Imitating Popular Photos to Select Views for an Indoor Scene

Selecting informative and visually appealing views for 3D indoor scenes is beneficial for the housing, decoration, and entertainment industries. A set of views that exhibit comfort, aesthetics, and functionality of a particular scene can attract customers and facilitate business transactions. However, selecting views for an indoor scene is challenging because the system has to consider not only the need to reveal as much information as possible, but also object arrangements, occlusions, and characteristics. Since there can be many principles utilized to guide the view selection, and various principles to follow under different circumstances, we achieve the goal by imitating popular photos on the Internet. Specifically, we select the view that can optimize the contour similarity of corresponding objects to the photo. Because the selected view can be inadequate if object arrangements in the 3D scene and the photo are different, our system imitates many popular photos and selects a certain number of views. After that, it clusters the selected views and determines the view/cluster centers by the weighted average to finally exhibit the scene. Experimental results demonstrate that the views selected by our method are visually appealing.     

On the well-posedness of a spectral fractional forward–backward pseudo-parabolic equation

We prove existence, uniqueness and stability of solution of a forward–backward pseudo-parabolic equation with spectral fractional Laplacian. Then we define and prove existence of Young measure valued solution for fractional forward–backward problem by the vanishing viscosity method.     

Impact of varying hydrocolloid proportions on encapsulation of ascorbic acid by spray drying

There has been considerable research into ascorbic acid (AA) as a food component in the human diet and disease prevention. Microencapsulation technology has a promising strategy for enhancing the stability of AA towards the carrier food. The effects of varying hydrocolloid proportions on encapsulation of AA by spray drying have been evaluated. Spray drying pilot plant scale was used to produce the microcapsules, and capillary electrophoresis has been applied to analyse the retention of AA during bread making process. To investigate the characteristics of microstructure of encapsulated AA after processing, the environmental scanning electron microscope was used to investigate the structure of microcapsules. In addition to that to measure the particle size and distribution of microcapsules, the laser beam scattering was used. The impact of varying hydrocolloids proportion on encapsulation of AA by spray drying was studied.     

Evolution of oxide charge trapping under bias temperature stressing

Transient oxide-charge trapping and detrapping, commonly regarded as a parasitic effect in the interpretation of dynamic bias-temperature stress (BTS) data, may play an important role on the long term reliability of the gate oxide as revealed by recent studies on the SiON and HfO₂ gate dielectrics. Specifically, it is found that transient charge trapping (one which relaxes upon removal of the applied electrical stress) is transformed into more permanent trapped charge when the applied electrical cum thermal stress exceeds a certain threshold. Below the threshold, cyclical transient charge trapping and detrapping behavior is observed. The observations imply that the oxide structure may be modified by the applied stress, making it susceptible to permanent defect generation. In addition, it is found that when the transformation of hole trapping occurs under negative-bias temperature stress, a correlated increase of the gate current is always observed, which points to the transformation process being the origin for bulk oxide trap generation. However, when the transformation of electron trapping occurs under positive-bias temperature stress, an increase of the gate current is not always observed. From ab initio simulation, we show that an intrinsic oxide defect – the oxygen vacancy-interstitial (V_O − O_i) – could consistently explain the experimental observations. An interesting feature of the V_O − O_i defect is that it can exists in various metastable configurations with the interstitial oxygen O_i in different positions around the vacancy V_O, corresponding to different trap energy states in the oxide bandgap. This characteristic is able to account for the BTS induced generation of deep-level trapped charges as well as transformation of transient (or shallow) to permanent (or deep) charge trapping.     

High Temperature Crystallization of Free‐Standing Anatase TiO2 Nanotube Membranes for High Efficiency Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Despite the one‐dimensional ordering of anodic TiO₂ nanotube arrays (TNAs), the electron diffusion towards the substrate in TNA‐based dye‐sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is comparably slow. The improvement of electron mobility by enhancing TNA crystallinity under high‐temperature annealing, however, is infeasible with the existence of Ti metal substrate. Herein, it is shown that, by high temperature (up to 700 °C) crystallization of high‐quality free‐standing TNA membranes, the TNAs can maintain their structure integrity and phase (anatase) stability as a result of the absence of the nucleation sites and the high quality of the membrane obtained by a self‐detachment method. The electron transport is much faster (≈4 times) in the 700 °C‐annealed TNA membranes than that in the 400 °C‐treated ones for 20 μm‐length nanotubes, which is mainly attributed to the improved crystallinity and reduced electron trap states. In spite of slightly reduced dye loading capacity (decreased by ≈30%) in the 700 °C‐annealed membranes, the superior electron transport leads to a significantly improved efficiency of 7.81% (enhanced by ≈50%). The strategy of manipulating the electron transport dynamics by high temperature treatment on high‐quality TNA membranes may open new route for further improvement in the performances of TNA‐based DSSCs.     

Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Solar Power Plant Location Selection

Vietnam is one of Southeast Asian countries with a rapid GDP growth rate, ranging from 6.5% to 7% annually, leading to an average increase in energy demand of 11% per year. This demand creates many new opportunities in the energy industry, especially renewable energy, to ensure sustainable development in the future for the country with applications of solar energy growing at the present, and other opportunities to expand in the future. In Vietnam, thanks to favorable weather, climate, terrain characteristics and many preferential support policies, there are many great opportunities in the field of solar energy exploitation and application. Location selection is an important problem in all renewable energy projects. Therefore, the author proposed a fuzzy Multi-criteria Decision-Making Model (MCDM) model for solar power plant location selection in this study, and as a result, location 5 is the optimal solution. The contribution of this study is to propose a MCDM for solar power plant location selection in Vietnam under fuzzy environmental conditions.     

Development of emission factors and emission inventories for motorcycles and light duty vehicles in the urban region in Vietnam

This paper reports on a 2-year emissions monitoring program launched by the Centre for Environmental Monitoring of the Vietnam Environment Administration which aimed at determining emission factors and emission inventories for two typical types of vehicle in Hanoi, Vietnam. The program involves four major activities. A database for motorcycles and light duty vehicles (LDV) in Hanoi was first compiled through a questionnaire survey. Then, two typical driving cycles were developed for the first time for motorcycles and LDVs in Hanoi. Based on this database and the developed driving cycles for Hanoi, a sample of 12 representative test vehicles were selected to determine vehicle specific fuel consumption and emission factors (CO, HC, NOx and CO₂). This set of emission factors were developed for the first time in Hanoi with due considerations of local driving characteristics. In particular, it was found that the emission factors derived from Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) driving cycles and adopted in some previous studies were generally overestimated. Eventually, emission inventories for motorcycles and LDVs were derived by combining the vehicle population data, the developed vehicle specific emission factors and vehicle kilometre travelled (VKT) information from the survey. The inventory suggested that motorcycles contributed most to CO, HC and NOx emissions while LDVs appeared to be more fuel consuming.     

Electrocatalytic characterization and dye degradation of Nano-TiO2 electrode films fabricated by CVD

A 20-40 nm anatase-titania film on a titanium electrode was fabricated using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The film was characterized using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The CVD deposition time and number of deposition coatings were evaluated to establish the appropriate film fabrication parameters. Results indicate that two coatings at a deposition time of 6 h each produced the best nano-TiO₂ electrode films (NTEFs) with an even distribution of ca. 20 nm diameter nanoparticles in the anatase lattice. The NTEF was tested as an electrocatalytic anode to investigate the degradation efficiency in treating methyl orange dye wastewater. A high removal efficiency of methyl orange dye and total organic carbon (TOC) of 97 and 56%, respectively; was achieved using a current density of 20 mA cm^− 2 for 160 min. Cyclic voltammetry showed that the electrochemical degradation reaction rate at the NTEF surface was predominately driven by molecular diffusion. The electrocatalytic decomposition rate of organic pollutants at the NTEF is controlled by mass transport, which was associated with the nanostructure of the electrocatalytic electrode.