Ghost city phenomenon along China’s high-speed railway grid

A fresh urbanism era appears in China with the development of high-speed railway (HSR). Voluminous numbers of local governments are designing and erecting novel cities oriented to the HSR stations with the objective of gaining benefits from the HSR system. Nevertheless, a huge number of these freshly erected districts or cities entail a tremendously high vacancy rate, thereby resulting in 'ghost cities'. The present paper commences with an outline of the China's urban HSR growth and the phenomena of ghost cities. After a literature review on worldwide urban HSR development, the reasons behind the 'ghost city phenomenon' in China are analysed. In the end, the study is concluded by proposing several suggestions for HSR development

Levy Flightに基づく進化計算によるレイアウト問題の解法

筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

Separation of nanoparticles by a nano-orifice based DC-dielectrophoresis method in a pressure-driven flow

A novel DC-dielectrophoresis (DEP) method employing a pressure-driven flow for the continuous separation of micro/nano-particles is presented in this paper. To generate the DEP force, a small voltage difference is applied to produce a non-uniformity of the electric field across a microchannel via a larger orifice of several hundred microns on one side of the channel wall and a smaller orifice of several hundred nanometers on the opposite channel wall. The particles experience a DEP force when they move with the flow through the vicinity of the small orifice, where the strongest electrical field gradient exists. Experiments were conducted to demonstrate the separation of 1 μm and 3 μm polystyrene particles by size by adjusting the applied electrical potentials. In order to separate smaller nanoparticles, the electrical conductivity of the suspending solution is adjusted so that the polystyrene nanoparticles of a given size experience positive DEP while the polystyrene nanoparticles of another size experience negative DEP. Using this method, the separation of 51 nm and 140 nm nanoparticles and the separation of 140 nm and 500 nm nanoparticles were demonstrated. In comparison with the microfluidic DC-DEP methods reported in the literature which utilize hurdles or obstacles to induce the non-uniformity of an electric field, a pair of asymmetrical orifices on the channel side walls is used in this method to generate a strong electrical field gradient and has advantages such as capability of separating nanoparticles, and locally applied lower electrical voltages to minimize the Joule heating effect.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Counci

Reflecting on the architecture curriculum through a survey on career switching

Due to the deteriorating investment environment, many real-estate companies in China have started transferring their business out of the construction industry. This leads to the shrinkage of the design market and also architects’ salary. A great number of architects have switched career to maintain the same living quality as before. Meanwhile, architectural education in China is not able to integrate itself with emerging science and technologies, losing possibilities to explore new employment channels for its graduates. There is a huge gap between qualities needed in the current or future labour market and the architectural education in schools. An online survey was conducted to investigate the current state of architects’ career shifting, trying to expose the problem mentioned above. In the second part of this paper, education missions from 50 universities are analysed and detailed education curriculums from three top universities are scrutinised. At the end, the education boundary is suggested to be reconstructed from three aspects: integrating the emerging technologies; reducing unnecessary content; and training in self-learning skills

Manipulation and separation of oil droplets by using asymmetric nano-orifice induced DC dielectrophoretic method

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2017.10.073 © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Emulsion droplets are versatile tools in chemical and biological fields and the separation of emulsion droplets is one of the most crucial steps in research and industry. This work developed a nano-orifice based DC dielectrophoretic (DEP) system for the sorting of oil-in-water emulsion droplets by size and content in a microchannel. Then, the size-dependent separation of oil droplets was conducted and verified by the prediction of theoretical simulation. In addition, by selecting the suspending solution with a specific electrical conductivity, the oil droplets with similar sizes but different contents were separated based on their opposite DEP behaviors. The size-dependent separation of smaller silicone oil droplets (7.5 and 11 µm in diameter) with a high separation resolution, i.e., size difference of only 3.5 µm was achieved and showed good agreement with the simulation results. The positive and negative DEP behaviors of the droplets varying with the electrical conductivity of the suspending solution were discussed and different types of droplets of similar sizes but different contents were separated. This paper presents the DC-DEP method based sorting of emulsion droplets by size and content in nanofluidic chip for the first time, providing a platform to manipulate individual emulsion droplet

Levy Flightに基づく進化計算によるレイアウト問題の解法

筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

Reflecting on the architecture curriculum through a survey on career switching

Architectural education in China was a contributor to the super-fast urbanization process during the past 20 years. However, due to the economy bubble in the construction industry, many real-estate companies started transferring investments to other fields. This lead to the shrinkage of the architecture design market and the decrease of architects’ salary. A great number of architects switched careers to maintain the same living quality as before. Meanwhile, architectural education in China is not able to integrate itself with emerging science and technologies, losing the possibilities to explore new employment channels for its graduates. An online survey is conducted to investigate the current state of architects shifting their careers, trying to analyse the feedback and exposure to the existing problems. In the second part of this paper, education curriculum from three top universities is scrutinized and the education boundary is reconstructed from three aspects: integrating the emerging technologies into the architectural curriculum; reducing unnecessary content from the teaching program; training the ability to learn. &nbsp

Faster Computation of Self-pairings

Self-pairings have found interesting applications in cryptographic schemes. In this paper, we present a novel method for constructing a self-pairing on supersingular elliptic curves with even embedding degrees, which we call the Ateil pairing. This new pairing improves the efficiency of the self-pairing computation on supersingular curves over finite fields with large characteristics. Based on the $\eta_T$ pairing, we propose a generalization of the Ateil pairing, which we call the Ateil$_i$ pairing. The optimal Ateil$_i$ pairing which has the shortest Miller loop is faster than previously known self-pairings on supersingular elliptic curves over finite fields with small characteristics. We also present a new self-pairing based on the Weil pairing which is faster than the self-pairing based on the Tate pairing on ordinary elliptic curves with embedding degree $one$

Reducing the Complexity of the Weil Pairing Computation

In this paper, we present some new variants based on the Weil pairing for efficient pairing computations. The new pairing variants have the short Miller iteration loop and simple final exponentiation. We then show that computing the proposed pairings is more efficient than computing the Weil pairing. Experimental results for these pairings are also given