Fuel cell technology has attracted great interest in recent decades. However, progress in lignocellulosic biomass-energized fuel cells has been slow. This is because that lignocellulosic biomass generally cannot be directly used for electricity generation in a fuel cell with high efficiency. As a renewable resource is available in large quantities in many regions of the world, lignocellulosic biomass can be a promising feedstock for sustainable electricity production using fuel cell technologies. In this monograph, we focus on the electricity generation in fuel cells that are operated at high temperatures with high efficiency using lignocellulosic biomass-derived fuels. More specifically, we discussed biomass conversion coupled solid oxide fuel cell and direct carbon fuel cell. The state of the art in technology development, as well as challenges, is outlined and perspectives on future development are provided.

The diverging diamond interchange (also known as a double crossover diamond interchange) is a relatively new design to the United States. This design can increase throughput and safety without widening bridge structures. The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Research Report 959: Diverging Diamond Interchange Informational Guide, Second Edition presents a comprehensive guide to the design and operation of diverging diamond interchanges and updates material found in the FHWA's Diverging Diamond Interchange Informational Guide. A workshop summary is provided that includes an overview of key traffic signal timing concepts at diverging diamond interchanges--from terminology to timing considerations and from operational analysis to traffic signal equipment. Videos viewed during the workshop are also provided.

In this thesis, we will evaluate the performance of the aforementioned RFID counting algorithms under a more sophisticated time-correlated channel fading model. In particular, we focus on investigating and analyzing how the temporal correlations would influence the accuracy of these existing counting algorithms. Based on the experimental statistics that characterized the realistic indoor channels, we refine the channel model to describe the time-correlation of the forward and backward channel between the RFID reader and the tags. We also modify the model to support implementations of different communication scenarios. Comparisons of the performance of the existing counting schemes under the simplistic uncorrelated packet loss channel model and the refined correlated channel model are conducted. We also propose extensions for these RFID counting schemes to mitigate the estimation inaccuracy generated by the correlated packet loss.