| 1. |
- Yu, ChaoQing, et al.
(författare)
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Managing nitrogen to restore water quality in China
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Nature Publishing Group. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 567:7749, s. 516-520
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The nitrogen cycle has been radically changed by human activities(1). China consumes nearly one third of the world's nitrogen fertilizers. The excessive application of fertilizers(2,3) and increased nitrogen discharge from livestock, domestic and industrial sources have resulted in pervasive water pollution. Quantifying a nitrogen 'boundary'(4) in heterogeneous environments is important for the effective management of local water quality. Here we use a combination of water-quality observations and simulated nitrogen discharge from agricultural and other sources to estimate spatial patterns of nitrogen discharge into water bodies across China from 1955 to 2014. We find that the critical surface-water quality standard (1.0 milligrams of nitrogen per litre) was being exceeded in most provinces by the mid-1980s, and that current rates of anthropogenic nitrogen discharge (14.5 +/- 3.1 megatonnes of nitrogen per year) to fresh water are about 2.7 times the estimated 'safe' nitrogen discharge threshold (5.2 +/- 0.7 megatonnes of nitrogen per year). Current efforts to reduce pollution through wastewater treatment and by improving cropland nitrogen management can partially remedy this situation. Domestic wastewater treatment has helped to reduce net discharge by 0.7 +/- 0.1 megatonnes in 2014, but at high monetary and energy costs. Improved cropland nitrogen management could remove another 2.3 +/- 0.3 megatonnes of nitrogen per year-about 25 per cent of the excess discharge to fresh water. Successfully restoring a clean water environment in China will further require transformational changes to boost the national nutrient recycling rate from its current average of 36 per cent to about 87 per cent, which is a level typical of traditional Chinese agriculture. Although ambitious, such a high level of nitrogen recycling is technologically achievable at an estimated capital cost of approximately 100 billion US dollars and operating costs of 18-29 billion US dollars per year, and could provide co-benefits such as recycled wastewater for crop irrigation and improved environmental quality and ecosystem services.
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| 2. |
- Kristan, Matej, et al.
(författare)
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The Visual Object Tracking VOT2015 challenge results
- 2015
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Ingår i: Proceedings 2015 IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops ICCVW 2015. - : IEEE. - 9780769557205 ; , s. 564-586
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Visual Object Tracking challenge 2015, VOT2015, aims at comparing short-term single-object visual trackers that do not apply pre-learned models of object appearance. Results of 62 trackers are presented. The number of tested trackers makes VOT 2015 the largest benchmark on short-term tracking to date. For each participating tracker, a short description is provided in the appendix. Features of the VOT2015 challenge that go beyond its VOT2014 predecessor are: (i) a new VOT2015 dataset twice as large as in VOT2014 with full annotation of targets by rotated bounding boxes and per-frame attribute, (ii) extensions of the VOT2014 evaluation methodology by introduction of a new performance measure. The dataset, the evaluation kit as well as the results are publicly available at the challenge website(1).
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| 3. |
- Lin, Jiajie, et al.
(författare)
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Wafer-scale heterogeneous integration InP on trenched Si with a bubble-free interface
- 2020
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Ingår i: APL Materials. - : AIP Publishing. - 2166-532X. ; 8:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Heterogeneous integration of compound semiconductors on a Si platform leads to advanced device applications in the field of Si photonics and high frequency electronics. However, the unavoidable bubbles formed at the bonding interface are detrimental for achieving a high yield of dissimilar semiconductor integration by the direct wafer bonding technology. In this work, lateral outgassing surface trenches (LOTs) are introduced to efficiently inhibit the bubbles. It is found that the chemical reactions in InP-Si bonding are similar to those in Si-Si bonding, and the generated gas can escape via the LOTs. The outgassing efficiency is dominated by LOTs' spacing, and moreover, the relationship between bubble formation and the LOT's structure is well described by a thermodynamic model. With the method explored in this work, a 2-in. bubble-free crystalline InP thin film integrated on the Si substrate with LOTs is obtained by the ion-slicing and wafer bonding technology. The quantum well active region grown on this Si-based InP film shows a superior photoemission efficiency, and it is found to be 65% as compared to its bulk counterpart.
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| 4. |
- Tao, Feng, et al.
(författare)
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Convergence in simulating global soil organic carbon by structurally different models after data assimilation
- 2024
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 30:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Current biogeochemical models produce carbon–climate feedback projections with large uncertainties, often attributed to their structural differences when simulating soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics worldwide. However, choices of model parameter values that quantify the strength and represent properties of different soil carbon cycle processes could also contribute to model simulation uncertainties. Here, we demonstrate the critical role of using common observational data in reducing model uncertainty in estimates of global SOC storage. Two structurally different models featuring distinctive carbon pools, decomposition kinetics, and carbon transfer pathways simulate opposite global SOC distributions with their customary parameter values yet converge to similar results after being informed by the same global SOC database using a data assimilation approach. The converged spatial SOC simulations result from similar simulations in key model components such as carbon transfer efficiency, baseline decomposition rate, and environmental effects on carbon fluxes by these two models after data assimilation. Moreover, data assimilation results suggest equally effective simulations of SOC using models following either first-order or Michaelis–Menten kinetics at the global scale. Nevertheless, a wider range of data with high-quality control and assurance are needed to further constrain SOC dynamics simulations and reduce unconstrained parameters. New sets of data, such as microbial genomics-function relationships, may also suggest novel structures to account for in future model development. Overall, our results highlight the importance of observational data in informing model development and constraining model predictions.
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| 5. |
- Tao, Feng, et al.
(författare)
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Microbial carbon use efficiency promotes global soil carbon storage
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 618:7967, s. 981-985
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Soils store more carbon than other terrestrial ecosystems. How soil organic carbon (SOC) forms and persists remains uncertain, which makes it challenging to understand how it will respond to climatic change. It has been suggested that soil microorganisms play an important role in SOC formation, preservation and loss. Although microorganisms affect the accumulation and loss of soil organic matter through many pathways, microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is an integrative metric that can capture the balance of these processes. Although CUE has the potential to act as a predictor of variation in SOC storage, the role of CUE in SOC persistence remains unresolved. Here we examine the relationship between CUE and the preservation of SOC, and interactions with climate, vegetation and edaphic properties, using a combination of global-scale datasets, a microbial-process explicit model, data assimilation, deep learning and meta-analysis. We find that CUE is at least four times as important as other evaluated factors, such as carbon input, decomposition or vertical transport, in determining SOC storage and its spatial variation across the globe. In addition, CUE shows a positive correlation with SOC content. Our findings point to microbial CUE as a major determinant of global SOC storage. Understanding the microbial processes underlying CUE and their environmental dependence may help the prediction of SOC feedback to a changing climate.
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| 6. |
- Chen, Xiaomeng, et al.
(författare)
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A Differentially Private Method for Distributed Optimization in Directed Networks via State Decomposition
- 2023
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 2325-5870. ; 10:4, s. 2165-2177
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we study the problem of consensus-based distributed optimization, where a network of agents, abstracted as a directed graph, aims to minimize the sum of all agents' cost functions collaboratively. In the existing distributed optimization approaches (Push-Pull/AB) for directed graphs, all the agents exchange their states with neighbors to achieve the optimal solution with a constant step size, which may lead to the disclosure of sensitive and private information. For privacy preservation, we propose a novel state-decomposition-based gradient tracking approach (SD-Push-Pull) for distributed optimization over directed networks that preserves differential privacy, which is a strong notion that protects agents' privacy against an adversary with arbitrary auxiliary information. The main idea of the proposed approach is to decompose the gradient state of each agent into two substates. Only one substate is exchanged by the agent with its neighbors over time, and the other one is not shared. That is to say, only one substate is visible to an adversary, protecting the sensitive information from being leaked. It is proved that under certain decomposition principles, a bound for the suboptimality of the proposed algorithm can be derived, and the differential privacy is achieved simultaneously. Moreover, the tradeoff between differential privacy and the optimization accuracy is also characterized. Finally, a numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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| 7. |
- Chen, Xiaomeng, et al.
(författare)
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Privacy-Preserving Push-Sum Average Consensus via State Decomposition
- 2023
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 0018-9286 .- 1558-2523. ; 68:12, s. 7974-7981
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Average consensus is extensively used in distributed networks for computation and control, where all the agents constantly communicate with each other and update their states in order to reach an agreement. Under a general average consensus algorithm, information exchanged through wireless or wired communication networks could lead to the disclosure of sensitive and private information. In this article, we propose a privacy-preserving push-sum approach for directed networks that can protect the privacy of all agents while achieving average consensus simultaneously. Each node decomposes its initial state arbitrarily into two substates, and their average equals to the initial state, guaranteeing that the agent's state will converge to the accurate average consensus. Only one substate is exchanged by the node with its neighbors over time, and the other one is reserved. That is to say, only the exchanged substate would be visible to an adversary, preventing the initial state information from leakage. Different from the existing state-decomposition approach, which only applies to undirected graphs, our proposed approach is applicable to strongly connected digraphs. In addition, in direct contrast to offset-adding-based privacy-preserving push-sum algorithm, which is vulnerable to an external eavesdropper, our proposed approach can ensure privacy against both an honest-but-curious node and an external eavesdropper. A numerical simulation is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
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| 8. |
- Kristan, Matej, et al.
(författare)
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The Visual Object Tracking VOT2016 Challenge Results
- 2016
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Ingår i: COMPUTER VISION - ECCV 2016 WORKSHOPS, PT II. - Cham : SPRINGER INT PUBLISHING AG. - 9783319488813 - 9783319488806 ; , s. 777-823
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Visual Object Tracking challenge VOT2016 aims at comparing short-term single-object visual trackers that do not apply pre-learned models of object appearance. Results of 70 trackers are presented, with a large number of trackers being published at major computer vision conferences and journals in the recent years. The number of tested state-of-the-art trackers makes the VOT 2016 the largest and most challenging benchmark on short-term tracking to date. For each participating tracker, a short description is provided in the Appendix. The VOT2016 goes beyond its predecessors by (i) introducing a new semi-automatic ground truth bounding box annotation methodology and (ii) extending the evaluation system with the no-reset experiment.
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