The Rise of American Food in China

Over the years, American food has become more and more popular in China. Today, the Chinese are more open to trying new cuisines. To fully understand the forces that have catalyzed the growing presence of American foods in China, my research project demonstrates the complex web of factors that shape how American food businesses’ presence in China has changed over the last decade. Examining a diversity of sources, including existing trend data, my analysis focuses on the domestic and global factors that have facilitated the growing presence of American food restaurants in China. Using this research as a jumping off point, I argue that this increased presence is an indicator of changes in Chinese food culture in response to new economic developments and global trends taking shape. This project asserts that three main factors are responsible for this food phenomenon: globalization, urbanization, and localization. First off, globalization and China’s economic downturn have affected China’s food culture and encouraged the growth of American food businesses in China. Second, urbanization and China’s shifting food culture have been driving forces in the marketing plans for these businesses. Third, the businesses which utilize effective localization strategies have the best chances of success. In turn, culturally appropriate marketing strategies and implementation are the key measures of success or failure for these businesses. The elements for the successful opening of a business include cultural sensitivity, appropriate products, proper location, and an efficient supply chain. By developing this detailed, comprehensive understanding, American businesses can increase their likelihood of sustainability and profitability in China. Moreover, this analysis will inform my own plans, as an entrepreneur, when I open one and serve as a guide for others who wish to do so

Sedimentation of disks in a linearly stratified fluid

We consider the unbounded settling dynamics of a circular disk of diameter d and finite thickness h evolving with a vertical speed U in a linearly stratified fluid of kinematic viscosity v and diffusivity k of the stratifying agent, at moderate Reynolds numbers (Re=Ud/v ). The influence of the disk geometry (diameter d and aspect ratio x = d/h ) and of the stratified environment (buoyancy frequency N, viscosity and diffusivity) are experimentally and numerically investigated. Three regimes for the settling dynamics have been identified for a disk reaching its gravitational equilibrium level. The disk first falls broadside-on, experiencing an enhanced drag force that can be linked to the stratification. A second regime corresponds to a change of stability for the disk orientation, from broadside-on to edgewise settling. This occurs when the non-dimensional velocity U/√vN becomes smaller than some threshold value. Uncertainties in identifying the threshold value is discussed in terms of disk quality. It differs from the same problem in a homogeneous fluid which is associated with a fixed orientation (at its initial value) in the Stokes regime and a broadside-on settling orientation at low, but finite Reynolds numbers. Finally, the third regime corresponds to the disk returning to its broadside orientation after stopping at its neutrally buoyant level

Blind Inpainting with Object-aware Discrimination for Artificial Marker Removal

Medical images often contain artificial markers added by doctors, which can negatively affect the accuracy of AI-based diagnosis. To address this issue and recover the missing visual contents, inpainting techniques are highly needed. However, existing inpainting methods require manual mask input, limiting their application scenarios. In this paper, we introduce a novel blind inpainting method that automatically completes visual contents without specifying masks for target areas in an image. Our proposed model includes a mask-free reconstruction network and an object-aware discriminator. The reconstruction network consists of two branches that predict the corrupted regions with artificial markers and simultaneously recover the missing visual contents. The object-aware discriminator relies on the powerful recognition capabilities of the dense object detector to ensure that the markers of reconstructed images cannot be detected in any local regions. As a result, the reconstructed image can be close to the clean one as much as possible. Our proposed method is evaluated on different medical image datasets, covering multiple imaging modalities such as ultrasound (US), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and electron microscopy (EM), demonstrating that our method is effective and robust against various unknown missing region patterns

Nitro-compounds and GHG exhaust emissions of a pilot diesel-ignited ammonia dual-fuel engine under various operating conditions

In the transportation sector, ammonia used as a power source plays a significant role in the scenario of carbon neutralization. However, the engine-out emissions correlations of ammonia-diesel dual-fuel (DF) engines are still unclear, especially the nitro-compounds of great concern and GHG. In this study, the engine-out emissions are evaluated by using a four-cylinder ammonia/diesel DF engine. Various operating conditions consisting of ammonia energy ratio (AER), engine load, and speed were carried out. Unburned NH3 increases with raising ammonia content but decreases with increasing engine load and speed. The NO+NO2 tendency shows a non-linearity trend with increasing ammonia content, while a trade-off correlation is linked to N2O. The N2O emission of ammonia engine significantly weakens the beneficial effect of GHG reduction, the 30% and 50% decarbonization targets need at least 40% and 60% ammonia energy without regard to N2O effect, while at least 65% and 80% ammonia energy respectively with considering N2O. N2O presents a parabolic-like tendency with AERs. Advanced pilot-diesel injection timing helps to reduce both NH3 and N2O, but this effect becomes insignificant as the AER is less than 0.4. A combustion strategy of the rapid heat release and ammonia-governed heat release respectively are revealed

Gain scheduled torque compensation of PMSG-based wind turbine for frequency regulation in an isolated grid

Frequency stability in an isolated grid can be easily impacted by sudden load or wind speed changes. Many frequency regulation techniques are utilized to solve this problem. However, there are only few studies designing torque compensation controllers based on power performances in different Speed Parts. It is a major challenge for a wind turbine generator (WTG) to achieve the satisfactory compensation performance in different Speed Parts. To tackle this challenge, this paper proposes a gain scheduled torque compensation strategy for permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) based wind turbines. Our main idea is to improve the anti-disturbance ability for frequency regulation by compensating torque based on WTG speed Parts. To achieve higher power reserve in each Speed Part, an enhanced deloading method of WTG is proposed. We develop a new small-signal dynamic model through analyzing the steady-state performances of deloaded WTG in the whole range of wind speed. Subsequently, H∞ theory is leveraged in designing the gain scheduled torque compensation controller to effectively suppress frequency fluctuation. Moreover, since torque compensation brings about untimely power adjustment in over-rated wind speed condition, the conventional speed reference of pitch control system is improved. Our simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can significantly improve frequency stability and smoothen power fluctuation resulting from wind speed variations. The minimum of frequency deviation with the proposed strategy is improved by up to 0.16 Hz at over-rated wind speed. Our technique can also improve anti-disturbance ability in frequency domain and achieve power balance