Designing reliable cyber-physical systems overview associated to the special session at FDL’16

CPS, that consist of a cyber part – a computing system – and a physical part – the system in the physical environment – as well as the respective interfaces between those parts, are omnipresent in our daily lives. The application in the physical environment drives the overall requirements that must be respected when designing the computing system. Here, reliability is a core aspect where some of the most pressing design challenges are: • monitoring failures throughout the computing system, • determining the impact of failures on the application constraints, and • ensuring correctness of the computing system with respect to application-driven requirements rooted in the physical environment. This paper provides an overview of techniques discussed in the special session to tackle these challenges throughout the stack of layers of the computing system while tightly coupling the design methodology to the physical requirements.</p

Technological and Economical Assessment of Alternative Process Chains for Blisk Manufacture

Due to the increase of blisk (blade integrated disk) demands instead of the conventional fir-tree design in current aero-engine concepts there is a high resource-driven need for a comprehensive evaluation of different process chain alternatives for blisk manufacture. Therefore, in this paper different manufacturing chains consisting of roughing, pre-finishing and finishing/polishing are compared to each other by the example of a HPC-blisk out of Inconel 718. Beside conventional milling and electrochemical machining also alternative manufacturing technologies like wire-based laser cladding, water jet cutting and automated polishing are taken into account. Based on a technological analysis an adaptable methodology is introduced, which allows an independent economical assessment of different process chains regarding e.g. company-specific boundary conditions or different production quantities

Polytraumatization in young male refugees from the Middle East and its association with internalizing and externalizing symptoms

El-Awad U, Reinelt T, Braig J, et al. Polytraumatization in young male refugees from the Middle East and its association with internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health . 2021;15(1): 75.Background Young Middle Eastern male refugees are currently among the most vulnerable groups in Europe. Most of them have experienced potentially traumatic events (PTEs) such as rape, torture, or violent assaults. Compared to their peers, young refugees suffer more from internalizing and externalizing symptoms, especially when unaccompanied. Little is known about the cumulative impact of experiencing different types of PTEs on mental health outcomes (polytraumatization) of young male refugees from the Middle East. We investigated (1) whether there is a dose-response relationship between multiple PTE types experienced and mental health outcomes, (2) whether individual types of PTEs are particularly important, and (3) to what extent these are differentially associated with mental health outcomes among unaccompanied or accompanied peers. Methods In total, 151 young Middle Eastern male refugees in Germany (M-age = 16.81 years, SDage = 2.01) answered questionnaires on PTEs, mental health, and post-migration stress. Results Hierarchical regression analyses revealed, while controlling for age, duration of stay, unaccompanied status, and post-migration stress, (1) a dose-effect between PTE types on both internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Moreover, (2) regarding internalizing symptoms, violent family separation and experiencing life-threatening medical problems were particularly crucial. The latter was driven by unaccompanied refugees, who also reported higher levels of substance use. Conclusions The results extend findings from the literature and suggest that not only may greater polytraumatization be related to greater depression among refugees, but also to a range of other mental health outcomes from the internalizing and externalizing symptom domains. Furthermore, the results highlight the mental health risks that unaccompanied and accompanied refugee adolescents face after exposure to PTEs, and provide information for practitioners as well as researchers about event types that may be particularly relevant

Designing Reliable Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-physical systems, that consist of a cyber part a computing System and a physical part the system in the physical environment as well as the respective interfaces between those parts, are omnipresent in our daily lives. The application in the physical environment drives the overall requirements that must be respected when designing the computing system. Here, reliability is a core aspect where some of the most pressing design challenges are: *monitoring failures throughout the computing system, *determining the impact of failures on the application constraints, and *ensuring correctness of the computing system with respect to application-driven requirements rooted in the physical environment. *This chapter gives an overview of the state-of-the-art techniques developed within the Horizon 2020 project IMMORTAL that tackle these challenges throughout the stack of layers of the computing system while tightly coupling the design methodology to the physical requirements. (The chapter is based on the contributions of the special session Designing Reliable Cyber-Physical Systems of the Forum on Specification and Design Languages (FDL) 2016.

Community Dynamics of Browsing and Grazing Ungulates

The world’s 240 ungulate species belong largely to the same guild, feeding on terrestrial plants, and yet, ungulates typically occur in multi-species assemblages. What allows multiple ungulate species dependent on similar resources to coexist? We focus on the role of variation in ungulate body masses and their feeding adaptations in facilitating coexistence at multiple scales. Our analyses of a global dataset of extant ungulates (incl. proboscideans) show that grazing species tend to have significantly larger body masses, browsers significantly smaller, and mixed feeders tend to have body masses similar to the global median of all species. We report evidence for body mass structuring in grazer and browser assemblages at the biome scale, presumably brought about by the interplay of competitive and facilitative interactions. Our analyses of the Pleistocene species assemblage indicate biased extinction of species across body mass extremes, and point to the role of Pleistocene extinctions in determining the continental ungulate assemblages of today. Our findings also indicate the possibility of mass extinctions not just of larger bodied species but of smaller bodied ungulates as well; this may have gone undetected so far, or is most likely, poorly represented in the fossil record