Spiking NeRF: Making Bio-inspired Neural Networks See through the Real World

Spiking neuron networks (SNNs) have been thriving on numerous tasks to leverage their promising energy efficiency and exploit their potentialities as biologically plausible intelligence. Meanwhile, the Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) render high-quality 3D scenes with massive energy consumption, and few works delve into the energy-saving solution with a bio-inspired approach. In this paper, we propose spiking NeRF (SpikingNeRF), which aligns the radiance ray with the temporal dimension of SNN, to naturally accommodate the SNN to the reconstruction of Radiance Fields. Thus, the computation turns into a spike-based, multiplication-free manner, reducing the energy consumption. In SpikingNeRF, each sampled point on the ray is matched onto a particular time step, and represented in a hybrid manner where the voxel grids are maintained as well. Based on the voxel grids, sampled points are determined whether to be masked for better training and inference. However, this operation also incurs irregular temporal length. We propose the temporal condensing-and-padding (TCP) strategy to tackle the masked samples to maintain regular temporal length, i.e., regular tensors, for hardware-friendly computation. Extensive experiments on a variety of datasets demonstrate that our method reduces the $76.74\%$ energy consumption on average and obtains comparable synthesis quality with the ANN baseline

The dynamic evolution of multipoint interplanetary coronal mass ejections observed with BepiColombo, Tianwen-1, and MAVEN

We present two multipoint interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) detected by the Tianwen-1 and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft at Mars and the BepiColombo (0.56 au ∼0.67 au) upstream of Mars from 2021 December 5 to 31. This is the first time that BepiColombo is used as an upstream solar wind monitor ahead of Mars and that Tianwen-1 is used to investigate the magnetic field characteristics of ICMEs at Mars. The Heliospheric Upwind Extrapolation time model was used to connect the multiple in situ observations and the coronagraph observations from STEREO/SECCHI and SOHO/LASCO. The first fast coronal mass ejection event (∼761.2 km s−1), which erupted on December 4, impacted Mars centrally and grazed BepiColombo by its western flank. The ambient slow solar wind decelerated the west flank of the ICME, implying that the ICME event was significantly distorted by the solar wind structure. The second slow ICME event (∼390.7 km s−1) underwent an acceleration from its eruption to a distance within 0.69 au and then traveled with the constant velocity of the ambient solar wind. These findings highlight the importance of background solar wind in determining the interplanetary evolution and global morphology of ICMEs up to Mars distance. Observations from multiple locations are invaluable for space weather studies at Mars and merit more exploration in the future

A two‐stage algorithm for vehicle routing problem with charging relief in post‐disaster

Abstract This paper first investigates emergency transportation for power recovery in post‐disaster. The problem is formulated as a mixed‐integer linear programming model called vehicle routing problem with charging relief (VRPCR). The battery state of charge (SoC) implies the working hours that the battery can provide. The goal is to make a set of shelters charge before the battery SoC of shelters reaches the minimum bound over time. To this end, a two‐stage algorithm is developed to deal with the problem. In stage I, a reduced road network is obtained from a leading road network by the A‐star search algorithm. Subsequently, to determine the order of power delivery with charging operations at shelters by enhanced genetic algorithm (EGA) in stage II. To evaluate this strategy, the detailed complexity analysis of the three algorithms and results tested on a realistic disaster scenario shows the performance of the A‐star search algorithm for VRPCR that outperforms the Dijkstra and Floyd algorithms. In addition, the EGA is applied to Solomon's benchmarks compared with the state‐of‐the‐art heuristic algorithms, which indicates a better performance of EGA. A real case obtained from a disaster scenario in Ichihara City, Japan is also conducted. Simulation results demonstrate that the method can achieve satisfactory solutions

A Novel BCC-Structure Zr-Nb-Ti Medium-Entropy Alloys (MEAs) with Excellent Structure and Irradiation Resistance

Medium-entropy alloys (MEAs) are prospective structural materials for emerging advanced nuclear systems because of their outstanding mechanical properties and irradiation resistance. In this study, the microstructure and mechanical properties of three new single-phase body-centered cubic (BCC) structured MEAs (Zr40Nb35Ti25, Zr50Nb35Ti15, and Zr60Nb35Ti5) before and after irradiation were investigated. It is shown that the yield strength and elongation after fracture at room temperature are greater than 900 MPa and 10%, respectively. Three MEAs were irradiated with 3 MeV Fe11+ ions to 8 × 1015 and 2.5 × 1016 ions/cm2 at temperatures of 300 and 500 °C, to investigate the irradiation-induced hardening and microstructure changes. Compared with most conventional alloys, the three MEAs showed only negligible irradiation hardening and even softening in some cases. After irradiation, they exhibit somewhat surprising lattice constant reduction, and the microstructure contains small dislocation loops. Neither cavities nor precipitates were observed. This indicates that the MEAs have better irradiation resistance than traditional alloys, which can be attributed to the high-entropy and lattice distortion effect of MEAs

Ni2P nanocrystals embedded Ni-MOF nanosheets supported on nickel foam as bifunctional electrocatalyst for urea electrolysis

It's highly desired but challenging to synthesize self-supporting nanohybrid made of conductive nanoparticles with metal organic framework (MOF) materials for the application in the electrochemical field. In this work, we report the preparation of Ni2P embedded Ni-MOF nanosheets supported on nickel foam through partial phosphidation (Ni2P@Ni-MOF/NF). The self-supporting Ni2P@Ni-MOF/NF was directly tested as electrode for urea electrolysis. When served as anode for urea oxidation reaction (UOR), it only demands 1.41 V (vs RHE) to deliver a current of 100 mA cm(-2). And the overpotential of Ni2P@Ni-MOF/NF to reach 10 mA cm(-2) for hydrogen evolution reaction HER was only 66 mV, remarkably lower than Ni2P/NF (133 mV). The exceptional electrochemical performance was attributed to the unique structure of Ni2P@Ni-MOF and the well exposed surface of Ni2P. Furthermore, the Ni2P@Ni-MOF/NF demonstrated outstanding longevity for both HER and UOR. The electrolyzer constructed with Ni2P@Ni-MOF/NF as bifunctional electrode can attain a current density of 100 mA cm(-2) at a cell voltage as low as 1.65 V. Our work provides new insights for prepare MOF based nanohydrid for electrochemical application