30793 research outputs found
Sort by
Ontology-Based Modelling and Analysis of Sustainable Polymer Systems: PVC Comparative Polymer and Implementation Perspectives
Get PDFData Availability Statement:
The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author(s).This study develops an ontology-based decision support framework to enhance sustainable polymer recycling within the circular economy. The framework, constructed in Protégé (OWL 2), systematically captures polymer categories with emphasis on polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polylactic acid (PLA), and rigid polyvinyl chloride (PVC) as well as recycling processes, waste classifications, and sustainability indicators such as carbon footprint. Semantic reasoning was implemented using the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) and SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) to infer optimal material flows and sustainable pathways. Validation through a UK industrial case study confirmed both the framework’s applicability and highlighted barriers to large-scale recycling, including performance gaps between virgin and recycled polymers. The comparative analysis showed carbon footprints of 2.8 kg CO2/kg for virgin PET, 1.5 kg CO2/kg for PLA, and 2.1 kg CO2/kg for PVC, underscoring material-specific sustainability challenges. Validation through a UK industrial case study further highlighted additive complexity in PVC as a major barrier to large scale recycling. Bibliometric and thematic analyses conducted in this study revealed persistent gaps in sustainability metrics, lifecycle assessment, and semantic support for circular polymer systems. By integrating these insights, the proposed framework provides a scalable, data-driven tool for evaluating and optimising polymer lifecycles, supporting industry transitions toward resilient, circular, and net-zero material systems.This research received no external funding
Delay Coprime Array: A New Sparse Linear Array for Fast and Robust DOA Estimation
Get PDFIn this letter, we propose a new sparse linear array (SLA), termed delay coprime array (DCA), and correspondingly develop a low-complexity direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm. In terms of structure, unlike existing SLAs, e.g., coprime array, DCA is composed of two “large-spaced” uniform linear arrays (ULAs) with shifted distance which is coprime with the inter-element spacing in the ULAs. In terms of algorithm, the proposed algorithm involves ambiguity and de-ambiguity stages and significantly improves estimation accuracy due to the active use of phase ambiguity instead of hastily suppressing ambiguity. Numerical results indicate that DOA estimation with DCA has comparable performance as the existing DOA estimation with SLAs, but with much lower complexity and simpler configuration. Admittedly, since the proposed method achieves fast calculation without using difference co-array, it losts the ability to identify more sources. Yet, owing to low complexity and simple configuration, DCA and the corresponding algorithm are expected to play a role in DOA estimation
Empowering Older Migrants: Co-Designing Climate Communication with Chinese Seniors in the UK
Get PDFData Availability Statement:
The data relating to this study can be obtained from the first author.This study explores how older Chinese migrants in London engage with climate change discourse using participatory co-design workshops. Although already practising sustainability behaviours such as recycling, this group faces significant barriers—particularly language difficulties and cultural differences—that limit their active participation in broader climate initiatives. The research addresses three key aspects: (1) identifying opportunities for sustainable practices within migrants’ daily routines; (2) understanding their influential roles within families and communities; and (3) examining their trusted sources and preferred channels for climate communication. Results highlight that family and community networks, combined with digital platforms (e.g., WeChat) and visually engaging materials, play essential roles in disseminating climate information. Participants expressed strong motivations rooted in intergenerational responsibility and economic benefits. The findings emphasise the necessity of inclusive and peer-led communication strategies that are attuned to older migrants’ linguistic preferences, media habits, and cultural values—underscoring their significant but often overlooked potential to meaningfully contribute to climate action.This research received no external funding
Lessons from History about Russian Sabotage
Get PDFHistorical information about Soviet sabotage planning is instructive in analyzing Russian sabotage operations today. The Soviet KGB was responsible during the Cold War for preparing target packages on critical infrastructure sites and planning operations against them to be executed during periods of increased political tension preceding war, in what Soviet planners called the “special period”. Sabotage operations, which are executed during the “special period”, are planned and executed differently from disinformation operations, which are executed routinely across the peacetimewartime spectrum. The prevalence of Russian-sponsored sabotage operations in Europe since 2023 is an indication that Russian intelligence services have returned to Soviet-era planning and thresholds for executing sabotage operations
Developing and Defining ‘Young Adult First’ Probation Practice
No full textData availability statement:
The data is not available publicly due to conditions in the contract between the funder and the research team.This article considers how the four tenets of child first youth justice are relevant to work with young adults on probation by defining and applying the concept of ‘young adult first’ probation practice. Interviews were carried out with practitioners working in a specialist young adult probation hub (n = 60) and young adults on probation (n = 35) across three phases of data collection. We use the child first ABCD framework as a lens to consider how the Hub reflects child first approaches. We conclude that the Hub provides a useful example of what ‘young adult first’ practice might look like and that such practice needs to be adapted to reflect the unique life stage of young adulthood.This work was supported by the Ministry of Justice, England and Wales
Distributed Polynomial Set-Membership Fusion Estimation for Target Tracking Systems Under a Binary Encoding Scheme
Get PDFIn this article, a distributed polynomial set-membership fusion estimation approach is proposed for target tracking systems under a binary encoding scheme. Each distance measurement of the considered target is encoded via a binary encoding scheme to facilitate digital transmission. Based on the decoding signals, local estimators are designed by employing a polynomial set-membership estimation method. Furthermore, the effects of possible flipping bits occurring during the transmissions from the distance sensors to the local estimators are considered, and a detection scheme for flipping bits is presented by utilizing the obtained local estimation results. Subsequently, an optimal matrix-weighted distributed fusion estimator is developed in the10.13039/501100001809-National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 61933007, 62373103, 62573219 and 62403130);
Jiangsu Provincial Scientific Research Center of Applied Mathematics (Grant Number: BK20233002);
Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China (Grant Number: BK20241286);
Jiangsu Funding Program for Excellent Postdoctoral Talent of China (Grant Number: 2024ZB601);
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation-CCTEG Joint Support Program (Grant Number: 2025T055ZGMK);
Royal Society of the U.K.;
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany
Learning With Noisy Labels for Industrial Time Series Outlier Detection: A Transformer-Embedded Contrastive Learning Framework
Get PDFIn many real-world industrial scenarios, acquiring accurately labeled data are often challenging due to limited resources or unexpected errors. Learning with noisy labels (LNL) has emerged as a significant research topic, aiming to develop reliable deep learning models using noisy-labeled training data. In this article, a novel Transformer-embedded LNL framework with fuzzy-clustering-assisted contrastive learning is developed for industrial time series outlier detection under noisy labels. Specifically, a fuzzy-clustering-assisted contrastive learning strategy is proposed to enhance the robustness of the Transformer encoder against noisy labels by leveraging the intrinsic characteristics of raw data. Furthermore, a dynamic two-stage training scheme is introduced to train the outlier detector. In the first training stage, the Transformer encoder is pretrained through data reconstruction to improve feature extraction capabilities for industrial time series. In the second stage, the outlier detector is jointly trained with the Transformer encoder, incorporating a joint learning strategy. Furthermore, a label-consistency regularization term is designed to enhance the robustness of the outlier detector against noisy labels by minimizing the discrepancy between the outputs of the outlier detector and the clustering algorithm. The proposed framework is applied to industrial time series data collected from a real-world wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) process. Experimental results demonstrate that the developed framework outperforms selected representative LNL approaches in WAAM outlier detection under both low and high noise ratios.Independent Innovation Foundation of AECC (Grant Number: ZZCX-2023-005);
Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of the Fujian Province of China (Grant Number: 2023J06010);
National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Number: 2024YFC3407000);
Royal Society of the U.K.;
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany
Anti-eavesdropping set-membership state estimation for networked systems: An encryption–decryption scheme
No full textThe material in this paper was not presented at any conference.In this paper, the secure set-membership state estimation problem is investigated for a class of networked linear systems, where the measurement data might be intercepted by potential eavesdroppers. To protect the privacy of system state from information leakage, an artificial-noise-assisted encryptor is dedicatedly designed to transform the measurement data into the ciphertext (i.e., the encrypted data) before being transmitted, and a decryptor is then employed at the state estimator side to decrypt the received ciphertext. Under the proposed encryption–decryption mechanism, the concept of secrecy capacity is introduced to quantify the information security of the signal transmission process. A parameter-dependent state estimator is constructed to confine the estimation error into a time-varying ellipsoidal set. The desired parameters for the state estimator and the encryptor are co-designed by resorting to a set of recursions. Furthermore, sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the ultimate boundedness of the time-varying ellipsoidal set. Finally, two simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our developed secure set-membership state estimation scheme.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 62273087, 61933007, 62273088 and U21A2019, the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of German
Towards Abolition: The Final Years of the British Slave Trade, 1783-1807
No full textThis chapter shows that the British transatlantic slave trade in its final quarter century was a thriving affair which delivered more Africans to the Americas than in any previous quarter-century period. The Caribbean remained easily the most important market region for the disembarkation of these captives. British slaving merchants always looked for the best markets from which they could garner good sales and high average prices and, in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic war years between 1793 and 1807, they were able to dispatch slaves to non-Anglophone markets in the French, Dutch and Danish Caribbean as well as to Anglophone destinations. On the eve of the abolition of the British slave trade in 1807, the ‘Guinea’ traffic was still economically viable, despite abolitionist pressures, but the most important British Caribbean destination, Jamaica, was the one island where slave deliveries stood a good chance of continuing and increasing in the future: other British islands in the eastern Caribbean had reached a point in their development where fresh slave imports were not so vital owing to demographic improvements among the black population
Diversifying the Restorative Sector: Lessons from Practitioners
Get PDFRestorative justice is increasingly integrated into government policy and services, extending beyond criminal justice to other sectors. However, as this process of institutionalisation gathers pace there is a danger that practices can become removed from their community roots and consequently becoming less representative of the diverse populations that they are meant to serve, particularly in post-colonial societies. This paper is based on research that used a participatory action framework to engage restorative practitioners from racially, ethnically and culturally minoritised backgrounds in England and Wales. The aim of the research was to centre the voices of practitioners in both identifying challenges and providing potential solutions for a more inclusive and representative sector. Practitioners identified the need for raising awareness, making the sector more accessible, the importance of language used and the cultural capital available to individuals, and the ways in which these issues often reflect the dynamics of established power relations. Practitioners also reflected on the need for better representation and training of leadership in the sector. It is clear from this research that resources need to be directed towards addressing these challenges whilst keeping in mind the specific needs of minoritised groups...
Data sources:
Access Repository Dashboard
Do you manage Open Research Online? Become a CORE Member to access insider analytics, issue reports and manage access to outputs from your repository in the CORE Repository Dashboard! 👇