AlignDiff: Aligning Diverse Human Preferences via Behavior-Customisable Diffusion Model

Aligning agent behaviors with diverse human preferences remains a challenging problem in reinforcement learning (RL), owing to the inherent abstractness and mutability of human preferences. To address these issues, we propose AlignDiff, a novel framework that leverages RL from Human Feedback (RLHF) to quantify human preferences, covering abstractness, and utilizes them to guide diffusion planning for zero-shot behavior customizing, covering mutability. AlignDiff can accurately match user-customized behaviors and efficiently switch from one to another. To build the framework, we first establish the multi-perspective human feedback datasets, which contain comparisons for the attributes of diverse behaviors, and then train an attribute strength model to predict quantified relative strengths. After relabeling behavioral datasets with relative strengths, we proceed to train an attribute-conditioned diffusion model, which serves as a planner with the attribute strength model as a director for preference aligning at the inference phase. We evaluate AlignDiff on various locomotion tasks and demonstrate its superior performance on preference matching, switching, and covering compared to other baselines. Its capability of completing unseen downstream tasks under human instructions also showcases the promising potential for human-AI collaboration. More visualization videos are released on https://aligndiff.github.io/

Influence of photochemical loss of volatile organic compounds on understanding ozone formation mechanism

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) tend to be consumed by atmospheric oxidants, resulting in substantial photochemical loss during transport. An observation-based model was used to evaluate the influence of photochemical loss of VOCs on the sensitivity regime and mechanisms of ozone formation. Our results showed that a VOC-limited regime based on observed VOC concentrations shifted to a transition regime with a photochemical initial concentration of VOCs (PIC-VOCs) in the morning. The net ozone formation rate was underestimated by 3 ppbh(-1) (similar to 36 ppb d(-1)) based on the measured VOCs when compared with the PIC-VOCs. The relative contribution of the RO2 path to ozone production based on the PIC-VOCs accordingly increased by 13.4 %; in particular, the contribution of alkene-derived RO(2 )increased by approximately 10.2 %. In addition, the OH-HO2 radical cycle was obviously accelerated by highly reactive alkenes after accounting for photochemical loss of VOCs. The contribution of local photochemistry might be underestimated for both local and regional ozone pollution if consumed VOCs are not accounted for, and policymaking on ozone pollution prevention should focus on VOCs with a high reactivity.Peer reviewe

The evolution of cloud and aerosol microphysics at the summit of Mt. Tai, China

The influence of aerosols, both natural and anthropogenic, remains a major area of uncertainty when predicting the properties and the behaviours of clouds and their influence on climate. In an attempt to better understand the microphysical properties of cloud droplets, the simultaneous variations in aerosol microphysics and their potential interactions during cloud life cycles in the North China Plain, an intensive observation took place from 17 June to 30 July 2018 at the summit of Mt. Tai. Cloud microphysical parameters were monitored simultaneously with number concentrations of cloud condensation nuclei (NCCN) at different supersaturations, PM2:5 mass concentrations, particle size distributions and meteorological parameters. Number concentrations of cloud droplets (NC), liquid water content (LWC) and effective radius of cloud droplets (reff) show large variations among 40 cloud events observed during the campaign. The low values of reff and LWC observed at Mt. Tai are comparable with urban fog. Clouds on clean days are more susceptible to the change in concentrations of particle number (NP), while clouds formed on polluted days might be more sensitive to meteorological parameters, such as updraft velocity and cloud base height. Through studying the size distributions of aerosol particles and cloud droplets, we find that particles larger than 150 nm play important roles in forming cloud droplets with the size of 5-10 μm. In general, LWC consistently varies with reff. As NC increases, reff changes from a trimodal distribution to a unimodal distribution and shifts to smaller size mode. By assuming a constant cloud thickness and ignoring any lifetime effects, increase in NC and decrease in reff would increase cloud albedo, which may induce a cooling effect on the local climate system. Our results contribute valuable information to enhance the understanding of cloud and aerosol properties, along with their potential interactions on the North China plain. © Author(s) 2020

A New Type of Quartz Smog Chamber : Design and Characterization

Publisher Copyright: ©Since the 1960s, many indoor and outdoor smog chambers have been developed worldwide. However, most of them are made of Teflon films, which have relatively high background contaminations due to the wall effect. We developed the world's first medium-size quartz chamber (10 m(3)), which is jointed with 32 pieces of 5 mm thick polished quartz glasses and a stainless-steel frame. Characterizations show that this chamber exhibits excellent performance in terms of relative humidity (RH) (2-80%) and temperature (15-30 +/- 1 degrees C) control, mixing efficiency of the reactants (6-8 min), light transmittance (>90% above 290 nm), and wall loss of pollutants. The wall loss rates of the gas-phase pollutants are on the order of 10(-4) min(-1) at 298 K under dry conditions. It is 0.08 h(-1) for 100-500 nm particles, significantly lower than those of Teflon chambers. The photolysis rate of NO2 (J(NO2)) is automatically adjustable to simulate the diurnal variation of solar irradiation from 0 to 0.40 min(-1). The inner surface of the chamber can be repeatedly washed with deionized water, resulting in low background contaminations. Both experiments (toluene-NOx and alpha-pinene-ozone systems) and box model demonstrate that this new quartz chamber can provide high-quality data for investigating SOA and O-3 formation in the atmosphere.Peer reviewe

Levels, sources and health risks of carbonyls and BTEX in the ambient air of Beijing, China

International audienceThe atmospheric concentrations of carbonyls and BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, m,p-xylene and o-xylene) were measuredsimultaneously at a same sampling site in Beijing from September 2008 to August 2010. The average concentrations of the totalmeasured carbonyls during autumn, winter, spring, and summer were 37.7, 31.3, 39.7, 50.5 g/m3, respectively, and maximal values fortheir diurnal variations usually happened at noontime. In contrast to carbonyls, the average concentrations of the total measured BTEXduring the four seasons were 27.2, 31.9, 23.2, 19.1 g/m3, respectively, and minimal values for their diurnal variations always occurredin the early afternoon. The average concentration for carbonyls increased about 24% from September 2008–August 2009 to September2009–August 2010, for BTEX, increased about 15%. Integrated life time cancer risks for three carcinogens (benzene, formaldehyde andacetaldehyde) in Beijing exceeded the value of 1E-06, and the hazard quotient (HQ) of non-cancer risk of exposure to formaldehydeexceeded unity

Direct and simultaneous determination of trace-level carbon tetrachloride, peroxyacetyl nitrate, and peroxypropionyl nitrate using gas chromatography-electron capture detection

International audienceGas chromatography equipped with electron capture detector (GC-ECD) has been widely used for detecting atmospheric peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) and peroxypropionyl nitrate (PPN). However, to the best of our knowledge, only a few capillary columns have been adopted for separation to achieve the direct and simultaneous analysis of the two atmospheric pollutants. This paper demonstrates a novel method for directly and simultaneously measuring atmospheric carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), PAN, and PPN using GC-ECD with a DB-1 separation column. The responses of the GC-ECD to PAN, PPN, and CCl4 were individually calibrated by using gas mixtures prepared via volatilization of synthesized solutions of PAN and PPN or high-purity CCl4 reagent in a Teflon Bag. The concentrations of PAN and PPN in the synthesized solutions were quantified by ion chromatography (IC). Further calibration of the GC-ECD for PAN was conducted by in situ photochemical formation of gaseous PAN which was quantified by a NOx analyzer. The two calibration methods agreed well with each other, and the overall uncertainties for measuring atmospheric PAN were estimated to be ±13% and ±15% based on the calibrations of IC and NOx, respectively. The detection limits (three times the signal to noise ratio) for PAN, PPN, and CCl4 were estimated to be 22, 36, and 5 pptv (parts per trillion by volume), respectively. The atmospheric concentrations of these compounds were measured for several days in August in Beijing, and the values obtained in this study were found to be in good agreement with the data reported in the literature for Beijing using other GC-ECD methods

Rate Coefficients for Reactions of OH and Cl with Esters

International audienc