Empirical investigations of properties of robust aircraft routing models

The airline schedule planning process is an important component of airline operations, and it involves considerably complex problems. This research focuses on the aircraft routing phase. We introduce the concept of robustness in aircraft routing problems, and find solutions that can stand uncertainty. We categorize the delays in flight operations into two components – independent delay and propagated delay. In the data driven approach, independent delay can be regarded as constant, but propagated delay can be worked on. An example of aircraft swap is given to show that aircraft routing can potentially reduce the flight delays. To solve robust aircraft routing problems, we propose a list of formulations. They are in three categories – Lan, Clarke, Barnhart’s approach, chance-constrained programming approach, and extreme value approach. We conduct experiments with two airline networks – a 50-flight network and a 165-flight network. The K-fold cross validation approach is incorporated into aircraft routing problems to eliminate overfitting. According to the three evaluation metrics – on time performance, average total propagated delay and passenger disruptions, several good formulations are identified, which are recommended for airline schedule planners. We also explain the reasons behind the solution differences

A Miniscule Survey on Blockchain Scalability

With the rise of cryptocurrency and NFTs in the past decade, blockchain technology has been an area of increasing interest to both industry and academic experts. In this paper, we discuss the feasibility of such systems through the lens of scalability. We also briefly dive into the security issues of such systems, as well as some applications, including healthcare, supply chain, and government applications

A Comprehensive Assessment of Cell Type-Specific Differential Expression Methods in Bulk Data

Accounting for cell type compositions has been very successful at analyzing high-throughput data from heterogeneous tissues. Differential gene expression analysis at cell type level is becoming increasingly popular, yielding biomarker discovery in a finer granularity within a particular cell type. Although several computational methods have been developed to identify cell type-specific differentially expressed genes (csDEG) from RNA-seq data, a systematic evaluation is yet to be performed. Here, we thoroughly benchmark six recently published methods: CellDMC, CARseq, TOAST, LRCDE, CeDAR and TCA, together with two classical methods, csSAM and DESeq2, for a comprehensive comparison. We aim to systematically evaluate the performance of popular csDEG detection methods and provide guidance to researchers. In simulation studies, we benchmark available methods under various scenarios of baseline expression levels, sample sizes, cell type compositions, expression level alterations, technical noises and biological dispersions. Real data analyses of three large datasets on inflammatory bowel disease, lung cancer and autism provide evaluation in both the gene level and the pathway level. We find that csDEG calling is strongly affected by effect size, baseline expression level and cell type compositions. Results imply that csDEG discovery is a challenging task itself, with room to improvements on handling low signal-to-noise ratio and low expression genes

Trap characterization in composite of solid-liquid using dual-level trap model and TSDC method

Charge trap is considered to be one of the effective characteristic parameters for qualitatively evaluating the aging status of insulating material. In this paper, the trap characteristics in oil-impregnated paper with different aging types (non-treatment, thermal treatment and electrical treatment) are investigated using a dual-level (shallow and deep energy) trap model based on space charge profiles and thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) data. The simulated results based on the model are well consistent with the experimental results. Onthe other hand, the TSDC method can acquire much information related to the shallower traps, and the dual–level trap model can obtain much charge dynamicscharacteristics. It has been observed that thermally aging makes the shallow trap energy become deeper while electrically aging makes it shallower. Moreover, thetrap density in oil-impregnated paper increases after aging regardless of thermal or electrical aging

Imbibition behaviors in shale nanoporous media from pore-scale perspectives

In shale reservoirs, spontaneous imbibition is an important mechanism of fracturing fluid loss, which has an important impact on enhanced oil recovery and water resource demand. However, spontaneous imbibition behaviors are more complicated to characterize and clarify due to the nanoscale effects of the boundary slip, oil-water interfacial slip, and heterogeneous fluid properties caused by intermolecular interactions. A nanoscale multi-relaxation-time multicomponent and multiphase lattice Boltzmann method was applied to investigate the water imbibition into oil-saturated nanoscale space. The effects of pore size, fluid-surface slip, water film, oil-water interfacial slip, water bridge, and pore structures on the imbibition behaviors in a single nanopore were investigated. Then, the spontaneous imbibition behaviors in nanoporous media based on the pore scale microsimulation parameters obtained from the molecular simulation velocity results were simulated, and the effects of water saturations on imbibition behaviors were discussed. The results show that as the water saturation increases from 0 to 0.1, the imbibition mass in nanoporous media increases because of the oil-water interfacial slip and a completely hydrophilic wall. As water saturation continues to increase, the imbibition mass decreases gradually because the existence of water bridges impedes the water imbibition.Document Type: Original articleCited as: Wang, H., Cai, J., Su, Y., Jin, Z., Wang, W., Li, G. Imbibition behaviors in shale nanoporous media from pore-scale perspectives. Capillarity, 2023, 9(2): 32-44. https://doi.org/10.46690/capi.2023.11.0

Interfacing Nickel Nitride and Nickel Boosts Both Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution and Oxidation Reactions

Electrocatalysts of the hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions (HER and HOR) are of critical importance for the realization of future hydrogen economy. In order to make electrocatalysts economically competitive for large-scale applications, increasing attention has been devoted to developing noble metal-free HER and HOR electrocatalysts especially for alkaline electrolytes due to the promise of emerging hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells. Herein, we report that interface engineering of Ni3N and Ni results in a unique Ni3N/Ni electrocatalyst which exhibits exceptional HER/HOR activities in aqueous electrolytes. A systematic electrochemical study was carried out to investigate the superior hydrogen electrochemistry catalyzed by Ni3N/Ni, including nearly zero overpotential of catalytic onset, robust long-term durability, unity Faradaic efficiency, and excellent CO tolerance. Density functional theory computations were performed to aid the understanding of the electrochemical results and suggested that the real active sites are located at the interface between Ni3N and Ni

Interfacing Nickel Nitride and Nickel Boosts Both Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution and Oxidation Reactions

Electrocatalysts of the hydrogen evolution and oxidation reactions (HER and HOR) are of critical importance for the realization of future hydrogen economy. In order to make electrocatalysts economically competitive for large-scale applications, increasing attention has been devoted to developing noble metal-free HER and HOR electrocatalysts especially for alkaline electrolytes due to the promise of emerging hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells. Herein, we report that interface engineering of Ni3N and Ni results in a unique Ni3N/Ni electrocatalyst which exhibits exceptional HER/HOR activities in aqueous electrolytes. A systematic electrochemical study was carried out to investigate the superior hydrogen electrochemistry catalyzed by Ni3N/Ni, including nearly zero overpotential of catalytic onset, robust long-term durability, unity Faradaic efficiency, and excellent CO tolerance. Density functional theory computations were performed to aid the understanding of the electrochemical results and suggested that the real active sites are located at the interface between Ni3N and Ni

Signature of the coexistence of ferromagnetism and superconductivity at KTaO3_3 heterointerfaces

The coexistence of superconductivity and ferromagnetism is a long-standing issue in the realm of unconventional superconductivity due to the antagonistic nature of these two ordered states. Experimentally identifying and characterizing novel heterointerface superconductors that coexist with magnetism is challenging. Here, we report the experimental observation of long-range ferromagnetic order at the verge of two-dimensional superconductivity at KTaO$_3$ heterointerfaces. Remarkably, we observe in-plane magnetization hysteresis loop persisting up to room temperature with direct current superconducting quantum interference device measurements. Furthermore, first-principles calculations suggest that the observed robust ferromagnetism is attributed to the presence of oxygen vacancies that localize electrons in nearby Ta 5$d$ states. Our findings not only indicate KTaO$_3$ heterointerfaces as unconventional superconductors with time-reversal symmetry breaking, but also inject a new momentum to the study of the delicate interplay between superconductivity and magnetism boosted by strong spin-orbit coupling inherent to the heavy Ta in 5$d$ orbitals of KTaO$_3$ heterointerfaces.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure