Search

The present paper provides an overview of the inaugural edition of the Festival for Architecture Schools of Tomorrow (FAST), held in Timișoara in 2023, with particular emphasis on its section dedicated to #activation. The authors' involvement is presented in their roles as members of the research team of teachers, as well as coordinators and participants in the applied study. The final proposal, enriched by contributions from tutors and students representing all five faculties of architecture nationwide, encapsulates key themes such as rethinking resource utilization, fostering community resilience, prioritizing health, promoting inclusiveness, designing for climate adaptation. The intended purpose of the paper is to highlight the necessity of integrating sustainability principles into the educational curriculum, celebrating encounters, collaboration and shared values in the co-creation process of an architectural object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the pyrolysis and adsorption properties of biochar derived from coconut shell (BC-CS), rice husk (BC-RH), and cow manure (BC-CM) under varying thermal treatment conditions. Biochar samples were produced at 800 °C with residence times ranging from 0 to 60 min. Their characteristics were analyzed using their Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area, total pore volume, and pore diameter measurements. BC-CM exhibited the highest BET surface area of 263.3 m2/g and a total pore volume of 0.164 cm3/g, while BC-RH and BC-CS showed maximum BET surface areas of 220.62 m2/g and 197.38 m2/g, respectively. Nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms revealed distinct microporous and mesoporous structures, with BC-CM demonstrating superior adsorption capacity across all relative pressures. The adsorption kinetics of methylene blue (MB) were examined at initial concentrations of 1 ppm, 5 ppm, and 10 ppm, with varying biochar doses (0.1 g, 0.3 g, and 0.5 g). The results showed that the adsorption rate constant (k) decreased with higher initial MB concentrations, while the equilibrium adsorption capacity (qe) increased. BC-CM achieved the highest qe of 2.18 mg/g at 10 ppm and a 0.5 g dose, followed by BC-RH-800-45 (1.145 mg/g) and BC-CS (0.340 mg/g). The adsorption process was well described by a pseudo-second-order kinetic model, indicating chemisorption as the dominant mechanism. Increasing biochar doses improved MB removal efficiency, highlighting the dose-dependent nature of adsorption. These findings underscore the importance of optimizing pyrolysis parameters to enhance biochar's adsorption performance and identify key factors influencing its effectiveness in environmental applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Technology of Water Treatment is the property of Technology of Water Treatment Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present paper provides an overview of the inaugural edition of the Festival for Architecture Schools of Tomorrow (FAST), held in Timișoara in 2023, with particular emphasis on its section dedicated to #activation. The authors' involvement is presented in their roles as members of the research team of teachers, as well as coordinators and participants in the applied study. The final proposal, enriched by contributions from tutors and students representing all five faculties of architecture nationwide, encapsulates key themes such as rethinking resource utilization, fostering community resilience, prioritizing health, promoting inclusiveness, designing for climate adaptation. The intended purpose of the paper is to highlight the necessity of integrating sustainability principles into the educational curriculum, celebrating encounters, collaboration and shared values in the co-creation process of an architectural object.

In this work, the Honduras Mahogany (Swietenia macropnylla King, SMK) seed husk was used as a novel biomass resource for producing activated carbon by physical activation. The texture characteristics and chemical characterization of resulting products were investigated in correlation with the process parameters. Based on the thermochemical properties of the SMK biomass, the process conditions were set to a rate of about 10 °C/min under nitrogen (N2) flow of 500 cm3/min heated to 500 °C, then switched to carbon dioxide (CO2) flow of 100 cm3/min in the specified activation conditions (i.e., temperature of 700–850 °C for holding times of 0–60 min). Our findings showed that the texture characteristics (i.e., surface area and pore volume) increased with an activation temperature increase from 700 to 800 °C for a holding time of 30 min but gradually decreased as the temperature increased thereafter. Similarly, the texture characteristics also indicated an increasing trend with the residence time extending from 0 min to 30 min but slightly decreased as the time was extended to 60 min. Therefore, the optimal activation conditions for producing SMK-based activated carbon should be set at 800 °C for a holding time of 30 min to obtain the maximal texture characteristics (i.e., BET surface area of 966 m2/g and total pore volume of 0.43 cm3/g). On the other hand, the chemical characteristics were analyzed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), showing oxygen complexes contained on the hydrophilic surface of the resulting activated carbon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: What is the main research? Biochar production using multiple waste streams as feedstock. Introduction to different modification methods. What is the significance of the main discovery? Biochar and its composites in environmental applications. The existing shortcomings of biochar materials and their outlook for the future. Biochar is a carbon-rich material that can be composed of a variety of raw materials. From the perspective of resource reuse, it is quite feasible to use waste as a raw material for the preparation of biochar. This paper provides an overview of the types of waste that can be used to prepare biochar and their specific substances, and also summarises methods to enhance or improve the performance of biochar, including physical, chemical, biological and other methods. The feedstock for biochar includes four categories: agricultural and forestry waste, industrial by-products, municipal solid waste and other non-traditional materials. This paper also summarises and classifies the role played by biochar in environmental applications, which can be classified according to its role as an adsorbent, catalyst and soil conditioner, and other applications. In addition to being widely used as an adsorbent, catalyst and activator, biomass charcoal also has good application prospects as a soil remediation agent, amendment agent and supercapacitor, and in soil carbon sequestration. Finally, some ideas and suggestions are detailed for the present research and experiments, offering new perspectives for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Wastewater treatment methods based on catalytic technology are receiving more and more attention in recent years. In order to achieve the high-value utilization of agricultural residues, the development of greener, more efficient, and economically favorable catalysts is the focus of this review. The main contents include: (i) discussions around the differences in surface morphology, chemical stability, electrical conductivity, porosity, and the specific surface area of the prepared biochar according to the biochemical composition of different agricultural residues; (ii) through the above comparison, the shortlisting and selection of suitable catalysts for the preparation of agricultural residues to improve the adsorption and catalytic performance; (iii) discussions around the interaction mode and catalytic mechanism between the surface properties of biochar and pollutants; (iv) based upon future needs, discussions around making full use of the distribution of the pyrolysis products of agricultural residue, and designing biochar-based catalysts to achieve the efficient degradation of pollutants in wastewater. The review aims to provide a waste disposal alternative for the alleviation of environmental pollution and the promotion of green chemistry as well as sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To promote the reuse of remediated soil (RS) and facilitate the cleanup of rainwater in sponge city, we investigated the effects of ceramsite made from RS serving as urban street cushion. Ceramsite was prepared by RS or pollution-free soil (PS) and showed no difference in physical properties. Compared with gravel, ceramsite had purification effects on effluents, reducing the content of chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, and ammoniacal nitrogen. However, the content of total phosphorus and the concentration of Cr(VI) and arsenic slightly increased in ceramsite groups, inferring potential risk. Microbial community analysis proved that ceramsite promoted microbial growth and increased microbial diversity. A long-term risk assessment indicated that ceramsite was good at fixing heavy metals during leaching process. Taken together, ceramsite prepared from RS could serve as excellent urban street cushion with little potential risk to surroundings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of phosphorus pollution and its resource utilization has been a source of general concern. The preparation of green, renewable, and non-secondary pollution adsorbents has become a research direction. In this paper, a one-step hydrothermal preparation method of Ca-modified magnetic sludge biochar (Ca-MSBC) is used for enhancing phosphate removal. The results show that the adsorption rate of phosphate by Ca-MSBC is mainly controlled by chemisorption but is also related to physical adsorption and an internal diffusion mechanism. The maximum phosphorus adsorption capacity of Ca-MSBC was 89.25 mg g−1 at 343 K (initial phosphate concentration 500 mg L−1). After nine cycles of adsorption experiments, the adsorption capacity of 70.16 mg g−1 was still high. In addition, coexisting ions Cl−, NO3−, SO42−, and CO32− have no significant effect on the adsorption properties of phosphate. XRD, FT-IR, VSM, XPS, and N2 adsorption/desorption isotherms showed that the mechanism of phosphate removal from water by Ca-MSBC was mainly the chemical precipitation reaction of phosphate and calcium. The results of this study indicate that Ca-MSBC has potential application and environmental value as a solid waste recycling material for environmental remediation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systematic summary and visual analysis of urban mining research is conducive to a scientific understanding of urban mining research content and future development trends. We used CiteSpace to perform a scientometric analysis of the research literature on urban mining in the Web of Science (WOS) database from 1984 to 2021. The results showed that the number of publications on urban mining showed an overall trend of increase, indicating that it has received more and more attention and importance. In terms of contributions, urban mining research has been conducted relatively early in the United States, but China has published the largest number of papers. The most published institutions are Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We analyzed the keywords and found that urban mining appeared most frequently, followed by recovery, city, data mining and impact. Based on the co-citation clustering analysis of keywords, we obtained that big data, atmospheric contamination and reuse were the most important research themes. The hotspots and future research trends of urban mining research are recovery, cobalt and impact. The contribution of this paper is to broaden the time scope of urban mining research, analyze the current situation and research frontier of urban mining more systematically, and provide an important reference value for the resource utilization of urban mining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A novel utilization for rapid conversion of bauxite residue into soil-like matrix was proposed. • The co-pyrolysis can effectively neutralize the bauxite residue alkalinity. • The soil characteristics of transformed product is in-depth revealed. • The good revegetation performance shows the suitability as artificial soil. The extreme alkalinity of bauxite residue (BR) leads to difficulty with its reuse. Alkaline leachate and dust generation during the stacking process can pollute surrounding soil, air and water. In this work, co-pyrolysis of bauxite residue and sawdust was applied to rapidly produce a soil-like matrix that met the conditions for plant growth as demonstrated by ryegrass pot experiments. The present study aimed to characterize the detailed changes in physicochemical, mineral weathering, and microbial communities of the pyrolyzed BR with different ratios of saw dust after plant colonization for 2 months. With increasing sawdust addition during co-pyrolysis, the pH of BR decreased from 11.21 to 8.16, the fraction of macro-aggregates 0.25-2 mm in the water-stable agglomerates increased by 29.3%, and the organic carbon concentration increased from 12.5 to 320 mg/kg, whilst facilitating the degree of humification, which were all beneficial to its revegetation performance. The backscattered electron-scanning electron microscope-energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (BSE-SEM-EDS) results confirmed the occurrence of sodalite and calcite weathering on aggregate surfaces, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results of surface Al and Si compounds identified that some weathering products were clay minerals such as kaolinite. Furthermore, bacterial community composition and structure shifted towards typical soil taxonomic groups. These results demonstrate soil development of treated BR at an early stage. The technique is a combination of alkalinity regulation and agglomerate construction, which accelerates soil formation of BR, thus proving highly promising for potential application as an artificial soil substitute. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to study the phytoremediation effect of Cd pollution in the riverbed soil around the sewage outfall, based on the Cd concentrationof the riverbed soil near the sewage outfall in the typical area along the Fujiang River in Mianyang City, the effects of six typical plants, namely Solanum nigrum L,Phytolacca acinosa Roxb,Nephrolepis auriculata (L.), Pogonatherum crinitum (Thunb.) Kunth,Pteris vittata L and Sedum lineare Thunb,on the Cd concentration in the soil with different pollution levels (3 mg/kg, 5 mg/kg and 8 mg/kg) and the Cd concentration in different parts of the plant (root, stem and leaf) after planting were studied, to explore the remediation effects of different plants on different Cd polluted soils.The research results show that: When the concentration of Cd in the soil was 3 mg/kg, the Cd enrichment coefficient of Solanum nigrum L and Sedum lineare Thunb was the largest, which were 18.18 times and 20.54 times that of Pteris vittata L respectively; The Cd concentrations in the stem and leaf of Solanum nigrum L and the root and stem of Sedum lineare Thunb are 26.18 mg/kg, 40.26 mg/kg, 34.38 mg/kg and 49.45 mg/kg, respectively, which can be recycled by composting; Therefore, it is recommended to plant Solanum nigrum L or Sedum lineare Thunb to repair the Cd pollution in the riverbed around the sewage outlet in the urban residential area. When the concentration of Cd was 5 mg/kg, the Cd enrichment coefficient of Sedum lineare Thunb was the largest, which was 39.43 times that of Pteris vittata L;The concentration of Cd in roots and stems was 65.79 mg/kg and 108.11 mg/kg, respectively, which could be reused by composting and hydrothermal transformation; Therefore, it is recommended to plant Sedum lineare Thunb to repair the Cd pollution in the riverbed around the sewage outlet of the light industry zone. When the concentration of Cd was 8 mg/kg, the Cd enrichment coefficients of Nephrolepis auriculata (L.) and Solanum nigrum L were the largest, which were 37.10 times and 36.26 times of Pteris vittata L respectively; And the stem of Solanum nigrum L, the leaf of Nephrolepis auriculata (L.) and the stem of Solanum nigrum L could be reused by composting and hydrothermal transformation respectively; Therefore, it is recommended to plant Nephrolepis auriculata (L.) to repair the Cd pollution in the river bed around the sewage outlet of the heavy industry zone, and mix Nephrolepis auriculata (L.) and Solanum nigrum L to repair the Cd pollution in the river bed around the chemical industry concentration zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Straw burning can cause serious environmental pollution, whereas returning straw to the fields, as a green production method, can improve the rural environment and strengthen the sustainable development of agriculture. According to statistics, China produced 797 million tons of straw in 2020, but the current straw return technology still needs to be improved; the ability of farmers to choose the correct amount of straw to be returned to the field and their awareness of environmental protection still need to be strengthened. Straw is still openly burned in some areas, causing environmental pollution and the waste of resources, which are contrary to the concept of sustainable development in China. In this study, we estimated the amount of straw resources in Heilongjiang Province, a major grain-producing province in China, by quantifying the production of major crops between 2011 and 2020. We then identified and analyzed the current problems in terms of policy support and other aspects. We used an integrated AHP-fuzzy evaluation method to evaluate the comprehensive benefits of different straw return amounts, and we determined the amount of straw that should be returned to the soil to produce the best comprehensive benefits. We provide suggestions for the current main problems regarding the amount of crop straw to return to the soil in Heilongjiang Province, arguing that choosing a reasonable straw return amount will help farmers increase profit, reduce environmental pollution, and contribute to the sustainable development of the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biochar is a carbon-rich material that can be composed of a variety of raw materials. From the perspective of resource reuse, it is quite feasible to use waste as a raw material for the preparation of biochar. This paper provides an overview of the types of waste that can be used to prepare biochar and their specific substances, and also summarises methods to enhance or improve the performance of biochar, including physical, chemical, biological and other methods. The feedstock for biochar includes four categories: agricultural and forestry waste, industrial by-products, municipal solid waste and other non-traditional materials. This paper also summarises and classifies the role played by biochar in environmental applications, which can be classified according to its role as an adsorbent, catalyst and soil conditioner, and other applications. In addition to being widely used as an adsorbent, catalyst and activator, biomass charcoal also has good application prospects as a soil remediation agent, amendment agent and supercapacitor, and in soil carbon sequestration. Finally, some ideas and suggestions are detailed for the present research and experiments, offering new perspectives for future development.

The RLWE encryption scheme is one of the most potential candidates in the lattice cryptosystem in the post-quantum era. In view of the problem of high latency and low throughput in RLWE cryptoprocessor, this study proposes a high-performance RLWE cryptoprocessor hardware architecture. The parallel circuit structure of two NTT modules and four butterfly modules are adopted in the proposed architecture. In the pre-calculation and post-calculation process, the multipliers in the four butterfly modules are used for parallel calculation. In the encryption process, NTT calculation and ciphertext calculation are performed in parallel. In the processing of NTT and INTT operations, the data read and write process and calculation process are ping-pong operations, thereby hiding the data read and write cycle, reducing the delay of the RLWE encryption processor, and improving the throughput of the RLWE encryption processor. A hardware architecture is designed for resource reuse, the multiplier and adder are reused in the butterfly module during the encryption and decryption process, and the circuit structure of NTT is reused by INTT, thereby reducing the hardware resource consumption of the encryption processor. The cryptoprocessor with parameters of n=256 and q=65 537 is implemented on the Spartan-6 FPGA development platform. The results indicate that the encryption time is only 12.18 μs, the throughput is 21.01 Mbit·s-1, the decryption time is only 8.65 μs, and the throughput is 29.60 Mbit·s-1. Compared with other cryptoprocessor, the proposed design has improved the delay and throughput of the cryptoprocessor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture is booming. During case study Water-Energy-Food nexus research at urban farms, investigation indicated two types of ‘food’ to be relevant for urban agriculture. Consequently, the ‘food’-component in the WEF nexus is split, which leads to a Water-Energy-Nutrients-Food (WENF) nexus framework for urban farming.This systematic WENF nexus monitoring, analysis and evaluation framework aims to facilitate acquisition of quality data during case study research at farming sites, in order to fill the quantitative data gap regarding urban agriculture and closed circularity loops. Stocks of various types of water, energy, nutrients and food are differentiated and flows within each described. Subsequently, multi-sectoral flows between the four main resource stocks and their interactions and interdependencies are identified with the aim of formulating options for circularity in urban farming. The analysis shows that urban systems offer many opportunities for the realisation of sustainable agriculture in cities because waste management and farming could mutually reinforce each other. Local reuse of resources found in urban “waste” has the potential to reduce stormwater nuisances, energy needs for water, nutrient and food transport, irrigation, and wastewater pumping while eliminating the need for synthetic soil improvement and unsustainable mineral mining. All in all, reusing resources from urban (waste)waters in urban farming initiatives can reduce the negative impact of food production on the environment.

Wastewater treatment methods based on catalytic technology are receiving more and more attention in recent years. In order to achieve the high-value utilization of agricultural residues, the development of greener, more efficient, and economically favorable catalysts is the focus of this review. The main contents include: (i) discussions around the differences in surface morphology, chemical stability, electrical conductivity, porosity, and the specific surface area of the prepared biochar according to the biochemical composition of different agricultural residues; (ii) through the above comparison, the shortlisting and selection of suitable catalysts for the preparation of agricultural residues to improve the adsorption and catalytic performance; (iii) discussions around the interaction mode and catalytic mechanism between the surface properties of biochar and pollutants; (iv) based upon future needs, discussions around making full use of the distribution of the pyrolysis products of agricultural residue, and designing biochar-based catalysts to achieve the efficient degradation of pollutants in wastewater. The review aims to provide a waste disposal alternative for the alleviation of environmental pollution and the promotion of green chemistry as well as sustainable development.

As CNNs are widely used in fields such as image classification and target detection, the total number of parameters and computation of the models is gradually increasing. In addition, the requirements on hardware resources and power consumption for deploying CNNs are becoming higher and higher, leading to CNN models being restricted to certain specific platforms for miniaturization and practicality. Therefore, this paper proposes a convolutional-neural-network-processor design with an FPGA-based resource-multiplexing architecture, aiming to reduce the consumption of hardware resources and power consumption of CNNs. First, this paper takes a handwritten-digit-recognition CNN as an example of a CNN design based on a resource-multiplexing architecture, and the prediction accuracy of the CNN can reach 97.3 percent by training and testing with Mnist dataset. Then, the CNN is deployed on FPGA using the hardware description language Verilog, and the design is optimized by resource multiplexing and parallel processing. Finally, the total power consumption of the system is 1.03 W and the power consumption of the CNN module is 0.03 W under the premise of guaranteeing the prediction accuracy, and the prediction of a picture is about 68,139 clock cycles, which is 340.7 us under a 200 MHz clock. The experimental results have obvious advantages in terms of resources and power consumption compared with those reported in related articles in recent years, and the design proposed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, manganese tailing sand concrete (MTSC) was prepared using manganese tailing sand (MTS) in replacement of river sand (RS) to alleviate the shortage of RS resources and achieve clean treatment and high-value resource utilization of manganese tailing stone. The effects of MTS content on the slump, mechanical strength, air void characteristics, hydration products and micromorphology of MTSC were studied experimentally. The leaching risk of harmful substances in MTSC was also explored by testing the concentration of Mn2+. The results show that the utilization of MTS reduces the slump of MTSC to a certain extent. When the MTS content is lower than 40%, the gypsum introduced by MTS and C3A in cement undergoes a hydration reaction to form ettringite, which decreases the number of pores with a diameter less than 0.1 mm and promotes strength development in MTSC. Additionally, when the MTS content exceeds 40%, the large amount of gypsum reacts to form more ettringite. The expansive stress generated by the ettringite severely damages the pore structure, which is not conducive to the mechanical properties of MTSC. In addition, the leaching of hazardous substances in MTSC is insignificant, and the incorporation of cement can effectively reduce the risk of leaching hazardous substances in MTSC. In summary, it is completely feasible to use MTS to replace RS for concrete preparation when the substitution rate of MTS is less than 40%, with no risk of environmental pollution. The results and adaptation in the concrete industry can reduce the carbon footprint, which is in line with the current trend in civil and materials engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of high lalency, low Lhroughpul and low area efficiency of polar code SC decoder, a high - performance hardware archiLeclure of SC decoder is proposed. The decoder becomes low - laLency and high - Lhroughput by pruning frozen bit nodes to simplify the SC decoding binary tree, designing cross - cycle storage for PE, and using 2b - SC algorithm in the last stage. The resource - reused method is adopted to increase the decoder area efficiency. The testing results show that the cycle of the proposed decoder is 330, the throughput is 388. 85 Mbit · s - 1, and the area efficiency is 2. 204 Mbit · s _, · kGE _,. Compared with other SC decoders, latency, throughput and area efficiency of the high - performance SC decoder proposed in Lhis study are significantly improved. Additionally, Lhe decoder has lower power consumplion and broad applicalion prospecl. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxonomy merging is an important work to provide a uniform schema for several heterogeneous taxonomies. Previous studies primarily focus on merging two taxonomies in a specific domain, while the merging of multiple taxonomies has been neglected. This article proposes a taxonomy merging approach to automatically merge multiple source taxonomies into a target taxonomy in an asymmetric manner. The approach adopts a strategy of breaking up the whole into parts to decrease the complexity of merging multiple taxonomies and employs a block-based method to reduce the scale of measuring semantic relations between concept pairs. In addition, for the problem of multiple inheritance, a method of topical coverage is proposed. Experiments conducted on synthetic and real-world scenarios indicate that the proposed merging approach is feasible and effective to merge multiple taxonomies. In particular, the proposed approach works well in the aspects of limiting the semantic redundancy and establishing high-quality hierarchical relations between concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indium (In) has vital applications in solar photovoltaic technology and light-emitting diodes. However, the resource for In production is low. Zinc smelting is an important source of In, but the average In recovery rate is only 20%. The annual economic loss due to the loss of In is as high as USD 199.7 million. In this study, a high-sulphur hot filter residue (HFR) was processed via sodium-hydroxide (NaOH) hydrothermal treatment (NAHT). By varying the amount of NaOH and using the dissolution exotherm of NaOH, sulphur element (S0) in HFR was transferred to a liquid phase. Thus, In and other precious metals originally wrapped in S0 were enriched in the slag phase (TLR). The In grade in TLR was as high as 1700 g/t, and the recovery rate was 99%. In addition, 10.94 g/t gold, 125.81 g/t silver, 15.18% zinc and 22.27% iron were incidentally recovered. The wastewater produced in the process showed better effects than industrial Na 2 S in flotation processes. Thus, NAHT is an effective green recovery technique for recovering In and other precious metals from HFR. Further, the recovered In can yield an annual revenue of USD 1,122,170 for the plant. Therefore, the treatment of HFR plays an important role in zinc hydrometallurgical smelting plants. Green process diagram for recovering indium and other precious metal resources from high-sulphur hot filter residue (HFR) by using NaOH hydrothermal (NAHT) treatment [Display omitted] • Indium and other precious metals in high-sulphur hot filter residue were recovered by NaOH hydrothermal treatment. • Indium content in TLR was as high as 1700 g/t, and the recovery rate was 99.07%. • Gold, silver, zinc and iron were accidentally recovered from HFR at a rate greater than 90%. • No waste was produced in the process. • The recovered indium can bring annual revenue of USD1,122,170. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water, energy and nutrients are interlinked extensively with food and each other as shown in the monitoring, analysis and evaluation framework for the Water Energy Nutrient Food (WENF) nexus by Haitsma Mulier et al. (2022). This study aims to contribute to the quantification of the Water Energy Nutrient Food nexus regarding urban agriculture. It investigates the water, energy and nutrient demand of urban farms along with the presence of those resources in urban waters at three case study sites. Demands for water and nutrients (nitrogen & phosphorus) at a greenhouse in Amsterdam and a community farm and a container farm in East-Boston could be met by resources present in urban waters (rainwater and wastewater) in the direct vicinity. Whether enough energy is available to operate each of these farms is related to the type of agriculture.

The problem of phosphorus pollution and its resource utilization has been a source of general concern. The preparation of green, renewable, and non-secondary pollution adsorbents has become a research direction. In this paper, a one-step hydrothermal preparation method of Ca-modified magnetic sludge biochar (Ca-MSBC) is used for enhancing phosphate removal. The results show that the adsorption rate of phosphate by Ca-MSBC is mainly controlled by chemisorption but is also related to physical adsorption and an internal diffusion mechanism. The maximum phosphorus adsorption capacity of Ca-MSBC was 89.25 mg g−1 at 343 K (initial phosphate concentration 500 mg L−1). After nine cycles of adsorption experiments, the adsorption capacity of 70.16 mg g−1 was still high. In addition, coexisting ions Cl−, NO3−, SO42−, and CO32− have no significant effect on the adsorption properties of phosphate. XRD, FT-IR, VSM, XPS, and N2 adsorption/desorption isotherms showed that the mechanism of phosphate removal from water by Ca-MSBC was mainly the chemical precipitation reaction of phosphate and calcium. The results of this study indicate that Ca-MSBC has potential application and environmental value as a solid waste recycling material for environmental remediation.

Copyright of Journal of Agro-Environment Science is the property of Journal of Agro-Environment Science Editorial Board and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Through comparison, algorithm optimization, pipeline accelerated design and structural compatibility extension of a large number of mainstream algorithm, this paper propose an algorithm that is good for modulo operation structure compatibility: improved radix-4 interleaved modular multiplication algorithm. It has advantages of short path and simple structure, and has advantages in compatibility design, can achieve full flow accelerated operation, and achieve the high speed and reconfigurable design purposes. The improved radix-4 interleaved modular multiplication unit proposed in this paper can directly realize plus-minus module division and modular addition without adding extra structure, which solves the problem of the waste of independent resources. The unified modular unit is synthesized under the 65 nm CMOS process. The area is 0.117 mm2. The clock frequency is 526 MHz. A 576 bit modular multiplication and modular division are completed at 0.55 μs and 2.98 μs respectively.

In this work, manganese tailing sand concrete (MTSC) was prepared using manganese tailing sand (MTS) in replacement of river sand (RS) to alleviate the shortage of RS resources and achieve clean treatment and high-value resource utilization of manganese tailing stone. The effects of MTS content on the slump, mechanical strength, air void characteristics, hydration products and micromorphology of MTSC were studied experimentally. The leaching risk of harmful substances in MTSC was also explored by testing the concentration of Mn2+. The results show that the utilization of MTS reduces the slump of MTSC to a certain extent. When the MTS content is lower than 40%, the gypsum introduced by MTS and C3A in cement undergoes a hydration reaction to form ettringite, which decreases the number of pores with a diameter less than 0.1 mm and promotes strength development in MTSC. Additionally, when the MTS content exceeds 40%, the large amount of gypsum reacts to form more ettringite. The expansive stress generated by the ettringite severely damages the pore structure, which is not conducive to the mechanical properties of MTSC. In addition, the leaching of hazardous substances in MTSC is insignificant, and the incorporation of cement can effectively reduce the risk of leaching hazardous substances in MTSC. In summary, it is completely feasible to use MTS to replace RS for concrete preparation when the substitution rate of MTS is less than 40%, with no risk of environmental pollution. The results and adaptation in the concrete industry can reduce the carbon footprint, which is in line with the current trend in civil and materials engineering.

As CNNs are widely used in fields such as image classification and target detection, the total number of parameters and computation of the models is gradually increasing. In addition, the requirements on hardware resources and power consumption for deploying CNNs are becoming higher and higher, leading to CNN models being restricted to certain specific platforms for miniaturization and practicality. Therefore, this paper proposes a convolutional-neural-network-processor design with an FPGA-based resource-multiplexing architecture, aiming to reduce the consumption of hardware resources and power consumption of CNNs. First, this paper takes a handwritten-digit-recognition CNN as an example of a CNN design based on a resource-multiplexing architecture, and the prediction accuracy of the CNN can reach 97.3 percent by training and testing with Mnist dataset. Then, the CNN is deployed on FPGA using the hardware description language Verilog, and the design is optimized by resource multiplexing and parallel processing. Finally, the total power consumption of the system is 1.03 W and the power consumption of the CNN module is 0.03 W under the premise of guaranteeing the prediction accuracy, and the prediction of a picture is about 68,139 clock cycles, which is 340.7 us under a 200 MHz clock. The experimental results have obvious advantages in terms of resources and power consumption compared with those reported in related articles in recent years, and the design proposed in this paper.

Because of its low price and simple operation and maintenance, the three-compartment septic tank toilet has become the main technical mode of the rural toilet revolution in underdeveloped areas. However, there are some widespread misunderstandings about its functional orientation, which will have a negative impact on the correct use of the septic tank, the harmless disposal of manure, and there use of manure. Therefore, this paper traced the development of the septic tank, analyzed its functional orientation under differents anitation patterns, and revealed the historical mission of sanitation and environmental protection of septic tank toilets. On this basis,analysis of the three typical misunderstandings of the current rural toilets in some areas, namely, the problem of common use flush toilets,“pipe collection+（centralized）large septic tank”,“collection+off-site dehydration dry fertilizer”, revealed the need to pay attention to the correct use of septic tanks, and incorporated the septic tank toilet in rural areas into the application of rationalization recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication and heterogeneous networks have been considered as promising techniques for alleviating the demand both for increased spectral resources and for additional infrastructure required for meeting the increased tele-traffic. For the sake of improving both the bandwidth efficiency and the network capacity of heterogeneous cellular networks constituted by multiple tiers, a direct D2D communication is arranged between a pair of nearby devices without involving the base station (BS), whilst reusing the cellular resources. We aim for maximising the sum-rate of the energy harvesting (EH) aided D2D links in a two-tier heterogeneous network by superimposing their messages on the downlink resources of mobile users (MUs), which is achieved without unduly degrading MU's throughput. Specifically, our optimization problem relies on the objective function of maximising the D2D sum-rate based on the joint assignment of both the resource blocks (RBs) and of the transmission power for both the EH aided D2D links and the MUs. This non-convex optimization problem, which is intractable in its original form, is then converted to a tractable convex problem, which is then analyzed by invoking the method of Lagrange multipliers of constrained optimization. As a result, an algorithmic solution defined as joint optimization of RB and power allocation (JORPA) is proposed, which jointly allocates the RBs and power for the D2D links, whilst relying on the results of Lagrangian constrained optimization, when the base stations (BSs) of different tiers obey one of the following regimes: (a) orthogonal; (b) co-channel; and (c) the proposed co-orthogonal channel deployments. We also propose low complexity heuristic methods for optimizing the D2D transmit power, while defining the D2D-MU matching heuristically and vice versa. The performance of both the JORPA algorithm as well as of the low-complexity heuristic algorithms is quantitatively analyzed using our simulation results for different channel deployments relying on diverse network parameter settings. As expected, orthogonal deployment performs best, followed by the co-orthogonal and co-channel deployments. Moreover, the throughput experienced by the MUs in presence of D2D communication is guaranteed by our co-orthogonal scheme as well as orthogonal scheme, while co-channel suffers a marginal degradation when compared with throughput threshold. We also demonstrate that our equal power allocation heuristic method is capable of achieving 96% of the sum-rate achieved by JORPA while other heuristic methods perform less well, implying that the optimization of the D2D-MU matching is indeed crucial for the system considered.

In this paper, by jointly considering resource reuse and allocation, we formulate a stochastic optimization programming to investigate the spectral efficiency maximization problem in dynamic wireless self-backhaul small cell networks, where random and finite-traffic loads are considered while keeping the system stable. Then, by leveraging the fractional programming theory and the Lyapunov optimization technique, an extremely simple but optimal queue-aware dynamic resource reuse and joint allocation algorithm (QDRRJAA) is proposed to solve the formulation. In the QDRRJAA, at the beginning of each time slot, the system will exploit the current queue states of all users and channel state information first to calculate four resource scheduling priority matrixes. Then, the category of each resource block (RB), i.e., either an access-only RB, a backhaul-only RB or a common RB can be determined. The theoretical analysis and simulation results reveal that the proposed algorithm can flexibly strike a balance between spectral efficiency and delay by simply adjusting an introduced control parameter and also reduce the required resources for packet transmission. In particular, no iteration and optimization tools are required in the QDRRJAA, which paves the way for practical applications.

In a cloud environment, the primary way to optimize physical resources is to reuse a physical machine (PM) by consolidating complementary multiple virtual machines (VMs) on it. When considering VMs' dynamically changing resource demands, one hot research topic revolves around reusing VM migration resources more efficiently. The challenge here is finding the best tradeoff between the VM migration optimization performance and complexity. On one hand, to improve the migration efficiency, VM migration planning is adopted to achieve efficient resource reuse while minimizing the number of VM migrations. On the other hand, the huge number of PMs and VMs in a cloud datacenter often adds considerable complexity to migration planning, which hampers the decision-making process in VM migration. To address these issues, this paper proposes a hybrid resource pool model to reduce the complexity of VM migration planning by limiting the scope of VM migration decisions. Then, based on this model, we use our novel resource-reuse optimization mechanism (called HirePool) to improve efficiency by maximizing resource usage with only a few VM migrations. Finally, we perform simulation tests and actual experiments running on a real cloud platform to evaluate HirePool. Results show that HirePool improves average resource usage by 13%, saves the number of PMs used by 12%, and reduces the average number of migrations (compared with contrast mechanisms) by 31%.

We propose a dynamic distributed resource allocation algorithm for wireless networks, where the resources allocated to adjacent nodes (vertices) must be different and the topology of the network (graph) may change. Time is divided into rounds. In each round, a maximal independent set (MIS) is found, and the vertices in the MIS will use the resource in the next round. Therefore, the resource reuse equals the expected value of sizes of MISs, and we present two lower bounds for it. The number of messages transmitted by each vertex included/excluded in the MIS is one/zero, and messages are 1-bit. Therefore, the independence number of the graph is an upper bound for the number of bits transmitted in a round. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Device-to-device (D2D) communication can improve coverage, spectrum efficiency, and energy efficiency based on the current cellular network architecture. The fair scheduling for D2D communication in the orthogonal frequency division multiple access-based cellular network is studied in this paper. Based on the proportional fairness criteria, the optimization objective is formulated to maximize the sum of the relative achievable rate of both cellular users (CUs) and D2D pairs. It is a hybrid optimization problem since it involves in both the resource reuse and the transmit power control. A practical proportional fairness scheduling (PFS) algorithm is proposed. Firstly, the admissible area is decided according to the transmit power limitation of terminals and the quality of service (QoS) requirement. Next, we seek the optimal transmit power combination for the CU and D2D pair in the admissible area and it is demonstrated that the optimal value can be selected from several points on the border of the admissible area. Lastly, when multiple subchannels can be employed for scheduling, based on the generated bipartite graph, Hungarian algorithm is adopted to realize maximum matching, i.e., select reusable CUs and D2D pairs to maximize the sum of the relative achievable rates. The simulation results show that PFS algorithm can guarantee the excellent performance of both throughput and fairness.

Resource reuse has become an important aspect of wastewater management. At present, use of sludge in agriculture is one of the major reuse routes. Conventional municipal wastewater treatment does not involve any designated process for removal of heavy metals, and these distribute mainly between effluent and sludge. Enhanced removal of heavy metals during primary treatment may decrease the heavy metal concentrations in both effluent and sludge from secondary treatment and promote long-term reuse of secondary sludge. This review considers heavy metal occurrence and removal during primary settling, together with possible treatment technologies for heavy metal removal in primary settlers and their theoretical performance. The variation in total heavy metal concentrations and dissolved fraction in raw municipal wastewater points to a need for site-specific assessments of appropriate technologies for improved heavy metal removal. Studies examining the heavy metal speciation beyond dissolved/particulate are few. Missing or disparate information on process parameters such as hydraulic retention time, pH and composition of return flows makes it hard to generalize the findings from studies concerning heavy metal removal in primary settlers. Coagulation/flocculation and use of low-cost sorbents were identified as the most promising methods for enhancing heavy metal removal during primary settling. Based on the available data on heavy metal speciation and removal during primary settling, sorption technologies may be most effective for enhancing the removal of Cu and Ni, while coagulation may be efficient for Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Zn and Hg removal (but not as efficient for Ni removal).

Recently, the concept of network virtualization and network slicing attracted significant attention from both industry and academia as a key component of the evolving 5G architecture to allow the efficient entrance of vertical industries and tackle increased aggregate traffic by flexible network re-configurability. However, the potential price to be paid for facilitating network slicing in a multi-tenant virtual network is the underutilization of the scarce wireless network resources due to the different tenant requirements and the inherent dynamics of the traffic. A potential way to avoid such sacrifice of radio resources is to allow efficient inter-tenant resource sharing. To this end, this paper proposes a novel optimization framework for flexible inter-tenant resource sharing embedded with transmission power control to aggressively improve network capacity, the utilization of wireless access resources, user data rate as well as energy efficiency. More specifically, we define two novel resource sharing mechanisms called tight coupling and loose coupling, respectively, via mixed integer linear programming formulations. Furthermore, two resource and power joint allocation algorithms are designed to solve the optimization problem in polynomial time. Based on 3GPP network parameterization, a rigorous analysis via a wide set of numerical investigations reveal that significant gains in network throughput, individual user rate, and energy efficiency can be achieved compared with current baseline network slicing methods and constant power resource sharing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is a promising take over in cellular communication. Due to its advantages it gains significance in the industrial standardization along with academic researchers. The concept of two tier network can be evolved to enlighten the cellular communication. Making each cellular user as transmission relays it would form a massive D2D network resulting in increased offloading of cellular traffic. The scope of D2D also extends to mobile cloud computing, proximity applications, social network content distribution and so on. It has been proved to be the best solution for energy efficient, spectral efficient technology which meets the capacity demand. However, the D2D scheme have practical challenges which needs to be met in order to keep its place primary in the next generation wireless communication. One of the major challenges which has to be addressed and resolved is resource allocation. In this paper various resource allocation scheme for D2D networks in cellular network are discussed. Each of the resource allocation with its signal to interference ratio performance with the other and the sum-data rate of each system is compared. D2D assisted Cognitive radio networks (Ahmad et al. in IET Commun 12(10): 1207–1214, 2008) can be developed to utilise the spectrum opportunistically for next generation communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Device to device (D2D) communication is a key technology of 5G mobile communications. It allows devices to communicate by using direct links, rather than travelling all the way through base stations. It can not only reduce the burden of base station, but also increase the capacity of cellular networks. In order to efficiently use the limited resource blocks (RB), researchers suggest that D2D pairs which can mutually tolerate the induced interference be grouped into a clique and reuse the assigned RBs. As a result the system capacity can be improved. Most methods evaluate SINR in accordance with device locations and free space path loss formula. However, between the two devices of a D2D pair, there may be obstacles which lead to severe signal attenuation. But these obstacles are generally ignored in path-loss formulas. To deal with this problem, we propose a practical approach which evaluates SINR using the reference signal received power reported by devices during the proximity discovery phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • Sulfate reduction effluent (SR-effluent) was turned into iron-sulfur for reuse. • Sulfidation of nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) with SR-effluent was achieved. • Sulfidation improved nZVI's ability to remove Cr(VI) from aqueous solution by 100%. • A structural equation model elucidated enhanced Cr(VI) removal efficiency. • SR-effluent's corrosion radius tuned the distribution of iron-sulfur compounds. This study investigated the use of sulfate reduction effluent (SR-effluent) to induce sulfidation on nanoscale zerovalent iron (nZVI). SR-effluent–modified nZVI achieved a 100% improvement in Cr(VI) removal from simulated groundwater, a result comparable to cases where other, more typical sulfur precursors (Na 2 S 2 O 4 , Na 2 S 2 O 3, Na 2 S, K 2 S 6 , and S0) were used. Through a structural equation model analysis, amendment of nanoparticles' agglomeration (standardized path coefficient (std. path coeff.) = −0.449, p < 0.05) and hydrophobicity (std. path coeff. = 0.100, p < 0.05) and direct reaction between iron-sulfur compounds and Cr(VI) (std. path coeff. ranged from −0.195 to 0.322, p < 0.05) were primarily contributing to sulfidation-induced Cr(VI) removal enhancement. Regarding the property improvement of nZVI, the SR-effluent's corrosion radius played a crucial role in tuning the content and distribution of the iron-sulfur compounds based on the core–shell structure of the nZVI and the redox processes at the aqueous-solid interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address the important issue of reusing frequency resource in femtocells deployed in dense multi-floor buildings over a large urban macrocell coverage to enhance network capacity and spectral efficiency using almost blank subframe (ABS)-based enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) technique. Femtocell clustering and modeling an optimum number of ABS (OPNA) are, however, two major challenges to reuse frequency in femtocells deployed in buildings using ABS-based eICIC. In this paper, we address these challenges by exploiting the high external wall penetration loss of any buildings and in-between distance of neighboring buildings, and propose a femtocell clustering approach by considering all femtocells in any buildings as a femtocell cluster to avoid an additional computational complexity from clustering. We develop a frequency reuse and scheduling algorithm (FRSA) for an arbitrary number of ABSs for a multi-tier network, which consists of in-building femtocells and outdoor picocells in the coverage of an urban macrocell. We then propose a model for estimating the OPNA and derive an OPNA per femtocell cluster basis under two schemes, namely adaptive OPNA and non-adaptive OPNA, in order to vary the number of ABSs imposed on femtocells within a building dynamically based on the presence of indoor macrocell users within the building to avoid cross-tier interference with femtocells. An optimization algorithm for OPNA schemes is developed, and its implementation aspects are discussed. The impact of varying the number of ABSs and femtocells per building on the throughput performance of FRSA is analyzed through an extensive system-level simulation, and the capacity outperformance of the adaptive over the non-adaptive OPNA scheme is shown. Finally, a schematic of the scheduler implementation for FRSA is developed, and the capacity outperformance of FRSA over a number of existing works is shown. © 2017 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Device-to-device (D2D) communication can improve coverage, spectrum efficiency, and energy efficiency based on the current cellular network architecture. The fair scheduling for D2D communication in the orthogonal frequency division multiple access-based cellular network is studied in this paper. Based on the proportional fairness criteria, the optimization objective is formulated to maximize the sum of the relative achievable rate of both cellular users (CUs) and D2D pairs. It is a hybrid optimization problem since it involves in both the resource reuse and the transmit power control. A practical proportional fairness scheduling (PFS) algorithm is proposed. Firstly, the admissible area is decided according to the transmit power limitation of terminals and the quality of service (QoS) requirement. Next, we seek the optimal transmit power combination for the CU and D2D pair in the admissible area and it is demonstrated that the optimal value can be selected from several points on the border of the admissible area. Lastly, when multiple subchannels can be employed for scheduling, based on the generated bipartite graph, Hungarian algorithm is adopted to realize maximum matching, i.e., select reusable CUs and D2D pairs to maximize the sum of the relative achievable rates. The simulation results show that PFS algorithm can guarantee the excellent performance of both throughput and fairness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we address mainly 2 important issues, namely, characterizing co-channel interference and enforcing a minimum distance between femtocell base stations (FCBSs) for reusing resources in FCBSs deployed in a 3-dimentional multi-floor building. Each floor is modeled as a group of square-grid apartments, with one FCBS per apartment. We propose a simple yet reasonable analytical model by using planar-Wyner model for intra-floor interference and linear-Wyner model for inter-floor interference modeling in a 3-dimensional multi-floor building to derive a minimum distance between co-channel FCBSs for optimization constraints, namely, link level interference, spectral efficiency, and capacity. As opposed to orthogonal resource reuse and allocation (ORRA) where resources are reused once, using the proposed model, we develop 2 strategies for reusing resources more than once, that is, non-ORRA, within a multi-floor building. An algorithm of the proposed model is developed by including an application of the model to an ultra-dense deployment of multi-floor buildings. With an extensive numerical analysis and system level simulation, we demonstrate the capacity outperformance of non-ORRA over ORRA by manifold. Further, with a fairly accurate yet realistic estimation, we show that the expected spectral efficiency of fifth-generation networks can be achieved by applying the proposed model to an ultra-dense deployment of FCBSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that large scale multiple-input multiple-output (LS-MIMO) systems are very attractive technology to increase both spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). However, one of big obstacles to the realization of the LS-MIMO system is the overhead of reference signals (RSs), since the number of RS increases as the number of transmitter (TX) antennas increases. In this paper, the RS overhead problem is analyzed, and we propose an RS overhead reduction scheme based on beam grouping, which is called beam grouping based resource reuse (BGRR). The proposed scheme divides one cell into several sectors and reuses the RS resources for the different sectors. The resource conflict is reduced using beam separability. According to the analysis and the simulation results, the proposed scheme can remarkably reduce the RS overhead and improve the SE performance significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]