Industry 4.0: a supply chain innovation perspective

The Fourth Industrial Revolution – also known as Industry 4.0 (i4.0) – comprises the digitalisation of the industrial sector. This paper uses the theoretical lens of supply chain innovation (SCI) to investigate the implications of i4.0 on supply chain management. For these purposes, the method of structured content analysis is applied to more than 200 use cases of i4.0-enabled SCI introduced by both established and startup companies. i4.0-enabled SCI manifests along three dimensions: process, technology, and business architecture. The key findings of this study can be summarised as follows: first, i4.0-enabled SCI extends the initial focus on productivity improvements in SC processes towards scalability and flexibility. Second, extant i4.0 solutions rely mostly on analytics and smart things while omitting smart people technology and the human-centric approach associated with the i4.0 paradigm. Third, established companies adopt i4.0 merely to sustain their existing business architectures while startup companies radically change their operating models, relying heavily on data analytics and the platform economy. Consequently, established companies pursue a problem-driven, engineering-based approach to SCI while startup companies follow an ‘asset-light’, business-driven approach. Lastly, there are two distinct approaches to digitalising operational SC processes: platform-based crowdsourcing of standard processes and on-demand provision of customised services.     

Synthesis of Ionic Ultramicroporous Polymers for Selective Separation of Acetylene from Ethylene

The design of highly stable and efficient porous materials is essential for developing breakthrough hydrocarbon separation methods based on physisorption to replace currently used energy-intensive distillation/absorption technologies. Efforts to develop advanced porous materials such as zeolites, coordination frameworks, and organic polymers have met with limited success. Here, a new class of ionic ultramicroporous polymers (IUPs) with high-density inorganic anions and narrowly distributed ultramicroporosity is reported, which are synthesized by a facile free-radical polymerization using branched and amphiphilic ionic compounds as reactive monomers. A covalent and ionic dual-crosslinking strategy is proposed to manipulate the pore structure of amorphous polymers at the ultramicroporous scale. The IUPs exhibit exceptional selectivity (286.1–474.4) for separating acetylene from ethylene along with high thermal and water stability, collaboratively demonstrated by gas adsorption isotherms and experimental breakthrough curves. Modeling studies unveil the specific binding sites for acetylene capture as well as the interconnected ultramicroporosity for size sieving. The porosity-engineering protocol used in this work can also be extended to the design of other ultramicroporous materials for the challenging separation of other key gas constituents.     

Exploring design trade-offs for achieving social inclusion in multi-tiered design problems

ABSTRACT

The digital age of the future is ‘not out there to be discovered’, but it needs to be ‘designed’. The design challenge has to address questions about how we want to live, work, and learn (as individuals and as communities) and what we value and appreciate, e.g.: reflecting on quality of life and creating inclusive societies. An overriding design trade-off for the digital age is whether new developments will increase the digital divide or will create more inclusive societies. Sustaining inclusive societies means allowing people of all ages and all abilities to exploit information technologies for personally meaningful activities. Meta-design fosters the design of socio-technical environments that end-user developers can modify and evolve at use time to improve their quality of life and favour their inclusion in the society. This paper describes three case studies in the domain of assistive technologies in which end users themselves cannot act as end-user developers, but someone else (e.g.: a caregiver or a clinician) must accept this role requiring multi-tiered architectures. The design trade-offs and requirements for meta-design identified in the context of the case studies and other researchers’ projects are described to inform the development of future socio-technical environments focused on social inclusion.     

Off‐grid DoA estimation method of wideband signals

In this paper, an off‐grid direction of arrival (DoA) estimation method is proposed for wideband signals. This method is based on the sparse representation (SR) of the array covariance matrix. Similar to the time domain DoA estimation methods, the correlation function of the sources was assumed to be the same and known. A new measurement vector is obtained using the lower‐left triangular elements of the covariance matrix. The DoAs are estimated by quantizing the entire range of continuous angle space into discrete grid points. However, the exact DoAs may be located between two grid points; therefore, this estimation has errors. The accuracy of DoA estimation is improved by the minimization of the difference between the new measurement vector and its estimated values. Simulation results revealed that the proposed method can enhance the DoA estimation accuracy of wideband signals.     

基于物联网的智慧林业可持续发展策略研究

随着我国科技的不断进步,在“互联网+”大数据的背景下,林业的智慧化发展是必经之路。虽然我国智慧林业的发展已经取得了一定的突破,但是仍然存在着许多问题。基于此,文章在物联网技术的基础上,对智慧林业的可持续发展策略进行探讨。     

基于学科竞赛的中医药类院校程序设计课程教学模式的探索

高素质人才培养是我国可持续发展战略、科教兴国战略以及人才强国战略等多项发展战略的一项基础性工程。本文针对中医药类院校程序设计类课程实践教学模式单一等教学实际，以“学科竞赛”为平台，“赛教结合”为理念，以《C语言程序设计》为例，从现存问题、赛教结合模式的引入、建立实施及其评价机制4个方面展开阐述，旨在提高学生学习积极性和能力。     

Output feedback controller for polytopic systems exploiting the direct searching of the design space

This paper deals with the problem of designing a robust static output feedback controller for polytopic systems. The current research that tackled this problem is mainly based on LMI method, which is conservative by nature. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed, which considers the design space of the controller parameters and iteratively partitions the space to small simplexes. Then, by assessing the stability in each simplex, the solution space for design parameters is directly determined. It has been theoretically proved that, if there exists a feasible solution in the design space, the algorithm can find it. To validate the result of the proposed approach, comparative simulation examples are given to illustrate the performance of the design methodology as compared to those of previous approaches.     

Deep reinforcement learning-based cooperative interactions among heterogeneous vehicular networks

Most real-world vehicle nodes can be structured into an interconnected network of vehicles. Through structuring these services and vehicle device interactions into multiple types, such internet of vehicles becomes multidimensional heterogeneous overlay networks. The heterogeneousness of the overlays makes it difficult for the overlay networks to coordinate with each other to improve their performance. Therefore, it poses an interesting but critical challenge to the effective analysis of heterogeneous virtual vehicular networks. A variety of virtual vehicular networks can be easily deployed onto the native network by applying the concept of SDN (Software Defined Networking). These virtual networks reflect their heterogeneousness due to their different performance goals, and they compete for the same physical resources of the underlying network, so that a sub-optimal performance of the virtual networks may be achieved. Therefore, we propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) approach to make the virtual networks cooperate with each other through the SDN controller. A cooperative solution based on the asymmetric Nash bargaining is proposed for co-existing virtual networks to improve their performance. Moreover, the Markov Chain model and DRL resolution are introduced to leverage the heterogeneous performance goals of virtual networks. The implementation of the approach is introduced, and simulation results confirm the performance improvement of the latency sensitive, loss-rate sensitive and throughput sensitive heterogeneous vehicular networks using our cooperative solution.     

A survey on fog computing for the Internet of Things

Fog computing has emerged to support the requirements of IoT applications that could not be met by today’s solutions. Different initiatives have been presented to drive the development of fog, and much work has been done to improve certain aspects. However, an in-depth analysis of the different solutions, detailing how they can be integrated and applied to meet specific requirements, is still required. In this work, we present a unified architectural model and a new taxonomy, by comparing a large number of solutions. Finally, we draw some conclusions and guidelines for the development of IoT applications based on fog.     

Evaluation of hydrodynamic behavior of the perforated gas distributor of industrial gas phase polymerization reactor using CFD-PBM coupled model

A 2D computational fluid dynamics (Eulerian–Eulerian) multiphase flow model coupled with a population balance model (CFD-PBM) was implemented to investigate the fluidization structure in terms of entrance region in an industrial-scale gas phase fluidized bed reactor. The simulation results were compared with the industrial data, and good agreement was observed. Two cases including perforated distributor and complete sparger were applied to examine the flow structure through the bed. The parametric sensitivity analysis of time step, number of node, drag coefficient, and specularity coefficient was carried out. It was found that the results were more sensitive to the drag model. The results showed that the entrance configuration has significant effect on the flow structure. While the dead zones are created in both corners of the distributors, the perforated distributor generates more startup bubbles, heterogeneous flow field, and better gas–solid interaction above the entrance region due to jet formation.