Impact of urban development on residents’ public transportation travel energy consumption in China: An analysis of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles alternatives

Urban development has an important influence on the energy consumption of transportation. To develop public transportation is one of the important ways to decrease the energy consumption of urban transportation. It is very urgent to upgrade technology to reduce the energy consumption and emissions of the vehicles constantly. The popularization of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is the trend of the future automobile industry, which can effectively reduce traffic energy consumption and alleviate urban pollution. This article analyzes the impact of urban development on public transport and private transportation energy consumption from 2013 to 2015; and uses hydrogen fuel cell vehicles alternatives in urban public transport as a scenario. It shows that urban economic development can effectively reduce public transport. Population growth will increase greatly energy consumption of public transport, while larger cities with reasonable spatial density can reduce traffic energy consumption. Moreover, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can effectively reduce the energy consumption and pollution emissions of urban transportation during operating. Based on the above conclusions, this article will eventually provide targeted recommendations for the development of Chinese cities, public transport, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.     

Direct Z-scheme photocatalytic overall water splitting on two dimensional MoSe2/SnS2 heterojunction

The direct Z-scheme photocatalysts for overall water decomposition have aroused much concern on account of their strong redox ability and efficient separation of photogenerated electron-hole pairs. In the present work, we have constructed the two dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) MoSe₂/SnS₂ heterojunction and investigated its electronical and optical properties by applying hybrid functional calculations. The calculated band structures have implied that the MoSe₂/SnS₂ heterostructure as a direct Z-scheme photocatalyst can make the best of visible light. The induced built-in electric field can effectively improve the separation efficiency of the photoinduced carriers. Moreover, compared with the MoSe₂ and SnS₂ monolayers, the absorption intensity of MoSe₂/SnS₂ heterojunction is reinforced in the visible light range. Therefore, MoSe₂/SnS₂ nanocomposite shows a bright application prospect as a direct Z-scheme visible-light-driven photocatalyst for overall water splitting.     

A web-based screening model for climate risk to water supply systems in the northeastern United States

The aim of this study is to describe the development and application of a web-based decision support tool (ViRTUE) for performing climate risk evaluations of water supply systems. The tool is designed for small-scale water utilities in the northeastern United States that may lack the resources for detailed climate change risk investigations. Development of this tool demonstrates a relatively new approach to web application development using the Shiny framework for the R programming language to create an interactive environment for stakeholders and water managers to explore climate vulnerabilities. Using a decision-scaling framework, the tool allows the user to perform a climate stress test to evaluate the performance and vulnerability to water supply shortfalls of local reservoir systems over a wide range of potential climate change scenarios using a generic systems model. Probabilities of future climate conditions derived from climate projections then help inform utility operators of impending risk.     

Internet use and farm households food and nutrition security nexus: The case of rural Ghana

The impact of internet use on food and nutrition security of rural households in Ghana is investigated in this study. To offset the potential challenge of selection bias, an endogenous treatment regression (ETR) technique is utilized for the analysis.. The results reveal that Internet use can improve smallholder farmers’ food and nutrition security. Internet usage has a profound positive effect on the food security of households with off-farm work and larger size of landholding. Our results suggest the intensification of efforts to enhance Internet connectivity across the nation by the government and policymakers is essential since it can go a long way to affect household welfare. The findings also highlight the importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs), the Internet, patronization to improve rural household welfare.     

Improved frictional modeling for the pressure-time method

The pressure-time method is classified as a primary method for measuring discharge in hydraulic machinery. The uncertainty in the discharge determined using the pressure-time method is typically around $\pm 1.5$ %; however, despite dating back almost one hundred years in time, there still exists potential to reduce this uncertainty. In this paper, an improvement of the pressure-time method is suggested by implementing a novel formulation to model the frictional losses arising in the evaluation procedure. By analyzing previously obtained data from CFD, laboratory and full-scale pressure-time measurements it is shown that the new friction model improves the accuracy of the flow rate calculation by approximately 0.1–0.2% points, compared to currently utilized friction models. Despite being a small absolute improvement, the new friction model presents an important development of the pressure-time method because the relative improvement is significant.     

ERSA Conference participation: does location matter?

Abstract.  This article analyses participation in the annual European congresses of the Regional Science Association (ERSA) from 1998 through 2003. We formulate goals that the ERSA conferences should aim at and based on these aims we formulate hypotheses about conference participation. In the empirical part we test hypotheses with regard to the spatial distribution of the participants over countries, the distribution of the frequency of attendance among the participants, and the presence of distance decay in participation. All hypotheses are confirmed. We also pay attention to the relation between the frequency of attendance and distance. In the conclusions we derive implications for future conferences.     

A6N01铝合金焊接接头疲劳损伤和断口形貌分析

采用高频疲劳试验机对A6N01铝合金MIG焊接试样进行低周拉伸疲劳试验,研究了A6N01铝合金焊接接头疲劳过程中表面形貌变化和疲劳断裂后的断口形貌。结果表明:随着循环应力的加载,在试样产生裂纹之前,晶界处位错塞积严重,产生永久滑移带,裂纹源萌生于永久滑移带。气孔、夹杂等缺陷处应力集中较大,也容易称为裂纹源。在裂纹扩展过程中,主裂纹对次裂纹的扩展具有屏蔽作用。裂纹在相邻的不同位向的晶粒中扩展时,裂纹扩展方向发生变化。A6N01铝合金焊接接头疲劳断口有较多浅显的韧窝,说明A6N01铝合金焊接接头具有良好塑性。     

嵌入式无线智能家居监控系统

随着电子技术与网络技术的飞速发展,使得家居控制呈现出智能化、远程化、无线化的特点。本设计以ARM嵌入式平台作为中心控制装置,利用 GSM 网络、WI－FI 无线通讯技术、nRF24l01无线组网技术、以及基于单片机Atmega16的各类传感器组建了一个智能家居的系统网络。在本地可以按照需要调整电器状态,另一方面各类传感器可以监控家居的安防情况,一旦发现险情,系统通过GSM模块通知远方主人作出相应处理,减少财产损失。本设计对于进一步提高智能家居控制系统的实际应用水平和相关研究具有一定借鉴意义。     

Robust performance analysis for uncertain negative‐imaginary systems

Negative‐imaginary systems are important in engineering practice as this class of systems appears quite often in practical problems, for example, lightly damped flexible structures with collocated position sensors and force actuators. In this paper, an analytical framework for robust performance of uncertain negative‐imaginary systems is proposed. The results are obtained by transforming negative‐imaginary systems into a bounded‐real framework via the positive‐real property. This paper deals with all the significant technical difficulties that appear due to the transformation and the punctured j ω‐axis frequency condition of negative‐imaginary systems. The problem is equivalently cast into a structured singular value condition that gives a quantitative performance test for this class of systems. This result also gives an analytical framework for robust stability when the perturbations are mixture of bounded‐real and negative‐imaginary uncertainties. A numerical example is presented to show the usefulness of the proposed methods. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.