This research implements sustainable environmental practices by repurposing post-industrial plastic waste as an alternative material for non-conventional construction systems. Focusing on the development of a recycled polymer matrix, the study produces panels suitable for masonry applications based on tensile and compressive stress performance. The project, conducted in Portoviejo and Medellín, comprises three phases combining bibliographic and experimental research. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), and polypropylene (PP) were processed under controlled temperatures to form a composite matrix. This material demonstrates versatile applications upon cooling—including planks, blocks, caps, signage, and furniture (e.g., chairs). Key findings indicate optimal performance of the recycled thermoplastic polymer matrix at a 1:1:1 ratio of LDPE, HDPE, and PP, exhibiting 15% deformation. The proposed implementation features 50 × 10 × 7 cm panels designed with tongue-and-groove joints. When assembled into larger plates, these panels function effectively as masonry for housing construction, wall cladding, or lightweight fill material for slab relieving.
Maps of forest stand condition—the current phase of the forest-forming process—will be useful for foresters in their forest management in addition to the forest planning and cartographic materials. The mapping methodology was applied in the test area of the Bolshemurtinsky forest district of the Krasnoyarsk region, which is typical for the southern taiga forests of East Siberia. Source data for mapping was obtained on the basis of descriptions of the forest subcompartments on the GIS attribute table of the forest district. Forest stand confinement to the terrain relief indicators was identified on the basis of the SRTM 55-01 digital terrain model data. Spatial analysis has been performed using the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst module. Mapping capability has been shown not only for the year of forest inventory but also for the earlier period of time. To determine the predominant species and the age of the 100-year-old forest stand, a scheme was proposed in which the conceivable options are typified depending on the succession trend, the forest stand age prior to disturbance, and the period of reforestation. Map fragments of the test area as of 2006—the year of forest inventory—and as of 1906—the year of the intensive colonization beginning in southern Siberia—are demonstrated. Maps of forest condition in the test area represent successions that are typical in the southern taiga forests of Siberia: post-harvest, pyrogenic, and biogenic. The methodology of forest condition mapping is universal.
In view of the fact that the convolution neural network segmentation method lacks to capture the global dependency of infected areas in COVID-19 images, which is not conducive to the complete segmentation of scattered lesion areas, this paper proposes a COVID-19 lesion segmentation method UniUNet based on UniFormer with its strong ability to capture global dependency. Firstly, a U-shaped encoder-decoder structure based on UniFormer is designed, which can enhance the cooperation ability of local and global relations. Secondly, Swin spatial pyramid pooling module is introduced to compensate the influence of spatial resolution reduction in the encoder process and generate multi-scale representation. Multi-scale attention gate is introduced at the skip connection to suppress redundant features and enhance important features. Experiment results show that, compared with the other four methods, the proposed model achieves better results in Dice, loU and Recall on COVID-19-CT-Seg and CC-CCIII dataset, and achieves a more complete segmentation of the lesion area.
In April 2023, the government of Changshu City, in Jiangsu Province, China, announced that it would officially use digital Chinese Yuan (E-CNY) as a method of wage payment to the government and state-owned enterprises staff starting in May. With the gradual improvement and application of E-CNY technologies, such as no electricity, no internet payment (offline payment), and the programmability of smart contracts, E-CNY will be officially used in China. CNN said China is on the verge of a cashless society. The advantages of E-CNY have a positive role in promoting the Chinese government’s implementation of the development goals of a low-carbon and sustainable economy. However, artificial intelligence (AI) trust concerns are the primary bottleneck in the current development based on intelligent algorithms and digital information technology. AI trust concerns are affecting the scope of use of E-CNY, and it may need to achieve effective scale-use, making it promote low-carbon and sustainable development. From the industry perspective, this article selects the housing rental enterprises, which are challenging to develop and energy-intensive, to analyze the theoretical approach and practical impact of E-CNY in promoting the low-carbon and sustainable development of China’s rental housing economy. Meanwhile, from the perspective of Chinese consumers, the impact of AI trust concerns on E-CNY in promoting low-carbon and sustainable development is analyzed in this article.
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