An agent-based dynamic information network for supply chain management

One of the main research issues in supply chain management is to improve the global efficiency of supply chains. However, the improvement efforts often fail because supply chains are complex, are subject to frequent changes, and collaboration and information sharing in the supply chains are often infeasible. This paper presents a practical collaboration framework for supply chain management wherein multi-agent systems form dynamic information networks and coordinate their production and order planning according to synchronized estimation of market demands. In the framework, agents employ an iterative relaxation contract net protocol to find the most desirable suppliers by using data envelopment analysis. Furthermore, the chain of buyers and suppliers, from the end markets to raw material suppliers, form dynamic information networks for synchronized planning. This paper presents an agent-based dynamic information network for supply chain management and discusses the associated pros and cons

Beta: Bioprinting engineering technology for academia

Higher STEM education is a field of growing potential, but too many middle school and high school students are not testing proficiently in STEM subjects. The BETA team worked to improve biology classroom engagement through the development of technologies for high school biology experiments. The BETA project team expanded functionality of an existing product line to allow for better student and teacher user experience and the execution of more interesting experiments. The BETA project’s first goal was to create a modular incubating Box for the high school classroom. This Box, called the BETA Box was designed with a variety of sensors to allow for custom temperature and lighting environments for each experiment. It was completed with a clear interface to control the settings and an automatic image capture system. The team also conducted a feasibility study on auto calibration and dual-extrusion for SE3D’s existing 3D bioprinter. The findings of this study led to the incorporation of a force sensor for auto calibration and the evidence to support the feasibility of dual extrusion, although further work is needed. These additions to the current SE3D educational product line will increase effectiveness in the classroom and allow the target audience, high school students, to better engage in STEM education activities

High definition systems in Japan

The successful implementation of a strategy to produce high-definition systems within the Japanese economy will favorably affect the fundamental competitiveness of Japan relative to the rest of the world. The development of an infrastructure necessary to support high-definition products and systems in that country involves major commitments of engineering resources, plants and equipment, educational programs and funding. The results of these efforts appear to affect virtually every aspect of the Japanese industrial complex. The results of assessments of the current progress of Japan toward the development of high-definition products and systems are presented. The assessments are based on the findings of a panel of U.S. experts made up of individuals from U.S. academia and industry, and derived from a study of the Japanese literature combined with visits to the primary relevant industrial laboratories and development agencies in Japan. Specific coverage includes an evaluation of progress in R&D for high-definition television (HDTV) displays that are evolving in Japan; high-definition standards and equipment development; Japanese intentions for the use of HDTV; economic evaluation of Japan's public policy initiatives in support of high-definition systems; management analysis of Japan's strategy of leverage with respect to high-definition products and systems

Diversified Projects in Microcontroller Class Enhances Undergraduate Students’ Learning, Design and Research

Understanding the use of microcontrollers is fundamental in both Electrical and Computer Engineering undergraduate programs. Our school replaced our microprocessor class with microcontroller class in year 2010 due to the fast growing popularity of microcontrollers. In the first two years of offering this class, a more traditional “lectures plus weekly Lab” model was used. Students received background knowledge in the lecture and applied that information in the lab. In order to improve students’ ability to design, problem solve and research, a new teaching approach was adopted for this course in 2012. After preparing the class with sufficient fundamental knowledge, they are asked to implement a microcontroller project of their own choice. The students must conduct research on the state of the art in that topic, design their own implementation which includes both hardware and software, and plan the budget. They also must submit a project proposal along with the electrical components list and the total cost for their project. Once approved, the team implements their project and gives a demonstration and a presentation of their work to the whole class. The classes have enjoyed learning through the project research and implementation. The diversified projects have allowed the students to more deeply and broadly explore microcontroller applications. The projects show them the significance of microcontrollers and inspires their interests in Computer and Electrical Engineering. It also give them practical practice in team work and time management. Additionally, it has helped to better prepares them for the coming senior design projects. This paper will explain why and how the new model is adopted in our microcontroller course. It will demonstrate some of the fun projects our student implemented. It will also present the improved class outcomes and evaluations

The Interface of Technology in Culinary Arts Education

Introduction: A culinary educator must make many decisions that affect the day-to-day activities in both the classroom and the lab. One of the more important decisions is how to select the most appropriate technology to implement for use in teaching and administrative activities. The research presented here is intended to help the educator identify specific needs, decide where the use of technology is desirable, and offer information designed to help the educator make an informed decision about using technology as a teaching tool. Purpose Statement: The purpose of this paper is to inform the culinary educator about the technology available for use in both the classroom and the lab setting. There is an ever-increasing pool of technology, making it more important than ever that the educator choose the appropriate lab/kitchen equipment and software programs for use in a specific culinary program. Making an informed decision ensures maximum usefulness of the technology in the setting

A dimmable light-emitting diode (LED) driver with mag-amp postregulators for multistring applications

Current imbalance should be avoided when multiple LED strings are connected in parallel. In this paper, a dimmable LED driver with magnetic-amplifier postregulators for multistring applications is presented. Powered by a common master source, parallel LED strings are individually regulated by their corresponding adaptive slave sources for current balancing in this proposal. Without linear current regulators, the proposed driver offers relatively high efficiency. Its structure is simpler than multiconverter structures for red, blue, and green LED applications, and is particularly suitable for LEDs with wide parameter variations. The performance of the proposed driver is experimentally verified by a 16.5-W prototype with a load of three 5.5-W LED strings. © 2006 IEEE.published_or_final_versio

Security Check-In Station

The major qualifying project is the culmination of lab and courses over four years. The Security Check-In Station is a device which communicates with a central server to give access to guards based on RFID badge verification and voice authentication. The device is designed to have guards check in with the central server showing the patrolled area. By using RFID tags and scanners, and using signal analysis techniques like frequency comparing and signal covariance, the device is able to distinguish guards from imposters

Detection-by-Localization: Maintenance-Free Change Object Detector

Recent researches demonstrate that self-localization performance is a very useful measure of likelihood-of-change (LoC) for change detection. In this paper, this "detection-by-localization" scheme is studied in a novel generalized task of object-level change detection. In our framework, a given query image is segmented into object-level subimages (termed "scene parts"), which are then converted to subimage-level pixel-wise LoC maps via the detection-by-localization scheme. Our approach models a self-localization system as a ranking function, outputting a ranked list of reference images, without requiring relevance score. Thanks to this new setting, we can generalize our approach to a broad class of self-localization systems. Our ranking based self-localization model allows to fuse self-localization results from different modalities via an unsupervised rank fusion derived from a field of multi-modal information retrieval (MMR).Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, Technical repor

FY2017 Equipment and Vehicle Revolving Fund report

The Equipment and Vehicle Revolving Fund report covers all equipment and vehicle purchases through the highway materials and equipment revolving fund during FY 2017