An Approach to Evaluate Software Effectiveness

The Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center (AFOTEC) is tasked with the evaluation of operational effectiveness of new systems for the Air Force. Currently, the software analysis team within AFOTEC has no methodology to directly address the effectiveness of the software portion of these new systems. This research develops a working definition for software effectiveness, then outlines an approach to evaluate software effectiveness-- the Software Effectiveness Traceability Approach (SETA). Effectiveness is defined as the degree to which the software requirements are satisfied and is therefore application-independent. With SETA, requirements satisfaction is measured by the degree of traceability throughout the software development effort. A degree of traceability is determined for specific pairs of software life-cycle phases, such as the traceability from software requirements to high-level design and low-level design to code. The degrees of traceability are combined for an overall software effectiveness value. It is shown that SETA can be implemented in a simplified database, and basic database operations are described to retrieve traceability information and quantify the software\u27s effectiveness. SETA is demonstrated using actual software development data from a small software component of the avionics subsystem of the C-17, the Air Force\u27s newest transport aircraft

Machine Learning for Cyber Physical Systems

This open access proceedings presents new approaches to Machine Learning for Cyber Physical Systems, experiences and visions. It contains selected papers from the fifth international Conference ML4CPS – Machine Learning for Cyber Physical Systems, which was held in Berlin, March 12-13, 2020. Cyber Physical Systems are characterized by their ability to adapt and to learn: They analyze their environment and, based on observations, they learn patterns, correlations and predictive models. Typical applications are condition monitoring, predictive maintenance, image processing and diagnosis. Machine Learning is the key technology for these developments

Minimally Invasive Urological Procedures and Related Technological Developments

The landscape of minimally invasive urological intervention is changing. A lot of new innovations and technological developments have happened over the last 3 decades. Laparoscopy and robotic surgery have revolutionised kidney and prostate cancer treatment, with more minimally invasive procedures now being carried out than ever before. At the same time, technological advancements and the use of laser have changed the face of endourology. Several new innovative treatments are now commonplace for benign prostate enlargement (BPE). Management of prostate cancer now involves procedures such as robotic prostatectomy, brachytherapy, radiotherapy, cryotherapy and HIFU. Robotic partial nephrectomy and cryotherapy have changed the face of renal cancer. En-bloc resection of bladder cancer is challenging the traditional management of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer and becoming commonplace, while robotic cystectomy is also gaining popularity for muscle invasive bladder cancer. Newer surgical intervention related to BPE includes laser (holmium, thulium and green light), water-based treatment (Rezum, Aquablation) and other minimally invasive procedures such as prostate artery embolisation (PAE) and Urolift. Endourological procedures have incorporated newer laser types and settings such as moses technology, disposable ureteroscopes (URS) and minimisation of percutaneous nephrolithotomy (PCNL) instruments. All these technological innovations and improvements have led to shorter hospital stay, reduced cost, potential reduction in complications and improvement in the quality of life (QoL)

A holonic manufacturing architecture for line-less mobile assembly systems operations planning and control

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Automação e Sistemas, Florianópolis, 2022.O Line-Less Mobile Assembly Systems (LMAS) é um paradigma de fabricação que visa maximizar a resposta às tendências do mercado através de configurações adaptáveis de fábrica utilizando recursos de montagem móvel. Tais sistemas podem ser caracterizados como holonic manufacturing systems (HMS), cujas chamadas holonic control architecture (HCA) são recentemente retratadas como abordagens habilitadoras da Indústria 4.0 devido a suas relações de entidades temporárias (hierárquicas e/ou heterárquicas). Embora as estruturas de referência HCA como PROSA ou ADACOR/ADACOR² tenham sido muito discutidas na literatura, nenhuma delas pode ser aplicada diretamente ao contexto LMAS. Assim, esta dissertação visa responder à pergunta \"Como uma arquitetura de produção e sistema de controle LMAS precisa ser projetada?\" apresentando os modelos de projeto de arquitetura desenvolvidos de acordo com as etapas da metodologia para desenvolvimento de sistemas holônicos multi-agentes ANEMONA. A fase de análise da ANEMONA resulta em uma especificação do caso de uso, requisitos, objetivos do sistema, simplificações e suposições. A fase de projeto resulta nos modelos de organização, interação e agentes, seguido de uma breve análise de sua cobertura comportamental. O resultado da fase de implementação é um protótipo (realizado com o Robot Operation System) que implementa os modelos ANEMONA e uma ontologia LMAS, que reutiliza elementos de ontologias de referência do domínio de manufatura. A fim de testar o protótipo, um algoritmo para geração de dados para teste baseado na complexidade dos produtos e na flexibilidade do chão de fábrica é apresentado. A validação qualitativa dos modelos HCA é baseada em como o HCA proposto atende a critérios específicos para avaliar sistemas HCA. A validação é complementada por uma análise quantitativa considerando o comportamento dos modelos implementados durante a execução normal e a execução interrompida (e.g. equipamento defeituoso) em um ambiente simulado. A validação da execução normal concentra-se no desvio de tempo entre as agendas planejadas e executadas, o que provou ser em média irrelevante dentro do caso simulado considerando a ordem de magnitude das operações típicas demandadas. Posteriormente, durante a execução do caso interrompido, o sistema é testado sob a simulação de uma falha, onde duas estratégias são aplicadas, LOCAL\_FIX e REORGANIZATION, e seu resultado é comparado para decidir qual é a opção apropriada quando o objetivo é reduzir o tempo total de execução. Finalmente, é apresentada uma análise sobre a cobertura desta dissertação culminando em diretrizes que podem ser vistas como uma resposta possível (entre muitas outras) para a questão de pesquisa apresentada. Além disso, são apresentados pontos fortes e fracos dos modelos desenvolvidos, e possíveis melhorias e idéias para futuras contribuições para a implementação de sistemas de controle holônico para LMAS.Abstract: The Line-Less Mobile Assembly Systems (LMAS) is a manufacturing paradigm aiming to maximize responsiveness to market trends (product-individualization and ever-shortening product lifecycles) by adaptive factory configurations utilizing mobile assembly resources. Such responsive systems can be characterized as holonic manufacturing systems (HMS), whose so-called holonic control architectures (HCA) are recently portrayed as Industry 4.0-enabling approaches due to their mixed-hierarchical and -heterarchical temporary entity relationships. They are particularly suitable for distributed and flexible systems as the Line-Less Mobile Assembly or Matrix-Production, as they meet reconfigurability capabilities. Though HCA reference structures as PROSA or ADACOR/ADACOR² have been heavily discussed in the literature, neither can directly be applied to the LMAS context. Methodologies such as ANEMONA provide guidelines and best practices for the development of holonic multi-agent systems. Accordingly, this dissertation aims to answer the question \"How does an LMAS production and control system architecture need to be designed?\" presenting the architecture design models developed according to the steps of the ANEMONA methodology. The ANEMONA analysis phase results in a use case specification, requirements, system goals, simplifications, and assumptions. The design phase results in an LMAS architecture design consisting of the organization, interaction, and agent models followed by a brief analysis of its behavioral coverage. The implementation phase result is an LMAS ontology, which reuses elements from the widespread manufacturing domain ontologies MAnufacturing's Semantics Ontology (MASON) and Manufacturing Resource Capability Ontology (MaRCO) enriched with essential holonic concepts. The architecture approach and ontology are implemented using the Robot Operating System (ROS) robotic framework. In order to create test data sets validation, an algorithm for test generation based on the complexity of products and the shopfloor flexibility is presented considering a maximum number of operations per work station and the maximum number of simultaneous stations. The validation phase presents a two-folded validation: qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative validation of the HCA models is based on how the proposed HCA attends specific criteria for evaluating HCA systems (e.g., modularity, integrability, diagnosability, fault tolerance, distributability, developer training requirements). The validation is complemented by a quantitative analysis considering the behavior of the implemented models during the normal execution and disrupted execution (e.g.; defective equipment) in a simulated environment (in the form of a software prototype). The normal execution validation focuses on the time drift between the planned and executed schedules, which has proved to be irrelevant within the simulated case considering the order of magnitude of the typical demanded operations. Subsequently, during the disrupted case execution, the system is tested under the simulation of a failure, where two strategies are applied, LOCAL\_FIX and REORGANIZATION, and their outcome is compared to decide which one is the appropriate option when the goal is to reduce the overall execution time. Ultimately, it is presented an analysis about the coverage of this dissertation culminating into guidelines that can be seen as one possible answer (among many others) for the presented research question. Furthermore, strong and weak points of the developed models are presented, and possible improvements and ideas for future contributions towards the implementation of holonic control systems for LMAS

Ontology-based standards development: Application of OntoStanD to ebXML business process specification schema

Business-to-Business (B2B) interoperations are an important part of today's global economy. Business process standards are developed to provide a common understanding of the information shared between trading partners. These standards, however, mainly capture the syntax of the transactions and not their semantics. This paper proposes the use of ontologies as the basis for standards development and presents an ontology for the ebXML Business Process Specification Schema (ebBP) with the aim of empowering the capture and sharing of semantics embedded within B2B processes as well as enabling knowledge deduction and reasoning over the shared knowledge. The paper utilises the Ontology-based Standards Development methodology (OntoStanD) as a methodological approach for designing ontological models of standards. This research demonstrates how Semantic Web technologies can be utilised as a basis for standards development and representation in order to improve standards-based interoperability between trading partners

Membrane-active peptides from structural viral proteins : identifying novel delivery vectors for gene therapy

Péptidos activos em membranas são relevantes em diversos campos da biomedicina. Os péptidos translocadores de membranas (CPPs), em particular, são promissores na administração de fármacos, incluindo em terapia génica. O presente trabalho teve por objectivo identificar novas sequências CPPs em proteínas estruturais de vírus utilizando técnicas bioinformáticas e validação experimental. 270 proteínas virais foram examinadas para reconhecimento de potenciais CPPs, tendo sido identificadas 2400 sequências putativas. 14 CPPs de vírus foram seleccionados para ensaios in vitro como vectores para carga génica, utilizando oligonucleótidos de ssDNA como modelo. A eficiência de entrega foi monitorizada por espectroscopia de fluorescência, citometria de fluxo e microscopia confocal. Adicionalmente, efectuaram-se ensaios biofísicos para compreender propriedades físico-químicas necessárias para entrega celular eficiente dos CPPs. Consequentemente, medidas de potencial de membrana com di-8-ANEPPS foram utilizados ao estudar afinidade de CPPs para membranas. Foi usado dicroísmo circular para inferir estruturas secundárias induzidas em CPPs por membranas lipídicas. A conjugação entre CPPs de vírus e oligonucleótidos foi também avaliada por dispersão dinâmica de luz para aferir a formação de complexos entre vectores e carga transportada. Seis dos péptidos demonstraram eficiência na entrega de ssDNA a células. Dados biofísicos demonstraram que a eficiência da entrega de CPPs está dependente das interacções entre CPPs e lípidos, assim como da capacidade de conjugação com a carga a transportar. Dois CPPs foram particularmente eficientes e deverão continuar sob desenvolvimento e caracterização. Proteínas estruturais de vírus são uma fonte viável de CPPs, e podem ser exploradas para outras biotecnologias de péptidos activos em membranas, nomeadamente péptidos antimicrobianos.Membrane-active peptides provide wide therapeutic potential in several biomedical areas. Among these, cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are highly promising molecules in drug delivery, particularly when applied to gene therapy applications. This work aimed to identify novel CPP sequences in structural viral proteins using bioinformatics, followed by experimental validation. 270 structural viral proteins were screened for the existence of potential CPP sequences, which resulted in the identification of 2400 putative sequences. A subset of 14 viral CPPs was selected for in vitro testing as gene cargo vectors using a 15-mer ssDNA oligonucleotide as a model. Delivery efficiency was monitored by fluorescence spectroscopy, flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. Furthermore, biophysical assays were conducted to understand the physical-chemical properties required for effective CPP cellular delivery. As such, membrane dipole potential sensing, using di-8-ANEPPS, was employed to study the affinity of CPPs towards lipid membranes. Circular dichroism was used to infer about lipid membrane-induced CPP secondary structure. Moreover, conjugation between each viral CPP and oligonucleotides was evaluated by dynamic light scattering to infer about the proper formation of vector:cargo complexes. Six peptides demonstrated clear efficiency in delivering ssDNA into cells. Biophysical data showed that the molecular determinants required for an efficient CPP are dependent on CPP-lipid interactions and proper conjugation with the cargo to deliver. Thus, two CPPs were particularly efficient and should be considered for future development and characterization. Structural viral proteins are a viable source for new CPPs, which may also be explored for other membrane-active peptide biotechnologies, namely antimicrobial peptides

IMPROVE - Innovative Modelling Approaches for Production Systems to Raise Validatable Efficiency

This open access work presents selected results from the European research and innovation project IMPROVE which yielded novel data-based solutions to enhance machine reliability and efficiency in the fields of simulation and optimization, condition monitoring, alarm management, and quality prediction

New Trends in the Use of Artificial Intelligence for the Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 is based on the cyber-physical transformation of processes, systems and methods applied in the manufacturing sector, and on its autonomous and decentralized operation. Industry 4.0 reflects that the industrial world is at the beginning of the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterized by a massive interconnection of assets and the integration of human operators with the manufacturing environment. In this regard, data analytics and, specifically, the artificial intelligence is the vehicular technology towards the next generation of smart factories.Chapters in this book cover a diversity of current and new developments in the use of artificial intelligence on the industrial sector seen from the fourth industrial revolution point of view, namely, cyber-physical applications, artificial intelligence technologies and tools, Industrial Internet of Things and data analytics. This book contains high-quality chapters containing original research results and literature review of exceptional merit. Thus, it is in the aim of the book to contribute to the literature of the topic in this regard and let the readers know current and new trends in the use of artificial intelligence for the Industry 4.0