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Improving carbon emission efficiency(CEE) is crucial to reducing CO 2 emissions. Most studies on CO 2 emission are conducted at national and industrial scales, and city-scale studies still need to be included. In order to collect more consistent city- and county-scale CO 2 emission data, the sparrow search neural network is trained to fit the energy consumption CO 2 emissions with nighttime light in this study. Additionally, using the SBM-DEA model and spatial econometric techniques, the CEE values of 27 cities in the Yangtze River Delta region (YRDR) from 2000 to 2020 were examined from the perspective of total factor inputs. The findings demonstrate that CEE's general trend is erratic and uneven. The CEE value of the YRDR decreases from 0.720 in 2000 to 0.628 by 2020, which means that the YRDR has redundant capital and labour inputs and insufficient economic output. The low value carbon efficiency areas are mainly concentrated in the western part of the YRDR, i.e. the Anhui Province region. Shanghai, Wuxi and Suzhou have high carbon efficiency values of 1.21, 2.08 and 1.00 respectively, and are exemplary cities in terms of carbon efficiency, while the rest of the cities have varying degrees of efficiency loss. Taking Chizhou-Jiaxing as the middle line, the CEE pattern in the YRDR presents a state of "low in the middle and high at each end," and center of gravity for CEE generally shifts southward. Additionally, the cold-spot areas of CEE are concentrated in the southern part of Anhui Province, and develop a low-efficiency zone with Chizhou, Anqing, and Xuancheng as clusters and spreading outwards. Overall, this paper significantly narrows the spatial scale of carbon accounting studies and the findings can be applied to the formulation of customized carbon reduction policies. • The neural network was trained based on the sparrow optimization algorithm. • The relationship between nighttime stable light data and carbon emissions was estimated. • Based on the total factor, the carbon emission efficiency of the city was measured. • There are different degrees of efficiency loss in Yangtze River Delta cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of geodiversity is one of the initial and main steps in the development of geoconservation actions. It is fundamental to establish parameters that quantify elements and places of abiotic nature in order to draw attention to those that are richer than the average. In doing so, it is possible to manage areas for the protection of notable geoheritage and to develop sustainable activities such as geotourism. The literature comprises several methodologies for the quantitative assessment of geodiversity, but the use of geoprocessing tools appears to be the least subjective type of analysis. From this standpoint, this work aimed to analyze the geodiversity in an area of geological interest in the northeast of Brazil by using two methodologies. The first is widely used and involved the definition of a grid to overlay the cartographic datasets that are used to define the geodiversity index. The second method is based on a centroid analysis of intersected datasets. These investigations showed that the two methodologies have similar aspects and produce a high geodiversity index for the area. This outcome supports the reliability of these methods when the results converge, with respect to the delimitation of the valuable places where geodiversity should be protected. These methods may be used as basis for the sustainable management of natural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Performances of centroid analysis (CA) used for extracting Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) from noisy signals are studied in this paper. The variance of extracted BFS, i.e., the minimum detectable BFS, is deduced as a function of signal-to-noise ratio, frequency step, Brillouin linewidth, and the data window used in the analysis. It is found theoretically that both of the averaged BFS and its variance are susceptible to the deviation of data window center from real-Brillouin central frequency, termed data window deviation (DWD). The theoretically analyzed results are verified by experiments and simulation, showing good agreement with each other. Since the DWD occurs often for noisy signals, an iterative CA (ICA) is proposed and demonstrated to reduce this impact and improve the accuracy of CA. Compared with curve fitting methods (CFM) the CA has attractive features, such as extremely shorter time of processing. The CA is especially suitable for extracting BFS from complicated spectra observed often in sensors paved in fields, for which the usual CFM may yield wrong results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A few literary scholars have long claimed that Shakespeare did not write some of his best plays (history plays and tragedies) and proposed at one time or another various suspect authorship candidates. Most modern-day scholars of Shakespeare have rejected this claim, arguing that strong evidence that Shakespeare wrote the plays and poems being his name appears on them as the author. This has caused and led to an ongoing scholarly academic debate for quite some long time. Stylometry is a fast-growing field often used to attribute authorship to anonymous or disputed texts. Stylometric attempts to resolve this literary puzzle have raised interesting questions over the past few years. The following paper contributes to “the Shakespeare authorship question” by using a mathematically-based methodology to examine the hypothesis that Shakespeare wrote all the disputed plays traditionally attributed to him. More specifically, the mathematically based methodology used here is based on Mean Proximity, as a linear hierarchical clustering method, and on Principal Components Analysis, as a non-hierarchical linear clustering method. It is also based, for the first time in the domain, on Self-Organizing Map U-Matrix and Voronoi Map, as non-linear clustering methods to cover the possibility that our data contains significant non-linearities. Vector Space Model (VSM) is used to convert texts into vectors in a high dimensional space. The aim of which is to compare the degrees of similarity within and between limited samples of text (the disputed plays). The various works and plays assumed to have been written by Shakespeare and possible authors notably, Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, John Fletcher, and Thomas Kyd, where “similarity” is defined in terms of correlation/distance coefficient measure based on the frequency of usage profiles of function words, word bi-grams, and character triple-grams. The claim that Shakespeare authored all the disputed plays traditionally attributed to him is falsified in favor of the alternative authors according to the stylistic criteria and analytic methodology used. The result of this validated analysis is empirically-based, objective, and involves replicable evidence which can be used in conjunction with existing arguments to resolve the question of whether or not Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote all the disputed plays traditionally attributed to him.

The development of research involving the geodiversity concept has been growing in the last two decades. The quantification of spatial patterns of geodiversity seems to be one of the most promising lines of research related with natural diversity, since it explores the relations between abiotic elements. This last aspect can be crucial, not only for territorial management, but also for conservation initiatives associated with biodiversity. The main aim of this study was to develop a new GIS procedure, based on centroid analysis, to calculate a geodiversity index, using kernel density, and to test its application in two municipalities with different area surfaces and geological setting. The proposed method is an upgrade of those previously published based on a spatial grid system at a landscape scale. The results of this method show that it is possible to obtain a spatial geodiversity standard that reflects the spatial variation of natural abiotic elements on both territories and that lithology and geomorphology are the key drivers that control the geodiversity index. In addition, the testing procedures have demonstrated that this method can be applied to areas with any geological and geomorphological setting and at different scales and also to be a useful tool for land use planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a novel seismic interpretational workflow applied to a large gas-chimney located above the Marjoram Gas Field, offshore NW Borneo. The gas-chimney is hosted by a clay-dominated sealing sequence characterised by meter-scale silt beds. The sealing sequence is affected by a complex network of normal faults. The gas chimney, interpretable as vertical anomaly cluster, is composed of several discrete amplitude anomalies and is the result of gas leakage from the crest of a ∼500 m thick carbonate pinnacle-reef below. By analysing the seal properties and the anomalies composing the vertical anomaly cluster we argue that the leakage is consistent with migration of gas either along faults or using faults via cross-fault-plane juxtapositions. We show that this process is focussed within a narrow pathway rather than spread over the fault network. Mode I fault opening in response to the large capillary pressure exerted by the long gas column of the subjacent Marjoram Gas Field is postulated to be the cause of leakage. • The Marjoram Gas Field is a multi-trillion cubic feet reservoir obscured by a large gas chimney. • Analysis of the gas chimney provides a precise pathway for gas leakage across the overburden. • Leakage occur via mode I dilation of a fracture induced by the large gas column in the reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Conventional aberration analysis by a Shack- Hartmann aberrometer is based on the implicit assumption that an injected probe beam reflects from a single fundus layer. In fact, the biological fundus is a thick reflector and therefore conventional analysis may produce errors of unknown magnitude. We developed a novel computational method to investigate this potential failure of conventional analysis. Methods The Shack- Hartmann wavefront sensor was simulated by computer software and used to recover by two methods the known wavefront aberrations expected from a population of normally-aberrated human eyes and bi-layer fundus reflection. The conventional method determines the centroid of each spot in the SH data image, from which wavefront slopes are computed for least-squares fitting with derivatives of Zernike polynomials. The novel 'global' method iteratively adjusted the aberration coefficients derived from conventional centroid analysis until the SH image, when treated as a unitary picture, optimally matched the original data image. Results Both methods recovered higher order aberrations accurately and precisely, but only the global algorithm correctly recovered the defocus coefficients associated with each layer of fundus reflection. The global algorithm accurately recovered Zernike coefficients for mean defocus and bi-layer separation with maximum error <0.1%. The global algorithm was robust for bi-layer separation up to 2 dioptres for a typical SH wavefront sensor design. For 100 randomly generated test wavefronts with 0.7 D axial separation, the retrieved mean axial separation was 0.70 D with standard deviations ( S.D.) of 0.002 D. Conclusions Sufficient information is contained in SH data images to measure the dioptric thickness of dual-layer fundus reflection. The global algorithm is superior since it successfully recovered the focus value associated with both fundus layers even when their separation was too small to produce clearly separated spots, while the conventional analysis misrepresents the defocus component of the wavefront aberration as the mean defocus for the two reflectors. Our novel global algorithm is a promising method for SH data image analysis in clinical and visual optics research for human and animal eyes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]