fragmentation. We conducted a comparison study in the si...

Rapid urban and industrial development in China in the last few decades has provoked some serious environmental concerns. As one of the regions with the fastest economic development in China, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is particularly susceptible to environmental degradation. Atmospheric emissions represent a major pathway of anthropogenic inputs of heavy metals into the surface environment. S...

Abstract Background A higher risk of cancer has been reported among patients with adult-onset immune-mediated inflammatory disease (IMID). However, data on in paediatric-onset IMIDs (pIMID) are scarce. In this nationwide study from 1980 to 2018, we investigated the Danish pIMID population compared controls background population. Methods PIMID was defined as registered National Patient Registrie...

The Pearl River Delta (PRD), located in the coastal area of South China, contains a large confined Quaternary aquifer. This aquifer has been identified to have high concentrations of total dissolved solids–ranging from 1 g/l in the inland area to 26.8 g/l near the southeast shoreline. This work aims to investigate the origin of groundwater salinity and the major hydrogeochemical processes contr...

Wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) have been potentially applicable for several emerging applications. However, the available resources, i.e., power and rate, of visual sensors in a WMSN are very limited. Hence, it is important but challenging to achieve efficient resource allocation and optimal video compression while maximizing the overall network lifetime. In this paper, a power-rat...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to analyze the state of activity and levels of complement in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients with various prion diseases (PrDs). FINDINGS The proteomic data emphasized the levels of 20 known complement components found in the CSF of the sCJD panel that were lower than those found in the non-PrD panel. 50 % of the complement hemolytic activity (CH...

Objective. To analyze a potential cumulative effect of life-time depression on dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD), with control of vascular factors (VFs). Methods. This study was a subanalysis of the Neurological Disorders in Central Spain (NEDICES) study. Past and present depression, VFs, dementia status, and dementia due to AD were documented at study inception. Dementia status was also do...

Storage and transmission limitations have made electrocardiogram (ECG) data compression an important aspect for ECG computerized systems. In this paper a lossless method based on modified American standard code for information Interchange (ASCII) character encoding for ECG data compression have been proposed. The Proposed method consists of compression algorithm comprising sign count; generatio...

This paper proposes a CDE-MPR methodology designed to forecast and analyze container throughput volumes. The proposed methodology includes: a container throughput module which considers both interactions among ports and other influence factors, a demand demand-oriented module which provides additional information and chance events effect had on the maritime industries. It is applied to forecast...