Filetype
Drylands occupy 43% of the African continent and play an important role in the global carbon cycle and in supporting local livelihoods. Understanding how dryland ecosystems respond to environmental changes, both structurally and functionally, is of great significance for sustainable dryland management. In this article, we review the current remote sensing-based knowledge on African dryland ecosyst
Semi-open ecosystems, such as savannas and open woodlands, are biodiversity hotspots due largely to their heterogeneous tree cover (TC), which supports diverse habitats. However, increasing woody encroachment is altering TC heterogeneity, with unclear consequences for ecosystem stability. Using global satellite-based TC estimates (2000–2020), we reveal widespread TC homogenization (24.1%) in semi-
Forests are crucial for biodiversity, climate stability, and human well-being, yet rising pressures from climate change and conventional forestry practices threaten their resilience and sustainability. Approximately 30% of global forests are managed intensively, often as monoculture plantations, compromising biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration, and ecosystem stability. Here, we propose
Nurses are essential pillars of society, providing care for the sick. It is crucial for society to ensure that nurses have favorable working conditions, as they face a heightened risk of negative psychological conditions such as depression, anxiety, stress, and emotional exhaustion due to the demanding nature of their work. The strain on healthcare staff, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic,
This paper mainly focuses on the effect of cell unbalancing on the overall performance of a battery pack, as well as the challenges associated with designing a protection system for the Battery Management System (BMS). With the increasing trend towards fully electric aircraft, cars, buses, bikes, etc., the battery pack has become the sole power source for these vehicles. Consequently, it's imperat
Aim: Widespread greening and an increasing global terrestrial carbon sink over recent decades have been reported. However, the spatio-temporal relationships between vegetation greenness and productivity and the factors influencing this relationship remain unclear. We define a new metric of ecosystem-scale photosynthetic efficiency (EPE) to analyse its spatio-temporal pattern and investigate how po
Although India has an extensive healthcare system, there are still significant quality gaps between the country’s rural and urban regions as well as between the country’s public and private healthcare sectors. Despite this, India is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for medical tourists due to the comparatively cheap rates and good quality of its private institutions. Students from o
IoT technology for healthcare is a modern innovation that provides reliable and secure use of available resources for serving the healthcare industry. It not only helps improve contact between the community and public healthcare but also significantly lowers healthcare costs and improves treatment outcomes. This book, IoT-Enabled Healthcare Systems: Applications, Benefits, and Challenges, highligh
There has long been a consensus that healthcare systems play a critical role in enhancing human well-being and contributing to a healthy society. Efforts should be made to promote public awareness and execute necessary measures to improve healthcare. Because of this, a computer-based system is created to allow individuals to self-diagnose their health state based on specified symptoms. This approa
The Loess Plateau in China is prone to widespread land degradation (soil erosion, deforestation, and water loss), and therefore, ecological restoration programmes aiming to re-establish the ecosystem by revegetation have been implemented during recent decades. Consequently, a widespread increase in vegetation cover has been reported, but the state and dynamics of forests remain largely unknown. He
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new and rapidly evolving technology in which everything (smart items and smart gadgets) is linked to the internet to allow for efficient communication between these interconnected devices. The Internet of Things is a stimulant for healthcare and plays a critical role in a broad variety of healthcare-monitoring applications. Networked sensor devices, whether worn o
Blockchain technology is emerging as one of the most transformative forces to have ever reshaped supply chain management, with unique transparency, security, and efficiency. This paper reviews the literature on blockchain technology and applications in core industries such as transportation, manufacturing, food and beverages, and healthcare. At its core, blockchain deploys distributed ledger techn
Expansive farmlands in Europe and elsewhere are either already abandoned or projected to become abandoned. Afforestation on these abandoned farmlands is highly popular, but it only addresses the climate crisis, not the biodiversity emergency. An alternative to afforestation is rewilding, which would contribute to combating both the biodiversity and climate crises while also facilitating socio-ecol
Plant phenology provides information on the seasonal dynamics of plants, and changes herein are important for understanding the impact of climate change and human management on the biosphere. Land surface phenology is the study of plant phenology across large spatial scales estimated by satellite observations. However, satellite observations (pixels) are often composed of a mixture of vegetation t
The urban surface system is an integral part of the land surface system. And the spatio-temporal processes of urban LUCC (land use/cover change), mainly featured in covered with impervious surfaces, breaking the original physical geographic patterns and processes of the system, affecting material circulation and energy flow among different media or interfaces, and changing cycles and mechanisms of
Global warming has greatly stimulated vegetation growth through both extending the growing season and promoting photosynthesis in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). Analyzing the combined dynamics of such trends can potentially improve our current understanding on changes in vegetation functioning and the complex relationship between anthropogenic and climatic drivers. This study aims to analyze the re
The water cycle is accelerating in the context of global warming. However, how the multifaceted characteristics of aridity, particularly atmospheric, hydrological, and ecological drying, change and interact with each other are largely unknown. A gap we bridged was discovering the causal relationships underlying the atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere nexus from the nonlinear dynamic system perspectiv
Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a largely underdiagnosed disease including several phenotypes. In this report, the design of a study intending to evaluate the pathophysiological mechanism in COPD in relation to the specific phenotypes non-rapid and rapid decline in lung function is described together with the recruitment process of the study population derived from a po
Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, is an increasing cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, and an imbalance between proteases and antiproteases has been implicated to play a role in COPD pathogenesis. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) are important proteases that along with their inhibitors, tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMP), affect homeostasis of elastin and
