Handling disruptions in manufacturing systems: An immune perspective

One of the major issues in the monitoring and control of manufacturing systems is to determine how to effectively deal with unexpected disruptions (e.g. material unavailability, resource failures, unavailability of operators, rush orders, etc.). Existing approaches and tools offer few concepts that are specific enough and sufficiently generic to help in handling a broad variety of such unexpected events. The biological immune system potentially offers interesting features to face the threats (bacteria, viruses, cancers, etc.) that may harm an organism. This research aims to investigate this potential for the monitoring and control of manufacturing systems at the occurrence of disruptions. Based on analogies that we point out, we suggest a framework to help with the design of software tools that are more able to assist decision makers in dealing with various types of disruptions occurring in a manufacturing system. A first prototype implementation, developed using a multi agent approach, contributes to show the feasibility and the interest of this immune based framework.     

塔里木盆地西部石炭─二叠纪沉积体系及沉积相

根据30余条地面剖面,结合钻井、地震资料系统分析了塔里木盆地西部石炭—二叠纪沉积体系及沉积相演化特征。认为石炭—二叠纪为一个完整的海进至海退旋回期,在海进初期和海退末期为碳酸盐岩和碎屑岩混积时期。将石炭—二叠系划分为下石炭统（包括个别地区的下二叠统下部）混积陆棚沉积体系;上石炭统至下二叠统下部的碳酸盐岩台地沉积体系;下二叠统上部至上二叠统的陆源碎屑沉积体系。根据碳、氧同位素、微量元素等分析化验结果以及生物组合面貌,对古地形、古温度等古地理环境进行了分析。     

Ternay Au@TiO2/α-Fe2O3 Nanocomposite with Nanoring Structure: Synthesis,Characterization and Photocatalytic Activity

Journal of Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers and Materials - In the present study, a modified solvothermal reaction of (hematite) with titanium(IV) butoxide and gold(III) chloride produced...     

Optimization of Emergency Ventilation Strategies in a Roadway Tunnel

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of in-place emergency ventilation strategies to control smoke spread in the event of a fire in a section of a roadway tunnel, both numerical and experimental studies were performed. The experimental study was conducted to provide the necessary initial and boundary conditions for the numerical phase of the investigation. A fire heat release rate of 1 MW was used in all fire tests. This fire heat release rate was selected to minimize the risk of damage to the tunnel and its associated systems while producing reliable data for visualizing the smoke movement in the tunnel. The numerical study used Computational Fluid Dynamics, Fire Dynamic Simulator version 4.0 to investigate smoke removal in the tunnel for large fire of 30 MW (bus or truck on fire). In total, four field fire tests and seven numerical simulations were conducted. Based on the study results, recommendations were made to optimize the ventilation scenarios in the tunnel section. This article presents the details of the study as well as the recommendations made.     

Design and Implementation of a Novel Spherical Mobile Robot

In this paper, the design, modeling and implementation of a novel spherical mobile robot is presented. The robot composes of a spherical outer shell made of a transparent thermoplastic material, two pendulums, two DC motors with gearboxes, two equipments for linear motion and two control units. It possesses four distinct motional modes including: driving, steering, jumping and zero-radius turning. In driving and steering modes, the robot moves along straight and circular trajectories, respectively. The robot performs these motional modes using movable internal masses. In the jumping mode, it can jump over obstacles and in the zero-radius turning mode, the robot can turn with zero-radius to improve the motion flexibility. Furthermore, the attempts to establish the dynamic models of some motional modes are made and finally, the accuracy of the obtained dynamic models is verified by simulation and experimental results.     

Thermal and Molecular Characterization of Aspergillus awamori Glucoamylase Catalytic and Starch‐Binding Domains

Aspergillus awamori glucoamylase catalytic domain, linker, and starch‐binding domain, the first and third expressed from yeast, have molecular masses of 56.2, 12.6 and 12.9 kDa, respectively, as determined by MALDI‐TOF mass spectroscopy, and have 10.2, 73.2 and 7.0 % (w/w) carbohydrate, respectively, showing overglycosylation by yeast. Unfolding of the starch‐binding domain monitored by circular dichroism is reversible at pH 6.0—8.0, with the unfolding T_m and ΔH increasing from 49.7 to 58.5 °C and from 284 to 351 kJ/mol, respectively, as pH decreases from 8.0 to 6.0. The catalytic domain unfolds irreversibly at pH 7.5, producing a single asymmetric endotherm by differential scanning calorimetry, with T_m and ΔH at a 1 °C/min heating rate being 60.9 °C and 1720 kJ/mol, but with both increasing as the heating rate increases. This suggests that unfolding is partially under kinetic control, while various tests show that it does not follow a simple two‐state irreversible model. Values of ΔH from calculated solvent‐accessible surface areas of unglycosylated catalytic and starch‐binding domains are about 100 kJ/mol lower than experimentally determined ΔH values of the corresponding glycosylated domains, showing the effect of glycosylation on unfolding enthalpies.