Conservation of plant biodiversity requires in situ protection of native habitat and ex situ conservation methods to secure collections of propagules for restoration and reintroduction. Integrating both in situ and ex situ strategies is essential in Hawai'i, where over half the native flora is at risk of endangerment or extinction due to threats such as alien invasive species, habitat modification, climate change, and other human impacts (Sakai et al., 2002; Fortini et al., 2013; Weisenberger and Keir, 2014b; IUCN [International Union for the Conservation of Nature], 2018). The recent commencement of widespread in situ recovery efforts across the state has not yet stemmed rapid decline within remaining populations of many endemic species (IUCN, 2018). In fact, the number of federally listed Threatened and Endangered (T&E) plants in Hawai'i has increased by 56% over the last decade (USFWS, 2018). Accordingly, maintaining viable propagules as an ex situ "genetic safety net" until appropriate habitat can be protected is often the only way to prevent further extinctions (Havens et al., 2004). Restoration outplantings are often experimental, testing site suitability and mixing source material to determine which combinations are most effective (Guerrant and Kaye, 2007). One limiting factor biodiversity managers need to overcome to successfully restore habitats and populations is obtaining enough propagules to maximize genetic diversity. Thus, managers are increasingly dependent on ex situ germplasm storage to accumulate collections from small fragmented subpopulations, so that plant material collected from maternal founders over multiple seasons can be recombined

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Considering the surge in e-learning growth over the last decade and the proliferation of mobile devices in the Bring Your Own Device generation, this paper reviews selected use cases of Bluetooth beacons in educational situations. We review the contribution of Bluetooth beacons to a mixed pedagogy that uses digital and physical learning spaces, and we discuss the pilot deployment of Bluetooth beacons at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, to enhance physical learning spaces. Our work represents one of the first deployments of Bluetooth beacons in a university teaching and learning capacity and provides a starting point for others attempting to utilise beacon-enabled location-based services to enhance learner experiences. The widespread adoption of beacon technology in educational institutions has not yet occurred, and the most common usage of beacon transmitters and systems in education is for attendance-taking and dissemination of teaching material. Mobile applications are constantly being developed to utilise the location-based services provided by beacons to enhance student learning and effectiveness. This paper also discusses the sustainability benefits of beacon systems, especially in the contexts of smart campus and smart city development.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is a wireless network technology used for transmitting data over short distances. BLE maintains a data transmission range comparable to the regular Bluetooth transmission, but consumes less energy and cost. iBeacon technology refers to BLE mobile devices, which allow mobile applications to receive signals from iBeacons in both indoor and outdoor environments. It is commonly used nowadays for positioning, location services, navigation and marketing, for the sustainable development of smart cities. The applications, however, can be further enhanced for use in many disciplines, such as education, health sector, and exhibitions for disseminating information. This study performed a set of robustness and performance tests on BLE-based iBeacons in the teaching and learning environments to evaluate the performance of iBeacon signals for positioning. During robustness testing, positioning accuracy, signal availability and stability were assessed under different environmental conditions, and the findings suggested pedestrian traffic blocking the line of sight between iBeacon and receiver, causing the most signal attenuations and variation in RSSI. In performance testing, a series of tests was conducted to evaluate the deployment of the iBeacons for positioning; leading to recommendations of iBeacon deployment location, density, transmission interval, fingerprint space interval and collection time in physical learning spaces for sustainable eLearning environments.

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