Automatic generation of AMF compliant configurations

Nowadays, the demand for robust, reliable, and dependable telecommunication systems is higher than ever. End users expect services to be delivered with minimal to no interruption especially in cases where the effect of service outage can have catastrophic consequences such as loss of human lives and monetary losses. Examples of such applications include air traffic control and navigation systems, or systems that perform money transfer transactions such as VISA. Systems are considered highly available if they are up and running 99.999% of the time. One solution to sustain such availability is for such systems to be deployed on specific middleware that allow the redundancy of the system components to ensure the availability of services they provide. However, most existing platforms are proprietary and platform dependent. The goal of the Service Availability Forum (SAF) is to develop open specifications that aim to standardize the interface between the applications and the middleware from one side and the middleware and the underlying hardware from the other side. SAF specifications have also been developed to allow highly available applications to be built using commercial off-the-shelf components. A key component of SAF is the Availability Management Framework (AMF), which is the middleware part responsible for managing the redundant resources of applications and therefore enables high availability. AMF, however, requires a certain organization and groupings of those components known as an AMF configuration. Creating AMF configurations manually tends to be very difficult, error prone and sometimes impossible when the number of components forming the application and the cluster hosting the application is considerably high, which is the case for most real-world telecommunication systems. In this thesis, we devise a solution for automatically generating AMF compliant configurations for applications. The proposed solution encompasses two techniques that vary depending on the way AMF entities are handled. We have implemented both approaches and applied one of them to a case study to demonstrate the applicability of our solutio

Konzeption und Realisierung einer sensitiven Montageaufgabe basierend auf einem Handhabungsgerät und intelligenter Sensorik für den Wickelprozess endloser Gummidichtungen

Immer mehr Aufgaben in der Produktion werden von Industrierobotern übernommen. Die steigende Komplexität der Produktionsprozesse und Produkte stellt den Robotereinsatz vor große Herausforderungen, sodass positionsgeregelte Robotersysteme sowie Sensorsysteme mitunter an ihre Grenzen stoßen. Der Einsatz von kraftgesteuerten bzw. sensitiven Robotersystemen stellt eine mögliche Lösung der Problematik dar. Er verringert das Problem von Messungenauigkeiten und großen Toleranzen bei der Umsetzung von komplexeren Produktionsaufgaben und erfordert keine genaueren Informationen über die Roboterumgebung. Bei sensitiven Robotersystemen werden mittels integrierter Drehmomentsensoren externe Kräfte bzw. Drehmomente überwacht, um die Roboterbewegungen anzupassen. Die Ermittlung der externen Kräfte sowie die moderne Regelstruktur ermöglichen außerdem ein vordefiniertes dynamisches Roboterverhalten und damit die direkte Interaktion des Roboters mit der Umgebung. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird eine Methodik zur Umsetzung komplexer Montageaufgaben mithilfe eines sensitiven Robotersystems vorgestellt. Dabei werden die wesentlichen Funktionen und Methoden für den effizienten Einsatz und die effiziente Inbetriebnahme der Hauptkomponenten eines sensitiven Robotersystems entwickelt. Die Methodik wird am Beispiel der sensitiven Wickelapplikation einer endlosen Gummidichtung erprobt und validiert.Industrial robots are becoming more widely used in manufacturing tasks. The increasing complexity of production processes and products poses great challenges for the use of robots, so that position-controlled robot systems and sensor systems sometimes reach their limits. The use of force-controlled or sensitive robot systems represents a possible solution to the problem. It reduces the problem of measurement inaccuracies and large tolerances when implementing more complex production tasks and does not require more precise information about the robot environment. In the case of sensitive robot systems, the external forces or torques are monitored by means of integrated torque sensors in order to adapt the robot movements. The determination of the external forces as well as the modern control structure also enable a predefined dynamic robot behavior and thus the direct interaction of the robot with the environment. In this thesis a methodology for the implementation of complex assembly tasks with the help of a sensitive robot system is presented. Thereby the essential functions and methods for the efficient use and commissioning of the main components of a sensitive robot system are developed. The methodology is tested and validated on the example of the sensitive winding application of a endless rubber seal

Automated Configuration Design and Analysis for Service High-Availability

The need for highly available services is ever increasing in various domains ranging from mission critical systems to transaction based ones such as online banking. The Service Availability Forum (SAForum) has defined a set of services and related Application Programming Interface (API) specifications to address the growing need of commercial-off-the-shelf high availability solutions. Among these services, the Availability Management Framework (AMF) is the service responsible for managing the high availability of the application services. To achieve this task, an AMF implementation requires a specific logical view of the organization of the application’s services and components, known as an AMF configuration. Any AMF configuration must be compliant to the concepts and constraints defined in the AMF specifications. The process of defining AMF configurations is error prone and requires extensive domain knowledge. Another major issue is being able to analyze the designed AMF configuration to quantify the anticipated service availability. This requires a different set of modeling and analysis skills that system integrators might not necessarily possess. In this dissertation we propose the automation of this process. The premise is to define a generation method within which we embed the domain knowledge and the domain constraints, and by that generating AMF configurations that are valid by construction. We also define an approach for the service availability analysis of AMF configurations. Our method is based on generating an analysis stochastic model that captures the middleware behavior and the application configuration. This model is thereafter solved to quantify the service availability

Projetando ambientes de aprendizagem hipermídia com recursos da inteligência artificial

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção.As principais distorções geradas pela introdução do uso pedagógico do computador no Brasil parecem residir, essencialmente, no quadro caótico do ensino, carente de suporte teórico e prático e que, por essa razão, expõe contrastes acentuados. O presente trabalho objetiva caracterizar as bases teóricas para o projeto de ambientes de aprendizagem a partir da aplicação de recursos da hipermídia e da inteligência artificial, como elementos de qualificação dos softwares educacionais e como ponto de partida para responder às determinantes questões que surgem, quando da concepção de um projeto pedagógico consistente, no âmbito da teoria construtivista

MEDICINAL PLANTS’ STRESS FACTORS: EFFECTS ON METABOLITES AND NOVEL PERSPECTIVES FOR TOLERANCE

Medicinal plants are rich in secondary metabolites representing different chemical classes and synthesized by various biochemical pathways. However, these compounds are susceptible to potential herbal predators and to environmental influences. Several factors induce different biotic and abiotic stresses (drought, cold, salinity, heat) that lead to fluctuations in the biogenesis and accumulation of secondary metabolites by which plants react to overcome the threatening stress conditions. This contribution aims to give an overview of the various medicinal plant defense mechanisms against imminent threats and their impact on secondary metabolites profiles in the most effective medicinal plant species such as the levels of vincristine in Catharanthus roseus which is affected by salinity and drought stress, sage (Salvia officinalis) that showed fluctuations in terpenes level under drought stress and mineral contents in the soil and Papaver somniferum that exhibited a decrease in alkaloids content under cold stress. From a wider perspective, the aim of this study is to present novel tools and strategies used for the preservation of some plant species from extinction by minimizing as much as possible the risk of exogenous influences on phytochemicals levels and on plant bio genome and manipulating the stress factors to ensure plants quality and safety. It also aims to raise awareness about the consumption of herbal medicines without respecting the herbal monographs information about the safe dose, the interactions with drugs, and the side effects, in addition to the necessity of performing toxicity studies by pharmaceutical industries, especially on herbal medicines raised under various stress factors because of the risk of SMs (secondary metabolites) accumulation in these plants at a critical level that may be toxic to consumers

GENUS MELALEUCA: PHYTOCHEMISTRY, PHARMACOLOGY AND EFFECT AGAINST COVID-19

Medicinal plants are used for the prevention and treatment of many diseases as they are rich in phytochemical constituents (like terpenes, flavonoids, and alkaloids) responsible for the pharmacological effects of these plants. Genus Melaleuca named the tea tree, belonging to the family Myrtaceae, is cultivated in Australia as well as in the Pacific and some regions of Asia. It has been employed in Australian traditional medicine for its broad antimicrobial activity because of its contents of phenolic compounds, monoterpenes, tannins, flavonoids, sesquiterpenes, and essential oils. Owing to the valuable uses of plants of genus Melaleuca, for different medical purposes, it was deemed interest to summarize the previous studies reported from 2004 to 2020 in the available literature about the phytochemistry and pharmacological potential of both volatile and non-volatile components of Melaleuca species. Accordingly, this article may help researchers work on plants of genus Melaleuca to promote clinical applications towards the development of novel drugs of diverse pharmacological activities, including inhibitory effects on COVID 19 obtained from Melaleuca species

Construction cluster' mesoeconomic regulation: international experiences for Ukraine

У статті узагальнюється міжнародний досвід модернізації методологічних підходів до аналізу та регулювання мезоекономічних систем, що займають проміжне становище між мікро- та макрорівнями національної економіки, та покликані виконувати посередницькі функції заощадження суспільних витрат у ході управління процесами адаптації суб’єктів первинного рівня господарювання до вимог і умов функціонування національної моделі соціально орієнтованої ринкової економіки. Досліджуються можливі варіанти використання спеціалізованих аналітично-управлінських процедур на рівні мезоекономічних систем національної економіки. Особливу увагу приділено характерним особливостям функціонування будівельних галузевих кластерів у Німеччині, Данії та Швеції, можливостям використання цього досвіду в Україні. Наводиться характеристика основних етапів життєвого циклу обігу коштів у масштабах мезоструктур будівельного профілю. Обґрунтовується визначальний вплив процесів заощадження трансакційних витрат на рівень внеску мезоекономічних структур до споживання ВВП. The article summarizes international experience upgrading methodological approaches to the analysis mesoeconomical systems that occupy an intermediate position between the micro and macro levels of the national economy, and are designed to perform mediation savings of public spending during the adaptation process management entities of economic conditions and the requirements of a national model of a social market economy. Investigate options for the introduction of specialized analytical procedures at mesoeconomic of the national economy. Attention is paid to the theme of branch (in construction) and regional systems. The description of the main stages of the life cycle of turnover across mesostructured sectoral and regional profile. Grounded determining the impact of transaction costs savings to the level of fee structures to mesoeconomical consumption GDP. Strategic development programming suitable for practical use seems to define the essence of mesoeconomical five-stratification system structure of the national economy. Subsequently, since the purpose mesoeconomical system is the goal of the system of higher level – and the baseline of its formation serving system lower level, meaning its operation is to implement effective development of specific tools in the use of the economic potential institutional units within mesoeconomical association

A clash on the Toll pathway: competitive action between pesticides and zymosan A on components of innate immunity in Apis mellifera

BackgroundThe immune system of honeybees includes multiple pathways that may be affected by pesticide exposure decreasing the immune competencies of bees and increasing their susceptibility to diseases like the fungal Nosema spp. infection, which is detected in collapsed colonies.MethodsTo better understand the effect of the co-presence of multiple pesticides that interact with bees like imidacloprid and amitraz, we evaluated the expression of immune-related genes in honeybee hemocytes.ResultsImidacloprid, amitraz, and the immune activator, zymosan A, mainly affect the gene expression in the Toll pathway.DiscussionImidacloprid, amitraz, and zymosan A have a synergistic or an antagonistic relationship on gene expression depending on the level of immune signaling. The presence of multiple risk factors like pesticides and pathogens requires the assessment of their complex interaction, which has differential effects on the innate immunity of honeybees as seen in this study