Effects of mixing conditions and activator anionic species on the rheology of silicate-activated slag concrete

The proper control of the rheological performance of silicate-based alkali-activated slag (AAS) mixtures is problematic, as the conventional superplasticizers become less effective in alkaline media. Nevertheless, several methods have been proposed to improve the workability of silicate-activated AAS, such as by extending the mixing time, and...

Oxidation Catalysis of Crystalline Mo₃VO_x for the Selective Oxidation of Ethane

Oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane (ODHE) is an essential reaction in modern society to produce ethylene. The orthorhombic Mo₃VO_x catalyst (MoVO) was reported as one of the best catalysts for this reaction after a particular redox treatment to generate lattice oxygen defects. This study elucidates the location and...

From binary to singular: The AGN PSO J334.2028+1.4075 under the high-resolution scope

Context. PSO J334.2028+1.4075 (PSO J334) is a luminous quasar located at redshift z = 2.06. The source gained attention when periodic flux density variations were discovered in its optical light curve. These variations were initially interpreted as the variability due to the orbital motion of a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) residing...

How do new transit stations affect people's sentiment and activity? A case study based on social media data in Hong Kong

Urban rail development can increase land value, reduce commute time, and increase accessibility, as reported in the literature. However, little is known about the impact of opening urban rail transit stations on people's sentiment, particularly in the context of large metropolises where population density is significantly high. This paper...

Reliability assessment with density scanned adaptive Kriging

Reliability assessment with adaptive Kriging has gained notoriety due to the Kriging capability of accurately replacing the performance function while performing as a self-improving function for learning procedures. Recent works on adaptive Kriging pursued to improve the efficiency of the active learning through the application of distinct...

Heat Transfer Enhancement in Passively Cooled 5G Base Station Antennas Using Thick Ground Planes

The thermal and electromagnetic effects of varying the ground plane thickness and aperture size of the 5G integrated base station antennas are investigated. A double-sided PCB structure is designed with antennas and digital beamforming chips on the opposite sides. Fully-passive cooling is achieved by using fanless CPU coolers attached to the...

Pareto-based modulated model predictive control strategy for power converter applications

Modulated model predictive control (M ² PC) allows fixed switching frequency operation of power converters, producing lower ripple and lower total harmonic distortion (THD) in the output signals than those obtained using regular model predictive control (MPC) algorithms. However, the design of the M ² PC algorithm and...

Viewpoint optimization for aiding grasp synthesis algorithms using reinforcement learning

Grasp synthesis for unknown objects is a challenging problem as the algorithms are expected to cope with missing object shape information. This missing information is a function of the vision sensor viewpoint. The majority of the grasp synthesis algorithms in literature synthesize a grasp by using one single image of the target object and...

Optimized algorithm of active injection circuit to calibrate DC circuit breaker

The widely acknowledged high-voltage direct current (HVDC) technology has now been accepted as a solution of connecting renewable energy sources. However, this technology is vulnerable when facing DC-side faults; due to<br/>the low DC impedance, the fault current can rise to an extremely high value in a short time. In addition, when building a...

Active Electrodes for Wearable EEG Acquisition: Review and Design Methodology

Active electrodes (AEs), i.e., electrodes with built-in readout circuitry, are increasingly being implemented in wearable healthcare and lifestyle applications due to AEs' robustness to environmental interference. An AE locally amplifies and buffers μV-level EEG signals before driving any cabling. The low output impedance of an AE mitigates...

Activated Carbon as a Pseudo-reference Electrode for Potentiometric Sensing Inside Concrete

The half-cell potential of the Activated carbon (AC), due to its high double layer capacitance (EDL), remains stable in high ionic electrolyte. The open circuit potential (OCV) of the AC, with EDL of 40 – 50 F, shows a stable potential (10 mV variation) over two weeks in the cement pore solution (sat. Ca(OH)2). The OCV is less sensitive to the...

Kinetic and mesoscopic non-equilibrium description of the Ca2+ pump: A comparison

We analyse the operation of the Ca2?-ATPase ion pump using a kinetic cycle diagram. Using the methodology of Hill, we obtain the cycle fluxes, entropy production and efficiency of the pump. We compare these results with a mesoscopic non-equilibrium description of the pump and show that the kinetic and mesoscopic pictures are in accordance with...

Infrared response of charge-coupled devices

With a band gap of silicon of 1.1eV, the largest wavelength that can excite electrons from the valence to the conduction band is roughly 1100nm. As a consequence, in, for instance, a charge-coupled device, the quantum efficiency (QE) for wavelengths larger than 1100nm is assumed to be zero. We found that there is a response at those longer...