Top-up operation experience at APS.

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) is a 7-OeV, third-generation synchrotrons radiation source. To provide more stable beam for users, in September 1998 we began commissioning a new operating mode called ''top-up.'' In this mode, the beam current does not decay but is maintained at a high level using frequent injection, while photon shutters are open and photon beams are delivered to users. The hardware, software, and safety requirements for top-up will be reported. Safety issues related to injection with open photon shutters are covered in companion papers in this conference. Recent operational experience includes testing aspects of top-up injection and delivering beam to X-ray users for a few hours with fractional current stability of 10{sup {minus}3}. We expect to run several top-up operation shifts in Spring 1999. Issues of importance are orbit and emittance transients during the injection and scheduling of injection pulses for the convenience of users

SMEs COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AND ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING IMPLEMENTATION: FINDING FROM CENTRAL JAVA

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is an integrated application software for widespread use in the organization. The aim of this study is to determine factors that affect the successful implementation of ERP in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Central Java in order to build competitive advantage. To test the hypothesis, this study utilized data from 107 SMEs in Central Java. The results revealed that variable Business Process Reengineering have the greatest influence toward the successful implementation in Small and Medium Enterprises. It is suggested that SMEs should gain knowledge and solidify its business process reengineering before implementing ERP

Requirements for the workflow-based support of release management processes in the automotive sector

One of the challenges the automotive industry currently has to master is the complexity of the electrical/elctronic system of a car. One key factor for reaching short product development cycles and high quality in this area are well-defined, properly executed test and release processes. In this paper we show why workflow management technology is needed to support these processes and how this support should look like. We further confront these requirements with the features of contemporary workflow technology and discuss which extensions become necessary

New Directions in Data Analysis

In the next decade, high energy physicists will use very sophisticated equipment to record unprecedented amounts of data in the hope of making major advances in our understanding of particle phenomena. Some of the signals of new physics will be small, and the use of advanced analysis techniques will be crucial for optimizing signal to noise ratio. I will discuss new directions in data analysis and some novel methods that could prove to be particularly valuable for finding evidence of any new physics, for improving precision measurements and for exploring parameter spaces of theoretical models.Comment: 5 pages, 1 Figure, Presented at DPF2000. Proceedings of the American Physical Society DPF2000 Meeting, Columbus, Ohio, to be published in the International Journal of Modern Physics

Building Blocks for Control System Software

Software implementation of control laws for industrial systems seem straightforward, but is not. The computer code stemming from the control laws is mostly not more than 10 to 30% of the total. A building-block approach for embedded control system development is advocated to enable a fast and efficient software design process.\ud We have developed the CTJ library, Communicating Threads for Java¿,\ud resulting in fundamental elements for creating building blocks to implement communication using channels. Due to the simulate-ability, our building block method is suitable for a concurrent engineering design approach. Furthermore, via a stepwise refinement process, using verification by simulation, the implementation trajectory can be done efficiently

Interactive Vegetation Rendering with Slicing and Blending

Detailed and interactive 3D rendering of vegetation is one of the challenges of traditional polygon-oriented computer graphics, due to large geometric complexity even of simple plants. In this paper we introduce a simplified image-based rendering approach based solely on alpha-blended textured polygons. The simplification is based on the limitations of human perception of complex geometry. Our approach renders dozens of detailed trees in real-time with off-the-shelf hardware, while providing significantly improved image quality over existing real-time techniques. The method is based on using ordinary mesh-based rendering for the solid parts of a tree, its trunk and limbs. The sparse parts of a tree, its twigs and leaves, are instead represented with a set of slices, an image-based representation. A slice is a planar layer, represented with an ordinary alpha or color-keyed texture; a set of parallel slices is a slicing. Rendering from an arbitrary viewpoint in a 360 degree circle around the center of a tree is achieved by blending between the nearest two slicings. In our implementation, only 6 slicings with 5 slices each are sufficient to visualize a tree for a moving or stationary observer with the perceptually similar quality as the original model