Search Results (4)

The purpose of this study is to synthesize and explore the relationship between the optical properties and gas-sensing performance of ZnO nanowires (NWs). Well-aligned ZnO nanowire (NW) arrays were synthesized on a silicon substrate using the thermal evaporation method without any catalyst or additive. The structures, surface morphologies, chemical compositions, and optical properties of the products were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) together with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy, and their gas-sensing properties for NO₂ were examined. The results showed that single-crystalline ZnO NWs with high density grow uniformly and vertically on a Si substrate. The FESEM and TEM images indicate that ZnO NWs have an average diameter of roughly 135–160 nm with an average length of roughly 3.5 μm. The results from XRD confirm that the ZnO NWs have a hexagonal wurtzite structure with high crystalline quality and are highly oriented in the [0001] direction (i.e., along the c-axis). The deconvoluted O 1s peak at ~531.6 eV (29.4%) is assigned to the oxygen deficiency, indicating that the ZnO NWs contain very few oxygen vacancies. This observation is further confirmed by the PL analysis, which showed a sharp and high-intensity peak of ultraviolet (UV) emission with a suppressed deep-level (DL) emission (very high: I_UV/I_DL > 70), indicating the excellent crystalline quality and good optical properties of the grown NWs. In addition, the gas-sensing properties of the as-prepared ZnO NWs were investigated. The results indicated that under an operating temperature of 200 °C, the sensor based on ZnO NWs is able to detect the lowest concentration of 1.57 ppm of NO₂ gas. Full article

Urban lake wetlands play an essential role in providing ecological services, promoting urban sustainability, and enhancing the quality of urban life. This study quantitatively assesses the ecosystem services value (ESV) of the Zhangdu, East, and Ziyang urban lake wetlands in Wuhan, China, based on primary survey data and methodologies, including the market price, shadow engineering, and travel cost methods. The ESV is categorized into direct use value (DUV), indirect use value (IUV), and non-use value (NUV). Our findings reveal that the non-use value proportion is significant, amounting to 1.569 × 10⁸ CNY × yr⁻¹ for Zhangdu Lake, 1.527 × 10⁸ CNY × yr⁻¹ for East Lake, and 1.060 × 10⁸ CNY × yr⁻¹ for Ziyang Lake. This indicates a high willingness to pay among respondents, reflecting a recognition of the value of wetland services. In addition to the non-use value, this study underscores the considerable material production, water conservation, and leisure tourism value that these urban lake wetlands provide. The assessment of ESV delivers a scientific basis for the management and protection of urban lake wetlands. It also highlights the challenges faced, such as pollution and fragmented management approaches due to unclear property rights and insufficient funding. This study concludes by emphasizing the need for future research to explore mechanisms that promote social participation in wetland management, with the aim of enhancing the overall ecological health of urban lake wetlands. Full article

Groundwater flow simulation often inevitably involves uncertainty, which has been quantified by a host of methods including stochastic methods and statistical methods. Stochastic methods and statistical methods face great difficulties in applications. One of such difficulties is that the statistical characteristics of random variables (such as mean, variance, covariance, etc.) must be firstly obtained before the stochastic methods can be applied. The dilemma is that one is often unclear about such statistical characteristics, given the limited available data. To overcome the problems met by stochastic methods, this study provides an innovative approach in which the hydrogeological parameters and sources and sinks of groundwater flow are represented by bounded but uncertain intervals of variables called interval of uncertainty variables (IUVs) and this approach is namely the interval uncertain method (IUM). IUM requires only the maximum and minimum values of the variable. By utilizing the natural interval expansion, an interval-based parametric groundwater flow equation is established, and the solution of that equation can be found. Using a hypothetical steady-state flow case as an example, one can see that when the rate of change is less than 0.2, the relative error of this method is generally limited to less than 5%; when the rate of change is less than 0.3, the relative error of this method can be kept within 10%. This research shows that the proposed method has smaller relative errors and higher computational efficiency than the Monte Carlo methods. It is possible to use this method to analyze the uncertainties of groundwater flow when it is difficult to obtain the statistical characteristics of the hydrogeological systems. The proposed method is applicable in linear groundwater flow system. Its validity in nonlinear flow systems such as variably saturated flow or unconfined flow with considerable variation of water table will be checked in the future. Full article

We consider Bayesian estimation of information-theoretic quantities from data, using a Dirichlet prior. Acknowledging the uncertainty of the event space size m and the Dirichlet prior’s concentration parameter c, we treat both as random variables set by a hyperprior. We show that the associated hyperprior, P(c, m), obeys a simple “Irrelevance of Unseen Variables” (IUV) desideratum iff P(c, m) = P(c)P(m). Thus, requiring IUV greatly reduces the number of degrees of freedom of the hyperprior. Some information-theoretic quantities can be expressed multiple ways, in terms of different event spaces, e.g., mutual information. With all hyperpriors (implicitly) used in earlier work, different choices of this event space lead to different posterior expected values of these information-theoretic quantities. We show that there is no such dependence on the choice of event space for a hyperprior that obeys IUV. We also derive a result that allows us to exploit IUV to greatly simplify calculations, like the posterior expected mutual information or posterior expected multi-information. We also use computer experiments to favorably compare an IUV-based estimator of entropy to three alternative methods in common use. We end by discussing how seemingly innocuous changes to the formalization of an estimation problem can substantially affect the resultant estimates of posterior expectations. Full article