Modelling the phase and chemical equilibria of aqueous solutions of alkanolamines and carbon dioxide using the SAFT-γ SW group contribution approach

p>All computational data for figures presented in the publication/p

Mechanism Design Theory in Control Engineering: A Tutorial and Overview of Applications in Communication, Power Grid, Transportation, and Security Systems

This article provides an introduction to the theory of mechanism design and its application to engineering problems. Our aim is to provide the fundamental principles of the theory of mechanism design for control engineers and theorists along with the state-of-the-art methods in engineering applications. We start our exposition with a brief overview of game theory highlighting the key notions that are necessary to introduce mechanism design, and then we offer a comprehensive discussion of the principles in mechanism design. Finally, we explore four key applications of mechanism design in engineering, i.e., communication networks, power grids, transportation, and security systems

Social Media and Misleading Information in a Democracy: A Mechanism Design Approach

In this paper, we present a resource allocation mechanism for the problem of incentivizing filtering among a finite number of strategic social media platforms. We consider the presence of a strategic government and private knowledge of how misinformation affects the users of the social media platforms. Our proposed mechanism incentivizes social media platforms to filter misleading information efficiently, and thus indirectly prevents the spread of fake news. In particular, we design an economically inspired mechanism that strongly implements all generalized Nash equilibria for efficient filtering of misleading information in the induced game. We show that our mechanism is individually rational, budget balanced, while it has at least one equilibrium. Finally, we show that for quasi-concave utilities and constraints, our mechanism admits a generalized Nash equilibrium and implements a Pareto efficient solution

Modeling Travel Behavior in Mobility Systems with an Atomic Routing Game and Prospect Theory

In this paper, we present a game-theoretic modeling framework for studying the travel behavior in mobility systems, by incorporating prospect theory. As part of our motivation, we conducted an experiment in a scaled smart city to investigate the frequency of errors in actual and perceived probabilities of a highway route under free flow conditions. Based on these findings, we provide a game that captures how travelers distribute their traffic flows in a transportation network with splittable traffic, utilizing the Bureau of Public Roads function to establish the relationship between traffic flow and travel time cost. Given the inherent non-linearities, we propose a smooth approximation function that helps us estimate the prospect-theoretic cost functions. As part of our analysis, we characterize the best-fit parameters and derive an upper bound for the error. We then show a Nash Equilibrium existence. Finally, we present a numerical example and simulations to verify the theoretical results and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approximation.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2202.0769

Highly Tunable Nanostructures in a Doubly pH-Responsive Pentablock Terpolymer in Solution and in Thin Films

Multiblock copolymers with charged blocks are complex systems that show great potential for enhancing the structural control of block copolymers. A pentablock terpolymer PMMA-b-PDMAEMA-b-P2VP-b-PDMAEMA-b-PMMA is investigated. It contains two types of midblocks, which are weak cationic polyelectrolytes, namely poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate) (PDMAEMA) and poly(2-vinylpyridine) (P2VP). Furthermore, these are end-capped with short hydrophobic poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) blocks in dilute aqueous solution and thin films. The self-assembly behavior depends on the degrees of ionization α of the P2VP and PDMAEMA blocks, which are altered in a wide range by varying the pH value. High degrees of ionization of both blocks prevent structure formation, whereas microphase-separated nanostructures form for a partially charged and uncharged state. While in solutions, the nanostructure formation is governed by the dependence of the P2VP block solubility of the and the flexibility of the PDMAEMA blocks on α, in thin films, the dependence of the segregation strength on α is key. Furthermore, the solution state plays a crucial role in the film formation during spin-coating. Overall, both the mixing behavior of the 3 types of blocks and the block sequence, governing the bridging behavior, result in strong variations of the nanostructures and their repeat distances

A traveler-centric mobility game: Efficiency and stability under rationality and prospect theory.

In this paper, we study a routing and travel-mode choice problem for mobility systems with a multimodal transportation network as a "mobility game" with coupled action sets. We formulate an atomic routing game to focus on the travelers' preferences and study the impact on the efficiency of the travelers' behavioral decision-making under rationality and prospect theory. To control the innate inefficiencies, we introduce a mobility "pricing mechanism," in which we model traffic congestion using linear cost functions while also considering the waiting times at different transport hubs. We show that the travelers' selfish actions lead to a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. We then perform a Price of Anarchy and Price of Stability analysis to establish that the mobility system's inefficiencies remain relatively low and the social welfare at a NE remains close to the social optimum as the number of travelers increases. We deviate from the standard game-theoretic analysis of decision-making by extending our mobility game to capture the subjective behavior of travelers using prospect theory. Finally, we provide a detailed discussion of implementing our proposed mobility game

Dynamics of Solvent-free Grafted Nanoparticles

The diffusivity and structural relaxation characteristics of oligomer-grafted nanoparticles have been investigated with simulations of a previously proposed coarse-grained model at atmospheric pressure. Solvent-free, polymer-grafted nanoparticles as well as grafted nanoparticles in a melt were compared to a reference system of bare (ungrafted) particles in a melt. Whereas longer chains lead to a larger hydrodynamic radius and lower relative diffusivity for grafted particles in a melt, bulk solvent-free nanoparticles with longer chains have higher relative diffusivities than their short chain counterparts. Solvent-free nanoparticles with short chains undergo a glass transition as indicated by a vanishing diffusivity, diverging structural relaxation time and the formation of body-centered-cubic-like order. Nanoparticles with longer chains exhibit a more gradual increase in the structural relaxation time with decreasing temperature and concomitantly increasing particle volume fraction. The diffusivity of the long chain nanoparticles exhibits a minimum at an intermediate temperature and volume fraction where the polymer brushes of neighboring particles overlap, but must stretch to fill the interparticle space.The authors would like to thank Professor Fernando Escobedo and Hsiu-Yu Yu for helpful discussions and Professor Escobedo for suggesting the simulation model used in this work. This publication is based on work supported in part by Award No.KUS-C1-018-02, made by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Additional support was provided by grant CBET-1033155 from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)