A Model of Green Acceptance and Intentions to Use Bike-Sharing: YouBike Users in Taiwan

With the emphasis on sustainability in transportation, bike-sharing systems are gaining popularity. This paper investigates the attitudes of users of a bike-sharing system with the aim of identifying their priorities, thus allowing local governments to focus their efforts most effectively on enhancing users’ intentions to use such systems. The relationships among green perceived usefulness (the extent to which individuals believe that a bike-sharing system will improve the environmental performance of some part of their life within a specific context), user attitude and perceived ease of use with green intentions, and the mediation effect of user attitude towards bike-sharing are explored. The focus of the study is on how to enhance green intentions via perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and user attitude of the green technology acceptance model (green TAM) (Davis 1989). The two-step approach of structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the empirical results, which indicated that green perceived usefulness and user attitude have positive influences on the green intentions of 262 users and 262 non-users from ten sampled bike-sharing sites around the central administrative districts of Taipei. However, user attitude has the highest mediation effect on green intentions, and perceived ease of use does not have a significant effect on intentions for either users or non-users. Therefore, governmental institutions can strive to improve the attitudes of bike-sharing users and non-users, their green perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use to strengthen their intentions to use this mode of sustainable transportation.     

One-step implementation of a Toffoli gate of separated superconducting qubits via quantum Zeno dynamics

Based on the quantum Zeno dynamics, a scheme is presented to implement a Toffoli gate of three separated superconducting qubits (SQs) by one step. Three separated SQs are connected by two resonators. The scheme is insensitive to the resonator decay because the Zeno subspace does not include the state of the resonators being excited. Numerical simulations indicate that the scheme is robust to the fluctuation of the parameters and the Toffoli gate can be implemented with high fidelity.     

Minimal output unstable configurations in chemical reaction networks and deciders

We study the set of output stable configurations of chemical reaction deciders (CRDs). It turns out that CRDs with only bimolecular reactions (which are almost equivalent to population protocols) have a special structure that allows for an algorithm to efficiently compute their finite set of minimal output unstable configurations. As a consequence, a relatively large set of configurations may be efficiently checked for output stability. We also provide a number of observations regarding the semilinearity result of Angluin et al. (Distrib Comput 20(4):279–304, 2007) from the context of population protocols (which is a central result for output stable CRDs). In particular, we observe that the computation-friendly class of totally stable CRDs has equal expressive power as the larger class of output stable CRDs.     

Size-separable tile self-assembly: a tight bound for temperature-1 mismatch-free systems

We introduce a new property of tile self-assembly systems that we call size-separability. A system is size-separable if every terminal assembly is a constant factor larger than any intermediate assembly. Size-separability is motivated by the practical problem of filtering completed assemblies from a variety of incomplete “garbage” assemblies using gel electrophoresis or other mass-based filtering techniques. Here we prove that any system without cooperative bonding assembling a unique mismatch-free terminal assembly can be used to construct a size-separable system uniquely assembling the same shape. The proof achieves optimal scale factor, temperature, and tile types (within a factor of 2) for the size-separable system.     

Bounds on multipartite concurrence and tangle

We present an analytical lower bound of multipartite concurrence based on the generalized Bloch representations of density matrices. It is shown that the lower bound can be used as an effective entanglement witness of genuine multipartite entanglement. Tight lower and upper bounds for multipartite tangles are also derived. Since the lower bounds depend on just part of the correlation tensors, the result is experimentally feasible.     

Survey of control performance in quantum information processing

There is a rich variety of physics underlying the fundamental gating operations for quantum information processing (QIP). A key aspect of a QIP system is how noise may enter during quantum operations and how suppressing or correcting its effects can best be addressed. Quantum control techniques have been developed to specifically address this effort, although a detailed classification of the compatibility of controls schemes with noise sources found in common quantum systems has not yet been performed. This work numerically examines the performance of modern control methods for suppressing decoherence in the presence of noise forms found in viable quantum systems. The noise-averaged process matrix for controlled one-qubit and two-qubit operations are calculated across noise found in systems driven by Markovian open quantum dynamics. Rather than aiming to describe the absolute best control scheme for a given physical circumstance, this work serves instead to classify quantum control behavior across a large class of noise forms so that opportunities for improving QIP performance may be identified.     

Quantum state transfer between an optomechanical cavity and a diamond nuclear spin ensemble

We explore an efficient scheme for transferring quantum state between an optomechanical cavity and nuclear spins of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond, where quantum information can be efficiently stored (retrieved) into (from) the nuclear spin ensemble assisted by a mechanical resonator in a dispersive regime. Our scheme works for a broad range of cavity frequencies and might have potential applications in employing the nuclear spin ensemble as a memory in quantum information processing. The feasibility of our protocol is analyzed using currently available parameters.     

A modular designed bolt tightening shaft based on adaptive fuzzy backstepping control

This paper presents a modular designed autonomous bolt tightening shaft system with an adaptive fuzzy backstepping control approach developed for it. The bolt tightening shaft is designed for the autonomous bolt tightening operation, which has huge potential for industry application. Due to the inherent nonlinear and uncertain properties, the bolt tightening shaft and the bolt tightening process are mathematically modeled as an uncertain strict feedback system. With the adaptive backstepping and approximation property of fuzzy logic system, the controller is recursively designed. Based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, all signals in the closed-loop system are proved to be uniformly ultimately bounded and the torque tracking error exponentially converges to a small residue. And the effectiveness and performance of the proposed autonomous system are verified by the simulation and experiment results on the bolt tightening shaft system.     

Positive <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis><Subscript>1</Subscript>-gain filter design for positive continuous-time Markovian jump systems with partly known transition rates

The paper is concerned with the problem of positive L ₁-gain filter design for positive continuous-time Markovian jump systems with partly known transition rates. Our aim is to design a positive full-order filter such that the corresponding filtering error system is positive and stochastically stable with L ₁-gain performance. By applying a linear co-positive Lyapunov function and free-connection weighting vectors, the desired positive L ₁-gain filter is provided. The obtained theoretical results are demonstrated by numerical examples.