The uncertainties in the aerosol effects on radiative forcing limit our knowledge of climate change, presenting us with an important research challenge. Aerosols in Atmospheric Chemistry introduces basic concepts about the characterization, formation, and impacts of ambient aerosol particles as an introduction to graduate students new to the field. Each chapter also provides an up-to-date synopsis of the latest knowledge of aerosol particles in atmospheric chemistry.

Damage Modeling of Composite Structures: Strength, Fracture, and Finite Element Analysis provides readers with a fundamental overview of the mechanics of composite materials, along with an outline of an array of modeling and numerical techniques used to analyze damage, failure mechanisms and safety tolerance. Strength prediction and finite element analysis of laminated composite structures are both covered, as are modeling techniques for delaminated composites under compression and shear. Viscoelastic cohesive/friction coupled model and finite element analysis for delamination analysis of composites under shear and for laminates under low-velocity impact are all covered at length. A concluding chapter discusses multiscale damage models and finite element analysis of composite structures. - Integrates intralaminar damage and interlaminar delamination under different load patterns, covering intralaminar damage constitutive models, failure criteria, damage evolution laws, and virtual crack closure techniques - Discusses numerical techniques for progressive failure analysis and modeling, as well as numerical convergence and mesh sensitivity, thus allowing for more accurate modeling - Features models and methods that can be seamlessly extended to analyze failure mechanisms and safety tolerance of composites under more complex loads, and in more extreme environments - Demonstrates applications of damage models and numerical methods

Acoustic Emission Signal Analysis and Damage Mode Identification of Composite Wind Turbine Blades covers both the underlying theory and various techniques for effective structural monitoring of composite wind turbine blades via acoustic emission signal analysis, helping readers solve critical problems such as noise elimination, defect detection, damage mode identification, and more. Author Pengfei Liu introduces techniques for identifying and analyzing progressive failure under tension, delamination, damage localization, adhesive composite joint failure, and other degradation phenomena, outlining methods such as time-difference, wavelet, machine learning, and more including combined methods. The disadvantages and advantages of using each method are covered as are techniques for different blade-lengths and various blade substructures. Piezoelectric sensors are discussed as is experimental analysis of damage source localization. The book also takes great lengths to let readers know when techniques and concepts discussed can be applied to composite materials and structures beyond just wind turbine blades. - Features fundamental acoustic emission theories and techniques for monitoring the structural integrity of wind turbine blades - Covers sensor arrangements, noise elimination, defect detection, and dominating damage mode identification using acoustic emission techniques - Outlines the wavelet method, the time-difference defect detection method, and damage mode identification techniques using machine learning - Discusses how the techniques covered can be extended and adapted for use in other composite structures under complex loads and in different environments

How did ancestral arthropods successfully diversify to colonize the land? How do insects use their wings to exploit terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems by metamorphosis? The causes and consequences of metamorphosis are still poorly understood in biology. This collection of essays examines the molecular basis underlying the metamorphosis regulation of the white wax scale insect (WWS), a fascinating insect that undergoes different metamorphoses between males and females. It shows that the WWS has produced great economic or medical benefits for human beings for thousands of years. This book provides interesting information for scientific and technical personnel, as well as undergraduate and graduate students engaged in entomology, molecular biology and biogeography.

The purpose of my study is to better understand the current obstacles in establishing a functional environmental market. In the dissertation, I study this problem from both supply and demand sides; that is, I consider the available actions from the environmental credit suppliers, such as landowners or farmers, under different market institutions, and I also study the buyers’ behaviors for a potential environmental market for a public good, such as private individuals who hold positive values toward various types of ecosystem services. I mainly address two questions. The first question is how to raise revenue from private individuals to support an environmental market, which is discussed extensively in the first chapter. I investigate new auction approaches to support an environmental market, focusing on the differences in individuals’ contribution behaviors when they are asked to support a public or common good in different auction approaches. Experimental results show that the proposed auction approaches can significantly increase the realized social surplus compared to the traditional pay-your-bids approach. The second question is called the â€credit-stacking†problem, which concerns suppliers’ choices and participation constraints when multiple environmental markets are to be established. Since environmental markets may be established at different scales (e.g., regional or global), I propose to study the impact of credit stacking when multiple environmental markets, including a regional and a global environmental market, coexist. I also study credit suppliers’ behavioral responses in different market institutions (or different policies, such as when credit stacking is allowed versus the situation when credit stacking is not allowed). In particular, I study how the behavioral responses of producers in the long run will influence the policy outcomes. I find that not allowing credit stacking is a substantial restriction against achieving social optimality and the social inefficiency loss due to such restriction could be magnified in the long run. My research on credit stacking policy is discussed in the second and third chapters.

Economic impacts of energy infrastructure incidents have been a focus of attention, especially since the rapid pipeline expansion due to the domestic shale oil and gas boom. While previous studies focus on individual pipeline incidents, we provide the first nationwide assessment of pipeline incidents' impacts on housing prices using data from 864 gas distribution pipeline incidents and 17 million property transactions from 2010 to 2020. A difference-in-differences analysis finds that a pipeline incident decreases housing prices by 4% -- 6% on average. We explore the heterogeneous impacts of incidents with different characteristics. These heterogeneous impacts can potentially explain conflicting results from previous studies.

Metal structural components have the characteristics of complex product structures and long production cycles, which lead to problems such as delayed delivery, low material utilization, large quantity of work in progress, poor welding integrity, and unbalanced equipment load during the production process. This article conducts in-depth research on key optimization problems and production process control methods in the production process of metal structural components, such as batch production optimization, part cutting grouping optimization, and processing scheduling optimization. The study of these optimization problems and control methods is of great significance in shortening the production cycle of metal structural components and reducing production costs.

Respondents' belief on policy and payment consequentiality in a stated preference survey can influence the estimation of willingness to pay (WTP). This study introduces a new approach to calibrate WTP estimates using perceived policy consequentiality that enables detailed analyses of the factors behind preference misrepresentations. We examine the effects of perceived policy consequentiality under a single-bounded referendum with a tax or a donation payment vehicle on an individual's probability of revealing truthful preference and corresponding WTP estimates based on a proposed river restoration project in Florida. We structurally estimate individuals' misrepresentation probabilities under different levels of perceived policy consequentiality. Our results imply that a higher perceived policy consequentiality reduces preference misrepresentation. The tax payment vehicle is generally preferred to the voluntary donation payment vehicle as the tax reduces free-riding incentives when true WTP is higher than the elicited amounts. We also find that tax has a relative advantage of reducing free-riding incentives while voluntary donation has a relative advantage of reducing the hypothetical bias. Using the predicted probability of truthful representation to calibrate WTP leads to higher levels of WTP estimates and these estimates converge under the tax and donation payment vehicles.