The State of Illinois Manufacturing

The strength of the manufacturing sector is fundamental to the overall economic performance of Illinois and the U.S. as a whole. The manufacturing sector in Illinois create large numbers of jobs that pay high wages to workers, purchases more goods and services from within the state than any other sector, and constitutes a main component of the state export economy. For these and other reasons, manufacturing needs be at the center of all government discussions on economic policy.The Center for Labor and Community Research (CLCR) was commissioned by the Illinois Manufacturers' Association to analyze the condition of the Illinois manufacturing sector. We found that Illinois manufacturing is essential to Illinois' economy, and although it is among the top manufacturing states in the country, it faces a number of challenges. This report demonstrates why and how Illinois manufacturing matters, explains the current challenges it faces, and recommends actions to overcome some of these challenges. In addition to looking at manufacturing as a whole, this report looks at four key manufacturing sectors, or clusters, that together account for 64% of manufacturing employment in the state. These are the metals, electrical, printing, and food manufacturing sectors.A few key findings that CLCR uncovered in this study include the following: Manufacturing is vital to the state's economy and workers. Manufacturing exports create significant employment opportunities in Illinois, and the state's manufacturing workers are the most productive in the nation by far.Like other U.S. states, Illinois faces increasing competition from low-wage producers in the developing world as well as from highly skilled producers in developed countries. In order to remain competitive into the future, the sector requires increased investments in its infrastructure and workers and an improved workforce development system in order to increase the value-added component of their products.The Illinois manufacturing sector needs a "High Road" partnership with government and labor to increase investment in infrastructure and workforce development, to support the sector by creating specialized service centers that provide assistance to Illinois companies, and to effectively using public subsidies to reward and assist those companies that are pursuing High Road strategies of innovation and development

Ice-COLD-PCR enables rapid amplification and robust enrichment for low-abundance unknown DNA mutations

Identifying low-abundance mutations within wild-type DNA is important in several fields of medicine, including cancer, prenatal diagnosis and infectious diseases. However, utilizing the clinical and diagnostic potential of rare mutations is limited by sensitivity of the molecular techniques employed, especially when the type and position of mutations are unknown. We have developed a novel platform that incorporates a synthetic reference sequence within a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) reaction, designed to enhance amplification of unknown mutant sequences during COLD-PCR (CO-amplification at Lower Denaturation temperature). This new platform enables an Improved and Complete Enrichment (ice-COLD-PCR) for all mutation types and eliminates shortcomings of previous formats of COLD-PCR. We evaluated ice-COLD-PCR enrichment in regions of TP53 in serially diluted mutant and wild-type DNA mixtures. Conventional-PCR, COLD-PCR and ice-COLD-PCR amplicons were run in parallel and sequenced to determine final mutation abundance for a range of mutations representing all possible single base changes. Amplification by ice-COLD-PCR enriched all mutation types and allowed identification of mutation abundances down to 1%, and 0.1% by Sanger sequencing or pyrosequencing, respectively, surpassing the capabilities of other forms of PCR. Ice-COLD-PCR will help elucidate the clinical significance of low-abundance mutations and our understanding of cancer origin, evolution, recurrence-risk and treatment diagnostics

Temporal Profiles and Spectral Lags of XRF 060218

The spectral and temporal properties of the non-thermal emission ofthe nearby XRF 060218 in 0.3-150 keV band are studied. We show that both the spectral energy distribution and the light curve properties suggest the same origin of the non-thermal emission detected by {\em Swift} BAT and XRT. This event has the longest pulse duration and spectral lag observed to date among the known GRBs. The pulse structure and its energy dependence are analogous to typical GRBs. By extrapolating the observed spectral lag to the {\em CGRO/BATSE} bands we find that the hypothesis that this event complies with the same luminosity-lag relation with bright GRBs cannot be ruled out at $2\sigma$ significance level. These intriguing facts, along with its compliance with the Amati-relation, indicate that XRF 060218 shares the similar radiation physics as typical GRBs.Comment: 9 pages in emulateapj format, including 4 figures and 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

On Explicit Constructions of Extremely Depth Robust Graphs

A directed acyclic graph $G=(V,E)$ is said to be $(e,d)$-depth robust if for every subset $S \subseteq V$ of $|S| \leq e$ nodes the graph $G-S$ still contains a directed path of length $d$. If the graph is $(e,d)$-depth-robust for any $e,d$ such that $e+d \leq (1-\epsilon)|V|$ then the graph is said to be $\epsilon$-extreme depth-robust. In the field of cryptography, (extremely) depth-robust graphs with low indegree have found numerous applications including the design of side-channel resistant Memory-Hard Functions, Proofs of Space and Replication, and in the design of Computationally Relaxed Locally Correctable Codes. In these applications, it is desirable to ensure the graphs are locally navigable, i.e., there is an efficient algorithm $\mathsf{GetParents}$ running in time $\mathrm{polylog} |V|$ which takes as input a node $v \in V$ and returns the set of $v$'s parents. We give the first explicit construction of locally navigable $\epsilon$-extreme depth-robust graphs with indegree $O(\log |V|)$. Previous constructions of $\epsilon$-extreme depth-robust graphs either had indegree $\tilde{\omega}(\log^2 |V|)$ or were not explicit.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure. This is the full version of the paper published at STACS 2022. We noticed a mistake in the references for the computational intractability of the depth robustness of the graphs and fixed i

Measuring IS Service Quality in the Context of the Service Quality-User Satisfaction Relationship

There is little research regarding the relationship between IS service quality and user satisfaction, the most frequently used surrogate for information systems success. The current study is designed to investigate three ways of measuring service quality (i.e., confirmation/disconfirmation, perception-only, and overall assessment) and shed light on the relationship between service quality and user satisfaction. The results imply that when managers try to measure service quality to improve their service, they have to be cautious in ruling out or selecting one way or another of measuring service quality. The current research also clearly shows that mangers have to take care of the service quality to enhance user satisfaction. The models and results are discussed

DoS/DDoS-MQTT-IoT: A dataset for evaluating intrusions in IoT networks using the MQTT protocol

Adversaries may exploit a range of vulnerabilities in Internet of Things (IoT) environments. These vulnerabilities are typically exploited to carry out attacks, such as denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, either against the IoT devices themselves, or using the devices to perform the attacks. These attacks are often successful due to the nature of the protocols used in the IoT. One popular protocol used for machine-to-machine IoT communications is the Message Queueing Telemetry Protocol (MQTT). Countermeasures for attacks against MQTT include testing defenses with existing datasets. However, there is a lack of real-world test datasets in this area. For this reason, this paper introduces a DoS/DDoS-MQTT-IoT dataset—that contains various DoS/DDoS attack scenarios using MQTT traffic—to help develop and test countermeasures against such attacks. To this end, a physical IoT testbed was constructed and a large volume of IoT data was generated that included standard MQTT traffic as well as 10 DoS scenarios. The usability of the dataset has been evaluated via machine learning

AC Loss Calculation on a 6.5 MVA/25 kV HTS Traction Transformer with Hybrid Winding Structure

HTS wire cost is a critical factor for successful commercialization of HTS traction transformer technology. Wire cost might be minimized without significantly increasing AC loss by introducing a hybrid winding structure: the end-part of the windings is wound with high-cost high-I c wires; the central-part of the windings is wound with low-cost low-I c wires. We report AC loss simulation results on HTS windings with both HV and LV windings wound with REBCO wires. The 2D axisymmetric FEM simulation was carried out using H-formulation. The HV windings are wound with 4 mm-wide wires and LV windings are wound with 8/5 (eight 5 mm - wide strands) Roebel cables. Both HV and LV windings have a hybrid structure in order to reduce the wire cost. Flux diverters are placed at the end of the windings to reduce AC loss. Significant HTS wire cost reduction could be achieved without compromising AC loss by using hybrid windings. This may help commercialize HTS traction transformer technology