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Hierarchical fuzzy systems have been an increasingly prevalent research topic, however, most of them are with fixed structures. This could reduce the flexibility of the method in applications and make it difficult to build an elastic multilayer structure for different input information. Hesitant fuzzy set (HFS) consists of rich and flexible hesitant fuzzy elements, which have been widely developed and applied in recent years, and related basic concepts and theories have been constantly developed and improved. By using the flexible expressing capabilities of HFS, we constructively construct a new serial-based hierarchical fuzzy system with flexible and adaptive rules in each layer, named after hesitant hierarchical T–S fuzzy system (HHFS). In the general HHFS, lengths of HFS elements play an important role generating constructions of each layer and consequent parameters of rules are adjusted by fuzzily weighted recursive least square method. It is the first time to build a multilayer fuzzy system using HFS. To adapt HHFS into the application of maneuvering target tracking, another newly adapted one, time-sequential hesitant fuzzy set (TSHFS) is utilized. The function of the conventional HFS is still generating structures of subsystems, and the TSHFS is utilized to optimize parameters of consequent parts with the new proposed approach for fluctuated hesitant information under TSHFS environment. In HHFS, the rules of subsystems are adaptively changeable according to different inputs, namely subsystems of each layer are with variant structures. Compared with state-of-the-art algorithms, the effectiveness and advantage of HHFS are exhibited in various experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Comparison of inoculation and leachate circulation methods on solid-state digestion. • No difference in methane yield between complete mix and slurry application inoculation. • Leachate circulation with immersion showed higher CH 4 yield than percolation. • CH 4 yield was depended on immersion period, and 24 h showed the highest yield. Abstract Heterogeneous distribution of substrate and microorganisms and low mass transfer limit methane production dramatically in solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD). To overcome this challenge, this study determined the optimal inoculation strategy (complete premix/slurry application) for reusing solid digestate as inoculum and the optimal leachate circulation method (percolation/immersion) using batch digestion. Initially, percolation and immersion (1 h per 3 days) were compared and the result shows that immersing rice straw into leachate was superior to leachate percolation in methane production. Effect of the immersion period (24, 48 and 72 h) in each circulation cycle on methane production was then evaluated for each inoculation strategy. Methane production increased until the immersion period up to 24 h and then decreased, while the average cumulative methane yield with an immersion period of 24 h was (180 mL/g volatile solids). Slurry application with an immersion period 24 h is recommended as the optimum operating condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Solid-state anaerobic digestion was conducted with turning waste in the atmosphere. • No significant improvement in methane yield by turning waste during digestion. • Mixing every day affected methanogenesis and resulted in acetate accumulation. • Mixing every day increased oxidation-reduction potential and CO 2 content. • No mixing during digestion was recommended based on net energy analysis. Mixing is an important operation in solid-state anaerobic digestion (SS-AD) to improve the mass transfer of the solid phase. This study proposed simple turning by loader in common garage-type digester without commonly used mixer or percolation system (simplified SS-AD). In simplified-SS-AD, turning is conducted in open condition. Thus, oxidation of anaerobic sludge during turning would influence digestion performance. Therefore, in this study, the effect of turning wastes by mixing during digestion on a simplified SS-AD fed with rice straw and pig urine was investigated. Four different mixing frequency levels—no mixing (M0) and mixing once a day (M-1/1), once every 3 days (M-1/3) and once a week (M-1/7)—were conducted. Methane yields of M0, M-1/3 and M-1/7 were comparable with each other. Methane yield and lag period of M-1/1 were approximately 61% and 155% of M0 (351.2 mL/g VS and 4.7 days), respectively. Furthermore, the chemical oxygen demand (COD) of acetate accumulated in the digestate of M-1/1 was comparable to the difference in the COD of methane production between M-1/1 and the other treatments. Mixing every day also resulted in a higher oxidation-reduction potential and carbon dioxide content. These findings suggest that methanogenesis was inhibited in M-1/1 by frequent mixing in the atmosphere. Net energy analysis of SS-AD plant operation showed that M0 can obtain the highest net energy gain, whereas net energy production of M-1/7 was reduced by rewarming after mixing. Therefore, no mixing is the most effective approach for the proposed simplified process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In decision making problems, the hesitance of the decision maker to the same decision object is reflected not only in the length of multiple possible memberships under, but also in the time dimension. The newly proposed time-sequential hesitant fuzzy set (TSHFS) can show the hesitance in decision making information from the view of time dimension, and in which the concept of hesitance of hesitant fuzzy sets is improved from a constructive perspective. However, it is difficult to further explore the application prospects of TSHFS in decision making as the current measurement methods, such as entropy, cross-entropy, and correlation coefficient, could not be leveraged directly in the TSHFS environment. For that entropy, cross-entropy, and correlation coefficient are important metric components of fuzzy sets and in related scenarios, we propose corresponding methods for TSHFS in this work. Meanwhile, to make full use of the importance of attribute information in the decision matrix and make the decision results have better discrimination ability, hesitant fuzzy diffusion decision model is proposed. The proposed entropy measures are constructed on trigonometric functions, the new cross-entropy measure and correlation coefficients are derived from classical counterparts, which enrich ways to deal with problems under the TSHFS environment, especially referring to decision making. In hesitant fuzzy diffusion decision model, the prior ordered value is defined as the final decision result to measure relationships among alternatives. The effectiveness and advantages of proposed entropy measures, cross-entropy measure, correlation coefficients, and the proposed decision model are demonstrated through the application of decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effect of the feedstock-to-inoculum (F/I) ratio on performance of the solid-state anaerobic co-digestion of pig urine and rice straw inoculated with a solid digestate, and clarified the microbial community succession. A 44-day biochemical methane potential test at F/I ratios of 0.5, 1, 2 and 3 at 55 °C and a 35-day large-scale batch test at F/I ratios of 0.5 and 3 at 55 °C were conducted to investigate the effects of F/I ratio on anaerobic digestibility and analyze microbial community succession, respectively. The highest cumulative methane yield was 353.7 m 3 /t VS in the large-scale batch test. Volatile fatty acids did not accumulate at any F/I ratios. The volatile solids reduction rate was highest at a F/I ratio of 0.5. Microbial community structures were similar between F/I ratios of 3 and 0.5, despite differences in digestion performance, suggesting that stable operation can be achieved at these ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shadow prices, or marginal abatement cost, of pollutants is a useful measure of environmental performance. Unlike much of the previous studies focusing on only one kind of pollutants, this paper applies the (multiplier) by-production approach to measure the shadow prices of carbon emission, sulfur emission, and dust. The case of regional economies in China is considered. As the foreign direct investment may have an impact on the environmental performance, a spatial Durbin model is utilized to identify the impact of foreign direct investment on the shadow prices of pollutants. The results show that the shadow prices of all three pollutants have been increasing over time which indicates the environmental performance of China has been improving. Moreover, the spatial regression results imply that both foreign direct investment and technology export volume positively impact the shadow price of pollutant emissions across the provinces of China. [Display omitted] • Shadow prices of three pollutants are calculated. • We explore the factors affecting shadow prices of bads in China. • FDI has a positive effect on environmental performance. • The environmental performance of China was improving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The catastrophic consequences of cascading thermal runaway events on lithium-ion battery (LIB) packs have been well recognised and studied. In underground coal mining occupations, the design enclosure for LIB packs is generally constructed to be explosion-proof (IEC60079.1 Standard). This, however, in contrast to various investigations that have been performed and conducted to illustrate the inappropriate application of such protection techniques if detailed and thorough analyses of the thermal runaway mechanism and the thermodynamic characterization of the vented gas are well understood. In this article, a thorough experimental and finite element analysis is conducted to illustrate the paramount design parameters and factors that need to be considered for safe operation of large LIB packs, particularly for hazardous environments, in both traction and stationary applications. The outcomes of this investigation provide the deep insight that can evaluate the influential factors when it comes to the design of the battery enclosure and also potentially establishes new guidelines for assessing the integrity of any large-scale battery pack design and construction for various practical applications, specifically for underground coal mining applications. • An encapsulated method is proposed for largescale Li-ion battery thermal runaway protection. • A series of nail penetration experiment are conducted for thermal abuse analysis. • Data-intensive modeling is designed for single and 10 cell pack thermal abuse simulation. • Encapsulation method can effectively dissipate heat and prevent cascaded thermal runaway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Extracellular vesicles of Lacticaseibacillus paracasei PC-H1 (LpEVs) can enter colon cancer cells. • LpEVs can inhibit the proliferation, migration and invasion of colon cancer cells. • LpEVs induced apoptosis of colon cancer cells through the PDK1/AKT/Bcl-2 signaling pathway. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common malignant tumor in the world. Previous research has shown that Lacticaseibacillus paracasei strains and its cultures have anti-colon cancer effects, but the study of L. paracasei -derived extracellular vesicles (LpEVs) as intercellular communication molecule against colon cancer has not been previously reported. Our research showed LpEVs were taken in by colorectal cancer cells. Subsequently, LpEVs inhibited the proliferation, migration, invasion and promote apoptosis of colorectal cancer cells. LpEVs inhibited the growth of CRC xenograft in nude mice and promoted tumor apoptosis in vivo. Transcriptome sequencing analysis revealed that differentially expressed genes were involved in the regulation of apoptosis. LpEVs significantly inhibited the phosphorylation level of 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase-1 (PDK1) and AKT in colorectal cancer cells and reduced the expression of Bcl-2 protein. In conclusion, extracellular vesicles of Lacticaseibacillus paracasei PC-H1 can inhibit the growth of colorectal cancer cells in vivo and vitro and induce apoptosis through PDK1/AKT/Bcl-2 signaling pathway. This research not only provides a new mechanism for the anti-tumor effects of probiotics, but also opens up new opportunity for the treatment of colon cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Volatile fatty acids (VFAs) were accumulated in reactors with low inoculum. • Methane generation and VFAs degradation were promoted with biochar addition. • Carbon dioxide utilization was promoted by either inoculum or biochar addition. • Methane yields from soured reactors increased with inoculum or biochar addition. A high concentration of accumulated volatile fatty acids (VFAs) is one of the most important factors resulting in reactor failure during solid-state anaerobic digestion. In this study, the feedstock-to-inoculum (F/I) ratio (0.5, 2, 3, 4 and 6) and the recovery method after failure (biochar addition or inoculum addition) were investigated in batch solid-state anaerobic digestion fed with rice straw and pig urine. An F/I ratio of 3 was the threshold for stable operation, while the reactors failed at F/I ratios of 4 and 6 because of high accumulated VFAs concentrations (above 30 g HAc/kg). Biochar addition (10% or 20% (wet weight) of the mixture) was as effective as inoculum addition (by adjusting the F/I ratio to 2 or 3) in promoting VFAs degradation in failed reactors within a short period (<1 day). The buffering capacity of biochar was important in promoting VFAs degradation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical image fusion mainly focuses on finding better method on combining multi-modal medical images with different characteristics, and which has been playing a significant role on clinical diagnosis and disease treatment. For the fusion of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and CT (Computed Tomography), a novel algorithm is proposed in this paper based on LatentLRR (Latent Low Rank Representation) and gradient transfer. LatentLRR is a meaningful tool for separating out detailed information and saliency information. In order to produce saliency information fused result, image statics is used through the corresponding detailed information. For detailed information, it is separated into high frequency parts and low frequency parts by NSCT (Non-Subsampled Contourlet Transform), the former are fused by the method of scale based, and the latter are merged by local energy maxima. To obtain the reconstructed image, it needs to integrate high frequency fused parts and low frequency fused parts into one image by inverse NSCT. Finally, the final image can be given by combining the reconstructed images and saliency information fused result into one image, and for a better visual effect, optimize the final result by gradient transfer. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods on the experiments of ten pair clinical medical images MRI/CT, the proposed algorithm receives a comprehensive advantage in preserving the detailed and gradient information, not only in visual effects but also in objective evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vehicle detection is an important component of intelligent transportation systems and autonomous driving. However, in real-world vehicle detection scenarios, the presence of many complex and high uncertainty factors, such as illumination differences, motion blur, occlusion, weather, etc., makes accurate and real-time vehicle detection still challenging. In order to reduce the influence of these uncertainties in real scenarios and improve the accuracy and real-time performance of vehicle detection, this paper proposes a type-1 fuzzy attention (T1FA), in which fuzzy entropy is introduced to re-weight the feature map in order to reduce the uncertainty of the feature map and facilitates the detector's focus on the target center as a way to effectively improve the accuracy of vehicle detection. Furthermore, to detect vehicles with different sizes more effectively, mixed depth convolution in MetaFormer (MDFormer) is employed as a token mixer to capture multi-scale perceptual fields. And a novel YOLO detector based on fuzzy attention (YOLO-FA) is proposed. Experimental results show that T1FA can boost 3.2% AP50 on challenging vehicle detection dataset UA-DETRAC, which is better than other commonly used attention mechanisms, especially in scenarios of rain and nighttime with higher uncertainty by 4.2% and 8.1% AP50, respectively. Finally, without pretraining on extra data, YOLO-FA achieves 70.0% AP50 and 50.3% AP on UA-DETRAC, which achieves better balance between accuracy and speed compared with state-of-the-art detectors. The remarkable improvement of T1FA in different detectors and datasets also shows the considerable generalization of T1FA. • A type-1 fuzzy attention (T1FA) mechanism-based YOLO (YOLO-FA) detector is proposed. • Mixed depthwise convolution is employed as a token mixer in MetaFormer. • T1FA can boost 3.2% AP50 in UA-DETRAC by reducing the uncertainty. • YOLO-FA trained from scratch achieves 70.0% AP50 and 50.3% AP on UADETRACA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dry anaerobic digestion is a promising technology for the recycling of agricultural waste to produce energy and fertilizer. Adding water to the substrate enables better handling and avoid inhibition caused by high total solid (TS) content in the reactor; however, it also increases leachate and operational costs. To assess the extent to which the amount of water added can be reduced, it was examined how the TS content in the reactor influenced the production of biogas. A semi-batch dry thermophilic anaerobic digester was fed with substrate (rice straw and pig manure) at a constant organic loading rate, and varied the TS contents (27%, 32%, 37%, and 42%) of the substrate by adding different amounts of water (representing 0–36% of the total substrate). During incubation, the TS content in the reactor gradually increased from 18% to 31%. Biogas production was stable and high (564 ± 13–580 ± 36 N m 3 t −1 VS), and there was no accumulation of volatile fatty acids when the TS content of the reactor was between 18% and 27%. However, the rate decreased sharply and propionate and acetate were also produced when the TS content of the reactor exceeded 28%. By applying a simple TS balance model, it was found that stable biogas production could be achieved at a substrate TS content of 32%, at which reactor TS content reached 23% at steady-state condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various substrates have been used to stimulate habitat microbes in chloroethene-contaminated groundwater, however, the specific efficiency and minimum growth of microbes have rarely been studied. This study investigated the effects of seven substrates on trichloroethene (TCE) dechlorination by augmentation of groundwater with Dehalococcoides mccartyi NIT01 and its contribution to the microbial community. Three out of eight test groups completed dechlorination of 1 mM TCE-to-ethene in varying durations; groundwater supplemented with formate (FOR) required 78 days, whereas the microcosms with lactate (LAC) and citrate (CIT) required approximately twice as long (143 days). The calculated efficiency of how much produced H 2 was used in dechlorination indicated a higher efficiency in FOR (36%) compared with LAC (1.9%) or CIT (2.9%). FOR showed lower microbial growth (3.4 × 105 copies/mL) than LAC (1.5 × 106) or CIT (4.4 × 106), and maintained a higher Shannon diversity index (5.65) than LAC (4.97) and CIT (4.30). The rapid and higher H 2 transfer efficiency with lower bacterial growth by using formate was attributed to the slightly positive Gibbs free energy identified in H 2 production requiring a H 2 -utilizer, lower carbon in the molecule, and adaptation to metabolic potential of the original groundwater microbiome. Formate is, therefore, a promising electron donor for rapid Dehalococcoides- augmented remediation with minimum bacterial growth. Sequential transferring of the FOR culture successfully maintained TCE-to-ethene dechlorination activity and enriched the members of genera Dehalococcoides (33%), Methanosphaerula (23%), Rectinema (13%), and Desulfitobacterium (5.6%). This suggests that formate is transferred to H 2 and acetate, and provided to Dehalococcoide s. [Display omitted] • Seven e− donors were assayed in Dehalococcoides -augmented groundwater. • Formate showed most rapid dechlorination of trichloroethylene to ethene. • The H 2 transferring efficiency to Dehalococcoides was estimated to 30%. • Formate could be transferred to H 2 and acetate for Dehalococcoides. • One of the bacteria producing H2 from formate was Rectinema sp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A zoning method based on ecological indicators and economic indicators is applied. • Ecological and economic situations are highly correlated with topographic conditions. • The coupling coordination degree(CCD) between ecology and economy is calculated. • Economic development is highly positively correlated with CCD. • Targeted regional sustainable development strategies are put forward. The coordinated development of ecology and economy is one of the key issues of sustainable development. A full understanding of the relationship between ecology and economy is necessary for the coordinated development of the two. This paper takes Sichuan Province as the research area and county-level administrative districts as the research unit. Based on the medium value of the ecological quality index and economic growth index of each unit, Sichuan Province is divided into dual pressure zones (DPZ), economic backward zones (EBZ), ecological crisis zones (ECZ), and coordinated development zones (CDZ) and the coupling coordination degree (CCD) of each unit is studied. The results show that: (1) On the whole, the eastern part of Sichuan Province has a better level of economic development, and the southern part of the western region has a higher ecological quality. The ecological quality and economic growth pattern are highly correlated with topographical conditions. (2) The distribution characteristics of the four types of partitions are significantly different. The EBZ are more distributed in the western and southern of Sichuan Province, the ECZ are more distributed in the eastern, the DPZ and CDZ are relatively more sporadic. More than 90% of the partition changed zones are distributed in the eastern area. (3) The CCD of more than 95% units belongs to moderate coordination and high coordination. The overall CCD of the four types of zones has shown an upward trend from 2010 to 2015. Based on the results, Sichuan Province should follow the path of clear waters and green mountains are as good as mountains of gold and silver, and targeted sustainable development suggestions for DPZ, EBZ, ECZ, and CDZ are put forward. This paper provides guidance for formulating regional sustainable development strategies, especially in areas with unbalanced development due to congenital topographical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]