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SnO2-based materials are promising catalysts for CO2 electrochemical reduction due to its attractive selectivity for C1 products (formate and carbon monoxide) but they tend to suffer high overpotential and poor stability. Here, a porous SnO2/ZnO catalyst is synthesized via hydroxides coprecipitation, hydrothermal treatment and carbon black template calcination. SnO2 nanocrystals are produced by calcination of tin hydroxides while the growth of ZnO nanocrystals is associated with carbon black template. The porous SnO2/ZnO catalyst presents a stable Faradaic efficiency of >90% for CO2 reduction at an applied voltage of -0.7 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) and a C1 current density of 9.53 mA cm−2 over a testing period of 100 h. The improved performance is originated from abundant heterojunctions and lattice defects of SnO2 and ZnO nanocrystals, large specific surface area and grain boundary. This study provides a facile method to fabricate porous and nanocrystal metal oxides electrocatalysts for electrochemical processes.

The distribution of large-size data block in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), especially in the urban IoV with dense vehicles, is still a challenge issue. Though the methods based on 5G-cellular network commonly can efficiently distribute the large-size file in IoVs, they also have obvious defects, such as occupying scarce 5G resources, generating communication fees and limited service coverage. This paper focuses on distributing large-size data block in IoVs based on dedicated vehicular ad hoc network to reduce the relying on cellular (5G/6G) resources. A heterogeneous vehicular network (HetVNET), in which a short-range OFDM wideband communication (SOWC) with ultra-high data rate and the original IEEE 802.11p protocol are included, is first proposed. To match with the proposed HetVNET, a content-centric data distribution scheme based on edge caching is designed. The content-centric data distribution architecture for distributing large-size file, the cache node selection and the process of data distribution and control based on the HetVNET are studied. The 5G/6G communication can be enabled in the scheme to further enhance the engineering stability of the massive infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) broadcast in IoVs. The evaluation results show that the proposed approach has low delivery delay and high penetration ratio.

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a large, double-stranded DNA virus that causes a fatal disease in pigs, posing a threat to the global pig industry. Whereas some ASFV proteins have been found to play important roles in ASFV–host interaction, the functional roles of many proteins are still largely unknown. In this study, we identified I73R , an early viral gene in the replication cycle of ASFV, as a key virulence factor. Our findings demonstrate that pI73R suppresses the host innate immune response by broadly inhibiting the synthesis of host proteins, including antiviral proteins. Crystallization and structural characterization results suggest that pI73R is a nucleic-acid-binding protein containing a Zα domain. It localizes in the nucleus and inhibits host protein synthesis by suppressing the nuclear export of cellular messenger RNA (mRNAs). While pI73R promotes viral replication, the deletion of the gene showed that it is a nonessential gene for virus replication. In vivo safety and immunogenicity evaluation results demonstrate that the deletion mutant ASFV-GZΔ I73R is completely nonpathogenic and provides effective protection to pigs against wild-type ASFV. These results reveal I73R as a virulence-related gene critical for ASFV pathogenesis and suggest that it is a potential target for virus attenuation. Accordingly, the deletion mutant ASFV-GZΔ I73R can be a potent live-attenuated vaccine candidate.

Ultrathin PANI-doped g-PAN not only serves as the encapsulating agent to protect Cu from oxygen attack, but it also improves the efficiency of electron–hole separation, thereby enhancing the photocatalytic hydrogen evolution efficiency.

African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious disease of domestic and wild pigs caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV). The current research on ASF vaccines focuses on the development of naturally attenuated, isolated, or genetically engineered live viruses that have been demonstrated to produce reliable immunity. As a result, a genetically engineered virus containing five genes deletion was synthesized based on ASFV Chinese strain GZ201801, named ASFV-GZΔI177LΔCD2vΔMGF. The five-gene-deleted ASFV was safe and fully attenuated in pigs and provides reliable protection against the parental ASFV strain challenge. This indicates that the five-gene-deleted ASFV is a potential candidate for a live attenuated vaccine that could control the spread of ASFV.

In this paper, we study the endomorphism properties of vertex operator algebras over an arbitrary field $\mathbb{F}$, with $\text{Char}(\mathbb{F}) \neq 2$. Let $V$ be a strongly finitely generated vertex operator algebra over $\mathbb{F}$, and $M$ be an irreducible admissible $V$-module. We prove that every element in $\text{End}_V(M)$ is algebraic over $\mathbb{F}$ and that $\text{End}_V(M)$ is also finite-dimensional. As an application, we prove Schur's lemma for strongly finitely generated vertex operator algebras over arbitrary algebraically closed fields, and we give a test for absolute irreducibility of $V$-modules.

The brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens Stal (Hemiptera: Delphacidae), is a notorious pest on rice in Asia and has evolved serious resistance to traditional chemical insecticides in recent years. Triflumezopyrim, a newly commercialized mesoionic insecticide, exhibited an excellent control effect on sucking insects, including N. lugens. However, the effects of triflumezopyrim on the reproduction of N. lugens have not yet been fully elucidated. In this study, we investigated the impacts of different concentrations of triflumezopyrim (LC10, LC50 and LC90) on the reproduction and the reproduction related genes of N. lugens exposure to the insecticide via systemic and contact route. The results indicated that the preoviposition periods of N. lugens females in the LC50 and LC90 triflumezopyrim-treated groups (♀ t × ♂ t) were prolonged in contact toxicity treatment, compared with control (acetone treatment). The fecundities for three pair combinations (♀ c ×♂ t, ♀ t ×♂ c and ♀ t ×♂ t) treated with LC50 and LC90 concentrations of triflumezopyrim showed a significant decrease compared to water/acetone-treated control via contact and systemic route. No significant effects of LC10 triflumezopyrim on preoviposition period and fecundity were found in contact and systemic toxicity treatments. However, the triflumezopyrim did not influence the egg hatchability. By microscope observation, the LC50 and LC90 triflumezopyrim impended the ovarian development in females. qRT-PCR analysis showed that the vitellogenin (NlVg) relative expression level of female adults exposed to LC50 and LC90 triflumezopyrim decreased by 30.3 – 39.5% in two toxicity treatments. The titers of another reproduction related hormones juvenile hormone III (JH III) in LC50 and LC90 triflumezopyrim-treatments were 27.4% and 25.8% lower than control in contact toxicity treatment and 27.08% and 37.18% lower than control in systemic toxicity treatment. In summary, these results suggested that the median lethal and high lethal concentrations of triflumezopyrim inhibited the reproduction and reduced the expression of NlVg and JH III in N. lugens. This study provided a reference for the efficient and scientific utilization of triflumezopyrim in the field.

The catalytic reduction performance of NO on the surface of Fe-doped ZnAl2O4 (100) was calculated based on DFT. The adsorption of NO and other molecules, the change of reaction energy of CH4 and C2H4 as reducing agents, and the activation energy barrier of CH4 were studied. It was found that the best adsorption energy of NO is −2.166 eV. Compared with Al and Zn sites, doped Fe atoms are better adsorption catalytic sites. At temperatures of 300 K and 600 K, the molecules will move in the direction of the Fe atoms. O2 adsorption will repel NO, reduce its adsorption energy, and cause NO to lose electrons and be oxidized. The reaction enthalpy with CH4 as the reducing agent is −7.02 eV, and with C2H4 is −3.45 eV. Transition state calculations show that O reduces the dissociation barrier of CH4 by about 2 eV. The smaller adsorption energy and negative reaction enthalpy of the product indicate that the iron-doped ZnAl2O4 has a good catalytic NO potential. This also provides a basis for future research on the catalytic mechanism of different hydrocarbons.

Multi-drug resistance (MDR) is one of the major challenges in the successful chemotherapy of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Although RNA interference (RNAi) has been widely used to silence resistance-related genes, the effect remains unsatisfactory. In this study, we attempted to overcome MDR of NSCLC by simultaneously interfering with two RNAs that have different functions. A new pH-triggered polyglutamate brush polymer dimethylmaleic anhydride-poly(ethyleneglycol) monomethyl ether-b-polyglutamate-g-spermine (DMA-mPEG-b-PG-g-spermine, DPPGS) was designed and synthesized. The DPPGS/small interfering RNA (siRNA) complex nanoparticles (DPPGSN) were prepared. The results demonstrated that DPPGSN could be transformed from a negatively charged form into a positively charged form in the slightly acidic tumor extracellular environment. The siRNA targeting MDR1 mRNA (siMDR1) and siRNA targeting survivin mRNA (siSurvivin) could be efficiently co-delivered by DPPGS to simultaneously interfere with two genes (p < 0.01). Furthermore, DPPGS co-delivery of siMDR1 and siSurvivin lowered the IC50 value of cisplatin (DDP) in A549/DDP (p < 0.01) cells and increased the apoptosis rate of the cells (p < 0.01). Therefore, co-delivery of siMDR1 and siSurvivin using DPPGS would be a promising approach for overcoming MDR of NSCLC.

A combined plasma photolysis (CPP) reactor was used to study the effect of UV irradiation on the removal efficiency and byproducts of toluene decomposition. The influence of UV irradiation length on the removal rate and byproducts were compared. The results show that the toluene removal is obviously improved in the CPP reactor. The removal rate is enhanced with the increase of the UV irradiation length. The increase of removal efficiency is 7.94% and 19.1% under the UV irradiation with 5 cm and 15 cm length, respectively. UV also reduces the production of ozone significantly. It is interesting to find that the effect of UV on the carbon balance is not always increased as expected, but is related to the inlet toluene initial concentration. When the inlet toluene concentration is 300 ppm or 400 ppm, the carbon balance is enhanced by UV. When the inlet concentration is lower, in 60 ppm and 100 ppm, UV no longer plays a positive role. However, UV can change the trend of carbon balance at low initial concentrations and makes it positively related to specific input energy (SIE), which is contrary to the cases without UV.

The Hemipteran predator, Cyrtorhinus lividipennis, feeds on the eggs and nymphs of rice planthoppers and leafhoppers. We previously demonstrated that sublethal concentrations of imidacloprid stimulated the reproduction of C. lividipennis. Considering the essential roles of juvenile hormone (JH) in insect reproduction, we speculated that sublethal concentrations of imidacloprid may stimulate the reproduction of C. lividipennis by regulating JH level. To test this, we cloned C. lividipennis JH acid methyl transferase (ClJHAMT) and JH esterase (ClJHE), which are responsible for JH biosynthesis and degradation genes, respectively. We then knocked down ClJHAMT by injecting dsRNA into C. lividipennis nymphs and found that emerging female adults exhibited 88.8% lower expression of the vitellogenin gene (ClVg) and the number of eggs was reduced by 41.5% as compared with controls. Silencing ClJHE increased ClVg mRNA expression by 275.0% but did not affect fecundity. A sublethal concentration of imidacloprid (LC20) increased the JH titer in females by 35.3% and 60.6% at 24 and 48 h post-emergence, respectively. In treatments containing both imidacloprid and dsJHAMT, the silencing of CLJHAMT reduced the number of eggs produced by adult females by 21.4% as compared to the control (imidacloprid + dsGFP). Our results indicated that sublethal concentration of imidacloprid may induce C. lividipennis reproduction by upregulating JH level via JHAMT. The finding could provide valuable information for improved integration of C. lividipennis and insecticides in pest management.

A plethora of information is now readily available for traffic prediction, making an effective use of them enables better traffic planning. With data coming from multiple sources, and their features spanning spatial and temporal dimensions, there is an increasing demand to exploit them for accurate traffic prediction. Existing methods, however, do not provide a solution for this, as they tend to require expertise feature engineering. In this paper, we propose a general architecture for S patio T emporal D ata F usion (STDF) with parameter efficiency. To make heterogeneous multi-source data fusion effectiveness, we separate all data into traffic directly related data and traffic indirectly related data. With traffic indirectly related data as the input to S patial E mbedding by T emporal convoluti ON (SETON) that simultaneously encodes each feature in both space and time dimensions and traffic directly related data as the input to the graph convolutional network(GCN), we designed a fine-grained feature transformer to match the ones generated by GCN. This is then followed by a fusion module to combine all features to make final prediction. Compared to using GCNs training with only traffic directly related data, experimental results show that our model can achieve a 6.1% improvement in prediction accuracy measured by Root Mean Squared Error.

Cytorhinus lividipennis is a natural enemy of rice planthoppers and leafhoppers. Improving the fecundity of C. lividipennis will be helpful to improve its control effect on pests. However, little is known about the hormonal regulatory mechanism of reproduction in C. lividipennis. In the current study, we examined the role of 20-hydroxyecdysone (20E) biosynthesis relative gene Shadow in the reproduction of C. lividipennis. The complementary DNA sequence of ClSad is 2018 -bp in length with an open reading frame of 1398-bp encoding 465 amino acid residues. ClSad was readily detected in nymphal and adult stages, and highly expressed in the adult stage. ClSad was highly expressed in the midgut and ovaries of adult females. Moreover, RNA interference-mediated knockdown of ClSad reduced the 20E titers and ClVg transcript level, resulting in fewer fully developed eggs and a decrease in the number of eggs laid by dsSad-injected adult females within 15 days. These results suggest that ClSad plays a critical role in the reproduction of C. lividipennis. The present study provides insights into the molecular mechanism of the ClSad gene for the reproduction of C. lividipennis.

With the development of the fifth-generation wireless network, autonomous moving platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have been widely used in modern smart cities. In some applications, the UAVs need to perform certain monitoring tasks within a specified time. However, due to the energy constraints of UAVs, such tasks require using multiple UAVs to monitor multiple points. To solve this practical problem, this paper proposes a multi-UAV path planning model with the energy constraint (MUPPEC). The MUPPEC considers the energy consumption of a UAV in different states, such as acceleration, cruising speed, deceleration, and hovering, and the main objective of the MUPPEC is to minimize the total monitoring time. Also, a hybrid discrete intelligence algorithm based on the grey wolf optimizer (HDGWO) is proposed to solve the MUPPEC. In the HDGWO, the discrete grey wolf update operators are implemented, and the integer coding and greedy algorithms are used to transform between the grey wolf space and discrete problem space. Furthermore, the central position operation and stagnation compensation grey wolf update operation are introduced to improve the global convergence ability, and a two-opt with azimuth is designed to enhance the local search ability of the algorithm. Experimental results show that the HDGWO can solve the MUPPEC effectively, and compared to the traditional grey wolf optimizer(GWO), the discrete operators and the two-opt local search strategy with azimuth can effectively improve the optimization ability of the GWO.

Combing with photo-catalysis and photo-catalyst, a surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) reactor with a mesh electrode was applied for toluene degradation and a high mineralization was achieved. The degradation performance comparison between SDBD reactors with a mesh and a spring electrode was carried out as well. A significant improvement in carbon balance and CO

With the exploding growth of smart devices and application of 5G communications, there are more and more computation-intensive tasks which are delay-sensitive. Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a new paradigm that provides rich computing resources in close proximity to mobile users. However, how to make the decision of whether offloading or not as well as control the transmission power jointly remains a challenge. In this paper, we first study the joint multiuser offloading and transmission power control optimization problem in a multi-channel wireless interference scenario. We formulate the joint optimization problem into a system-wide computation overhead minimization problem as a mixed integer non-linear program. We then propose an efficient semi-distributed algorithm consisting of two subalgorithms of offloading scheme and transmission power control. The numerical simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce system-wide computation overhead and increase the number of beneficial edge computing users, compared with all local or edge computing and fixed transmission power schemes.

A large number of public cameras are connected to the Internet, providing valuable information to modern society. We consider a cloud-based system that analyzes the streaming data from the cameras. It consists of a manager to dispatch jobs and workers to process the jobs. The workers are bound with various instances from public cloud that have different performance in terms of average frame rate and monetary cost. In this paper, we investigate the resource management on how to dispatch jobs to workers. First, we aim to maximize the minimum average frame rate of workers while satisfying the budget of renting computing instances from public cloud. Second, we aim to minimize the cost while satisfying the desired frame rate for stream analysis. For the former, we transform the maximization problem into a knapsack problem; for the latter, we transform the minimization problem as a bin packing problem. We develop efficient greedy algorithms to solve optimization problems with theoretical bounds. Simulation results indicate the tradeoff between performance and cost: as the budget of renting cloud instances, the benefit diminishes in achieving high average frame rate; as the number of cameras increases, more additional cost will incur to provide the desired frame rate.

Glass fiber (GF) was selected as catalyst carrier, and the experiment was carried out to modify the glass fiber without catalyst carrier, so that it could achieve the best loading effect. The activity of the waste gas from the catalytic combustion of polyester cotton with Ce-Mn/GF series of catalysts decreased in the following order: Ce-Mn/GF (1:5), Ce-Mn/GF (1:4), Ce-Mn/GF (1:6), Ce-Mn/GF (1:3), and Ce-Mn/GF (1:2) (Ce/Mn ratio is molar ratio). When O2 concentration was less than 6%, O2 had a great influence on the reaction and is the main control factor of the reaction. However, when O2 concentration was higher than 6%, the influence of O2 concentration could be basically ignored, and the gas condition of the reaction became the main influence factor of the reaction. The activity of the catalyst was related to its specific surface area and pore structure. The specific surface area of the catalyst was affected by the loading capacity of metal oxide CeO2 and MnOx. The catalysts of Ce-Mn/GF (x) series (x ≠ 0), Mn existed in the state of Mn4+. The active centers CeO2 and MnOx are amorphous and uniformly dispersed on the carrier glass fiber.

Mn

We prove that the space of intertwining operators associated with certain admissible modules over vertex operator algebras is isomorphic to a quotient of the vector space of conformal blocks on a three-pointed rational curve defined by the same data. This provides a new proof and alternative version of Frenkel and Zhu’s fusion rules theorem, in terms of the dimension of certain bimodules over Zhu’s algebra, without the assumption of rationality.

Recent advances in deep learning and big data have greatly promoted the development of image recognition technology. In the meantime, however, it also makes it more challenging to protect human identify information. In this paper, we propose a novel framework called Embedded AutoEncoders to address face de-identification problem in deep learning. The structure of our framework contains two parts: a Privacy Removal Network and a Feature Selection Network. The main objective of our framework is to ensure that the Privacy Removal Network is capable of discarding information involving privacy and retaining desired information for certain image recognition applications. In order to achieve this goal, the design of the Privacy Removal Network is crucial. Specifically, we employ two different autoencoders, one of which is embedded within the other. We evaluate the proposed framework through extensive experiments, which show that the Embedded AutoEncoders framework can not only effectively retain data utility, but also protect personal identity information.

Combing with photo-catalysis and photo-catalyst, a surface dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) reactor with a mesh electrode was applied for toluene degradation and a high mineralization was achieved. The degradation performance comparison between SDBD reactors with a mesh and a spring electrode was carried out as well. A significant improvement in carbon balance and CO2 selectivity were obtained in mesh SBDB reactor compared with that of spring's one. For instance, when only plasma was applied, the carbon balance and CO2 selectivity of mesh SDBD reactor were 84% and 42.6%, while only 64.5% and 31.8% in spring one, the carbon balance and CO2 selectivity were improved by 30.3% and 34% at SIE of 300 J L−1, respectively. Synergistic effects of photo-catalysis and photo-catalyst were conducted with a 254 nm UV lamp and TiO2 deposited on the mesh electrode by atmospheric pressure (AP) plasma technology. The results showed that TiO2 and UV irradiation both presented promoting effect on toluene degradation in SDBD reactor with mesh electrode. According to the experimental results, the carbon balance rose to 89.5% and 93.9% at SIE of 300 J L−1, when UV or TiO2 was applied. With the application of TiO2 and UV together, a highest carbon balance of 95.9% was obtained at the same SIE. At the same SIE, the CO2 selectivity was promoted by 42.8% or 55.3% with the application of UV or TiO2, and the promotion finally reached at 59.1% when TiO2 and UV were applied together. Additionally, the degradation efficiency of toluene was also enhanced with the introduction of TiO2 and UV irradiation. Increases in toluene degradation efficiency of 19. 7% and 26.8% were obtained at SIE of 300 J L−1, respectively. When both TiO2 and UV were applied, the enhancement could rise to 41.6%.

The user operates the smart home devices year in year out, have produced mass operation data, but these data do not be utilized well in past. Nowadays, these data can be used to predict user’s behavior custom with the development of big data and machine learning technologies, and then the prediction results can be employed to enhance the intelligence of a smart home system. In view of this, this paper proposes a novel unsupervised user behavior prediction (UUBP) algorithm, which employs an artificial neural network and proposes a forgetting factor to overcome the shortcomings of the previous prediction algorithm. This algorithm has a high-level of autonomous and self-organizing learning ability while does not require too much human intervention. Furthermore, the algorithm can better avoid the influence of user’s infrequent and out-of-date operation records, because of the forgetting factor. Finally, the use of real end user’s operation records to demonstrate that UUBP algorithm has a better level of performance than other algorithms from effectiveness.

Vehicular Edge Computing (VEC) has been studied as an important application of mobile edge computing in vehicular networks. Usually, the generalization of VEC involves large-scale deployment of dedicated servers, which will cause tremendous economic expense. We also observe that the Parked Vehicles (PVs) in addition to mobile vehicles have rich and underutilized resources for task execution in vehicular networks. Thus, we consider scheduling PVs as available edge computing nodes to execute tasks, and this leads to a new computing paradigm, called by parked vehicle edge computing (PVEC). In this paper, we investigate PVEC and explore opportunistic resources from PVs to run distributed mobile applications. PVs coordinate with VEC servers for collective task execution. First, a system architecture with primary network entities is proposed for enabling PVEC. We also elaborately design an interactive protocol to support mutual communications among them with security guarantee. Moreover, we measure the availability of opportunistic resources and formulate a resource scheduling optimization problem by using Stackelberg game approach. A subgradient-based iterative algorithm is presented to determine workload allocation among PVs and minimize the overall cost of users. Numerical results indicate that compared with existing schemes, PVEC serves more vehicles and reduces service fee for users. We also demonstrate that the Stackelberg game approach is effective and efficient.

A novel strategy for the degradation of high gaseous hourly space velocity benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX) by double dielectric barrier discharge (DDBD) coupled with Mn3O4/ activated carbon fiber (ACF) catalysts was proposed in this work. A series of Mn3O4/ACF catalysts were synthesized using the hydrothermal method and characterized. The results showed that all the prepared catalysts could improve the degradation of BTX in the DDBD system and inhibit the production of ozone. Among the catalysts with different Mn loading, the 5.6%Mn3O4/ACF, with the highest Mn(+3) content (43.2%) and the highest absorbed oxygen content (38.5%), presented the best catalytic performance. In the 5.6% Mn3O4/ACF + DDBD system, the degradation efficiency of benzene, toluene and xylene could reach 49.9%, 79.7% and 97.1%, respectively, with a specific input energy of 400 J l−1. The carbon balance and CO2 selectivity, meanwhile, were 83.3% and 51.1%, respectively. It seemed that Mn(+3) and absorbed oxygen content could be a reference for the catalytic performance of Mn3O4/ACF catalysts. The higher the Mn (III) and absorbed oxygen, the better the catalytic performance of the Mn3O4/ACF catalysts. The organic by-products were identified by chromatography-mass spectrometry, and a possible reaction mechanism of BTX in the DDBD reactor and catalyst surface was proposed based on the composition of organic by-products.

Mn2O3/γ-Al2O3 catalysts was combined with double dielectric barrier discharge (DDBD) for degradation of acetone, toluene and ethyl acetate. Mn2O3/γ-Al2O3 catalysts with different Mn loading were synthesized by hydrothermal method. XRD, SEM, XPS and H2-TPR were applied to characterize the catalysts. Among the catalysts prepared, the Mn2O3/γ-Al2O3 catalysts with 5 wt% Mn loading presented the best performance in multicomponent VOCs degradation, which the highest removal efficiency (58.8% for acetone, 96.3% for toluene and 85.8% for ethyl acetate), the best carbon balance (87.5%) and CO2 selectivity (51.9%) were obtained at a specific input energy (SIE) of 700 J L−1. The formation of ozone was obviously inhibited with the introduction of Mn2O3/γ-Al2O3 catalysts. The higher Mn3+/Mn ratio, higher O2/O2− ratio and excellent low-temperature reducibility were beneficial for the VOCs degradation. Highly dispersed Mn2O3 crystals on the surface of γ-Al2O3 also might be an explanation for the improvement of VOCs degradation. According to the result of GC-MS, the variety of organic by-products gradually decreased with the increase of SIE, and the degradation mechanism of the mixed VOCs in plasma and on catalyst surface was discussed.

Toluene removal by double dielectric barrier charge (DDBD) plasma combined with a ZrMnFe/Sepiolite (SEP) catalyst was investigated and compared with the results from Fe/SEP, Mn/SEP and MnFe/SEP ones. All the catalysts were prepared by the impregnation method and characterized by XRD, BET, ICP, SEM, TEM, H2-TPR and XPS. The effect of catalysts on toluene degradation efficiency, carbon balance, CO2 selectivity and residual O3 concentration was studied. The experimental results indicated that the ZrMnFe/SEP catalyst presented the best catalytic performance. This is because of the high content of lattice oxygen contained in its surface, owing to the addition of Zr. When the SIE was 740 J/L, the highest toluene removal efficiency (87%), carbon balance (93%) and CO2 selectivity (51%) were obtained. The ZrMnFe/SEP catalyst had a better ozone inhibition effect than other catalysts. The catalyst has good stability, which the toluene removal efficiency, carbon balance and CO2 selectivity did not decrease significantly after 36 h of work at a constant energy density. The results indicated that the ZrMnFe/SEP catalyst is an efficient catalyst for degradation of toluene by plasma-catalyst measures.

Ag nanoparticles functionalized flower-like molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) hybrid nanostructures (AgNPs/MoS2) were successfully synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. The structure and surface morphology were subsequently characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques. The as-synthesized AgNPs/MoS2 hybrid nanostructures were modified on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) and further utilized for amperometric hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) detection. The electrochemical behaviors and sensing performance of the AgNPs/MoS2/GCE were studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and single-potential amperometry methods. The obtained results have demonstrated that the developed AgNPs/MoS2/GCE amperometric sensor possesses an excellent catalytic performance toward the reduction of H2O2. The as-prepared electrochemical sensor exhibits fast response time of less than 3 s, large linear detection range of 0.025-135.2 mM (R-2=0.998) and high sensitivity of 54.5 mu A.mM(-1). cm(-2). Moreover, the developed H2O2 sensor has shown good anti interference ability, outstanding stability and reproducibility, which represents a great potential for H2O2 detection in practical applications.

With the increasing number of vehicle and traffic jams, urban traffic management is becoming a serious issue. In this article, we propose novel four-tier architecture for urban traffic management with the convergence of VANETs, 5G networks, software-defined networks, and mobile edge computing technologies. The proposed architecture provides better communication and more rapid responsive speed in a more distributed and dynamic manner. The practical case of rapid accident rescue can significantly shorten the rescue time. Key technologies with respect to vehicle localization, data pre-fetching, traffic lights control, and traffic prediction are also discussed. Obviously, the novel architecture shows noteworthy potential for alleviating traffic congestion and improving the efficiency of urban traffic management.

Connected vehicles provide advanced transformations and attractive business opportunities in the automotive industry. Presently, IEEE 802.11p and evolving 5G are the mainstream radio access technologies in the vehicular industry, but neither of them can meet all requirements of vehicle communication. In order to provide low-latency and high-reliability communication, an SDN-enabled network architecture assisted by MEC, which integrates different types of access technologies, is proposed. MEC technology with its on-premises feature can decrease data transmission time and enhance quality of user experience in latency-sensitive applications. Therefore, MEC plays as important a role in the proposed architecture as SDN technology. The proposed architecture was validated by a practical use case, and the obtained results have shown that it meets application- specific requirements and maintains good scalability and responsiveness.

In robot tasks, camera is widely used for scene recognition and localization. However, it is still a challenging problem for robot vision working well in low-brightness environments. We propose a brightness adaptive image fusion algorithm (BAIFA) which fuses one RGB image and one infrared image to improve the quality of image for robotic visual perception. A weight function is presented to calculate the image brightness weight to balance RGB and infrared images in fusion. To verify the proposed algorithm, comparisons with three image fusion algorithms are made in different brightness environments. Experimental results show that the proposed BAIFA is able to effectively preserve image contrast and target contour, which is more robust than others in various brightness environments. Furthermore, a case study shows that, visual perception is improved with our method and the fused image can also provide visual data in mobile robots.

This paper investigates a Yagi antenna with circular polarization (CP) at the end-fire direction based on normal-mode helix. It consists of a right-handed center-fed helical dipole and two parasitic helixes with the same direction of rotation. The parameters of the driven helix are optimized to realize circular polarization and quasi-uniform radiation in the plane normal to the helix axis. The coupling between the driven and parasitic helixes is utilized to achieve a unidirectional radiation. It is found that an end-fire beam with CP is obtained by carefully choosing the parameters of the parasitic helix and the spacing between them. Simulation results show that the final optimized antenna achieves a gain of 6.4 dBic and front-to-back ratio of 8.1 dB at 1 GHz.

This paper presents a conformal slot array based on a cylindrical cavity. A coaxial-to-microstrip feed line is employed to excite the TM 010 mode of the cylindrical cavity. Three slot elements are placed close to each other and etched out of the surface of the hollow cylinder, through which the surface current of the cylinder is disturbed by the slots for radiation. In addition, a conducting cone is utilized to increase the antenna gain as well as to achieve nearly end-fire radiation. Simulated results show that the conformal three-element slot array achieves the −10 dB impedance bandwidth from 5.48 GHz-5.92 GHz and the antenna gain of 7.8 dBi.