Growth mechanism and gas-sensing characteristics of organic-additive-free zinc oxide of various shapes

Zinc oxide is widely used in gas sensors, solar cells, and photocatalysts because of its wide bandgap and exciton binding energy of 60 meV in various metal oxides. To use ZnO as a gas sensor, it is necessary to synthesize it with surface defects and a large specific surface area. In this study, hydrothermal synthesis without surfactants was employed to obtain organic-additive-free ZnO. For morphology control, we varied the ratio of the hydroxide ion concentration to the zinc ion concentration. To confirm the growth mechanism of ZnO, we performed X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy analyses. Raman spectroscopy and photoluminescence measurements were performed to analyze the surface properties. The Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method and probe stations were used to measure the specific surface area and sensitivity of the gas sensor, respectively. The results confirmed that flower-shaped ZnO is the most suitable gas-sensing material.     

粮仓环境监测系统设计

随着科学技术的发展,粮食行业信息化发展得到了强有力的科技支撑。为满足粮库整体信息化建设的要求,打破"信息孤岛"现状,实现资源整合、数据共享,为大数据分析和数据应用提供数据基础,设计一款能够实时采集粮仓内温湿度、氧气、二氧化碳气体浓度、粮堆高度的数据集成系统。系统采用分层分布式结构,由数据集中器和多种传感器模块组成,数据集中器与各传感器模块间通过RS485总线进行数据通讯,并由数据集中器通过网络专线传输汇总的环境监测数据,通过专用软件进行数据处理和挖掘,从而实现粮仓环境监测和预警等功能。     

Design optimization of semiconductor piezoresistors with Schottky diode contacts

A modeling theory is developed to predict the performance of piezoresistors which incorporate Schottky diode electrical contacts. This new theory allows the design of high performance gauges which can be fabricated using Non-Lithographically-Based Microfabrication (NLBM) techniques. These semiconductor piezoresistors can be designed in customizable sizes and fabricated in parallel in order to integrate position sensing into MEMS flexural positioners. Customizable sensing for nanopositioning platforms will enable advances in a range of nano-scale fabrication and metrology applications. A semiconductor piezoresistor with Schottky diode contacts was fabricated and attached to a titanium flexure. This device is shown to match predicted electrical performance within about 8% and to show a gauge factor of 116, within 2% of the predicted value. Optimized performance limits for Schottky diode semiconductor piezoresistors are identified to be about 127 dB full noise dynamic range for a quarter bridge over a 10 kHz sensor bandwidth on a 600 μm width titanium flexure, making them ideal for sensing on meso-/micro-scale flexural positioners. Methods are suggested for achieving the performance limits indicated above and the impact of these methods on the sensor dynamic range are studied.     

Entwicklung und Validierung eines Kühlmittelsensors zur Bewertung der Korrosionsschutzwirkung

A sophisticated thermal management is one of the main subsystems that enables combustion engines with high power density. In this context the demands on coolants are also increasing. There has to be a certain level of corrosion protection to ensure the functionality of the cooling system. Hereafter the result of an electrochemical sensor development is presented. With the knowledge of analytical and electrochemical results a quick test for characterizing coolants corrosion protection has been developed and validated.     

Comparison of joint angle,velocity and acceleration estimators for hydraulically actuated manipulators to a novel dynamical approach

Excavators are used for a wide range of applications like earthworks and material handling. Assistance systems are becoming more common to support the operator. For monitoring and control based assistance functions the angular position, velocity and acceleration of the joints from the working implement are required. Commercial systems often use inertial measurement units, consisting of triaxial accelerometers and gyroscopes, to accomplish an estimation of those states. A novel joint angle, velocity and acceleration estimation for hydraulic manipulators is proposed and compared to state of the art methods. A decentralized kinematic filter using no information about the underlying system and a centralized kinematic filter taking the system kinematics into account are implemented as state of the art approaches. Both filters only use inertial measurement units to obtain information about the current state of the system. The novel centralized dynamic filter uses the same information as the centralized kinematic filter and extends it by a dynamic model containing additional information about the angular acceleration due to pressure readings of the hydraulic cylinders. Kalman filtering is used to combine the derived system and measurement models with the sensor information. The methods are evaluated on a material handling excavator for single and coupled movements of the working implement. The novel centralized dynamic filter enables improvements for the angular acceleration estimation compared to the decentralized and centralized kinematic filter. Less noise of the acceleration estimation and a better tracking of the actual acceleration are shown.     

WSNs中规避攻击者的源位置隐私保护路由协议

为了保证无线传感器网络（Wireless Sensor Networks，WSNs）中的源节点位置隐私安全，同时实现安全性能和网络能耗的均衡，提出了WSNs中规避攻击者的源节点位置隐私路由协议，该协议假设节点具有检测攻击者的能力，通过发出危险警告消息使路由路径上的节点采取路由改变策略，使攻击者无法回溯到源节点，延长了源节点保持位置隐私的安全时间。理论分析和仿真实验表明，该协议在消耗较少的通信开销的情况下保证了源节点位置的高度隐私。     

Fault handling in large water networks with online dictionary learning

Fault detection and isolation in water distribution networks is an active topic due to the nonlinearities of flow propagation and recent increases in data availability due to sensor deployment. Here, we propose an efficient two-step data driven alternative: first, we perform sensor placement taking the network topology into account; second, we use incoming sensor data to build a network model through online dictionary learning. Online learning is fast and allows tackling large networks as it processes small batches of signals at a time. This brings the benefit of continuous integration of new data into the existing network model, either in the beginning for training or in production when new data samples are gathered. The proposed algorithms show good performance in our simulations on both small and large-scale networks.     

基于改进正弦余弦算法的无线传感器节点部署优化

为了提高无线传感器网络（WSN）的性能，提出了一种基于改进正弦余弦算法（ESCA）的节点部署优化方法。首先，引入双曲正弦调节因子和动态余弦波权重系数，以平衡算法的全局探索与局部开发能力；然后，提出了一种基于拉普拉斯和高斯分布的变异策略，避免算法陷入局部最优。对于基准函数的优化实验结果表明，ESCA相比引力搜索算法、鲸鱼优化算法、基本正弦余弦算法（SCA）及其改进算法具有更高的收敛精度和收敛速度。最后，将ESCA应用于WSN节点部署优化，结果表明其优化覆盖率相比改进粒子群优化算法、外推人工蜂群算法、改进灰狼优化算法和自适应混沌量子粒子群算法分别提高了1.55个百分点、7.72个百分点、2.99个百分点和7.63个百分点，用更少节点便可达到相同目标精度。     

Mining urban data (part A)

Modern cities are flooded with data. New information sources like public transport and wearable devices provide opportunities for novel applications that will improve citizens׳ quality of life. From a data science perspective, data emerging from smart cities give rise to a lot of challenges that constitute a new inter-disciplinary field of research. This article introduces the first part of a special issue on the topic ‘Mining Urban Data’ published in the journal Information Systems.     

Preparation and temperature-resistance characteristics of novel dense SiAlCN ceramics

The compact green bodies, prepared via a novel solid-liquid mixing method of precursors, were successfully pyrolyzed to obtain the dense bulk SiAlCN ceramics at 1000 °C. It can be seen from their SEM that they have uniform and dense microstructure, indicating that this method can be used to prepare bulk ceramics. In order to verify that they can be used as sensor heads, their temperature-resistance characteristics and repeatability were tested. The results show that the conductive mechanism belongs to Arrhenius's Tailed-State and Extended-State in the temperature range of 500–650 °C and 650–930 °C, respectively. And it shows that SiAlCN ceramics can be used as the sensor heads for high-temperature sensors.