Management: A continuing literature survey with indexes, March 1975

A special bibliography listing 1,064 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System in 1974 is presented

Analysis, design and "in silico" evaluation of e-selectin antagonists

E-selectin, is member of a family of cell-adhesion proteins, which plays a crucial role in many physiological processes and diseases [1], and in particular, in the early phases of the inflammatory response. Its role is to promote the tethering and the rolling of leukocytes along the endothelial surface [2]. These steps are then followed by integrin-mediated firm adhesion and final transendothelial migration. Therefore, control of the leukocyte-endothelial cell adhesion process may be useful in cases, where excessive recruitment of leukocytes can contribute to acute or chronic diseases such as stroke, reperfusion injury, psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis [3]. In this work, efforts to develop in silico-based protocols to study the interaction between E-selectin and its ligands, are presented. Hence, different protocols had to be developed and validated. In particular, a new procedure for the analysis of the conformational preferences of E-selectin antagonists was established and the results compared to those obtained with the MC(JBW)/SD approach, which had already demonstrated its validity in the past [161,168]. Thus, the comparison between the two protocols permitted to recognize a different conformational preference of the two methods for the orientation of the sialic acid moiety of sLex (3) (torsions Φ3 and Ψ3, Figure A), which reflects the contrasting opinions existing for the conformation adopted by sLex (3) in solution [150–168]. A more detailed analysis revealed that probably both approaches deliver only a partially correct view and that in reality, in solution, sLex (3) exists as a mixture of low energy conformers and not as supposed to date [150–154,161–163] as a population of a single conformer. In addition, a docking routine was established and the impact of different partialcharge methods and of explicit solvation on the binding mode studied. MD simulations enabled to gain an insight into the dynamical character of the protein-ligand interactions. In particular, the observations done in an atomic-force microscopy study [350], describing the interactions between the carboxylic group of sLex and Arg97, and between the 3– and 4–hydroxyls of fucose and the calcium ion, as the two main energy barriers for the dissociation process of the protein-ligand complex, found confirmation in our MD-investigations. Thus, these two contacts always lasted longer than any other in the MD simulation. QSAR-models with Quasar [270–272,351] and Raptor [315,316,335] were successfully derived and will permit a semi-quantitative in silico estimation of the binding affinity for the ligands that will be designed in the future. Finally, the developed protocols and models were applied for the development of new E-selectin antagonists. Unfortunately, to date, only few biological data is available to evaluate our design strategies. However, the impact of the ligand’s pre-organization on the binding affinity could be established at least for the Lexcore of sLex (3). Hence, the importance of the exo-anomeric effect, of the steric compression, and of the hydrophobic interaction between the methyl group of fucose and the β-face of galactose was clearly demonstrated

Analysis, design and "in silico" evaluation of e-selectin antagonists

E-selectin, is member of a family of cell-adhesion proteins, which plays a crucial role in many physiological processes and diseases [1], and in particular, in the early phases of the inflammatory response. Its role is to promote the tethering and the rolling of leukocytes along the endothelial surface [2]. These steps are then followed by integrin-mediated firm adhesion and final transendothelial migration. Therefore, control of the leukocyte-endothelial cell adhesion process may be useful in cases, where excessive recruitment of leukocytes can contribute to acute or chronic diseases such as stroke, reperfusion injury, psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis [3]. In this work, efforts to develop in silico-based protocols to study the interaction between E-selectin and its ligands, are presented. Hence, different protocols had to be developed and validated. In particular, a new procedure for the analysis of the conformational preferences of E-selectin antagonists was established and the results compared to those obtained with the MC(JBW)/SD approach, which had already demonstrated its validity in the past [161,168]. Thus, the comparison between the two protocols permitted to recognize a different conformational preference of the two methods for the orientation of the sialic acid moiety of sLex (3) (torsions Φ3 and Ψ3, Figure A), which reflects the contrasting opinions existing for the conformation adopted by sLex (3) in solution [150–168]. A more detailed analysis revealed that probably both approaches deliver only a partially correct view and that in reality, in solution, sLex (3) exists as a mixture of low energy conformers and not as supposed to date [150–154,161–163] as a population of a single conformer. In addition, a docking routine was established and the impact of different partialcharge methods and of explicit solvation on the binding mode studied. MD simulations enabled to gain an insight into the dynamical character of the protein-ligand interactions. In particular, the observations done in an atomic-force microscopy study [350], describing the interactions between the carboxylic group of sLex and Arg97, and between the 3– and 4–hydroxyls of fucose and the calcium ion, as the two main energy barriers for the dissociation process of the protein-ligand complex, found confirmation in our MD-investigations. Thus, these two contacts always lasted longer than any other in the MD simulation. QSAR-models with Quasar [270–272,351] and Raptor [315,316,335] were successfully derived and will permit a semi-quantitative in silico estimation of the binding affinity for the ligands that will be designed in the future. Finally, the developed protocols and models were applied for the development of new E-selectin antagonists. Unfortunately, to date, only few biological data is available to evaluate our design strategies. However, the impact of the ligand’s pre-organization on the binding affinity could be established at least for the Lexcore of sLex (3). Hence, the importance of the exo-anomeric effect, of the steric compression, and of the hydrophobic interaction between the methyl group of fucose and the β-face of galactose was clearly demonstrated

Review: computer vision applied to the inspection and quality control of fruits and vegetables

This is a review of the current existing literature concerning the inspection of fruits and vegetables with the application of computer vision, where the techniques most used to estimate various properties related to quality are analyzed. The objectives of the typical applications of such systems include the classification, quality estimation according to the internal and external characteristics, supervision of fruit processes during storage or the evaluation of experimental treatments. In general, computer vision systems do not only replace manual inspection, but can also improve their skills. In conclusion, computer vision systems are powerful tools for the automatic inspection of fruits and vegetables. In addition, the development of such systems adapted to the food industry is fundamental to achieve competitive advantages

The process of organisational learning and its value for organisational performance

Organisational learning has been advocated as a key enabler of organisational performance improvement. However, despite over half a century of research, such claims attributed to organisational learning cannot be adequately verified. To date, the field is fragmented where agreement is not evident on even the fundamental aspects such as the definition or process. It has been proposed that the organisational learning concept may outlive its usefulness unless these anxieties are addressed. To ameliorate these anxieties, it was argued that further empirical research utilising carefully constructed methodologies needs to be conducted to help validate the claims attributed to organisational learning. The following research addresses this need by empirically studying organisational learning and evaluates the concept’s value for organisational performance. A researchable organisational learning model was developed and extended to include a link with organisational performance. The rationale of the developed model proposed that organisational learning, in comparison to individual learning, aids a broader understanding of the business environment and the formation of a shared vision which provides the basis for unified action leading to organisational performance improvement. The proposal was then longitudinally tested in four organisations with senior and departmental managers by utilising a causal cognitive mapping method. The findings suggest that there is value in the organisational learning concept and the process should be fostered within organisations for potentially improved organisational performance. However, the results also advise caution in that barriers to effective organisational learning, such as cognitive inertia, need to be recognised and addressed. The research concludes that organisational learning can be potentially beneficial to an organisation and provides some empirical support for the concept that has been argued to be lacking

A Deep Learning-based approach for Fault Detection of Power Lines

Master's thesis in Information- and communication technology (IKT590)A transmission network is the most crucial part of modern infrastructure. However, it requires an extensive amount of power line inspection each year to maintain, and with an increased interest in replacing large helicopters with drones for this process, the possibility of including AI is equally compelling. This thesis goes into the second part by taking a deep learning-based approach in the interest of fault detection. A literature review illustrates that earlier research has some to none understanding of the complexity re-quired for inspection. Due to the advancement in object detection and classification, this thesis has identified and implemented an applicable model capable of giving state-of-the-art accuracy in electrical pole and component detection by dividing the process into multiple layers. This thesis takes as well and proposes a new method that presented great result in assuring more reliable fault detection and is a way to improve the quality of images taken by drones. The pole detection layer gave 97.7 mAP, the component detection layer reached 95.6mAP, the fault classifier delivered an accuracy of 93%, and the proposed quality classifier had an accuracy of 93% as well. The presented approach illustrates the possibility of phasing the physical inspection out. The amount of component labeled that must be available for algorithmic training to surpass a human expert is not readily available. Nevertheless, the presented approach is a sufficient tool for assisting the inspector

Aeronautical engineering: A special bibliography, supplement 44

This special bibliography lists 249 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in April 1974

NASA Patent Abstracts bibliography: A continuing bibliography. Section 2: Indexes (supplement 20)

Entries for approximately 4000 citations for the period May 1969 through December 1981 are listed. Subject, invention, source, number, and accession number indexes are included

RobotChain: Artificial Intelligence on a Blockchain using Tezos Technology

Blockchain technology is not only growing everyday at a fast-passed rhythm, but it is also a disruptive technology that has changed how we look at financial transactions. By providing a way to trust an unknown network and by allowing us to conduct transactions without the need for a central authority, blockchain has grown exponentially. Moreover, blockchain also provides decentralization of the data, immutability, accessibility, non-repudiation and irreversibility properties that makes this technology a must in many industries. But, even thought blockchain provides interesting properties, it has not been extensively used outside the financial scope. Similarly, robots have been increasingly used in factories to automate tasks that range from picking objects, to transporting them and also to work collaboratively with humans to perform complex tasks. It is important to enforce that robots act between legal and moral boundaries and that their events and data are securely stored and auditable. This rarely happens, as robots are programmed to do a specific task without certainty that that task will always be performed correctly and their data is either locally stored, without security measures, or disregarded. This means that the data, especially logs, can be altered, which means that robots and manufacturers can be accused of problems that they did not cause. Henceforth, in this work, we sought to integrate blockchain with robotics with the goal to provide enhanced security to robots, to the data and to leverage artificial intelligence algorithms. By doing an extensive overview of the methods that integrate blockchain and artificial intelligence or robotics, we found that this is a growing field but there is a lack of proposals that try to improve robotic systems by using blockchain. It was also clear that most of the existing proposals that integrate artificial intelligence and blockchain, are focused on building marketplaces and only use the latter to storage transactions. So, in this document, we proposed three different methods that use blockchain to solve different problems associated with robots. The first one is a method to securely store robot logs in a blockchain by using smart-contracts as storage and automatically detect when anomalies occur in a robot by using the data contained in the blockchain and a smart-contract. By using smart-contracts, it is assured that the data is secure and immutable as long as the blockchain has enough peers to participate in the consensus process. The second method goes beyond registering events to also register information about external sensors, like a camera, and by using smart-contracts to allow Oracles to interact with the blockchain, it was possible to leverage image analysis algorithms that can detect the presence of material to be picked. This information is then inserted into a smart-contract that automatically defines the movement that a robot should have, regarding the number of materials present to be picked. The third proposal is a method that uses blockchain to store information about the robots and the images derived from a Kinect. This information is then used by Oracles that check if there is any person located inside a robot workspace. If there is any, this information is stored and different Oracles try to identify the person. Then, a smart-contract acts appropriately by changing or even stopping the robot depending on the identity of the person and if the person is located inside the warning or the critical zone surrounding the robot. With this work, we show how blockchain can be used in robotic environments and how it can beneficial in contexts where multi-party cooperation, security, and decentralization of the data is essential. We also show how Oracles can interact with the blockchain and distributively cooperate to leverage artificial intelligence algorithms to perform analysis in the data that allow us to detect robotic anomalies, material in images and the presence of people. We also show that smart-contracts can be used to perform more tasks than just serve the purpose of automatically do monetary transactions. The proposed architectures are modular and can be used in multiple contexts such as in manufacturing, network control, robot control, and others since they are easy to integrate, adapt, maintain and extend to new domains. We expect that the intersection of blockchain and robotics will shape part of the future of robotics once blockchain is more widely used and easy to integrate. This integration will be very prominent in tasks where robots need to behave under certain constraints, in swarm robotics due to the fact that blockchain offers global information and in factories because the actions undertaken by a robot can easily be extended to the rest of the robots by using smart-contracts.Hoje em dia é possível ver que a blockchain não está apenas a crescer a um ritmo exponencial, mas que é também uma tecnologia disruptiva que mudou a forma como trabalhamos com transações financeiras. Ao fornecer uma maneira eficiente de confiar numa rede desconhecida e de permitir realizar transações sem a necessidade de uma autoridade central, a blockchain cresceu rapidamente. Além disso, a blockchain fornece também descentralização de dados, imutabilidade, acessibilidade, não-repúdio e irreversibilidade, o que torna esta tecnologia indispensável em muitos setores. Mas, mesmo fornecendo propriedades interessantes, a blockchain não tem sido amplamente utilizada fora do âmbito financeiro. Da mesma forma, os robôs têm sido cada vez mais utilizados em fábricas para automatizar tarefas que vão desde pegar objetos, transportá-los e colaborar com humanos para realizar tarefas complexas. Porém, é importante impor que os robôs atuem entre certos limites legais e morais e que seus eventos e dados são armazenados com segurança e que estes possam ser auditáveis. O problema é que isso raramente acontece. Os robôs são programados para executar uma tarefa específica sem se ter total certeza de que essa tarefa irá ser executada sempre de maneira correta, e os seus dados são armazenados localmente, desconsiderando a segurança dos dados. Sendo que em muitas ocasiões, não existe qualquer segurança. Isso significa que os dados, especialmente os logs, podem ser alterados, o que pode resultar em que os robôs e, pela mesma linha de pensamento, os fabricantes, possam ser acusados de problemas que não causaram. Tendo isto em consideração, neste trabalho, procuramos integrar a blockchain com a robótica, com o objetivo de proporcionar maior segurança aos robôs e aos dados que geram e potenciar ainda a utilização de algoritmos de inteligência artificial. Fazendo uma visão abrangente dos métodos que propõem integrar a blockchain e inteligência artificial ou robótica, descobrimos que este é um campo em crescimento, mas que há uma falta de propostas que tentem melhorar os sistemas robóticos utilizando a blockchain. Ficou também claro que a maioria das propostas existentes que integram inteligência artificial e blockchain estão focadas na construção de marketplaces e só utilizam a blockchain para armazenar a informação sobre as transações que foram executadas. Assim, neste documento, propomos três métodos que utilizam a blockchain para resolver diferentes problemas associados a robôs. O primeiro é um método para armazenar, com segurança, logs de robôs dentro de uma blockchain, utilizando para isso smart-contracts como armazenamento. Neste método foi também proposta uma maneira de detetar anomalias em robôs automaticamente, utilizando para isso os dados contidos na blockchain e smart-contracts para definir a lógica do algoritmo. Ao utilizar smart-contracts, é garantido que os dados são seguros e imutáveis, desde que a blockchain contenha nós suficientes a participar no algoritmo de consenso. O segundo método vai além de registar eventos, para registar também informações sobre sensores externos, como uma câmara, e utilizando smart-contracts para permitir que Óraculos interajam com a blockchain, foi possível utilizar algoritmos de análise de imagens, que podem detetar a presença de material para ser recolhido. Esta informação é então inserida num smart-contract que define automaticamente o movimento que um robô deve ter, tendo em consideração a quantidade de material à espera para ser recolhida. A terceira proposta é um método que utiliza a blockchain para armazenar informações sobre robôs, e imagens provenientes de uma Kinect. Esta informação é então utilizada por Óraculos que verificam se existe alguma pessoa dentro do um espaço de trabalho de um robô. Se existir alguém, essa informação é armazenada e diferentes Óraculos tentam identificar a pessoa. No fim, um smart-contract age apropriadamente, mudando ou até mesmo parando o robô, dependendo da identidade da Com este trabalho, mostramos como a blockchain pode ser utilizada em ambientes onde existam robôs e como esta pode ser benéfica em contextos onde a cooperação entre várias entidades, a segurança e a descentralização dos dados são essenciais. Mostramos também como Óraculos podem interagir com a blockchain e cooperar de forma distribuída, para alavancar algoritmos de inteligência artificial de forma a realizar análises nos dados, o que nos permite detetar anomalias robóticas, material para ser recolhido e a presença de pessoas em imagens. Mostramos também que os smart-contracts podem ser utilizados para executar mais tarefas do que servir o propósito de fazer transações monetárias de forma automática. As arquiteturas propostas neste trabalho são modulares e podem ser utilizadas em vários contextos, como no fabrico de peças, controle de robô e outras. Devido ao facto de que as arquiteturas propostas, são fáceis de integrar, adaptar, manter e estender a novos domínios. A nossa opinião é que a interseção entre a blockchain e a robótica irá moldar parte do futuro da robótica moderna assim que a blockchain seja mais utilizada e fácil de integrar em sistemas robóticos. Esta integração será muito proeminente em tarefas onde os robôs precisam de se comportar sob certas restrições, em enxames de robôs, devido ao fato de que a blockchain fornece informação global sobre o estado da rede, e também em fábricas, porque as ações realizadas por um robô podem ser facilmente estendidas ao resto dos robôs, e porque fornece um mecanismo extra de segurança aos dados e a todas as ações que são efetuadas com ajuda de smart-contracts