Concerning the knowledge domain of anticipation – awareness of early contributions in the context of defining the field

The knowledge domain of anticipation is still in the process of being defined, and is therefore subject to controversies. Science was never an endeavour of consensus but rather of debate. This additional argument to the debate integrates awareness of the early Soviet/Russian contributions to a science of anticipation. From this awareness derives the understanding of why anticipation faces opposition from established viewpoints. This article ascertains that anticipation advances a fundamental view of the living. Within this view, anticipation is always expressed in action. Short of this definitory condition, anticipation fades into the grey mass of speculative predictive methods.     

Automatic Control of Aircraft in Lateral‐Directional Plane During Landing

The paper focuses on the automatic control of aircraft in the lateral‐directional plane during the landing approach phase, taking into account crosswind and sensor errors. Two new automatic landing systems are designed using the H‐inf control, dynamic inversion, optimal observers, and reference models. To validate them, we use the dynamics associated with the landing of a light airplane, we software implement the theoretical results, and analyze the accuracy of the results and the precision standards’ achievement with respect to the requirements of the Federal Aviation Administration for lateral error during the lateral‐directional motion of the aircraft during the landing approach phase.     

The numerical method of successive interpolations for two-point boundary value problems with deviating argument

A new numerical method for two-point boundary value problems associated to differential equations with deviating argument is obtained. The method uses the fixed point technique, the trapezoidal quadrature rule, and the cubic spline interpolation procedure. The convergence of the method is proved without smoothness conditions, the kernel function being Lipschitzian in each argument. The interpolation procedure is used only on the points where the argument is modified. A practical stopping criterion of the algorithm is obtained and the accuracy of the method is illustrated on some numerical examples of the pantograph type.     

A-Brain: a general system for solving data analysis problems

An intelligent system should be able to solve a wide range of problems from different domains. In this paper we propose a complex and adaptive system capable of solving various data analysis problems without needing human help for parameter settings. The system, called A-Brain, consists of several interconnected components (a decision-maker, a trainer, and several problem solvers) which provide a base for building complex problem solvers. The parameters of the trainer's algorithm are problem independent. This fact is a requirement for intelligent systems which cannot rely on human intervention while operating. The A-Brain system is used to solve some well-known problems in the field of symbolic regression and classification. Numerical experiments show that the A-Brain system is able to perform very well on the considered test problems.     

A linearly implicit trapezoidal method for integrating stiff multibody dynamics with contact,joints, and friction

We present a hard constraint, linear complementarity based, method for the simulation of stiff multibody dynamics with contact, joints and friction. The approach uses a linearization of the modified trapezoidal method, incorporates a Poisson restitution model at collision, and solves only one linear complementarity problem per time step when no collisions are encountered. We prove that, under certain assumptions, the method has order two, a fact that is also demonstrated by our numerical simulations. For the unconstrained (ODE) case, the method achieves second‐order convergence and absolute stability while solving only one linear system per step. When we use a special approximation of the Jacobian matrix for the case where the stiff forces originate in springs and dampers attached to two points in the system, the linear complementarity problem can be solved for any value of the time step and numerical simulation demonstrate that the method is stiffly stable. The method was implemented in UMBRA, an industrial‐grade virtual prototyping software. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantitative Thermal Microscopy Measurement with Thermal Probe Driven by dc+ac Current

Quantitative thermal measurements with spatial resolution allowing the examination of objects of submicron dimensions are still a challenging task. The quantity of methods providing spatial resolution better than 100 nm is very limited. One of them is scanning thermal microscopy (SThM). This method is a variant of atomic force microscopy which uses a probe equipped with a temperature sensor near the apex. Depending on the sensor current, either the temperature or the thermal conductivity distribution at the sample surface can be measured. However, like all microscopy methods, the SThM gives only qualitative information. Quantitative measuring methods using SThM equipment are still under development. In this paper, a method based on simultaneous registration of the static and the dynamic electrical resistances of the probe driven by the sum of dc and ac currents, and examples of its applications are described. Special attention is paid to the investigation of thin films deposited on thick substrates. The influence of substrate thermal properties on the measured signal and its dependence on thin film thermal conductivity and film thickness are analyzed. It is shown that in the case where layer thicknesses are comparable or smaller than the probe–sample contact diameter, a correction procedure is required to obtain actual thermal conductivity of the layer. Experimental results obtained for thin SiO\(_{\mathrm {2}}\) and BaTiO\(_{\mathrm {3 }}\)layers with thicknesses in the range from 11 nm to 100 nm are correctly confirmed with this approach.     

Comparative node selection‐based localization technique for wireless sensor networks: A bilateration approach

Wireless sensor networks find extensive applications, such as environmental and smart city monitoring, structural health, and target location. To be useful, most sensor data must be localized. We propose a node localization technique based on bilateration comparison (BACL) for dense networks, which considers two reference nodes to determine the unknown position of a third node. The mirror positions resulted from bilateration are resolved by comparing their coordinates with the coordinates of the reference nodes. Additionally, we use network clustering to further refine the location of the nodes. We show that BACL has several advantages over Energy Aware Co‐operative Localization (EACL) and Underwater Recursive Position Estimation (URPE): (1) BACL uses bilateration (needs only two reference nodes) instead of trilateration (that needs three reference nodes), (2) BACL needs reference (anchor) nodes only on the field periphery, and (3) BACL needs substantially less communication and computation. Through simulation, we show that BACL localization accuracy, as root mean square error, improves by 53% that of URPE and by 40% that of EACL. We also explore the BACL localization error when the anchor nodes are placed on one or multiple sides of a rectangular field, as a trade‐off between localization accuracy and network deployment effort. Best accuracy is achieved using anchors on all field sides, but we show that localization refinement using node clustering and anchor nodes only on one side of the field has comparable localization accuracy with anchor nodes on two sides but without clustering.     

Microstructural characterization and amorphous phase formation in Co40Fe22Ta8B30 powders produced by mechanical alloying

In this work, microstructural evolution and amorphous phase formation in Co₄₀Fe₂₂Ta₈B₃₀ alloy produced by mechanical alloying (MA) of the elemental powder mixture under argon gas atmosphere was investigated. Milling time had a profound effect on the phase transformation, microstructure, morphological evolution and thermal behavior of the powders. These effects were studied by the X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) in reflection mode using Cu Kα and in transmission configuration using synchrotron radiation, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results showed that at the early stage of the milling, microstructure consisted of nanocrystalline bcc-(Fe, Co) phases and unreacted tantalum.Further milling, produced an amorphous phase, which became a dominant phase with a fraction of 96 wt% after 200 h milling. The DSC profile of 200 h milled powders demonstrated a huge and broad exothermic hump due to the structural relaxation, followed by a single exothermic peak, indicating the crystallization of the amorphous phase. Further XRD studies in transmission mode by synchrotron radiation revealed that the crystalline products were (Co, Fe)_20.82Ta_2.18B₆, (Co, Fe)₂₁ Ta₂ B₆, and (Co, Fe)₃B₂. The amorphization mechanisms were discussed in terms of severe grain refinement, atomic size effect, the concept of local topological instability and the heat of mixing of the reactants.     

In vitro evaluation of anti-pathogenic surface coating nanofluid,obtained by combining Fe3O4/C12 nanostructures and 2-((4-ethylphenoxy)methyl)-N-(substituted-phenylcarbamothioyl)-benzamides

In this paper, we report the design of a new nanofluid for anti-pathogenic surface coating. For this purpose, new 2-((4-ethylphenoxy)methyl)-N-(substituted-phenylcarbamothioyl)-benzamides were synthesized and used as an adsorption shell for Fe₃O₄/C₁₂ core/shell nanosized material. The functionalized specimens were tested by in vitro assays for their anti-biofilm properties and biocompatibility. The optimized catheter sections showed an improved resistance to Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853 in vitro biofilm development, as demonstrated by the viable cell counts of biofilm-embedded bacterial cells and by scanning electron microscopy examination of the colonized surfaces. The nanofluid proved to be not cytotoxic and did not influence the eukaryotic cell cycle. These results could be of a great interest for the biomedical field, opening new directions for the design of film-coated surfaces with improved anti-biofilm properties.     

Algebraic structures for fuzzy numbers from categorial point of view

Using a classic algebraic construction additive and multiplicative structures (as commutative monoids) for fuzzy numbers are obtained. Moreover, we realize here an isomorphism between these structures.