Autonomous Mobility and Energy Service Management in Future Smart Cities: An Overview

With the rise of transportation electrification, autonomous driving and shared mobility in urban mobility systems, and increasing penetrations of distributed energy resources and autonomous demand-side management techniques in energy systems, tremendous opportunities, as well as challenges, are emerging in the forging of a sustainable and converged urban mobility and energy future. This paper is motivated by these disruptive transformations and gives an overview of managing autonomous mobility and energy services in future smart cities. First, we propose a three-layer architecture for the convergence of future mobility and energy systems. For each layer, we give a brief overview of the disruptive transformations that directly contribute to the rise of autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) systems. Second, we propose the concept of autonomous flexibility-on-demand (AFoD), as an energy service platform built directly on existing infrastructures of AMoD systems. In the vision of AFoD, autonomous electric vehicles provide charging flexibilities as a service on demand in energy systems. Third, we analyze and compare AMoD and AFoD, and we identify four key decisions that, if appropriately coordinated, will create a synergy between AMoD and AFoD. Finally, we discuss key challenges towards the success of AMoD and AFoD in future smart cities and present some key research directions regarding the system-wide coordination between AMoD and AFoD.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

Commercialisation de l'Heparin diagnostics par le biais d'une startup

Mon travail de bachelor m'a été proposé par un professeur de chimie analytique de l'université de Genève. Ce dossier a pour objectif de développer les différentes étapes d'un business plan afin d'aboutir à la commercialisation d'un dispositif médical breveté par M. Bakker et cela sous la forme d'une création d'entreprise. L'inventeur du dispositif a développé une technologie qui permet de mesurer en temps réel la concentration d'héparine dans le sang. L'héparine est un puissant anticoagulant utilisé lors d'opérations cardio-vasculaires. Actuellement, aucun autre dispositif ne permet une telle précision de mesures. C'est pourquoi nous pouvons considérer que ce dispositif représente une avancée majeure pour la médecine intensive. Le dispositif se place sur un marché peu exploité. Sa précision de mesures et sa diminution de complications lors des opérations offres des opportunités commerciales importantes. Le sondage effectué auprès des spécialistes et les résultats qu'offrent les différentes analyses de marché m'amène à recommander à M. Bakker de s'implanter sur le marché suisse. Les spécialistes ont montré un intérêt particulier au dispositif et sont prêts à l'essayer en interne. L'enthousiasme des utilisateurs relève d'une importance capitale pour Heparin diagnostics. Cibler les Hôpitaux universitaires sera donc la première étape pour la société. La réputation que se forgera la start-up en suisse permettra à cette dernière de s'étendre vers d'autres marchés. Les États-Unis subissent au fil des années un accroissement de l'obésité et une augmentation du taux de maladies cardio-vasculaires. C'est pourquoi le marché américain représente un marché attrayant pour l'entreprise. Dans ce travail, je me suis efforcée de recenser les éléments les plus pertinents afin que M. Bakker soit en mesure de démontrer aux investisseurs et aux utilisateurs les opportunités de Heparin diagnostic

The role of UV in crab spider signals: effects on perception by prey and predators

Australian crab spiders Thomisus spectabilis sit on the petals of flowers and ambush prey such as honeybees. White-coloured T. spectabilis reflect in the UV (UV+ spiders) and previous research has shown that their presence, curiously, attracts honeybees to daisies. We applied an UV-absorber (Parsol®) to create UV-absorbing (UV–) spiders that did not reflect any light below 395 nm wavelength. These physical changes of visual signals generated by crab spiders caused honeybees to avoid flowers with UV– spiders on their petals. They also affected the perception of UV– spiders by honeybees and a potential avian predator (blue tits). Compared to UV+ spiders, UV– spiders produced less excitation of the UV-photoreceptors in honeybees and blue tits, which translated into a reduced UV-receptor contrast and a reduced overall colour contrast between UV– spiders and daisy petals. Our results reveal that a clean physical elimination of reflection in the UV range affects perception in predators and prey and ultimately changes the behaviour of prey.7 page(s

Multiple roles for UV RESISTANCE LOCUS8 in regulating gene expression and metabolite accumulation in arabidopsis under solar ultraviolet radiation

Photomorphogenic responses triggered by low fluence rates of ultraviolet B radiation (UV-B; 280–315 nm) are mediated by the UV-B photoreceptor UV RESISTANCE LOCUS8 (UVR8). Beyond our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of UV-B perception by UVR8, there is still limited information on how the UVR8 pathway functions under natural sunlight. Here, wild-type Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and the uvr8-2 mutant were used in an experiment outdoors where UV-A (315–400 nm) and UV-B irradiances were attenuated using plastic films. Gene expression, PYRIDOXINE BIOSYNTHESIS1 (PDX1) accumulation, and leaf metabolite signatures were analyzed. The results show that UVR8 is required for transcript accumulation of genes involved in UV protection, oxidative stress, hormone signal transduction, and defense against herbivores under solar UV. Under natural UV-A irradiance, UVR8 is likely to interact with UV-A/blue light signaling pathways to moderate UV-B-driven transcript and PDX1 accumulation. UVR8 both positively and negatively affects UV-A-regulated gene expression and metabolite accumulation but is required for the UV-B induction of phenolics. Moreover, UVR8-dependent UV-B acclimation during the early stages of plant development may enhance normal growth under long-term exposure to solar UV

OPTIMAL EVAPORATING AND CONDENSING TEMPERATURES OF ORGANIC RANKINE CYCLE IN A HOT AND HUMID ENVIRONMENT

This paper presents a thermodynamic analysis of an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) in a hot and humid environment. A theoretical procedure is proposed for the determination of the optimal evaporation temperature (OET) and optimal condensing temperature (OCT) of a subcritical ORC plant, which is based on thermodynamic theory; the heat input is selected as the objective function. The OETs and OCTs of 21 working fluids, which comprise wet, isentropic and dry fluids, are determined under given environmental conditions– hot and humid environment. The Engineering Equation Solver (EES) integrated development environment is used to optimize the heat input of the ORC plant. Results suggest that the wet fluids (namely R717, Methanol and Ethanol) have the potential of producing better thermodynamic figure of merit over the other fluid types.   http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/njt.v36i1.1