You Wu

In IoT-centric adaptive traffic signal control, existing multi-agent deep reinforcement learning methods are constrained by insufficient communication mechanisms. These limitations become particularly evident when handling the dynamic traffic networks and high-dimensional action spaces, leading to unstable environmental observability and diminished control effectiveness. Motivated by the idea of policy entropy maximization and the paradigm of centralized training and decentralized execution, the MASAC (Multi-Agent Soft Actor-Critic) algorithm was developed. However, the algorithm exhibited issues such as unstable training and low sample efficiency during its application. To enhance MASAC’s training speed and stability, the prioritized experience replay was introduced, leading to the development of a Multi-Agent Soft Actor-Critic algorithm based on prioritized experience replay(MPER-SAC), which improves the model’s learning efficiency. Joint simulation experiments using SUMO and Carla demonstrated that the proposed algorithm increased the average reward in the traffic environment by 9.55%, boosted average vehicle speed by 14.52%, and reduced average queue length and average intersection delay by 15.35% and 11.26%, respectively. Additionally, the ablation study displayed significant performance improvements, with an 11.36% increase in average reward, a 11.65% reduction in average queue length, and a 8.12% decrease in total travel delay. Additional performance metrics also exhibited varying degrees of enhancement.

As a medium to understand the nature of glass transition, ultrastable glasses have garnered increasing attention for their significance in fundamental science and technological applications. Most studies have produced ultrastable glasses through a surface-controlled process using physical vapor deposition. Here, we demonstrate an approach to accessing ultrastable glasses via the glass-to-glass transition, a bulk transformation that is inherently free from size constraints and anisotropy. The resulting ultrastable glass exhibits a significantly enhanced density (improved by 2.3%), along with high thermodynamic, kinetic, and mechanical stability. Furthermore, we propose that this method of accessing ultrastable glasses is general for metallic glasses, based on the examination of the competitive relationship between the glass-to-glass transition and crystallization. This strategy is expected to facilitate the proliferation of the ultrastable glass family, helping to resolve the instability issues of glass materials and devices and deepen our understanding of glasses and the glass transition.

Although there are numerous published studies that have helped to enhance our understanding about methods or approaches to eco-design products, there are limited publications that focus on the study of eco-redesign of lighting products. Redesign of existing products is one of the most applied design-related activities in industry, and eco-redesign is one of the most suitable eco-design interventions that can be applied by manufacturers when they want to include environmental considerations in their existing products. This type of eco-design intervention is incremental, which typically means less change, and therefore, lower investments of time, money, and correspondent risks. It consists of selecting an existing product from a given portfolio and redesigning it to reduce its environmental impact. This paper presents and demonstrates, with an example of a manufacturing company, a method to eco-redesign lighting products. The method is based in the iterative combination of an analysis-synthesis approach involving: (1) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impact of the lighting product, (2) Identification of the specific issues which typically cause the impact in the product life cycle stages and components, and (3) Specific eco-lighting design strategies to address the areas of impact (and causes of that impact) identified with the LCA. This method can be applied as a stand-alone method or be integrated into existing design and development processes and methods already used by companies, to facilitate its adoption, and hence impact. Insights and limitations after the application of the method are also discussed.

Fine-grained sedimentary rock (FGSR) reservoirs in a deep-water sedimentary environment from the Late Triassic Yanchang Formation in the Ordos Basin in central China have huge potential for tight oil production. According to the comprehensive research of fluid inclusion experiment, scanning electron microscopy, cathodoluminescence, thin section identification, and whole rock analysis, the petrographic characteristics, fluorescence spectrum parameters, and the homogenization temperature of oil inclusions and associated brine inclusions in the FGSR reservoir were analyzed to explore the coupling relationship between densification characteristics and tight oil accumulation of the FGSR reservoir. The results show the FGSR reservoir diagenesis has experienced compaction, cementation, and multiple stages of dissolution. A comprehensive analysis of burial history shows that the Chang 7 Member FGSR reservoir in the study area has three phases of oil charging, corresponding to the geologic time range of 132–124, 120–102, and 98–97 Ma. The organic acid produced by the first-stage oil charging accelerated the dissolution of feldspar and cuttings, and the dissolution pores increased significantly. Then, the organic acid in the second-stage oil charging accelerated the dissolution, and the abnormally high hydrocarbon expulsion pressure inhibited the damage of compaction on the pores of FGSR reservoir. Finally, the thermal evolution degree of source rocks reached the highest in the third-stage oil charging. The constructive effect of large-scale organic acids on pores and the protective effect of the chlorite membrane on pores inhibited the densification process of the FGSR reservoir. In short, the FGSR reservoir has experienced a cyclical reservoir densification process of “reducing porosity–increasing porosity–preserving porosity.” The coupling of pore evolution and oil charging of the FGSR reservoir is the key to the extensive accumulation and large-scale reservoir formation of tight oil in the Chang 7 Member of the Yanchang Formation in the Zhenyuan area, southwest Ordos Basin. The significance of the study may help to understand the process of the tight oil accumulation and predict the tight oil of the FGSR reservoir distribution.

Nowadays, eco-accounting is widely used in sustainable consumption and production. In order to incentivise consumers’ sustainable consumption and enhance their environmental awareness, a novel mobile based eco-accounting infrastructure has been developed by this research. It applies the eco-credit values to incentivise the consumer’s recycling activities and utilises the eco-cost values to record the consumer’s footprint obtained through consumption. The infrastructure consists of four modules: the consumer’s eco-account, eco-shopping, eco-recycling and eco-incentives. In order to implement the mobile eco-accounting infrastructure, multiple mobile technologies have been applied to develop the novel functions of the mobile app, including a new QR encryption algorithm, embedded Google maps, advanced Internet-based services and multi-language support. A case study is conducted by demonstrating the consumer’s purchasing and recycling processes. It proves that the novel mobile application system has been successfully developed, which provides an effective support for the implementation and demonstration of the eco-accounting infrastructure.

An approach for integrating life-cycle assessment (LCA) into the eco-design of lighting products was developed, and LCAs of five lighting products that are currently on the market were then carried out using this approach. Based on the results of these LCAs, the sustainability requests for lighting products were derived and embedded into the product design specification (PDS), thus ensuring that any product developed according to the PDS would have the desired eco-design features. A new sustainable lighting product was then designed according to the PDS and manufactured, after which the new product underwent LCA. Upon comparing the results of the LCA of the new product with the LCA results for the existing lighting products, the newly designed product was found to provide better environmental performance than the existing products (a 27–58% reduction in environmental impact).