Good Environmental Performance Research Articles

Constrained least total lncosh algorithm and its sparsity-induced version

Constrained adaptive filtering has developed rapidly in recent years. The constrained least lncosh (CLL) algorithm has good performance in heavy-tailed impulsive noise environments. However, it does not consider the situation where the input of the adaptive filter is corrupted by noise. To solve this problem, this work proposes a constrained least total lncosh algorithm (CLTL) based on the error-in-variables (EIV) model by employing the total least-squares framework and the lncosh loss function. In addition, to enhance the behavior of CLTL for estimating sparse systems or to save energy consumption in beamforming, an improved CLTL algorithm is proposed by using the constraint of the l1-norm of the weight vector. Simulation results are given to demonstrate the superiority of CLTL and its sparsity-induced version.

Ghost key distribution under mutual authentication mechanism

Most existing ghost-imaging-based cryptographic key-distribution protocols involve one-way authentication, and the lack of a mutual authentication mechanism can easily lead to the tampering of key information. In this study, we employed ghost imaging as an encryption transmission to realise multiparty key distribution under a mutual authentication mechanism. This protocol achieved identity authentication using shared image synthesis based on cumulative visual cryptography and could effectively determine the communication channel threatened by an attack. Simulation and experimental results verified that the protocol was capable of resisting various attacks—such as exhaustive and tampering attacks— and exhibited good performance in a noisy environment. The proposed protocol is a novel key-distribution technology in the non-quantum field and can be applied in wireless key distribution and secure optical communication.

Adaptive Correction of Landmark for Visual Homing in Mobile Vehicles

This paper presents an optimized visual homing method based on Average Landmark Vector (ALV), termed Adaptive Correction of Landmark (ACoL), which exhibits good homing performance and robustness in both static and dynamic indoor environments. The salient features of this paper are: (1) Inherent constraints of visual homing are analyzed in detail to reveal the limitations of existing ALV-based methods. (2) Instead of removing mismatched landmarks or artificially assigning fixed weights to landmarks, a novel solution is proposed by adaptively evaluating a reasonable weight for each landmark to account for contribution to the output. (3) Computation time of the proposed method is particularly concerned to enable the vehicle to perform real-time homing tasks in actual scenarios. (4) Simulations and experiments demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method under both static and dynamic conditions. Our method focuses on improving a vehicle's homing ability in terms of landmark matching, landmark distribution and homing direction. Comparative studies with other ALV-based methods demonstrate that our method generalizes well to various complex and challenging indoor scenarios.

A Real-Time Stereo Visual-Inertial SLAM System Based on Point-and-Line Features

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is widely used in various fields, such as unmanned driving, robotics, and VR. The SLAM system with multiple landmarks is also a research hotspot currently. In this study, a real-time stereo visual-inertial SLAM system based on point-and-line features is proposed; the system is studied based on VINS-fusion. It improves the front-end process of VINS fusion. First, we proposed an IMU-assisted hierarchical grid optical flow tracking method that can more accurately and quickly tracks points between frames. Second, we add line features on the basis of existing point features. To match line features in real time, we only select the best line features to participate in optimization. We combine line segments by geometric relation to reduce the line segment splitting and redundancy brought by LSD algorithm, and further predict line features by IMU-assisted optical flow tracking to achieve higher precision matching. In the back-end optimization process, we used a redundant structure to avoid the failure of stereo constraints in a highly dynamic environment. The proposed method outperformed the state-of-the-art methods (VINS-fusion and PL-VINS) on the EuRoC MAV dataset. The system also achieved good performance in a real environment.

Impact of interaction between corporate environmental responsibility and corporate financial performance: the moderating effects of environmental regulation and internal control

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the interaction between corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and corporate financial performance (CFP). Moreover, the moderating effect of environmental regulation and internal control on this relationship is also examined. Based on the panel data of 790 China’s A-shares listed companies of heavily polluting industries from 2006 to 2019, the results show that while CFP has a significant positive impact on CER, the positive impact of CER on CFP is not significant. Further analysis reveals that environmental regulation plays a positive moderating role in the impact of CFP on CER, and the positive impact of CER on CFP become significant in higher internal control quality firms. The results indicate that good environmental performance is a consequence of earlier good financial performance, and the costs of implementing sustainable and responsible projects are not always offset by revenues sufficient to generate increases in profit. Our findings suggest that firms should improve the quality of internal control and government should increase environmental supervision to achieve a virtuous circle connecting CER and CFP.

A multifunctional Eu2-cluster coordination polymer as a luminescent probe of imidacloprid and renewable catalyst for the fixation of CO2 with epoxides

A bifunctional coordination polymer material is of great significance for the environmentally friendly applications due to its inherent advantages such as abundant active sites and characteristic metal ions. Here, a 3D Eu2-based framework 1 ({[Eu2(BTB)2(H2O)2]}n, H3BTB = 1,3,5-tris(4-carboxyphenyl)benzene) has been prepared through solvothermal method, presenting excellent chemical stability and thermal stability. Importantly, compound 1 serving as a recyclable luminescence probe (five times) can recognize pesticide imidacloprid with detection limit of 4.9 ppm, featuring good selectivity and anti-interference performance in simulative serum and urine environments. Additionally, in view of abundant Lewis-acid sites, compound 1 can be employed as an efficient catalyst for the conversion reaction of CO2 and epoxides with different substituent groups into high-valued chemical substances (five-cycled carbonate) without solvent. More importantly, this heterogeneous catalyst can be reused without significant change in catalytic activity after five reaction cycles, which are further confirmed by the PXRD, ICP and IR analyses of catalyst 1 after the fifth recycling. This work greatly enriched the applications of multifunctional coordination materials in CO2 cycloaddition catalysis and luminescence sensing.

Cover-up or true? does CSR disclosure really contribute to corporate environmental performance?

Do companies disclose their environmental social responsibility to demonstrate their good environmental performance or to cover up their poor environmental performance? This study examines the relationship between the disclosure level of corporate environmental responsibility information and corporate environmental performance based on institutional pressure, using data from Chinese A-share listed companies between 2008 and 2021. The results showed a negative relationship between the two variables, indicating that many firms might disclose environmental information to cover up their poor environmental performance. This phenomenon was more evident among non-state-owned enterprises and the enterprises in the economically underdeveloped regions. This study provides a new theoretical perspective for relevant management institutions to study social responsibility reports and formulate environmental protection policies.

A chemically tailored capacitive deionization system for the enhanced removal of cesium from process water

A capacitive deionization (CDI) electrode comprising ethylenediamine triacetic acid (EDTA) and 2D MXene (EDTA-MXene) is fabricated to separate Cs+ from strongly acidic process water. The method provides new direction for an advanced aqueous recycle process to separate fission products from spent fuel liquor. Grafting EDTA on MXene has no detrimental effect on its structure but does diversify the modes of ion interaction and increase the number of binding sites. The composite CDI electrode has a Cs+ adsorption capacity of 2.07 mmol g−1 at 1.2 V with 97.3% removal efficiency within 15 min. Step-wise adsorption and desorption cycling of the electrode highlights the chemisorption effect of EDTA which immobilizes the ions as the applied voltage is lowered, although almost all ions can be stripped by reversing the voltage to −1.4 V and without the need for chemical treatment. The EDTA-MXene electrode demonstrates outstanding cyclic performance with a capacity retention of >80% after 320 cycles. Furthermore, the electrode maintains its performance in strongly acidic solution, removing 0.66 mmol g−1 Cs+ at 1.2 V, as well as being stable after immersing in 3 mol L−1 HNO3 for 7 days. Through continuous cycling it is possible to enrich the Cs+ into a highly concentrated solution for element recovery or safe disposal. The EDTA-MXene material is robust and maintains good performance in harsh chemical environments, levering its multiple binding sites to successfully isolate Cs+ from strongly acidic solutions and in the presence of competing ions, Sr2+ and Ce(IV).

Measuring environmental performance of power dispatch influenced by low-carbon approaches

Wind power integration and carbon reduction cooperation, as low-carbon approaches, are introduced into the current power dispatching process under carbon reduction requirements. In order to measure the environmental performance of power dispatch influenced by the above approaches, this paper firstly presents a low-carbon power dispatch model for wind power integrated system imported with carbon reduction cooperation. Next, the methods related to wind speed prediction, optimization algorithm and efficiency evaluation are fully discussed. Finally, empirical analysis shows that: (1) the overall effect of ARIMA-NARX model is superior to that of ARIMA model for wind speed prediction, whose MSE is reduced by 79.73%, (2) compared with GA and PSO, GA-PSO has better effect of optimization, which can effectively jump out of the local optimal value, and its convergence speed keeps improving, (3) the two low-carbon approaches can facilitate the achievement of system carbon reduction targets with good environmental performance of power dispatch, and (4) low-carbon power dispatching strategies taking full account of these two approaches are developed, which proves to be of reliability, economy and environment.

Environmental implication of international migration on high- and middle-income countries: A comparative analysis

In this paper, we researched the implication of international migration and pollution on environmental development of the selected countries which we classified as middle- and upper-income countries. Maintaining good environmental performance while keeping pollution at minimum level amidst international migration has being the global focus towards climate goal. On this premises, this study examines the relationship between international migration and carbon dioxide emission (CO2). Scientific approaches (random-effects model and Driscoll-Kraay standard error estimator) with panel data for the period from 2010 to 2019 are adopted for indepth analysis of the selected countries. The findings according to random-effects model/Driscoll-Kraay standard error estimator suggest the incresae of CO2 due to increase in international migration for the case of middle-income countries. Also, a decrease in CO2 due to increase in international migration is found for high-income countries. Following our main findings, as a function of CO2 emission, we recommend to take identity of people who migrate into consideration for both economics and environment policy. On the other hand, policies should be based on mitigating the negative impact of international migration and economic growth for the middle-income countries. Moreover, environmentally friendly growth technologies are suggested.

Good Corporate Governance, Environmental Performance And Disclosure Of Carbon Emissions

The study aims to prove and empirically test the effect of good corporate governance (GCG) and environmental performance on carbon emission disclosure. Good corporate governance variables include independent board of commissioners, board of directors, audit committee, institutional ownership, and managerial ownership. The object of this research is mining companies and property companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) fot the 2021 period. The sample of this research was obtained using purposive sampling method which was taken from 100 companies that met the criteria from a total of 146 mining companies and property companies in the 2021 period. The analysis model used in this research is a multiple linear regression model. The result showed that the board of directors, audit committee, and environmental performance have a positive and significant effect on carbon emission disclosure. While the independent board of commissioners, institutional ownership, and managerial ownership have no influence on carbon emission disclosure.

The effect of environmental performance on sustainability reporting: A case of Indonesia

Sustainability reporting reflects business contribution to sustainable development. Indonesia seeks to engage in sustainable development by assessing the companies using the PROPER scale. The study aims to determine whether environmental performance (assessed by the PROPER scale) affect sustainability reporting of companies in Indonesia. The research population includes companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange that have published annual and sustainability reports within five consecutive years. This study employs WarpPLS to analyze data from 85 observations. The results show an increase in the disclosure of sustainability reports when the audit committee and the board of directors hold regular meetings. Companies without governance committees focus more on improving governance rather than disclosing sustainability reports. Environmental performance, when associated with the type of industry and governance committee, will increase sustainability reporting. However, a company with good environmental performance will make the audit committee and directors focus on other responsibilities because the community already understands that a company with a good PROPER rating properly manages its environmental impact and is aware of the importance of sustainable development. This study concludes that environmental performance measured by the PROPER scale positively affects sustainability reporting considering the type of industry, governance committee, audit committee, and board of directors of companies in Indonesia. The Indonesian government must support, facilitate, and encourage companies to achieve the gold category in the PROPER scale and promote higher disclosure of sustainability reports to contribute to sustainable development.

Analysis of Engineering Performance and Environmental Impact of Asphalt Pavement Debonding and Ice Suppression Materials

Aiming at the maladies of high labor intensity, the low efficiency of ice and snow removal, and environmental pollution in traditional ice-deicing and snow-melting methods, we successfully developed a material that can effectively reduce the adhesive force between ice and snow with the pavement, aimed at the characteristics of the road ice de-icing and snow melting. According to the evaluation index and method of de-icing performance, we determined the ratio of the three components of the film-forming component, the adhesive component, the modified ice suppression component, and the preparation technology. It has no perfect evaluation index and method for the viscosity-reducing and ice-defending materials at present, this paper further evaluates the performance of the viscosity-reducing and ice-defending materials from the aspects of ice-deicing performance, durability, and environmental performance. The results show that the viscosity-reducing and ice-defending material has good permeability and water resistance. The material still has good ice-deicing performance after seven rounds of cycle tests at the same time, indicating that it has a good slow-release performance. It is verified that the viscosity-reducing and ice-defending materials have good durability using the low-temperature accelerated test. Finally, from the analysis and evaluation of the environmental protection performance of the viscosity-reducing and ice-defending materials, the materials have no effect on the growth of plants and their average corrosion rate is much lower than the average corrosion rate of the snow melting test piece, which means that the viscosity-reducing and ice-defending materials have good environmental performance.

Vision-and-Language Navigation Based on Cross-Modal Feature Fusion in Indoor Environment

It is challenging for an agent to simultaneously decipher visual and language information and make decisions to perform corresponding actions. Recently, the vision-and-language navigation task has been proposed to allow the agent to navigate based on a language instruction and the currently visible visual point information in a 3-D indoor real environment. The key to this task is that the agent needs to understand the information of the two models of vision and language in an unknown environment to navigate effectively. In this study, we capture the alignment relationship between visual features and language features using a cross-modal feature fusion method. Attention is used to set up the cross-modal fusion module so that visual features contain language information and language features contain visual information, thereby allowing the model to learn more feature relationships and improving the success rate (SR) of agent navigation. Considering the practical significance of the navigation of the agent, we aim to shorten the trajectory length of the agent as much as possible while ensuring that the agent reaches the target position successfully. We employ a reinforcement learning algorithm based on the advantage actor critic to constrain the action selection of the agent to shorten the trajectory length. In order to further improve the performance of the model and reduce the difference between the performance of the agent in known environments and unknown environments, we propose the data augmentation method Cro-Speaker, and the three training methods Speaker data augmentation (SD), Cro-Speaker data augmentation (CSD), and Speaker and Cro-Speaker data augmentation (SCSD) based on this method. We evaluate the proposed method based on the Room-to-Room data set. The results show that the proposed method improves the SR of the agent navigation, shortens the length of the navigation trajectory, and exhibits a good generalization performance in known and unknown environments.

Corporate waste disclosure, risk‐taking and foreign ownership: Evidence from Indonesia

AbstractThe role of corporations in waste management can reflect the superior performance in innovation and the risk a company is willing to take to engage in the circular economy. The superior performance of corporate waste management can be reflected in the corporate disclosure as a media of accountability and transparency. This research investigates the association between waste disclosure and corporate risk‐taking and the moderating role of foreign ownership in companies in Indonesia as an emerging country struggling to find an effective solution toward environmental problems, including waste. The observation was performed on non‐financial companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange for the period 2018–2021. Panel regression was used to find the answers to the research questions of the direct and moderate associations among corporate waste disclosure, risk‐taking and foreign ownership. The results show that waste disclosure encourages increased corporate risk‐taking, which means that companies that disclose waste are companies with good accountability and environmental performance and tend to take risks that can increase value. Foreign ownership was not found to statistically strengthen the relationship between waste disclosure and corporate risk‐taking, which is different from the expectation that improving the transparency of waste information can attract a greater inflow of foreign investor resources. This brings implication that investors need to increase attention to the issue of corporate waste management and put pressure on companies to provide information on corporate waste performance for investment decision‐making. Furthermore, the results of the study also found that waste disclosure in Indonesia is still low compared to the international disclosure standard. This research contributes to the sustainability accounting literature in developing countries by outlining the role of waste disclosure.

Potential of carvacrol as plant growth-promotor and green fungicide against fusarium wilt disease of perennial ryegrass.

Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) is a valuable forage and soil stabilisation crop. Perennial crops have long been associated with good environmental performance and ecosystem stability. Vascular wilt diseases caused by Fusarium species are the most damaging plant diseases affecting both woody perennials and annual crops. Therefore, the aim of the present study was the assessment of the preventive and growth-promoting effects of carvacrol against Fusarium oxysporum, F. solani, and F. nivale (phylogenetically analyzed on the basis of internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions) causing vascular wilt of ryegrass in vitro and under greenhouse conditions. To accomplish this aim, various parameters were monitored including coleoptile development, rhizogenesis, the incidence of coleoptile lesions, disease index, the visual appearance of ryegrass health, ryegrass organic matter and soil fungal load. The results obtained showed that F. nivale was highly harmful to ryegrass seedlings compared to other Fusarium species. Furthermore, carvacrol with 0.1 and 0.2 mg/mL protected significantly the seedlings against Fusarium wilt diseases both in vitro and in the greenhouse. Simultaneously, carvacrol also functioned as a seedling growth promoter, as is reflected in all monitored parameters, such as the recovery of seedling height and root length, and the development of new leaf buds and secondary roots. Carvacrol proved to be effective plant growth promoter and a bio-fungicide against Fusarium vascular diseases.

Oxidation decomposition mechanism of hexamethyldisiloxane

Siloxane working fluid has good environmental performance and thermodynamic performance, widely used in high temperature heat source ORC system. During the filling process of working fluid and operation in ORC system operation, air may leak into the system. The reaction of siloxane working fluid with oxygen in high temperature environment will produce abrasive silica, which will cause serious damage to the system. The oxidative decomposition mechanism of hexamethyldisiloxane (MM) was analyzed by density functional theory (DFT) and ReaxFF molecular dynamic simulation. It is found that the initial reactions of MM oxidation decomposition can be divided into two categories. The first type is the thermal decomposition of MM itself. The second one is the collision reaction between MM molecule and O2 molecule. Comparing the two kinds of chemical reaction barriers, MM is more likely to react with O2. Pathways 2–3 involving the collision between O2 molecule and Si atom are the optimal pathway of initial reaction kinetics, and its reaction energy barrier is 204.1 kJ/mol. It was observed from ReaxFF MD simulations that the main products of MM oxidative decomposition were CH4, CH2O, CO, CO2, SiO and amorphous silica. In the process of oxidative decomposition, small free radicals such as CH3, O, H, OH played a very important role in the oxidative decomposition of working fluids, which greatly promoted the decomposition of working fluids and the formation of main products.

Single-qubit quantum classifier based on gradient-free optimization algorithm

A single-qubit quantum classifier (SQC) based on a gradient-free optimization (GFO) algorithm, named the GFO-based SQC, is proposed to overcome the effects of barren plateaus caused by quantum devices. Here, a rotation gate RX (ϕ) is applied on the single-qubit binary quantum classifier, and the training data and parameters are loaded into ϕ in the form of vector multiplication. The cost function is decreased by finding the value of each parameter that yields the minimum expectation value of measuring the quantum circuit. The algorithm is performed iteratively for all parameters one by one until the cost function satisfies the stop condition. The proposed GFO-based SQC is demonstrated for classification tasks in Iris and MNIST datasets and compared with the Adam-based SQC and the quantum support vector machine (QSVM). Furthermore, the performance of the GFO-based SQC is discussed when the rotation gate in the quantum device is under different types of noise. The simulation results show that the GFO-based SQC can reach a high accuracy in reduced time. Additionally, the proposed GFO algorithm can quickly complete the training process of the SQC. Importantly, the GFO-based SQC has a good performance in noisy environments.

Properties and application of thixotropic cement paste backfill with molybdenum tailings

Backfilling is considered worldwide as an effective treatment method for coal mining subsidence and mineral tailing disposal. A green thixotropic cement paste backfill with molybdenum tailing (MoT) sand was prepared which can rapidly accumulate in the coal mining cavity. A thixotropic coefficient method was also proposed to evaluate the thixotropy of the paste based on the correlation between shear stress and time. Through an orthogonal test regarding the optimal proportion design, the thixotropy, water separation rate and stone compressive strength of the thixotropic MoT-cement paste were tested. The range analysis showed that the optimal proportion of the paste was 6% mixed metal hydroxide (MMH), 0.8 water-cement ratio, and 6:4 MoT-cement ratio. The analysis in the rheological properties of the proposed paste indicated that the relationships of shear rate-shear stress of the optimal proportion conformed to the power rate rheological model. The influences of the addition amount of MMH, water-cement ratio and MoT-cement ratio on the mechanical property of the stone body of the proposed paste were tested and predicted theoretically. Through a simulated accumulation test, the relationships among the flowing distance, accumulation height and time of the thixotropic MoT-cement paste in the process of filling coal mining cavity were obtained. The cost of the thixotropic cement paste with MoT is 30–50% better economy than that with natural river sand and recycled fine aggregate whilst the thixotropic cement paste with MoT also shows good environmental performance by considering the depletion of stocked mineral tailing in coal mining cavity treatment.

Prospective life cycle assessment of a novel building system with improved foam glass incorporating high recycled content

This article presents a prospective life cycle assessment of the novel building system incorporating an improved foam glass with high recycled content, considering alternative shells (clay and concrete bricks) and construction site locations. The improved foam glass (λ = 0.037 W/m K; ρ = 100 kg/m3) outperforms the commercial foam glass in most environmental impact categories. A fully electric production process is only beneficial with a high share of renewable energy sources in the electricity mix. The use of the improved foam glass can lead to a reduction of climate change impacts by 64 % and resource use - fossil by 66 % in the European foam glass market. The novel building system can have good environmental performance even when assuming long-distance distribution. This article advances in proposing future scenario analyses by identifying life cycle hotspots (e.g. energy intensity, cullet availability), including changes in production, suppliers and market demand. A prospective life cycle assessment allows to anticipate critical issues and provide recommendations for improvement.