Ideally, to achieve optimal production in agriculture, crop stress needs to be measured in real-time, and plant inputs managed in response. However, many important physiological responses like photosynthesis are diffi...Ideally, to achieve optimal production in agriculture, crop stress needs to be measured in real-time, and plant inputs managed in response. However, many important physiological responses like photosynthesis are difficult to measure, and current trade-offs between cost, robustness, and spatial measurement capacity of available plant sensors may prevent practical in-field application of most current sensing techniques. This paper investigates a novel application of laser speckle imaging of a plant leaf as a sensor with an aim, ultimately, to detect indicators of crop stress: changes to the dynamic properties of leaf topography on the scale of the wavelength of laser light. In our previous published work, an initial prototype of the laser speckle acquisition system specific for plant status measurements together with data processing algorithms were developed. In this paper, we report a new area based statistical method that improves robustness of the data processing against disturbances from various sources. Water and light responses of the laser speckle measurements from cabbage leaves taken by the developed apparatus are exhibited via growth chamber experiments. Experimental evidence indicates that the properties of the laser speckle patterns from a leaf are closely related to the physiological status of the leaf. This technology has the potential to be robust, cost effective, and relatively inexpensive to scale.展开更多
Night sky cooling is explored as an alternative to the conventional cooling technologies using fossil fuels. The night sky cooling method is based on the long wave radiation of unglazed collectors to the sky at night....Night sky cooling is explored as an alternative to the conventional cooling technologies using fossil fuels. The night sky cooling method is based on the long wave radiation of unglazed collectors to the sky at night. An evaluation of the night sky cooling system is present for a residential building in three cities of Australia, namely Alice Springs, Darwin and Melbourne. The system comprises an unglazed flat plate solar collector integrated with borehole storage. It uses night sky radiation to reduce the temperature of the ground near to the boreholes. The system was simulated with TRNSYS, a transient simulation program. The simulation results for adequately sized systems show that night sky radiation is able to reduce the coolth storage borehole temperature and the proposed system is able to meet the cooling load of the residential building simulated in three locations. Borchole lengths of 270, 318 and 106 m are required for coolth storage with 90, 260 and 14 m2 collector area for heat rejection in Alice Springs, Darwin and Melbourne, respectively. At the 20th simulation year, the proposed system is able to achieve a system cooling coefficient of performance of 2.2 in Alice Springs, and 2.8 in Darwin and Melbourne.展开更多
Congestion pricing is an important component of urban intelligent transport system.The efficiency,equity and the environmental impacts associated with road pricing schemes are key issues that should be considered befo...Congestion pricing is an important component of urban intelligent transport system.The efficiency,equity and the environmental impacts associated with road pricing schemes are key issues that should be considered before such schemes are implemented.This paper focuses on the cordon-based pricing with distance tolls,where the tolls are determined by a nonlinear function of a vehicles' travel distance within a cordon,termed as toll charge function.The optimal tolls can give rise to:1) higher total social benefits,2) better levels of equity,and 3) reduced environmental impacts(e.g.,less emission).Firstly,a deterministic equilibrium(DUE) model with elastic demand is presented to evaluate any given toll charge function.The distance tolls are non-additive,thus a modified path-based gradient projection algorithm is developed to solve the DUE model.Then,to quantitatively measure the equity level of each toll charge function,the Gini coefficient is adopted to measure the equity level of the flows in the entire transport network based on equilibrium flows.The total emission level is used to reflect the impacts of distance tolls on the environment.With these two indexes/measurements for the efficiency,equity and environmental issues as well as the DUE model,a multi-objective bi-level programming model is then developed to determine optimal distance tolls.The multi-objective model is converted to a single level model using the goal programming.A genetic algorithm(GA) is adopted to determine solutions.Finally,a numerical example is presented to verify the methodology.展开更多
文摘Ideally, to achieve optimal production in agriculture, crop stress needs to be measured in real-time, and plant inputs managed in response. However, many important physiological responses like photosynthesis are difficult to measure, and current trade-offs between cost, robustness, and spatial measurement capacity of available plant sensors may prevent practical in-field application of most current sensing techniques. This paper investigates a novel application of laser speckle imaging of a plant leaf as a sensor with an aim, ultimately, to detect indicators of crop stress: changes to the dynamic properties of leaf topography on the scale of the wavelength of laser light. In our previous published work, an initial prototype of the laser speckle acquisition system specific for plant status measurements together with data processing algorithms were developed. In this paper, we report a new area based statistical method that improves robustness of the data processing against disturbances from various sources. Water and light responses of the laser speckle measurements from cabbage leaves taken by the developed apparatus are exhibited via growth chamber experiments. Experimental evidence indicates that the properties of the laser speckle patterns from a leaf are closely related to the physiological status of the leaf. This technology has the potential to be robust, cost effective, and relatively inexpensive to scale.
文摘Night sky cooling is explored as an alternative to the conventional cooling technologies using fossil fuels. The night sky cooling method is based on the long wave radiation of unglazed collectors to the sky at night. An evaluation of the night sky cooling system is present for a residential building in three cities of Australia, namely Alice Springs, Darwin and Melbourne. The system comprises an unglazed flat plate solar collector integrated with borehole storage. It uses night sky radiation to reduce the temperature of the ground near to the boreholes. The system was simulated with TRNSYS, a transient simulation program. The simulation results for adequately sized systems show that night sky radiation is able to reduce the coolth storage borehole temperature and the proposed system is able to meet the cooling load of the residential building simulated in three locations. Borchole lengths of 270, 318 and 106 m are required for coolth storage with 90, 260 and 14 m2 collector area for heat rejection in Alice Springs, Darwin and Melbourne, respectively. At the 20th simulation year, the proposed system is able to achieve a system cooling coefficient of performance of 2.2 in Alice Springs, and 2.8 in Darwin and Melbourne.
基金Projects (61304198,61374195) supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of ChinaProjects (2013M530159,2014T70351) supported by the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
文摘Congestion pricing is an important component of urban intelligent transport system.The efficiency,equity and the environmental impacts associated with road pricing schemes are key issues that should be considered before such schemes are implemented.This paper focuses on the cordon-based pricing with distance tolls,where the tolls are determined by a nonlinear function of a vehicles' travel distance within a cordon,termed as toll charge function.The optimal tolls can give rise to:1) higher total social benefits,2) better levels of equity,and 3) reduced environmental impacts(e.g.,less emission).Firstly,a deterministic equilibrium(DUE) model with elastic demand is presented to evaluate any given toll charge function.The distance tolls are non-additive,thus a modified path-based gradient projection algorithm is developed to solve the DUE model.Then,to quantitatively measure the equity level of each toll charge function,the Gini coefficient is adopted to measure the equity level of the flows in the entire transport network based on equilibrium flows.The total emission level is used to reflect the impacts of distance tolls on the environment.With these two indexes/measurements for the efficiency,equity and environmental issues as well as the DUE model,a multi-objective bi-level programming model is then developed to determine optimal distance tolls.The multi-objective model is converted to a single level model using the goal programming.A genetic algorithm(GA) is adopted to determine solutions.Finally,a numerical example is presented to verify the methodology.
