Belle II Technical Design Report

The Belle detector at the KEKB electron-positron collider has collected almost 1 billion Y(4S) events in its decade of operation. Super-KEKB, an upgrade of KEKB is under construction, to increase the luminosity by two orders of magnitude during a three-year shutdown, with an ultimate goal of 8E35 /cm^2 /s luminosity. To exploit the increased luminosity, an upgrade of the Belle detector has been proposed. A new international collaboration Belle-II, is being formed. The Technical Design Report presents physics motivation, basic methods of the accelerator upgrade, as well as key improvements of the detector.Comment: Edited by: Z. Dole\v{z}al and S. Un

Topical Workshop on Electronics for Particle Physics

The purpose of the workshop was to present results and original concepts for electronics research and development relevant to particle physics experiments as well as accelerator and beam instrumentation at future facilities; to review the status of electronics for the LHC experiments; to identify and encourage common efforts for the development of electronics; and to promote information exchange and collaboration in the relevant engineering and physics communities

Development of Ultrasonic Devices for Non-destructive Testing: Ultrasonic Vibro-tactile Sensor and FPGA-Based Research Platform

This thesis is focused on the development of ultrasonic devices for industrial non-destructive testing (NDT). Ultrasound is generated from mechanical vibrations and then propagates through the medium. Ultrasonic devices can make use of the ultrasound in both aspects, vibrations and propagations, to perform inspections of the objects. To this end, two devices were developed in this research, each pertaining to NDT of the objects. The first device is the vibro-tactile sensor which aims to estimate the elastic modules of soft materials with minimally invasive technique. Inspired by load sensitivity studies in the high-power ultrasonic applications, vibration characteristics in resonance were utilized to perform the inspection. Only a minimal force to ensure contact with the object surface needs to be applied for a vibro-tactile sensor to perform inspection of the object; hence, it can be used for in-vivo measurement of the soft materials’ elastic moduli without causing severe surface deformation. The design and analysis of the device were carried out using the electro-mechanical analogy to address the electro-mechanical nature of piezoelectric devices. The designed vibro-tactile sensor resonates at ~40 kHz and can be applied to differentiate the elastic modulus of isotropic soft samples with a range from 10 kPa to 70 kPa. The second device developed is a field-programmable development platform for ultrasonic pulse-echo testing. Ultrasonic testing, utilizing sound wave propagation, is a widely used technique in the industry. The commercially available equipment for industrial NDT is highly dependent on the competence of the inspector and rarely provides the access to raw data. For successful transition from traditional labor-intensive manufacturing to the next generation “smart factory” where intelligent machines replace human labor, inspection equipment with automated in-line data collection and processing capability is highly needed. To this end, a flexible platform which provides the access to raw data for algorithm development and implementation should be established. Therefore, an affordable, versatile, and researcher-friendly development platform based on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) was developed in the research. Both hardware and software development tools and procedures were discussed. In the lab experiment, the developed prototype exhibited its competence in NDT applications and successfully carried out hardware-based auto-detection algorithm for mm-level defects on steel and aluminum specimens. Comparisons with commercial systems were provided to guide future development

Business set-up, transfer and closure

The report deals with the key drivers of business set-ups, transfers and closures. It considers innovative new business models and entrepreneurial activity. It also examines a wide range of regulatory, institutional and financial factors that influence primarily set-ups, but ultimately can also impact on the manner and ease with which businesses close. Finally, the report examines the closure of businesses - through voluntary exits, personal insolvency (bankruptcy) or corporate insolvency. This report was released on 21 May 2015. You are invited to examine the draft report, to make written submissions by Friday 3 July 2015 and to register to participate in public hearings. Key Points Businesses are set-up for a variety of reasons and in any one year there is a churn of entries and exits that is comparable with other countries. Most businesses are small and a very low proportion are innovative, producing a product or service new to Australian or international markets. The propensity to be innovative is highest amongst larger businesses. While it is generally relatively easy to start a business, a number of longstanding issues with specific regulatory requirements and regulator engagement and funding remain unaddressed and are making new business entry unnecessarily complex or costly. Some new business models - particularly those that exploit digital technology to make better use of information - are challenging existing regulatory arrangements or causing others to operate in regulatory grey areas. Regulators should have the capacity to exempt businesses for a fixed period, from particular regulatory requirements where these deter entry but exemption does not threaten consumer, public health and safety, or environmental outcomes. Government assistance to business set-ups should not be directed at particular business models, technologies, sectors or locations - criteria based on desired outcomes (such as technology transfer and spillovers) with matching private sector investment, are less likely to distort incentives and behaviours, particularly in a rapidly evolving environment. Any assistance should focus on those areas where there are economy-wide net benefits, and in the absence of a business set-up, there would be a justifiable need for other forms of government assistance. Access to finance is generally not a significant barrier to business set-up. New debt financing platforms, such as peer-to-peer lending, are helping to fill the gap in unsecured debt finance available from the major financial institutions. The voluntary participation by lenders in comprehensive credit reporting should be reviewed. A two-tier regulatory structure should be introduced for crowd-sourced equity to balance the financing needs of business against the risk preferences of different types of investors. Most businesses are closed or transferred without financial failure. Governments\u27 role in such situations should be limited to provision of clear guidelines for businesses, associations and advisers on exit and succession planning, and ensuring government processes are timely. While some specific reforms to Australia\u27s corporate insolvency regime are warranted, a wholesale change to the system, such as the adoption of the United States \u27chapter 11\u27 framework, is not justified. Formal restructuring of companies through voluntary administration should be enabled as an option for when a company may become, but is not yet, insolvent. There should be provision for a \u27safe harbour\u27 to allow company directors to explore restructuring options without liability for insolvent trading. A simplified liquidation process should be introduced to reduce the time and expense toward winding up businesses with little or no recoverable assets. All directors should be required to obtain a director identification number to enable the easier detection of disqualified or fraudulent directors. The default exclusion period and associated restrictions applying to bankrupts in relation to access to finance, employment (including being a company director) and overseas travel should be reduced from 3 years to 1 year, with the trustee and courts retaining the power to extend this period where necessary to prevent abuse of the bankruptcy process

Unified Synchronized Data Acquisition Networks

The permanently evolving technical area of communication technology and the presence of more and more precise sensors and detectors, enable options and solutions to challenges in science and industry. In high-energy physics, for example, it becomes possible with accurate measurements to observe particles almost at the speed of light in small-sized dimensions. Thereby, the enormous amounts of gathered data require modern high performance communication networks. Potential and efficient implementation of future readout chains will depend on new concepts and mechanisms. The main goals of this dissertation are to create new efficient synchronization mechanisms and to evolve readout systems for optimization of future sensor and detector systems. This happens in the context of the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment, which is a part of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, an international accelerator facility. It extends an accelerator complex in Darmstadt at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung GmbH. Initially, the challenges are specified and an analysis of the state of the art is presented. The resulting constraints and requirements influenced the design and development described within this dissertation. Subsequently, the different design and implementation tasks are discussed. Starting with the basic detector read system requirements and the definition of an efficient communication protocol. This protocol delivers all features needed for building of compact and efficient readout systems. Therefore, it is advantageous to use a single unified connection for processing all communication traffic. This means not only data, control, and synchronization messages, but also clock distribution is handled. Furthermore, all links in this system have a deterministic latency. The deterministic behavior enables establishing a synchronous network. Emerging problems were solved and the concept was successfully implemented and tested during several test beam times. In addition, the implementation and integration of this communication methodology into different network devices is described. Therefore, a generic modular approach was created. This enhances ASIC development by supporting them with proven hardware IPs, reducing design time, and risk of failure. Furthermore, this approach delivers flexibility concerning data rate and structure for the network system. Additionally, the design and prototyping for a data aggregation and concentrator ASIC is described. In conjunction with a dense electrical to optical conversion, this ASIC enables communication with flexible readout structures for the experiment and delivers the planned capacities and bandwidth. In the last part of the work, analysis and transfer of the created innovative synchronization mechanism into the area of high performance computing is discussed. Finally, a conclusion of all reached results and an outlook of possible future activities and research tasks within the Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment are presented

NASA Tech Briefs, February 2002

Topics include:a technology focus on computers, electronic components and systems, software, materials, mechanics,physical sciences machinery, manufacturing/fabrication, mathematics, book and reports, motion control tech briefs and a special section on Photonics Tech Briefs

Programmable diffractive optics for laser scanning confocal microscopy

Imperial Users onl

Integrated payload and mission planning, phase 3. Volume 3: Ground real-time mission operations

The payloads tentatively planned to fly on the first two Spacelab missions were analyzed to examine the cost relationships of providing mission operations support from onboard vs the ground-based Payload Operations Control Center (POCC). The quantitative results indicate that use of a POCC, with data processing capability, to support real-time mission operations is the most cost effective case

A system development methodology for embedded applications

In recent years, Singapore’s manufacturing sector has contributed more than a quarter of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and has established global leadership positions in several manufacturing areas such as electronics, Information Technology (IT) and industrial automation. The Singapore Economic Review Committee (ERC) recommendation states that “software and embedded systems that drive products are one of the most important technologies for the manufacturing sector. “ With the increasing adoption of automated and intelligent products, embedded systems have emerged as a crucial technology for Singapore. However, the development of embedded applications is not a trivial undertaking as it can usually involve multi-discipline parties and different application platforms. Most embedded application developments use either vendor specific or desktop based methodologies. Vendor specific methodologies constrain the company to rely on the specific vendor's solutions, whereas desktop-based methodologies are not well suited to embedded application development. Therefore, this research aims to develop a standard-based system development methodology for embedded applications. The research programme comprises 5 stages. The first stage reviews the existing system development methodologies for embedded applications. The next stage formulates the proposed conceptual methodology followed by the development of the proof-of-concept tool to demonstrate the merits of the proposed approach. The methodology is then tested and evaluated respectively by using industrial experiments and feedback from a workshop. The final stage refines the methodology based on the feedback and presents the final system development methodology. The research has provided a sound foundation which future research in methodology for embedded applications to develop further.Eng

A system development methodology for embedded applications

In recent years, Singapore’s manufacturing sector has contributed more than a quarter of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and has established global leadership positions in several manufacturing areas such as electronics, Information Technology (IT) and industrial automation. The Singapore Economic Review Committee (ERC) recommendation states that “software and embedded systems that drive products are one of the most important technologies for the manufacturing sector. “ With the increasing adoption of automated and intelligent products, embedded systems have emerged as a crucial technology for Singapore. However, the development of embedded applications is not a trivial undertaking as it can usually involve multi-discipline parties and different application platforms. Most embedded application developments use either vendor specific or desktop based methodologies. Vendor specific methodologies constrain the company to rely on the specific vendor's solutions, whereas desktop-based methodologies are not well suited to embedded application development. Therefore, this research aims to develop a standard-based system development methodology for embedded applications. The research programme comprises 5 stages. The first stage reviews the existing system development methodologies for embedded applications. The next stage formulates the proposed conceptual methodology followed by the development of the proof-of-concept tool to demonstrate the merits of the proposed approach. The methodology is then tested and evaluated respectively by using industrial experiments and feedback from a workshop. The final stage refines the methodology based on the feedback and presents the final system development methodology. The research has provided a sound foundation which future research in methodology for embedded applications to develop further.Eng