A lightweight autonomous MAV for indoor search and rescue

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have great potentials to be applied for indoor search and rescue missions. In this paper, we propose a modular lightweight design of an autonomous MAV with integrated hardware and software. The MAV is equipped with the 2D laser scanner, camera, mission computer and flight controller, running all the computation onboard in real time. The onboard perception system includes a laser‐based SLAM module and a custom‐designed visual detection module. A dual Kalman filter design provides robust state estimation by multiple sensor fusion. Specifically, the fusion module provides robust altitude measurement in the circumstance of surface changing. In addition, indoor‐outdoor transition is explicitly handled by the fusion module. In order to efficiently navigate through obstacles and adapt to multiple tasks, a task tree‐based mission planning method is seamlessly integrated with path planning and control modules. The MAV is capable of searching and rescuing victims from unknown indoor environments effectively. It was validated by our award‐winning performance at the 2017 International Micro Air Vehicle Competition (IMAV 2017), held in Toulouse, France. The performance video is available on https://youtu.be/8H19ppS_VXM .     

A survey and taxonomy on virtual data center embedding

The Journal of Supercomputing - Data center network virtualization is being considered as a promising technology to provide a performance guarantee for cloud computing applications. One important...     

Regulation of sensory nerve conduction velocity of human bodies responding to annual temperature variations in natural environments

The extensive research interests in environmental temperature can be linked to human productivity / performance as well as comfort and health; while the mechanisms of physiological indices responding to temperature variations remain incompletely understood. This study adopted a physiological sensory nerve conduction velocity (SCV) as a temperature‐sensitive biomarker to explore the thermoregulatory mechanisms of human responding to annual temperatures. The measurements of subjects’ SCV (over 600 samples) were conducted in a naturally ventilated environment over all four seasons. The results showed a positive correlation between SCV and annual temperatures and a Boltzmann model was adopted to depict the S‐shaped trend of SCV with operative temperatures from 5°C to 40°C. The SCV increased linearly with operative temperatures from 14.28°C to 20.5°C and responded sensitively for 10.19°C‐24.59°C, while tended to be stable beyond that. The subjects’ thermal sensations were linearly related to SCV, elaborating the relation between human physiological regulations and subjective thermal perception variations. The findings reveal the body SCV regulatory characteristics in different operative temperature intervals, thereby giving a deeper insight into human autonomic thermoregulation and benefiting for built environment designs, meantime minimizing the temperature‐invoked risks to human health and well‐being.     

Do funded papers attract more usage?

Research funding has been seen as one of the most important resource in the reward system of science. And usage of publications denotes an interesting perspective of user behavior in scientific communication. This study aims to address the relationship between funding and Usage Count, which is a new metrics item established on the platform of Web of Science. Full records of 300,010 articles published in 2013 were downloaded in October 2015, and divided into six disciplines, including information science library science, education educational research, economics, computer science, materials science, and chemistry. Seven indicators were proposed to measure the impact, including Funding rate, Citation per paper, Usage rate, Usage per paper, Citation difference, Usage difference, and Conversion rate. It concluded funding has impact on usage and citation, and funded papers attract more usage, but varying in different disciplines. Usage Count can be used in the extension of citation metrics but with limits. This study originally engages with usage metrics and detected that there is positive correlation between usage and funding.     

Iron Towers in Guangxiao Temple,Guangzhou City

正Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period (963 A.D. and 967 A.D.)The western tower was damaged and is now incomplete. The eastern tower is 7.7 m high.There are two towers, called the eastern tower and the western tower, which were built in 963 A.D. and 967 A.D.,respectively, and are the earliest extant iron towers. There are 1,024 Buddha statues cast on each side of the tower body.The whole tower is made up of 17 castings, which are stacked layer by layer, and each casting is made to be a single     

Mixed coordination mechanisms for scheduling games on hierarchical machines

In this paper, we study scheduling games under mixed coordination mechanisms on hierarchical machines. The two scheduling policies involved are ‐ and ‐, where ‐ (resp., ‐) policy sequences jobs in nondecreasing order of their hierarchies, and jobs of the same hierarchy in nonincreasing (resp., nondecreasing) order of their processing times. We first show the existence of a Nash equilibrium. Then we present the price of anarchy and the price of stability for the games with social costs of minimizing the makespan and maximizing the minimum machine load. All the bounds given in this paper are tight.     

Corrosion morphology of AZ91D exposed in an atmospheric environment

The focused ion beam technique was employed to investigate the atmospheric corrosion morphology of AZ91D. It was found that the α matrix of the alloy was preferentially corroded in the areas adjacent to intermetallic phases. The most interesting finding was that the corrosion products in corrosion cavities were pelletlike, which has never been reported before.     

P(DBF-VA)型柴油低温流动性改进剂的研制

针对新疆地产柴油蜡含量较高的特点,以游离基聚合法合成了富马酸双链混合酯和醋酸乙烯酯共聚物型[P(DBF-VA)]柴油低温流动改进剂,利用正交实验研究了单体配比,引发剂用量,溶剂用量,聚合温度对聚合物降冷滤效果的影响。共聚物用IR进行表征,利用XRD初步探讨了该降凝剂的降凝机理。结果表明:该剂能使吐哈—10~#、0~#柴油冷滤点降低10℃和7℃;使独山子0~#柴油冷滤点下降12℃;使石化0~#柴油冷滤点下降8℃;使克拉玛依0~#柴油的冷滤点下降8℃。