Optics Design and Verification for the APEX Swedish Heterodyne Facility Instrument (SHeFI)

In this paper, we present the design and verification of the optics of the Swedish Heterodyne Facility Instrument (SHeFI) receiver installed in the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) telescope during spring 2008. SHeFI is located in the Nasmyth instrumentation Cabin A (NCA). The receiver has been designed to have 6 frequency channels, of which four receiver channels have been built, and characterized: 211-275 GHz (Band 1), 275-370 GHz (Band 2), 385-500 GHz (Band 3), and 1250-1390 GHz (Band T2). Bands 1, 2, and T2 are installed at the telescope and are currently in operation. The optical design is driven by the requirement of frequency independent illumination of the secondary with -12 dB edge taper for each frequency channel and the limitation (beam clearance through the Nasmyth tube and the elevation encoder) imposed by the receiver position in the NCA. This paper describes the design approach, optimization, and verification of the optical system, coupling each individual receiving beam to the common optics of the telescope.     

Intelligent systems in the automotive industry: applications and trends

There is a common misconception that the automobile industry is slow to adapt new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and soft computing. The reality is that many new technologies are deployed and brought to the public through the vehicles that they drive. This paper provides an overview and a sampling of many of the ways that the automotive industry has utilized AI, soft computing and other intelligent system technologies in such diverse domains like manufacturing, diagnostics, on-board systems, warranty analysis and design. Oleg Gusikhin received the Ph.D. degree from St. Petersburg Institute of Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the M.B.A. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Since 1993, he has been with the Ford Motor Company, where he is a Technical Leader at the Ford Manufacturing and Vehicle Design Research Laboratory, and is engaged in different functional areas including information technology, advanced electronics manufacturing, and research and advanced engineering. He has also been involved in the design and implementation of intelligent control applications for manufacturing and vehicle systems. He is the recipient of the 2004 Henry Ford Technology Award. He holds two U.S. patents and has published over 30 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems. He is also a Certified Fellow of the American Production and Inventory Control Society and a member of IEEE and SME. Nestor Rychtyckyj received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from Wayne State University, Detroit, MI. He is a technical expert in Artificial Intelligence at Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, MI, in Advanced and Manufacturing Engineering Systems. His current research interests include the application of knowledge-based systems for vehicle assembly process planning and scheduling. Currently, his responsibilities include the development of automotive ontologies, intelligent manufacturing systems, controlled languages, machine translation and corporate terminology management. He has published more than 30 papers in referred journals and conference proceedings. He is a member of AAAI, ACM and the IEEE Computer Society. Dimitar P. Filev received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Czech Technical University, Prague, in 1979. He is a Senior Technical Leader, Intelligent Control and Information Systems with Ford Research and Advanced Engineering specializing in industrial intelligent systems and technologies for control, diagnostics and decision making. He is conducting research in systems theory and applications, modeling of complex systems, intelligent modeling and control, and has published 3 books and over 160 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He holds 14 granted U.S. patents and numerous foreign patents in the area of industrial intelligent systems He is the recipient of the 1995 Award for Excellence of MCB University Press. He was awarded the Henry Ford Technology Award four times for development and implementation of advanced intelligent control technologies. He is an Associate Editor of International Journal of General Systems and International Journal of Approximate Reasoning. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society and President of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society (NAFIPS).     

Robotic smart house to assist people with movement disabilities

This paper introduces a new robotic smart house, Intelligent Sweet Home, developed at KAIST in Korea, which is based on several robotic agents and aims at testing advanced concepts for independent living of the elderly and people with disabilities. The work focuses on technical solutions for human-friendly assistance in motion/mobility and advanced human-machine interfaces that provide simple control of all assistive robotic systems and home-installed appliances. The smart house concept includes an intelligent bed, intelligent wheelchair, and robotic hoist for effortless transfer of the user between bed and wheelchair. The design solutions comply with most of the users’ requirements and suggestions collected by a special questionnaire survey of people with disabilities. The smart house responds to the user's commands as well as to the recognized intentions of the user. Various interfaces, based on hand gestures, voice, body movement, and posture, have been studied and tested. The paper describes the overall system structure and explains the design and functionality of some main system components.     

Experimental investigation into strengthened short reinforced concrete corbels by bonding carbon fiber fabrics

This paper presents the mechanical behavior of strengthened short reinforced concrete corbel bonded by composite carbon fiber fabrics. Often, short reinforced concrete corbel is used in Civil Engineering and in building constructions. In fact, this paper investigated the influence of some parameters on the mechanical behavior of corbel specimens. The parameters are the carbon fiber fabric layers, type of strengthening by gluing directly fabrics on the front and rear of specimen faces or by wrapping. The composite materials used in this study are unidirectional and bidirectional carbon fiber fabrics. The ultimate load is obtained from monotone static test. The extensometer technique based on gauge strain is used to study the local behavior of structures. This technique allows one to measure strains of electric gauges glued to the surface of carbon fiber fabrics, concrete and steel bar. Finally, the cracking and failure modes of specimen are presented.     

High yield simultaneous hydrogen and ethanol production under extreme-thermophilic (70 °C) mixed culture environment

The effect of pH and medium composition on extreme-thermophilic (70 °C) dark fermentative simultaneous hydrogen and ethanol production (process performance and microbial ecology) was investigated. Hydrogen and ethanol yields were optimized with respect to glucose, peptone, FeSO₄, NaHCO₃, yeast extract, trace mineral salts, vitamins, and phosphate buffer concentrations as well as initial pH as independent variables. A combination of low levels of both glucose (≤2 g/L) and vitamin solutions (≤1 mL/L) and high levels of initial pH (≥7), mineral salts solution (≥5 mL/L) and FeSO₄ (≥100 mg/L) stimulated the hydrogen production, while high level of glucose (≥5 g/L) and low levels of both initial pH (≤5.5) and mineral salts solution (≤1 mL/L) enhanced the ethanol production. High yield of simultaneous hydrogen and ethanol production (1.58 mol H₂/mol glucose combined with an ethanol yield of 0.90 mol ethanol/mol glucose) was achieved under extreme-thermophilic mixed culture environment. Results obtained showed that the shift of the metabolic pathways favouring either hydrogen or ethanol production was affected by the change in cultivation conditions (pH and medium composition). The mixed culture in this study demonstrated flexible ability for simultaneous hydrogen and ethanol production, depending on pH and nutrients formulation. The microorganisms involved could be regarded as simultaneous hydrogen/ethanol producers, as hydrogen and ethanol fermentation under all conditions was carried out by a group of extreme-thermophilic bacterial species related to Thermoanaerobacter, Thermoanaerobacterium and Caldanaerobacter.     

The protective ability of Mediterranean dietary plants against the oxidative damage: The role of radical oxygen species in inflammation and the polyphenol,flavonoid and sterol contents

Ten hydroalcoholic extracts of edible plants from the Calabria region (Italy) were evaluated for their in vitro antioxidant and antiradical properties and in vivo topical anti-inflammatory activity. All the extracts had radical-scavenging and/or antioxidant properties, the most active plants being hawkweed oxtongue and viper’s bugloss. The best free radical (DPPH·)-scavenging activity was found in hawkweed oxtongue and chicory leaves extracts (IC₅₀ = 25 and 26 μg/ml, respectively). Hawkweed oxtongue, poppy and viper’s bugloss extracts showed the greatest inhibition of linoleic acid oxidation (IC₅₀ = 3 μg/ml). Viper’s bugloss and hawkweed oxtongue extracts had the greatest antioxidant effect on bovine brain peroxidation (IC₅₀ = 11 and 22 μg/ml). All the extracts also showed an anti-inflammatory effect: 300 μg/cm² provoked oedema reductions ranging from 18% to 43%. Cress was the most active plant. Chicory leaves contained the highest amount of phenolics (190 mg/g) whilst Rush crimps contained the highest amount of flavonoids (32.9 mg/g), followed by hawkweed oxtongue (15.8 mg/g). Cress contained the highest number of sterols. Among them, γ-sitosterol (12.2%) and ergost-5-en-3-ol (3β) (4.5%) were found to be the major constituents. Moreover, three of the identified molecules (stigmasta-5,23-dien-3β-ol, stigmasta-5,24(28)-dien-3-ol (3β,22E) and 9,19-cyclolanost-24-en-3-ol (3β)) were found in this plant only.