Mini-review of biofilm interactions with surface materials in industrial piping system

The growth of biofilm, which is caused by microorganism accumulation and growth on wetted surfaces, may damage industrial piping systems, increase maintenance and cleaning costs for the system sterilization, and even divulge the immune system into high risk. This article systematically analyzes the biofilm interactions with piping surface materials from the perspectives of physical convection, and biological and chemical adhesion. The thermodynamics of the flow, bacterial surface sensing, and bio-communication are the most critical factors for biofilm attachment. Furthermore, experimental analysis methods as well as biofilm control and removal approaches, are also included in this study. Finally, the resistance and growth of biofilm, as well as the practical and advanced methodology to control the biofilm and challenges associated with technology, are also discussed. Moreover, this paper may also offer a significant reference for the practice and strategic applications to address the biofilm resistance issues in industrial piping.Published versio

Mini-Review of Biofilm Interactions with Surface Materials in Industrial Piping System

The growth of biofilm, which is caused by microorganism accumulation and growth on wetted surfaces, may damage industrial piping systems, increase maintenance and cleaning costs for the system sterilization, and even divulge the immune system into high risk. This article systematically analyzes the biofilm interactions with piping surface materials from the perspectives of physical convection, and biological and chemical adhesion. The thermodynamics of the flow, bacterial surface sensing, and bio-communication are the most critical factors for biofilm attachment. Furthermore, experimental analysis methods as well as biofilm control and removal approaches, are also included in this study. Finally, the resistance and growth of biofilm, as well as the practical and advanced methodology to control the biofilm and challenges associated with technology, are also discussed. Moreover, this paper may also offer a significant reference for the practice and strategic applications to address the biofilm resistance issues in industrial piping

Psychosocial impacts of mobile game on K12 students and trend exploration for future educational mobile games

Due to the popularity and advancement of 4G/5G networks, mobile games have already currently become profitable tools for major internet platforms. These games are even refined to cover almost all age groups of the population rather than the young people. Yet in the perception of the public, mobile games have always seemed to be associated with various derogatory terms such as interfering with learning, addiction, and violence. K12 students usually have less self-control capability, and they are undoubtedly the biggest advocates of mobile games. This paper summarizes the technological development of mobile games from the aspects of hardware and software in chronological order. The psychological and social problems that mobile games have brought to K12 students are analyzed from a neutral perspective. At the end of the paper, the future development of educational games and current limitations of mobile games are also given for the explorations of future trends of game-based education. This position paper aims to provide the insight of what psychosocial impacts that the current mobile games have on the student, and it may also serve as a reference for the how the game-based education has been developing according to the mobile technology wise.Published versio

Study on the Basic Characteristics of Iron Ore Powder with Different Particle Sizes

In order to study in depth the differences in basic characteristics between iron ore fines commonly used by a steel company, and guide the sintering performance plant to choose the best ore allocation method, experimental studies on the basic characteristics of seven iron ore powders of three sizes were carried out using micro-sintering equipment, mainly including assimilation properties, liquid phase fluidity, and bonding phase strength. The results of the research showed that with the increase of the iron ore powder particle size, the assimilation of the seven iron ore powders showed an overall decreasing trend, deteriorating fluidity and decreasing bonding phase strength. Among them, the overall fluidity of iron ore powder A was poor, and the fluidity of iron ore powder B varied greatly between different particle grades, and the fluidity of iron ore powder C was more balanced and its bonding phase strength was high, while the overall bonding phase strength of iron ore powders B and E was low. The results of the study provide a theoretical basis for optimal ore allocation in sintering plants

Overviews of internet of things applications in China’s hospitality industry

During the current post-epidemic period, hygiene requirements and health needs in the hospitality industry keep increasing, and consumers become more concerned about the cleanliness of hotels and have stronger demands for contactless services in hotels. The growth and popularity of IoT technology in China make it more accessible to a wider range of service industries and provides the basis for the application of IoT in the hospitality industry. The application of IoT devices in hotels mainly includes intelligent robots, intelligent guest control, systems, etc., which helps to realize contactless services in hotels. This research reviews the entire development cycle of the application of IoT in the hospitality industry, from the founding, development, and expansion of companies to their IPO and post-IPO maturity. From a perspective combined with IoT technology, we can cope with the changing industry models, business models, and operation modes in the hospitality industry more efficiently. The development of IoT in hotels will move towards humanization and service-orientation. Through the role of human–machine linkage and the reasonable management of IoT equipment, IoT technology can reasonably promote the efficiency of manual work, while injecting “warmth” and “quality” into IoT equipment.Published versio

Overviews of Internet of Things Applications in China’s Hospitality Industry

During the current post-epidemic period, hygiene requirements and health needs in the hospitality industry keep increasing, and consumers become more concerned about the cleanliness of hotels and have stronger demands for contactless services in hotels. The growth and popularity of IoT technology in China make it more accessible to a wider range of service industries and provides the basis for the application of IoT in the hospitality industry. The application of IoT devices in hotels mainly includes intelligent robots, intelligent guest control, systems, etc., which helps to realize contactless services in hotels. This research reviews the entire development cycle of the application of IoT in the hospitality industry, from the founding, development, and expansion of companies to their IPO and post-IPO maturity. From a perspective combined with IoT technology, we can cope with the changing industry models, business models, and operation modes in the hospitality industry more efficiently. The development of IoT in hotels will move towards humanization and service-orientation. Through the role of human–machine linkage and the reasonable management of IoT equipment, IoT technology can reasonably promote the efficiency of manual work, while injecting “warmth” and “quality” into IoT equipment

3D Face Reconstruction Using A Spectral-Based Graph Convolution Encoder

Monocular 3D face reconstruction plays a crucial role in avatar generation, with significant demand in web-related applications such as generating virtual financial advisors in FinTech. Current reconstruction methods predominantly rely on deep learning techniques and employ 2D self-supervision as a means to guide model learning. However, these methods encounter challenges in capturing the comprehensive 3D structural information of the face due to the utilization of 2D images for model training purposes. To overcome this limitation and enhance the reconstruction of 3D structural features, we propose an innovative approach that integrates existing 2D features with 3D features to guide the model learning process. Specifically, we introduce the 3D-ID Loss, which leverages the high-dimensional structure features extracted from a Spectral-Based Graph Convolution Encoder applied to the facial mesh. This approach surpasses the sole reliance on the 3D information provided by the facial mesh vertices coordinates. Our model is trained using 2D-3D data pairs from a combination of datasets and achieves state-of-the-art performance on the NoW benchmark.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Accepted to WWW 202

Established and nascent entrepreneurs: comparing the mental health, self-care behaviours and wellbeing in Singapore

Mental health problems currently affect a quarter of the world's population. Recent research in western societies has started to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and mental health problems such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and dyslexia. However, little has been done to categorize entrepreneurs into different types and investigate how their levels of mental health and well-being correspond to these types. This study divided entrepreneurs into established and nascent categories and examined this topic in Singapore. By distributing two sets of surveys, a total of 834 responses were collected, with 346 responses from established entrepreneurs and 488 responses from nascent ones. The results showed that the nascent entrepreneurs' levels of well-being were found to be much lower than those of the established entrepreneurs. Furthermore, entrepreneurs with ADHD or dyslexia symptoms generally had a much lower level of life satisfaction, compared with those without. However, the self-care behaviours observed in this sample differed somewhat from observations made in western societies, which might be explained by the different cultures and habits in Singaporean society. The findings not only highlight the need for relevant organizations to support nascent entrepreneurs but serve to remind veteran entrepreneurs to practice more healthy self-care behaviours.Published versio

Sensing the Environmental Inequality of PM_2.5 Exposure Using Fine-Scale Measurements of Social Strata and Citizenship Identity

Exposure to PM2.5 pollution poses substantial health risks, with the precise quantification of exposure being fundamental to understanding the environmental inequalities therein. However, the absence of high-resolution spatiotemporal ambient population data, coupled with an insufficiency of attribute data, impedes a comprehension of the environmental inequality of exposure risks at a fine scale. Within the purview of a conceptual framework that interlinks social strata and citizenship identity with environmental inequality, this study examines the environmental inequality of PM2.5 exposure with a focus on the city of Xi’an. Quantitative metrics of the social strata and citizenship identities of the ambient population are derived from housing price data and mobile phone big data. The fine-scale estimation of PM2.5 concentrations is predicated on the kriging interpolation method and refined by leveraging an advanced dataset. Employing geographically weighted regression models, we examine the environmental inequality pattern at a fine spatial scale. The key findings are threefold: (1) the manifestation of environmental inequality in PM2.5 exposure is pronounced among individuals of varying social strata and citizenship identities within our study area, Xi’an; (2) nonlocal residents situated in the northwestern precincts of Xi’an are subject to the most pronounced PM2.5 exposure; and (3) an elevated socioeconomic status is identified as an attenuating factor, capable of averting the deleterious impacts of PM2.5 exposure among nonlocal residents. These findings proffer substantial practical implications for the orchestration of air pollution mitigation strategies and urban planning initiatives. They suggest that addressing the wellbeing of the marginalized underprivileged cohorts, who are environmentally and politically segregated under the extant urban planning policies in China, is of critical importance

Auto-Fas:searching lightweight networks for face anti-spoofing

Abstract With the development of mobile devices, it is hopeful and pressing to deploy face recognition and face anti-spoofing (FAS) model on cell phone or portable devices. Most of existing face anti-spoofing methods focus on building computational costly detector for better spoofing face detection performance. However, these detectors are unfriendly to be deployed on the mobile device for real-time FAS applications. In this paper, we propose a neural architecture search (NAS) based method called Auto-FAS, intending to discover well-suitable lightweight networks for mobile-level face anti-spoofing. In Auto-FAS, a special search space is designed to restrict the model’s size, and pixel-wise binary supervision is used to improve the model’s performance. We demonstrate both the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach on three public benchmark datasets, which shows the potential real-time FAS application for mobile devices