Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a predominant foodborne pathogen with severe pathogenicity, leading to increasing attention given to rapid and sensitive detection. Herein, we propose an impedance ...biosensor using new kinds of screen-printed interdigitated microelectrodes (SPIMs) and wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) for signal amplification to detect E. coli O157:H7 with high sensitivity and time-efficiency. The SPIMs integrate the high sensitivity and short response time of the interdigitated electrodes and the low cost of the screen-printed electrodes. Self-assembling of bi-functional 3-dithiobis-(sulfosuccinimidyl-propionate) (DTSP) on the SPIMs was investigated and was proved to be able to improve adsorption quantity and stability of biomaterials. WGA was further adopted to enhance the signal taking advantage of the abundant lectin-binding sites on the bacteria surface. The immunosensor exhibited a detection limit of 102 cfu·mL(-1), with a linear detection range from 10(2) to 10(7) cfu·mL(-1) (r2 = 0.98). The total detection time was less than 1 h, showing its comparable sensitivity and rapid response. Furthermore, the low cost of one SPIM significantly reduced the detection cost of the biosensor. The biosensor may have great promise in food safety analysis and lead to a portable biosensing system for routine monitoring of foodborne pathogens.
Remote sensing has proven a useful way of evaluating long-term trends in vegetation “greenness” through the use of vegetation indices like Normalized Differences Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Enhanced ...Vegetation Index (EVI). In particular, analyses of greenness trends have been performed for large areas (continents, for example) in an attempt to understand vegetation response to climate. These studies have been most often used coarse resolution sensors like Moderate Resolution Image Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR). However, trends in greenness are also important at more local scales, particularly in and around cities as vegetation offers a variety of valuable ecosystem services ranging from minimizing air pollution to mitigating urban heat island effects. To explore the ability to monitor greenness trends in and around cities, this paper presents a new way for analyzing greenness trends based on all available Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images and applies it to Guangzhou, China. This method is capable of including the effects of land cover change in the evaluation of greenness trends by separating the effects of abrupt and gradual changes, and providing information on the timing of greenness trends.
An assessment of the consistency of surface reflectance from Landsat 8 with past Landsat sensors indicates biases in the visible bands of Landsat 8, especially the blue band. Landsat 8 NDVI values were found to have a larger bias than the EVI values; therefore, EVI was used in the analysis of greenness trends for Guangzhou. In spite of massive amounts of development in Guangzhou from 2000 to 2014, greenness was found to increase, mostly as a result of gradual change. Comparison of the greening magnitudes estimated from the approach presented here and a Simple Linear Trend (SLT) method indicated large differences for certain time intervals as the SLT method does not include consideration for abrupt land cover changes. Overall, this analysis demonstrates the importance of considering land cover change when analyzing trends in greenness from satellite time series in areas where land cover change is common.
•All available Landsats 5–8 data were used to analyze greenness trends.•Data from Landsat 8 were not completely consistent with the data from Landsats 5–7.•Landsat 8 EVI values were less biased than Landsat 8 NDVI values.•The total EVI change estimated by SLT was 14.3% higher than CCDC estimation.•On average Guangzhou experienced a 0.0567 increase in EVI from 2000 to 2014.
Simple and visual quantitative detection of foodborne pathogens can effectively reduce the outbreaks of foodborne diseases. Herein, we developed a simple and sensitive quantum dot (QD)-based paper ...device for visual and quantitative detection of
Escherichia coli
(
E. coli
) O157:H7 based on immunomagnetic separation and nanoparticle dissolution-triggered signal amplification. In this study,
E. coli
O157:H7 was magnetically separated and labeled with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), and the AgNP labels can be converted into millions of Ag ions, which subsequently quench the fluorescence of QDs in the paper strip, which along with the readout can be visualized and quantified by the change in length of fluorescent quenched band. Owing to the high capture efficiency and effective signal amplification, as low as 500 cfu mL
−1
of
E. coli
O157:H7 could be easily detected by naked eyes. Furthermore, this novel platform was successfully applied to detect
E. coli
O157:H7 in spiked milk samples with good accuracy, indicating its potential in the detection of foodborne pathogens in real samples.
Artificial terraces are of great importance for agricultural production and soil and water conservation. Automatic high-accuracy mapping of artificial terraces is the basis of monitoring and related ...studies. Previous research achieved artificial terrace mapping based on high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) or imagery. As a result of the importance of the contextual information for terrace mapping, object-based image analysis (OBIA) combined with machine learning (ML) technologies are widely used. However, the selection of an appropriate classifier is of great importance for the terrace mapping task. In this study, the performance of an integrated framework using OBIA and ML for terrace mapping was tested. A catchment, Zhifanggou, in the Loess Plateau, China, was used as the study area. First, optimized image segmentation was conducted. Then, features from the DEMs and imagery were extracted, and the correlations between the features were analyzed and ranked for classification. Finally, three different commonly-used ML classifiers, namely, extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), random forest (RF), and k-nearest neighbor (KNN), were used for terrace mapping. The comparison with the ground truth, as delineated by field survey, indicated that random forest performed best, with a 95.60% overall accuracy (followed by 94.16% and 92.33% for XGBoost and KNN, respectively). The influence of class imbalance and feature selection is discussed. This work provides a credible framework for mapping artificial terraces.
Subtropical forests easily suffer anthropogenic disturbance, including deforestation and reforestation management, which both highly affect the carbon pools. This study proposes spatial-temporal ...tracking of the carbon density dynamics to improve bookkeeping in the carbon model and applied to subtropical forest activities in Guangzhou, southern China, during the period of 1995 to 2014. Based on the overall accuracy of 87.5% ± 1.7% for forest change products using Landsat time series (LTS), we found that this is a typical period of deforestation conversion to reforestation activity accompanied with urbanization. Additionally, linear regression, random forest regression and allometric growth fitting were proposed by using forest field plots to obtain reliable per-pixel carbon density estimations. The cross-validation (CV) of random forest with LTS-derived parameters reached the highest accuracy of R2 and RMSE of 0.763 and 7.499 Mg ha−1. The RMES of the density estimation ranged between 78 and 84% of the mean observed biomass in the study area, which outperformed previous studies. Over the 20-year period, the study results showed that the explicit carbon emissions were (6.82 ± 0.26) × 104 Mg C yr−1 from deforestation; emissions increased to (1.02 ± 0.04) × 105 Mg C yr−1 given the implicit carbon not yet released to the atmosphere in the form of decomposing slash and wood products. In addition, a carbon uptake of about 1.91 ± 0.73 × 105 Mg C yr−1, presented as the net carbon pool. Based on the continuous detection capability, biennial reforestation activity has increased carbon density by a growth rate of 1.55 Mg ha−1, and the emission factors can be identified with LTS-derived parameters. In general, the study realizes the spatiotemporal improvement of carbon density and flux dynamics tracking, including the abrupt and graduate change based on fine-scale forest activity. It can provide more comprehensive and detailed feedback on the carbon source and sink change process of forest activities and disturbances.
Abstract
Digital elevation models (DEMs) are the fundamental datasets for coastal ecosystem monitoring, and several global open‐accessed DEMs have recently been reported. In coastal regions, a ...comprehensive vertical accuracy assessment of these DEMs has not yet been carried out. In this study, eight open‐access DEM datasets, including SRTM‐3, SRTM‐1, TanDEM‐X, ASTER GDEM v3, MERIT DEM, AW3D30, NASADEM, and CoastalDEM, were investigated across the coastal region of the Chinese mainland using high accuracy ICESat‐2 data as a reference. Statistical tools including mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) were selected to describe the data error/uncertainty and spatial distribution. Moreover, the effects of elevation ranging, slope degree, geomorphogenesis and landuse on vertical accuracy were further analyzed to assess their applicability. The assessment results revealed that the CoastalDEM and NASADEM datasets had the highest accuracy, with MAE values of 1.68 and 1.88 m and RMSE values of 2.55 and 2.61 m, for 3‐arc second and 1‐arc second resolution DEMs, respectively. Other DEMs with close accuracies include AW3D30, SRTM‐1, MERIT, and SRTM‐3 DEM. The results proved that the CoastalDEM outperformed other datasets, indicating its applicability in coastal regions.
Spatial equality of medical services refers to equal access to medical services in all regions. Currently, research on medical facility planning focuses mainly on efficiency, and less on methods for ...achieving medical facility access equality. In this study, we propose a medical service equality optimization method considering facility grade and Gaode actual travel time data. First, we use the maximum coverage location problem (MCLP) model to locate new medical facilities. Then, we incorporate a service capacity weight matrix reflecting medical facility grade into the quadratic programming (QP) model, with the objective of optimizing the bed configuration of each facility to maximize the spatial equality of medical accessibility. By measuring and optimizing medical accessibility in Guangzhou under different travel time thresholds, we analyzed the optimization results of central, peripheral, and edge areas. The results show that (1) the model significantly improves the spatial equality of medical accessibility. After optimization, fewer locations have very low (or low) and very high (or high) accessibility, while more locations have moderate accessibility. When the travel time threshold is 22 min, the number of locations with medium accessibility level increases by about 18.86%. (2) The higher the travel time threshold, the greater is the overall optimization effect. (3) Different regions have different optimization effects and a larger travel time threshold can improve the optimization effect of the peripheral areas more significantly. It is recommended that new medical facilities be built in the peripheral and edge areas, along with improvements to the transport system.
Net primary productivity (NPP) can indicate vegetation ecosystem services ability and reflect variation response to climate change and human activities. This study applied MODIS-1 km NPP products to ...investigate the NPP variation from 2001 to 2006, a fast urban expansion and adjustment period in Guangzhou, China, and quantify the impacts of weather and land use/land cover (LULC) changes, respectively. The results showed that the NPP mean value increased at a rate of 11.6 g∙C∙m−2∙yr−1 during the initial three years and decreased at an accelerated rate of 31.0 g∙C∙m−2∙yr−1 during the final three years, resulting in a total NPP loss of approximately 167 × 106 g∙C. The spatiotemporal of NPP varied obviously in the central area, suburb and exurb of Guangzhou driven by three patterns of weather and LULC changes. By the interactive effects and the weather variation dominated effects, NPP of most areas changed slightly with dynamic index less than 5% of NPP mean value in the central area and the suburb. The LULC change dominated effects caused obvious NPP reduction, by more than 15% of the NPP mean value, which occurred in some areas of the suburb and extended to the exurb with the outward urban sprawl. Importantly, conversion from wood grassland, shrublands and even forests to croplands occupied by urban landscapes proved to be a main process in the conversion from high-NPP coverage to low-NPP coverage, thereby leading to the rapid degradation of urban carbon stock capacity in urban fringe areas. It is helpful for government to monitor urban ecological health and safety and make relevant policies.
The surface urban heat island (SUHI) of urban agglomeration has always been an important topic in the studies of urban heat island, especially with the development of satellite-based land surface ...temperature (LST) products. However, most studies are limited to the perspective of a single city, ignoring the impact of urban agglomeration and the changes of LST at day and night on the reference LST (RLST) (e.g., rural areas). Consequently, this article proposed a novel method about SUHI intensity estimation for the multicenters (mcSUHII) of urban agglomeration in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GHMBay) using nighttime light (NTL) data (i.e., DMSP/OLS) obtained in October, 2010. The mcSUHII method considered the RLST of SUHII estimation based on multicenter structure, and was more flexible to adapt the impact of human activity intensity. The study showed that compared with other RLSTs, such as suburban and forest, mcSUHII mitigates the underestimation bias caused by ignoring the multicenter structure. Importantly, the change in SUHII for urban agglomerations is greater than for a single city. Moreover, it was illustrated that the variation of SUHII presented an obvious inverted U-shape along the gradient from the inland to the coastal cities. The highest SUHIIs in the delta cities at day and night are ~7.27 ± 1.71 °C and ~4.46 ± 1.42 °C, respectively. Additionally, NTL served as the dominator together with other factors that were capable of explaining more than 90% of the spatial variation in SUHII in GHMBay. Therefore, considering multicenters more in estimation of SUHII of urban agglomeration for the sustainable development.