Teaching Science Content Area Literacy to 21st Century Learners

The use of new literacies within science classrooms needs to be balanced by teachers to both teach different forms of communication while assessing content area proficiency. Using new literacies such as Twitter and Facebook needs to be incorporated into science content area literacy studies in addition to continuing to use generally-accepted forms of scientific content area presentation which include scientific papers and textbooks. The research question this literature review seeks to answer is “What are some ways in which new forms of literacy are better suited to teach scientific content area literacy to 21st century learners?” The research question is addressed through a literature review that highlights methods currently being used to educate the next wave of learners in the world of science content area literacy. Both temporal discourse analysis (TDA) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) were used to determine the need to use new literacies to teach science content area literacy. Increased use of digital technologies and a change in science content area pedagogy were explored.

Human Fall Detection by FMCW Radar Based on Time-Varying Range-Doppler Features

The existing two-dimensional micro-Doppler features extraction ignores the correlation information between the spatial and temporal dimension features. For the range-Doppler map, the time dimension is introduced, and a frequency modulation continuous wave (FMCW) radar human fall detection algorithm based on time-varying range-Doppler features is proposed. Firstly, the range-Doppler sequence maps are generated from the echo signals of the continuous motion of the human body collected by the radar. Then the three-dimensional data cube composed of multiple frames of range-Doppler maps is input into the three-dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (3D CNN). The spatial and temporal features of time-varying range-Doppler are extracted by the convolution layer and pool layer at the same time. Finally, the extracted spatial and temporal features are input into the fully connected layer for classification. The experimental results show that the proposed fall detection algorithm has a detection accuracy of 95.66%.

The Reintegration of the Past as Self-Realisation: Zhao Tao in Jia Zhangke’s Films

This article examines the figure Zhao Tao in Jia Zhangke’s films in light of Carl Jung’s psychoanalytical theory. Zhao is a recurring aesthetic trope in Jia’s films, and the characters she plays often have an intimate relationship with the past. Nevertheless, this relationship has not been systematically investigated, especially its symbolism of the typical relationship between the past and the self in post-social China. To fill this research gap, the article will explore how Zhao’s characters discover, preserve, and adapt the past in I Wish I knew (2010), Mountains May Depart (2015), and Ash Is Purest White (2018). Through a Jungian lens, these three levels of engagement with the past will be demonstrated as corresponding with Jung’s psychoanalytical theory of self-realisation, which entails the confrontation with the shadow, the embodiment of the archetype, and individuation. Thus, by articulating a film-philosophy dialogue between Jia and Jung, this article will develop a philosophy of self-realisation based on the symbolism of Zhao. Through the reintegration of the past, the individuals can overcome the fragmentation of temporality and selfhood in the postmodern world and achieve self-realisation.

Libretto Thematology in Rossini's Operas and Its Formation by the Composer

The present study examines the way Gioachino Rossini’s librettos are selected and formed demonstrating the evolutionary trajectory of the composer during his operatic career. Rossini, a dominant figure in the early 19th century Italian opera, is demanding in his choice of librettos and has a preference for subjects inspired by European literature, of his time or earlier. He begins his operatic career with farsae and operas buffae, but he mainly continues with operas seriae, to end it with a grand opera that conforms to the spirit of romanticism as manifested in Paris of his time. His farsae, operas buffae and comic operas in general are representative of the trends of the time: in some the irrational and the exaggeration prevail, in others the upheavals, others are semi-serious and emotional with a happy ending and others are comedies with more realistic characters, but usually the styles are mixed and complement each other. The stories that refer to his modern era unfold mocking human characters, beliefs attitudes and their expressions in every day habits, satirizing current affairs, presenting innovative elements in dramatic intervention and dealing with a variety of social and national issues. Count Ory, his final comic work, consists of a complex witty urban comic opera entwined with romantic sensitivity. The themes he chooses for his operas seriae are characterized by tragic passion, take place in the era of the Trojan War, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and the Age of the Crusades and are set in Italy, England, Poland, Greece, Switzerland, Israel and Egypt. In his early works he sketches the characters remotely, objectively and with static, reflexive emotional expression and a happy ending. Then he continues with operas for the San Carlo Theater, which are characterized by experimentation and innovation to end up his Italian operatic career with the ostensibly backward but in fact tragic Semiramis followed in Paris by William Tell, his ultimate dramatic achievement. There are indirect references to burning issues of his era but the censorship of the time does not allow direct reference to topics that would upset the status quo. In addition, Rossini lives in a temporal period of peace after the Napoleonic Wars and by temperament he resists openly engaging in political strife. Furthermore, the need for survival necessitates the search for the more profitable contracts. In conclusion, Rossini, as a liberal personality, shapes his librettos without interruptions or setbacks, with ideas that come out after a lot of thought and a strong sense of purpose. He moves from the moral and aesthetic clarity of the classic tradition of his early works to a more elaborate and morally ambiguous romantic style in a moderate and hesitant way.

Predicting Shot Making in Basketball Learnt from Adversarial Multiagent Trajectories

In this paper, we predict the likelihood of a player making a shot in basketball from multiagent trajectories. To approach this problem, we present a convolutional neural network (CNN) approach where we initially represent the multiagent behavior as an image. To encode the adversarial nature of basketball, we use a multichannel image which we then feed into a CNN. Additionally, to capture the temporal aspect of the trajectories we use “fading.” We find that this approach is superior to a traditional FFN model. By using gradient ascent, we were able to discover what the CNN filters look for during training. Last, we find that a combined FFN+CNN is the best performing network with an error rate of 39%.

Dissecting Big Trajectory Data to Analyse Road Network Travel Efficiency

Digital innovation has played a crucial role in managing smart transportation. For this, big trajectory data collected from trav-eling vehicles, such as taxis through installed global positioning sys-tem (GPS)-enabled devices can be utilized. It offers an unprecedented opportunity to trace the movements of vehicles in fine spatiotemporal granularity. This paper aims to explore big trajectory data to measure the travel efficiency of road networks using the proposed statistical travel efficiency measure (STEM) across an entire city. Further, it identifies the cause of low travel efficiency by proposed least square approximation network-based causality exploration (LANCE). Finally, the resulting data analysis reveals the causes of low travel efficiency, along with the road segments that need to be optimized to improve the traffic conditions and thus minimize the average travel time from given point A to point B in the road network. Obtained results show that our proposed approach outperforms the baseline algorithms for measuring the travel efficiency of the road network.

Cirrhosis Mortality Prediction as Classification Using Frequent Subgraph Mining

In this work, we use machine learning and data analysis techniques to predict the one-year mortality of cirrhotic patients. Data from 2,322 patients with liver cirrhosis are collected at a single medical center. Different machine learning models are applied to predict one-year mortality. A comprehensive feature space including demographic information, comorbidity, clinical procedure and laboratory tests is being analyzed. A temporal pattern mining technic called Frequent Subgraph Mining (FSM) is being used. Model for End-stage liver disease (MELD) prediction of mortality is used as a comparator. All of our models statistically significantly outperform the MELD-score model and show an average 10% improvement of the area under the curve (AUC). The FSM technic itself does not improve the model significantly, but FSM, together with a machine learning technique called an ensemble, further improves the model performance. With the abundance of data available in healthcare through electronic health records (EHR), existing predictive models can be refined to identify and treat patients at risk for higher mortality. However, due to the sparsity of the temporal information needed by FSM, the FSM model does not yield significant improvements. Our work applies modern machine learning algorithms and data analysis methods on predicting one-year mortality of cirrhotic patients and builds a model that predicts one-year mortality significantly more accurate than the MELD score. We have also tested the potential of FSM and provided a new perspective of the importance of clinical features.

A 3D Numerical Environmental Modeling Approach for Assessing Transport of Spilled Oil in Porous Beach Conditions under a Meso-Scale Tank Design

Shorelines are vulnerable to significant environmental impacts from oil spills. Stranded oil can cause potential short- to long-term detrimental effects along beaches that include injuries to ecosystem, socio-economic and cultural resources. In this study, a three-dimensional (3D) numerical modeling approach is developed to evaluate the fate and transport of spilled oil for hypothetical oiled shoreline cases under various combinations of beach geomorphology and environmental conditions. The developed model estimates the spatial and temporal distribution of spilled oil for the various test conditions, using the finite volume method and considering the physical transport (dispersion and advection), sinks, and sorption processes. The model includes a user-friendly interface for data input on variables such as beach properties, environmental conditions, and physical-chemical properties of spilled oil. An experimental meso-scale tank design was used to test the developed model for dissolved petroleum hydrocarbon within shorelines. The simulated results for effects of different sediment substrates, oil types, and shoreline features for the transport of spilled oil are comparable to that obtained with a commercially available model. Results show that the properties of substrates and the oil removal by shoreline effects have significant impacts on oil transport in the beach area. Sensitivity analysis, through the application of the one-step-at-a-time method (OAT), for the 3D model identified hydraulic conductivity as the most sensitive parameter. The 3D numerical model allows users to examine the behavior of oil on and within beaches, assess potential environmental impacts, and provide technical support for decisions related to shoreline clean-up operations.

Hydrochemical Contamination Profiling and Spatial-Temporal Mapping with the Support of Multivariate and Cluster Statistical Analysis

The aim of this work was to test a methodology able to generate spatial-temporal maps that can synthesize simultaneously the trends of distinct hydrochemical indicators in an old radium-uranium tailings dam deposit. Multidimensionality reduction derived from principal component analysis and subsequent data aggregation derived from clustering analysis allow to identify distinct hydrochemical behavioral profiles and generate synthetic evolutionary hydrochemical maps.

Destination Port Detection for Vessels: An Analytic Tool for Optimizing Port Authorities Resources

Port authorities have many challenges in congested ports to allocate their resources to provide a safe and secure loading/unloading procedure for cargo vessels. Selecting a destination port is the decision of a vessel master based on many factors such as weather, wavelength and changes of priorities. Having access to a tool which leverages Automatic Identification System (AIS) messages to monitor vessel’s movements and accurately predict their next destination port promotes an effective resource allocation process for port authorities. In this research, we propose a method, namely, Reference Route of Trajectory (RRoT) to assist port authorities in predicting inflow and outflow traffic in their local environment by monitoring AIS messages. Our RRo method creates a reference route based on historical AIS messages. It utilizes some of the best trajectory similarity measures to identify the destination of a vessel using their recent movement. We evaluated five different similarity measures such as Discrete Frechet Distance (DFD), Dynamic Time ´ Warping (DTW), Partial Curve Mapping (PCM), Area between two curves (Area) and Curve length (CL). Our experiments show that our method identifies the destination port with an accuracy of 98.97% and an f-measure of 99.08% using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) similarity measure.

Multi-Temporal Mapping of Built-up Areas Using Daytime and Nighttime Satellite Images Based on Google Earth Engine Platform

The built-up area is a significant proxy to measure regional economic growth and reflects the Gross Provincial Product (GPP). However, an up-to-date and reliable database of built-up areas is not always available, especially in developing countries. The cloud-based geospatial analysis platform such as Google Earth Engine (GEE) provides an opportunity with accessibility and computational power for those countries to generate the built-up data. Therefore, this study aims to extract the built-up areas in Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), Thailand using day and nighttime satellite imagery based on GEE facilities. The normalized indices were generated from Landsat 8 surface reflectance dataset, including Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Built-up Index (BUI), and Modified Built-up Index (MBUI). These indices were applied to identify built-up areas in EEC. The result shows that MBUI performs better than BUI and NDBI, with the highest accuracy of 0.85 and Kappa of 0.82. Moreover, the overall accuracy of classification was improved from 79% to 90%, and error of total built-up area was decreased from 29% to 0.7%, after night-time light data from the Visible and Infrared Imaging Suite (VIIRS) Day Night Band (DNB). The results suggest that MBUI with night-time light imagery is appropriate for built-up area extraction and be utilize for further study of socioeconomic impacts of regional development policy over the EEC region.

Early Melt Season Variability of Fast Ice Degradation Due to Small Arctic Riverine Heat Fluxes

In order to determine the importance of small-system riverine heat flux on regional landfast sea ice breakup, our study explores the annual spring freshet of the Sagavanirktok River from 2014-2019. Seasonal heat cycling ultimately serves as the driving mechanism behind the freshet; however, as an emerging area of study, the extent to which inland thermodynamics influence coastal tundra geomorphology and connected landfast sea ice has not been extensively investigated in relation to small-scale Arctic river systems. The Sagavanirktok River is a small-to-midsized river system that flows south-to-north on the Alaskan North Slope from the Brooks mountain range to the Beaufort Sea at Prudhoe Bay. Seasonal warming in the spring rapidly melts snow and ice in a northwards progression from the Brooks Range and transitional tundra highlands towards the coast and when coupled with seasonal precipitation, results in a pulsed freshet that propagates through the Sagavanirktok River. The concentrated presence of newly exposed vegetation in the transitional tundra region due to spring melting results in higher absorption of solar radiation due to a lower albedo relative to snow-covered tundra and/or landfast sea ice. This results in spring flood runoff that advances over impermeable early-season permafrost soils with elevated temperatures relative to landfast sea ice and sub-ice flow. We examine the extent to which interannual temporal variability influences the onset and magnitude of river discharge by analyzing field measurements from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) river and meteorological observation sites. Rapid influx of heat to the Arctic Ocean via riverine systems results in a noticeable decay of landfast sea ice independent of ice breakup seaward of the shear zone. Utilizing MODIS imagery from NASA’s Terra satellite, interannual variability of river discharge is visualized, allowing for optical validation that the discharge flow is interacting with landfast sea ice. Thermal erosion experienced by sediment fast ice at the arrival of warm overflow preconditions the ice regime for rapid thawing. We investigate the extent to which interannual heat flux from the Sagavanirktok River’s freshet significantly influences the onset of local landfast sea ice breakup. The early-season warming of atmospheric temperatures is evidenced by the presence of storms which introduce liquid, rather than frozen, precipitation into the system. The resultant decreased albedo of the transitional tundra supports the positive relationship between early-season precipitation events, inland thermodynamic cycling, and degradation of landfast sea ice. Early removal of landfast sea ice increases coastal erosion in these regions and has implications for coastline geomorphology which stress industrial, ecological, and humanitarian infrastructure.

Towards Real-Time Classification of Finger Movement Direction Using Encephalography Independent Components

This study explores the practicality of using electroencephalographic (EEG) independent components to predict eight-direction finger movements in pseudo-real-time. Six healthy participants with individual-head MRI images performed finger movements in eight directions with two different arm configurations. The analysis was performed in two stages. The first stage consisted of using independent component analysis (ICA) to separate the signals representing brain activity from non-brain activity signals and to obtain the unmixing matrix. The resulting independent components (ICs) were checked, and those reflecting brain-activity were selected. Finally, the time series of the selected ICs were used to predict eight finger-movement directions using Sparse Logistic Regression (SLR). The second stage consisted of using the previously obtained unmixing matrix, the selected ICs, and the model obtained by applying SLR to classify a different EEG dataset. This method was applied to two different settings, namely the single-participant level and the group-level. For the single-participant level, the EEG dataset used in the first stage and the EEG dataset used in the second stage originated from the same participant. For the group-level, the EEG datasets used in the first stage were constructed by temporally concatenating each combination without repetition of the EEG datasets of five participants out of six, whereas the EEG dataset used in the second stage originated from the remaining participants. The average test classification results across datasets (mean ± S.D.) were 38.62 ± 8.36% for the single-participant, which was significantly higher than the chance level (12.50 ± 0.01%), and 27.26 ± 4.39% for the group-level which was also significantly higher than the chance level (12.49% ± 0.01%). The classification accuracy within [–45°, 45°] of the true direction is 70.03 ± 8.14% for single-participant and 62.63 ± 6.07% for group-level which may be promising for some real-life applications. Clustering and contribution analyses further revealed the brain regions involved in finger movement and the temporal aspect of their contribution to the classification. These results showed the possibility of using the ICA-based method in combination with other methods to build a real-time system to control prostheses.

Study on Landscape Pattern Evolution of Ecological-Living-Industrial Land in Plateau Mountainous Area: A Case Study of Yuxi City, Yunnan Province

The coordination and development of ecological-living-industrial land uses are the premise foundations for the formulation and implementation of the current land space planning, and more attention should be paid to plateau mountainous areas. This research is based on spatial analysis technology and landscape pattern index method taking Yuxi city, a typical mountainous plateau as the research area. By using relevant software such as ArcGIS10.5, Fragstats 4.2 and the four remote sensing images of Yuxi city in 1980, 1995, 2005 and 2015, the temporal-spatial evolution and differentiation pattern of ecological-living-industrial land applications have been discussed. The research results show that: (1) From the perspective of land use type change, ecological land of Yuxi city has been the main source of land from 1980 to 2015, which totally occupies more than 78%. During this period, the spatial structure of the ecological-living-industrial land changed significantly, namely, the living land. Its land area increased significantly from 0.83% of the total area in 1980 to 1.25% in 2015, the change range of ecological land and industrial land is relatively small. (2) In terms of land use landscape pattern transfer matrix, from 1980 to 2015, the industrial land and ecological land in Yuxi city have been gradually transferred to living land. (3) In the aspect of landscape pattern changes, various landscape pattern indexes of Yuxi city indicate that the fragmentation degree of landscape pattern of the ecological-living-industrial land in this region is increasing. The degree of agglomeration goes down, and the landscape types have changed from being relatively simple to relatively rich. The landscape is more diverse, but the patch size is uneven, meanwhile, the integrity of the ecological space is destroyed.

Protection of Cultural Heritage against the Effects of Climate Change Using Autonomous Aerial Systems Combined with Automated Decision Support

The article presents an ongoing work in research projects such as SCAN4RECO or ARCH, both funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020 program. The former one concerns multimodal and multispectral scanning of Cultural Heritage assets for their digitization and conservation via spatiotemporal reconstruction and 3D printing, while the latter one aims to better preserve areas of cultural heritage from hazards and risks. It co-creates tools that would help pilot cities to save cultural heritage from the effects of climate change. It develops a disaster risk management framework for assessing and improving the resilience of historic areas to climate change and natural hazards. Tools and methodologies are designed for local authorities and practitioners, urban population, as well as national and international expert communities, aiding authorities in knowledge-aware decision making. In this article we focus on 3D modelling of object geometry using primarily photogrammetric methods to achieve very high model accuracy using consumer types of devices, attractive both to professions and hobbyists alike.

Enhancing Temporal Extrapolation of Wind Speed Using a Hybrid Technique: A Case Study in West Coast of Denmark

The demand for renewable energy is significantly increasing, major investments are being supplied to the wind power generation industry as a leading source of clean energy. The wind energy sector is entirely dependable and driven by the prediction of wind speed, which by the nature of wind is very stochastic and widely random. This s0tudy employs deep multi-fidelity Gaussian process regression, used to predict wind speeds for medium term time horizons. Data of the RUNE experiment in the west coast of Denmark were provided by the Technical University of Denmark, which represent the wind speed across the study area from the period between December 2015 and March 2016. The study aims to investigate the effect of pre-processing the data by denoising the signal using empirical wavelet transform (EWT) and engaging the vector components of wind speed to increase the number of input data layers for data fusion using deep multi-fidelity Gaussian process regression (GPR). The outcomes were compared using root mean square error (RMSE) and the results demonstrated a significant increase in the accuracy of predictions which demonstrated that using vector components of the wind speed as additional predictors exhibits more accurate predictions than strategies that ignore them, reflecting the importance of the inclusion of all sub data and pre-processing signals for wind speed forecasting models.

Flow Duration Curves and Recession Curves Connection through a Mathematical Link

This study helps Public Water Bureaus in giving reliable answers to water concession requests. Rapidly increasing water requests can be supported provided that further uses of a river course are not totally compromised, and environmental features are protected as well. Strictly speaking, a water concession can be considered a continuous drawing from the source and causes a mean annual streamflow reduction. Therefore, deciding if a water concession is appropriate or inappropriate seems to be easily solved by comparing the generic demand to the mean annual streamflow value at disposal. Still, the immediate shortcoming for such a comparison is that streamflow data are information available only for few catchments and, most often, limited to specific sites. Subsequently, comparing the generic water demand to mean daily discharge is indeed far from being completely satisfactory since the mean daily streamflow is greater than the water withdrawal for a long period of a year. Consequently, such a comparison appears to be of little significance in order to preserve the quality and the quantity of the river. In order to overcome such a limit, this study aims to complete the information provided by flow duration curves introducing a link between Flow Duration Curves (FDCs) and recession curves and aims to show the chronological sequence of flows with a particular focus on low flow data. The analysis is carried out on 25 catchments located in North-Eastern Italy for which daily data are provided. The results identify groups of catchments as hydrologically homogeneous, having the lower part of the FDCs (corresponding streamflow interval is streamflow Q between 300 and 335, namely: Q(300), Q(335)) smoothly reproduced by a common recession curve. In conclusion, the results are useful to provide more reliable answers to water request, especially for those catchments which show similar hydrological response and can be used for a focused regionalization approach on low flow data. A mathematical link between streamflow duration curves and recession curves is herein provided, thus furnishing streamflow duration curves information upon a temporal sequence of data. In such a way, by introducing assumptions on recession curves, the chronological sequence upon low flow data can also be attributed to FDCs, which are known to lack this information by nature.

Spatial-Temporal Awareness Approach for Extensive Re-Identification

Recent development of AI and edge computing plays a critical role to capture meaningful events such as detection of an unattended bag. One of the core problems is re-identification across multiple CCTVs. Immediately following the detection of a meaningful event is to track and trace the objects related to the event. In an extensive environment, the challenge becomes severe when the number of CCTVs increases substantially, imposing difficulties in achieving high accuracy while maintaining real-time performance. The algorithm that re-identifies cross-boundary objects for extensive tracking is referred to Extensive Re-Identification, which emphasizes the issues related to the complexity behind a great number of CCTVs. The Spatial-Temporal Awareness approach challenges the conventional thinking and concept of operations which is labor intensive and time consuming. The ability to perform Extensive Re-Identification through a multi-sensory network provides the next-level insights – creating value beyond traditional risk management.

Integrated Modeling of Transformation of Electricity and Transportation Sectors: A Case Study of Australia

The proposed stringent mitigation targets require an immediate start for a drastic transformation of the whole energy system. The current Australian energy system is mainly centralized and fossil fuel-based in most states with coal and gas-fired plants dominating the total produced electricity over the recent past. On the other hand, the country is characterized by a huge, untapped renewable potential, where wind and solar energy could play a key role in the decarbonization of the Australia’s future energy system. However, integrating high shares of such variable renewable energy sources (VRES) challenges the power system considerably due to their temporal fluctuations and geographical dispersion. This raises the concerns about flexibility gap in the system to ensure the security of supply with increasing shares of such intermittent sources. One main flexibility dimension to facilitate system integration of high shares of VRES is to increase the cross-sectoral integration through coupling of electricity to other energy sectors alongside the decarbonization of the power sector and reinforcement of the transmission grid. This paper applies a multi-sectoral energy system optimization model for Australia. We investigate the cost-optimal configuration of a renewable-based Australian energy system and its transformation pathway in line with the ambitious range of proposed climate change mitigation targets. We particularly analyse the implications of linking the electricity and transport sectors in a prospective, highly renewable Australian energy system.

Multidisciplinary Approach to Diagnosis of Primary Progressive Aphasia in a Younger Middle Aged Patient

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a neurodegenerative disease similar to frontotemporal and semantic dementia, while having a different clinical image and anatomic pathology topography. Nonetheless, they are often included under an umbrella term: frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD). In the study, examples of diagnosing PPA are presented through the multidisciplinary lens of specialists from different fields (neurologists, psychiatrists, clinical speech therapists, clinical neuropsychologists and others) using a variety of diagnostic tools such as MR, PET/CT, genetic screening and neuropsychological and logopedic methods. Thanks to that, specialists can get a better and clearer understanding of PPA diagnosis. The study summarizes the concrete procedures and results of different specialists while diagnosing PPA in a patient of younger middle age and illustrates the importance of multidisciplinary approach to differential diagnosis of PPA.