A critical assessment and summary on the low carbon energy pile technologies based on the life-cycle perspective: Challenges and prospects

Energy piles, a technology integrating the heat exchange component within building pile foundations for shallow geothermal energy utilization, have proven economically efficient. They outperform conventional ground source heat pumps by mitigating additional borehole costs and space requirements. This paper systematically examines low-carbon...

An Integrated Graph Model for Spatial–Temporal Urban Crime Prediction Based on Attention Mechanism

Crime issues have been attracting widespread attention from citizens and managers of cities due to their unexpected and massive consequences. As an effective technique to prevent and control urban crimes, the data-driven spatial–temporal crime prediction can provide reasonable estimations associated with the crime hotspot. It thus contributes to...

Thickness-Independent Capacitive Performance of Holey Ti₃C₂T_x Film Prepared through a Mild Oxidation Strategy

The Ti₃C₂T_x film with metallic conductivity and high pseudo-capacitance holds profound promise in flexible high-rate supercapacitors. However, the restacking of Ti₃C₂T_x sheets hinders ion access to thick film electrodes. Herein, a mild yet green route has been developed to...

EdgeTuner: Fast Scheduling Algorithm Tuning for Dynamic Edge-Cloud Workloads and Resources

Edge-cloud jobs are rapidly prevailing in many application domains, posing the challenge of using both resource-strenuous edge devices and elastic cloud resources. Efficient resource allocation on such jobs via scheduling algorithms is essential to guarantee their performance, e.g. latency. Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is increasingly...

Microwave roasting of blast furnace slag for carbon dioxide mineralization and energy analysis

For both the waste treatment of large quantities of blast furnace (BF) slag and carbon dioxide (CO₂) that are discharged in ironworks, mineral carbonation by BF slag was proposed in this decade. However, it has not been widely used due to its high energy consumption and low production efficiency. In this study, a microwave roasting...

An Extended Linear Quadratic Model Predictive Control Approach for Multi-Destination Urban Traffic Networks

This paper extends an existing linear quadratic model predictive control (LQMPC) approach to multi-destination traffic networks, where the correct origin-destination (OD) relations are preserved. In the literature, the LQMPC approach has been presented for efficient routing and intersection signal control. The optimization problem in the...

Resolving freeway jam waves by discrete first-order model-based predictive control of variable speed limits

In this paper we develop a fast model predictive control (MPC) approach for variable speed limit coordination to resolve freeway jam waves. Existing MPC approaches that are based on the second-order traffic flow models suffer from high computation load due to the non-linear and non-convex optimization formulation. In recent years, simplified...

Chitosan cross-linked poly(acrylic acid) hydrogels: drug release control and mechanism

Chitosan has been used to cross-link poly(acrylic acid) to give three pH-sensitive hydrogels designed to control the release of the drugs amoxicillin and meloxicam. The extent of cross-linking and solution pH was found to dominate the swelling behavior of these hydrogels as shown by scanning electron microscopy and swelling time dependencies....

New Extended Discrete First-Order Model to Reproduce Propagation of Jam Waves

This paper proposes an extension of the discrete Lighthill–Whitham–Richards model of the cell transmission model type to reproduce capacity drop and the propagation of jam waves. Recent studies have tried to incorporate the capacity drop into discrete first-order traffic flow models for traffic optimization purposes. It was found that the inflow...

Integrated network linear-quadratic model predictive control for disturbance on freeways

We propose an integrated approach for dynamic route guidance and ramp metering using Linear Quadratic Model Predictive Control (LQMPC). The main objective is to maximize the throughput of the network by guiding traffic flow towards to insufficiently utilized infrastructures. Due to the linear property of the LQMPC, it is fast enough for real...

Numerical simulation on the mechanical characteristics of double-stranded DNA under axial stretching and lateral unzipping

The mechanical characteristics of the long-chain double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) molecule under the axial stretching and lateral unzipping are studied by the clustered atomistic-continuum method (CACM). The CACM consisted of the clustered atom method (CAM) and the atomistic-continuum method (ACM). The CAM treats the specific atomic group as the...