Modeling and Algorithms of the Crew Rostering Problem with Given Cycle on High-Speed Railway Lines

This paper studies the modeling and algorithms of crew roster problem with given cycle on highspeed railway lines. Two feasible compilation strategies for work out the crew rostering plan are discussed, and then an integrated compilation method is proposed in this paper to obtain a plan with relatively higher regularity in execution and lower crew members arranged. The process of plan making is divided into two subproblems which are decomposition of crew legs and adjustment of nonmaximum crew roster scheme. The decomposition subproblem is transformed to finding a Hamilton chain with the best objective function in network which was solved by an improved ant colony algorithm, whereas the adjustment of nonmaximum crew rostering scheme is finally presented as a set covering problem and solved by a two-stage algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed models and algorithms are testified by a numerical example

Design and Experiment of Frequency Offset Estimation and Compensation in High-speed Underwater Acoustic Communication

In underwater acoustic (UWA) communication, Doppler effect is particularly severe due to the slow velocity of sound and the complex variant UWA channel environment. Carrier frequency offset (CFO) can result in extension and compression of the received signal in time domain and has a direct effect on the performance of decoding. In this paper, we propose a new scheme of CFO estimation and compensation for a high speed UWA communication system. There are three steps including coarse CFO estimation, fine CFO estimation and linear interpolation, which are taken to estimate and compensate the CFO. The scheme can eliminate the phenomenon of ambiguous phase and tolerate quick random variation of the CFO in UWA channel. A UWA communication experiment was carried out in December 2012 in the Indian Ocean, off Rottnest Island, Western Australia. With the proposed algorithm in this paper, the UWA system can achieve an average of 1.95% uncoded BER with QPSK modulation at the 1km range and 5.57% with BPSK at the 10km range

Synthesis of Silver Nanowires with Reduced Diameters Using Benzoin-Derived Radicals to Make Transparent Conductors with High Transparency and Low Haze.

Reducing the diameter of silver nanowires has been proven to be an effective way to improve their optoelectronic performance by lessening light attenuation. The state-of-the-art silver nanowires are typically around 20 nm in diameter. Herein we report a modified polyol synthesis of silver nanowires with average diameters as thin as 13 nm and aspect ratios up to 3000. The success of this synthesis is based on the employment of benzoin-derived radicals in the polyol approach and does not require high-pressure conditions. The strong reducing power of radicals allows the reduction of silver precursors to occur at relatively low temperatures, wherein the lateral growth of silver nanowires is restrained because of efficient surface passivation. The optoelectronic performance of as-prepared 13 nm silver nanowires presents a sheet resistance of 28 Ω sq-1 at a transmittance of 95% with a haze factor of ∼1.2%, comparable to that of commercial indium tin oxide (ITO)

Accelerating Bayesian Neural Networks via Algorithmic and Hardware Optimizations

Bayesian neural networks (BayesNNs) have demonstrated their advantages in various safety-critical applications, such as autonomous driving or healthcare, due to their ability to capture and represent model uncertainty. However, standard BayesNNs require to be repeatedly run because of Monte Carlo sampling to quantify their uncertainty, which puts a burden on their real-world hardware performance. To address this performance issue, this article systematically exploits the extensive structured sparsity and redundant computation in BayesNNs. Different from the unstructured or structured sparsity in standard convolutional NNs, the structured sparsity of BayesNNs is introduced by Monte Carlo Dropout and its associated sampling required during uncertainty estimation and prediction, which can be exploited through both algorithmic and hardware optimizations. We first classify the observed sparsity patterns into three categories: channel sparsity, layer sparsity and sample sparsity. On the algorithmic side, a framework is proposed to automatically explore these three sparsity categories without sacrificing algorithmic performance. We demonstrated that structured sparsity can be exploited to accelerate CPU designs by up to 49 times, and GPU designs by up to 40 times. On the hardware side, a novel hardware architecture is proposed to accelerate BayesNNs, which achieves a high hardware performance using the runtime adaptable hardware engines and the intelligent skipping support. Upon implementing the proposed hardware design on an FPGA, our experiments demonstrated that the algorithm-optimized BayesNNs can achieve up to 56 times speedup when compared with unoptimized Bayesian nets. Comparing with the optimized GPU implementation, our FPGA design achieved up to 7.6 times speedup and up to 39.3 times higher energy efficiency

Experimental study on the mechanical behavior of RPC filled square steel tube columns subjected to eccentric compression

In order to study the mechanical behavior of reactive powder concrete (RPC) filled square steel tubular columns, this paper designs an eccentric compression experiment for 12 specimens of RPC filled square steel tubular columns and studies the effects of failure form, load-displacement curve, slenderness ratio, steel ratio and eccentricity ratio of an eccentrically loaded columns on its mechanical behavior. At the same time, it also compares the experiment results with the bearing capacity calculated with relevant specifications and uses Abaqus to carry out numerical simulation of eccentrically loaded columns. The results show that, the failure form of the eccentrically loaded RPC filled square steel tubular column shows local buckling failure. Before the ultimate load is reached, there is no significant change on the surface of the specimen, and the yield stage of the load-displacement curve is not obvious, either. The results of the bearing capacity calculation formula recommended in CECS28-2012 are close to the experiment results and relatively conservative, so it is more applicable to the bearing capacity design of eccentrically loaded RPC filled square steel tubular columns. The results of the numerical simulation analysis are in good agreement with the experimental results, which can provide theoretical support for engineering practice

Bis{μ-1-[(2-oxidophen­yl)imino­meth­yl]-2-naphtholato}bis­[pyridine­copper(II)]

The dinuclear title complex, [Cu2(C17H11NO2)2(C5H5N)2], consists of centrosymmetric dimers in which the CuII atom displays an elongated square-pyramidal coordination geometry. The conformation of the dimer is stabilized by inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds and by π–π aromatic stacking inter­actions involving the pyridine and benzene rings with centroid–centroid separations of 3.624 (3) Å

Experimental study on the mechanical behavior of RPC filled square steel tube columns subjected to eccentric compression

In order to study the mechanical behavior of reactive powder concrete (RPC) filled square steel tubular columns, this paper designs an eccentric compression experiment for 12 specimens of RPC filled square steel tubular column and studies the effects of failure form, load-displacement curve, slenderness ratio, steel ratio and eccentricity ratio of a eccentrically loaded columns on its mechanical behavior. At the same time, it also compares the experiment results with the bearing capacity calculated with relevant specifications and uses Abaqus to carry out numerical simulation of eccentrically loaded columns. The results show that, the failure form of the eccentrically loaded RPC filled square steel tubular column shows local buckling failure. Before the ultimate load is reached, there is no significant change on the surface of the specimen, and the yield stage of the load-displacement curve is not obvious, either. The results of the bearing capacity calculation formula recommended in CECS28-2012 are close to the experiment results and relatively conservative, so it is more applicable to the bearing capacity design of eccentrically loaded RPC filled square steel tubular columns. The results of the numerical simulation analysis are in good agreement with the experimental results, which can provide theoretical support for engineering practice