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In the quest for effective solutions to address Environ. Pollut. and meet the escalating energy demands, heterojunction photocatalysts have emerged as a captivating and versatile technology. These photocatalysts have garnered significant interest due to their wide-ranging applications, including wastewater treatment, air purification, CO2 capture, and hydrogen generation via water splitting. This technique harnesses the power of semiconductors, which are activated under light illumination, providing the necessary energy for catalytic reactions. With visible light constituting a substantial portion (46%) of the solar spectrum, the development of visible-light-driven semiconductors has become imperative. Heterojunction photocatalysts offer a promising strategy to overcome the limitations associated with activating semiconductors under visible light. In this comprehensive review, we present the recent advancements in the field of photocatalytic degradation of contaminants across diverse media, as well as the remarkable progress made in renewable energy production. Moreover, we delve into the crucial role played by various operating parameters in influencing the photocatalytic performance of heterojunction systems. Finally, we address emerging challenges and propose novel perspectives to provide valuable insights for future advancements in this dynamic research domain. By unraveling the potential of heterojunction photocatalysts, this review contributes to the broader understanding of their applications and paves the way for exciting avenues of exploration and innovation.

Life in soil is a key driver of important ecosystem processes, such as the recycling of carbon and nutrients. In current intensive agricultural soils, however, richness and abundance of many groups of soil organisms are often reduced, which may threaten soil health and sustainable agriculture in the long run. Therefore, a switch to alternative agricultural practices (e.g., minimal tillage) that are less detrimental or even stimulate soil life has been suggested as a way to increase sustainable food production. Although we understand how some of these practices impact specific species or functional groups in soils, it is necessary to get a more complete overview to understand which practices can be used in agriculture to improve soil biodiversity. Here, we present a systematic literature review identifying which practices are studied as alternatives to current, intensive practices for four soil taxonomic groups encompassing a range of trophic groups and functions in the soil ecosystem: nematodes, earthworms, bacteria and fungi. Further, we review how these alternative practices impact the abundance and diversity of these four taxonomic groups, as well as for the 14 functional groups identified and retrieved from the review. We found that a total of 23 alternative agricultural practices, grouped into 10 groups of practices, were studied for the four target taxonomic groups. Three groups of practices, 'fertilization’, ‘soil cover’ and ‘tillage’ were studied for all taxa. In general, alternative agricultural practices had positive impacts on the species richness in the four taxonomic groups and on the abundance of organisms in the functional groups. However, there were some exceptions. For example, organic fertilizers reduced the abundance of epigeic earthworms, while enhancing the abundance of endogeic and anecic earthworms. There was only one alternative practice, i.e., the use of cover crops, that was neutral to positive for the abundance of all functional groups across all taxa. Our review revealed that there are gaps in the literature, as practices that are commonly studied for aboveground biodiversity, such as field margins or flower strips, are not studied well across taxonomic and functional groups and need to be further studied to improve our understanding of the impact of alternative practices on soil life. We conclude that alternative agricultural practices are promising to enhance soil biodiversity. However, as some practices have specific impacts on taxonomic groups in the soil, we may require careful application and combinations of alternative agricultural practices to stimulate multiple groups.

We present a modeling and optimization framework to design powertrains for a family of electric vehicles, focusing on the concurrent sizing of their motors and batteries. Whilst tailoring these component modules to each individual vehicle type can minimize energy consumption, it can result in high production costs due to the variety of component modules to be realized for the family of vehicles, driving the Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) high. Against this backdrop, we explore modularity and standardization strategies whereby we jointly design unique motor and battery modules to be installed in all the vehicles in the family, using a different number of these modules when needed. Such an approach results in higher production volumes of the same component module, entailing significantly lower manufacturing costs due to Economy-of-Scale (EoS) effects, and hence a potentially lower TCO for the family of vehicles. To solve the resulting one-size-fits-all problem, we instantiate a nested framework consisting of an inner convex optimization routine which jointly optimizes the modules' sizes and the powertrain operation of the entire family, for given driving cycles and modules' multiplicities. Likewise, we devise an outer loop comparing each configuration to identify the minimum-TCO solution with global optimality guarantees. Finally, we showcase our framework on a case study for the Tesla vehicle family in a benchmark design problem, considering the Model S, Model 3, Model X, and Model Y. Our results show that, compared to an individually tailored design, the application of our concurrent design optimization framework achieves a significant reduction of the production costs for a minimal increase in operational costs, ultimately lowering the family TCO in the benchmark design problem by 3.5\%. 17 pages, 17 figures, 7 tables

CONTEXT: Serious games can be used as a tool for learning, increasing coordination, supporting decision-making processes, and other purposes that can strengthen sustainability transitions. While agriculture is an important corner stone for these transitions, little research has been done on serious games on agricultural and none on the potential link with sustainability issues. OBJECTIVE: This article is a systematic review of published research articles on the use of serious games to address agricultural issues. It aimed to understand how these serious games incorporate or are likely to address sustainability issues. METHODS: The process of the review is described accord to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). After data collection, we conducted a four-step analysis: i) short bibliometric analysis of the corpus, ii) descriptive analysis of the games' characteristics, iii) comprehensive analysis on sustainability based on a framework developed to define what is sustainable agriculture, iv) analysis of assessment of the games. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Results were based on 237 articles including 182 empirical studies. We showed that the number of articles on serious games in agriculture have recently increased throughout the world. Serious games can reach different goals: i) learning, particularly on specific topics, ii) mediation and co-design, iii) research. Games can be seen as effective means to enable stakeholders to work together. In a context of sustainability transitions, serious games can be used to tackle complex issues. However, more effort must be undertaken to assess the real impact of the game. SIGNIFICANCE: This review confirmed the importance of serious games in agricultural research aiming to enhance sustainability transition. We identified gaps and proposed a research agenda to further work on i) inclusion of the diversity of games, ii) rethinking using of games with possible combinations, iii) opening to broader agricultural productions, iv) assessing the real impact of the games, v) using games for transdisciplinary research.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have found wide applications in a variety of fields such as electrified transportation, stationary storage and portable electronics devices. A battery management system (BMS) is critical to ensure the reliability, efficiency and longevity of LIBs. Recent research has witnessed the emergence of model-based fault diagnosis methods in advanced BMSs. This paper provides a comprehensive review on the model-based fault diagnosis methods for LIBs. First, the widely explored battery models in the existing literature are classified into physics-based electrochemical models and electrical equivalent circuit models. Second, a general state-space representation that describes electrical dynamics of a faulty battery is presented. The formulation of the state vectors and the identification of the parameter matrices are then elaborated. Third, the fault mechanisms of both battery faults (incl. overcharege/overdischarge faults, connection faults, short circuit faults) and sensor faults (incl. voltage sensor faults and current sensor faults) are discussed. Furthermore, different types of modeling uncertainties, such as modeling errors and measurement noises, aging effects, measurement outliers, are elaborated. An emphasis is then placed on the observer design (incl. online state observers and offline state observers). The algorithm implementation of typical state observers for battery fault diagnosis is also put forward. Finally, discussion and outlook are offered to envision some possible future research directions. Comment: Submitted to Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews on 09-Jan-2024

A new energy-consistent discretization of the viscous dissipation function in incompressible flows is proposed. It is implied by choosing a discretization of the diffusive terms and a discretization of the local kinetic energy equation and by requiring that continuous identities like the product rule are mimicked discretely. The proposed viscous dissipation function has a quadratic, strictly dissipative form, for both simplified (constant viscosity) stress tensors and general stress tensors. The proposed expression is not only useful in evaluating energy budgets in turbulent flows, but also in natural convection flows, where it appears in the internal energy equation and is responsible for viscous heating. The viscous dissipation function is such that a consistent total energy balance is obtained: the 'implied' presence as sink in the kinetic energy equation is exactly balanced by explicitly adding it as source term in the internal energy equation. Numerical experiments of Rayleigh-Bénard convection (RBC) and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities confirm that with the proposed dissipation function, the energy exchange between kinetic and internal energy is exactly preserved. The experiments show furthermore that viscous dissipation does not affect the critical Rayleigh number at which instabilities form, but it does significantly impact the development of instabilities once they occur. Consequently, the value of the Nusselt number on the cold plate becomes larger than on the hot plate, with the difference increasing with increasing Gebhart number. Finally, 3D simulations of turbulent RBC show that energy balances are exactly satisfied even for very coarse grids; therefore, we consider that the proposed discretization forms an excellent starting point for testing sub-grid scale models.

More frequently occurring droughts, related to climate change, lead to reduced growth and loss of vitality in trees. The recent drought of 2018 was extreme, long-lasting and resulted in high evaporative demands due to the concurrent high temperatures. The aim of this study was to compare the drought resilience of nine temperate tree species in the Netherlands, and to determine their responses to the severe drought of 2018 in comparison with five earlier drought events since 1970. To assess drought effects on tree species, we analysed tree-ring series of 678 trees in 45 plots throughout the Netherlands. Resilience indices were calculated based on growth reactions and growth recovery after drought. Furthermore, the impact of drought events on species productivity was quantified. We observed species-specific differences in growth responses to drought timing. All species in nearly all sites responded with growth reductions to drought, except sessile oak (Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl.). The most productive species in our study were found to be drought sensitive, with productivity losses of up to 30 % during drought in some sites. Productivity losses were highest on the driest soils. Resilience to the 2018 drought did not differ significantly from other drought years for six out of the nine studied species. However, 77.5 % of the individual trees of all studied species did not fully recover in growth within the following two years. Low post-drought growth remains poorly understood and should be taken into account in future studies to safeguard the health and productivity of the forest under climate change. We consider sessile oak a promising species for future forests in the Netherlands. Based on our results, we provide an outlook on future resilience and growth potential of the species studied under projected climate change for the Netherlands.

Climate change, along with infectious diseasespathogens notably Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), B. salamandrivorans (Bsal), Ranavirus, and PerkinseaPerkinsus, continue to devastate global amphibian populations, contributing to the greatest vertebrate extinctions of the Anthropocene. These pathogens, primarily favoring cooler, subtropical conditions, demonstrate a significant overlap in their climatic niches, thus affecting a broad range species. Here, we aim to explore the role of global warming and other climatic factors in the dispersal and evolution of these pathogens and to predict the future implications for amphibian populations worldwide. Given the limitations of data availability We conducted a thorough analysis of the climatic niche conservatism (NC) and evolution (CNE) of these pathogens using the currently available distributional data, including our own. We used , We engaged in a comprehensive analysis of the climatic niche conservatism (NC) and evolution (CNE) of these pathogens, utilizing predictive models to anticipate potential shifts in their future distribution and evaluate the capacity for CNE in response to climate change. We show that Bd and Bsal are likely to experience a total reduction in their current potential distributions by 2040, while Ranavirus and PerkinseaPerkinsus may expand their distributions. Interestingly, CNE has played a significant role in influencing the climatic niches of Bd and Bsal, with lineage dependent variations. However, there was no strong correlation found between virulence of Bd and its climatic niche. On the contrary, ranaviruses Ranaviruses and PerkinseaPerkinsus showed evidence of sporadic and recent CNE. Moreover, the emergence of lineages adapted to warmer climates suggests an ongoing CNE and a potential evolutionary response to climate change. With increased infection risk, particularly for Asian amphibians (from Ranavirus and PerkinseaPerkinsus), and the vulnerability of the southern hemisphere (except Bsal) due to limited prior exposure, this study underscores the urgent need for close monitoring and preventive measures, including stringent biosecurity protocols such as risk analysis and pre-border pathogen screening. Our study provides a critical framework for international collaboration and guideline development for amphibian trade, while contributing to the deeper dialogue on mitigating impacts of climate change on wildlife diseases.