Originally initiated in Germany, Industry 4.0, the fourth industrial revolution, has attracted much attention in recent literatures. It is closely related with the Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber ...Physical System (CPS), information and communications technology (ICT), Enterprise Architecture (EA), and Enterprise Integration (EI). Despite of the dynamic nature of the research on Industry 4.0, however, a systematic and extensive review of recent research on it is has been unavailable. Accordingly, this paper conducts a comprehensive review on Industry 4.0 and presents an overview of the content, scope, and findings of Industry 4.0 by examining the existing literatures in all of the databases within the Web of Science. Altogether, 88 papers related to Industry 4.0 are grouped into five research categories and reviewed. In addition, this paper outlines the critical issue of the interoperability of Industry 4.0, and proposes a conceptual framework of interoperability regarding Industry 4.0. Challenges and trends for future research on Industry 4.0 are discussed.
In this paper, we investigate causality and connectedness between economic policy uncertainty and oil price shocks across time scales. By incorporating the wavelet approach into the structural vector ...autoregression (VAR) framework proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz (2009, 2012, 2014), we find that crude oil prices behave like receivers of information from economic policy uncertainty, regardless of time scale. However, the causality relationship between economic policy uncertainty and oil price shocks intensifies as time scales increase. In addition, the connectedness relationship is robust to time scale changes, whereas the causal relationship intensifies as time scales increase. Notably, the weight of US economic policy uncertainty increases in the VAR system as time scales increase. In particular, we employ the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil price as an alternative measure to increase the robustness of our results and identify differences in the VAR system. Overall, the total connectedness of the WTI crude oil price is lower than that of the Brent crude oil price, regardless of time scale. Our results provide meaningful information for both investors and policymakers.
•We find that crude oil prices receive information on economic policy uncertainty.•We find that US economic policy uncertainty plays an increasingly vital role in the long term.•We find that the connectedness relationship is robust to time scale changes.•We find that the total connectedness of the WTI crude oil price was lower regardless of time scale.
The blockchain revolutionizes the creation of both scalable information technology systems and diversified applications by integrating the increasingly popular artificial intelligence, cloud ...computing, and big data. Various industries have recently begun to implement the exploration of blockchain. It will not take long for the blockchain to spread all over the world. In order to identify and further the development of the blockchain technology, this paper reviews the extant studies on the blockchain and its key components, blockchain-based IoT, blockchain-based security, blockchain-based data management, and the main applications based on the blockchain, and it delineates potential trends and challenges. This study provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art blockchain and describes a forward-looking direction.
As a highly infectious respiratory tract disease, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) can cause respiratory, physical, and psychological dysfunction in patients. Therefore, pulmonary rehabilitation ...is crucial for both admitted and discharged patients of COVID-19. In this study, based on the newly released pulmonary rehabilitation guidelines for patients with COVID-19, as well as evidence from the pulmonary rehabilitation of patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome, we investigated pulmonary rehabilitation for patients with COVID-19 having complications, such as chronic pulmonary disease, and established an intelligent respiratory rehabilitation model for these patients.
As one of the main forms and intermediate carriers of energy, it is impressive to expand the application scope of heat energy, thereby boosting innovations in heat harvesting, conversion, storage, ...regulation, and utilization associated with the relevant techniques. Phase change materials (PCMs), as a state‐of‐the‐art latent heat storage technique, have garnered increasing interest in heat‐related applications over the past decades, and abundant high‐performance PCMs with excellent shape stability and salient thermal conductivity have been developed. This review focuses on the issues concerning organic PCMs from the perspectives of flexible, multifunctional, and smart phase change composites, along with emerging applications and processing technologies, which are expected to offer possible guidance for the exploration of next‐generation advanced functional phase change composites.
Next‐generation advanced functional phase change composites are analyzed from the perspectives of myriad phase change materials, promising applications, and mass‐manufactured processing technologies to boost their rapid implementation.
Survey on 3D Hand Gesture Recognition Cheng, Hong; Yang, Lu; Liu, Zicheng
IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology,
2016-Sept., 2016-9-00, 20160901, Volume:
26, Issue:
9
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Three-dimensional hand gesture recognition has attracted increasing research interests in computer vision, pattern recognition, and human-computer interaction. The emerging depth sensors greatly ...inspired various hand gesture recognition approaches and applications, which were severely limited in the 2D domain with conventional cameras. This paper presents a survey of some recent works on hand gesture recognition using 3D depth sensors. We first review the commercial depth sensors and public data sets that are widely used in this field. Then, we review the state-of-the-art research for 3D hand gesture recognition in four aspects: 1) 3D hand modeling; 2) static hand gesture recognition; 3) hand trajectory gesture recognition; and 4) continuous hand gesture recognition. While the emphasis is on 3D hand gesture recognition approaches, the related applications and typical systems are also briefly summarized for practitioners.
Multivariate claim data are common in insurance applications, for example, claims of each policyholder from different types of insurance coverages. Understanding the dependencies among such ...multivariate risks is critical to the solvency and profitability of insurers. Effectively modeling insurance claim data is challenging due to their special complexities. At the policyholder level, claim outcomes usually follow a two-part mixed distribution: a probability mass at zero corresponding to no claim and an otherwise positive claim from a skewed and long-tailed distribution. To simultaneously accommodate the complex features of the marginal distributions while flexibly quantifying the dependencies among multivariate claims, copula models are commonly used. Although a substantial body of literature focusing on copulas with continuous outcomes has emerged, some key steps do not carry over to mixed data. In particular, existing nonparametric copula estimators are not consistent for mixed data, and thus copula specification and diagnostics for mixed outcomes have been a problem. However, insurance is a closely regulated industry in which model validation is particularly important, and it is essential to develop a baseline nonparametric copula estimator to identify the underlying dependence structure. In this article, we fill in this gap by developing a nonparametric copula estimator for mixed data. We show the uniform convergence of the proposed nonparametric copula estimator. Through simulation studies, we demonstrate that the proportion of zeros plays a key role in the finite sample performance of the proposed estimator. Using the claim data from the Wisconsin Local Government Property Insurance Fund, we illustrate that our nonparametric copula estimator can assist analysts in identifying important features of the underlying dependence structure, revealing how different claims or risks are related to one another.
With a systematic approach, this study investigates the roles of the peak-valley prices and idiosyncratic factors in the information spillover mechanism between the electricity and carbon markets in ...Europe. Our findings show that electricity demand plays a crucial role in the idiosyncratic information spillover channel, especially in the risk spillover channel. Moreover, the German and Austrian electricity market operators reveal the dominating power in the system while the carbon market is the net information receiver from the system. The results also indicate that the EU-ETS functions well in prompting the integration of European electricity market and reducing the greenhouse gas emission. Crucially, we find that after the “clean energy for all Europeans” package were adopted in 2016 by the European Commission, the European internal electricity markets gradually integrated. The results provide supportive evidence for the effectiveness of the new rule on developing a single European electricity market. Our research can provide useful information for policy-makers, regulators, and investors.
•We find that electricity demand plays a crucial role in the information spillover channel.•We find that the carbon market is the net information receiver from the system.•We find that the EU-ETS promotes the integration of European electricity markets.•We find that the European internal electricity markets gradually integrated.•We find that the German and Austrian electricity markets reveal the dominating power in the system.
Under the double pressures of both the energy crisis and environmental pollution, the exploitation and utilization of hydrogen, a clean and renewable power resource, has become an important trend in ...the development of sustainable energy‐production and energy‐consumption systems. In this regard, the electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) provides an efficient and clean pathway for the mass production of hydrogen fuel and has motivated the design and construction of highly active HER electrocatalysts of an acceptable cost. In particular, graphene‐based electrocatalysts commonly exhibit an enhanced HER performance owing to their distinctive structural merits, including a large surface area, high electrical conductivity, and good chemical stability. Considering the rapidly growing research enthusiasm for this topic over the last several years, herein, a panoramic review of recent advances in graphene‐based electrocatalysts is presented, covering various advanced synthetic strategies, microstructural characterizations, and the applications of such materials in HER electrocatalysis. Lastly, future perspectives on the challenges and opportunities awaiting this emerging field are proposed and discussed.
Electrode catalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction are at the heart of electrochemical water splitting technology. Recent advances in the controllable synthesis, microstructural analysis, and electrocatalytic properties of graphene‐based hydrogen evolution electrocatalysts are presented, together with a discussion of the major challenges and opportunities in this emerging field.
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