Identification and Tuning Methods for PI Control Systems Based on Symmetric Send-on-delta Sampling

International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems - Two procedures for the definition of an autotuning algorithm for event-based proportional-integral (PI) control systems are proposed in...     

Linear regression-based multifidelity surrogate for disturbance amplification in multiphase explosion

Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization - When simulations are very expensive and many are required, as for optimization or uncertainty quantification, a way to reduce cost is using...     

What do stakeholders think about knowledge transfer offices? The perspective of firms and research groups in a regional innovation system

Knowledge transfer offices (KTOs) are required to adopt a comprehensive approach to managing a broad set of channels of university–industry collaboration, including collaborative research, business services, exchange of human resources and informal relations within a regional innovation system. The perspectives of firms and academic researchers, the main stakeholders of KTOs, are useful complements to assess KTO activity. The goal of this article is to study the effectiveness that these stakeholders attribute to KTOs. Based on survey data collected in the Spanish region of Andalusia, the article explores stakeholders’ perceptions and determinants. The results show that the level of engagement in a diversified range of activities and the importance attributed to knowledge transfer in the strategy of both research groups and firms are the best predictors of the perceived effectiveness of KTOs. The article also underlines specific differences between the two types of stakeholders.     

Pre-treatment for the extraction of manganese from mangano-argentiferous refractory tailings

A novel process was used to extract manganese from minerals that are refractory to cyanidation and ammonium thiosulphate. These minerals, known as mangano-argentiferous compounds, are principally composed of manganese, silver, and iron and exhibit low recovery. The mineral of interest was obtained from the leaching tails procured in Monte del Favor, Hostotipaquillo, Jalisco, Mexico. The tailings were characterised by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), atomic absorption, and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) microanalysis. After mineralogical characterisation, the tailings were screened through a mesh (mesh number 100, 0.147?mm); later, they were subjected to a reductive leaching process, where the solid–liquid ratio was varied from 2:1 to 10:1. A 5:1 ratio yielded the highest manganese content. With sulphuric acid and sodium sulphite as the reducing agents, 96.05% of Mn could be extracted during the first 3?h, with a head grade of 3.58% and an acid consumption of 49.31?kg/t. The sulphite consumption was found to be 9.81?kg/t.     

Ten Arguments Against the Proclaimed Amount of Dark Matter

According to the Standard cosmological model, our universe needs a significant amount of dark matter (DM), about six times that of the usual baryonic matter, besides an even larger amount of dark energy. But to date, both DMand dark energy have remained conceptually delusive, without concrete evidence based on direct physical measurements. In this survey paper, we present ten counterarguments showing that such a claimed amount of DMcan be a result of vast overestimation and does not conform to reality. Some of those counterarguments can be convincingly verified even by simple hand calculations.     

Dynamic affinity-based classification of multi-class imbalanced data with one-versus-one decomposition: a fuzzy rough set approach

Although the relevance problem in recommender systems, which typically refers to the similarity between the preference of the user and the items the system recommends, has been well studied, the issue of making recommendations in right orders has barely been mentioned before. The order defines the way in which items should be better consumed in relation to each other. The analysis of real-world data sets demonstrates strong item consumption patterns in the degree of order. In this paper, we propose a novel method to tackle the right-order recommendation problem based on a graph structure that incorporates the item consumption orders. The proposed method can combine relevance and order effects in recommendations. We attempt to recommend the relevant items in the consecutive steps within a user session so that the user’s selected items in the consecutive steps can be stringed together in a right order. The experimental evaluation conducted on three real-world data sets shows that the recommendation accuracy is improved by considering item consumption orders compared with the baseline recommendation methods. In addition, the study on right-order recommendation contributes to the exploration on recommendation appropriateness besides relevance.     

PID position regulation in one-degree-of-freedom Euler–Lagrange systems actuated by a PMSM

This paper is concerned with position regulation in one-degree-of-freedom Euler–Lagrange Systems. We consider that the mechanical subsystem is actuated by a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). Our proposal consists of a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller for the mechanical subsystem and a slight variation of field oriented control for the PMSM. We take into account the motor electric dynamics during the stability analysis. We present, for the first time, a global asymptotic stability proof for such a control scheme without requiring the mechanical subsystem to naturally possess viscous friction. Finally, as a corollary of our main result we prove global asymptotic stability for output feedback PID regulation of one-degree-of-freedom Euler–Lagrange systems when generated torque is considered as the system input, i.e. when the electric dynamics of PMSM's is not taken into account.     

Stability,performance and sensitivity analysis of I.I.D. jump linear systems

This paper presents a symmetric Kronecker product analysis of independent and identically distributed jump linear systems to develop new, lower dimensional equations for the stability and performance analysis of this type of systems than what is currently available. In addition, new closed form expressions characterising multi-parameter relative sensitivity functions for performance metrics are introduced. The analysis technique is illustrated with a distributed fault-tolerant flight control example where the communication links are allowed to fail randomly.     

Remote sensing of wetlands in South America: status and challenges

South America has a large proportion of wetlands compared with other continents. While most of these wetlands were conserved in a relatively good condition until a few decades ago, pressures brought about by land use and climate change have threaten their integrity in recent years. The aim of this article is to provide a bibliometric analysis of the available scientific literature relating to the remote sensing of wetlands in South America. From 1960 to 2015, 153 articles were published in 63 different journals, with the number of articles published per year increasing progressively since 1990. This rise is also paralleled by an increase in the contribution of local authors. The most intensively studied regions are the wetland macrosystems of South American mega-rivers: the Amazon and Paraná Rivers, along with the Pantanal at the headwaters of Paraguay River. Few studies spanned more than two countries. The most frequent objectives were mapping, covering all types of wetlands with optical data, and hydrology, focusing on floodplain wetlands with microwave data as the preferred data source. The last decade substantial growth reflects an increase in technological and scientific capacities. Nevertheless, the state of the art regarding the remote sensing of wetlands in South America remains enigmatic. Fundamental questions and guidelines which may contribute to the understanding of the functioning of these ecosystems are yet to be fully defined and there is considerable dispersion in the use of data and remote-sensing approaches.