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Interpreting the similarities and dissimilarities in spatiotemporal variations and various controls between surface and canopy urban heat islands (UHIs) is critical for a better understanding of their vertical structure. Preceding comparisons of the surface UHI (SUHI) and canopy UHI (CUHI), however, remain mostly restricted either in a single city or over a few cities within limited background climates; therefore, the associated similarities and dissimilarities between the SUHI and CUHI under different climates, especially at a global scale, remain largely unknown. Based on both satellite and in situ data, we simultaneously investigated the spatiotemporal patterns of the SUHI intensity (SUHII) and CUHI intensity (SUHII) of 366 global cities within various background climates. We further investigated the different impacts of several controls (e.g., vegetation coverage, population size, precipitation) on SUHII and CUHII. Our results indicate the following: (1) For the selected 366 cities, the annual mean SUHII is higher than CUHII by 1.1 ± 1.9 °C (mean ± Std) during the day and 0.3 ± 1.5 °C (mean ± Std) at night. The SUHII and CUHII in the equatorial, warm temperate, and snow climates are generally consistent with the above characteristics (i.e., SUHII > CUHII), however, in arid regions SUHII is lower than CUHII by 0.8 °C during the day. (2) The annual mean day–night difference in SUHII is positive (i.e., 0.6 ± 1.8 °C (mean ± Std)), while the difference in CUHII becomes negative (i.e., −0.2 ± 1.6 °C (mean ± Std)), indicating that urbanization increases the diurnal temperature range (DTR) based on land surface temperature, but it decreases the DTR based on surface air temperature. (3) Despite the high correlation between vegetation coverage and impervious surface percentage (ISP), their impacts on SUHII and CUHII were not consistent. The urban–rural difference in ISP exerts an insignificant impact on both SUHII and CUHII during the day and a greater impact on CUHII than on SUHII at night, whereas the urban–rural difference in vegetation coverage has a greater impact on SUHII than on CUHII during the day, while the opposite occurs at night. The impacts of population size on SUHII and CUHII are much greater during the night than on the day in which their impacts can be minimal. The relationship between annual mean precipitation and SUHII is positive during the day but negative at night, while for CUHII, their relationship is insignificantly negative both during the day and at night. These results can improve our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns and controls of these two types of UHIs under various climates.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are becoming a reality and may integrate with existing public transport systems to enable the new generation of autonomous public transport. It is vital to understand what are the alternatives for AV integration from different angles such as costs, emissions, and transport performance. With the aim to support AV integration in public transport, this paper takes a typical European city as a case study for analyzing the impacts of different AV integration alternatives. A transport planning model considering AVs is developed and implemented, with a methodology to estimate the costs of the transport network. Traffic simulations are conducted to derive key variables related to AVs. An optimization process is introduced for identifying the optimal network configuration based on a given AV integration strategy, followed by the design of different AV integration scenarios, simulation, and analyses. With the proposed method, a case study is done for the city of Uppsala with presentation of detailed cost results together with key traffic statistics such as mode share. The results show that integrating AVs into public transport does not necessarily improve the overall cost efficiency. Based on the results and considering the long transition period to fully autonomous vehicles, it is recommended that public transport should consider a gradual introduction of AVs with more detailed analysis on different combination and integration alternatives of bus services and AVs.

The ordered Pt-based intermetallic nanoparticles (NPs) with small size show superior magnetic or catalytic properties, but the synthesis of these NPs still remains a great challenge due to the requirement of high temperature annealing for the formation of the ordered phase, which usually leads to sintering of the NPs. Here, we report a simple approach to directly synthesize monodisperse ordered L10-FePt NPs with average size 10.7 nm without further annealing or doping the third metal atoms, in which hexadecyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) was found to be the key inducing agent for the thermodynamic growth of the Fe and Pt atoms into the ordered intermetallic structure in the synthetic process. In particular, 10.7 nm L10-FePt NPs synthesized by the proper amount of CTAC show a coercivity of 3.15 kOe and saturation magnetization of 45 emu/g at room temperature. The current CTAC-assisted synthetic strategy makes it possible to deeply understand the formation of the ordered Pt-based intermetallic NP in solution phase synthesis.

A β-solidifying TiAl alloy with a refined microstructure and ultra-fine yttrium-rich precipitates that was consolidated by spark plasma sintering was investigated by scanning and transmission electron microscopies. Two categories of yttrium-rich precipitates, Y2O3 and YAl2, with sizes ranging from tens to hundreds of nanometers were found to be dispersed within the matrix uniformly. The crystallographic relationship between the two precipitates and the γ-TiAl matrix was determined by the selected area electron diffraction and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. This spark plasma sintered TiAl alloy was characterized by a uniform duplex microstructure, and it exhibited excellent tensile properties at room temperature. Typically, specimen sintered at 1150°C has an ultimate tensile strength of 1113.1 MPa, yield strength of 881MPa, and a moderate plastic elongation of 1.41%.

The incipient plasticity of an amorphous solid represents the onset of shear deformation, which is a stochastic progress closely related to microstructure evolution. It is well known that the cooling rate plays a crucial role in the microstructure evolution of a glass. Nevertheless, how the cooling rate affects the incipient plasticity is still unclear. In this work, the incipient plastic deformation of the amorphous phase in Cu47.5Zr48Al4Nb0.5 bulk metallic glass composites (BMGCs) cast with different cooling rates is systematically studied. The incipient plasticity of the glassy matrix of the BMGCs is found to occur via a first displacement burst, the occurrence of which is more stochastic as the cooling rate decreases. According to the auto-correlation functions and cooperative shear model, the stochastic behavior is attributed to the effects of the cooling rate on the initial free volume and subsequent activated shear transformation zones (STZs). A higher content of free volume is present in the glassy matrix of the studied samples cooled at a faster rate, which facilitates the operation of STZs. Moreover, the larger incipient burst size is correlated with the higher content of free volume and larger STZs in the glassy matrix. The larger STZs result in more preferable propagation of multiple shear bands, leading to less stochastic deformation and more obvious plastic deformation. This study provides further understanding on the incipient plasticity of glassy matrix in BMGCs.

In this paper, we report the results obtained from the hot compression behaviour of co-spray-formed Al-Si/7075 bimetallic gradient alloys by investigating the five selected layers divided evenly from top to bottom. It was found that with a decrease in the strain rate and an increase in temperature, the hot compression flow stress of deposited alloys decreases gradually, as expected. The relationship between flow stress, temperature and strain rate follows the Arrhenius relationship. The deformation activation energy of the co-spray formed gradient alloy gradually increases from bottom to top in the height direction, which are 100.15, 167.35, 185.54, 208.78 and 220.83 KJ/mol, indicating that the degree of difficulty in the deformation of the alloy is affected by changes in the silicon content of the alloy. Finally, the flow stress constitutive equation is calculated for each layer of alloy material, which is instructive for the subsequent study of the densification process of co-spray-formed gradient alloys.

The influence of surface microstructural regulation mechanisms on the mechanical and giant magneto-impedance (GMI) properties of as-cast melt-extracted CoFe-based wires has been systematically researched based on morphology, phase distribution and domain structure parameters. A series of statistical models were applied to analyze the mechanical properties and followed by mapping the curve of cumulative failure rate for wire application. It was found that the average and highest fracture strengths, average tensile strain increased with Cu substitution and reached peaks of ~3725 MPa, ~4250 MPa and ~2.7%, respectively. Verified structure-simulation experiments revealed that surface Rayleigh waves effectively split the main crack and the diffusely distributed nanocrystalline in surface area acted as a pinning point to impede the crack growth, enhancing the mechanical properties. The GMI ratio displayed similar variations and attained a maximum value of 700 ± 5% as well as the resistance and reactance ratios improved to ~687% and ~2206%, respectively. The enhanced relative dielectric permeability μs resulting from the increased domain wall energy density and the decreased surface domain width. The unique synchronous enhancement of CoFe-based wires satisfies the demand for emerging magnetoelectric sensor applications, e.g. flexible and wearable sensors, equipment self-monitoring sensors, and array robotic skin sensors under harsh working environments.

The improvement of mechanical properties must be achieved by designing and constructing more suitable microstructure, such as hierarchical microstructure. In order to significantly enhance the creep resistance of titanium matrix composites (TMCs), two-scale network microstructure was constructed including the first-scale network (

The plastic deformation of metallic glasses (MG) is well-known to occur via shear transformation zones (STZs) on the scale of atomic clusters, yet fracture of MG takes place via shear bands of the micron scale. So far, understanding on how the operation of STZs leads to shear localization and fracture remains limited. In this work, tensile tests on Cu/Zr-based MG micro-wires show that both the first-yield and fracture stress exhibit the Weibull distribution, and fractography reveals that shear localization in the form of intense shear bands leads to shear fracture. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations show that shear bands form via the correlated emergence and operation of discrete STZs close to one another. To describe how the stochastic yet correlated occurrence of the discrete STZs leads to shear localization, a model is constructed to relate the probability of the successive operation of discrete STZs, to their nucleation density. The model predicts that, if nucleation density of the STZs grows along the strain path, as prior shear events triggers the emergence of new STZs, then successive occurrence of discrete shear events speeds up rapidly to an asymptotic state which is exactly the condition of shear localization and shear banding. Furthermore, the MD results suggest an exponential growth law for the occurrence of the STZs along the strain path, which also gives predictions in good agreement with the experimental Weibull distributions of the first-yield stress of Cu/Zr-based MGs.

The atomic structure evolution of Gd36Tb20Co20Al24 high entropy metallic glass microwire from room to cryogenic temperature has been studied by in-situ high energy synchrotron X-ray diffraction. During the cooling process, the atomic volume decreases. For short-range order, the coordination numbers of all atomic pairs increase. As the temperature decreases, bond lengths of large atom-small atom and small atom-small atom pairs keep decreasing whereas that of large atom-large atom pairs unexpectedly increases continuously. The mechanism of atomic structure evolution is proposed, which might be helpful for better understanding the low temperature magnetocaloric effect of high entropy metallic glasses.

A novel type of bi-constituent wire composite was obtained by combining melt-extracted Gd50Al30Co20 and Gd55Al20Co25 microwire components with Curie temperature (TC) of 86 K and 110 K, respectively. For a field change of 5 T, the wire composite possesses a table-like feature spanning a temperature interval of 30 K with value of ∼8.6 J kg−1 K−1, and enhanced refrigerant capacity (RC) and relative cooling power (RCP) values of ∼680 J kg−1 and ∼863 J kg−1, respectively. The experimental results agree well with those calculated by a simple bi-composition model, demonstrating the possibility of designing wire-based composites with desirable magnetocaloric effects (MCE) for active magnetic refrigeration.

Through designing the composition and processing approach, the non-equiatomic (Gd36Tb20Co20Al24)100- xFex (x = 0, 1, 2 and 3 at.%) high-entropy-metallic-glass (HE-MG) alloy microwires were successfully fabricated by melt-extraction technique. The microstructure and magnetocaloric properties of the microwires were systematically investigated. The microwires possess tunable Curie temperatures, i.e. 81– 108 K, above the typical rare-earth (RE) containing HE-MG reports. The high Curie temperatures are attributed to the designed composition. Magnetocaloric response peak values of Fe-containing GdTbCoAl alloy microwires range 7.6–8.9 J kg1 K1 (5 T), which are comparable to those of many outstanding RE-containing magnetocaloric HE-MGs. The characteristics of the melt-extraction method, combining with compositional effects, favor the formation of amorphous and nanocrystalline phases. The increase in the cooling efficiency for microwires with higher Fe content can be attributed to the broadening of the Curie temperature distribution induced by the composition difference between nanocrystalline phase and amorphous matrix. The designed composition and the melt-extraction processing approach for Fe-containing GdTbCoAl alloys can tune their Curie temperatures towards a temperature range of natural gas liquefaction and improve their magnetocaloric properties. This demonstrates that Fe-containing GdTbCoAl HE-MG composite microwires have great potential as high-performance magnetic refrigerants

The understanding of the fracture mechanism of amorphous alloys (AAs) is of importance for their engineering applications as advanced structural materials. In this study, a series of micro-tensions of Cu45Zr45Co10 AA microwires were conducted under different strain rates ranging from 5 × 10−5 s−1 to 1 × 10−2 s−1. It is found that all microwires fracture by shear cracking, but the shear fracture strengths exhibit pronounced rate-dependent uncertainties. Based on both lognormal and Weibull statistical analyses, the studied AA microwires reveal a positive rate-sensitivity of fracture strengths. However, increasing strain rates incurs the decrease in the fracture reliability. We demonstrate that the fracture reliability of AA microwires is dominated by a square root singularity of the characteristic lengths of shear offset on fracture surfaces, which satisfies linear elastic fracture mechanics.

Understanding the distribution and propagation of train delay is crucial for railway management. This paper combines the interpretability of logistic regression models with the robustness and accuracy of Random Forest models to create a combined model which was applied to predict punctuality. The data consists of relative timetable deviation of train movement for all stations, as well as punctuality observations at destination stations. The data was recorded for both passenger and freight trains in Sweden between year 2017 and 2018.The data consists of many policy and categorical variables such as train operator which are known to indirectly effect delay risk, but are labeled as insignificant in classical regression making their coefficients unstable and difficult to interpret. For this reason, the study has applied logistic regression model with the variables of interest such as train type as well as first registered delay (relative deviation compared with timetable) along with "bagging" of Random Forest capturing indirect or/and sensitive predictors. This semi-parametric logistic regression model was trained using 2017 data and was accurate and robust when tested using the 2018 data. It has shown to be capable of handling the delays caused by unforeseen disruptions such as abnormal weather in the test year. In this paper we show that the semi-parametric model has significantly better prediction performance than linear models, Weibull distributions, Binomial logistic regression and Random Forest alone. Furthermore, the semiparametric model maintains its interpretability whilst producing accurate predictions with new data.

Techniques to fabricate patterned sapphire substrates (PSSs) have attracted much attention in recent decades. Wet etching behaviors and crystalline sapphire processes are critical for PSSs applications to improve the performance of light-emitting diodes. This study investigated the shape evolution behaviors and associated kinetics of cavities on the c-{0001} plane in crystalline sapphire during wet etching. It was revealed that wet etching reduces the cavity aspect ratio, and the cavity shape is a complicated structure constructed by 15 faceted planes of c-{0001}, r-{1 1 ¯ 02}, p-{11 2 ¯ 3}, m-{10 1 ¯ 0}, and s-{1 1 ¯ 01} families. A constant etching rate was demonstrated, suggesting the step flow mechanism of etching. The etching activation energy of crystalline sapphire is reduced by preformation of cavities as elucidated by the Arrhenius kinetic model followed during the etching process. This study provides new insight into wet etching behaviors of crystalline sapphire and might open up a way for fabricating sapphire substrate with large aspect ratio patterns.

Small-sized materials with large surface to volume ratio favor heat transfer during magnetic refrigeration cycling and thus may help enhancing the refrigeration efficiency. Here, high Fe content Ni44.9Fe4.3Mn38.3Sn12.5 polycrystalline microwires were prepared by a melt-extraction technique. The as-extracted microwires were annealed at 1173 K for 60 min, leading to significant grain growth and formation of a secondary Fe-rich γ phase. The annealed microwire exhibits larger magnetization difference (ΔM) between the austenite and martensite phases and smaller thermal hysteresis compared to the as-extracted microwire. The annealed microwire possesses a magnetic transition to austenite at 299 K, followed by a martensitic transformation (MT) from a ferromagnetic austenite to a weak-magnetic martensite at 208 K upon cooling. Under a magnetic field of 50 kOe, the annealed microwires show a maximum magnetic entropy change ΔSm of 6.9 J/kg·K and an effective refrigeration capacity RCeff of 78.0 J/kg over a broad working temperature span ΔTFWHM of 20 K around the MT. In addition, magnetic transition of the austenite gives rise to ΔSm −3.7 J/kg·K and RCmag 232.5 J/kg with ΔTFWHM of 85 K under 50 kOe. Keywords: Ferromagnetic shape memory alloys, Microwires, Martensitic transformation, Magnetocaloric effect, Ni-Fe-Mn-Sn

We have proposed a series of novel tailoring techniques for integrating conventional vacuum annealing (CVA) and the specific (e.g. transverse- and rotated-) magnetic field annealing (as denoted by TMFA and RMFA respectively), and systematically investigated the impacts of them on the giant magnetoimpedance (GMI) properties and domain microstructure of Co-based amorphous wires. Experimental results indicated that a multiplex MFA treatment i.e, two-step CVA annealing under a rotated magnetic field of 4000Oe, can realize remarkable enhancement of GMI in comparison with the as-prepared, CVA-treated and MFA-treated wires. The GMI ratio increased firstly and then tended to be stable with increasing frequency, moreover, both permeability and GMI ratio decreased with the increase of DC magnetic field. At 13 MHz, the maximum GMI ratio [ΔZ/Zmax]max and field response sensitivity ξmax of RMFA-ed wires increased to 398.39% and 21.84%/Oe, respectively, which is 2.41 times and 3.17 times than those of 165.18% and 6.88%/Oe for the as-prepared wires. Essentially, the physical process of RMFA action is mainly described as the multi-angle induced magnetic anisotropy and atomic reordering dynamic process due to the co-action of rotatory variation magnetic field energy and thermal activation. Meanwhile, the GMI behavior of TMFA evolving from single peak (SP) to double peaks (DPs) is attributed to the increase of magnetic domain driving force (namely domain wall movement increment) and uni-directional inducing magnetic anisotropy at relatively high frequency, which modified the GMI ratio and field sensitivity to 334.61% and 33.51%/Oe, respectively. Therefore, it can be concluded that both RMFA & TMFA would be used to explore microwires with enhanced GMI property for high-performance sensor applications.

Cardiovascular drug research and development (R&D) has been in active state and continuously attracts attention from the pharmaceutical industry. However, only one individual drug can eventually reach the market from about the 10,000 compounds tested. It would be useful to learn from these failures when developing better strategies for the future. Discontinued drugs were identified from a search performed by Thomson Reuters Integrity. Additional information was sought through PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, and pharmaceutical companies search. Twelve compounds discontinued for cardiovascular disease treatment after reaching Phase I–III clinical trials from 2016 to 2018 are detailed in this manuscript, and the reasons for these failures are reported. Of these, six candidates (MDCO-216, TRV027, ubenimex, sodium nitrite, losmapimod, and bococizumab) were dropped for lack of clinical efficacy, the other six for strategic or unspecified reasons. In total, three candidates were discontinued in Phase I trials, six in Phase II, and three in Phase III. It was reported that the success rate of drug R&D utilizing selection biomarkers is higher. Four candidate developments (OPC-108459, ONO-4232, GSK-2798745, and TAK-536TCH) were run without biomarkers, which could be used as surrogate endpoints in the 12 cardiovascular drugs discontinued from 2016 to 2018. This review will be useful for those involved in the field of drug discovery and development, and for those interested in the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

The data in this article is the supplementary data of the research article entitled “Comparable magnetocaloric properties of melt-extracted Gd36Tb20Co20Al24 metallic glass microwires” (Yin et al., 2020). The data shows the circular cross section of Gd36Tb20Co20Al24 metallic glass microwires with a diameter of ∼55 μm. The data also shows that the chemical compositions of microwires are basically uniform on macro-scale and micro-scale.

Modelling of the Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI) temporal variations have been a great concern. However, most previous studies only focused on modelling the SUHI variations in the past period, yet those for their future patterns remain rarely investigated. By incorporating various predictable meteorological variables in the SVM regression model, this study achieved an attempt to the prediction for the next-day SUHIs over Chinese main cities. Both the SUHI intensity (SUHII) and the pixel-based Gaussian-simulated LSTs were predicted. The averaged MAE of our predicted SUHII across Chinese megacities is 0.67 K; and the MAE for the LST is generally less than 1.5 K. The incorporation of meteorological variables was shown to greatly contribute to the predicted daily SUHIIs. We consider our study, by achieving an attempt to the SUHI prediction, can improve the understanding of the SUHI mitigation.

Chemical wet etching technology is widely applied in semiconductor device fabrication such as the patterned sapphire substrates. However, the etching of pre-formed structure is still lack of investigations, which has potential applications in the preparation of particular devices. By using molten KOH etchant, the present work studied the wet etching behaviors of cavity on the A-plane of sapphire crystal in three-dimensional space and revealed the etching kinetics. It was demonstrated that the cavity will evolve into a complicate symmetric shape with multiple facet planes during etching. The width of the cavity is gradually expanded however the depth of the cavity is stable during etching, where the Arrhenius model was held, indicating that the etching process is realized by step flow removal of atoms. The present results improve the understanding of the morphology evolution and relevant kinetics of a pre-formed structure on sapphire crystal during wet etching, which shed further light on the single crystal wet etching technology for device fabrication.

The effects of trace Fe-doping on the magnetic and magnetocaloric performances of Gd-based metallic microfibers were systematically and detailedly investigated in this article. Experimental results indicated that the Gd-based microfibers prepared by the rotated-dipping process are uniform and continuous, with typically amorphous structure characteristics and favorable thermal stability. Curie temperature TC of Gd-based amorphous microfibers increases with the rising of Fe content, and the TC of GdAlCoFe3 microfibers is the highest at 128.7 K (relatively increased by 15.3 K than before doping). Among the general magnetic performance indicators, the saturation magnetization Ms of GdAlCoFe2 microfibers reaches a peak at 264.04 emu/g. Furthermore, the values of magnetocaloric performance indexes of Gd-based amorphous microfibers increase firstly and then decrease with the rising of Fe-doping amount. When the external magnetic field Hex = 50,000 Oe, the maximum magnetic entropy change -ΔSmmax, refrigeration capacity RC and relative cooling power RCP of GdAlCoFe1 microfibers are 10.33 J/kg·K, 748.22 J/kg and 1006.90 J/kg, which increased by 0.07 times, 0.13 times and 0.16 times, respectively than before Fe-doping (namely -ΔSmmax = 9.68 J/kg·K, RC = 663.79 J/kg, RCP = 871.73 J/kg). From the perspective of microstructural changes, Fe-doping results in the formation tendency of atomic clusters and nanocrystals in micro-regions, the orderly orientation of atoms appears, and the magnetic anisotropy increases accordingly. In addition, the 3d electron layer of the doped Fe element in Gd-Al-Co-Fe quaternary alloy system enhances the RKKY indirectly exchange coupling interaction and changes the state of magnetic entropy, which in turn leads to an increase in Curie temperature and an improvement in magnetocaloric performance. Since RC and RCP are the main indicators in engineering applications, the GdAlCoFe1 amorphous microfibers can be selected as a low-temperature magnetic refrigeration working medium to provide technical guarantee for the application of magnetic refrigeration technology.

We report upon the excellent magnetocaloric effect in melt-extracted DyHoCo medium entropy microwires. The magnetic entropy change (-ΔSM) reaches a large value of ∼11.2 J kg−1 K−1 for a field change (μ0ΔH) of 5 T. The large value of -ΔSM is resulted from the large magnetic moments of Dy and Ho. In addition, the DyHoCo microwires show a good cooling efficiency; RC1, RC2 and RC3 are evaluated to be ∼530 J kg−1, ∼417 J kg−1 and ∼279 J kg−1, respectively, at μ0ΔH = 5 T. The DyHoCo microwires undergo a second-order paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition at the Curie temperature of ∼35 K. The excellent magnetocaloric property makes the melt-extracted DyHoCo microwires a promising refrigerant for cryogenic cooling application.

Impedance output stability of Co-rich amorphous wires depends largely on the wire-terminal-connection, which can be accomplished by composite electroplating towards a robust sensor application. The present experimental results indicated that Ni/Cu composite layer composed of Ni, Cu plating and passivating treatment show a homogeneous microstructure, and excellent surface wettability, weldability and thermal expansion coefficient matching under variable temperature of wire-terminal-connecting. The properties of composite electroplated layer are mainly influenced by cathode current density, electroplating time and electrolyte temperature. The inhomogeneous distributed clustering-regions, disproportionated reaction, tendency of hydrogen brittleness and crack have been reduced by optimized coactions of intermolecular Van der Waals force, inner diffusion and mechanical bonding of electroplated layer. Therefore, the wire-terminal-connection is able to effectively improve impedance output stability by minimizing the disturbance of stray capacity, decreasing radio-frequency wave emission and electromagnetic signal attenuation, and suppressing the destabilization or concussion. Keywords: Amorphous wires, Wire-terminal-connection, Ni/Cu composite electroplating, Impedance output stability