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Organic solid waste is considered a renewable resource that can be converted by various technologies into valuable products. Conventional thermophilic composting (TC), a well-studied and mature technology, can be applied to organic solid waste treatment to achieve waste reduction, mineralization, and humification simultaneously. However, poor efficiency, a long processing period, as well as low compost quality have always limited its wide application. In order to overcome these shortages, hyperthermophilic composting (HTC) has been recently put forward. This paper reviews the basic principle, process flow, operation parameters, research advances, and application status of HTC. Compared with the TC process, the shorter composting period and higher temperature and treatment efficiency, as well as more desirable compost quality, can be achieved during HTC by inoculating the waste with hyperthermophilic microbes. Additionally, HTC can reduce greenhouse gas emission, increase the removal rate of microplastics and antibiotic residues, and achieve in-situ remediation of heavy metal-polluted soils, which greatly improve its application potential for organic solid waste treatment. This paper also proposes the limitations and future prospects of HTC technology for a wider application. As a result, this review advances our understanding of the HTC process, which promotes its further investigation and application.

With a broad adaptation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in recent years, machine learning (ML) has encountered an increasing popularity in various aspects of business, science and individual life. We proposed a research question on possibilities and threat that machine learning tools may bring to psychological studies. We analyzed the current state of the art to provide contemporary adaptations and scope of implementation of ML into psychological research. The most popular ML languages and frameworks have been provided. Then, we defined core pros and cons of these deployment tools. Finally, we have presented a SWOT analysis for ML in psychology. Concerning our findings, we claim that ML seems to be a promising solution for improving psychological studies in areas of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment. These applications may be used for pattern recognition that are too complex for a human researcher. Still, ML is not a mature technology and still faces important challenges. It is not well-established, accessible and user-friendly.

Microwave-assisted organic synthesis has been widely studied and deliberated, opening up some controversial issues as well. Nowadays, microwave chemistry is a mature technology that has been well demonstrated in many cases with numerous advantages in terms of the reaction rate and yield. The strategies toward scaling up find an ally in continuous-flow reactor technology comparing dielectric and conductive heating.

FCST collaborative education model is a creative idea for vocational college students cultivating, especially under the background of COVID-19 pandemic. Family, society, school and teacher work together to provide comprehensive education to students. Based on the background of mobile Internet technology, this paper proposes an interactive mode of “FCST” to train higher vocational education students from families, schools, teachers and society. Research methods: literature retrieval method; questionnaire survey; sample interview; logical induction. Research conclusions: Mobile Internet technology is a mature technology and can be widely used in higher vocational education in China. In the process of ideological education for college students, families, schools, teachers and society jointly construct the “1+2+3+N” “FCST” collaborative education model.

Dynamic programming (DP) is a powerful principle for solving quite challenging optimization problems. However, it is not a tool like, e.g., linear programming. If we are able to cast a decision problem within the framework of linear programming models, in most cases we are done. We may just use a state-of-the-art commercial solver, since linear programming is a rather robust and mature technology.

Offshore wind turbines are now a mature technology to produce renewable energy on a vast scale, nonetheless several design and maintenance planning challenges remain. There have been attempts to investigate the impact of marine growth on fixed offshore wind turbine structures, but only few adopted a whole dynamics approach. This work presents a methodology to capture the influence of marine growth on the dynamic response of a tripod substructure, supporting the NREL 5 MW reference offshore wind turbine, under combined dynamic loads from wind and waves, and including soil-structure interaction by means of the spring-to-ground model. Marine growth is modelled as prescribed by DNV and API, evaluating the effects of variation of its thickness, roughness, and distribution. It is here demonstrated that marine growth thickness and roughness impact significantly on the loads acting on wind turbines' structures and its dynamic response, and that heterogeneity in marine growth thickness profiles vs depth available in literature lead to substantially different results. Tower top displacement becomes 24% higher when marine growth thickness grows from 0 to 200 mm. On the other hand, the changes in the natural frequencies of the support structure with an increase of marine growth's thickness are almost negligible (0.3%).

Gasification is a mature technology to convert carbonaceous materials into valuable chemicals, fuel, or power. The technology of coal gasification is well-established; however, it has some inherent drawbacks like high ash content in Indian coal, slagging, and tar formation. Biomass gasification is a promising area, though sustainable and economic supply of raw material, low calorific value, high moisture content, etc. remain challenging issues. On the other hand, there is a considerable production of petcoke from different refineries, which may be used for different purposes including gasification. Petcoke is rich in carbon; hence, it will yield high concentration of syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) in the total gaseous product. This syngas can be used to generate electricity or produce liquid fuels or chemicals. In this chapter, petcoke gasification technology and the associated issues and challenges are discussed. Some novel ideas as well as future prospects are also discussed.

The conversion of geothermal energy into electrical power or useful heat produces no CO2 and no flue gas emissions such as soot particles, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The operation of a geothermal power plant is deeply friendly to the environment. The risk for harmful environmental effects is extremely low during normal operation and even during accidents. The low-risk systems result from the use of high-quality structural materials and from the mature technology with numerous safety precaution installations.

Due to the increasing integration of renewable forms of generation, ageing network infrastructure, and rapid increase in peak load demand, flexibility is becoming economically more viable and hence significant role player in the future power system. There is vast amount of literature on flexibility covering research, demonstration and validation activities. Nevertheless, there is still no unifying definition of the term "flexibility" and consistent characterizing terms for "flexibility resources". The lack of clarity in definitions and concepts may undermine information exchange amongst stakeholders imposing hurdles on the transition from mature technology to investment decisions and deployment. System operators, for example, require better clarity for the techno-economic evaluation of flexibility resources in their planning processes. This paper, by reviewing prominent flexibility-related publications, proposes a comprehensive flexibility definition and unified characterizing terms for flexibility resources. Furthermore, the paper proposes a taxonomy method which is applied to classify flexibility resources. The presented taxonomy method clears the confusion on "what-is-what" under the concept of flexibility. This paper also presents the benefits of unified characterizing terms in mapping flexibility resources to ancillary services. The benefits are illustrated by considering a realistic use case in a Norwegian distribution network.

Inductive wireless power transfer is a more mature technology than capacitive wireless transfer. The aim of this work is to illustrate the duality principle as tool to transfer results from the inductive into the capacitive wireless power research. The efficiency maximization by varying the loads for a Single-Input Multiple-Output system is considered to exemplify this principle, and to highlight some limitations.

The term roto-linear actuator is used to describe a solution able to control at the same time two degree of freedom, a linear motion along an axis and a rotation around the same one, realizing a controlled helicoidal motion with variable pitch. This kind of actuation systems widely diffused in robotics are encountering a growing diffusion also applications associated to relatively small production series such as packaging assembly machines. In this work some applications related to common industrial applications developed by authors are introduced to show how the increased accessibility of this mature technology can be useful to improve design and performances of existing machines even considering very small production scales.

Summary Underground hydrogen storage (UHS) will play a key role in the future energy system by providing flexibility to balance the supply and demand of energy. With this technology, hydrogen can be stored in large quantities in salt caverns and (potentially) in porous reservoirs. While UHS in salt caverns is already operational at four locations in the world, UHS in porous reservoirs is not yet a mature technology and only limited number of field experiences have been realized. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of UHS in the depleted gas field of Roden in the northeast of the Netherlands. We run several simulations to assess the potential to use the reservoir for both seasonal and peak-shaver storage. For this purpose we used operational data from two underground gas storages nearby and hydrogen demand and supply forecasts generated for the Netherlands for the year 2050. We run different scenarios with different storage capacities (working pressure ranges) and investigate the implications of using nitrogen as cushion gas (instead of the more costly hydrogen) and the degree of mixing. Furthermore, we investigate the performance of this field and determine the number of additional wells required when using it as peak-shaver storage.

The economic context for renewable power in Europe is shifting: feed-in tariffs are replaced by auctioned premiums as the main support schemes. As renewables approach competitiveness, political pressure mounts to phase out support, whereas some other actors perceive a need for continued fixed-price support. We investigate how the phase-out of support or the reintroduction of feed-in tariffs would affect investors’ choices for renewables through a conjoint analysis. In particular, we analyse the impact of coordination – the simultaneousness – of policy changes across countries and technologies. We find that investment choices are not strongly affected if policy changes are coordinated and returns unaffected. However, if policy changes are uncoordinated, investments shift to still supported – less mature and costlier – technologies or countries where support remains or is reintroduced. This shift is particularly strong for large investors and could potentially skew the European power mix towards an over-reliance on a single, less mature technology or specific generation region, resulting in a more expensive power system. If European countries want to change their renewable power support policies, and especially if they phase out support and expose renewables to market competition, it is important that they coordinate their actions.

PEM is a mature technology to produce hydrogen using fluctuated renewable energy, but still utilization of oxygen from PEM has potential to integrate with reforming process. In this study, we proposed biogas autothermal reforming integrated with PEM and oxygen liquefaction system, to achieve continuous production of green hydrogen. The optimization is conducted to evaluate specific energy consumption. Conclusively, the proposed system produces green hydrogen of nominal 5596.7kmol/h in PEM section and constant 964.6kmol/h in ATR section based on fluctuated energy source.

In recent years, wave renewable energy is becoming established as one of the crucial components of a diversified and successful energy mix. The Inertial Sea Wave Energy Converter (ISWEC) is a mature technology, especially designed for closed seas, as the Mediterranean Sea, which has already been deployed in full-scale. At this stage of development, since the technology has been proven successful, it is crucial to assess its environmental impact. A life cycle assessment has been performed on the ISWEC including all relevant phases, from raw material extraction, to construction, assembly, transportation, use and final dismantling. As an outcome, the LCA study allowed the calculation of a set of impacts on the environment, resources depletion and human health that allows the innovative renewable energy-based technology to be consistently compared with other solutions. One of the most popular impacts, such as climate change, has been estimated at 31.5 gCO2eq/kWh which is in line e.g. with the performance of photovoltaics.

Near-infrared spectroscopy has the characteristics of higher spectral resolution, mature technology, nondestructive, and low sample consumption, which is suitable for real-time monitoring in production. In this technology, the reflective fiber is usually used to obtain the spectral information of the sample, and the external environmental factors have little influence on the spectral acquisition. This chapter mainly discusses the principle and application of near-infrared spectroscopy technology in the detection of food samples, as well as the processing and analysis of near-infrared spectroscopy data, as shown in Fig. 2.1.

Wind energy system is becoming a mature technology for generating electric energy from the wind. The design of the wind energy system should take into consideration the matching between the wind speed site characteristics and the performance characteristics of the wind turbine. This chapter is introduced to perform the matching process between the site and the wind turbines (WTs) for minimum cost and highest reliability. An accurate matching methodology for pairing between site and WTs has been introduced. The pairing methodology is designed in Matlab code to perform this study. The input data for 32 Saudi Arabia sites and 140 market available WTs have been selected to validate the right operation of the new proposed computer program. This program will select the best site and the most suitable WT for this site based on techno-economical methodology. This program can help researchers, designers, experts, and decision-makers to select the best site among many sites and the best WT for each site. The results obtained from this site show a substantial reduction in cost when the best site is selected as the most suitable WT for this site.

Although internet banking is considered a mature technology, digital failures and breakdowns have resulted in widespread customer dissatisfaction. However, recent examples in developed countries show that customer dissatisfaction with internet banking platforms does not necessarily erode customer loyalty. While this could be due to the strong assurance provided by institutional structures that govern the internet usage, it is not known if similar results can be found in emerging markets where internet banking technology has still not reached its saturation stage and coexists with traditional brick and mortar banking services. Thus, this study aims to develop a better understanding of the e-satisfaction-e-loyalty link in the Indian internet banking context. The moderating effects of structural assurance at the individual level and market share at the firm level are analysed on the e-satisfaction - e-loyalty link applying a multilevel modeling framework. Data collected from customers along with archival data across 21 banks in India demonstrate that structural assurance significantly moderates the e-satisfaction-e-loyalty link at the consumer level and market share regulates the link at the bank level. Also, market share is found to moderate the relationships among e-satisfaction, structural assurance, and e-loyalty. Three-way interaction results suggest that the interaction effect between e-satisfaction and structural assurance is less pronounced when market share is high rather than low. This study advances our understanding of the conditional effects of e-satisfaction on e-loyalty and elucidates how different share banks may optimize customer loyalty in an emerging market context.

The transition from fossil-based primary steel production to a low-emission alternative has gained increasing attention in recent years. Various schemes including Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) and Carbon Direct Avoidance (CDA) via hydrogen-based as well as electrochemical routes have been proposed. With multiple technical analyses being available and technical feasibility being proven by first pilot plants, pathways towards commercial market entry are of increasing interest. While multiple publications on the economic feasibility of CCU are available, data on CDA approaches is scarce. In this work an economic model for the quantification of production cost as well as CO2 emission mitigation cost is presented. The approach is characterized by a seamless integration with a flowsheet-based process model of a direct reduction-based crude steel production plant detailed in a previous work and allows for the investigation of multiple economic aspects. Firstly, the gradual transition from the natural gas-based state-of-the-art direct reduction towards a fossil-free hydrogen-based reduction is analyzed. Furthermore, a comparison between the more mature technology of low-temperature electrolysis and a potentially more efficient solid oxide electrolysis (SOEL) is given, highlighting the potential of SOEL technology. The conducted forecast to 2050 shows that SOEL-based CDA offers lower production cost when technological maturity is reached. Based on the results of the economic assessment possible legislative support mechanisms are studied, showing that legislative actions are necessary to allow for market entry as well as for sustainable and economically feasible operation of fossil-free direct reduction plants.

In Chapter 9, Jin et al. (2020) identifies and analyzes a new phenomenon of globalization, namely the reverse innovation, the processes whereby technology, innovation and new products are developed or marketed in developing countries and are then transferred from developing countries to advanced countries. The chapter identifies three ideal types of reverse innovation, which are also empirically illustrated, based on a matrix framework, which is itself based on types of innovation strategy and the location of commercialization. They are Ideal Type I: Reverse innovation based on transferred technology; Ideal Type II: Original reverse innovation; and Ideal Type III: Original reverse innovation (front-end technology). The firm’s innovation capabilities play a critical role in reverse innovation. The chapter indicates that Ideal Type I is a good strategy for firms in developing countries to achieve reverse innovation in mature technology, whereas the Ideal Types II and III are suitable for firms in developing countries to achieve reverse innovation in emerging technologies and markets.

This paper provides an overview of 3D detectors fabrication technology developed in the clean room of the Microelectronics Institute of Barcelona (IMB-CNM). Emphasis is put on manufacturability, especially on stress and bow issues. Some of the technological solutions proposed at IMB-CNM to improve manufacturability are presented. Results and solutions from other research institutes are also mentioned. Analogy with through-silicon-via technology is drawn. This article aims at giving hints of the technology improvements implemented to upgrade from a R&D process to a mature technology., This work has been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICIN) through the Particle Physics National Program (RTI2018-094906-B-C22 and FPA2017-85155-C4-2-R) and by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation funding program, under Grant Agreement No. 654168 (AIDA-2020). All the manufacturing were performed at the IMB-CNM clean room facilities, member of the Spanish ICTS Network MICRONANOFABS partially supported by MICIN and FEDER funds.

One of the most significant research trends in the last decades of the aeronautic industry is the effort to move towards the design and the production of “more electric aircraft”. Within this framework, the application of the electrical technology to flight control systems has seen a progressive, although slow, increase: starting with the introduction of fly-by-wire and proceeding with the partial replacement of the traditional hydraulic/electro-hydraulic actuators with purely electro-mechanical ones. This evolution allowed to obtain more flexible solutions, reduced installation issues and enhanced aircraft control capability. Electro-Mechanical Actuators (EMAs) are however far from being a mature technology and still suffer from several safety issues, which can be partially limited by increasing the complexity of their design and hence their production costs. The development of a robust Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system could provide a way to prevent the occurrence of a critical failure without resorting to complex device design. This paper deals with the first part of the study of a comprehensive PHM system for EMAs employed as primary flight control actuators; the peculiarities of the application are presented and discussed, while a novel approach, based on short pre-flight/post-flight health monitoring tests, is proposed. Turn-to-turn short in the electric motor windings is identified as the most common electrical degradation and a particle filtering framework for anomaly detection and prognosis featuring a self-tuning non-linear model is proposed. Features, anomaly detection and a prognostic algorithm are hence evaluated through state-of-the art performance metrics and their results discussed.

Chemical flooding is one of the classical EOR methods, together with thermal methods and gas injection. It is not a new method; indeed, the first polymer flood field pilots date back to the 1950s while the first surfactant-based pilots can be traced back to the 1960s. However, while both gas injection and thermal methods have long been recognised as field proven and are being used at a large scale in multiple fields, it is not the case for chemical EOR.Although there have been over 500 polymer flood pilots recorded, and almost 100 surfactant-based field tests, large scale field applications are few and far between. This situation seems to be evolving however, as more and more large scale chemical projects get underway. This paper proposes to review the status of chemical EOR worldwide to determine whether it is finally coming of age.The status of chemical EOR projects worldwide will be reviewed, focusing on recent and current large-scale field developments. This will allow to establish what is working and where the industry is still encountering difficulties. This review will cover North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa.It is clear that polymer flooding is now indeed becoming a well-established process, with many large-scale projects ongoing or in the early stages of implementation in particular in Canada, Argentina, India, Albania and Oman in addition to China. Strangely enough, the US lags behind with no ongoing large-scale polymer flood.The situation is more complex for surfactant-based processes. At the moment, large-scale projects can only be found in China and – although to a lesser extent – in Canada. The situation appears on the brink of changing however, with some large developments in the early stages in Oman, India and Russia. Still, the economics of surfactant-based processes are still challenging and there is some disagreement between the various actors as to whether surfactant-polymer or alkali-surfactant polymer is the way to go.This review will demonstrate that polymer flooding is now a mature technology that has finally made it to very large-scale field applications. Surfactant-based processes however, are lagging behind due in part to technical issues but even more to challenging economics. Still there is light at the end of the tunnel and the coming years may well be a turning point for this technology.

The advancements in second-generation bioethanol produced from lignocellulosic biomass, such as crops residues, woody crops or energy grasses are gaining momentum. Though, they are still representing less than 3% of total bioethanol production, the GHG reduction potential is higher than for 1G-bioethanol. The environmental impacts of bioethanol production are totally dependent on feedstock availability and conversion technology. The biochemical conversion route must overcome several technological and economical challenges such as pre-treatment, fermentation, hydrolysis process and separation. A completely mature technology is still to be developed and must adapted to the nature of the feedstock. Nevertheless, using process simulation software, Life Cycle Assessment and integrating the different steps of bioresource harvesting and treatment processes, including the energy balances and the water requirements, it is shown that 2G bioethanol production will reduce environmental impacts provided the evaluation addresses a long-time perspective, including all conversion steps and the regeneration of the bioresource.

The worsening with age of technical systems performance is a matter of fact which is particularly timely to analyze for horizontal-axis wind turbines because they constitute a mature technology. On these grounds, the present study deals with the assessment of wind turbine performance decline with age. The selected test case is a Vestas V52 wind turbine, installed in 2005 at the Dundalk Institute of Technology campus in Ireland. Operation data from 2008 to 2019 have been used for this study. The general idea is analyzing the appropriate operation curves for each working region of the wind turbine: in Region 2 (wind speed between 5 and 9 m/s), the generator speed–power curve is studied, because the wind turbine operates at fixed pitch. In Region 2 12bevelledtrue (wind speed between 9 and 13 m/s), the generator speed is rated and the pitch control is relevant: therefore, the pitch angle–power curve is analyzed. Using a support vector regression for the operation curves of interest, it is observed that in Region 2, a progressive degradation occurs as regards the power extracted for given generator speed, and after ten years (from 2008 to 2018), the average production has diminished of the order of 8%. In Region 2 12bevelledtrue, the performance decline with age is less regular and, after ten years of operation, the performance has diminished averagely of the 1.3%. The gearbox of the test case wind turbine was substituted with a brand new one at the end of 2018, and it results that the performance in Region 2 12bevelledtrue has considerably improved after the gearbox replacement (+3% in 2019 with respect to 2018, +1.7% with respect to 2008), while in Region 2, an improvement is observed (+1.9% in 2019 with respect to 2018) which does not compensate the ten-year period decline (−6.5% in 2019 with respect to 2008). Therefore, the lesson is that for the test case wind turbine, the generator aging impacts remarkably on the power production in Region 2, while in Region 2 12bevelledtrue, the impact of the gearbox aging dominates over the generator aging; for this reason, wind turbine refurbishment or component replacement should be carefully considered on the grounds of the wind intensity distribution onsite.

The traditional dance learning management system has obvious deficiencies, mainly reflected in the lack of authority management and control of resource management and sharing, and the lack of flexibility of authority management and lack of everyone's participation and external sharing; It cannot support complex applications and lacks extensible mechanisms for new technologies and application hotspots, cannot adapt to cross-platform integration and application. Aiming at the application of the system in colleges and universities dance classes existing in the use of the above problems and the insufficiency, this article from the trend of intelligent IT technology development and mature technology architecture, which combines with the application of the hot spots, to promote construction and development, sharing, communication, dance class digital resources in colleges and universities as a starting point, develops a set of resources that are complete, highly available, easy to expand, flexibility, strong, conform to the technical development trend, convenient for people to use and participate in the personalized digital platform.

In the current debate about Circular Economy (CE) many circularity measurements focus solely on material cycles and resource-efficiency. Hence, remanufacturing is per se seen as a sustainable End-of-Life (EoL) pathway. As CE-indicators do often not take the use-phase into account, that assumption is not necessarily true and the benefit questionable. This is why in this paper a remanufacturing indicator is introduced which evaluates if remanufacturing is a good EoL strategy for energy using products (EuP) from an ecologic and economic point of view, taking technical improvements and energy efficiency gains into account. We elaborate what matters when assessing remanufacturing, especially when a comparative assessment is conducted. The indicator is applied in a case study where remanufacturing of an old circulation pump is compared to using various new, more efficient pumps as substitutes in a 2nd Life Cycle. Thereby, a parameterized model is developed for the LCA and LCC assessment of the remanufacturing process. The main finding is that remanufacturing of EuP only makes sense when technology is mature. This is very distinct from an environmental perspective but applies also to the financial aspects.

For use-cases in Industry 4.0, involving several stakeholders of a value chain around connected and autonomous smart robots, the blockchain Ethereum appears as a high potential technology. However, the use of digital certificates from a PKI also allows to meet the requirements with a more mature technology. This paper explores through the implementation of two proofs of concept the advantages of each of the technologies and shows that they could complement each other advantageously. The blockchain reinforces trust between independent stakeholders, involved around cyber-secure embedded smart robots distributed in a factory, enabling business development and traceability of the activities in a transparent way.

The common agreement of the United Nation members pushes the 2030 Agenda ahead to alleviate poverty and ensure wellbeing for all, recognizing energy as a crucial pathway to achieving this goal under three core dimensions: human development, sustainable economic growth, and environmental sustainability. Affordable and clean energy is represented by the Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7). This great scope represents a multifaceted challenge for all countries, especially for the most disadvantaged environments such as small islands and rural areas from developing countries. Both small islands and rural areas experience a scarcity of goods and services such as energy and are isolated from markets, have lack of human resources, difficulties in deploying economies of scale, and other issues that affect their development. Along the same line, their energy security is limited by their dependence on imported fuels, increasing electricity prices or making it infeasible to access electricity. This research builds the state of the art of off-grid energy systems for both contexts based on an extensive review of literature. The evidence shows that moving sustainable energy systems forward requires getting more people involved, the application of several business models, prevalent technological innovations, and the application of technical quality procedures. This perspective would really help to address the vulnerabilities of fragile locations. Here, auctions, the Energy Service Company, community, and Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) models and renewable energy projects based on mature technology present a great opportunity for a sustainable future, powering a nexus among energy, environment, and society.

This last decade, the amount of data exchanged in the Internet increased by over a staggering factor of 100, and is expected to exceed well over the 500 exabytes by 2020. This phenomenon is mainly due to the evolution of high speed broadband Internet and, more specifically, the popularization and wide spread use of smartphones and associated accessible data plans. Although 4G with its long-term evolution (LTE) technology is seen as a mature technology, there is continual improvement to its radio technology and architecture such as in the scope of the LTE Advanced standard, a major enhancement of LTE. But for the long run, the next generation of telecommunication (5G) is considered and is gaining considerable momentum from both industry and researchers. In addition, with the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, smart cities, vehicular networks, e-health systems, and Industry 4.0, a new plethora of 5G services has emerged with very diverging and technologically challenging design requirements. These include: high mobile data volume per area, high number of devices connected per area, high data rates, longer battery life for low-power devices, and reduced end-to-end latency. Several technologies are being developed to meet these new requirements. Among these we list ultra-densification, millimeter Wave usage, antennas with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), antenna beamforming to increase spacial diversity, edge/fog computing, among others. Each of these technologies brings its own design issues and challenges. For instance, ultra-densification and MIMO will increase the complexity to estimate channel condition and traditional channel state information (CSI) estimation techniques are no longer suitable due to the complexity of the new scenarios. As a result, new approaches to evaluate network condition such as by continuously collecting and monitoring key performance indicators become necessary. Timely decisions are needed to ensure the correct operation of such network. In this context, deep learning (DL) models could be seen as one of the main tools that can be used to process monitoring data and automate decisions. As these models are able to extract relevant features from raw data (images, texts, and other types of unstructured data), the integration between 5G and DL looks promising and one that requires exploring. As main contributions, this paper presents a systematic review about how DL is being applied to solve some 5G issues. We examine data from the last decade and the works that addressed diverse 5G problems, such as physical medium state estimation, network traffic prediction, user device location prediction, self network management, among others. We also discuss the main research challenges when using DL models in 5G scenarios and identify several issues that deserve further consideration.

In 2019, a team at the Federal Reserve Board (Board) conducted small-scale experimentation, named the "FooWire project," to build a payment system using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The team built the system using Hyperledger Fabric, a popular DLT platform, because it generally met the team's design requirements of a closed network, mature technology, and enterprise readiness.

One anticipated pathway in society's decarbonization is the electrification of the transportation sector. From a power system perspective, transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs) presages many impacts, both positive and negative. This study utilizes the theoretical framework of business model theory and a review of the existing literature to portray a rational development path for the electric vehicle power supply chain (EVPSC). Three phases of development were identified in which EVs transition from the present day's low utilization, to rapid development, to a mature technology dominating the transportation sector. Within these phases, the business content, business structure, and corresponding coordination modes were analyzed and discussed. The three phases of development are shown to dynamically interact, between development phases and the business models, providing insight into the content of the EVPSC. Such insight is necessary for developing coherent policies and institutional supports to foster efficient development of the EVPSC. This study provides a new perspective about EVPSC development, answers the core question on how to realize the coordinated development between EVs and the electric power system chain (EPSC) based on the model of EVPSC, and provides recommendations on the establishment of business models for the future EVPSC.

At present, mature technology of images fusion is generally implemented by software. But it has been proved to have a bad real-time capability. This paper designs a new system to resolve the problems of bad real time performance on traditional method. Based upon FPGA, the system processes the infrared and low-level-light images then output images data to the display module in real time. In order to meet requirement of accuracy and optimization, this system takes a registration method based on parallel optical axis. Also, it adopts the bionic algorithm for color fusion of infrared and low Level light images. The images resultant increased by an average of 3.86% and 8.77% than Waxman algorithm in terms of mutual information and structural similarity respectively. The exceptional quality images we can obtain shows that the system is useful in images processing. The processing and transferring time of one frame image is 0.043434s in total shows that the system performs better in real-time. In addition, this system is valuable for defense and security.

Indonesia's geographical condition allowed satellite operators to develop their business. The current development of satellite trends leads to High Throughput Satellite (HTS), which could be classified as a mature technology, proven by HTS launched by many operators. PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia, as the biggest state-owned telecommunication company in Indonesia, should launch HTS to fulfill its ambition to be the top 3 full satellite service providers in Asia. Besides, Telkom-2 Satellite, which was launched in 2005, needs to be replaced by the new one to deliver the best services. This paper aimed to analyze the feasibility study of HTS implementation in PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia using a techno-economic method, which calculates the technical and economic value in HTS implementation. The technical aspects discussed in this paper are link budget and layout beam based on the traffic requirements of each beam that may differ per area. The economic aspects discussed are Payback Period (PBP), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and Net Present Value (NPV).

Technology concepts are often focused on the technical aspects and parameters and fail to detail the need and business sense of the said concept. When a concept is envisioned, it stems from the contributor as a spark. However, detailing on three major aspects, namely Desirability (the need from an end user point of view), Feasibility (the approach from an engineer’s point of view) and Viability (the business case from an organization’s point of view) ensures that all major fronts are addressed, transforming an idea (the spark) into a fully mature Technology concept. In order to ensure this transformation, an idea must go through a series of 6 Phases, called the 6E Incubator Method. This method was applied in a satellite R&D Location in India on technological ideas, to create technical concepts with business cases. Using the method, the lead time for Management decisions to implement the concepts were significantly reduced and benchmarked for further application on future ideas.

The U.S. Army envisions fighting and winning future wars in congested and contested environments and multi-domain battles where revolutionary capabilities for the network-centric warfare (NCW) are essentially needed. NCW is characterized by the ability of geographically dispersed forces to attain a high level of shared battle-space awareness that can be exploited to achieve strategic, operational, and tactical objectives by autonomously linking people, platforms, weapons, sensors, and decision aids into a single network. Future battlefield networks will generate a massive volume of data, which can go beyond quantities. In a multi-domain battle, novel technologies for real-time decision-making, which is based on a large amount of heterogeneous as well as sparse, noisy, and ill-defined data under extremely uncertain environment, are specifically required. Additionally, humans have sometimes become completely comfortable with the information brought in by our sensing technologies. As a result, the command architecture, built on a massive web of information sources, becomes more receptive to potential catastrophic machine-human decision-making conflicts as well as vulnerable to incoming cyber threats including adversaries’ deception, interruption, and obscuration, which can eventually introduce own sources of decision-making failure. In this paper, researchers present validation results of a conceptualized artificial intelligence-based visual analytics framework. The researchers’ ultimate goal is to integrate the mature technology into the situation awareness technology for local commands and global logistics centers to enable an effective logistic command and control of aviation platforms and autonomous systems while being operated in an expeditionary multi-domain environment.

Three-dimensional (3D) visualization involves feature extraction and 3D reconstruction of CT images using a computer processing technology. It is a tool for displaying, describing, and interpreting 3D anatomy and morphological features of organs, thus providing intuitive, stereoscopic, and accurate methods for clinical decision-making. It has played an increasingly significant role in the diagnosis and management of liver diseases. Over the last decade, it has been proven safe and effective to use 3D simulation software for pre-hepatectomy assessment, virtual hepatectomy, and measurement of liver volumes in blood flow areas of the portal vein; meanwhile, the use of 3D models in combination with hydrodynamic analysis has become a novel non-invasive method for diagnosis and detection of portal hypertension. We herein describe the progress of research on 3D visualization, its workflow, current situation, challenges, opportunities, and its capacity to improve clinical decision-making, emphasizing its utility for patients with liver diseases. Current advances in modern imaging technologies have promised a further increase in diagnostic efficacy of liver diseases. For example, complex internal anatomy of the liver and detailed morphological features of liver lesions can be reflected from CT-based 3D models. A meta-analysis reported that the application of 3D visualization technology in the diagnosis and management of primary hepatocellular carcinoma has significant or extremely significant differences over the control group in terms of intraoperative blood loss, postoperative complications, recovery of postoperative liver function, operation time, hospitalization time, and tumor recurrence on short-term follow-up. However, the acquisition of high-quality CT images and the use of these images for 3D visualization processing lack a unified standard, quality control system, and homogeneity, which might hinder the evaluation of application efficacy in different clinical centers, causing enormous inconvenience to clinical practice and scientific research. Therefore, rigorous operating guidelines and quality control systems need to be established for 3D visualization of liver to develop it to become a mature technology. Herein, we provide recommendations for the research on diagnosis and management of 3D visualization in liver diseases to meet this urgent need in this research field.

In the field of cryogenic cooling, Joule–Thomson (JT) cooling is a mature technology but suffers from low efficiency. Various efforts such as the optimization of compressors, cold stages, working fluids, and operating conditions have been reported to develop more efficient JT cooling systems. As a further alternative, ejectors can be used in JT cooling systems to create sub-atmospheric pressures and to recover expansion work, and thus achieve lower temperatures and higher system efficiency. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the use of ejectors for cryogenic cooling. The research progress of cooling cycles with ejectors at the system-scale is analyzed and compared, followed by the experimental investigation and numerical simulation of ejector performance at the component-scale. The experimental studies mainly discuss the local flow characteristics of ejectors captured through pressure measurements and flow visualization. The simulation studies introduce the analytical modelling of ejectors although the focus is on the CFD modelling. Current challenges and suggestions for future research on the use of ejectors in cryogenic cooling systems are summarized.

The growing demand of efficient and failure less air-ground communication system in civil aviation has led to gradual improvement in various long-range (Beyond Line-of-Sight) and short-range (Line-of-Sight) communication systems. Ground-to-Air (G2A) communication system is a vast area of communication which deals with huge infrastructures involving varieties of systems and technologies. It has been grown to quite a mature technology by now by the help of various research and development along with related industrial revolutions. There have been several developments in air to ground communication; from effective use of limited spectrum to adaption of advanced modulation and green energy powering techniques. This research article is an extensive study based survey on existing technological development in the G2A communication system of civil aviation. It presents an explicit discussion on the issues, requirements and development in different aspects of air-to-ground communication systems starting from the time of world war-I to till now in a comprehensive manner. It also explains in details about the budding technological development, future scope, challenges and potential research directions in the system. This paper is aimed at increasing researchers’ understanding on this vast and emerging area of research, as well as find new research challenges in the constituent domains of G2A communication systems.

This paper asks whether current State aid rules for solid biomass are still fit for purpose and considers the scope for revision of those rules. The paper is structured to present: (i) the rationale and logic of the current State aid regime for support to renewable energy; (ii) the implementation of support for bioenergy deployment since 2005; (iii) the effects of support on markets and the environment; (iv) the relevance of newly adopted policies and policy objectives; and (v) the scope for revision of the rules to better allocate State aid to achieve long-term climate goals. The paper argues that ignoring the external costs of forest biomass use in State aid assessments may lead to a skewed image of its cost-effectiveness as a renewable energy option. This reveals an important discrepancy between the specific way in which biomass support is treated by the current rules and the rationale and objectives of the current State aid regime for renewable energy. Not factoring in external costs of forest biomass may result in an inherently preferential treatment of solid biomass and hinder the development of other – more innovative and cleaner – technologies, which could undermine the principle of technology-neutrality embedded in the Guidelines on State aid for environmental protection and energy (EEAG). This is especially concerning in the case of continuous operating aid for the use of solid biomass as a (close-to) mature technology, which can lead to a lock-in of State aid, of a specific renewable energy technology and of biomass materials for energetic use.

Solvent extraction is a mature technology that is used in many industrial applications for the extraction and/or purification of metals contained in aqueous solutions. Such a technology could be advantageously utilized to produce high-grade salts of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese from mine or lithium-ion battery recycling. However, nickel–cobalt–manganese separation is not easy by means of commercial extractants. Such a separation could be achieved providing that process operation would be always optimized. Modelling tools could help achieve this goal. This paper presents the development of a global model implementing a physicochemical model and an engineering model, which can predict the influence of pH, flowrates, and mixers-settlers arrangement on the performances of liquid–liquid extraction.

Laboratory tests and field investigations show promising results of structural performance of warm mix asphalt (WMA). Also, the lower environmental burdens and fuel requirement in WMA production increase sustainability in the asphalt industry. However, there are challenges that significantly affect WMA performance and marketing in the future. In this paper, all these challenges are discussed, and the trend of WMA technology is evaluated. The statistics indicate that the energy market plays a pivotal role in enthusiasm for WMA. Lastly, WMA requires further investigations to meet requirements of post-modern pavement, as a new concept of pavement design in the 21st century.

Several projects of electron-ion colliders are being proposed worldwide involving a broad scientific community. The overall panorama is presented, with emphasis on the projects with shorter timescale and more mature technology, namely the EIC in USA and the LHeC proposed at CERN. In particular, the first level of the decisional process for EIC is expected within 2019.

Tissue engineering (TE) systems (TESs) are devices and accessories that enable the in vitro culture of engineered tissues for regenerative medical, diagnostic, or research purposes and include everything from a simple tissue culture plate to complex TE bioreactors, and to the defined protocols used to effect tissue growth. Monitoring and control in TE bioreactors is important for several reasons. (1) To ensure homeostasis selected parameter. In many cases, for example, temperature, the monitored and controlled variable are the same. In other cases the controlled variable can be used to indirectly manipulate the tissue. (2) To address and possibly overcome the variability intrinsic to the cellular component. This includes adapting to the tissues varying responses to stimuli. Finally, (3) monitoring can be used to identify failures in the TE protocol. Monitoring of a TES can be done at several levels: cellular (e.g., gene expression), tissue (e.g., matrix deposition of mechanical performance), and environmental (e.g., temperature, O2, CO2, pH, nutrient concentrations, and osmotic environment). Control for homeostasis of environmental properties is a fairly mature technology; on the other hand, monitoring of emerging properties of the developing tissue may, at this point, only result in go/no-go decisions for the particular piece of tissue. In many cases, this is because we do not yet know what parameters to adjust to effect a correction. At this point, collecting and compiling as much data from the performance of TES, including the failures, is of paramount importance to advance the field.

With the increasing capacity of wind power grid-connected, the unique randomness, volatility and anti-peak characteristics of wind power bring new challenges to the system's backup, output tracking and peak shaving programs. As a new technology with increasingly mature technology and gradually decreasing cost, energy storage can improve the grid-connected characteristics of wind power and make wind power a new energy source that can be accessed friendly. Firstly, for the energy storage application to stabilize the fluctuation mode, this paper studies the energy storage configuration strategy when the wind power fluctuation is flat. Then, for the energy storage application to be used in the standby supply mode, it is determined that the energy storage design plan is provided in the future. Finally, this paper minimizes the sum of the operation and backup costs of the combined system of wind storage as the optimization goal, and calculates the operation and backup cost of the wind storage system at this time. The simulation analysis shows that the unit of wind storage combined system with energy storage participating in peak shaving can improve the stable operation and economic benefits of the system.

At present, embedded devices have been widely used in people’s daily life, which makes more convenience for the public. However, embedded devices still have security problems, such as automatic driving accidents that may cause casualties. In the field of embedded device security, there are many studies, for instance, OPENTEE for ARM handheld devices, providing a secure execution environment for payment devices, and SGX for Intel desk top devices, for security-critical applications, such as bank teller systems, build a safe operating environment. But it is a lack of correlation between these new and existing technologies. In our opinion, through the combination of mature technology accumulation and embedded devices, the antivirus industry can create a more secure user environment. In this paper, we propose a source isolation method to make the resources used by key processes exclusive. This method uses antivirus software and builds a more comprehensive embedded security system in critical security applications. The experimental results show that the proposed method is effective and safe.

Anaerobic digestion (AD) could be considered as a mature technology and nowadays it can still play a pivot role because of the urgent need to provide renewable energy sources and efficiently manage the continuously growing amount of organic waste. Biochar (BC) is an extremely versatile material, which could be produced by carbonization of organic materials, including biomass and wastes, consistently with Circular Economy principles, and “tailor-made” for specific applications. The potential BC role as additive in the control of the many well-known critical issues of AD processes has been increasingly explored over the past few years. However, a clear and comprehensive understanding of the connections between BC and AD is still missing. This review paper analyses and discusses significant references (review articles, research papers and international databases and reports), mostly published in the last 10 years. This review is aimed at addressing three key issues related to the better understanding of the BC role in AD processes: 1. Investigation of the influence of BC properties on AD performances and of their ability to counteract its main challenges; 2. Assessment of the optimal BC production chain (i.e. feedstock-pyrolysis-activation) to achieve the desired features; 3. Evaluation of the economic and environmental advantages connected to BC use in AD processes, compared to conventional solutions applied to address AD challenges.

The need for widespread use of renewable energy has created intense interest in developing various renewable energy technologies that can be used in different applications. Solar chimney is a system that can be used for cooling or heating the buildings, and power production. Moreover, in recent years solar chimneys were widely used for air cleaning, urban planning and sea water desalination. One of the reasons behind these various purposes is the simple working principle of solar chimneys. Due to its simplicity, it can play a key role in transitioning to 100% renewable energy. However, solar chimneys have weaknesses, and many of these issues need new approaches and innovative solutions. It is not a mature technology yet, either for power production or building energy efficient projects. Standardization, integration, hybridization, and finally developing the key components are the main subjects of solar chimney research and development. However, this unique system has great potential for harnessing solar energy in the near future in various applications.

Organic Photovoltaics (OPVs) based on Bulk Heterojunction (BHJ) blends are a mature technology. Having started their intensive development two decades ago, their low cost, processability and flexibility rapidly funneled the interest of the scientific community, searching for new solutions to expand solar photovoltaics market and promote sustainable development. However, their robust implementation is hampered by some issues, concerning the choice of the donor/acceptor materials, the device thermal/photo-stability, and, last but not least, their morphology. Indeed, the morphological profile of BHJs has a strong impact over charge generation, collection, and recombination processes; control over nano/microstructural morphology would be desirable, aiming at finely tuning the device performance and overcoming those previously mentioned critical issues. The employ of compatibilizers has emerged as a promising, economically sustainable, and widely applicable approach for the donor/acceptor interface (D/A-I) optimization. Thus, improvements in the global performance of the devices can be achieved without making use of more complex architectures. Even though several materials have been deeply documented and reported as effective compatibilizing agents, scientific reports are quite fragmentary. Here we would like to offer a panoramic overview of the literature on compatibilizers, focusing on the progression documented in the last decade.

To analyze the stability of the IEEE 14 bus system with & without the integration of photovoltaic and wind vitality. The integration of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar have been increased in recent years due to environmental, social and serve technical benefits over fossil fuels based power generation. PV and wind energy is the most promising and mature technology among renewable energy sources. In the proposed system ETAP software is used to analyze transient stability, power flow analysis, real and reactive power compensation in the IEEE 14 bus system to reduce transmission losses, fuel cost and to improve the stability of the transmission lines.