Performance Evaluation of Components Using a Granularity-based Interface Between Real-Time Calculus and Timed Automata

To analyze complex and heterogeneous real-time embedded systems, recent works have proposed interface techniques between real-time calculus (RTC) and timed automata (TA), in order to take advantage of the strengths of each technique for analyzing various components. But the time to analyze a state-based component modeled by TA may be prohibitively high, due to the state space explosion problem. In this paper, we propose a framework of granularity-based interfacing to speed up the analysis of a TA modeled component. First, we abstract fine models to work with event streams at coarse granularity. We perform analysis of the component at multiple coarse granularities and then based on RTC theory, we derive lower and upper bounds on arrival patterns of the fine output streams using the causality closure algorithm. Our framework can help to achieve tradeoffs between precision and analysis time.Comment: QAPL 201

Real-time assessment of critical quality attributes of a continuous granulation process

There exists the intention to shift pharmaceutical manufacturing of solid dosage forms from traditional batch production towards continuous production. The currently applied conventional quality control systems, based on sampling and time-consuming off-line analyses in analytical laboratories, would annul the advantages of continuous processing. It is clear that real-time quality assessment and control is indispensable for continuous production. This manuscript evaluates strengths and weaknesses of several complementary Process Analytical Technology (PAT) tools implemented in a continuous wet granulation process, which is part of a fully continuous from powder-to-tablet production line. The use of Raman and NIR-spectroscopy and a particle size distribution analyzer is evaluated for the real-time monitoring of critical parameters during the continuous wet agglomeration of an anhydrous theophylline− lactose blend. The solid state characteristics and particle size of the granules were analyzed in real-time and the critical process parameters influencing these granule characteristics were identified. The temperature of the granulator barrel, the amount of granulation liquid added and, to a lesser extent, the powder feed rate were the parameters influencing the solid state of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). A higher barrel temperature and a higher powder feed rate, resulted in larger granules

Integrated Design and Implementation of Embedded Control Systems with Scilab

Embedded systems are playing an increasingly important role in control engineering. Despite their popularity, embedded systems are generally subject to resource constraints and it is therefore difficult to build complex control systems on embedded platforms. Traditionally, the design and implementation of control systems are often separated, which causes the development of embedded control systems to be highly time-consuming and costly. To address these problems, this paper presents a low-cost, reusable, reconfigurable platform that enables integrated design and implementation of embedded control systems. To minimize the cost, free and open source software packages such as Linux and Scilab are used. Scilab is ported to the embedded ARM-Linux system. The drivers for interfacing Scilab with several communication protocols including serial, Ethernet, and Modbus are developed. Experiments are conducted to test the developed embedded platform. The use of Scilab enables implementation of complex control algorithms on embedded platforms. With the developed platform, it is possible to perform all phases of the development cycle of embedded control systems in a unified environment, thus facilitating the reduction of development time and cost.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures; Open Access at http://www.mdpi.org/sensors/papers/s8095501.pd

A Stable Lipid/TiO2 Interface with Headgroup Inversed Phosphocholine and a Comparison with SiO2

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in the Journal of the American Chemical Society copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.5b06642Zwitterionic phosphocholine (PC) lipids are highly biocompatible, representing a major component of the cell membrane. A simple mixing of PC liposomes and silica (SiO2) surface results in liposome fusion with the surface and formation of supported lipid bilayers. However, the stability of this bilayer is relatively low because adsorption is based mainly on weak van der Waals force. PC lipids strongly adsorb by TiO2 via chemical bonding with the lipid phosphate. The lack of fusion on TiO2 is attributable to the steric effect from the choline group in PC. In this study, inverse phosphocholine lipids (CP) are used, directly exposing the phosphate. Using a calcein leakage assay and cryo-TEM, fusion of CP liposome with TiO2 is demonstrated. The stability of this supported bilayer is significantly higher than that of the PC/SiO2 system, as indicated by washing the membrane under harsh conditions. Adsorption of CP liposomes by TiO2 is inhibited at high pH. Interestingly, the CP liposome cannot fuse with silica surface because of a strong charge repulsion. This study demonstrates an interesting interplay between a soft matter surface and metal oxides. By tuning the lipid structure, it is possible to rationally control the interaction force. This study provides an alternative system for forming stable supported bilayers on TiO2, and represents the first example of interfacing inverse lipids with inorganic surfaces.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council |

Using foreign inclusion detection to improve parsing performance

Inclusions from other languages can be a significant source of errors for monolin-gual parsers. We show this for English in-clusions, which are sufficiently frequent to present a problem when parsing German. We describe an annotation-free approach for accurately detecting such inclusions, and de-velop two methods for interfacing this ap-proach with a state-of-the-art parser for Ger-man. An evaluation on the TIGER cor-pus shows that our inclusion entity model achieves a performance gain of 4.3 points in F-score over a baseline of no inclusion de-tection, and even outperforms a parser with access to gold standard part-of-speech tags.

Design and Control of a Flight-Style AUV with Hovering Capability

The small flight-style Delphin AUV is designed to evaluate the performance of a long range survey AUV with the additional capability to hover and manoeuvre at slow speed. Delphin’s hull form is based on a scaled version of Autosub6000, and in addition to the main thruster and control surfaces at the rear of the vehicle, Delphin is equipped with four rim driven tunnel thrusters. In order to reduce the development cycle time, Delphin was designed to use commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors and thrusters interfaced to a standard PC motherboard running the control software within the MS Windows environment. To further simplify the development, the autonomy system uses the State-Flow Toolbox within the Matlab/Simulink environment. While the autonomy software is running, image processing routines are used for obstacle avoidance and target tracking, within the commercial Scorpion Vision software. This runs as a parallel thread and passes results to Matlab via the TCP/IP communication protocol. The COTS based development approach has proved effective. However, a powerful PC is required to effectively run Matlab and Simulink, and, due to the nature of the Windows environment, it is impossible to run the control in hard real-time. The autonomy system will be recoded to run under the Matlab Windows Real-Time Windows Target in the near future. Experimental results are used to demonstrating the performance and current capabilities of the vehicle are presented