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Almost 15 years have gone ever since the discovery of graphene as a single atom layer. Numerous papers have been published to demonstrate its high electron mobility, excellent thermal and mechanical as well as optical properties. We have recently seen more and more applications towards using graphene in commercial products. This paper is an attempt to review and summarize the current status of the research of the thermal properties of graphene and other 2D based materials including the manufacturing and characterization techniques and their applications, especially in electronics and power modules. It is obvious from the review that graphene has penetrated the market and gets more and more applications in commercial electronics thermal management context. In the paper, we also made a critical analysis of how mature the manufacturing processes are; what are the accuracies and challenges with the various characterization techniques and what are the remaining questions and issues left before we see further more applications in this exciting and fascinating field.

Changes in vegetation activity are driven by multiple natural and anthropogenic factors, which can be reflected by Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from satellites. In this paper, NDVI trends from 1982 to 2012 are first estimated by the Theil-Sen median slope method to explore their spatial and temporal patterns. Then, the impact of climate variables and human activity on the observed NDVI trends is analyzed. Our results show that on average, NDVI increased by 0.46 × 10 1982-2004, 1995-2004, and 2005-2012, respectively. A positive partial correlation of NDVI and temperature is observed in the first period but it decreases and occasionally becomes negative in the following periods, especially in the Humid Temperate and Dry Domain Regions. This suggests a weakened effect of temperature on vegetation growth. Precipitation, on the other hand, is found to have a positive impact on the NDVI trend. This effect becomes stronger in the third period of 1995-2004, especially