one of the indicators of sustainable urban growth is the balance of development between different regions of the city, quality of the environment, equality in job opportunities, housing, basic services, social infrastructures, and transportation in urban areas. urban sprawl has some negative consequences. some of the consequences that are frequently mentioned are destroying green spaces, high c...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influences of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions on hazardousness and photochemical reactivity and to propose efficient VOCs abatement strategies. METHODS The atmospheric concentrations of 101 components of VOCs were measured at six sites which comprehend four urban areas, a roadside area, and an industrial area in Hyogo Prefectur...

Promoting settlement compactness and controlling fragmentation are often discussed as important goals towards sustainability. The article deals with the exploration of 111 urban municipalities in Germany. All cities are compared by characteristics of the urban form and typical statistical facts about cities such as population, employees or buildings. Spatial metrics (e.g. contagion index, core-...

Currently urban spatial structures are affected by pervasive developments, which provoke a diversity and reorganization of population. This article examines the driving forces that cause urban-to-rural migration of population in the Austrian metropolitan area of Vienna using exploratory spatial analysis methods over the time period from 2001 to 2006. To model the qualitative changes between sub...

This paper presents an adaptive version of the Hill estimator based on Lespki’s model selection method. This simple data-driven index selection method is shown to satisfy an oracle inequality and is checked to achieve the lower bound recently derived by Carpentier and Kim. In order to establish the oracle inequality, we derive non-asymptotic variance bounds and concentration inequalities for Hi...

Greenhouse gas emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the major factors causing global climate change. Urban green space plays a key role in regulating the global carbon cycle and reducing atmospheric CO2. Quantifying the carbon stock, distribution and change of urban green space is vital to understanding the role of urban green space in the urban environment. Remote sensing is a valuable a...

In this article a method based on data fusion approach and using multitemporal ASAR-ENVISAT / PRI-ERS SAR images to analyze different behaviours (urban growth, urban decrease and urban constance) of the urban dynamics phenomenon in rain forest context is proposed. The method computes first two attributes : NDVI index used as urban / non-urban index and as prior information to improve locally th...

OBJECTIVE To identify factors associated with increased arterial blood pressure in children. METHODS In this cross-sectional study, arterial blood pressure was measured in 672 children between 2 and 11 years of age from two schools in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil. After providing informed consent, all children had their blood pressure and anthropometric parameters measured. Blood pressu...

The concentration index is widely used to measure income-related inequality in health. No insight exists, however, whether the concentration index connects with people's preferences about distributions of income and health and whether a reduction in the concentration index reflects an increase in social welfare. We explored this question by testing the central assumption underlying the concentr...

BACKGROUND Prenatal and postnatal visits are two effective interventions for protection and promotion of maternal health by reducing maternal mortality and improving the quality of birth. There is limited nationally representative data regarding the changes of prenatal and postnatal visits since the latest health system reform initiated in 2009 in Shaanxi, China. The aim of this study was to ex...