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Over the past couple of decades, the number of wildfires and area of land burned around the world has been steadily increasing, partly due to climatic changes and global warming. Therefore, there is a high probability that more people will be exposed to and endangered by forest fires. Hence there is an urgent need to design pervasive systems that effectively assist people and guide them to safety during wildfires. This paper presents EscapeWildFire, a mobile application connected to a backend system which models and predicts wildfire geographical progression, assisting citizens to escape wildfires in real-time. A small pilot indicates the correctness of the system. The code is open-source; fire authorities around the world are encouraged to adopt this approach., Comment: 6th IEEE International Workshop on Pervasive Context-Aware Smart Cities and Intelligent Transport System (PerAwareCity), Proc. of PerCom 2021, Kassel, Germany, March, 2021

Blockchain is an emerging digital technology allowing ubiquitous financial transactions among distributed untrusted parties, without the need of intermediaries such as banks. This chapter examines the impact of blockchain technology in agriculture and food supply chain, presents existing ongoing projects and initiatives, and discusses overall implications, challenges and potential, with a critical view over the maturity of these projects. Our findings indicate that blockchain is a promising technology towards a transparent supply chain of food, with many ongoing initiatives in various food products and food-related issues, but many barriers and challenges still exist, which hinder its wider popularity among farmers and systems. These challenges involve technical aspects, education, policies and regulatory frameworks., Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1908.07391

Spectroradiometry is a key metrological topic for accurate testing of photovoltaic (PV) devices, particularly relevant both for indoor testing on solar simulators and for outdoor testing. The relevance of accurate measurements of solar spectral irradiance has led the most renowned European solar PV test centres to take part to a series of International Spetroradiometer Intercomparisons that has taken place every year so far since 2011 in various localities in the Mediterranean Basin. This paper revisits the performance of participant laboratories and highlights the importance of inter-laboratory comparisons, showing the possible improvements in measurement reproducibility

Vascular plants present in groundstoreys of variously–managed areas in four cemeteries in central western NSW – two on the Central Western Slopes (Garra and Toogong) and two on the Central Tablelands (Lyndhurst and Carcoar) – were recorded over periods of 6–10 years. It was hypothesised that (a) areas of the cemeteries with a history of nil or low disturbance would represent high quality remnant vegetation (i.e. contain a diversity of native species but few naturalised species), and (b) that clearing of woody vegetation, together with similar management (e.g. regular mowing) would result in homogenisation of the groundstoreys such that many species, native and naturalised, would be common to all sites. 344 species (176 native, 154 naturalised and 14 non–naturalised exotics) were recorded across the four cemeteries. Many native species that were rare in the surrounding agricultural lands were present in the cemeteries (enhancing their value as conservation areas) but no cemetery contained areas of groundstorey that would qualify as ‘pristine’. Across all management areas, the proportions of naturalised species in the native + naturalised floras of the cemeteries ranged from 46 to 55 %. Though never dominant, naturalised species also comprised high proportions (42 to 51 %) of the floras of the least disturbed (nil or infrequently mown) areas within each cemetery. Many (40 %) of the species recorded occurred at only one cemetery. This partly explained why the floras of similarly– managed parts of cemeteries on the Central Western Slopes were, contrary to expectations, markedly different to those on the Central Tablelands. However, within the same botanic subdivision, floras – particularly of naturalised species in regularly mown grasslands – were more similar (‘homogenised’) than those of nil or infrequently mown grasslands.

This paper assesses recent policies and initiatives to promote neighbourhood renewal in the context of housing market change in two different policy environments - those of Denmark and England. The authors suggest that surface similarities in the recent urban policy discourses of the two countries tend to conceal deeper differences in the capacity of community-led neighbourhood-based initiatives to improve housing opportunities for local residents. The paper also suggests that comparative analysis of neighbourhood renewal policy has often been too firmly lodged at the national level, neglecting the complexities of 'multi-level' governance and uneven spatial development which are increasingly important in urban policy formation and delivery. The authors examine the diverse motivations for the recent policy focus on the 'neighbourhood' as an arena for intervention. They suggest that in England the impact of ever starker regional and sub-regional inequalities, problems associated with uneven economic growth, patterns of household migration and mobility, empty housing and cultural segregation extend well beyond the reach of the New Labour government's original urban policy agenda, in its concerns with 'capacity building', 'partnership working' and 'joined up governance'. There are now signs of a realignment in approach to impose a more strategic emphasis at a regional level of governance, although this remains underdeveloped in England. While Danish urban policy also has contradictory elements, there is a smaller gap between national government rhetoric and the strategy to improve specific localities, and the central role accorded to local government, which stands in contrast to recent English policy, has been a key aspect underpinning this process.

This paper assesses recent policies and initiatives to promote neighbourhood renewal in the context of housing market change in two different policy environments - those of Denmark and England. The authors suggest that surface similarities in the recent urban policy discourses of the two countries tend to conceal deeper differences in the capacity of community-led neighbourhood-based initiatives to improve housing opportunities for local residents. The paper also suggests that comparative analysis of neighbourhood renewal policy has often been too firmly lodged at the national level, neglecting the complexities of 'multi-level' governance and uneven spatial development which are increasingly important in urban policy formation and delivery. The authors examine the diverse motivations for the recent policy focus on the 'neighbourhood' as an arena for intervention. They suggest that in England the impact of ever starker regional and sub-regional inequalities, problems associated with uneven economic growth, patterns of household migration and mobility, empty housing and cultural segregation extend well beyond the reach of the New Labour government's original urban policy agenda, in its concerns with 'capacity building', 'partnership working' and 'joined up governance'. There are now signs of a realignment in approach to impose a more strategic emphasis at a regional level of governance, although this remains underdeveloped in England. While Danish urban policy also has contradictory elements, there is a smaller gap between national government rhetoric and the strategy to improve specific localities, and the central role accorded to local government, which stands in contrast to recent English policy, has been a key aspect underpinning this process.

A new cold strain index (CSI), based on rectal temperature and skin temperature was recently suggested (Am. J. Physiol. 277:R556-R564, 1999). The purpose of this study was to validate CSI for exercising volunteers exposed to cool (0.0%) and moderately cold (-12.3 deg C) conditions. Eight volunteers walked on a level treadmill at a speed of 1.34 m/s for 15 min followed by sifting for 70 min. CSI evaluated all the exercise periods with negative calculated values, whereas the sifting periods were correctly assessed with positive values ranging from 0-10. Despite the cold exposure in this study, increased metabolic heat production masked the cold stress causing an elevation in core temperature and consequently negative values for CSI. Cold strain evaluation by CSI should be restricted to sedentary exposures, because during exercise in a cold environment, rectal temperature is the limiting indicator for cold strain assessment.