Temporal and spatial variations of energy consumption in rural China

Presented in this paper is an overview of energy consumption in rural China in view of temporal and spatial variations. Characterized by steadily decreased proportion of biomass use and increased percentage of coal and electricity use, coal and biomass are still the major energy sources in rural areas, accounting for nearly 80% of the total rural energy consumption. Moreover, the energy consumption varies significantly across provinces both in total sum and by fuel types due to diversities of geographic features, economic development levels and local energy source availability. Three statistical groups are clustered associated with quantitative change and structural change, exhibiting evident transition from noncommercial energy pattern to commercial energy pattern. Much more work need to be done to cope with the forthcoming dramatic changes associated with booming rural economy and newly released policy from the points of both energy security and environmental pressure in China.     

Search for Hawking radiation in heavy ion collisions

The creation of “white holes” that decay by Hawking radiation has been proposed as one way to achieve the very early thermalization observed in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. The charartistic temperature of the radiations depends only on the ratio of the baryon number to the transverse energy. The yields of pions, kaons, protons and antiprotons measured by BRAHMS in central Au+Au collisions can be described within a thermal model where T drops with rapidity, and beam energy. We find that the chemical freeze-out temperature drops as the ratio of baryon number to energy increases but much more rapidly than predicted by the model.     

Spatial resonance and Turing–Hopf bifurcations in the Gierer–Meinhardt model

Gierer–Meinhardt system as a molecularly plausible model has been proposed to formalize the observation for pattern formation. In this paper, the Gierer–Meinhardt model without the saturating term is considered. By the linear stability analysis, we not only give out the conditions ensuring the stability and Turing instability of the positive equilibrium but also find the parameter values where possible Turing–Hopf and spatial resonance bifurcation can occur. Then we develop the general algorithm for the calculations of normal form associated with codimension-2 spatial resonance bifurcation to better understand the dynamics neighboring of the bifurcating point. The spatial resonance bifurcation reveals the interaction of two steady state solutions with different modes. Numerical simulations are employed to illustrate the theoretical results for both the Turing–Hopf bifurcation and spatial resonance bifurcation. Some expected solutions including stable spatially inhomogeneous periodic solutions and coexisting stable spatially steady state solutions evolve from Turing–Hopf bifurcation and spatial resonance bifurcation respectively.     

Nonlinear measure approach for the robust exponential stability analysis of interval inertial Cohen–Grossberg neural networks

This article is concerned with the existence and robust stability of an equilibrium point that related to interval inertial Cohen–Grossberg neural networks. Such condition requires the existence of an equilibrium point to a given system, so the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium point are emerged via nonlinear measure method. Furthermore, with the help of Halanay inequality lemma, differential mean value theorem as well as inequality technique, several sufficient criteria are derived to ascertain the robust stability of the equilibrium point for the addressed system. The results obtained in this article will be shown to be new and they can be considered alternative results to previously results. Finally, the effectiveness and computational issues of the two models for the analysis are discussed by two examples. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 21: 459–469, 2016     

Synthesis of nano/micro scale ZSM-5 from kaolin and its catalytic performance

Nano/micro scale ZSM-5 zeolites were synthesized by using natural kaolin as raw material. The effect of particle size on the catalytic performance of ZSM-5 zeolite for the methanol to olefins conversion was evaluated in a fixed-bed reactor. The results indicated the crystal size had a significant effect on the catalytic stability and the products distribution. ZSM-5 with nanosize showed better tolerance to coke formation, longer catalytic lifetime, and higher selectivity to propylene. The selectivity to propylene on nanosized ZSM-5 was on average 4.5% higher than on the submicron sample and 10% higher than on microsized ZSM-5. After the reaction was conducted for 20 h the ZSM-5 catalyst synthesized from kaolin showed longer lifetime and higher propylene selectivity than the sample synthesized with chemical materials The reason can be explained by the occurence of such elements as Fe, P, and especially Ti.     

Fringe pattern denoising using averaging based on nonlocal self-similarity

Digital image processing for fringe patterns is an important procedure in optical interferometry. Filtering off noise from fringe patterns is one of the key tasks for extraction of the phase field. Spin filters proposed by Yu et al. [Appl. Opt. 33(1994), 41(2002), et al.] have been proven to be effective denoising methods. In this paper, we develop a nonlocal self-similarity filter, which averages similar pixels searched for in whole image instead of in a local fringe direction as the spin filters do. Although simple and free of the fringe orientation estimation, involving more pixels with higher similarity levels, our algorithm has stronger robustness against noise and thus denoises fringe patterns more effectively. Simulation and experimental results show that our algorithm outperforms related filters both in preserving smooth fringes and in reducing blurring effects and quantitative errors.     

c-Theorem for disordered systems

We find an analog of Zamolodchikov's c-theorem for disordered two-dimensional non-interacting systems in their supersymmetric field theory representation. We show that the energy momentum tensor of such field theories must be a part of a supermultiplet, and that a new parameter b can be introduced with the help of that multiplet. b flows along the renormalization group trajectories much like the central charge for unitary two-dimensional field theories. While it has not been established if this flow is irreversible, that is, if b always flows down to lower values, it does so for all the cases worked out so far. b gives a new way to label different conformal field theories for disordered systems whose central charge is always 0. b turns out to be related to the central extension of a certain algebra, a generalization of the Virasoro algebra, which we show may be present at the critical points of these theories. b is also related to the finite size corrections of the physical free energy of disordered systems. We discuss possible applications by computing b for two-dimensional Dirac fermions with random gauge potential, in other words, for U(1∣1) Kac-Moody algebra.     

Magic microfluidic T-junctions: Valving and bubbling

We develop and characterize a simple microfluidic component: a T-junction of two microfluidic channels conveying a gas and a liquid into the junction. It can either microvalve the two fluids or microbubble the gas with its functions switchable and controlled by the inlet pressure ratio of the two fluids. For the microvalving, it requires no actuating, moving and sealing components. Instead, the flow channels and the mechanisms of supplying the two fluids into them provide all these functions automatically. For microbubbling, it generates indistinguishable (monodispersed) bubbles steadily and stably with their size and generation frequency well-controlled.