Railway, as one of the most energy-efficient transport, plays an essential role in improving the world’s energy and environmental sustainability. Statistics about rail share of transport activities and the corresponding energy consumption will demonstrate the energy efficiency of railway and indicate the potential of developing railway transport. Therefore, this chapter will provide an overview of the railway's energy consumption and traffic volume shares. Statistics presented in this chapter show that railway energy consumption decreased in these decades while its transport volume kept stable, and the traffic volume share of the railway is extremely large in urban transport. To achieve the goal of carbon neutralization, the European Union and many countries have conducted research projects on railway energy conservation. The technologies developed in these projects include energy-efficient train driving, integrated timetabling, using regenerative braking energy, etc. A summary of these technologies is also given, along with their potential energy savings, which range from 1 to 25%. This book will analyse and illustrate the whole systems processes of train operation with optimisation solutions. The structure of the following chapters will be presented at the end.

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Having a healthy built environment becomes increasingly important, especially under the effects of COVID-19. This paper intends to combine sustainable goals based on climate change with passive design principles to achieve a healthy built environment regarding the building performance of residential buildings. The Yuedao Residential Community in the Lingnan area was taken as an example for the research. Based on relevant standards of healthy buildings, the thermal, light, and acoustic environment requirements were determined. The methods of building performance simulation and on-site measurement were used to quantify the research object environments. Then, the outcomes were obtained based on these standards. As observed, the thermal environment’s adaptive thermal comfort level was level III. It was hot indoors, but the light and acoustic environments met the requirements. Building designs based on a built environment optimized by external shading systems aim to solve problems through building performance simulation and qualitative analysis. After optimization, the thermal environment improved. According to the literature review, this research focused on a healthy built environment with a sustainable passive design in terms of building performance. A research workflow was established that could be used for more practical research, with abundant research methods. The problems were solved to varying degrees, and the Lingnan architectural culture was preserved. Moreover, this research filled the gap in interactive research on healthy built environments with sustainable passive design regarding building performance@en

This paper presents a second-generation integrated circuit for the Active Books neural stimulation microsystem. It provides multi-channel stimulation with versatile control of stimulation profiles and reduced crosstalk from other stimulation channels. The new design features enhanced safety by monitoring the temperature and humidity inside the micropackage, and the peak electrode voltage at any stimulating electrode. The humidity sensor uses an interdigitated capacitor covered by a passivation layer and a polyimide covering. To boost sensitivity in the operating range of interest, the temperature sensor uses a temperature-insensitive current that is subtracted from a proportional-to-absolute-temperature current. A 3-b analog-to-digital converter is used to record the peak electrode voltage. All sensor data is sent to an implanted central hub using bidirectional connection with error checking. Both the stimulation electronics and sensors are integrated on a 6.2 mm 4 mm silicon die using XFAB's 0.6- μ m CMOS high-voltage process. No post-processing steps are involved. The stimulator uses a five-wire cable to provide the power supply and bidirectional data signals. The chip operates from a 7.5-18 V power supply and can generate stimulation currents of 1 mA, 4 mA or 8 mA with a pulse duration of 2 μ S-1.07 ms. The humidity sensor output varies linearly with relative humidity (RH) with a normalized sensitivity of 0.04%/%RH over the range of 20-90%RH. The temperature sensor has a nonlinearity of 0.4% over the range of 20-90 °C and a resolution of 0.12 °C. The stimulator is the first of its kind to include integrated temperature and humidity sensors.@en