To mitigate the climate change-induced water shortage and realize the sustainable development of agriculture, drip irrigation, a more efficient water-saving irrigation method, has been intensively implemented in most arid agricultural regions in the world. However, compared to traditional border irrigation, how drip irrigation affects the biophysical conditions in the cropland and how crops physio

Plastic film mulching (PFM) in the cropland may alter biophysical conditions for crop growth, which may not be accounted for in existing stomatal conductance models. This can affect the accuracy of carbon–nitrogen-water cycle simulations for the soil-crop systems and hamper our understanding of internal mechanisms that control plant leaf stomatal conductance (gsw). To evaluate the simulations of P

The phase behavior of some different colloid systems is reviewed. Starting off with polymer solutions, we recall that while the monomers are soluble in the solvent, the polymer may not. Two polymers are even less miscible. Block copolymer melts, formed by two immiscible blocks, undergo “microphase separation” and form ordered liquid crystalline phases. Colloidal spheres crystallize at higher conce

This paper investigates the outcomes of small-scale egalitarian language contact in an attempt to address whether different linguistic domains exhibit different degrees of stability and resistance to convergence among cohabitant speakers of Jahai and Jedek, two closely related Aslian (Austroasiatic) language varieties spoken in northern Peninsular Malaysia. Using nonparametric Bayesian mixture mod

According to conventional wisdom, improving energy efficiency is an easy way to mitigate climate change and improve energy security, though the reduction in energy intensity in developed economies is largely due to offshoring energy-intensive production to developing countries. This chapter presents a contrarian view. Theory, historical evidence, and time series analysis suggest that the economy-w

Machine learning methods are now ubiquitous in physics, but often target objectives that are one or two steps removed from our physics goals. A prominent example of this is the discrimination between signal and background processes, which doesn’t account for the presence of systematic uncertainties – something crucial for the calculation of quantities such as the discovery significance and upper l

This chapter sets the scene for the Handbook by examining definitions of sustainable transport and explaining the rationale and structure of the book. The four parts of the book are outlined, including the brief that authors were given for their contributions to the book.

Chapter 5, ‘Evaluating the sustainability impacts of the sharing economy using input-output analysis’ by Andrius Plepys and Jagdeep Singh presents key challenges associated with a systematic sustainability evaluation of access-based consumption models. Starting with a causal loop diagram representing various reported and potential impacts of a generic sharing system, the authors provide a comprehe