In recent years, with the rapid increase in global warming and urbanization, urban heat island effects (UHI) have become an important environmental issue. Taiwan is no exception, with previous studies demonstrating serious UHIs in megacities. Although existing UHI research has utilized computer simulations to analyze improvement scenarios, there are few cooling strategy studies in actual blocks of Taiwan. Therefore, this study selected a block of a megacity in a tropical region of Taiwan as a case study by ENVI-met. Five improvement strategies were tested and compared to the current situation (B0): (1) Case C1 changed to permeable pavement, (2) Case C2 increased the green coverage ratio (GCR) of the street to 60%, (3) Case C3 changed to permeable pavement and increased the GCR in the street to 60%, (4) Case C4 changed to permeable pavement, increased the GCR in the street to 60%, and increased the GCR in the parks to 80%, and (5) Case C5 changed to permeable pavement, increased GCR in the street to 60% and parks to 80%, and set the GCR on the roof of public buildings to 100%. The results showed that the average temperature of the current thermal environment is 36.0 °C, with the comfort level described as very hot. Among the five improvement schemes, C5 had the greatest effect, cooling the area by an average of 2.00 °C. Further analysis of the relationship between the different GCRs of streets (SGCR) and the cooling effects revealed that for every 10% increase in the SGCR, the temperature of the pedestrian layer was reduced by 0.15 °C.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and a common cause of dementia, manifesting as progressive memory loss and cognitive decline. Moscatilin, which reportedly reduces fever and is anti-inflammatory, is the bibenzyl extract from Dendrobium loddigesii. This study aimed to examine whether moscatilin ameliorates tau phosphorylation and cognitive deficits in AD models. The first in vitro AD-like model was developed by cotransfection with the pCAX FLAG APP and pRK5-EGFP-Tau P301L plasmids, resulting in the neuronal overexpression of amyloid precursor protein (APP) and tau P301L, a tauopathy-associated tau. The second model was developed by using okadaic acid to induce tau protein phosphorylation. Spatial memory/cognition was assessed using water maze and elevated plus maze tests in a scopolamine-induced mouse model, and brain slices were evaluated further by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Moscatilin significantly reduced phospho-tau expression in a concentration-dependent manner, decreased tau aggregation, and reduced apoptosis. These results indicated that moscatilin reversed tauopathy through GSK3β inactivation and inhibition of oxidative stress. Furthermore, in vivo data demonstrated that moscatilin ameliorated learning and memory impairments in mice, while IHC and Western blot results of the mouse brain confirmed that moscatilin decreased tau phosphorylation. Our novel findings suggest that moscatilin has neuroprotective effects against AD.

This study took Chiayi City—a tropical, medium-sized city—as an example to investigate the urban heat island (UHI) effect using mobile transects and built environment characteristics in 2018. The findings were compared to those from a study in 1999 to explore the spatiotemporal changes in the built environment characteristics and UHI phenomenon. The result for the UHI intensity (UHII) during the day was approximately 4.1 °C and at midnight was approximately 2.5 °C. Compared with the survey in 1999, the UHII during the day increased by approximately 1.3 °C, and the UHII at midnight decreased by approximately 1.2 °C. The trend of the spatial distribution of the increasing artificial area ratio (AAR) proved the importance of urban land use expansion on UHI. The results of the air temperature survey were incorporated with the nesting space in GIS to explore the role of built environment characteristics in UHI effects. The higher the population density (PD) and artificial area ratio (AAR) were, the closer the proximity was to the downtown area. The green area ratio (GAR) was less than 0.2 in the downtown area and increased closer to the rural areas. The built environment factors were analyzed in detail and correlated with the UHI effect. The air temperature in the daytime increased with the population density (PD) and artificial area ratio (AAR), but decreased with the green area ratio (GAR) (r = ±0.3–0.4). The result showed good agreement with previous studies.

Previous studies have found that built-environment characteristics in large cities produce important effects of the urban heat island (UHI) and know the horizontal space affected by the urban canopy microclimate ranges from about 30–200 m, but there are few studies in medium-sized cities. Therefore, this study investigates canopy-scale built-environment characteristics and their correlation with urban heat island (UHI) effects in Chiayi city, a tropical, medium-sized city. Under a 100 m buffer size, 2D and 3D built-environment factors such as the green coverage ratio (GCR), building coverage ratio (BCR), floor area ratio (FAR), and sky view factor (SVF) were first analyzed and then correlated with the UHI effect. The analyses were repeated on 200 and 1000 m scales and compared to previous studies. It was found that the built-environment factors were more strongly correlated with UHI under the 200 m buffer. Moreover, 2D factors such as the GCR and BCR had a higher correlation with UHI, especially in developing medium-sized cities. Regarding the GCR, BCR, and FAR, as expected, the correlation coefficients with UHI increased to 0.4 at 13:00 during the day and changed from 0.2 to 0.4 at 00:30 at night, whereas the correlation between the SVF and UHI was greatly different from the study area or calculation methods. The scale effect and SVF calculation methods are recommended for further study.

In this study, the details of the existing physiological models of plant transpiration, Jarvis and Kosugi models, were reviewed and field experiments were also conducted to investigate the influence of environmental factors on the transpiration of trees, particularly roadside trees. Data were collected by measuring the environmental factors and the factors influencing stomatal transpiration. The following results were obtained: (1) The transpiration of trees during the daytime was most significantly influenced by solar radiation or photosynthetically active radiation, followed by the leaf or air temperature. (2) The influence of the relative humidity of air on the total amount of transpiration of trees during the daytime was not significant.(3) On the prediction precision of the two models on plant transpiration, Jarvis and Kosugi models were almost the same.