Cooperative activation of sodium channels for downgrading the energy efficiency in neuronal information processing

The Hodgkin–Huxley model assumes independent ion channel activation,although mutual interactions are common in biological systems.This raises the problem why neurons would favor independent over cooperative channel activation.In this study,we evaluate how cooperative activation of sodium channels affects the neuron’s information processing and energy consumption.Simulations of the stochastic Hodgkin–Huxley model with cooperative activation of sodium channels show that,while cooperative activation enhances neuronal information processing capacity,it greatly increases the neuron’s energy consumption.As a result,cooperative activation of sodium channel degrades the energy efficiency for neuronal information processing.This discovery improves our understanding of the design principles for neural systems,and may provide insights into future designs of the neuromorphic computing devices as well as systematic understanding of pathological mechanisms for neural diseases.

Influence of the Ambient Temperature on the Efficiency of Gas Turbines

In hot and arid regions like the Saharan area,effective methods for cooling and humidifying intake air are essential.This study explores the utilization of a water trickle cooler as a promising solution to meet this objective.In particular,the HASSI MESSAOUD area is considered as a testbed.The water trickle cooler is chosen for its adaptability to arid conditions.Modeling results demonstrate its effectiveness in conditioning air before it enters the compressor.The cooling system achieves a significant temperature reduction of 6 to 8 degrees Celsius,enhancing mass flow rate dynamics by 3 percent compared to standard cases without cooling.Moreover,the cooling system contributes to a remarkable 10 percent reduction in power consumption of gas turbines and a notable 10 percent increase in turbine efficiency.These findings highlight the potential of water trickle coolers in improving the performance and efficiency of gas turbine systems in hot and dry climates.

A New Dynamic and Vertical Photovoltaic Integrated Building Envelope for High-Rise Glaze-Facade Buildings

Substantially glazed facades are extensively used in contemporary high-rise buildings to achieve attractive architectural aesthetics.Inherent conflicts exist among architectural aesthetics,building energy consumption,and solar energy harvesting for glazed facades.In this study,we addressed these conflicts by introducing a new dynamic and vertical photovoltaic integrated building envelope(dvPVBE)that offers extraordinary flexibility with weather-responsive slat angles and blind positions,superior architectural aesthetics,and notable energy-saving potential.Three hierarchical control strategies were proposed for different scenarios of the dvPVBE:power generation priority(PGP),natural daylight priority(NDP),and energy-saving priority(ESP).Moreover,the PGP and ESP strategies were further analyzed in the simulation of a dvPVBE.An office room integrated with a dvPVBE was modeled using EnergyPlus.The influence of the dvPVBE in improving the building energy efficiency and corresponding optimal slat angles was investigated under the PGP and ESP control strategies.The results indicate that the application of dvPVBEs in Beijing can provide up to 131%of the annual energy demand of office rooms and significantly increase the annual net energy output by at least 226%compared with static photovoltaic(PV)blinds.The concept of this novel dvPVBE offers a viable approach by which the thermal load,daylight penetration,and energy generation can be effectively regulated.

Comprehensive Examination of Solar Panel Design: A Focus on Thermal Dynamics

In the 21st century, the deployment of ground-based Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Modules has seen exponential growth, driven by increasing demands for green, clean, and renewable energy sources. However, their usage is constrained by certain limitations. Notably, the efficiency of solar PV modules on the ground peaks at a maximum of 25%, and there are concerns regarding their long-term reliability, with an expected lifespan of approximately 25 years without failures. This study focuses on analyzing the thermal efficiency of PV Modules. We have investigated the temperature profile of PV Modules under varying environmental conditions, such as air velocity and ambient temperature, utilizing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). This analysis is crucial as the efficiency of PV Modules is significantly impacted by changes in the temperature differential relative to the environment. Furthermore, the study highlights the effect of airflow over solar panels on their temperature. It is found that a decrease in the temperature of the PV Module increases Open Circuit Voltage, underlining the importance of thermal management in optimizing solar panel performance.

Dynamic simulation and efficiency analysis of beam pumping system

An improved whole model of beam pumping system was built. In the detail, for surface transmission system(STS), a new mathematical model was established considering the influence of some factors on the STS's torsional vibration, such as the time variation characteristic of equivalent stiffness of belt and equivalent rotational inertia of crank. For the sucker rod string(SRS), an improved mathematical model was built considering the influence of some parameters on the SRS's longitudinal vibration, such as the nonlinear friction of plunger, hydraulic loss of pump and clearance leakage. The dynamic response and system efficiency of whole system were analyzed. The results show that there is a jumping phenomenon in the amplitude frequency curve, and the system efficiency is sensitive to motor power, pump diameter, stroke number, ratio of gas and oil, and submergence depth. The simulation results have important significance for improving the efficiency of beam pumping system.

Achieving Energy Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks Using Dynamic Channel Polling and Packet Concatenation

There has been a significant interest of researchers to combine different schemes focused on optimizing energy performance while developing aMAC protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks(WSNs).In this paper,we propose to integrate two cross-layer schemes:dynamic channel polling and packet concatenation using a recent asynchronous MAC protocol“Adaptive&Dynamic Polling MAC”(ADPMAC).ADP-MAC dynamically selects the polling interval distribution based on characterization of incoming traffic patterns using Coefficient of variation(CV).Packet Concatenation(PC)refers to combining the individually generated data packets into a single super packet and sending it at the polling instant.Also,the Block Acknowledgement(BA)scheme has been developed for ADP-MAC to work in conjunction with the packet concatenation.The proposed schemes have been implemented in Tiny-OS for Mica2 platform and Avrora emulator has been used for conducting experiments.Simulation results have revealed that the performance both in terms of energy&packet loss improves when ADP-MAC is used in conjunction with the additional features of PC&BA.Furthermore,the proposed scheme has been compared with a stateof-art packet concatenation primitive PiP(Packet-in-Packet).It has been observed that ADP-MAC supersedes the performance of PiP in terms of PDR(Packet Delivery Ratio)due to better management of synchronization between source and sink.

Dynamics and Inequalities in Energy Efficiency in China

As rapid economic growth in China in recent decades, the quality of economic growth through improvement of energy efficiency has attracted great attention. This paper evaluated energy efficiency of 29 provinces in China between 2000 and 2016 based on a global non-radial directional distance function. Moreover, the dynamics of energy efficiency were investigated using the non-radial global Malmquist-type efficiency index. The paper also sheds light on the evolution of inequalities in energy efficiency by decomposing interprovincial inequality into its within-region and between-region components. The findings of the study are as follows. First, the national energy efficiency was 0.49 in 2016, which indicated that 51% improvement could be made to reach the global technology frontier. Tianjin, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Shandong and Guangdong had the best energy efficiency in 2016, while Ningxia and Xinjiang had the lowest performance. Second, the national annual growth rate of energy efficiency was 3.4% between 2011 and 2016, which was a positive sign of energy efficiency improvement. Shandong made the biggest improvement in energy efficiency from 2011 to 2016, with 26.2% annual growth rate. Lastly, within-region inequality saw a decreasing trend after 2010 and was overtaken by between-region inequality in 2016.

Dynamic change of agricultural energy efficiency and its influencing factors in China

In order to practice the concept of‘lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets’and promote the green development of agriculture,it is necessary to improve the efficiency of agricultural energy utilization.Based on the panel data of 28 provinces from 1995 to 2018,this paper calculated China’s agricultural energy input from two categories of direct energy and indirect energy,and used EBM(Epsilon-based Measure)mixed distance function model to measure the energy efficiency of agriculture in China.The nuclear density function and spatial autocorrelation were used to analyze the dynamic evolution of agricultural energy efficiency,and the dynamic panel model was used to analyze the influencing factors of agricultural energy efficiency.The results showed that:①From 1995 to 2018,the total agricultural energy input had increased year by year in China,with an average annual growth rate of 2%.Energy input structure changed from indirect energy-based to direct energy-based.Agricultural energy efficiency showed an evolutionary trend of‘rising-stagnating-rising rapidly’in China.The agricultural energy efficiency was generally low in China,and there was a large space for improvement in agricultural energy efficiency.②From 1995 to 2018,the average annual growth rate of agricultural energy efficiency in the eastern,central and western regions was 2.7%,1.9%and 1.4%respectively.In 2018,the agricultural energy efficiency in the eastern,central and western regions was 0.81,0.71 and 0.59 respectively.The gap between regions was expanding rapidly,and the agricultural energy efficiency in the central and western regions needed to be improved.③From 1995 to 2018,the agricultural energy efficiency of each province was polarized and the absolute gap was widened.There was obvious improvement in agricultural energy efficiency in Guangdong,Shandong,Jiangxi,Jiangsu,Liaoning and Tianjin,while the agricultural energy efficiency of Xinjiang,Guizhou,Zhejiang,Shanghai,and Inner Mongolia deteriorated.④From 1995 to 2018,there was no global spatial correlation of China’s agricultural energy efficiency.However,local‘high-high’concentration gradually appeared in the eastern region since 2010.⑤The first lag of energy efficiency had a significant positive impact on agricultural energy efficiency,and agricultural energy efficiency improvement had a time lag.The level of human capital,per capita net income of farmers and the level of urbanizaton had a significant positive impact on agricultural energy efficiency.The disaster rate,the level of development of secondary and tertiary industries,and the level of opening up had a significant negative impact on agricultural energy efficiency.In the implementation of the strategy of rural revitalization,we should focus on the central and western regions,take the cultivation of professional farmers as the key,focus on improving agricultural production conditions,enhance the level of cooperation between regions,exert the leading role of the secondary and tertiary industries,and enhance the ability of agricultural disaster prevention and mitigation.

Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Green Total-factor Water-use Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors in China

In this study,we developed an evaluation index system for green total-factor water-use efficiency(GTFWUE)which reflected both economic and green efficiencies of water resource utilization.Then we measured the GTFWUE of 30 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions(hereafter provinces)in China(not including Tibet,Hong Kong,Macao,Taiwan as no data)from 2000 to 2018 using a minimum distance to the strong frontier model that contained an undesirable output.We further analyzed the regional differences and spatial correlations of GTFWUE using these values based on Global and Local Moran’s I statistics,and empirically determined the factors affecting GTFWUE using a spatial econometric model.The evaluation results revealed that the GTFWUE differed substantially between the regions.The provinces with high and low GTFWUE values were located in the coastal and inland areas of China,respectively.The eastern region had a significantly higher GTFWUE than the central and western regions.The GTFWUEs for all three regions(eastern,central,and western regions)decreased slowly from 2000 to 2011(except 2005),remained stable from 2012 to 2016,and rapidly increased in 2017 before decreasing again in 2018.We found significant spatial correlations between the provincial GTFWUEs.The GTFWUE for most provinces belonged to the high-high or low-low cluster region,revealing a significant spatial clustering effect of provincial GTFWUEs.We also found that China’s GTFWUE was highly promoted by economic growth,population size,opening-up level,and urbanization level,and was evidently hindered by water endowment,technological progress,and government influence.However,the water-use structure had little impact on GTFWUE.This study fully demonstrated that the water use mode would be improved,and water resources needed to be used more efficiently and green in China.Moreover,based on the findings of this study,several policy recommendations were proposed from the aspects of cross-regional cooperation,economy,society,and institution.

Panel Data Based Dynamic Evaluation of Agricultural Resource Utilization Efficiency: A Case Study of Hebei Province

Resource utilization efficiency is one of important factors influencing modern agricultural development. This paper evaluates agricultural resource utilization efficiency of Hebei Province in the Eleventh Five-Year Plan period by dynamic comprehensive evaluation method. Evaluation results indicate that regional disparity in agricultural resource utilization efficiency is significant, and the disparity is increasing year by year.

Energy Efficiency of Reactive Dynamic Compensators

A parameter that allows an evaluation of power quality transmitted, or distributed, between energy source and the final user is electric system power factor. Among other aspects, a bigger power factor, close to unit value, relieves operational conditions of lines and cables, besides, it improves feeder＇s voltage behavior. Due to load variation along the day, the dynamic compensation of power factor allows maintaining this parameter close to the ideal. This paper brings a study about a reactive dynamic compensator based on the voltage control in a capacitive element, varying the reactive energy in accordance with the system demand, everything from the energy efficiency point of view. In distribution systems, the losses due to this variable compensation can be lower than in other compensation methods and also the voltage presents a better behavior, justifying its application.

Efficient computation for dynamic responses of systems with time-varying characteristics

Based on Neumman series and epsilon-algorithm, an efficient computation for dynamic responses of systems with arbitrary time-varying characteristics is investigated. Avoiding the calculation for the inverses of the equivalent stiffness matrices in each time step, the computation effort of the proposed method is reduced compared with the full analysis of Newmark method. The validity and applications of the proposed method are illustrated by a 4-DOF spring-mass system with periodical time-varying stiffness properties and a truss structure with arbitrary time-varying lumped mass. It shows that good approximate results can be obtained by the proposed method compared with the responses obtained by the full analysis of Newmark method.

Theory of an Optimal Dynamical Water Resource Management Policy

Water markets even though not perfect and require a lot of effort to establish are considered as a robust tool to address water management issues around the world. However, the existing literature does not provide an optimal water resource management policy. To create a perfect water market, the government needs to identify the potential number of suppliers/producers and consumers of water against various extraction/supply/production rates of water, i.e., to identify a supply and a demand curve for number of suppliers/producers of water against each production rate in economy. This article presents a theory which is practically applicable for an optimal dynamical water resource management policy (JEL H20, H23, H27).

On Energy Efficient Design for Dynamic CoMP Transmission in K-Tier Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Motivated by the objective of pursuing revenue, improvement in coverage and reduction in energy cost for wireless communication networks have been of great significance for mobile operators. Therefore, heterogeneous cellular networks(HCNs) and Coordinated Multipoint(Co MP) transmission are considered as promising solutions to enhance the performances of wireless communication systems. This paper analyzed the K-tier HCNs with a dynamic downlink Co MP scheme, in which the flexible clusters of cooperative stations are determined by a connecting threshold θ. Using stochastic geometry, the coverage probability(CP) and energy efficiency(EE) of a K-tier HCN operating under this scheme are derived, based on which the trade-off between CP and EE is discovered and discussed. Simulation results show the validity of our derivations. The proposed schememay significantly reduce energy consumption sacrificing a small amount of CP, and outperforms the fixed scheme as well. The CP-EE trade-off are also revealed, whichsuggests suitable trade-off points between CP and EE that will deliver the maximum economic profitability. Tendencies discovered in this paper may provide the operators with opportunities for further optimization in pursuit of economic profitability.

A dynamic-mode-decomposition-based acceleration method for unsteady adjoint equations at low Reynolds numbers

The computational cost of unsteady adjoint equations remains high in adjoint-based unsteady aerodynamic op-timization.In this letter,the solution of unsteady adjoint equations is accelerated by dynamic mode decomposi-tion(DMD).The pseudo-time marching of every real-time step is approximated as an infinite-dimensional linear dynamical system.Thereafter,DMD is utilized to analyze the adjoint vectors sampled from these pseudo-time marching.First-order zero frequency mode is selected to accelerate the pseudo-time marching of unsteady adjoint equations in every real-time step.Through flow past a stationary circular cylinder and an unsteady aerodynamic shape optimization example,the efficiency of solving unsteady adjoint equations is significantly improved.Re-sults show that one hundred adjoint vectors contains enough information about the pseudo-time dynamics,and the adjoint dominant mode can be precisely predicted only by five snapshots produced from the adjoint vectors,which indicates DMD analysis for pseudo-time marching of unsteady adjoint equations is efficient.

Dynamic transfer and driving mechanisms of the coupling and coordination of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency in China

The joint study of agriculture and rural areas is of great significance for safeguarding agricultural development,revitalizing rural areas,and enhancing farmers'well-being.This paper aims to assess the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of the coupling and coordination degree of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency and their dynamic transfer law and driving mechanisms,based on panel data of 31 provinces(municipalities and autonomous regions)in China from 2010 to 2020.The results showed:(1)Good coupling and coordination of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency,with reduced temporal differentiation degrees between regions;(2)Significant spatial autocorrelation between the overall coupling and coordination degrees of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency,forming cold spot and hot spot spatial patterns in the western and eastern parts,respectively,with a central transition area;(3)A spillover effect of the dynamic transfer process,with a manifested specific law as"club convergence","Matthew effect",and progressive development characteristics;(4)The key roles of the natural,social,economic,and policy indicators in the coupling and coordination development process of agricultural resilience and rural land use efficiency.However,the selected indicators showed substantial spatial differences in their influences on the coupling and coordination process between provinces.

Increasing realism in modelling energy losses in railway vehicles and their impact to energy-efficient train control

The reduction of energy consumption is an increasingly important topic of the railway system.Energy-efficient train control(EETC)is one solution,which refers to mathematically computing when to accelerate,which cruising speed to hold,how long one should coast over a suitable space,and when to brake.Most approaches in literature and industry greatly simplify a lot of nonlinear effects,such that they ignore mostly the losses due to energy conversion in traction components and auxiliaries.To fill this research gap,a series of increasingly detailed nonlinear losses is described and modelled.We categorize an increasing detail in this representation as four levels.We study the impact of those levels of detail on the energy optimal speed trajectory.To do this,a standard approach based on dynamic programming is used,given constraints on total travel time.This evaluation of multiple test cases highlights the influence of the dynamic losses and the power consumption of auxiliary components on railway trajectories,also compared to multiple benchmarks.The results show how the losses can make up 50%of the total energy consumption for an exemplary trip.Ignoring them would though result in consistent but limited errors in the optimal trajectory.Overall,more complex trajectories can result in less energy consumption when including the complexity of nonlinear losses than when a simpler model is considered.Those effects are stronger when the trajectory includes many acceleration and braking phases.

Highly-Efficient Aerodynamic Optimal Design of Rotor Airfoil Using Viscous Adjoint Method

In order to overcome the efficiency problem of the conventional gradient-based optimal design method,a highly-efficient viscous adjoint-based RANS equations method is applied to the aerodynamic optimal design of hovering rotor airfoil.The C-shaped body-fitted mesh is firstly automatically generated around the airfoil by solving the Poisson equations,and the Navier-Stokes(N-S)equations combined with Spalart-Allmaras(S-A)one-equation turbulence model are used as the governing equations to acquire the reliable flowfield variables.Then,according to multi-constrained characteristics of the optimization of high lift/drag ratio for hovering rotor airfoil,its corresponding adjoint equations,boundary conditions and gradient expressions are newly derived.On these bases,two representative rotor airfoils,NACA0012 airfoil and SC1095 airfoil,are selected as numerical examples to optimize their synthesized aerodynamic characteristics about lift/drag ratio in hover,and better aerodynamic performance of optimal airfoils are obtained compared with the baseline.Furthermore,the new designed rotor with the optimized rotor airfoil has better hover aerodynamic characteristics compared with the baseline rotor.In contrast to the baseline airfoils optimized by the finite difference method,it is demonstrated that the adjoint optimal algorithm itself is practical and highly-efficient for the aerodynamic optimization of hover rotor airfoil.

Dynamic Automated Infrastructure for Efficient Cloud Data Centre

We propose a dynamic automated infrastructure model for the cloud data centre which is aimed as an efficient service stipulation for the enormous number of users.The data center and cloud computing technologies have been at the moment rendering attention to major research and development efforts by companies,governments,and academic and other research institutions.In that,the difficult task is to facilitate the infrastructure to construct the information available to application-driven services and make business-smart decisions.On the other hand,the challenges that remain are the provision of dynamic infrastructure for applications and information anywhere.Further,developing technologies to handle private cloud computing infrastructure and operations in a completely automated and secure way has been critical.As a result,the focus of this article is on service and infrastructure life cycle management.We also show how cloud users interact with the cloud,how they request services from the cloud,how they select cloud strategies to deliver the desired service,and how they analyze their cloud consumption.

Dynamic Spectrum Control-Assisted Secure and Efficient Transmission Scheme in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Heterogeneous cellular networks(HCNs)are envisioned as a promising architecture to provide seamless wireless coverage and increase network capacity.However,the densified multi-tier network architecture introduces excessive intra-and cross-tier interference and makes HCNs vulnerable to eavesdropping attacks.In this article,a dynamic spectrum control(DSC)-assisted transmission scheme is proposed for HCNs to strengthen network security and increase the network capacity.Specifically,the proposed DSC-assisted transmission scheme leverages the idea of block cryptography to generate sequence families,which represent the transmission decisions,by performing iterative and orthogonal sequence transformations.Based on the sequence families,multiple users can dynamically occupy different frequency slots for data transmission simultaneously.In addition,the collision probability of the data transmission is analyzed,which results in closed-form expressions of the reliable transmission probability and the secrecy probability.Then,the upper and lower bounds of network capacity are further derived with given requirements on the reliable and secure transmission probabilities.Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DSC-assisted scheme can outperform the benchmark scheme in terms of security performance.Finally,the impacts of key factors in the proposed DSC-assisted scheme on the network capacity and security are evaluated and discussed.