A Looseness Detection Method for Railway Catenary Fasteners based on Reinforcement Learning Refined Localization

Brace sleeve (BS) fasteners, i.e., nut and bolt, are small components but play essential roles in fixing BS and cantilever in railway catenary system. They are commonly inspected by onboard cameras using computer vision to ensure the safety of railway operation. However, most BS fasteners cannot be directly localized because they are too...

Integrating the flow regime and water quality effects into a niche-based metacommunity dynamics model for river ecosystems

Aquatic community dynamics are closely dominated by flow regime and water quality conditions, which are increasingly threatened by dam regulation, water diversion, and nutrition pollution. However, further understanding of the ecological impacts of flow regime and water quality conditions on aquatic multi-population dynamics has rarely been...

Silicon heterojunction solar cells with up to 26.81% efficiency achieved by electrically optimized nanocrystalline-silicon hole contact layers

Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells have reached high power conversion efficiency owing to their effective passivating contact structures. Improvements in the optoelectronic properties of these contacts can enable higher device efficiency, thus further consolidating the commercial potential of SHJ technology. Here we increase the...

Federated Learning With Heterogeneity-Aware Probabilistic Synchronous Parallel on Edge

With the massive amount of data generated from mobile devices and the increase of computing power of edge devices, the paradigm of Federated Learning has attracted great momentum. In federated learning, distributed and heterogeneous nodes collaborate to learn model parameters. However, while providing benefits such as privacy by design and...

Rapid extraction of pavement aggregate gradation based on point clouds using deep learning networks

Usage of asphalt mixture with poor gradation will most likely lead to pavement deficiency. There is a growing need for rapid and non-destructive methods to extract pavement aggregate gradation. In this study, a deep learning-based method that utilizes point clouds data for gradation extraction was proposed. Firstly, a data enhancement...

Spherical polyelectrolyte nanogels as templates to prepare hollow silica nanocarriers: observation by small angle X-ray scattering and TEM

Hollow silica nanoparticles were prepared through generating a silica layer in spherical polyelectrolyte nanogels (SPN), which consisted of a solid core of polystyrene (PS) and a shell of crosslinked poly(acrylic acid) (PAA), followed by removing the PS core via solvent dissolution. Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) in combination with TEM...

Effect of CO₂-based binary mixtures on the performance of radial-inflow turbines for the supercritical CO₂ cycles

Recently, the supercritical carbon dioxide (SCO₂) power cycle has become a hotspot in the field of energy-efficient utilization. The utilization of additives in the power cycle has been proven to be an effective way to improve the SCO₂ power cycle efficiency. As one of the core components of the system, the influence of...

New innovations in pavement materials and engineering: A review on pavement engineering research 2021

Sustainable and resilient pavement infrastructure is critical for current economic and environmental challenges. In the past 10 years, the pavement infrastructure strongly supports the rapid development of the global social economy. New theories, new methods, new technologies and new materials related to pavement engineering are emerging....