Decarbonizing the cement industry: Findings from coupling prospective life cycle assessment of clinker with integrated assessment model scenarios

In the race to achieve global climate neutrality, carbon intensive industries like the clinker and cement industry are required to decarbonize rapidly. The environmental impacts related to potential transition pathways to low-carbon systems can be evaluated using prospective life cycle assessment (pLCA). This study conducts a pLCA for future...

Real-Time Measurements of Photonic Microchips with Femtometer-Scale Spectral Precision and Ultrahigh Sensitivity

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are enabling breakthroughs in several areas, including quantum computing, neuromorphic processors, wearable devices, and more. Nevertheless, existing PIC measurement methods lack the spectral precision, speed, and sensitivity required for refining current applications and exploring new frontiers such as...

A Fully Integrated Sequential Synchronized Switch Harvesting on Capacitors Rectifier Based on Split-Electrode for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting

Synchronized rectifiers offer promising solutions for piezoelectric energy harvesting; however, achieving the promised energy extraction performance necessitates using either a bulky inductor or multiple large capacitors, which cannot be on-chip integrated and increase the system form factor. This article introduces a fully integrated...

Combined Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of TOPCon Back-Contact Solar Cells with Lateral Power Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistors on a Single Substrate

Nowadays, an increasing share of photovoltaic (PV) systems makes use of module- or submodule-level power electronics (PE). Furthermore, PE is used in stand-alone devices powered by PV-storage solutions. One way to facilitate further implementation of PE in PV applications is to integrate PE components into crystalline silicon PV cells. Herein...

A risk-based fuzzy arithmetic model to determine safety integrity levels considering individual and societal risks

Risk-based techniques such as risk graph and Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) are used to determine the Safety Integrity Level (SIL) of safety instrumented functions to ensure that risk is reduced to a tolerable level. However, these techniques have some drawbacks. For instance, they need absolute and precise numbers to evaluate SIL...

Integrated engineering education through design activities: A signal phase module design case study for traffic engineering course

This article presents an integrated educational module for undergraduate traffic engineering at the microscale level. When dealing with a complex transportation system, the education program should cultivate students’ acquisition of both in-depth traffic specialization and breadth of engineering knowledge. For the educational instruction of...

Decentralized project delivery on the crypto commons: Conceptualization, governance mechanisms, and future research directions

This paper presents a first conceptualization for decentralized project delivery through the combination of blockchain technology and common pool resource governance theory, also known as the ”crypto commons”. While previous literature on project delivery models identifies the use of decentralized governance, there is not yet a holistic...

Exploring Active Inference and Model Predictive Path Integral Control: A Journey from Low-Level Commands to Task and Motion Planning

In an ever-evolving society, the demand for autonomous robots equipped with human-level capabilities is becoming increasingly imperative. Various factors, such as an aging population and a shortage of labor for repetitive and physically demanding tasks, have underscored the need for capable autonomous robots to assist us in our daily activities....

Integrated Design Optimization of Electrically-Driven Vapor Compression Cycle Systems for Aircraft: Powered by High-Speed Centrifugal Compressors

In 2022 the aviation sector accounted for 1.9%of global greenhouse gas emissions, 2.5% of global CO2 emissions, and 3.5% of effective radiative forcing. To reach the long-term target of net zero emissions, revolutionary aircraft designs, featuring electrified or hydrogen powered propulsion systems, are needed. At the same time, the...

Engineering Synthetic Cells through Module Integration and Evolution

Life, the most complex and admirable machine that one could think of has evolved over billions of years to display a beautiful variety of mechanisms that keep cells adapting, self-maintaining, reproducing, and evolving. If we think about it, what is this magic? What are the mechanisms behind life’s origins and wonderful coordination? Attracted...

A Journey on Quantum Sound: Developing a scalable platform for integrated hybrid quantum systems

Recently, quantum networks have emerged as a focal point of research and discussion due to their promise in overcoming the limitations of classical networks, offering unparalleled capabilities in secure communication, quantum computation, and distributed quantum information processing. Simply speaking, a quantum network is a network in which the...

Continuous downstream processing

The main objectives of bioprocesses are to reliably deliver drugs in a relatively short time frame with high quality within a tight regulatory framework. Bioprocesses are highly complex, the level of automation is moderate, and there is constant pressure to improve efficiency and costs. In addition, climate change and resource scarcity...