33,625 research outputs found
Fragmentation of corrosion protection coatings: a combined finite-element discrete-element study
No full textIron carbonate scales form compact corrosion protection layers on the internal surfaces of pipelines transporting hydrocarbons. Scales can be removed by the action of the fluid flow and by other mechanisms with the consequent development of severe localized damages. A key safety role is therefore played by the adhesion to the metal substrate, which may be identified through indentation tests supplemented by simulation models of the experiment. Eventually, indentation induces the fragmentation of the coating, a phenomenon rather difficult to be reproduced. Some computational issues relevant to the use, in this context, of finite element and discrete element techniques are discussed in this contribution
Portraying disability with trauma: A case study of documentary screenwriting in presenting visually impaired subject
No full textScreenwriting for documentary films involves authentically and ethically representing real-life subjects, especially challenging when portraying disability. This article examines the screenwriting process for Invisible Summit (2023), directed by Fan Lixin, documenting Zhang Hong, the first visually impaired Asian mountaineer to summit Mount Everest. The research explores how the director balances narrative storytelling with ethical considerations, avoiding stereotypes and exploitation. Through a detailed case study, the analysis delves into Zhang Hong’s early childhood trauma and his sensitivity to social perceptions of disability, highlighting the importance of respecting the subject’s dignity. The article integrates insights from disability studies and trauma theory, advocating for a nuanced portrayal that transcends the ‘inspiration porn’ trope. The findings emphasize the necessity for documentary filmmakers to engage deeply with their subjects, ensuring narratives are grounded in empathy and reality. This approach enriches the documentary’s narrative and challenges traditional media representations of disability, promoting more inclusive and respectful portrayals. The study concludes that authentic representation in documentary screenwriting requires a commitment to ethical storytelling, respecting the complexities of the subject’s experiences and fostering a deeper understanding of disability and trauma among audiences
Vision-based proprioception and tactile sensing for soft robots
No full textSoft pneumatic manipulators are attractive for industrial and human-interactive tasks because of their inherent compliance, yet practical deployment demands accurate proprioception and tactile feedback. This thesis introduces a compact, vision-based sensing framework that delivers both modalities from a single internal camera. We instantiate the approach on PneuGelSight, a pneumatically actuated finger that uses color-coded illumination and a reflective elastomer surface to encode deformation and contact geometry in one image.
To co-design hardware and perception, we develop a simulation pipeline that couples finite-element deformation with physics-based optical rendering, enabling design optimization and training data generation. The resulting models provide high-resolution proprioceptive shape estimation and dense tactile reconstruction, transferring from simulation to hardware without per-scene supervision (zero-shot). Experiments demonstrate accurate recovery of large-scale bends, robust contact mapping under varied loads, and practical multi-touch object reconstruction, while keeping hardware simple and lightweight.
Together, PneuGelSight and the sim-to-real pipeline offer an easily implementable and robust sensing methodology for soft robots, advancing the integration of rich feedback into compliant manipulators and opening paths to closed-loop control and scalable multi-finger systems.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I Access', the embargo will last until 2027-12-01The student, Ruohan Zhang, accepted the attached license on 2025-12-11 at 16:26.The student, Ruohan Zhang, submitted this Thesis for approval on 2025-12-11 at 16:27.This Thesis was approved for publication on 2025-12-12 at 08:22.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22831 on 2026-02-19 at 18:45:3
Encyonema chebalingense sp. nov., a new freshwater diatom species (Cymbellales, Bacillariophyceae) from Guangdong Province, China
No full textHuang, Ruohan, Ma, Jin, Wang, Xianyun, Blanco, Saúl, Kociolek, John Patrick, Zhang, Wei (2021): Encyonema chebalingense sp. nov., a new freshwater diatom species (Cymbellales, Bacillariophyceae) from Guangdong Province, China. Phytotaxa 508 (1): 77-84, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.508.1.7, URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/phytotaxa.508.1.
Achieving full diversity in multi-antenna two-way relay networks via symbol-based physical-layer network coding
No full textThis paper considers physical-layer network coding (PNC) with M-ary phase-shift keying (MPSK) modulation in two-way relay channel (TWRC). A low complexity detection technique, termed symbol-based PNC (SPNC), is proposed for the relay. In particular, attributing to the outer product operation imposed on the superposed MPSK signals at the relay, SPNC obtains the network-coded symbol (NCS) straightforwardly without having to detect individual symbols separately. Unlike the optimal multi-user detector (MUD) which searches over the combinations of all users’ modulation constellations, SPNC searches over only one modulation constellation, thus simplifies the NCS detection. Despite the reduced complexity, SPNC achieves full diversity in multi-antenna relay as the optimal MUD does. Specifically, antenna selection based SPNC (AS-SPNC) scheme and signal combining based SPNC (SC-SPNC) scheme are proposed. Our analysis of these two schemes not only confirms their full diversity performance, but also implies when SPNC is applied in multi-antenna relay, TWRC can be viewed as an effective single-input multiple-output (SIMO) system, in which AS-PNC and SC-PNC are equivalent to the general AS scheme and the maximal-ratio combining (MRC) scheme. Moreover, an asymptotic analysis of symbol error rate (SER) is provided for SC-PNC considering the case that the number of relay antennas is sufficiently large
Encyonema chebalingense W. Zhang & S. Blanco 2021, sp. nov.
No full textEncyonema chebalingense W.Zhang & S.Blanco sp. nov. Figs 1–21 Description:—LM: Valves distinctly asymmetrical and dorsiventral, semielliptical or semielliptical-lanceolate, dorsal margin clearly arched, ventral margin nearly straight or slightly concave. Both ends gradually narrowed, apices not or only slightly protracted, broadly to obtusely rounded (Figs 1–9). Length of the observed specimens 17.8–26.0 μm, width 5.2–6.7 μm, length/width ratio 3.4–3.9 (n=17). Raphe slightly inclined to the ventral margin, nearly straight and linear. The proximal raphe end is slightly curved to the dorsal margin, the end slit of the distal end is close to the valve edge and conspicuously curved to the ventral margin. Axial area narrow, conspicuously inclined to the ventral side, and one stria (sometimes two) on the middle ventral side is shorter. Striae radiate with areolae indistinguishable under LM. Terminal striae density 10–11 in 10 μm, becoming 8–10 in 10 μm toward the central area. SEM: Externally, the valve of E. chebalingense is flat and the transition from the valve face to the mantle is gradual (Figs 10, 11). No stigmoids are present in the central area (Figs 12, 13). The proximal ends of the raphe are clearly enlarged and inclined to the dorsal side, while terminal fissures are hooked to the ventral side of the valve at an angle of almost 90°. The axial area is narrow and linear (Figs 10, 11, 14, 15). Most of the striae are composed by single areolae of different sizes and shapes, mostly short lineolae or slit-like. The middle part of the ventral side has significantly shortened striae (Figs 10–13). Internally, the proximal raphe endings are hidden by an overgrowth of silica (Fig.18), distal raphe ends terminate in small helictoglossae (Figs 16, 17, 19–21). The uniseriate areolae of each stria are arranged between the interstria, and short tectullae project within the striae (Figs 16–20). Areolae 40–45 in 10 μm within ventral and dorsal striae. Type:— CHINA. Guangdong Province: Shixing County, Shaoguan City, upper reaches of Mojiang River, 24°43’21” N, 114°15’24” E. 357 m asl, Date: X.L. Lin August 23 2020. Etymology:—The specific epithet “ chebalingense ” refers to the place from which this new species was collected.Published as part of Huang, Ruohan, Ma, Jin, Wang, Xianyun, Blanco, Saúl, Kociolek, John Patrick & Zhang, Wei, 2021, Encyonema chebalingense sp. nov., a new freshwater diatom species (Cymbellales, Bacillariophyceae) from Guangdong Province, China, pp. 77-84 in Phytotaxa 508 (1) on pages 78-79, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.508.1.7, http://zenodo.org/record/542579
FIGURES 16–21 in Encyonema chebalingense sp. nov., a new freshwater diatom species (Cymbellales, Bacillariophyceae) from Guangdong Province, China
No full textFIGURES 16–21. Encyonema chebalingense sp. nov. SEM images from type material, internal views. 16. Entire valve view. 17–21. Apex of valve with distal raphe ending terminating as a helictoglossa. Fig. 18. Valve center showing central nodule with proximal ends of the raphe hidden by siliceous covering. Figs 19–21. Distal raphe end showing helictoglossa. Scale bars = 1 μm (19–21), 2 μm (Fig.17–21): 2.5 μm (16).Published as part of Huang, Ruohan, Ma, Jin, Wang, Xianyun, Blanco, Saúl, Kociolek, John Patrick & Zhang, Wei, 2021, Encyonema chebalingense sp. nov., a new freshwater diatom species (Cymbellales, Bacillariophyceae) from Guangdong Province, China, pp. 77-84 in Phytotaxa 508 (1) on page 82, DOI: 10.11646/phytotaxa.508.1.7, http://zenodo.org/record/542579
Effects of global and local contexts on chord processing: An ERP study
No full text
In real life, the processing of an incoming event is continuously influenced by prior information at multiple timescales. The present study investigated how harmonic contexts at both local and global levels influence the processing of an incoming chord in an event-related potentials experiment. Chord sequences containing two phrases were presented to musically trained listeners, with the last critical chord either harmonically related or less related to its preceding context at local and/or global levels. ERPs data showed an ERAN-like effect for local context in early time window and a N5-like component for later interaction between the local context and global context. These results suggest that both the local and global contexts influence the processing of an incoming music event, and the local effect happens earlier than the global. Moreover, the interaction between the local context and global context in N5 may suggest that music syntactic integration at local level takes place prior to the integration at global level.</p
†Chuchinolepididae Zhang 1978
No full textFamily †Chuchinolepididae Zhang 1978, spelling in prevailing recent practice †Chuchinolepidae Zhang 1978a: 296 (family) † Chuchinolepis Zhang 1978 [family name also seen as †Chuchinolepididae; author also seen as Chang] †Qujinolepidae Zhang 1978b: 173 (family) † Qujinolepis Zhang 1978 [family name sometimes seen as † Qujinolepididae] †Procondylolepidae Zhang 1984: 82 (family) † Procondylolepis Zhang 1984Published as part of Laan, Richard Van Der, 2018, Family-group names of fossil fishes, pp. 1-167 in European Journal of Taxonomy 466 on page 27, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2018.466, http://zenodo.org/record/555755
Active vibration isolation of a monostable nonlinear electromagnetic actuator using machine learning adaptive feedforward control
No full textIn the realm of nonlinear vibration systems, the control of periodic low-frequency vibrations presents a formidable challenge due to the intricate nature of nonlinear dynamics. This paper proposes a novel machine learning adaptive feedforward active control method tailored for suppressing periodic low-frequency vibrations. Leveraging a monostable nonlinear electromagnetic actuator with an elastic boundary (MAEB), our method harnesses the power of a back-propagation neural network (BPNN) to accurately identify the driving model of the MAEB. This model is then integrated into the adaptive control loop for continuous parameter updating of the controller BPNN. Our approach demonstrates high proficiency in eliminating harmonic frequency components and ensuring robust control stability, thereby surpassing traditional filtered-x least mean square (Fx-LMS) algorithm. Specifically, our approach enhances overall vibration isolation performance by an impressive 7.13 dB compared to the Fx-LMS algorithm. Furthermore, our study validates the efficacy of the proposed method in accommodating variations in excitation, including low-frequency single-line and dual-line spectrums. A detailed parametric study underscores the pivotal role of neural network hyperparameters in enhancing active control performance, with adjustments to the number of hidden layer nodes and the learning rate offering notable improvements in convergence speed
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