Search Results (2,856)

Wireless sensor network (WSN) coverage optimization is a challenging high-dimensional and nonlinear problem that directly affects network performance, including sensing quality, energy efficiency, and system reliability. Although metaheuristic algorithms have been widely applied to this problem, many existing methods still suffer from premature convergence, insufficient population diversity, and an imbalance between exploration and exploitation. To address these issues, this paper proposes a multi-strategy enhanced enterprise development optimization algorithm (MEEDOA) inspired by business management mechanisms. The proposed method integrates a hybrid population initialization strategy, an adaptive activity switching mechanism based on performance feedback, a multi-elite collaborative learning strategy, and a Lévy flight-based stagnation escape mechanism. These strategies are tightly coupled within a unified adaptive framework to improve global search capability, convergence speed, and robustness. Furthermore, a mathematical model for WSN deployment is constructed based on a binary sensing model and discrete coverage evaluation. From the perspective of symmetry, the sensing regions of sensor nodes exhibit significant geometric symmetry in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional deployment spaces. In the two-dimensional case, the sensing and communication regions are modeled as concentric circular structures, while in the three-dimensional case, the sensing regions are represented by isotropic spheres with symmetric spatial distributions. Such symmetry properties provide an effective basis for describing coverage behavior, reducing redundant overlap, and improving the uniformity of node deployment. Meanwhile, the proposed MEEDOA preserves population diversity and enhances search balance, enabling the algorithm to better capture symmetric coverage patterns and more effectively explore complex spatial deployment configurations. Extensive experiments on CEC2014, CEC2017, CEC2020, and CEC2022 benchmark functions demonstrate that MEEDOA achieves superior convergence accuracy, faster convergence speed, and stronger robustness compared with several state-of-the-art algorithms. Additional simulation results in WSN deployment applications verify its effectiveness in improving coverage performance under both symmetric and irregular spatial deployment scenarios. The results indicate that the proposed MEEDOA provides a reliable and efficient solution for complex global optimization problems and practical engineering applications. Full article

Smart metering of high-time-resolution energy data enables efficient power grid management. However, it also raises significant privacy concerns by revealing users’ consumption patterns. In this paper, a novel privacy-preserving idea is introduced by utilizing a rechargeable battery (RB) to reshape the smart meter readings to statistically align with random target readings, which are preset independently of the private user energy consumption data. For the long-term privacy-preserving and cost-efficient objectives, we formulate a sequential energy management unit (EMU) policy design as a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP), where the cost-efficient objective is optimized subject to the constraint on privacy preservation. We then develop a novel variational-constraint adversarial proximal policy optimization (VCA-PPO) algorithm to solve the CMDP without requiring prior knowledge of probabilistic models. Experimental results on a standard real-world dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and its superiority to the load-flatness benchmark method. Full article

Continuous monitoring of livestock vocalizations offers a non-invasive tool for welfare assessment, but deploying current deep learning models in resource-constrained farm environments remains challenging due to high computational demands. This study proposes a feature-based machine learning pipeline optimized for edge computing to classify caprine vocalizations. Using the VOCAPRA dataset, which comprises 4147 labeled caprine vocalizations categorized into eight distinct welfare states and contexts, a hybrid feature extraction framework was applied to derive 156 spectral, temporal, and bioacoustic descriptors. Dimensionality reduction and a comprehensive comparative screening of 18 algorithms identified the CatBoost Classifier and a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) as the optimal models. The CatBoost ensemble achieved a robust accuracy of 85.2%, while the optimized MLP reached 87.2% overall accuracy. An edge deployment benchmark revealed that the MLP was the best candidate with for real-time application, featuring a memory footprint of just 0.639 MB and near-instantaneous inference speeds of under 0.005 milliseconds per sample. Furthermore, feature importance and SHAP analyses revealed that mel-frequency cepstral coefficients heavily drove model decisions, particularly for identifying extreme physical distress and maternal reunion. The proposed methodology achieves competitive classification performance while dramatically reducing pre-processing and computational loads compared to image-based deep learning approaches, demonstrating the viability of lightweight-model, energy-efficient, real-time bioacoustic monitoring for precision livestock farming. Full article

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) from inertial sensors must run continuously on battery-powered wearables under tight latency, memory, and energy budgets. While tiny Transformers can be effective on inertial time series, end-to-end co-design across quantized inference and heterogeneous low-power platforms remains underexplored. We present STORM (Small Transformer for On-node Recognition of Motion), a deployment-oriented [round-mode=places, round-precision=1]19.7k-parameter 1D Transformer co-designed with X-HEEP, an open-source low-power single-core RISC-V SoC, and a tightly coupled streaming CGRA for nonlinear primitives (e.g., softmax). We build a cross-source 8-class benchmark by harmonizing 3 public datasets under a stringent, deployment-aligned protocol that exposes both cross-subject and cross-source shift. Using 1.280 s windows with 0.640 s stride, the protocol models continuous on-node HAR under cross-dataset generalization. After quantization-aware training and INT8 C inference export, STORM achieves [round-mode=places, round-precision=3]0.799/[round-mode=places, round-precision=3]0.801 accuracy/macro-F1 on this benchmark. Deployed on an FPGA prototype of X-HEEP with the streaming CGRA backend, STORM requires round(6739790/ (100* 1000000)* 1000, 1) ms per inference at 100 MHz, while activity-based power analysis estimates a total inference energy of 632.4 $\mathsf{\mu }$J, satisfying the stride-driven real-time constraint. These results support the practical viability of compact attention-based HAR on low-power wearable-class embedded platforms. Full article

Computational chemistry has played a central role in early-stage drug discovery by accelerating target selection, hit identification, and lead optimization. This review summarizes recent developments in molecular docking, pharmacophore modeling, molecular dynamics (MD), and virtual screening (VS), with a focus on their application in practical drug discovery workflows. Advances in docking protocols, including consensus scoring, physics-based rescoring, and ensemble approaches, addressed the challenges of receptor flexibility. Both ligand-based and structure-based pharmacophore models facilitated scaffold hopping and guided library prioritization. MD simulations were used to assess binding pose stability, identify cryptic binding pockets, and characterize solvent interactions. These simulations also supported free-energy calculations using endpoint and alchemical methods. Large-scale VS campaigns employed curated compound libraries, often composed of make-on-demand molecules, and relied on high-performance computing or cloud infrastructure to screen up to 10⁹ compounds. Hits were validated using orthogonal biophysical assays and filtered by absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) predictions. Integrated pipelines combining pharmacophore modeling, docking, MD, and free-energy calculations improved enrichment rates and reduced the number of compounds requiring synthesis. Several case studies demonstrated the identification of nanomolar-affinity leads from ultra-large screening campaigns. The review also addressed ongoing challenges, such as inconsistent scoring of binding affinity, protonation, and tautomeric errors, dataset bias, and reproducibility issues. Strategies to mitigate these limitations included standardized library preparation, adherence to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data principles, and the use of prospective benchmarking protocols. The review discussed emerging trends, including the use of quantum chemistry for electronic structure refinement, ensemble docking guided by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) data, and the integration of computational tools with automated synthesis and high-throughput screening in closed-loop discovery systems. These approaches have the potential to accelerate the design–make–test cycle, increase hit novelty, and improve decision-making in early drug development programs. Full article

Introduction: Efficient geothermal energy extraction has the potential to significantly alleviate the shortage of fossil energy, but low extraction efficiency and an insufficiently understood extraction mechanism remain key bottlenecks hindering its large-scale deployment. Method: This study develops a fluid–solid coupled numerical model based on the intrinsic physical properties of geological reservoirs to systematically analyze the energy extraction characteristics of geothermal systems. Simultaneously, the effects of key geological factors on fluid flow behavior within geothermal reservoirs are investigated. Furthermore, molecular dynamics simulations are employed to elucidate the microscopic mechanisms by which driving fluids facilitate geothermal energy extraction. Results: The results demonstrate that the thermo-hydraulic–mechanical (THM) numerical model was validated through a comparison with benchmark data reported in previous studies, exhibiting a high degree of agreement with geothermal extraction performance. The model further confirms that heat transport in the geothermal reservoir is characterized by a pronounced “tongue-in” isotherm pattern during the extraction process. Discussion: Lower initial temperatures of the driving fluid lead to more rapid geothermal energy extraction compared with higher initial temperatures, and the “tongue-in” phenomenon becomes increasingly pronounced as the initial injection temperature decreases. Moreover, increased injection pressure significantly enhances geothermal energy extraction efficiency; however, reduced pressure differentials markedly suppress the development of the “tongue-in” pattern and decrease reservoir permeability. In addition, water used as a heat-driving fluid achieves higher thermal extraction efficiency than water, while simultaneously exerting a stronger moderating effect on the permeability evolution of geothermal reservoirs. Conclusions: The simulation results obtained from the thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) numerical model provide fundamental data to support the efficient development of geothermal reservoirs, while the associated analyses offer valuable insights into the selection of appropriate driving fluids for reservoirs with distinct geological characteristics. Full article

With the rapid development of new energy vehicles, fast and reliable prediction of power battery collision damage has become increasingly important. Traditional finite-element analysis is computationally expensive and difficult to deploy for rapid prediction under varying conditions. Although learning-based methods are faster, they usually rely on single-fidelity data: high-fidelity data is accurate but scarce and costly, while low-fidelity data is abundant but less reliable. Existing multi-fidelity methods alleviate this issue, yet often suffer from imbalanced sample allocation and weak cross-fidelity modeling. Moreover, current adaptive sampling strategies cannot dynamically determine the appropriate fidelity for different regions of the design space. To address these challenges, we propose HNGP-LCA, a multi-fidelity active learning framework for battery pack collision damage prediction. Our method consists of two components: (1) an Ensemble Nested Gaussian Process module that integrates single-layer and double-layer nested Gaussian process regression to better capture high–low fidelity correlations; and (2) a Location Information Cost-aware Active Learning strategy that leverages positional information to reconstruct expected improvement under different fidelities, enabling dynamic fidelity selection during sampling. Experiments on multiple synthetic benchmarks and a real battery pack engineering case demonstrate that HNGP-LCA achieves a better trade-off among accuracy, efficiency, and cost than strong baselines such as NARCO and MFBO. In the engineering case, it improves prediction accuracy by 0.6% over NARCO and 1.29% over MFBO, while reducing dependence on expensive high-fidelity data. These results show that HNGP-LCA provides an effective and practical solution for battery collision damage prediction. Full article

Accurate energy consumption prediction is fundamental for enhancing range estimation and trip planning in battery electric vehicles (BEVs) under real-world conditions. This study develops a route-level benchmark utilizing 1 Hz data acquired via ECU/OBD-II interfaces (CAN 500 kbps) across ten diverse real-world driving routes. The input feature set comprises vehicle speed, longitudinal acceleration, estimated motor torque, road altitude, and accelerator pedal position. Ground truth energy consumption was derived from battery voltage and current, integrated via the trapezoidal rule. We performed a comparative analysis between five memoryless regressors (FNN, SVR, GPR, QRNN, and Bagged Trees) and three sequence models (LSTM, GRU, and BiLSTM) trained on 20-second temporal windows. The results indicate that the GRU model achieved the highest overall performance (mean RMSE = 0.1142 kWh, R² = 0.9545 and MAE = 0.072 kWh), while Bagged Trees emerged as the most robust static model (mean RMSE = 0.1587 kWh). Temporal models outperformed static ones on routes with high dynamic variability, whereas Bagged Trees excelled in five specific scenarios. These findings provide a controlled within-route benchmark for time-resolved cumulative energy estimation and highlight the need for chronological and cross-route validation before drawing deployment-oriented generalization claims. Full article

This paper studies capacity planning for a wind–hydrogen integrated energy system under scenario-based uncertainty in wind generation, hydrogen demand, and electricity prices. The model is formulated as a two-stage stochastic program in which first-stage investment decisions are selected before uncertainty is realized and second-stage hourly operation is optimized for each representative scenario. The main methodological difficulty is that part of the first-stage hydrogen-storage investment cost may be available only through a non-analytical evaluator, such as supplier quotation logic, simulation software, or a data-driven estimator, while the operational recourse model remains linear. To address this setting, a hybrid heuristic–Benders framework, denoted as GSOA-Benders, is developed by coupling the General-Soldiers Optimization Algorithm for derivative-free first-stage search with Benders cuts generated from linear programming subproblems. The framework is not presented as a replacement for commercial solvers on explicit convex or mixed-integer models; rather, it is intended for cases where exact algebraic reformulation of the first-stage cost is unreliable or unavailable. In the black-box case study with 500 scenarios, the method converges in 35.86 s and obtains an investment plan expressed as $\mathbf{x}=[1,0.53,23.23,0]$, corresponding to wind-farm construction, a 0.53 MW electrolyzer, a 23.23 MWh hydrogen tank, and no fuel-cell investment. Additional discussion is provided on stability-gap interpretation, benchmark limitations, component lifetime assumptions, hydrogen losses, and environmental extensions. Full article

This study develops a lifecycle economic comparison framework for shared energy storage, in which multiple users share a common storage asset through capacity leasing. A multi-service revenue structure, including capacity leasing, spot-market arbitrage, auxiliary frequency regulation, peak shaving, and capacity compensation, is established for comparative evaluation. Case studies are conducted for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and vanadium redox flow (VRF) batteries across six representative Chinese electricity markets and six standardized revenue-combination scenarios. The results show that, among the scenarios that more closely reflect current operating practices, P3 (capacity compensation + spot market + auxiliary frequency regulation) delivers the highest net present value (NPV). P6 combines all five revenue streams without explicitly modeling service-coupling dispatch constraints, and is therefore treated as a theoretical benchmark rather than an immediately deployable operating mode. Under this benchmark assumption, its calculated NPV is 21.1% and 41.7% higher than that of P3 for the two battery types, respectively. The study also shows that power-related services are more sensitive to rated power, while spot-market and peak-shaving revenues are more dependent on rated capacity. Full article

The rapid integration of electric vehicles (EVs) and decentralized renewable energy sources is transforming urban power systems, while simultaneously increasing the complexity of real-time coordination across charging infrastructure, distributed energy resources, and grid-support devices. This systematic review synthesizes recent research on multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) for EV–grid coordination, with emphasis on four emerging dimensions: forecasting-informed control, safety-constrained learning, explainability and interpretability, and trustworthy decentralized coordination. A systematic literature search was conducted in IEEE Xplore, Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, MDPI, and arXiv, covering primarily the period 2016–2025, with selected early-2026 studies retained where relevant, with selected earlier foundational studies retained for context. The review was conducted and reported in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 framework. A total of 412 records were identified through database searching; after duplicate removal and screening, 58 studies were included in the final qualitative synthesis. The reviewed literature shows that MARL is increasingly being applied to EV charging coordination, demand-side management, community energy systems, transactive energy, and ancillary grid services. The evidence further indicates that forecasting integration improves anticipatory control, safety-aware formulations enhance operational reliability, and explainability-oriented designs help address transparency and trust barriers in safety-critical grid environments. However, the literature remains limited by heterogeneous benchmarks, inconsistent evaluation metrics, and a lack of real-world deployment evidence. This review provides a structured synthesis of current methodologies, identifies critical research gaps, and outlines future directions for the development of safe, interpretable, and deployment-ready MARL frameworks for urban energy systems. Full article

Multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling requires balancing conflicting objectives while supporting real-time decision-making in industrial environments. However, although traditional metaheuristics are effective for global search, their high computational cost limits their applicability in time-sensitive scenarios. To address this issue, this paper proposes dual-pool guided preference-conditioned graph reinforcement learning (DPG-GRL), an encoder–decoder framework for the multi-objective flexible job shop scheduling problem. In DPG-GRL, a graph attention network encoder extracts operation and machine-level representations from a heterogeneous graph, while the decoder is conditioned on a preference vector to generate scheduling solutions with different trade-offs using a single trained policy. To improve sample efficiency and training stability, a dual-pool guidance mechanism is introduced, in which an offline expert pool provides a stable behavioral prior for policy initialization and an online elite pool continuously replays high-quality trajectories to refine the policy. Experimental results show that DPG-GRL outperforms representative multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, including the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) and the multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D), on synthetic instances, with more pronounced advantages in solution quality and inference efficiency as the problem scale grows. In addition, evaluations on public benchmark instances using a model trained only on the small synthetic setting demonstrate rapid Pareto-front approximation, high-quality solution sets, and promising generalization to unseen instances. These results indicate the potential of DPG-GRL for real-time production scheduling and energy-aware manufacturing. Full article

Animal functional trait data are essential for macroecology, but massive datasets remain locked in unstructured scientific literature. Traditional manual extraction is inefficient, and general-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) systems struggle with complex biological tables and numerical accuracy. To address this bioinformatics challenge, we propose a multimodal neuro-symbolic framework combining visual-language perception and code-based reasoning. This approach reconstructs complex document layouts and delegates biostatistical calculations, such as unit normalization and thermodynamic energy conversion, to an isolated programming environment to ensure mathematical and statistical consistency. By mining literature spanning 117 years, we constructed a high-fidelity physiological database for 1632 chordate species. Our method achieved a macro-averaged F1 score of 0.935 in extracting biophysical fields. External benchmarking against a curated mammalian trait database showed strong concordance for shared body-mass and metabolic-rate traits, while our database retained record-level provenance and physiological context. Furthermore, the extracted data reproduced classic allometric scaling relationships for basal metabolic rate and brain volume while preserving physiological adaptations, supporting the biological plausibility of the dataset. This study validates a reproducible bioinformatics pipeline that minimizes extraction artifacts and substantially reduces downstream mathematical and statistical conversion errors, while providing a scalable, complementary resource for building physiology-oriented trait databases from historical literature. Full article

Demand response is shifting towards continuous coordination of flexible demand, storage, and distributed generation across buildings and prosumer communities. Multi-agent reinforcement learning has gained attention because it can support decentralized execution under partial observability while still learning coordinated behavior through centralized training. This systematic review follows PRISMA 2020 guidance and synthesizes $n=70$ peer-reviewed studies published in the 2021 to 2025 window, covering building clusters, grid-aware district coordination, program-level aggregation, industrial demand response, and transactive energy mechanisms. The results show that the dominant evaluation context is grid-responsive building clusters, with growing reliance on benchmark environments that standardize interfaces and encourage reproducible multi-KPI reporting. Across the methods, centralized training with decentralized execution is the prevailing pattern, often combined with attention-based critics or value factorization to handle heterogeneity and global rewards. Reward design and constraint handling emerge as primary determinants of stability, since objectives mix cost, peak, ramp, comfort, and emissions, while rebound and synchronized behavior are recurring risks. A descriptive and cross-variable quantitative synthesis is also provided, showing that publication activity increased from three studies (4.3%) in 2021 to 28 studies (40.0%) in 2025, with the strongest concentration in 2024–2025. Quantitatively, grid-responsive building clusters accounted for 26 of 70 studies (37.1%), actor–critic methods for 24 studies (34.3%), CityLearn for 16 studies (22.9%), and cost-based evaluation was reported in 64 studies (91.4%), whereas robustness testing appeared in only 16 studies (22.9%). Across the reviewed studies, peak reduction was reported in 55 (78.6%) studies, whereas robustness testing appeared in only 16 studies (22.9%) and transferability or deployment realism in 11 (15.7%), indicating that evaluation remains much stronger for operational performance than for real-world generalization. Full article

False data injection (FDI) cyberattacks pose a growing threat to modern power distribution systems in smart cities by manipulating state-estimation processes and provoking covert voltage violations that traditional defense mechanisms fail to detect. Recent industry data indicate that coordinated FDI attacks can distort measurement sets by as little as 3–7%, yet trigger voltage deviations exceeding 10% in vulnerable feeders, resulting in operational instability, unnecessary load curtailments, and elevated outage risk. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a quantum-accelerated digital twin (QDT) framework that integrates quantum optimization algorithms with a high-fidelity digital twin (DT) of the distribution system to detect, localize, and remediate FDI-induced cyberattacks in real time. The rationale behind the approach lies in the superior combinatorial search capability of quantum solvers, which accelerates the identification of falsified measurement vectors and optimal corrective control actions compared with classical methods. In addition, the framework introduces an innovative Bitcoin-mining-oriented virtual energy storage (BMOVES) mechanism that treats mining facilities as dynamically controllable, fast-response electrical loads within smart city demand–response programs. By modulating mining power consumption with sub-second granularity, the proposed BMOVES resource provides up to 18–45% flexible capacity during attack scenarios, enabling voltage restoration without relying on conventional energy storage assets. The unified QDT + BMOVES architecture is validated using the 136-bus Brazilian distribution system, a realistic benchmark for cyber–physical resilience studies. Simulation results demonstrate over 99% FDI detection accuracy, up to an 82% reduction in peak voltage violations, and restoration of operational limits 11 times faster than state-of-the-art classical methods. These findings highlight the transformative potential of integrating quantum computing, digital twins, and nontraditional flexible assets to enhance cyber-resilient power infrastructure in future smart cities. Full article