Forecasting and strategic planning for emerging technologies : a case for RFID

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 140-144).The RFID industry is going through a sea of change and at different levels within the industry. Forecasts have been done on different facets of the RFID/EPC industry like the market size or the possible financial returns. However, the forecasts to date are not based on a collective view on the evolving, dynamic and inter-relating nature of such technology covering Retailers, Suppliers and Industry experts on the same landscape. The EPC Peloton Forecasting and Strategic Planning Tool was developed out of a need to collaborate and form consensus around the events and milestones that are critical for the widespread adoption of EPC for the Fast Moving Consumer Goods ("FMCG") industry. Though developed around its need in the RFID space, this tool can be used for decision making around any emerging technology. We are at a critical juncture in the history of RFID where there is excitement among stakeholders and the technology's promise needs to be harnessed by providing the stakeholders with a clear idea of (a) where the technology's future lies and (b) how consensus on how to achieve such a future can be facilitated.(cont.) The Peloton Approach deals with how to identify or develop a technology forecasting methodology that could capture inputs from all dimensions of the industry and lay down a range of possible future paths. To address the latter issue of collaboration, the Peloton aids in identifying the various stakeholders and their stages of adoption and provide a platform for people at a similar level of adoption to collaborate or enable those seeking information to be able to get into the bandwagon and adopt relevant strategies.by Vineet Thuvara.S.M

Exploring protein fitness landscapes with new high-throughput technologies

The concept of a protein’s fitness landscape – an abstract space in which related sequences are close together and matched with their fitness – is a useful tool to visualize core principles of protein evolution. Acquiring a new function, for example the laboratory evolution of an enzyme to convert an industrially relevant substrate, can be understood as a stepwise climb through a fitness landscape, reaching higher fitness (or activity) with each step (or mutation). The valleys of such a space relate to the starting points of protein engineering campaigns. Understanding this area could enlighten principles of how proteins quickly adapt in nature and help to identify starting points with a high potential for evolution, a high ‘evolvability’, speeding up protein engineering. In this study, high-throughput technologies will be developed that enable the read-out of directed evolution on a large scale, tracking the exploration of the valley of a fitness landscape: the conversion of an amino acid- to amine dehydrogenase will be investigated as a model of enzyme evolvability with a drastic change of substrate specificity. A sensitive high-throughput screening assay as well as a comprehensive sequencing read-out will be required to establish the identity of selected variants during evolution. I will first generate and characterize three different but related starting points and test their initial evolvability. Stabilizing the starting point results in increased mutational robustness, broadening the range of accepted mutations. However, increased initial stability does not necessarily correlate to higher functional improvement, hinting at a nuanced view of evolvability. A sensitive high-throughput assay is necessary to verify the full potential of the starting points and study the early steps of evolution comprehensively. Broadly applicable ultrahigh-throughput assays of enzyme function, such as absorbance-activated droplet sorting, currently lack the sensitivity of more specific fluorescence-based or low-throughput counterparts. A universal approach to increase detectability in single cell-lysate microfluidic enzyme assays is established by amplifying the enzyme content per droplet more than 10-fold via homogeneous clonal cell growth. Clonal amplification enables the sensitive and precise detection of newly introduced amine dehydrogenase activities, a feat restricted in conventional assays by low initial activity and stability. To generate a truly complete view of directed evolution in a fitness landscape, however, an equally powerful sequencing read-out is necessary to identify all selected variants. Here, unique molecular identifiers are used to increase the accuracy of nanopore sequencing to levels that can reliably distinguish point mutations. I establish an inexpensive and straightforward long read amplicon sequencing workflow which is then applied to map the trajectories of two comparative long-term directed evolution campaigns. In the parallel evolution campaigns, initial beneficial mutations are exclusive to each starting point and lead to incompatible trajectories. Beneficial mutations are scarce and large improvements are unavailable until recombination occurs and a jump through the fitness landscape is realized. The recombined variant holds high evolvability and quickly evolves to take over the population and form the most successful lineages, indicating the power of recombination as a means to innovation in protein evolution. The tools established in this thesis can help protein engineers explore fitness landscapes more economically and comprehensively. Their application to mapping full trajectories of early adaptation uncovers differences in the evolvability of homologs, potentially aiding the identification of evolvable starting points as well as strategies to increase evolvability for efficient protein engineering in the future

Integrating multiple clusters for compute-intensive applications

Multicluster grids provide one promising solution to satisfying the growing computational demands of compute-intensive applications. However, it is challenging to seamlessly integrate all participating clusters in different domains into a single virtual computational platform. In order to fully utilize the capabilities of multicluster grids, computer scientists need to deal with the issue of joining together participating autonomic systems practically and efficiently to execute grid-enabled applications. Driven by several compute-intensive applications, this theses develops a multicluster grid management toolkit called Pelecanus to bridge the gap between user\u27s needs and the system\u27s heterogeneity. Application scientists will be able to conduct very large-scale execution across multiclusters with transparent QoS assurance. A novel model called DA-TC (Dynamic Assignment with Task Containers) is developed and is integrated into Pelecanus. This model uses the concept of a task container that allows one to decouple resource allocation from resource binding. It employs static load balancing for task container distribution and dynamic load balancing for task assignment. The slowest resources become useful rather than be bottlenecks in this manner. A cluster abstraction is implemented, which not only provides various cluster information for the DA-TC execution model, but also can be used as a standalone toolkit to monitor and evaluate the clusters\u27 functionality and performance. The performance of the proposed DA-TC model is evaluated both theoretically and experimentally. Results demonstrate the importance of reducing queuing time in decreasing the total turnaround time for an application. Experiments were conducted to understand the performance of various aspects of the DA-TC model. Experiments showed that our model could significantly reduce turnaround time and increase resource utilization for our targeted application scenarios. Four applications are implemented as case studies to determine the applicability of the DA-TC model. In each case the turnaround time is greatly reduced, which demonstrates that the DA-TC model is efficient for assisting application scientists in conducting their research. In addition, virtual resources were integrated into the DA-TC model for application execution. Experiments show that the execution model proposed in this thesis can work seamlessly with multiple hybrid grid/cloud resources to achieve reduced turnaround time

Development of wearable, screen-printable conductive polymer biosensors on flexible and textile substrates

Wearable biosensors have great potential for real-time diagnostics, but have been encumbered by costly fabrication processes, rigid materials, and inadequate sensitivity for physiological ranges. Sweat has hitherto been an understudied sample for measurement of components like pH and lactate, which can provide meaningful guidance for wound healing, eczema, and sports medicine applications. This thesis presents the development of a flexible, textile-based, screen-printed electrode system for biosensing applications. Furthermore, a flexible, pH-sensitive composite for textile substrates is developed by mixing polyaniline with dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid and textile screen-printing ink. The optimized composite’s pH response is compared to electropolymerized and drop-cast polyaniline sensors via open circuit potential measurements. A linear response is observed for all sensors between pH 3-10, with the composite demonstrating sufficient response time and a sensitivity better than -20 mV/pH, exceeding existing flexible screen-printed pH sensors. Investigations into a potentiometric, non-enzymatic lactate sensor using polyaminophenylboronic acid are also discussed

An investigation into marine biofouling and its influence on the durability of concrete sea defences

This research has investigated marine biofouling and its influence on the durability of concrete sea defences using on-site and laboratory-based studies. The study was divided into three main phases namely: the surface analysis of armour concrete, the study of algal colonisation within the matrix and investigations into the presence of a bacterial biofilm within freshly hardened armour concrete. The effectiveness of photocatalytic coatings as a non-toxic anti-fouling strategy and cell attachment to synthetic fibres was also studied. It was found that algal growth quickly developed at the interface of inclusions within the matrix and that power washing with the use of Dairy Hypochlorite to remove this accelerated wear, leading to significant mass loss. It was also observed that bacterial growth within local beach sand, which was used in the production of the revetment armour units, survived the concrete manufacturing process. Bacteria were cultured from the sand and were found to match the Actinomycete like growth in the freshly hardened matrix of armour concrete. This thesis proposes a holistic model for biofouling of fibre reinforced marine concrete in which algal growth around inclusions facilitates a complex process of biodeterioration. Bacterial filamentous growth around and through synthetic fibres embedded in the new concrete mix, appears to be detrimental to the long term durability of synthetic fibres. Subsequent algal colonisation on the surface of newly placed units appeared to quickly penetrate the surface through exposed fibres and percolated interfaces of inclusions, subsequently weakening their bond. During the manufacture of the armour units, aggregate segregation in the 90° corners in the bottom of the form created a weaker matrix in the surface region most exposed to biodeterioration, the full force of wave action and power washing. The main conclusions from this study are: • Synthetic fibres used at the study site are inappropriate for marine concrete, particularly in algal rich waters, within the inter-tidal zone where beach sand is used in the concrete mix. Amendments to Concrete Society Technical Report No. 65: Guidance on the use of Macro-synthetic-fibre-reinforced concrete have been recommended. • Bacterial loaded beach sand is detrimental to the durability of marine concrete in the inter-tidal zone and amendments are recommended to PD 6682-1:2013 Aggregates for concrete (BSI, 2013a) in order to highlight this concern. This UK guidance suggests limiting values for aggregate properties within the ranges permitted in BS EN 12620 (BSI, 2013) but does not place any limits on microorganisms present in beach sand. Further work is needed into the susceptibility of synthetic fibres to crystal growth. Alterations in the manufacture of armour units have been recommended by this author

Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers