Material Thermal Inputs of Iowa Materials for MEPDG, 2011

The thermal properties of concrete materials, such as coeffi cient of thermal expansion (CTE), thermal conductivity, and heat capacity, are required by the MEPDG program as the material inputs for pavement design. However, a limited amount of test data is available on the thermal properties of concrete in Iowa. The default values provided by the MEPDG program may not be suitable for Iowa concrete, since aggregate characteristics have signifi cant infl uence on concrete thermal properties

Grid simulation services for the medical community

The first part of this paper presents a selection of medical simulation applications, including image reconstruction, near real-time registration for neuro-surgery, enhanced dose distribution calculation for radio-therapy, inhaled drug delivery prediction, plastic surgery planning and cardio-vascular system simulation. The latter two topics are discussed in some detail. In the second part, we show how such services can be made available to the clinical practitioner using Grid technology. We discuss the developments and experience made during the EU project GEMSS, which provides reliable, efficient, secure and lawful medical Grid services

Cyber-Virtual Systems: Simulation, Validation & Visualization

We describe our ongoing work and view on simulation, validation and visualization of cyber-physical systems in industrial automation during development, operation and maintenance. System models may represent an existing physical part - for example an existing robot installation - and a software simulated part - for example a possible future extension. We call such systems cyber-virtual systems. In this paper, we present the existing VITELab infrastructure for visualization tasks in industrial automation. The new methodology for simulation and validation motivated in this paper integrates this infrastructure. We are targeting scenarios, where industrial sites which may be in remote locations are modeled and visualized from different sites anywhere in the world. Complementing the visualization work, here, we are also concentrating on software modeling challenges related to cyber-virtual systems and simulation, testing, validation and verification techniques for them. Software models of industrial sites require behavioural models of the components of the industrial sites such as models for tools, robots, workpieces and other machinery as well as communication and sensor facilities. Furthermore, collaboration between sites is an important goal of our work.Comment: Preprint, 9th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2014

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE VERTICAL ORGANIZATION OF INDUSTRY

A model has been developed to study the interdependence between the choice of information technology and industry structure. Advances in information technology might provide incentives for a firm to specialize or focus on its core competence. However, the degree of specialization depends on the extent of industry-level specialization, which is, in turn, the result of the behavior of individual firms and their adoption of information technology favoring specialization. Emerging electronic markets and industries have been chosen as an application domain, as they would not exist without information technology.