ORGANIC TEA HAS MORE HEALTH BENEFIT AND ENVIRONMENTAL ADAPTABLITY THAN CONVENTIONAL TEA

Organic tea is booming in China since it is regarded as a high quality and healthy product. To confirm this believing, six pairs of organic and conventional teas from six farms in Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces, eastern China have been analyzed. The results show that organic teas had significantly higher tea polyphenols and water extracts compared to the conventional ones in most cases. Catechins, especially the epigallocatechin gallate, epicatechin gallate and epigallocatechin were significantly higher in organic tea. The concentrations of proline andγ-aminobutyric acid were also significantly higher in organic tea. However, the amino acids, particular theanine, aspartic acid and arginine were generally lower due to insufficient supply of mineral N in soils under organic management. These results could conclude that organic tea is more health benefit and environmental adaptable compared to its conventional counterpart

Modeling and Simulation of Working Characteristics of Lithium Titanate Batteries for Emergency Power Transmission

This paper presents a battery model applied to dynamic simulation software. The simulation model uses only the battery State-Of-Charge (SOC) as a state variable in order to avoid the algebraic loop problem. It is shown that this model, composed of a controlled voltage source in series with a resistance, can accurately describe the lithium titanate battery discharge process. The model’s parameters can be easily extracted from the manufacturer’s discharge curve. In this paper, it is actually applied to the self-starting system after the emergency stop of the EMU, the simulation model of the system is established by MATLAB/Simulink, and the ground test platform is used to simulate the actual working condition of EMU to complete the experimental verification. The results of both simulation and experiment proved that the scheme of battery self-shifting driven system is feasible and correct

The effects of user-AI co-creation on UI design tasks

With the boost of GPU computation power and the developments of neural networks in the recent decade, a lot of AI technique are invented and show bright potential of improving human tasks. GAN (generative adversarial network) as one of recent AI technique has powerful ability to perform image generation tasks. Besides, many researchers are working on exploring the potentials and understand user-AI collaboration by developing prototype with the help of neural networks (such as GAN). Unlike previous works focus on simple sketch task, this work studied the user experience with UI design task to understand how AI could improve or harm the user experience within practical and complex design tasks. The findings are as follows: multiple-hint AI turned out to be more user-friendly, and it is im-portant to study and understand how AI’s presentation should be designed for user-AI col-laboration. Based on these findings and previous works, this research discussed about what factors should be taken into consideration when designing user-AI collaboration tool

The performance of a heat pump using nanofluid (R22+TiO2) as the working fluid – an experimental study

It has been well known that the nano-particles, including metals, oxides, carbides, or carbon nanotubes, can increase the conduction and convection coefficients and consequently, enhance the heat transfer. Using nanofluids as working fluids in the refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pump systems has attracted much attention. This work set-up a test rig to experimentally study the system performance of a heat pump with nanofluid as refrigerant, which was prepared by mixing 5wt% TiO2 with R22. Results show that adding the nano particle TiO2 didn’t changed the heat absorbed in the evaporator clearly but increase the heat released in the condenser. As a results, compared to using pure R22, when using R22 + TiO2, the COP of the cooling cycle was decreased slightly, however, the COP of the heating cycle was increased significantly increased power consumption of compression.publishedVersio

Facile and Label-Free Electrochemical Biosensors for MicroRNA Detection based on DNA Origami Nanostructures

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as the promising molecular biomarkers for early diagnosis and enhanced understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of cancers as well as certain diseases. Here, a facile, label-free, and amplification-free electrochemical biosensor was developed to detect miRNA by using DNA origami nanostructure-supported DNA probes, with methylene blue (MB) serving as the hybridization redox indicator, for the first time. Specifically, the use of cross-shaped DNA origami nanostructures containing multiple single-stranded DNA probes at preselected locations on each DNA nanostructure could increase the accessibility and the recognition efficiency of the probes (due to the rational controlled density of DNA probes). The successful immobilization of DNA origami probes and their hybridization with targeted miRNA-21 molecules was confirmed by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry methods. A differential pulse voltammetry technique was employed to record the oxidation peak current of MB before and after target hybridization. The linear detection range of this biosensor was from 0.1 pM to 10.0 nM, with a lower detection limit of 79.8 fM. The selectivity of the miRNA biosensor was also studied by observing the discrimination ability of single-base mismatched sequences. Because of the larger surface area and unprecedented customizability of DNA origami nanostructures, this strategy demonstrated great potential for sensitive, selective, and label-free determination of miRNA for translational biomedical research and clinical applications

SAW Delay Line based Smart Sensing in Water Distribution System

Wireless Passive Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) sensors have attracted great attention in numerous applications. They are powered by interrogating Radio Frequency (RF) pulses rather than batteries. In this study, a wireless passive SAW temperature and pressure delay line sensor was adapted in a designed framework which can control the ambient liquid temperature and pressure and characterised. The experimental results meet the theoretical analysis that the related phase delay of the response signal depends linearly on the temperature (pressure) when the pressure (temperature) keeps constant

Prioritized offline Goal-swapping Experience Replay

In goal-conditioned offline reinforcement learning, an agent learns from previously collected data to go to an arbitrary goal. Since the offline data only contains a finite number of trajectories, a main challenge is how to generate more data. Goal-swapping generates additional data by switching trajectory goals but while doing so produces a large number of invalid trajectories. To address this issue, we propose prioritized goal-swapping experience replay (PGSER). PGSER uses a pre-trained Q function to assign higher priority weights to goal swapped transitions that allow reaching the goal. In experiments, PGSER significantly improves over baselines in a wide range of benchmark tasks, including challenging previously unsuccessful dexterous in-hand manipulation tasks

Behavioural Informatics for Improving Water Hygiene Practice based on IoT Environment

The development of Internet of Things (IoT) and latest Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have changed the nature of healthcare monitoring and health behaviour intervention in many applications. Water hygiene and water conservation behaviour intervention as important influence factors to human health are gaining much attentions for improving sustained sanitation practice. Based on face-to-face delivery, typical behaviour intervention method is costly and hardly to provide all day access to personalised intervention guidance and feedbacks. In this study, we presented a behavioural information system and water use behaviour model using IoT platform. Using Expanded Theory of Planned Behaviour (ETPB) and adopted structure equation model, this study offers a solution for understanding the behaviour intervention mechanism and methodology for developing empirical model. A case study of behaviour intervention model is presented by utilising residential water conservation behaviour data collected in China. Results suggested that cultural differences have significant influences on the understanding of intervention drivers, promoting projects and increasing awareness, which could improve the behaviour intervention efficiency and further facilitate the improvement of water hygiene practice. The performance evaluation of water saving dimension is discussed as well in the pape