130,104 research outputs found
Elucidation of single atom catalysts for energy and sustainable chemical production: Synthesis, characterization and frontier science
The emergence of single atom sites as a frontier research area in catalysis has sparked extensive academic and industrial interest, especially for energy, environmental and chemicals production processes. Single atom catalysts (SACs) have shown remarkable performance in a variety of catalytic reactions, demonstrating high selectivity to the products of interest, long lifespan, high stability and more importantly high atomic metal utilization efficiency. In this review, we unveil in depth insights on development and achievements of SACs, including (a) Chronological progress on SACs development, (b) Recent advances in SACs synthesis, (c) Spatial and temporal SACs characterization techniques, (d) Application of SACs in different energy and chemical production, (e) Environmental and economic aspects of SACs, and (f) Current challenges, promising ideas and future prospects for SACs. On a whole, this review serves to enlighten scientists and engineers in developing fundamental catalytic understanding that can be applied into the future, both for academia or valorizing chemical processes
Elucidation of single atom catalysts for energy and sustainable chemical production: Synthesis, characterization and frontier science
The emergence of single atom sites as a frontier research area in catalysis has sparked extensive academic and industrial interest, especially for energy, environmental and chemicals production processes. Single atom catalysts (SACs) have shown remarkable performance in a variety of catalytic reactions, demonstrating high selectivity to the products of interest, long lifespan, high stability and more importantly high atomic metal utilization efficiency. In this review, we unveil in depth insights on development and achievements of SACs, including (a) Chronological progress on SACs development, (b) Recent advances in SACs synthesis, (c) Spatial and temporal SACs characterization techniques, (d) Application of SACs in different energy and chemical production, (e) Environmental and economic aspects of SACs, and (f) Current challenges, promising ideas and future prospects for SACs. On a whole, this review serves to enlighten scientists and engineers in developing fundamental catalytic understanding that can be applied into the future, both for academia or valorizing chemical processes
Context-aware Synthesis for Video Frame Interpolation
Video frame interpolation algorithms typically estimate optical flow or its
variations and then use it to guide the synthesis of an intermediate frame
between two consecutive original frames. To handle challenges like occlusion,
bidirectional flow between the two input frames is often estimated and used to
warp and blend the input frames. However, how to effectively blend the two
warped frames still remains a challenging problem. This paper presents a
context-aware synthesis approach that warps not only the input frames but also
their pixel-wise contextual information and uses them to interpolate a
high-quality intermediate frame. Specifically, we first use a pre-trained
neural network to extract per-pixel contextual information for input frames. We
then employ a state-of-the-art optical flow algorithm to estimate bidirectional
flow between them and pre-warp both input frames and their context maps.
Finally, unlike common approaches that blend the pre-warped frames, our method
feeds them and their context maps to a video frame synthesis neural network to
produce the interpolated frame in a context-aware fashion. Our neural network
is fully convolutional and is trained end to end. Our experiments show that our
method can handle challenging scenarios such as occlusion and large motion and
outperforms representative state-of-the-art approaches.Comment: CVPR 2018, http://graphics.cs.pdx.edu/project/ctxsy
Sciduction: Combining Induction, Deduction, and Structure for Verification and Synthesis
Even with impressive advances in automated formal methods, certain problems
in system verification and synthesis remain challenging. Examples include the
verification of quantitative properties of software involving constraints on
timing and energy consumption, and the automatic synthesis of systems from
specifications. The major challenges include environment modeling,
incompleteness in specifications, and the complexity of underlying decision
problems.
This position paper proposes sciduction, an approach to tackle these
challenges by integrating inductive inference, deductive reasoning, and
structure hypotheses. Deductive reasoning, which leads from general rules or
concepts to conclusions about specific problem instances, includes techniques
such as logical inference and constraint solving. Inductive inference, which
generalizes from specific instances to yield a concept, includes algorithmic
learning from examples. Structure hypotheses are used to define the class of
artifacts, such as invariants or program fragments, generated during
verification or synthesis. Sciduction constrains inductive and deductive
reasoning using structure hypotheses, and actively combines inductive and
deductive reasoning: for instance, deductive techniques generate examples for
learning, and inductive reasoning is used to guide the deductive engines.
We illustrate this approach with three applications: (i) timing analysis of
software; (ii) synthesis of loop-free programs, and (iii) controller synthesis
for hybrid systems. Some future applications are also discussed
Pre-disciplinary and Post-disciplinary Perspectives.
Contributors to this forum are invited to write from their own disciplinary perspective on exciting intellectual developments in their field and to assess their implications for contemporary political economy. They should also address how far political economy is (or should become) an interdisciplinary venture. We find it hard to answer these questions, however, because neither co-author identifies with a single discipline. Indeed, we reject the discursive and organisational construction (and, worse, the fetishisation) of disciplinary boundaries. This means in turn that we cannot describe our approach as inter- or multi-disciplinary in its aspiration�even though, faute de mieux, we draw on concepts,theoretical arguments and empirical studies written from existing disciplinary perspectives. Instead, we describe our shared approach as pre-disciplinary in its historical inspiration and as post-disciplinar y in its current intellectual implications. We are not alone in refusing disciplinary boundaries and decrying some of their effects. Indeed, among the most exciting recent intellectual developments in the social sciences is the increasing commitment to transcending these boundaries to understand better the complex interconnections within and across the natural and social worlds. Thus our own contribution to this forum seeks to bring out some implications of pre- and post-disciplinary analyses of political economy. We advocate the idea of a �cultural political economy� and suggest how it might transform understandings of recent developments in political economy
Preparing for a Northwest Passage: A Workshop on the Role of New England in Navigating the New Arctic
Preparing for a Northwest Passage: A Workshop on the Role of New England in Navigating the New Arctic (March 25 - 27, 2018 -- The University of New Hampshire) paired two of NSF\u27s 10 Big Ideas: Navigating the New Arctic and Growing Convergence Research at NSF. During this event, participants assessed economic, environmental, and social impacts of Arctic change on New England and established convergence research initiatives to prepare for, adapt to, and respond to these effects. Shipping routes through an ice-free Northwest Passage in combination with modifications to ocean circulation and regional climate patterns linked to Arctic ice melt will affect trade, fisheries, tourism, coastal ecology, air and water quality, animal migration, and demographics not only in the Arctic but also in lower latitude coastal regions such as New England. With profound changes on the horizon, this is a critical opportunity for New England to prepare for uncertain yet inevitable economic and environmental impacts of Arctic change
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