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1. Cardamom agro-environmental interrelationships analysis in Indian cardamom hills

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2023.1107804  

   Murugan, Muthusamy; Kuruvila, Anil; Anandhi, Aavudai; Pooja, A.; Ashokkumar, Kaliyaperumal; Dhanya, M. K.; Subbiah, A.; Alagupalamuthirsolai, M.; Sritharan, N. (June 2023, Frontiers in Climate)

   The rainfall pattern seen in the Indian Cardamom Hills (ICH) has been extremely variable and complicated, with El Niño -Southern Oscillation (ENSO) playing a crucial role in shaping this pattern. In light of this, more investigation is required through improved statistical analysis. During the study period, there was greater variability in rainfall and the frequency of rainy days. About 2,730 mm of rainfall was reported in 2018, while the lowest amount (1168.3 mm) was registered for 2016. The largest decrease in decadal rainfall (>65 mm) was given by the decade 1960–1969, followed by 1980–1989 (>40 mm) and 2010–2019 (>10 mm). In the last 60 years of study, there has been a reduction of rainy days by 5 days in the last decade (2000–2009), but in the following decade (2010–2019), it registered an increasing trend, which is only slightly <2 days. The highest increase in decadal rainy days was observed for the 1970–1979 period. The smallest decadal increase was reported for the last decade (2010–2019). Total sunshine hours were the highest (1527.47) for the lowest rainfall year of 2016, while the lowest value (1,279) was recorded for the highest rainfall year (2021). The rainfall characteristics of ICH are highly influenced by the global ENSO phenomenon, both positively and negatively, depending on the global El Nino and La Nina conditions. Correspondingly, below and above-average rainfall was recorded consecutively for 1963–1973, 2003–2016, and 1970–2002. Higher bright forenoon sun hours occurred only during SWM months, which also reported maximum disease intensity on cardamom. The year 2016 was regarded as a poorly distributed year, with the lowest rainfall and the highest bright afternoon sun hours during the winter and summer months (January-May). Over the last three decades, the production and productivity of cardamom have shown a steady increase along with the ongoing local climatic change. Many of our statistical tests resulted in important information in support of temporal climatic change and variability. Maintaining shade levels is essential to address the adverse effects of increasing surface air temperature coupled with the downward trend of the number of rainy days and elevated soil temperature levels. 

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2. Analysis of the Use of Robots for the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.1109/SSRR56537.2022.10018671  

   Murphy, Robin; Kathasagaram, Amrita; Millican, Truitt; Clendenin, Angela; deWitte, Paula; Moats, Jason (November 2022, 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics (SSRR))

   This article examines 152 reports the use of robots explicitly due to the COVID-19 pandemic reported in the science, trade, and press from 24 Jan 2021 to 23 Jan 2022 (Year 2) and compares with the previously published uses from 24 Jan 2020 to 23 Jan 2021 (Year 1). Of these 152 reports, 80 were new unique instances documented in 25 countries, bringing the total to 420 instances in 52 countries since 2020. The instances did not add new work domains or use cases, though they changed the relative ranking of three use cases. The most notable trend in Year was the shift from a) government or institutional use of robots to protect healthcare workers and the Public to b) personal and business use to enable the continuity of work and education. In Year 1, Public Safety, Clinical Care, and Continuity of Work and Education were the three highest work domains but in Year 2, Continuity of Work and Education had the highest number of instances. 

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3. African rotifer records

   https://doi.org/10.15468/ve5ygw  

   Fresno, Zacarias Lopez; Cancellario, Tommaso; Fontaneto, Diego; Kamburska, Lyudmila; Karimullah, Karimullah; L., Robert Wallace; J., Elizabeth Walsh; Smolak, Radoslav (January 2023, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Ricerca sulle Acque)

   {"Abstract":["We report a dataset of all known and published occurrence records of animals of the phylum Rotifera, including Bdelloidea, Monogononta, and Seisonacea (with the exclusion of Acanthocephala) for Africa and surrounding islands and archipelagos. The dataset includes 27,225 records of 957 taxa (subspecies: 39; species: 819; genus: 81; family: 17; group: 1), gathered from 706 published papers. The published literature spans from 1854 to 2022, with the highest number of records in the decades 1990-1999 and 2010-2019. \n230 records of "species inquirendae", "nomina nuda", and "genera inquirenda" found in the published literature were not included in the dataset. Almost 90 % of the data are georeferenced.<\/p>\nThe African countries with the highest number of taxa are Nigeria, Algeria, South Africa, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, whereas no records are yet available for a dozen countries. The number of species known from each country can be explained mostly by sampling efforts, measured as the number of papers published for each country up to October 2022.<\/p>\nThis detailed literature search increased the number of known rotifer taxa at species, subspecies, form and variety level reported in previous reviews, which were 639 in 1986 (De Ridder, 1986) and 765 (Smolak et al., 2022) in 2022. Of the taxa reported in the current dataset, 167 (18%) are Bdelloidea, 665 (698%) Ploima, 97 (10%) Flosculariaceae, 27 (3%) Collothecacea and one representative of Seisonacea, the marine epizoic rotifer Seison africanus Sørensen, Segers & Funch, 2005 described and recorded only from coastal waters of Kenya (Sørensen et al., 2005).<\/p>\nThe data were structured based on the Darwin Core standard (Wieczorek et al., 2012). The dataset is structured to have in each row each record of a rotifer taxon from a sample from Africa and surrounding islands, as cited in the literature. The columns report the original and updated taxon name, additional taxonomic information together with origin of the data and habitat.\nAll invalid names (i.e. at the level of species inquirenda, nomen nudum, genus inquirendum) were not included in the records uploaded to GBIF. All names were also checked against the backbone of GBIF.<\/p>"]} 

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4. Permission vs. App Limiters: Profiling Smartphone Users to Understand Differing Strategies for Mobile Privacy Management

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517652  

   Alsoubai, Ashwaq; Ghaiumy Anaraky, Reza; Li, Yao; Page, Xinru; Knijnenburg, Bart; Wisniewski, Pamela J. (April 2022, The 2022 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems)

   We conducted a user study with 380 Android users, profiling them according to two key privacy behaviors: the number of apps installed, and the Dangerous permissions granted to those apps. We identified four unique privacy profiles: 1) Privacy Balancers (49.74% of participants), 2) Permission Limiters (28.68%), 3) App Limiters (14.74%), and 4) the Privacy Unconcerned (6.84%). App and Permission Limiters were significantly more concerned about perceived surveillance than Privacy Balancers and the Privacy Unconcerned. App Limiters had the lowest number of apps installed on their devices with the lowest intention of using apps and sharing information with them, compared to Permission Limiters who had the highest number of apps installed and reported higher intention to share information with apps. The four profiles reflect the differing privacy management strategies, perceptions, and intentions of Android users that go beyond the binary decision to share or withhold information via mobile apps. 

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5. Evaluating solvothermal and mechanochemical routes towards the metal–organic framework Mg ₂ ( m -dobdc)

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D2CE00739H  

   Chen, Elena Y.; Mandel, Ruth M.; Milner, Phillip J. (October 2022, CrystEngComm)

   Metal–organic frameworks bearing coordinatively unsaturated Mg( ii ) sites are promising materials for gas storage, chemical separations, and drug delivery due to their low molecular weights and lack of toxicity. However, there remains a limited number of such MOFs reported in the literature. Herein, we investigate the gas sorption properties of the understudied framework Mg 2 ( m -dobdc) (dobdc 4− = 4,6-dioxido-1,3-benzenedicarboxylate) synthesized under both solvothermal and mechanochemical conditions. Both materials are found to be permanently porous, as confirmed by 77 K N 2 adsorption measurements. In particular, Mg 2 ( m -dobdc) synthesized under mechanochemical conditions using exogenous organic base displays one of the highest capacities reported to date (6.14 mmol g −1 ) for CO 2 capture in a porous solid under simulated coal flue gas conditions (150 mbar, 40 °C). As such, mechanochemically synthesized Mg 2 ( m -dobdc) represents a promising new framework for applications requiring high gas adsorption capacities in a porous solid. 

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