Gender and Age Differences in Safety-Oriented Personality Style or Phobicentric Psychopathology (SOPS/PCP)

This study investigates differences in gender and age in the Safety-Oriented Personality Style or Phobicentric Psychopathology (SOPS/PCP). Comparisons are made with Neuroticism in the Big 5 or Five Factor Model to further distinguish it from SOPS/PCP. The results show similarity in age but not gender differences between the two constructs. Also, the location of the participants (Canada or USA) was not significant. The study is an initial step in accumulating basic facts about SOPS/PCP

Speeding Up Path Planning via Reinforcement Learning in MCTS for Automated Parking

In this paper, we address a method that integrates reinforcement learning into the Monte Carlo tree search to boost online path planning under fully observable environments for automated parking tasks. Sampling-based planning methods under high-dimensional space can be computationally expensive and time-consuming. State evaluation methods are useful by leveraging the prior knowledge into the search steps, making the process faster in a real-time system. Given the fact that automated parking tasks are often executed under complex environments, a solid but lightweight heuristic guidance is challenging to compose in a traditional analytical way. To overcome this limitation, we propose a reinforcement learning pipeline with a Monte Carlo tree search under the path planning framework. By iteratively learning the value of a state and the best action among samples from its previous cycle's outcomes, we are able to model a value estimator and a policy generator for given states. By doing that, we build up a balancing mechanism between exploration and exploitation, speeding up the path planning process while maintaining its quality without using human expert driver data

Rise of the gold market in China: liberalisation and market development

The Chinese gold market is rapidly rising to global prominence in the recent decades. The paper reviews the history of the gold market in China and its liberalisation process amid the country’s opening to the outside world. Details of the current market structure and its main business are presented. Global impacts of the rise of the Chinese gold market are discussed

Command Filter Backstepping Sliding Model Control for Lower-Limb Exoskeleton

A command filter adaptive fuzzy backstepping control strategy is proposed for lower-limb assisting exoskeleton. Firstly, the human-robot model is established by taking the human body as a passive part, and a coupling torque is introduced to describe the interaction between the exoskeleton and human leg. Then, Vicon motion capture system is employed to obtain the reference trajectory. For the purpose of obviating the “explosion of complexity” in conventional backstepping, a second-order command filter is introduced into the sliding mode control strategy. The fuzzy logic systems (FLSs) are also applied to handle with the chattering problem by estimating the uncertainties and disturbances. Furthermore, the stability of the closed-loop system is proved based on the Lyapunov theory. Finally, simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the control strategy

The innovative design of air caps for improving the thermal efficiency of CFB boilers.

Air caps are an effective way of ensuring uniformity of air flow in Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) boilers. Published literature on the design and configuration of these air caps is severely limited. In this study, extensive theoretical as well as experimental investigations have been carried out to design novel air caps in order to improve efficiency of CFB boilers. A small-scale test bench of 220 t/h CFB boiler has been developed, integrated with novel air caps. It has been observed that inhomogeneity in air flow velocity decreases from 65.79% to 21.25%, while the pressure drop decreases by 20%. A mathematic model of air caps has been derived and its accuracy verified through cold tests. Two empirical correlations for calculating the pressure drop and the air jet penetration length of the novel air caps have been obtained and verified. Finally, in order to validate the innovative design of air caps, this methodology has been implemented to a full-scale 220 t/h CFB boiler. The hot test results depict that the thermal efficiency of the boiler has increased from 86.4% to 91.8% when tested with the novel air caps in-place, which is equivalent to a saving of 6000 tons of coal per year

Goals and plans for Big Five personality trait change in young adults

Four studies were conducted on young adults’ goals and plans to change personality traits. In Study 1, a new trait change goal assessment tool, the BF-TGI, found Neuroticism to be the most frequently cited trait for a change goal. In Study 2, data was gathered from the UK, Iran and China. Iran showed a higher prevalence of normative change goals than the UK and China. Study 3 investigated plans to change traits. Extraversion and Conscientiousness plans were more specific than for the other traits. Study 4 investigated whether goals and plans to change predict change over 12 months, and found that goals and plans to change Conscientiousness and Neuroticism predicted change in the opposite direction to the goal

Study on multi-axis sine vibration test control techniques

This paper describes several key aspects about multi-axis sine vibration test control techniques including the identification of the system frequency response function, synchronization of the input and output signals, the generation of the sinewave, the control algorithm, etc. A multi-axis sine vibration controller is developed based on these key techniques and the major framework of the controller is introduced. Finally, a dual axial experiment is carried out by the controller. The test results show the feasibility of the control algorithm and the good control strategy of the multi-axis sine vibration controller in which the key techniques are realized

Reconstruction and fast prediction of a 3D flow field based on a variational autoencoder

Reconstruction and fast prediction of flow fields are important for the improvement of data center operations and energy savings. In this study, an artificial neural network (ANN) and variational autoencoder (VAE) composite model is proposed for the reconstruction and prediction of 3D flowfields with high accuracy and efficiency. The VAE model is trained to extract features of the problem and to realize 3D physical field reconstruction. The ANN is employed to achieve the constructability of the extracted features. A dataset of steady temperature/velocity fields is acquired by computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer (CFD/HT) and fed to train the deep learning model. The proposed ANN-VAE model is experimentally proven to achieve promising field prediction accuracy with a significantly reduced computational cost. Compared to the CFD/HT method, the ANN-VAE method speeds up the physical field prediction by approximately 380,000 times, with mean accuracies of 97.3% for temperature field prediction and 97.9% for velocity field prediction, making it feasible for real-time physical field acquisition.Comment: 43 pages, 23 figure