Strategies for Activating Historic District: Micro-reform Implement in Qiulin District, Harbin

This paper explores urban strategies that address existing problems in Qiulin District, which is famous as a historic district with plenty of cultural memories in Harbin, China. In the paper, it firstly introduces the definition of historic district and made a brief review of academic literatures about space activation. It then takes Qiulin District in Harbin as a case to further discuss the current dilemma. In terms of land use, Qiulin District is primarily commercial and residential that increases the difficulty of activating this area. In accordance with demonstrated issues: 1) heritage buildings with limited value capture, 2) diverse business types challenged with urgent upgrading, 3) multiple high-quality resources utilized in weak synergy, it proposes three main strategies to solve problems. With introducing the concept of micro-reform, the strategies: 1) activate heritage buildings to recapture historic value, 2) extend outdoor space and upgrade commercial structure to enhance characteristic streets, 3) design for fun life to build inclusive network, compressively explore a number of possibilities to reflect the current situation and achieve visionary planning. Finally, this paper draws discussion about the significance of space activation for historic districts towards environmental sustainability and human beings

Assessing and benchmarking 3D city models

10.1080/13658816.2022.2140808International Journal of Geographical Information Science1-2

Challenges of urban digital twins: A systematic review and a Delphi expert survey

10.1016/j.autcon.2022.104716Automation in Construction147104716-10471

Uncovering the challenges of urban digital twins

GIM International37418-2

Demand Analysis of Lubricating Oil in Spur Gear Pairs

Theoretical calculation and numerical simulation are used to investigate the lubricating oil demand of spur gears. In accordance with the function of lubricating oil during the meshing process, oil demand is regarded as the superposition of oil for lubrication and cooling. Oil for lubrication is calculated in accordance with meshing and elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) theories. Oil for cooling is obtained from friction heat. The influence of different meshing positions on lubricating oil demand is analysed, and the effects of modulus, tooth number, transmission ratio, input speed and input torque on lubricating oil demand is investigated using a control variate method. Simulation results indicated that oil for lubrication and oil for cooling have two maxima each during a meshing circle. The influences of different gear parameters and working conditions on lubricating oil demand are compared. The results showed that the oil volume for lubrication increases and oil volume for cooling decreases as the modulus, tooth number and transmission ratio of the gear increase, the oil volume for lubrication and oil volume for cooling increases as the input speed and input torque increase

Axial Cross Attention Meets CNN: Bibranch Fusion Network for Change Detection

In the previous years, vision transformer has demonstrated a global information extraction capability in the field of computer vision that convolutional neural network (CNN) lacks. Due to the lack of inductive bias in vision transformer, it requires a large amount of data to support its training. In the field of remote sensing, it costs a lot to obtain a significant number of high-resolution remote sensing images. Most existing change detection networks based on deep learning rely heavily on the CNN, which cannot effectively utilize the long-distance dependence between pixels for difference discrimination. Therefore, this work aims to use a high-performance vision transformer to conduct change detection research with limited data. A bibranch fusion network based on axial cross attention (ACABFNet) is proposed. The network extracts local and global information of images through the CNN branch and transformer branch, respectively, and then, fuses local and global features by the bidirectional fusion approach. In the upsampling stage, similar feature information and difference feature information of the two branches are explicitly generated by feature addition and feature subtraction. Considering that the self-attention mechanism is not efficient enough for global attention over small datasets, we propose the axial cross attention. First, global attention along the height and width dimensions of images is performed respectively, and then cross attention is used to fuse the global feature information along two dimensions. Compared with the original self-attention, the structure is more graphics processing unit friendly and efficient. Experimental results on three datasets reveal that the ACABFNet outperforms existing change detection algorithms

Uncovering the challenges of urban digital twins: Identifying and ranking the barriers to operating digital twins in cities

To encourage discussion of the challenges hindering the design and implementation of digital twins, the authors have ranked them based on a systematic literature review combined with an expert survey.Urban Data Scienc

Towards Human-centric Digital Twins: Leveraging Computer Vision and Graph Models to Predict Outdoor Comfort

10.1016/j.scs.2023.104480Sustainable Cities and Society104480-10448

Effect of ultrasound treatment on thawing process of frozen tofu prepared with different salt coagulants

This study investigated the effects of ultrasound-assisted water thawing (UWT) at different power levels (0, 100, 150, 200, and 250 W) on the thawing rate and gel properties of frozen tofu made using three different salt coagulants (CaCl2, CaSO4, and MgCl2). Tofu produced with CaCl2 and CaSO4 elicited gel structures with dense and homogeneous networks, while that with MgCl2 had rough pores and irregular networks. UWT treatment significantly decreased thawing time by 30.9–53.5% compared to the control. Water holding capacity and scanning electron microscopy analyses demonstrated that UWT-100, UWT-150, and UWT-200 should be used to increase the amount of fixed water for CaCl2, CaSO4, and MgCl2. These findings suggest that appropriate ultrasonic treatment could improve the water retention capacity of the tofu network and make the gel network structure more compact. Additionally, protein structural analysis showed a decrease in the exposure of hydrophobic groups and reduced protein denaturation when tofu prepared with all the coagulants were thawed with UWT energies of 100–200 W ultrasonication. These findings offer theoretical support for improving the frozen tofu thawing process while ensuring optimal final product quality

Exploring the neural mechanisms underlying achalasia: A study of functional connectivity and regional brain activity

Background and Aims: The pathophysiology of achalasia, which involves central nuclei abnormalities, remains unknown. We investigated the resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) features of patients with achalasia. Methods: We applied resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) to investigate the brain features in patients with achalasia (n = 27), compared to healthy controls (n = 29). Focusing on three regions of interest (ROIs): the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMV), the nucleus ambiguus (NA), and the nucleus of the solitary tract (NTS), we analyzed variations in resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC), fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF), and regional homogeneity (ReHo). Results: Achalasia patients demonstrated stronger functional connectivity between the NA and the right precentral gyrus, left postcentral gyrus, and left insula. No significant changes were found in the DMV or NTS. The fMRI analysis showed higher rs-FC values for NA-DMV and NA-NTS connections in achalasia patients. Achalasia patients exhibited decreased fALFF values in the NA, DMV, and NTS regions, as well as increased ReHo values in the NA and DMV regions. A positive correlation was observed between fALFF values in all six ROIs and the width of the barium meal. The NTS fALFF value and NA ReHo value displayed a positive correlation with integrated relaxation pressure (IRP), while the ReHo value in the right precentral gyrus showed an inverse correlation with the height of the barium meal. Conclusions: Abnormal rs-FC and regional brain activity was found in patients with achalasia. Our study provides new insights into the pathophysiology of achalasia and highlights the potential of rs-fMRI in improving the diagnosis and treatment of this condition