Building and Environment 49 (2012) 97e103

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Building and Environment

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Decomposition of pollution contributors to urban ozone levels concerning regional and local scales
Hong-di Hea, Wei-Zhen Lub, *
a b

Logistics Research Center & Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Shipping Logistics Information, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai 200135, China Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 27 July 2011 Received in revised form 15 September 2011 Accepted 16 September 2011 Keywords: Air pollutant Multicollinearity Ozone Principal component analysis Multiple regression analysis

a b s t r a c t
An investigation of historical database of environmental pollutants (RSP, NO, NO2, NOx, Ozone, SO2, NO/ NO2 and NO2/NOx) and meteorological parameters at selected air monitoring stations in Hong Kong, is reported in this paper. Multiple regression and principal component analysis are employed to predict ozone levels from data of pollutants and meteorological variables. The results indicated that the performance of logarithmic transformation of ozone values is better than original data; based on this transformation, the variable NO2/NOx explained 75% of variation of the ozone level at Sha Tin and 83% at Kwun Tong. The ozone level increased exponentially with increase of NO2/NOx but the critical point was judged to be 0.5. In addition, due to close relationships between these studied variables, inuence of meteorological variables on ozone concentration was conrmed being incorporated in pollutant variables and could not be segregated in the regression model. The results showed that meteorological variables account for 31% and 34% of ozone variation at Sha Tin and Kwun Tong, respectively. The cloud amount was observed as the most important factor at both stations. Data of Sha Tin and Kwun Tong were compared to ascertain the effect of geographical location on ozone variation. It seems that ozone level depended more heavily on variations in pollutants and meteorological variables. It can be deduced that Kwun Tong located near Victoria harbor and surrounded by hilly terrain of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island is in a disadvantageous position in terms of ozone dispersion, which results in relatively high ozone concentration. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The troposphere is the region of the Earths atmosphere in which we live and into which chemical compounds are generally emitted by human activities. Urban areas are major sources of air pollution. Generally, air pollutants concentrations in urban areas are affected not only by chemical reactions that transform contaminants but also by physical processes such as accumulation or dispersion under certain meteorological conditions [8,9,11,13,18e21,27]. Hence, it is difcult to control and predict the variation of these pollutants concentration, especially ozone concentration, which is the secondary photochemical pollutant generated by chemical reactions in air. Ozone is produced from anthropogenic precursors that include industrial and vehicular emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx). VOC can react with NOx under the action of sunlight; ozone level depends highly on the initial concentration of VOCs.Besides, reactions between SO2, CO, CH4 and
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 852 27844316; fax: 852 27887612. E-mail address: bcwzlu@cityu.edu.hk (W.-Z. Lu). 0360-1323/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2011.09.019

NO also contribute much to ozone level in air [3,16]. Actually, there are no signicant primary emissions of ozone into the atmosphere; all ozone found in air is formed by chemical reactions under certain meteorological conditions [30]. Therefore, it is necessary to study the variation of ozone level in urban areas, considering effects of pollutants variables (VOCs, SO2 and NO, etc.) and meteorological variables (humidity and solar radiation, etc.). In previous studies, many scholars developed plenty of photochemical models to investigate the ozone formation in photochemical chain reactions and obtained many scientic results [10,14]. However, due to differences in the structure and reactivity of individual VOC species, each VOC has a different effect on ozone variation. Study of ozone through VOC in photochemical model sometime becomes complicated [5]. Hence, some researchers attempt to focus on investigating the inuence of NOx on ozone. They explore the relationship between them via statistical analysis approaches such as statistical regression, graphical analysis, fuzzy logic and cluster analysis [1,3,4,12,17,29]. Among these methods, multiple regression analysis (MRA) is one of the most widely used methods for deducing the dependence of

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a response variable on several independent (predictor) variables. In spite of its evident success in many applications, however, the regression approach still has some shortcomings when the independent variables are correlated with each other [22]. Multicollinearity, or high correlations between independent variables in a regression equation, makes it difcult to correctly identify the most important contributors to a physical process. One of the most effective methods for removing multicollinearity and redundant independent variables is to use principal component analysis (PCA), which has been employed in airquality studies to separate interrelationships into statistically independent basic components [2,23,26]. They are equally useful in regression analysis for mitigating the problem of multicollinearity, and in exploring the relationships among the independent variables, particularly if it is not obvious which of the variables is the predictor. In this paper, there appeared strong multicollinearity between these variables and, therefore, the PCA method is applied to optimize spatial patterns and remove possible complications caused by multicollinearity. The main goal of this study is to seek the primary variables affecting the ozone formation, thus providing a useful and practical method for forecasting ozone concentration. We also attempt to reveal the effect of geographical environment on the ozone formation. 2. Materials and methods 2.1. Investigation area and data collection To understand and specify characteristics of variations in ozone level, data of environmental pollutants variables (SO2, RSP, NO, NO2, NOx, Ozone, NO/NO2 and NO2/NOx) and meteorological variables (pressure, temperature, relative humidity, cloud amount, sunshine hours, solar radiation, evaporation, wind speed and direction) were collected for the period 2001e2007 at two monitoring sites in Hong Kong, Sha Tin, a residential area and Kwun Tong, a densely populated residential area with signicant commercial and industrial dwellings. Sha Tin station is located in Kowloon, surrounded by many small hills and plains, while Kwun Tong station is located in Victoria harbor, surrounded by the hilly terrain of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island (Fig. 1). The difference in topography is convenient to identify the effect of pollutants variables, as well as meteorological variables, on ozone level. The air pollution data (hourly) used in this study were provided by the Hong Kong

Environment Protection Department (HKEPD) and meteorological data were obtained from the Hong Kong Observatory (HKO). 2.2. Analysis methods Ozone is a secondary pollutant in urban or industrial areas and its ambient air concentration is inuenced by two independent groups of factors: emission rates of primary pollutants and meteorological conditions. It is well known that ozone generation rate relates to these factors in a complex way. It is difcult to quantify contributions of chemical reactions to ozone level under certain conditions. However, multiple regression analysis (MRA) is regarded as one of the most cost-effective methods to identify causeeffect relationships. In this study, MRA was used to nd equations for predicting ozone concentration with pollutants and meteorological variables as the predictor variables. With independent variables NO, NO2, SO2, RSP, NOx, NO/NO2, NO2/NOx, pressure (Pre), temperature (Tem), relative humidity (RH), cloud amount (Cloud), sunshine hours (Sun), solar radiation (Solar), evaporation (Eva), wind direction (WD) and wind speed (WS), a stepwise multiple regression procedure was used, with the objective of seeking variables that best t the ozone data. Principal component analysis (PCA) is a statistical technique that transforms the original set of inter-correlated variables into a new set of an equal number of independent uncorrelated variables or principal components (PCs) that are linear combinations of the original variables. The principal components are ordered such that the rst PC explains most of the variance in the data, and each subsequent PC accounts for the largest proportion of variability that has not been accounted for by its predecessors [2,25]. To better clarify the inuence of each original variable in the PCs, a rotational algorithm, such as varimax rotation, is deduced to obtain the rotated factor loadings that represent the contribution of each variable to a specic PC. Varimax rotation ensures that each variable is maximally correlated with only one principal component and a near zero association with other components [26]. The method used in this paper optimizes spatial patterns and removes (probably implied) multicollinearity between pollutants variables and meteorological variables. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. Data analysis Ozone is not directly emitted into the air from particular activities in urban or industrial areas and can, therefore, be regarded as a secondary pollutant. Unlike ideal formation and destruction of ozone in the troposphere with simple cyclic dynamics shown in Fig. 2, and the ground level of ozone concentration mostly depends on the presence of primary pollutants (e.g., NO, NO2, NOx, etc.), as well as the UV light itself [6,7] (Fig. 3). During morning time, ozone level tends to decrease due to accumulation of NO from vehicle emissions, some of which consume ozone within the reaction

Fig. 1. Location of sampling sites in Hong Kong.

Fig. 2. Ideal cyclic system of reactions for O3 in equilibrium status.

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NO O3 /NO2 O2 ; afterward, ozone level tends to increase because of the stronger solar radiation, which helps NO2 and O2 dissociate into O3 NO2 O2 hn/NO O3 . The peak value of ozone was observed at about 14:00 h while solar radiation also reached its highest at this time [24,28,29]. It can be deduced that there appear close relationships between ozone level and meteorological conditions, including at least solar radiation. Therefore, to deeply understand the effect of meteorological variables on ozone level, pollutants data at 14:00 h were chosen to match the daily meteorological data. Table 1 shows Pearson correlation matrices of variables measured at Sha Tin and Kwun Tong stations. Statistically signicant correlation coefcients (P < 0.001) are highlighted in bold. Ozone concentrations were negatively correlated with NO, NO2, NOx and NO/NO2, but positively with SO2, RSP and NO2/NOx at both stations. This result was expected since the negatively correlated pollutants were known precursors of ozone, indicating that a rise in ozone concentration was associated with a drop in levels of NO, NO2, NOx and NO/NO2. Among meteorological variables, ozone level appeared to have high correlation coefcients with relative humidity and cloud and was weakly correlated with temperature and wind speed. In addition, cross correlations between different variables were also observed (Table 1). It can be seen that most of them have a close relationship with each other, which implies the existence of multicollinearity. 3.2. Multiple regression analysis
Fig. 3. Hourly Observed values of NO, NO2 and O3.

With MRA, the signicant variables were chosen as predator variables to forecast ozone concentration. Table 2 presents results

Table 1 Person correlation matrix of selected variables. O3 (a) Sha Tin 1 O3 NO NO2 SO2 RSP NOx NO/NO2 NO2/NOx Pre Tem RH Cloud Sun Solar Evap WD WS (b) Kwun Tong 1 O3 NO NO2 SO2 RSP NOx NO/NO2 NO2/NOx Pre Tem RH Cloud Sun Solar Evap WD WS NO 0.43 1 NO2 0.13 0.83 1 SO2 0.02 0.53 0.57 1 RSP 0.61 0.13 0.43 0.39 1 NOx 0.34 0.98 0.92 0.57 0.24 1 NO/NO2 0.64 0.53 0.04 0.18 0.40 0.38 1 NO2/NOx 0.75 L0.50 0.03 0.15 0.49 0.35 L0.96 1 Pre 0.25 0.19 0.07 0.21 0.28 0.15 0.33 0.37 1 Tem 0.05 0.06 0.02 0.23 0.17 0.03 0.25 0.27 L0.81 1 RH L0.50 0.15 0.04 0.11 0.48 0.09 0.35 0.39 0.42 0.17 1 Cloud 0.47 0.11 0.03 0.16 0.35 0.06 0.25 0.29 0.28 0.01 0.64 1 Sun 0.31 0.13 0.06 0.13 0.14 0.11 0.10 0.11 0.09 0.19 0.47 L0.76 1 Solar 0.31 0.22 0.17 0.15 0.07 0.21 0.09 0.07 0.13 0.48 0.41 L0.60 0.87 1 Evap 0.23 0.13 0.10 0.18 0.07 0.13 0.01 0.01 0.33 0.60 0.36 0.39 0.61 0.78 1 WD 0.12 0.20 0.16 0.33 0.02 0.19 0.22 0.24 L0.51 0.48 0.06 0.05 0.05 0.17 0.29 1 WS 0.08 0.33 0.30 0.25 0.02 0.33 0.18 0.18 0.21 0.33 0.12 0.20 0.19 0.28 0.13 0.11 1 0.07 0.15 0.13 0.17 0.02 0.16 0.07 0.05 0.21 0.33 0.12 0.20 0.19 0.28 0.13 0.10 1

0.44 1

0.16 0.65 1

0.09 0.54 0.52 1

0.52 0.22 0.68 0.38 1

0.29 0.97 0.81 0.58 0.38 1

L0.76 0.56 0.21 0.22 0.42 0.37 1

0.87 L0.52 0.23 0.13 0.50 0.33 L0.96 1

0.26 0.01 0.15 0.19 0.26 0.04 0.28 0.27 1

0.05 0.10 0.16 0.18 0.17 0.13 0.15 0.12 L0.81 1

0.48 0.06 0.26 0.09 0.40 0.04 0.35 0.38 0.42 0.17 1

0.46 0.08 0.23 0.11 0.30 0.01 0.34 0.37 0.28 0.01 0.64 1

0.31 0.10 0.08 0.12 0.11 0.05 0.19 0.21 0.09 0.19 0.47 L0.76 1

0.31 0.19 0.02 0.15 0.06 0.16 0.18 0.19 0.13 0.48 0.41 L0.60 0.87 1

0.21 0.15 0.04 0.17 0.03 0.13 0.07 0.09 0.33 0.60 0.36 0.39 0.61 0.78 1

0.18 0.17 0.07 0.36 0.03 0.15 0.25 0.22 L0.51 0.48 0.06 0.05 0.05 0.17 0.29 1

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Table 2 Regression models for predicting ozone and log (ozone) using original independent variables. (a) Ozone at Sha Tin NO2/NOx R-Sq F Value Pr > F 0.584 2808.5 <.0001 RSP 0.659 441.5 <.0001 NO2 0.729 540.6 <.0001 Sun 0.760 237.1 <.0001 NO/NO2 0.788 275.9 <.0001 Pre 0.802 129.3 <.0001 SO2 0.803 16.9 <.0001 Cloud 0.804 13.9 0.0002 Eva 0.805 8.5 0.0037 WS 0.806 12.8 0.0004 RH 0.807 8.76 0.0031

(b) Log (ozone) at Sha Tin NO2/NOx R-Sq F Value Pr > F 0.748 5956.6 <.0001 Solar 0.798 497.7 <.0001 NOx 0.821 258.3 <.0001 RSP 0.861 573.6 <.0001 NO/NO2 0.870 136.8 <.0001 NO 0.873 44.3 <.0001 Sun 0.874 15.8 <.0001 SO2 0.875 10.8 0.0010 WD 0.875 10.7 0.0011

(c) Ozone at Kwun Tong NO2/NOx R-Sq F Value Pr > F 0.759 5811.7 <.0001 NO/NO2 0.818 605.8 <.0001 RH 0.839 229.1 <.0001 SO2 0.850 140.7 <.0001 Solar 0.858 101.2 <.0001 RSP 0.863 68.3 <.0001 NO2 0.866 45.3 <.0001 NOx 0.869 38.2 <.0001 WS 0.871 26.1 <.0001 Tem 0.872 11.3 0.0008

(d) Log (Ozone) at Kwun Tong NO2/NOx R-Sq F Value Pr > F 0.832 9172.7 <.0001 RH 0.852 245.4 <.0001 SO2 0.868 217.4 <.0001 Solar 0.878 155.8 <.0001 WD 0.888 156.5 <.0001 WS 0.893 95.7 <.0001 Pre 0.895 26.8 <.0001

The variables with bold values are selected as independent variable for predicting the ozone level in Fig.4.

of analysis of Sha Tin and Kwun Tong data. Under a stepwise multiple regression procedure in SAS, all variables left in the regression model were signicant at the 0.01 level while no other variables met the 0.01 signicance level for being included in the model. The coefcient of multiple determinations, R2, gives the proportion of variation in ozone concentration explained by independent variables in the model. In this study, when the best variables were selected to t ozone data, values of the adjusted R2 were about 0.81 and 0.87 for Sha Tin and Kwun Tong, respectively. This means, at these two stations, 81% and 87% of the variation in ozone data were explained by independent variables listed in this table. The common variables in both models were NO2/NOx, NO/NO2, SO2, RSP, NO2, humidity and wind speed. Among these, NO2/NOx alone explained up to 58% and 76% of ozone concentration recorded at these two stations and, therefore, NO2/NOx can be regarded as the dominant precursor of ozone concentration. In conformity with [3], it was found that the performance of the regression model improved substantially after logarithmic transformation of ozone data at both stations. Table 2b and d present the results using the logarithm of ozone concentration in the regression. As can be seen from the table, adjusted coefcients of determination of the single independent variable NO2/NOx reached 75% and 83% at these two stations, indicating that this transformation was signicant and effective for explaining the variation of ozone concentration. The main objective of the regression analysis was to select a subset of predictor variables that provided the best prediction equation for modeling of ozone concentration. From Table 2 above, different sets of variables could be selected as independent variables and all of them were statistically signicant. For better explaining the total ozone variation, using a small number of variables, NO2/ NOx, Solar, NOx and RSP (Table 2b) were chosen for predicting ozone level at Sha Tin station; no other variable from the table above could provide much contribution. Based on these four independent variables, ozone concentrations were predicted by the equation (Fig. 4a and b). Similarly, NO2/NOx and humidity (Table 2d) were used to predict ozone level at Kwun Tong station (Fig. 4c and d). Only data for 2007 clearly illustrate the difference between predicted and observed values. Comparing these results at these two stations, the variation of ozone concentration can be mostly explained using fewer variables at Kwun Tong station, which means the variation of

ozone level here is not complicated and can be easily predicted. Kwun Tong is located in Victoria harbor and is surrounded by the hilly terrain of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, implying the disadvantage of inability to disperse ozone, result in this phenomenon. From the regression analysis results above, ozone concentration highly depends on the ratio of NO2 and NOx at both stations. However, these data pertain to readings at 14:00 h only, to match the daily meteorological variables. The relationship between all hourly data could not be shown. So it is necessary to extend the study to all hourly data. Fig. 5 shows the variation of ozone level as a function of NO2/ NOx for all hourly data at Sha Tin and Kwun Tong stations. It can be seen that ozone concentrations at both stations increased exponentially as NO2/NOx increased. In most situations, the ratio of NO2 and NOx was less than 0.5. In other words, the quality of NO2 was less than the value of NO most of the time. Once NO2 was larger than NO in quality, NO2 was probably transformed into NO because of chemical reactions. So the critical point can be judged to be at the value of 0.5 in quality. It is suggested that this characteristic should be signicant for policy-makers to take effective measures to reduce pollutants, including ozone and oxides of nitrogen. In addition, difference between concentration of total oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and the total oxidant Ox (NO2 Ozone) is also plotted in Fig. 6. The Ox increased with NOx and the data roughly seem to t a linear regression. In previous studies [11,21], the intercept is generally interpreted as being the regional contribution to Ox that is independent of NOx and the gradient is explained as the local contribution that correlates with the level of primary pollution, such as vehicle emissions. In this study, regional contributions to Ox from two different sets of data were quite similar but local contributions seemed to be different. More local contribution appeared at Kwun Tong station. It can be inferred that more vehicle emissions and location specic factors together contribute to high ozone concentration at Kwun Tong station. 3.3. Principal components analysis From the results of multiple regression analysis, there appears signicant multicollinearity among the predictors, especially

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Fig. 4. Predicted values of log ozone vs observed values at Sha Tin and Kwun Tong stations.

Fig. 5. Variation of ozone level as a function of NO2/NOx at Sha Tin (a) and Kwun Tong (b).

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Fig. 6. Difference between Ox and NOx concentration at Sha Tin (a) and Kwun Tong (b).

Table 3 Rotated principal component loadings. PC1 Pre Tem RH Cloud Suns Solar Evap WD WS Eigenvalue Proportion Cumulative 0.038 0.027 0.009 0.027 0.002 0.010 0.005 0.998 0.013 7744.8 0.9008 0.9008 PC2 0.081 0.018 0.249 0.951 0.108 0.111 0.019 0.030 0.050 649.8 0.0756 0.9763 PC3 0.280 0.232 0.483 0.094 0.052 0.117 0.014 0.031 0.780 105.5 0.0123 0.9886 PC4 0.491 0.386 0.359 0.121 0.137 0.306 0.102 0.026 0.586 41.1 0.0048 0.9934 PC5 0.276 0.322 0.726 0.237 0.161 0.385 0.134 0.027 0.212 36.9 0.0043 0.9977 PC6 0.543 0.172 0.216 0.117 0.368 0.689 0.075 0.012 0.002 15.1 0.0018 0.9994 PC7 0.547 0.804 0.025 0.008 0.069 0.208 0.065 0.001 0.025 3.3 0.0004 0.9998 PC8 0.050 0.001 0.008 0.047 0.895 0.439 0.047 0.000 0.001 1.1 0.0001 0.9999 PC9 0.011 0.127 0.042 0.006 0.020 0.148 0.979 0.000 0.022 0.6 0.0001 1

The variables with loading larger than 0.5 (bold) are selected for principal components interpretation [5].

meteorological variables, judging by the strength of correlation coefcients between them (Table 1a and b). For instance, in Pearson correlation matrix, the cloud variable was more relevant for ozone level at both stations but contributed little effect in regression analysis model. The effect of cloud on ozone level is probably hidden in other variables. The presence of such strong multicollinearity makes the regression models inappropriate to clarify which meteorological variable constitute important factors. To counter this, only meteorological variables were transformed into an equal number of principal components, as explained in Section 2.2. After the transformation, varimax rotation was used to maximize the loading of one predictor variable on one component. Table 3 shows results of varimax rotation of the nine principal components together with the amount of variance explained by each component. The higher the loading of a variable, the more that
Table 4 Linear regression models for prediction of log(O3) using principal components. Sha Tin PC2 Partial R-Sq R-Sq F Value Pr > F 0.158 0.158 391.46 <.0001 PC3 0.079 0.237 217.4 <.0001 PC1 0.054 0.291 157.64 <.0001 PC5 0.013 0.304 38.67 <.0001 PC6

variable contributes to the variation accounted for by the particular principal component. In practice, only loadings with absolute values greater than 0.5 were selected for principal components interpretation [15]. A principal component with an eigenvalue greater than or equal to 1 is usually considered to be statistically signicant (the Kaiser criterion). From Table 3, it can be seen that the wind direction took up much loading (90%) on the rst principal component, followed by the cloud variable on the second one and wind speed variable on the third one. The remaining variables were represented by the rest of the principal components accounting for successively smaller proportions of the total variation. It can be deduced that the wind direction and cloud variables have a dominant inuence on all meteorological variations. Principal components scores were then used as independent variables in a stepwise regression analysis to determine the original

Kwun Tong PC2 0.155 0.155 355.74 <.0001 PC1 0.119 0.274 305 <.0001 PC3 0.044 0.318 125.28 <.0001 PC5 0.013 0.331 38.22 <.0001 PC6 0.005 0.336 14.69 0.0001

0.008 0.312 24.62 <.0001

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independent variables signicant to explain variations of transformed ozone observations. Results of the analysis are summarized in Table 4 for Sha Tin as well as Kwun Tong. At Sha Tin station, PC2 dominated with cloud variable contributing 15.8% of variation of ozone level, followed by PC3 (7.9%) and PC1 (5.4%), which were characterized with wind speed and wind direction, respectively. The remaining PCs contributed small proportions; the rst three principal components together explained 29.1% of variations in ozone level. For Kwun Tong station, the proportion was higher at 31.8% and it was different for each PC: PC2 (15.5%), PC1 (11.9%) and PC3 (4.4%). In contrast, PC1 dominated with wind direction explaining the highest proportion of ozone variation at Kwun Tong station while contribution of PC3 (wind speed) was smaller. It can be judged that wind direction had a strong inuence on pollutants dispersion. As mentioned before, Kwun Tong is located in Victoria harbor and is surrounded by the hilly terrains of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, which is a disadvantage for pollutants dispersion. Therefore, at this special geographic location, compared with wind speed, wind direction contributes more to diffusion of pollutants concentrations and improvement of the air quality. 4. Conclusion The analysis presented in this study suggests that variation of ozone level depends not only on environmental pollutants such as SO2, RSP, NO, NO2, NOx, Ozone, NO/NO2 and NO2/NOx, but also on meteorological variables pressure, temperature, relative humidity, cloud amount, sunshine hours, solar radiation, evaporation and wind speed and direction. Multiple regressions analysis was applied to seek the primary variables for forecasting ozone concentration. The results showed that variable NO2/NOx explained the largest proportion of variation in ozone level, and can be regarded as the most signicant predictor. In addition, the principal component analysis method was used to determine contributions of each meteorological variable. It was found that these variables describe a total of 31% and 34% of ozone level at the two stations and among these, the cloud variable was observed to be the most important factor. Furthermore, comparing the results at the two stations, ozone concentration depends more heavily on pollutants variables and meteorological variables at Kwun Tong station. It can be deduced that the geography of Kwun Tong, plays key role to inuence the resultant ozone level. Acknowledgment The work described here was partially supported by research grants from City University of Hong Kong, HKSAR [No. CityU-SRG 7002684], Science & Technology Program of Shanghai Maritime University [Nos. 20110046 and 20110048], and National Natural Science Foundation of China [Nos. 71101088 and 71171129]. References
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