Information about the availability of solar radiation on horizontal surface is essential for the optimum design and study of solar energy systems. For a country like UAE, the efficient application of solar energy seems inevitable because of abundant sunshine available throughout the year. The traditional way of knowing the amount of global solar radiation (GSR) in a particular region is to inst...

The introduction states, that the study focuses inter alia on small-scale spatial characteristics that have been derived from data at two sites with small spatial distance (Potsdam and Lindenberg). From my point of view interesting is the finding of increased differences in daily sunshine duration on short distances compared e.g. to global irradiation. It will restrict significance in spatial d...

Environmental factors that affect spatiotemporal distribution patterns of animals usually include resource availability, temperature, and the risk of predation. However, they do not explain the counterintuitive preference of high elevation range in winter by the black-and-white snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti). We asked whether variation of sunshine along with elevations is the key drivi...

In this paper, the support vector regression (SVR) methodology was adopted to estimate the horizontal global solar radiation (HGSR) based upon sunshine hours (n) and maximum possible sunshine hours (N) as input parameters. The capability of two SVRs of radial basis function (rbf) and polynomial basis function (poly) was investigated and compared with the conventional sunshine duration-based emp...

It is a common and well-spread belief that people feel more depressed when the weather is bad. However, whether meteorological factors such as temperature, sunshine and rainfall can actually account for variations in the prevalence of depression in the general population has yet to be investigated. We aimed to assess the influence of weather conditions on the seasonal variation of depression ob...