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Restoring forests, especially within deforested or degraded protected areas, is critical to prevent global biodiversity loss and climate change. In this article, we explore the current conditions and progress of forest restoration in Gunung Palung National Park in Indonesian Borneo. The aim of this research was to review forest restoration projects and their success in the park, and to analyse lessons learned from those projects. From 2009 till 2018, nearly 5000 ha of damaged forest in Gunung Palung National Park were replanted, but with only a 1% restoration success rate. The main reason for failed restoration is wildfire. We found four issues that should be resolved in forest restoration projects: fire management, weed management, cost calculation and defining an appropriate restoration strategy. Restoration projects in the park have estimated the price per seedling at around USD0.36 to USD0.78 for one year. We proposed a revised price per seedling of USD1 for the first year, with an additional 10 cents per year for the following three years, to account for maintenance and labour costs. One-time projects that focus only on planting are likely to fail, especially without fire prevention management. Successful forest restoration projects should do more than simply planting trees by also including care and maintenance after they are planted. With this in mind, we provide a standardised framework to guide decision-making and successful forest restoration. Our results should help increase forest restoration success, improve sustainability and allow for the persistence of forested landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Slurry-infiltrated fibrous concrete (SIFCON) is a special type of concrete that has great strength, as well as high ductility. However, the unit weight is high, which exceeds the unit weight of fiber-reinforced concrete, because of the high fiber content. This research aims to verify the compressive and flexural strength, as well as the density of SIFCON when using two different fibers (steel and polyolefin). Sometimes mono type of fiber steel or polyolefin, sometimes by hybridizing two types of fiber steel + polyplefin. Volume fraction (6% for all species) was used. Hook-end steel fiber and polyolefin fiber are used. With hybridization, a total volume fraction of 6% was used, which is 2/3 steel fibers with 1/3 polyolefin and vice versa. In addition, silica fume replaced 10% of the weight of cement. After checking all the results, the highest compressive strength was achieved in the SNS (symbol of mix SIFCON with 6% steel fiber) series by 81 MPa, as well as the highest flexural strength by 23 MPa, but it was the highest density of 2,490 kg/m3. The series contained 2/3 polyolefin and 1/3 steel fibers, which are ideal as they significantly reduced the density of the steel fiber series 2,490–2,210 kg/m3, as well as there was no significant reduction in strength as it achieved 67 MPa in the compressive strength and 19 MPa in the flexural strength, which are values suitable for high SIFCON applications.

Slurry infiltrated fibrous concrete (SIFCON) is a modern type of fibre reinforced concrete (FRC). It has unique properties; SIFCON is superior in compressive strength, flexural strength, tensile strength, impact resistance, energy absorption and ductility. Because of this superiority in these characteristics, SIFCON was qualified for applications of special structures, which require resisting sudden dynamic loads such as explosions and earthquakes. The main aim of this investigation is to determine the effect of fibre type on the apparent density of SIFCON and on performance under impact load. In this investigation, hook-end steel fibre and polyolefin fibre were used. Purely once and hybrid in different portions again. After reviewing previous research, including [1, 2, 3] references three trail mixes were tested with a volume fraction of fibres (4, 6 and 8)%, and after testing them, a volume fraction of 6% was chosen. We chose the volume fraction of 6% and made the type of fibre the variable for comparison in this research. In hybrid fibres this fraction was divided once 2/3 steel fibres with 1/3 polyolefin fibres and vice versa. The specimens of the Impact resistance test were made with two specimens for each series, which are panels with dimensions of 50×50×5 cm. Three cubes were made for each series in the SIFCON apparent density test. Test results prove SIFCON produced from 2/3 polyolefin and 1/3 steel fibres achieved a good density reduction that contributes to reducing the self-weight of the structural element, which is a major aim in this investigation, reducing cost and maintaining high impact resistance.

With the increasing demand for urban space, more and more multistory carparks are needed as they will play a central role in the city transportation system. An autonomous navigation solution for Intelligent Vehicles in these indoor scenarios is then required. One step to solve this problem is to localize Intelligent Vehicles in these specific environments. However, the lack of GPS due to signal obstruction (multipath, non-line of sight, interference, etc.) appears to be a significant concern for any localization system, let alone indoor ones. Hence, in this paper, a wireless sensor network based approach is proposed to replace the GPS (Global Positioning System) role for indoor environments. In addition, a fusion framework for multiple sensors such as Wi-Fi access points, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) or LiDAR is studied. Experiments in almost one-year duration yield a stable result of mean global localization error at 0.5m.

This paper proposes a two-stage local path planning approach to deal with all kinds of scenarios (i.e. intersections, turns, roundabouts). The first stage carries out an off-line optimization, considering vehicle kinematics and road constraints. The second stage includes all dynamic obstacles in the scene, generating a continuous path in real-time. Human-like driving style is provided by evaluating the sharpness of the road bends and the available space among them, optimizing the drivable area. The proposed approach is validated on overtaking scenarios where real-time path planning generation plays a key role. Simulation and real results on an experimental automated platform provide encouraging results, generating real-time collision-free paths while maintaining the defined smoothness criteria.

A pedestrian detection system is a crucial component of advanced driver assistance systems since it contributes to road flow safety. The safety of traffic participants could be significantly improved if these systems could also predict and recognize pedestrian's actions, or even estimate the time, for each pedestrian, to cross the street. In this paper, we focus not only on pedestrian detection and pedestrian action recognition but also on estimating if the pedestrian's action presents a risky situation according to time to cross the street. We propose 1) a pedestrian detection and action recognition component based, on RetinaNet; 2) an estimation of the time to cross the street for multiple pedestrians using a recurrent neural network. For each pedestrian, the recurrent network estimates the pedestrian's action intention in order to predict the time to cross the street. We based our experiments on the JAAD dataset, and show that integrating multiple pedestrian action tags for the detection part when merge with a recurrent neural network (LSTM) allows a significant performance improvement.

Nowadays, many intelligent vehicles are equipped with various sensors to recognize their surrounding environment and to measure the motion or position of the vehicle. In addition, the number of intelligent vehicles equipped with a mobile Internet modem is increasing. Based on the sensors and Internet connection, the intelligent vehicles are able to share the sensor information with other vehicles via a cloud service. The sensor information sharing via the cloud service promises to improve the safe and efficient operation of the multiple intelligent vehicles. This paper presents a cloud update framework of occupancy grid maps for multiple intelligent vehicles in a large-scale environment. An evidential theory is applied to create the occupancy grid maps to address sensor disturbance such as measurement noise, occlusion and dynamic objects. Multiple vehicles equipped with LiDARs, motion sensors, and a low-cost GPS receiver create the evidential occupancy grid map (EOGM) for their passing trajectory based on GraphSLAM. A geodetic quad-tree tile system is applied to manage the EOGM, which provides a common tiling format to cover the large-scale environment. The created EOGM tiles are uploaded to EOGM cloud and merged with old EOGM tiles in the cloud using Dempster combination of evidential theory. Experiments were performed to evaluate the multiple EOGM mapping and the cloud update framework for large-scale road environment.

In this paper, we define another type of Lindelof which is called strongly c- Lindelof, and we introduce some properties about this type of Lindelof and the relationships with Lindelof , c- Lindelof and strongly Lindelof spaces.

Electric vehicles are progressively introduced in urban areas, because of their ability to reduce air pollution, fuel consumption and noise nuisance. Nowadays, some big cities are launching the first electric car-sharing projects to clear traffic jams and enhance urban mobility, as an alternative to the classic public transportation systems. However, there are still some problems to be solved related to energy storage, electric charging and autonomy. In this paper, we present an autonomous docking system for electric vehicles recharging based on an embarked infrared camera performing infrared beacons detection installed in the infrastructure. A visual servoing system coupled with an automatic controller allows the vehicle to dock accurately to the recharging booth in a street parking area. The results show good behavior of the implemented system, which is currently deployed as a real prototype system in the city of Paris.

Background: Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect; however, the underlying etiology is unrecognized in the majority of cases. GATA-binding protein 4 (GATA4), a cardiac transcription factor gene, has a crucial role in the cardiogenesis process; hence, a number of heterozygote sequence variations were identified as a cause of CHD. G296S heterozygote variant is the most frequently reported GATA4 gene sequence alteration. This study aims to investigate the role of G296S variant of the GATA4 gene in Malaysian CHD subjects. Methods: We have investigated 86 Malaysian CHD subjects with cardiac septation defects for the presence of the GATA4 gene heterozygote variant (G296S) by the new technology of high resolution melting (HRM) analysis. Results: Genotyping of G296S (c.886G>A) by HRM analysis shows that all the sample genotypes were of the wild GG type genotype and the heterozygote mutant GA genotype was totally absent from this study cohort. Conclusions: The results of our study showed that the G296S variant of the GATA4 gene was not associated with the development of CHD in Malaysian subjects. The use of HRM analysis proved a cost-effective, high-throughput, specific and sensitive genotyping technique which eliminates the need for unnecessary sequencing.

In this paper, we define another types of Lindelof on bitopological space, namely N-Lindelof , S-Lindelof and pair-wise Lindelof spaces, and we introduce some properties about these types.

This paper examines the mechanical properties of a composite material made of modified Iraqi gypsum (juss) reinforced with polypropylene fibers. The modified juss was prepared by adding two percentages of cement (5, 10) %. Two percentages of polypropylene fibers were used, to reinforce the modified juss (1, 2) %. The water/dry compound ratio used was equal to 0.53%. The composite was evaluated based on compressive strength, flexural strengths, absorption percentage, density, acoustic impedance, ultra - pulse velocity, longitudinal shrinkage and setting time tests. The results indicated that the inclusion of cement on to juss increases the compressive strength, absorption percentage, density, acoustic impedance, ultra - pulse velocity, longitudinal shrinkage and a reduction in flexural strength and setting time were observed by adding the cement. In addition, the inclusion of polypropylene fiber was significant in improving mechanical performance of the composite material, it shows a great improvement in longitudinal shrinkage, modulus of rupture and absorption percentages.

The new generation of ADAS systems based on cooperation between vehicles can offer serious perspectives to the road security. The inter-vehicle cooperation is made possible thanks to the revolution in the wireless mobile ad hoc network. In this paper, we will develop a system that will minimize the imprecision of the GPS used to car tracking, based on the data given by the GPS which means the coordinates and speed in addition to the use of the vision data that will be collected from the loading system in the vehicle (camera and processor). Localization information can be exchanged between the vehicles through a wireless communication device. The creation of the system must adopt the Monte Carlo Method or what we call a particle filter for the treatment of the GPS data and vision data. An experimental study of this system is performed on our fleet of experimental communicating vehicles.