The present paper discusses the case of the Madrid Nuevo Norte Project (MNNP) in order to examine the relation of this mega-project with the city’s sustainable development. For this reason, the study used a qualitative approach using semi-structural interviews with experts (Madrid’s town hall, Madrid State, and the program management office and other external) that relayed strongly with MNNP. The expert panel requirements are split in six expertise areas: sustainability, urban development, urban planning, government or public affairs, project management or Madrid Nuevo Norte (MNN) key stakeholders. The study highlighted the vital importance of MNNP as a flagship sustainable project for the rest of Europe, that meets sustainability criteria for contributing substantially in the improvement of the quality of life of final users and for the community in general. For instance, it contributes to the regeneration of the city’s degraded area, to the interconnection of an isolated part of the city and public transportation connection, improving the external image of Madrid. Despite of it, there are some challenges that should be carefully managed such as applying sustainable solutions from other cities not properly tailored to Madrid, housing pricing accessibility increase due to the lack of terrain in Madrid and the politization of the project as discussion topic between local parties. In this context, local authorities should give particular emphasis in complying with the principles of sustainability for improving the overall performance of MNNP, ensuring social justice and prosperity for the people of Madrid.

The use of different energy sources and the worry of running out of some of them in the modern world have made factors such as environmental pollution and even energy sustainability vital. Vital resources for humanity include water, environment, food, and energy. As a result, building strong trust in these resources is crucial because of their interconnected nature. Sustainability in security of energy, water and food, generally decreases costs and improves durability. This study introduces and describes the components of a system named “Desktop Energetic Dark Greenhouse” in the context of the quadruple nexus of water, environment, food, and energy in urban life. This solution can concurrently serve to strengthen the sustainable security of water, environment, food, and energy. For home productivity, a small-scale version of this project was completed. The costs and revenues for this system have been determined after conducting an economic study from the viewpoints of the investor and the average household. The findings indicate that the capital return period is around five years from the investor’s perspective. The capital return on investment for this system is less than 4 years from the standpoint of the households. According to the estimates, this system annually supplies about 20 kg of vegetables or herbs, which means about one third of the annual needs of a family.

Monitoring marine biodiversity is a challenge in some vulnerable and difficult-to-access habitats, such as underwater caves. Underwater caves are a great focus of biodiversity, concentrating a large number of species in their environment. However, most of the sessile species that live on the rocky walls are very vulnerable, and they are often threatened by different pressures. The use of these spaces as a destination for recreational divers can cause different impacts on the benthic habitat. In this work, we propose a methodology based on video recordings of cave walls and image analysis with deep learning algorithms to estimate the spatial density of structuring species in a study area. We propose a combination of automatic frame overlap detection, estimation of the actual extent of surface cover, and semantic segmentation of the main 10 species of corals and sponges to obtain species density maps. These maps can be the data source for monitoring biodiversity over time. In this paper, we analyzed the performance of three different semantic segmentation algorithms and backbones for this task and found that the Mask R-CNN model with the Xception101 backbone achieves the best accuracy, with an average segmentation accuracy of 82%.

The semiclassical boron–boron interatomic pair potential is constructed in an integral form allowing its converting into the analytical one. It is an ab initio B–B potential free of any semiempirical adjusting parameters, which would serve as an effective tool for the theoretical characterization of all-boron and boron-rich nanomaterials.

The US Infrastructure Investment and Job Act (IIJA), also commonly referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, passed in 2021, has drawn international attention. It aims to help to rebuild US infrastructure, including transportation networks, broadband, water, power and energy, environmental protection and public works projects. An estimated $1.2 trillion in total funding over ten years will be allocated. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill is the largest funding bill for US infrastructure in the recent history of the United States. This review article will specifically discuss funding allocations for roads and bridges, power and grids, broadband, water infrastructure, airports, environmental protection, ports, Western water infrastructure, electric vehicle charging stations and electric school buses in the new spending of the Infrastructure Investment and Job Act and why these investments are urgently necessary. This article will also briefly discuss the views of think tank experts, the public policy perspectives, the impact on domestic and global arenas of the new spending in the IIJA, and the public policy implications.