There is a growing need for developing high-throughput tools for crop phenotyping that would increase the rate of genetic improvement. In most cases, the indicators used for this purpose are related with canopy structure (often acquired with RGB cameras and multispectral sensors allowing the calculation of NDVI), but using approaches related with the crop physiology are rare. High-resolution hy...

BACKGROUND The geography of where pregnant mothers live is important for understanding outdoor environmental habitat that may result in adverse birth outcomes. We investigated whether more babies were born small for gestational age or low birth weight at term to mothers living in environments with a higher accumulation of outdoor hazards. METHODS Live singleton births from the Alberta Perinat...

Environmental control strategy via computerized implementation is one of the most efficient approaches to integrate new advanced knowledge in research of human thermal comfort to a mechanical air-conditioning unit. Recently, a new conceptual development in designing air-conditioning systems has indicated that the indoor comfort temperature strongly depends upon changes of the outdoor air temper...

A heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) effectively conducts ventilation by recovering waste heat from indoors to outdoors during heating periods. However, dew condensation associated with the HRV system may arise due to the difference between the indoor temperature and the very low outdoor temperature in winter, and this can decrease the heat exchange efficiency. These problems can be solved by the p...

Tropical cities can use urban greening designs featuring trees that provide shade and cooling in hot outdoor environments. The cooling effect involves numerous tree characteristics that are not easy to control during planting design, such as the canopy size and the optical properties of leaves. Planting the appropriate tree species dominates the cooling effects and the human thermal environment...

In urban planning, sustainability is often synonymous to livability. Urban livability seeks improve living conditions of current and future outdoor users hence it has become a key priority for cities authorities. Melbourne, as the world second most livable city, sets out its life quality through various policies initiatives. One area improvement creation sustainable spaces that provides comfort...

the assessment of the thermal bioclimate is based on the human energy balance and derived indices such as Physiologically equivalent temperature (Pet) or Universal thermal Climate index (UtCi). these two indices were compared over a period of ten year based on hourly data in a middle european city with a temperate climate. the analysis performed shows that the differences obtained result from t...