Hydrologic and cryospheric processes observed from space

Ten Dragon 3 projects deal with hydrologic and cryosphere processes, with a focus on the Himalayas and Qinghai – Tibet Plateau, but not limited to that. At the 1st Dragon 3 Progress Symposium in 2013 a significant potential for a better and deeper integration appeared very clearly and we worked out an overview of the ten projects identifying...

Self-Healing Asphalt Review: From Idea to Practice

In recent decades, researchers have revealed the great healing potential of asphalt and proposed various novel methods to inspire and improve the self-healing capacity of asphalt aimed to prolong the service life of asphalt pavement. In this review, up to date research progresses in induction healing and embedded rejuvenator encapsulation are...

Deriving vegetation drag coefficients in combined wave-current flows by calibration and direct measurement methods

Coastal vegetation is efficient in damping incident waves even in storm events, thus providing valuable protections to coastal communities. However, large uncertainties lie in determining vegetation drag coefficients (C_D), which are directly related to the wave damping capacity of a certain vegetated area. One major uncertainty is...

Enhancing the internet of things with knowledge-driven software-defined networking technology: Future perspectives

The Internet of Things (IoT) connects smart devices to enable various intelligent services. The deployment of IoT encounters several challenges, such as difficulties in controlling and managing IoT applications and networks, problems in programming existing IoT devices, long service provisioning time, underused resources, as well as...

Dislocation-induced breakthrough of strength and ductility trade-off in a non-equiatomic high-entropy alloy

In conventional metallic materials, strength and ductility are mutually exclusive, referred to as strength-ductility trade-off. Here, we demonstrate an approach to improve the strength and ductility simultaneously by introducing micro-banding and the accumulation of a high density of dislocations in single-phase high-entropy alloys (HEAs). We...

Improved parameterization of snow albedo in Noah coupled with Weather Research and Forecasting: Applicability to snow estimates for the Tibetan Plateau

Snow albedo is important to the land surface energy balance and to the water cycle. During snowfall and subsequent snowmelt, snow albedo is usually parameterized as functions of snow-related variables in land surface models. However, the default snow albedo scheme in the widely used Noah land surface model shows evident shortcomings in land...

Multi-view Contour-constrained Transformer Network for Thin-cap Fibroatheroma Identification

Identification and detection of thin-cap fibroatheroma (TCFA) from intravascular optical coherence tomography (IVOCT) images is critical for treatment of coronary heart diseases. Recently, deep learning methods have shown promising successes in TCFA identification. However, most methods usually do not effectively utilize multi-view...

Practice of Planning Coordination for Crossborder Spatial Governance in the Yangtze River Delta Region: A Transformative Analysis in Meta-Governance

Nowadays, city clusters have become an important spatial form in the process of global urbanization, characterized by contiguous development across provincial, municipal, and county administrative boundaries, given all-around cross-border circulation of socio-economic factors at the regional scale has become the trend. In order to pursue their...

Introduction to Energy-Efficient Train Operation

Railway, as one of the most energy-efficient transport, plays an essential role in improving the world’s energy and environmental sustainability. Statistics about rail share of transport activities and the corresponding energy consumption will demonstrate the energy efficiency of railway and indicate the potential of developing railway...

Sub-seasonal soil moisture anomaly forecasting using combinations of deep learning, based on the reanalysis soil moisture records

Sub-seasonal drought forecasting is crucial for early warning in estimating agricultural production and optimizing irrigation management, as forecasting skills are relatively weak during this period. Soil moisture exhibits stronger persistence compared to other climate system quantities, which makes it especially influential in shaping land...