Porous nitrogen-enriched hollow carbon nanofibers as freestanding electrode for enhanced lithium storage

One-dimensional porous carbons bearing high surface areas and sufficient heteroatom doped functional-ities are essential for advanced electrochemical energy storage devices, especially for developing free-standing film electrodes. Here we develop a porous, nitrogen-enriched, freestanding hollow carbon nanofiber (PN-FHCF) electrode material via filtration of polypyrrole (PPy) hollow nanofibers formed by in situ self-degraded template-assisted strategy, followed by NH3-assisted carbonization. The PN-FHCF retains the freestanding film morphology that is composed of three-dimensional networks from the entanglement of 1D nanofiber and delivers 3.7-fold increase in specific surface area (592 m2·g-1) com-pared to the carbon without NH3 treatment (FHCF). In spite of the enhanced specific surface area, PN-FHCF still exhibits comparable high content of surface N functionalities (8.8％, atom fraction) to FHCF. Such developed hierarchical porous structure without sacrificing N doping functionalities together enables the achievement of high capacity, high-rate property and good cycling stability when applied as self-supporting anode in lithium-ion batteries, superior to those of FHCF without NH3 treatment.     

Experimental and computational study on the separation performance of an electrostatic precipitator with curved transvers collecting plates

Aiming at the problems of low collection efficiency of fine particulate matter and large area occupied by existing electrostatic precipitators (ESP), a new type of horizontal electrode ESP is proposed. It has the advantages of accelerating turbulent coalescence, increasing the effective dust collecting area and increasing the particle driving speed. The performance of the new type of ESP is systematic studied through simulation and experiment at the same time, and the results matches well. By comparing the dust removal effect of the horizontal electrode ESP and the conventional ESP, it can be concluded that the horizontal electrode ESP has a better dust removal efficiency, and can still maintain a better dust removal effect under high air velocity. The dust removal efficiency of new ESP can reach above 98% under the experimental conditions.     

Effect of obstacle density on the travel time of the visually impaired people

Because China has put more emphasis on people with disabilities, their living conditions and protection have received increasing attention. In an emergency, the visually impaired people are limited in their ability to evacuate, especially along egress paths with obstacles. This paper studied the relationship between the travel time of visually impaired people and obstacle density in their path. Eight sighted people and 32 people with visual impairments were chosen to carry out the walking experiment. The results of the experiment showed that the travel time of sighted people was shorter than that of visually impaired people under the same obstacle and non‐obstacle situations. Based on the analysis of variance of travel time, it was clear from the results that the travel time of the visually impaired people rapidly increased when there were obstacles. When the obstacle density was kept to within a certain range, there was no obvious increase in travel time. Once the density exceeded this range, there was another obvious increase. Based on this result, it can be seen that keeping the obstacle density to within a certain range could be helpful for the visually impaired people during an evacuation when the egress paths cannot be made obstacle‐free.     

Effect of grain size on the electrical performance of BaZr0.1Ce0.7Y0.1Yb0.1O3-δ solid electrolytes with addition of NiO

In order to clarify the effect of grain size on the electrical performance of BaZr_0.1Ce_0.7Y_0.1Yb_0.1O_3-δ (BZCYYb) solid electrolytes with addition of NiO, microcrystalline (~1.5?µm) and ultrafine-grained (~280?nm) BZCYYb electrolytes (with 1?wt% NiO) were fabricated by the conventional and two-step sintering method, respectively. The results show that compared with microcrystalline electrolytes, the ultrafine-grained electrolytes have similar grain-interior conductivities, but much lower grain-boundary conductivities, illustrating that the grain boundary is not conducive for ionic transport. As a result, the electrical conductivity of microcrystalline electrolytes (1.9?×?10^?2 S?cm^?1 at 600?°C in wet air) is higher than that of ultrafine-grained electrolytes (1.1?×?10^?2 S?cm^?1 at 600?°C in wet air). In addition, the OCV (open-circuit voltage) values of electrolyte-supported single cells show that the undesired electronic conduction exists in the electrolytes due to the BaY₂NiO₅ impurity formed by the reaction of NiO and BZCYYb. The ultrafine-grained electrolytes show lower OCV values than that of microcrystalline ones, due to the prolonged electronic transport paths. Therefore, large-grained or grain boundary-free microstructure are necessary for improving the electrical performance of BZCYYb electrolytes.     

Image authentication and tamper localization based on relative difference between DCT coefficient and its estimated value

Digital images are increasingly transmitted over non-secure channels such as Internet, therefore image authentication techniques have recently gained great attention due to their importance for a large number of multimedia applications. To protect the authenticity of images, several approaches have been proposed. These approaches include conventional cryptography, semi-fragile watermarking and digital signatures. In this paper, we propose two techniques of the same type based on what we call characteristic data digest. Both techniques can blindly detect and localize malicious tampering, while maintaining reasonable tolerance to conventional content-preserving manipulations. The characteristic data is derived from the relative difference between each pair of selected DCT coefficient, AC for one technique and DC for another technique, in a central block and its counterpart estimated by the center block and its adjacent blocks. In order to maintain the relative difference relationship when the image undergoes legitimate processing, we make a pre-compensation for the coefficients. Experimental results show that our techniques are significantly superior to semi-fragile techniques under the condition of the same image fidelity, especially in tolerance range of legitimate processing, and/or the ability to detect and localize the tampered area. Due to the simplicity of the algorithms, our techniques can be used in video frame authentication, and even other digital media. In addition, this kind of proposed techniques can be extended to use other characteristic data, such as high-level moment, statistical data of images, and so on.

     

Thermal and pH dual‐responsive hydrogels based on semi‐interpenetrating network of poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) and collagen nanofibrils

Hydrogels with environment‐sensitive properties have great potential applications in the controlled drug release field. In this paper, hybrid hydrogels with semi‐interpenetrating polymer networks (semi‐IPNs), composed of poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) as the thermo‐sensitive component by in situ polymerization and self‐assembled collagen nanofibrils as the pH‐sensitive framework, were prepared for controlled release of methyl violet as a model drug. From Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, it was indicated that the crosslinking of PNIPAM in the presence of collagen nanofibrils led to the formation of semi‐IPNs with homogeneous porous structure, and the semi‐IPNs showed improved thermal stability and elastic properties compared with the native collagen as determined using differential scanning calorimetry and rheologic measurements. Furthermore, the semi‐IPNs possessed swelling behaviors quite different from those of neat collagen or PNIPAM hydrogel under various pH values and temperatures. Correspondingly, as expected, the drug release behavior in vitro for semi‐IPNs performed variously compared with that for single‐component semi‐IPNs, which revealed the tunable performance of semi‐IPNs for release ability. Finally the thermo‐ and pH‐responsive mechanism of the semi‐IPNs was illuminated to provide guidance for the application of the thermo‐ and pH‐sensitive collagen‐based hybrid hydrogels in controlled drug delivery systems. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry     

Analyzing Dynamic Change in Social Network Based on Distribution-Free Multivariate Process Control Method

Social organizations can be represented by social network because it can mathematically quantify and represent complex interrelated organizational behavior. Exploring the change in dynamic social network is essential for the situation awareness of the corresponding social organization. Social network usually evolves gradually and slightly, which is hard to be noticed. The statistical process control techniques in industry field have been used to distinguish the statistically significant change of social network. But the original method is narrowed due to some limitation on measures. This paper presents a generic framework to address the change detection problem in dynamic social network and introduces a distribution-free multivariate control charts to supervise the changing of social network. Three groups of network parameters are integrated together in order to achieve a comprehensive view of the dynamic tendency. The proposed approaches handle the non-Gaussian data based on categorizing and ranking. Experiments indicate that nonparametric multivariate procedure is promising to be applied to social network analysis.     

Improved Input and State Estimation for Linear Stochastic Systems with Direct Feedthrough

This paper is concerned with the problem of joint input and state estimation for linear stochastic systems with direct feedthrough. Based on the fact that each unknown input between any two time steps is always bounded, a novel improved algorithm is proposed. Compared with existing results, this algorithm can effectively enhance estimation accuracy. Moreover, the stability of the algorithm is also discussed. Finally, an illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.