The essence of the new scientific paradigm lies in the fact that it made it possible to determine the patterns of development of the global society. This was achieved primarily through the ...understanding that humanity in its development objectively, whether we like it or not, pursues only one ultimate goal. This is the goal of satisfying the highest need of each individual (which he is not yet fully aware of) to become perfect physically, intellectually and spiritually and to achieve a high level of consciousness. Effective collaboration and collaboration across disciplines, this journal writes, maximizes the potential benefits of interdisciplinary research and provides a foundation for future research activities.
The spreading of entanglement in out-of-equilibrium quantum systems is currently at the center of intense interdisciplinary research efforts involving communities with interests ranging from ...holography to quantum information. Here we provide a constructive and mathematically rigorous method to compute the entanglement dynamics in a class of “maximally chaotic,” periodically driven, quantum spin chains. Specifically, we consider the so-called “self-dual” kicked Ising chains initialized in a class of separable states and devise a method to compute exactly the time evolution of the entanglement entropies of finite blocks of spins in the thermodynamic limit. Remarkably, these exact results are obtained despite the maximally chaotic models considered: Their spectral correlations are described by the circular orthogonal ensemble of random matrices on all scales. Our results saturate the so-called “minimal cut” bound and are in agreement with those found in the contexts of random unitary circuits with infinite-dimensional local Hilbert space and conformal field theory. In particular, they agree with the expectations from both the quasiparticle picture, which accounts for the entanglement spreading in integrable models, and the minimal membrane picture, recently proposed to describe the entanglement growth in generic systems. Based on a novel “duality-based” numerical method, we argue that our results describe the entanglement spreading from any product state at the leading order in time when the model is nonintegrable.
Real-world construction projects typically require three groups of tasks: site preparation (earthmoving, leveling), substructure (anchoring, foundations), and superstructure (load-bearing elements, ...facade, plumbing, wiring, etc.). Advances in construction automation have revealed a gap between industry and academic research, where industry efforts have been focused on automating conventional earthmoving equipment and embracing prefabrication in order to reduce the amount of work that needs to be done on site, while academic efforts have largely concentrated on proposals for on-site additive manufacturing or discrete assembly, which may be of limited applicability to industry. This review presents a broad range of advancements in construction automation research, and finds that achieving fully autonomous construction in unstructured environments will require considerably more development in all three groups of construction tasks, as well as a particular emphasis on coordinating myriad construction tasks between different task-specific robots. Consideration is given to both mature technologies (conventional equipment widely used in industry) and emerging technologies (novel machines designed for autonomy). Key findings from the survey suggest that achieving the goal of fully autonomous construction will require more attention to be paid to site preparation and substructure tasks, material-robot systems (co-designed robots and building materials), embedded sensing, auxiliary construction tasks, and coordinating operations between robot systems. More general lessons from the literature indicate that making incremental improvements to mature technologies may benefit the industry in the short term, but there are considerable limitations to adding autonomy to equipment designed for human operators. Instead, we perceive a demand for novel hardware to be developed for specific tasks, in each case based on fundamental principles and at the appropriate scale, as well as for an increase in interdisciplinary research. We suggest that the reported shortage of skilled labor in the industry can be met with an increased emphasis on training for leveraging advances in automation.
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•Attention is given to both academic and industry research, highlighting gaps between the two.•Incremental improvements to mature technologies may benefit the industry in the short term.•However, fully autonomous construction will almost certainly require new hardware.•Special attention is given to site preparation and substructure, as well as task integration.•Emerging technologies will require interdisciplinary research and new training programs.
•FEW shares IWRM spirit, yet offers a clearer path to research and implementation.•Knowledge gaps exist in process, system, technology, and policy linking water with food and energy.•FEW provides a ...context for water researchers to utilize and extend disciplinary strengths.
Studies on the food, energy, and water (FEW) nexus lay a shared foundation for researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and stakeholders to understand and manage linked production, utilization, and security of FEW systems. The FEW nexus paradigm provides the water community specific channels to move forward in interdisciplinary research where integrated water resources management (IWRM) has fallen short. Here, we help water researchers identify, articulate, utilize, and extend our disciplinary strengths within the broader FEW communities, while informing scientists in the food and energy domains about our unique skillset. This paper explores the relevance of existing and ongoing scholarship within the water community, as well as current research needs, for understanding FEW processes and systems and implementing FEW solutions through innovations in technologies, infrastructures, and policies. Following the historical efforts in IWRM, hydrologists, water resources engineers, economists, and policy analysts are provided opportunities for interdisciplinary studies among themselves and in collaboration with energy and food communities, united by a common path to achieve sustainability development goals.
Piezoelectric materials, with their unique ability for mechanical‐electrical energy conversion, have been widely applied in important fields such as sensing, energy harvesting, wastewater treatment, ...and catalysis. In recent years, advances in material synthesis and engineering have provided new opportunities for the development of bio‐piezoelectric materials with excellent biocompatibility and piezoelectric performance. Bio‐piezoelectric materials have attracted interdisciplinary research interest due to recent insights on the impact of piezoelectricity on biological systems and their versatile biomedical applications. This review therefore introduces the development of bio‐piezoelectric platforms from a broad perspective and highlights their design and engineering strategies. State‐of‐the‐art biomedical applications in both biosensing and disease treatment will be systematically outlined. The relationships between the properties, structure, and biomedical performance of the bio‐piezoelectric materials are examined to provide a deep understanding of the working mechanisms in a physiological environment. Finally, the development trends and challenges are discussed, with the aim to provide new insights for the design and construction of future bio‐piezoelectric materials.
Bio‐piezoelectric platforms with the ability for mechanical–electrical energy conversion exhibit great potential in the biomedical field. The latest developments in bio‐piezoelectric platforms are introduced, their design and engineering strategies are highlighted, and the current state‐of‐the‐art in biomedical applications is systematically outlined. One closely combines the range of materials structures with their biomedical performance, aiming to provide insights for their design and construction in the future.
Biopolymers are a leading class of functional material suitable for high-value applications and are of great interest to researchers and professionals across various disciplines. Interdisciplinary ...research is important to understand the basic and applied aspects of biopolymers to address several complex problems associated with good health and well-being. To reduce the environmental impact and dependence on fossil fuels, a lot of effort has gone into replacing synthetic polymers with biodegradable materials, especially those derived from natural resources. In this regard, many types of natural or biopolymers have been developed to meet the needs of ever-expanding applications. These biopolymers are currently used in food applications and are expanding their use in the pharmaceutical and medical industries due to their unique properties. This review focuses on the various uses of biopolymers in the food and medical industry and provides a future outlook for the biopolymer industry.
Mechanochemistry with solvent‐free and environmentally friendly characteristics is one of the most promising alternatives to traditional liquid‐phase‐based reactions, demonstrating epoch‐making ...significance in the realization of different types of chemistry. Mechanochemistry utilizes mechanical energy to promote physical and chemical transformations to design complex molecules and nanostructured materials, encourage dispersion and recombination of multiphase components, and accelerate reaction rates and efficiencies via highly reactive surfaces. In particular, mechanochemistry deserves special attention because it is capable of endowing energy materials with unique characteristics and properties. Herein, the latest advances and progress in mechanochemistry for the preparation and modification of energy materials are reviewed. An outline of the basic knowledge, methods, and characteristics of different mechanochemical strategies is presented, distinguishing this review from most mechanochemistry reviews that only focus on ball‐milling. Next, this outline is followed by a detailed and insightful discussion of mechanochemistry‐involved energy conversion and storage applications. The discussion comprehensively covers aspects of energy transformations from mechanical/optical/chemical energy to electrical energy. Finally, next‐generation advanced energy materials are proposed. This review is intended to bring mechanochemistry to the frontline and guide this burgeoning field of interdisciplinary research for developing advanced energy materials with greener mechanical force.
Mechanochemistry as a powerful tool to prepare advanced energy materials is reviewed, covering specific aspects of energy transformations from mechanical/optical/chemical energy to electrical energy. This review intends to comprehensively clarify mechanism, features, and methods of mechanochemistry and summarize the latest advances and progress in this field to inspire interdisciplinary research for developing novel energy materials with greener mechanical force.
A fundamental goal of scientific research is to learn about causal relationships. However, despite its critical role in the life and social sciences, causality has not had the same importance in ...Natural Language Processing (NLP), which has traditionally placed more emphasis on predictive tasks. This distinction is beginning to fade, with an emerging area of interdisciplinary research at the convergence of causal inference and language processing. Still, research on causality in NLP remains scattered across domains without unified definitions, benchmark datasets and clear articulations of the challenges and opportunities in the application of causal inference to the textual domain, with its unique properties. In this survey, we consolidate research across academic areas and situate it in the broader NLP landscape. We introduce the statistical challenge of estimating causal effects with text, encompassing settings where text is used as an outcome, treatment, or to address confounding. In addition, we explore potential uses of causal inference to improve the robustness, fairness, and interpretability of NLP models. We thus provide a unified overview of causal inference for the NLP community.
This essay has two aims: it tries, first, to demonstrate that there is an unignorable correlative relationship between the current resurgence in the popularity of stage plays and the meteoric rise of ...Speculative Materialism, a philosophical school led by Quentin Meillassoux, and, second, to elicit a useful insight for contemporary people who live in an era when the postmodern relativism has run into a snag. Concretely, the first part shows that any drama enjoins its audience to assent to the ‘dramatic premise’, which is a set of implicit presuppositions. The second part analyzes the fundamental tenets of Speculative Materialism, and points out that there is a curious similitude between the ‘dramatic premise’ and the perspective which the new philosophy urges us to adopt. The last part concludes the discussion by proposing a possible worldview that can be drawn from the investigation into the similarity between the outwardly irrelevant items.
Managing ecosystems is challenging because of the high number of stakeholders, the permeability of man-made political and jurisdictional demarcations in relation to the temporal and spatial extent of ...biophysical processes, and a limited understanding of complex ecosystem and societal dynamics. Given these conditions, collaborative governance is commonly put forward as the preferred means of addressing environmental problems. Under this paradigm, a deeper understanding of if, when, and how collaboration is effective, and when other means of addressing environmental problems are better suited, is needed. Interdisciplinary research on collaborative networks demonstrates that which actors get involved, with whom they collaborate, and in what ways they are tied to the structures of the ecosystems have profound implications on actors' abilities to address different types of environmental problems.