Solo Dining Restaurant: Environmental Interior Design & Interactive UX Design

Individualized dining can be anxious and awkward experiences for people. Especially when it comes to the sharing style of some foods (e.g., hotpot, barbecue, etc.) In addition to the form of food, the perception of social judgment creates discomfort for the individual. This project aims to incorporate the 3D interior design to model a restaurant that has embedded interactive UX design in the physical environment so that solo guests can enjoy the comfort of dining alone. A case in point, imagine yourself sitting in a crowded restaurant, a giant pot with hot soup boiling in front of you. Every other table around you has more than one person sitting by it; people are all eating with family or friends. Moreover, you saw the way that others look at you; you can feel the invisible social pressure in the air: why is this person alone in a hotpot restaurant? No one comes to eat this type of food alone. Even your waiter told you that you had enough food after you ordered three items because the food serving sizes are not for one. You start to feel a little embarrassed, but why should it be that way? You just want to eat some hotpot. That’s why a solo dining restaurant is needed. In fact, solo living has become a global trend, whether people like it or not. Fourteen percent of adults choose to live alone in the United States. Americans eat more than half of their meals alone. Till 2017, China stands as the country with the most rapidly growing solo living population. In Japan, 23.3% of males remained single their entire lives, many by choice. Moreover, the four countries with the highest rate of people living alone are all from Europe. This evidence supports the need for people to have a wonderful place to eat by themselves. The simple model of solo dining is the traditional high bar seat. This model does do not offer enough privacy to customers, and the distinct table format also outlines different dining statuses. In recent years, solo dining became more common, like the pop-up store EEN MAAL in Britain, which only serves table for one; single ramen booth in Korea and Japan, offer small booths for people to eat ramen by themselves. However, these formats still can’t achieve enough privacy, and servers are required. Based on these findings, the project goal is to design a solo dining restaurant that offers a private dining room with abundant space; one side of the room installed with single side glass as the window or installation like aquariums, eliminating staring or scanning by others. The room will have clean and simple design style, which makes people feel comfortable but not pitiable. The ordering process will be accomplished by interactive interfaces embedded in the environment, such as in the dining table. And the since the interactions are applied to the space, the user can use them as a dashboard, which means it is not limited to one screen, instead the user can have multiple tasks performed at the same time (e.g., food ordering and user entertainment system at the same time.) Besides, the dishes will serve by a conveyor belt; no server is required. In addition to enjoying a great meal, the room also contains a full entertainment and working system for clients to customized their dining experiences. The final deliverables of the project will incorporate 3D modeling for the restaurant structure and interior design. Besides, user interfaces for ordering and the entertaining system will be shown as UI/UX prototypes and interaction video. A final promotion video for the restaurant will also be exhibited as an overview of the project

How Does Adaptive Optimization Impact Local Neural Network Geometry?

Adaptive optimization methods are well known to achieve superior convergence relative to vanilla gradient methods. The traditional viewpoint in optimization, particularly in convex optimization, explains this improved performance by arguing that, unlike vanilla gradient schemes, adaptive algorithms mimic the behavior of a second-order method by adapting to the global geometry of the loss function. We argue that in the context of neural network optimization, this traditional viewpoint is insufficient. Instead, we advocate for a local trajectory analysis. For iterate trajectories produced by running a generic optimization algorithm OPT, we introduce $R^{\text{OPT}}_{\text{med}}$, a statistic that is analogous to the condition number of the loss Hessian evaluated at the iterates. Through extensive experiments, we show that adaptive methods such as Adam bias the trajectories towards regions where $R^{\text{Adam}}_{\text{med}}$ is small, where one might expect faster convergence. By contrast, vanilla gradient methods like SGD bias the trajectories towards regions where $R^{\text{SGD}}_{\text{med}}$ is comparatively large. We complement these empirical observations with a theoretical result that provably demonstrates this phenomenon in the simplified setting of a two-layer linear network. We view our findings as evidence for the need of a new explanation of the success of adaptive methods, one that is different than the conventional wisdom

Kinetic and thermodynamic investigations of CO2 gasification of coal chars prepared via conventional and microwave pyrolysis

This study examined an isothermal CO2 gasification of four chars prepared via two different methods, i.e., conventional and microwave-assisted pyrolysis, by the approach of thermogravimetric analysis. Physical, chemical, and structural behaviours of chars were examined using ultimate analysis, X-ray diffraction, and scanning electronic microscopy. Kinetic parameters were calculated by applying the shrinking unreacted core (SCM) and random pore (RPM) models. Moreover, char-CO2 gasification was further simulated by using Aspen Plus to investigate thermodynamic performances in terms of syngas composition and cold gas efficiency (CGE). The microwave-induced char has the largest C/H mass ratio and most ordered carbon structure, but the smallest gasification reactivity. Kinetic analysis indicates that the RPM is better for describing both gasification conversion and reaction rates of the studied chars, and the activation energies and pre-exponential factors varied in the range of 78.45–194.72 kJ/mol and 3.15–102,231.99 s−1, respectively. In addition, a compensation effect was noted during gasification. Finally, the microwave-derived char exhibits better thermodynamic performances than the conventional chars, with the highest CGE and CO molar concentration of 1.30% and 86.18%, respectively. Increasing the pyrolysis temperature, gasification temperature, and CO2-to-carbon molar ratio improved the CGE

Simulating combined SO2 and CO2 capture from combustion flue gas

The requirement to pre‐treat flue gas prior to the CO2 capture step is an economic challenge when using aqueous amine absorbents for capturing CO2 from coal‐fired power station flue gases. A potentially lower cost alternative is to combine the capture of both CO2 and SO2 from the flue gas into a single process, removing the requirement for the desulfurization pre‐treatment step. The CSIRO's CS‐Cap process uses a single aqueous amine absorbent to capture both of these acid gases from flue gas streams. This paper covers the initial simulation of this process applied to both brown and black coal flue gases. Removal of absorbed SO2 is achieved via reactive crystallization. This is simulated here using a ‘black box’ process, resulting in a K2SO4 product. Different operating conditions have been evaluated that increase the sulfate concentration of the absorbent in the SO2 capture section of the process, which is expected to increase the efficiency of the reactive crystallization step. This paper provides information on the absorption of SO2 into the amine solution, and heat and mass balances for the wider process. This information will be required for further detailed simulation of the reactive crystallization step, and economic evaluation of the CS‐Cap process. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Investigation on Co–Modified NixMgyO solid solutions for hydrogen production from steam reforming of acetic acid and a model blend

This paper is focused on the Co-modified NixMgyO solid solutions (10wt% Ni, 2-6wt% Co) for the steam reforming of acetic acid and a model blend. The pristine rocksalt structured NixMgyO solid solution and the modified NixMgyO-Co catalysts were synthesized via hydrothermal method and co-impregnation. The activity of the catalysts was evaluated in the temperature range of 500-800 °C with a steam/carbon molar ratio of 3 and a gas hourly space velocity (GHSV) of 57,000 h-1. Low cobalt content (Co loading = 2wt%) catalysts exhibited significant promotion of H2 yield via enhancement of both water-gas shift (WGS) reaction and methane decomposition. A 30-hour test at 700 °C achieved excellent acetic acid conversion rate and H2 yield of 99.1% and 86.9%, respectively. However, the catalysts with higher cobalt loading (Co loading ≥ 4wt%) suffered a much quicker deactivation mainly due to carbon deposition. In addition, the catalysts were also tested on a model blend combined acids, alcohols and aromatic species and exhibited outstanding performance with carbon conversion above 90% and H2 yield above 70% for 100 h

Novel two-stage fluidized bed-plasma gasification integrated with SOFC and chemical looping combustion for the high efficiency power generation from MSW: a thermodynamic investigation

A novel municipal solid waste (MSW)-based power generation system was proposed in this study, which consists of a bubbling fluidized-bed (BFB)-plasma gasification unit, a high-temperature solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), a chemical looping combustion (CLC) unit and a heat recovery unit. Process simulation was conducted using Aspen PlusTM and validated by literature data. The energetic and exergetic assessment of the proposed system showed that the net electrical efficiency and exergy efficiency reached 40.9 % and 36.1 %, respectively with 99.3 % of carbon dioxide being captured. It was found that the largest exergy destruction took place in the BFB-Plasma gasification unit (476.5 kW) and accounted for 33.6 % of the total exergy destruction, which is followed by the SOFC (219.1 kW) and then CLC (208.6 kW). Moreover, the effects of key variables, such as steam to fuel ratio (STFR), fuel utilization factor (Uf), current density and air reactor operating temperature, etc., on system performance were carried out and revealed that the system efficiency could be optimized under STFR = 0.5, Uf = 0.8 and air reactor operating temperature of 1000 ºC. Furthermore, the proposed process demonstrated more than 14% improvement in net electrical efficiency in comparison with other MSW incineration and/or gasification to power processes

Conformally Anodizing Hierarchical Structure in a Deformed Tube towards Energy-saving Liquid Transportation

The creation of drag-reducing surfaces in deformed tubes is of vital importance to thermal management, energy, and environmental applications. However, it remains a great challenge to tailor the surface structure and wettability inside the deformed tubes of slim and complicated feature. Here, we describe an electrochemical anodization strategy to achieve uniform and superhydrophobic coating of TiO2 nanotube arrays throughout the inner surface in deformed/bend titanium tubes. Guided by a hybrid carbon fibre cathode, conformal electric field can be generated to adaptatively fit the complex geometries in the deformed tube, where the structural design with rigid insulating beads can self-stabilize the hybrid cathode at the coaxial position of the tube with the electrolyte flow. As a result, we obtain a superhydrophobic coating with a water contact angle of 157° and contact angle hysteresis of less than 10°. Substantial drag reduction can be realised with an overall reduction up to 25.8 % for the anodized U-shaped tube. Furthermore, we demonstrate to spatially coat tubes with complex geometries, to achieve energy-saving liquid transportation. This facile coating strategy has great implications in liquid transport processes with the user-friendly approach to engineer surface regardless of the deformation of tube/pipe

Changes in Temporal Dynamics and Factors Influencing the Environment of the Bacterial Community in Mangrove Rhizosphere Sediments in Hainan

The structural characteristics of the rhizosphere soil’s microbial community is crucial to understanding the ecological function of mangroves. However, the mechanism influencing mangrove plants in soil microbial communities has yet to be determined. Here, the mangrove ecosystem of Xinying Mangrove National Wetland Park in Hainan Province was taken as the research object. The microbial communities, external regulatory factors, and the relationship between communities were analyzed using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing in the rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere sediments of mangrove forests under different spatiotemporal conditions. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the α-diversity of the bacterial community between the rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere sediments. However, β-diversity was significantly different. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that other environmental factors besides sulfide and Fe2+ affected the bacterial community structure in sediments. The co-occurrence pattern analysis of bacteria in the mangrove ecosystem indicates that the bacteria in rhizosphere sediments were more closely related than those in non-rhizosphere sediments. The results reveal significant differences between the rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere bacterial community diversity, structure, and their interaction in the mangrove ecosystem. Therefore, the ecological system of the mangrove wetland needs to be preserved and rehabilitated, which would have a tremendous impact on the sustainable development