New strategies of civil society in China: a case study of the network governance approach

Since the turn of the millennium a second generation of Chinese civil society organisations (CSO) have started taking on issues such as rural migrant integration, social service provision, as well as community building. Organisations such as Beijing-based Shining Stone Community Action (SSCA) can be seen as the avant-garde of a second wave of humanistic, community-based CSO which are willing to help improve the strained state-society relationship in the People´s Republic of China (PR China). In order to advance their values and interests civil society practitioners are willing to engage with Chinese government officials. By gaining the trust of First-in-Command (FIC) cadres they manage to introduce ideas such as the principle of subsidiarity, solidarity and reciprocity. Civil society practitioners thereby initiate open-ended processes of communication, consultation and cooperation. Such processes help promote cross-sector collaboration between Chinese civil society organisations and local government agencies. These developments signify an incremental change from government control (guanzhi) to public management (guanli) and to network governance (zhili). As a framework for the case study the authors look at strategies for the establishment of cooperative relations, focusing on steering mechanisms and process factors. In order to further understand the dynamics of cross-sector collaboration they further explore the social capital dimensions of the principle of reciprocity and trust. To evaluate outcomes and impacts of cross-sector collaboration, the authors discuss the ability of collaboration partners to produce tangible results and to innovate. The findings show that successful experiments with cross-sector collaboration not only depend on structural factors but also on the skills and strategies of the individuals and organisations involved

Fire Performance of Steel Reinforced Concrete (SRC) Structures

AbstractThis paper summarizes some of the recent research published on steel reinforced concrete (SRC) structures under or after exposure to fire. The contents include: 1) Fire resistance and post-fire behavior of SRC columns; 2) Fire performance of SRC column to beam joints, by adopting a loading sequence including initial loading, heating, cooling and post-fire loading; 3) Fire resistance and post-fire behavior of SRC composite frames

Analysis of concrete-filled stainless steel tubular columns under combined fire and loading

[EN] In fire scenarios, concrete-filled stainless steel tubular (CFSST) columns undergo initial loading at ambient temperature, loading during the heating phase as the fire develops, loading during the cooling phase as the fire dies out and continual loading after the fire. CFSST columns may fail some points during this process under combined fire and loading. In this paper, the failure modes and corresponding working mechanism of CFSST columns subjected to an entire loading and fire history are investigated. Sequentially coupled thermal-stress analyses in ABAQUS are employed to establish the temperature field and structural response of the CFSST column. To improve the precision of the finite element (FE) model, the influence of moisture on the thermal conductivity and specific heat of concrete during both the heating and cooling phases is considered using subroutines. Existing fire and post-fire test data of CFSST columns are used to validate the FE models. Comparisons between predicted and test results confirm that the accuracy of the FE models is acceptable; the FE models are then extended to simulate a typical CFSST column subjected to the entire loading and fire history. The behaviour of the CFSST column is explained by analysis of the temperature distribution, load versus axial deformation curves and failure response.The research reported in the paper is part of the Project 51308539 supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The financial support is highly appreciated.Tan, Q.; Gardner, L.; Han, L.; Song, D. (2018). Analysis of concrete-filled stainless steel tubular columns under combined fire and loading. En Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Advances in Steel-Concrete Composite Structures. ASCCS 2018. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 825-833. https://doi.org/10.4995/ASCCS2018.2018.7206OCS82583

An efficient background modeling approach based on vehicle detection

The existing Gaussian Mixture Model(GMM) which is widely used in vehicle detection suffers inefficiency in detecting foreground image during the model phase, because it needs quite a long time to blend the shadows in the background. In order to overcome this problem, an improved method is proposed in this paper. First of all, each frame is divided into several areas(A, B, C and D), Where area A, B, C and D are decided by the frequency and the scale of the vehicle access. For each area, different new learning rate including weight, mean and variance is applied to accelerate the elimination of shadows. At the same time, the measure of adaptive change for Gaussian distribution is taken to decrease the total number of distributions and save memory space effectively. With this method, different threshold value and different number of Gaussian distribution are adopted for different areas. The results show that the speed of learning and the accuracy of the model using our proposed algorithm surpass the traditional GMM. Probably to the 50th frame, interference with the vehicle has been eliminated basically, and the model number only 35% to 43% of the standard, the processing speed for every frame approximately has a 20% increase than the standard. The proposed algorithm has good performance in terms of elimination of shadow and processing speed for vehicle detection, it can promote the development of intelligent transportation, which is very meaningful to the other Background modeling methods. (2015) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only

Towards Fairer and More Efficient Federated Learning via Multidimensional Personalized Edge Models

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging technique that trains massive and geographically distributed edge data while maintaining privacy. However, FL has inherent challenges in terms of fairness and computational efficiency due to the rising heterogeneity of edges, and thus usually results in sub-optimal performance in recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) solutions. In this paper, we propose a Customized Federated Learning (CFL) system to eliminate FL heterogeneity from multiple dimensions. Specifically, CFL tailors personalized models from the specially designed global model for each client jointly guided by an online trained model-search helper and a novel aggregation algorithm. Extensive experiments demonstrate that CFL has full-stack advantages for both FL training and edge reasoning and significantly improves the SOTA performance w.r.t. model accuracy (up to 7.2% in the non-heterogeneous environment and up to 21.8% in the heterogeneous environment), efficiency, and FL fairness.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Conceptual Study of a Real-Time Hybrid Simulation Framework for Monopile Offshore Wind Turbines Under Wind and Wave Loads

As an attractive renewable energy source, offshore wind plants are becoming increasingly popular for energy production. However, the performance assessment of offshore wind turbine (OWT) structure is a challenging task due to the combined wind-wave loading and difficulties in reproducing such loading conditions in laboratory. Real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS), combining physical testing and numerical simulation in real-time, offers a new venue to study the structural behavior of OWTs. It overcomes the scaling incompatibilities in OWT scaled model testing by replacing the rotor components with an actuation system, driven by an aerodynamic simulation tool running in real-time. In this study, a RTHS framework for monopile OWTs is proposed. A set of sensitivity analyses is carried out to evaluate the feasibility of this RTHS framework and determine possible tolerances on its design. By simulating different scaling laws and possible error contributors (delays and noises) in the proposed framework, the sensitivity of the OWT responses to these parameters are quantified. An example using a National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) 5-MW reference OWT system at 1:25 scale is simulated in this study to demonstrate the proposed RTHS framework and sensitivity analyses. Three different scaling laws are considered. The sensitivity results show that the delays in the RTHS framework significantly impact the performance on the response evaluation, higher than the impact of noises. The proposed framework and sensitivity analyses presented in this study provides important information for future implementation and further development of the RTHS technology for similar marine structures

3D cohesive finite element minimum invasive surgery simulation based on Kelvin-Voigt model

Minimally invasive surgery is an important technique used for cytopathological examination. Recently, multiple studies have been conducted on a three-dimensional (3D) puncture simulation model as it can reveal the internal deformation state of the tissue at the micro level. In this study, a viscoelastic constitutive equation suitable for muscle tissue was derived. Additionally, a method was developed to define the fracture characteristics of muscle tissue material during the simulation process. The fracture of the muscle tissue in contact with the puncture needle was simulated using the cohesive zone model and a 3D puncture finite element model was established to analyze the deformation of the muscle tissue. The stress nephogram and reaction force under different parameters were compared and analyzed to study the deformation of the biological soft tissue and guide the actual operation process and reduce pain

Differences in diversity and community assembly processes between planktonic and benthic diatoms in the upper reach of the Jinsha River, China

Comparing spatio-temporal patterns between planktonic and benthic algae is helpful for understanding their associations and differences. However, such studies are still rare especially in large rivers. We used a dataset collected in the upper reach of the Jinsha River in different seasons to explore biodiversity and assembly processes of planktonic and benthic diatom assemblages. We found that planktonic and benthic diatoms presented different seasonal variation in species richness and community compositions. We also found evidence that planktonic and benthic diatoms were coupled in the summer. Planktonic diatom assemblages were mainly affected by spatial processes via directional spatial dispersal, especially in the summer. By comparison, benthic diatom assemblages were more affected by environmental processes. Our findings suggest that mass effect and species sorting paradigms explain the assembly processes of planktonic and benthic diatom assemblages, respectively, but the explanatory powers of these two paradigms vary seasonally. To effectively monitor and assess ecological conditions of large rivers, we recommend using benthic algae as a biotic indicator group as they had stronger correlations with environmental factors.Peer reviewe

Investigation of thermal management for lithium-ion pouch battery module based on phase change slurry and mini channel cooling plate

In this paper, the thermal management based on phase change slurry (PCS) and mini channel cooling plate for the lithium-ion pouch battery module was proposed. The three-dimensional thermal model was established and the optimum structure of the cooling plate with mini channel was designed with the orthogonal matrix experimental method to balance the cooling performance and energy consumption. The simulation results showed that the cooling performance of PCS consisting of 20% n-octadecane microcapsules and 80% water was better than that of pure water, glycol solution and mineral oil, when the mass flow rate was less than 3 x 10(-4) kg s(-1). For different concentrations of PCS, if the mass flow rate exceeded the critical value, its cooling performance was worse than that of pure water. When the cooling target for battery maximum temperature was higher than 309 K, the PCS cooling with appropriate microcapsule concentration had the edge over in energy consumption compared with water cooling. At last, the dimensionless empirical formula was obtained to predict the effect of the PCS's physical parameters and flow characteristics on the heat transfer and cooling performance. The simulation results will be useful for the design of PCS based battery thermal management systems. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved