357 research outputs found
Switzerland:China’s Old Friend and Innovative Strategic Partner
No full textWhile the EU continues to be divided on China, Switzerland has continued its longstanding privileged relationship with the country, writes Shichen Wang. He argues that China has favoured Switzerland’s long-term cooperation and absence of conflict, and that it uses the Swiss-Chinese relationship as a model for its relations with the rest of Europe
Machine-learning-enabled optimization and online monitoring for efficient and high-quality smart drying
No full textDrying is an important process in the food industry that plays a critical role in both food production and preservation. Industrial scale drying processes and systems involve multiple interacting process parameters, conflicting production objectives, and highly uncertain sample characteristics, which make process control extremely challenging. Current industrial practice lacks the necessary decision-making tools to simultaneously achieve high energy efficiency and food quality. To address these challenges, this dissertation develops a suite of machine-learning-based process control tools to enable smart drying with improved process efficiency and product quality. The contributions of this dissertation are summarized as follows.
It is important to devise a drying strategy to optimize drying efficiency, energy consumption, and product quality, especially under intricate input-output relationships with process uncertainties. Chapter 2 develops an uncertainty-aware, machine-learning-based response surface methodology for apple drying. New drying experiments are designed to resemble industrial practice with variable slice thickness. Variable-response relationships are modeled using machine learning models; Monte Carlo simulations are applied to quantify process uncertainties; and a constrained optimization approach identifies feasible design spaces and optimal parameter combinations. The proposed method achieves a 17.9% energy savings and a 19.0% reduction in drying time.
Physical phenomena in drying can be measured by heterogeneous data modalities, with each carrying unique and complementary information. Effectively leveraging multi-modal data is essential for improving the performance of predictive modeling but remains challenging. Chapter 3 develops a multi-modal data fusion framework for accurately predicting final moisture content in apple drying. Tabular data and high-dimensional images are integrated through an encoder-decoder network to capture both process conditions and sample variability. Experimental results demonstrate predictive accuracy improvements of 19.3%, 24.2%, and 15.2% compared to tabular-only, image-only, and standard data fusion models, respectively. It is also shown that the proposed method is robust to varying modality ratios and can effectively capture process variabilities.
Accurate real-time forecasting of the drying readiness (the optimal drying endpoint) is crucial for minimizing energy consumption and ensuring product quality. Chapter 4 presents a multi-modal fusion framework for online cookie drying readiness prediction. The model integrates in-situ video data and tabular process parameters using modality-specific encoders and a transformer-based decoder. The proposed model achieves a 15-second average prediction error, outperforming the state-of-the-art method by 65.7%, while balancing accuracy, model size, and efficiency. The framework is extensible to various other modality fusion tasks for effective online monitoring.
Dynamic changes in food attributes during drying directly reflect product quality, and accurately predicting the trajectories of these attributes provides valuable insights into determining optimal drying conditions. Chapter 5 develops a data-driven approach for zero-shot prediction of surface color trajectories during food drying. The method learns component function parameters to represent color evolution under unseen conditions, with DCT preprocessing and enhanced by multi-modal data fusion and similarity- informed training selection. The method is validated on two case studies: cookie and apple drying, significantly outperforming baseline models by 93.2% and 87.30%, respectively.Submission original under an indefinite embargo labeled 'Open Access'. The submission was exported from vireo on 2026-02-19 without embargo termsThe student, Shichen Li, accepted the attached license on 2025-08-18 at 14:01.The student, Shichen Li, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-08-18 at 14:43.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-08-18 at 16:11.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #22763 on 2026-02-19 at 18:24:0
Effect of creep ageing on the corrosion behaviour of an Al-Cu-Li alloy
No full textCreep ageing of Al-Cu-Li alloys induces precipitation of T1(Al2CuLi) and a high fraction of low-angle grain boundaries (LAGBs) and dislocations in grain interior, factors potentially contributing to corrosion. Qualitative/quantitative analysis of precipitates and quasi-in-situ EBSD observations of stress free and stress added alloy reveal that fine dense precipitation of T-1 in grain interior and suppressed precipitation along grain/subgrain-boundary induced by stress adding make the corrosion mode evolve from intergranular to intragranular, and grain orientation displays as the most relevant metallurgical parameter for the localised corrosion although the fraction of LAGBs and dislocations have been greatly improved by stress loading
China's People-to-people Diplomacy and Its Importance to China-EU Relations: A Historical Institutionalism Perspective
No full textPeople-to-people exchange has become a heated topic of the Chinese foreign policy. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, China has established people-to-people dialogues with the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, France and Russia. In 2012, China and the EU established a high-level dialogue for people-to-people exchange, making people-to-people exchange the third pillar of China-EU relations. However, China is not a newcomer to people-to-people exchanges with Europe. Why does China launch the people-to-people diplomacy? Is it a plus or a must for China as well as for China-EU relations? The author reviews the history and current situation of China's people-to-people exchange and investigates China’s motivations behind the policy. Using the historical institutionalism as an approach, this paper argues that people-to-people diplomacy is a key component of the contemporary Chinese foreign policy towards Europe. China has long been an unequal counterpart to Europe since the 1840s. After the development of bilateral political and economic cooperation in the past four decades, people-to-people diplomacy is the last part that China needs to finish in order to regain equal status with Europe. In addition, it is also a step towards realising the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation"
datacarpentry/shell-genomics: Data Carpentry: Introduction to the shell for genomics data, June 2019
No full text<p>Data Carpentry lesson to learn to navigate your file system, create, copy, move, and remove files and directories, and automate repetitive tasks using scripts and wildcards with genomics data.</p>
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