Search

Tuning an oxide/metal interface is of critical importance for the performance enhancement of many heterogeneous catalytic reactions. However, catalytic oxidation occurring at the interface between non-reducible oxide and metal has been challenging, since non-reducible oxides hardly lose their lattice oxygen (OL) or dissociate O2 from the gas phase. In this work, a ZnO monolayer film on Au(111) is used as an inverse catalyst to investigate CO oxidation occurring at the ZnO/Au(111) interface via high pressure scanning tunneling microscopy. Surface science experiments indicate that oxygen intercalation under the ZnO monolayer film, termed ZnO/O/Au(111), can be achieved via a surface reaction with 1 × 10−6 mbar O3. Subsequent exposure of the formed ZnO/O/Au(111) surface to mbar CO at room temperature leads to the recovery of the pristine ZnO/Au(111) surface. Theoretical calculations reveal that OL adjacent to intercalated oxygen (Oint) is activated due to the OL–Zn–Oint bonding and surface corrugation, which can be directly involved in CO oxidation. Subsequently, Oint migrates to the formed oxygen vacancy from the subsurface resuming the pristine ZnO structure. These results thus reveal that oxygen intercalation underneath single-layer ZnO will strongly boost the oxidation reaction via activating adjacent lattice oxygen atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Chinese government released the first residential building energy efficiency standard in 1986, the energy efficiency of residential buildings have been improved significantly. Three editions of residential building energy efficiency standards in severe cold and cold zones have been issued in the past 30 years, meanwhile, a new version is in the course of development and will be released in 2018. The paper reviews energy efficiency standards that have been issued for residential buildings in severe cold and cold zones in China, and development of new energy efficiency standards. The paper also describes the variation of key requirement in standards. Finally, future prospects for further developing energy efficiency standards for residential buildings in China are addressed. The findings show that the energy consumption reduction percentage has raised from 30% of JGJ 26-86 to 65% of the JGJ 26-2010. The insulation performance of roofs and external walls increased respectively by 103% and 83%, and the window performance increased by 130%.

Green scheduling is not only an effective way to achieve green manufacturing but also an effective way for modern manufacturing enterprises to achieve energy conservation and emission reduction. The double-flexible job shop scheduling problem (DFJSP) considers both machine flexibility and worker flexibility, so it is more suitable for practical production. First, a multi-objective mixed-integer programming model for the DFJSP with the objectives of optimizing the makespan, total worker costs, and total influence of the green production indicators is formulated. Considering the characteristics of the problem, three-layer salp individual encoding and decoding methods are designed for the multi-objective hybrid salp swarm algorithm (MHSSA), which is hybridized with the Lévy flight, the random probability crossover operator, and the mutation operator. In addition, the influence of the parameter setting on the MHSSA in solving the DFJSP is investigated by means of the Taguchi method of design of experiments. The simulation results for benchmark instances show that the MHSSA can effectively solve the proposed problem and is significantly better than the MSSA and the MOPSO algorithm in the diversity, convergence, and dominance of the Pareto frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies show a decline in parent–child co-residence among the elderly. This study examined the effect of living away from adult children on upward intergenerational monetary transfers by analysing a 2006 survey of 19,947 persons aged 60 and above and selected from 20 provinces in China. Results indicate that elderly who were not co-residing but had at least one adult child living in another community/village within the city/county were likely to receive more intergenerational monetary transfers than those who were living with children. Living close to children, rather than co-residing with them, might be the primary living arrangement for older Chinese people in the foreseeable future. The findings have important programme and policy implications for countries such as China, which has the largest elderly population in the world. There is a strong need for the development of specific public care support systems focused on the elderly population, in general, and elderly in rural areas, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Affected by various factors (genes, living habits and so on), different people present distinct aging patterns. To discover the underlying trend of aging patterns, we propose an effective age estimation method based on DGPLVM (Discriminative Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model). DGPLVM is a kind of discriminative latent variable method for manifold learning. It discovers the low-dimensional manifold by employing a discriminative prior distribution over the latent space. DGPLVM with KFDA (Kernel Fisher Discriminant Analysis) prior has been studied and successfully applied to face verification. Different with face verification which is a two-class problem, age estimation is a linearly inseparable multi-class problem. In this paper, DGPLVM with KFDA is reformulated to get the low-dimensional representations for age estimation. After low-dimensional representations are obtained, Gaussian process regression model is adopted to find the age regressor mapping low-dimensional representations to ages. Experimental results on two widely used databases FG-NET and MORPH show that reformulated DGPLVM with KFDA is a good application in age estimation and achieves comparable results to state-of-the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote gaze estimation under natural light is still a challenging problem. Appearance based methods are seriously sensitive to illumination variation in the visual spectrum and usually can hardly handle the problem of head movements. And most existing feature-based gaze estimation methods strongly rely on cornea reflections, which are unstable to glasses, head movements and especially useless for natural light condition. In this paper, we propose a novel feature based gaze estimation method without use of cornea reflections. A stereo camera system is built for the proposed method. Firstly, 3D Active Shape Models (ASM) is reconstructed using stereo vision to represent 3D face structure. Then, without use of cornea reflections, a 3D Iris-Eye-Contours based descriptor is proposed to represent human gaze information. Iris centers are used in natural light just like the pupil centers in condition of near-infrared light. What's more, precise estimation of head poses based on 3D face structure is employed to rectify the 3D iris centers and eye contours for improving the ability of tolerance to head movements. Experiments on several subjects show that the system is accurate and allows natural head movements under natural light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We aimed to investigate the diagnostic value of dynamic 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]-fluoro-D-glucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography in non-small cell lung cancer and fluoro-D-glucose hypermetabolic lymph nodes., Methods: Patients who made an active appointment for positron emission tomography-computed tomography were randomly enrolled by referring to previous imaging data and clinical information. Finally, 34 histopathologically confirmed non-small cell lung cancers (18 adenocarcinoma and 16 squamous cell carcinoma cases) were prospectively studied using dynamic and static 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]-fluoro-D-glucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography imaging (the diagnostic study has not yet been registered on a clinical trial platform). In dynamic positron emission tomography images, a volume of interest, defined by the thoracic aorta, was selected for estimating the arterial input function. Patlak and irreversible two-tissue compartment model analyses were performed based on the pixel points to obtain first-order characteristic kinetic parameters for each lesion and hypermetabolic lymph node. The first-order characteristic kinetic parameters were obtained based on the basic data of dynamic positron emission tomography images in the corresponding model and the lesion delineation of region-of-interest based on computed tomography images, such as V_Median (the median gray intensity of V), k3_Entropy, VB_Entropy, K1_Uniformity, and ki_Uniformity. The first-order characteristic kinetic parameters were also modeled by logistic regression for the differential diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer and hypermetabolic lymph nodes. Maximum and mean standard uptake values (SUVmax and SUVmean, respectively) were obtained from static positron emission tomography images. The diagnostic efficacy of the parameters was evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic curve and the DeLong test., Results: There was a significant difference in the V_Median values of adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. The regression models for K1, k3, and V provided good predictions of adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma typology. Significant differences were observed in k3_Entropy, VB_Entropy, K1_Uniformity, and ki_Uniformity between benign and malignant lymph nodes. The regression model of Ki, VB, and k3 could make a good prediction for identifying benign and malignant lymph nodes., Conclusions: Dynamic 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]-fluoro-D-glucose positron emission tomography-computed tomography imaging showed high diagnostic value in the staging of non-small cell lung cancer and fluoro-D-glucose hypermetabolic lymph nodes, and can be of great use in non-small cell lung cancer lymph node staging and surgical decision-making., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://qims.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/qims-22-725/coif). YW is an employee of Beijing General Electric Company. The other authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (2023 Quantitative Imaging in Medicine and Surgery. All rights reserved.)