The future of factories: Different trends

The technological advancements promote the rise of the fourth industrial revolution, where key terms are efficiency, innovation, and enterprises’ digitalization. Market globalization, product mass customization, and more complex products need to reflect on changing the actual design methods and developing business processes and methodologies that have to be data-driven, AI-assisted, smart, and service-oriented. Therefore, there is a great interest in experimenting with emerging technologies and evaluating how they impact the actual business processes. This paper reports a comparison among the major trends in the digitalization of a Factory of the Future, in conjunction with the two major strategic programs of Industry 4.0 and China 2025. We have focused on these two programs because we have had experience with them in the context of the FIRST H2020 project. European industrialists identify the radical change in the traditional manufacturing production process as the rise of Industry 4.0. Conversely, China mainland launched its strategic plan in China 2025 to promote smart manufacturing to digitalize traditional manufacturing processes. The main contribution of this review paper is to report about a study, conducted and part of the aforementioned FIRST project, which aimed to investigate major trends in applying for both programs in terms of technologies and their applications for the factory’s digitalization. In particular, our analysis consists of the comparison between Digital Factory, Virtual Factory, Smart Manufacturing, and Cloud Manufacturing. We analyzed their essential characteristics, the operational boundaries, the employed technologies, and the interoperability offered at each factory level for each paradigm. Based on this analysis, we report the building blocks in terms of essential technologies required to develop the next generation of a factory of the future, as well as some of the interoperability challenges at a different scale, for enabling inter-factories communications between heterogeneous entities

A Flexible and Modular Framework for Implementing Infrastructures for Global Computing

We present a Java software framework for building infrastructures to support the development of applications for systems where mobility and network awareness are key issues. The framework is particularly useful to develop run-time support for languages oriented towards global computing. It enables platform designers to customize communication protocols and network architectures and guarantees transparency of name management and code mobility in distributed environments. The key features are illustrated by means of a couple of simple case studies

Electron Microprobe Analysis and Proton Induced X-Ray Spectrometry Applied to Trace Element Analysis in Sulfides: Problems and Prospects

The complementary techniques of EPMA and micro-PIXE are reviewed in the context of spatially resolved trace element analysis of sulfide minerals. Attention is focussed on methods of standardization and of fitting EDX spectra. Sphalerites and chalcopyrites from various sources are used as specimens. For Ag in chalcopyrites, the two techniques agree well. Sphalerites pose problems such as Zn-Fe replacement and the presence of minor elements, both of which influence matrix corrections ; these are addressed in detail. The necessity for absorbers in the micro-PIXE work prevents detection of minor elements lighter than Zn ; these are determined by EPMA and the results used in the micro-PIXE fitting and matrix corrections. For Cd, Ag, Ga, Ge there is acceptable agreement between the two techniques given uncertainties and constraints on samples, but EPMA results for Hg are notably lower than micro-PIXE results. The improvement in detection limits afforded by micro-PIXE over EPMA in these sulfide minerals ranges from ~ 3 for Ga, Ge, Hg to 10-30 for Se, Ag, Cd, In ; possible further gains are discussed for both techniques

A formal approach to autonomic systems programming: the SCEL Language

The autonomic computing paradigm has been proposed to cope with size, complexity and dynamism of contemporary software-intensive systems. The challenge for language designers is to devise appropriate abstractions and linguistic primitives to deal with the large dimension of systems, and with their need to adapt to the changes of the working environment and to the evolving requirements. We propose a set of programming abstractions that permit to represent behaviors, knowledge and aggregations according to specific policies, and to support programming context-awareness, self-awareness and adaptation. Based on these abstractions, we define SCEL (Software Component Ensemble Language), a kernel language whose solid semantic foundations lay also the basis for formal reasoning on autonomic systems behavior. To show expressiveness and effectiveness of SCEL’s design, we present a Java implementation of the proposed abstractions and show how it can be exploited for programming a robotics scenario that is used as a running example for describing features and potentials of our approac

Steps towards sustainable solid phase peptide synthesis: use and recovery ofN-octyl pyrrolidone

The investigation of new green biogenic pyrrolidinones as alternative solvents toN,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) for solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) led to the identification ofN-octyl pyrrolidone (NOP) as the best candidate. NOP showed good performances in terms of swelling, coupling efficiency and low isomerization generating peptides with very high purity. A mixture of NOP with 20% dimethyl carbonate (DMC) allowed a decrease in solvent viscosity, making the mixture suitable for the automated solid-phase protocol. Aib-enkephalin and linear octreotide were successfully used to test the methodologies. It is worth noting that NOP, DMC and the piperidine used in the deprotection step could be easily recovered by direct distillation from the process waste mixture. The process mass intensity (PMI), being reduced by 63-66%, achieved an outstanding value representing a clear step forward in achieving green SPPS

Sustainability in peptide chemistry: current synthesis and purification technologies and future challenges.

Developing greener synthesis processes is an inescapable necessity to transform the industrial landscape, mainly in the pharmaceutical sector, into a long-term, sustainable reality. In this context, the renaissance of peptides as medical treatments, and the enforcement of more stringent sustainability requirements by regulatory agencies, pushed chemists toward the introduction of sustainable processes to prepare highly pure, active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Innovative upstream (synthesis) and downstream (purification) methodologies have been developed during the last 5 years with the introduction and optimization of several technologies in solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS), liquid-phase peptide synthesis (LPPS), chemoenzymatic peptide synthesis (CEPS), and chromatographic procedures. These innovations are also moving toward the introduction of continuous processes that represent one of the most important targets for iterative processes. This overview discusses the most recent efforts in making peptide chemistry greener. The extensive studies that were carried out on green solvents, reaction conditions, auxiliary reagents and purification technologies in the peptide segment can be useful to other fields of organic synthesi

Methodological Guidelines for Engineering Self-organization and Emergence

The ASCENS project deals with the design and development of complex self-adaptive systems, where self-organization is one of the possible means by which to achieve self-adaptation. However, to support the development of self-organising systems, one has to extensively re-situate their engineering from a software architectures and requirements point of view. In particular, in this chapter, we highlight the importance of the decomposition in components to go from the problem to the engineered solution. This leads us to explain and rationalise the following architectural strategy: designing by following the problem organisation. We discuss architectural advantages for development and documentation, and its coherence with existing methodological approaches to self-organisation, and we illustrate the approach with an example on the area of swarm robotics

Reliability and validity of PedsQL for Portuguese children aged 5–7 and 8–12 years

BACKGROUND: Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) is a measure to assess health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in children and adolescents. It is formed by 23 items adapted to children age and includes a parent proxy report version. With four multidimensional subscales and three summary scores, it measures health as defined by WHO. The concepts measured by this instrument are ‘physical functioning’ (8 items), ‘emotional functioning’ (5 items), ‘social functioning’ (5 items) and ‘school functioning’ (5 items). It also measures a ‘total scale score’ (23 items), a ‘physical health summary score’ (8 items) and a ‘psychosocial health summary score’ (15 items). The aim of this paper is to present the main results of the cultural adaptation and validation of the PedsQL into European Portuguese. METHODS: The Portuguese version was the result of a forward-backward translation process, with a cognitive debriefing analysis, guaranteeing face validity and semantic equivalence. Children aged 5–7 and 8–12 were randomly selected and were asked to fill a socio-demographic data survey and the Portuguese versions of PedsQL and KINDL, another HRQoL measure for children and adolescents. They were divided into three groups, healthy children, children with type I diabetes and children with spina bifida. The reliability was tested for reproducibility (ICC) and internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha). The construct validity (known-groups discriminant validity) was supported by differences between self-reports from healthy children and children with chronic conditions, and from children with chronic diseases and their parents. The criterion validity was tested after the correlations of the scores obtained by both children and adolescents HRQoL assessment instruments. RESULTS: A total of 179 children and 97 parents were recruited. PedsQL demonstrated good levels of reproducibility (r > 0.95 in all versions) and acceptable levels of internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha at 0.70 on most scales. Concordance values between children’s and parents’ perceptions ranged between 0.36 and 0.78 and the correlations with KINDL questionnaire were excellent, supporting concurrent validity. CONCLUSIONS: The Portuguese version of the PedsQL demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties for future research and clinical practice for children aged 5–12

Gold remobilisation and formation of high grade ore shoots driven by dissolution-reprecipitation replacement and Ni substitution into auriferous arsenopyrite

Both gold-rich sulphides and ultra-high grade native gold oreshoots are common but poorly understood phenomenon in orogenic-type mineral systems, partly because fluids in these systems are considered to have relatively low gold solubilities and are unlikely to generate high gold concentrations. The world-class Obuasi gold deposit, Ghana, has gold-rich arsenopyrite spatially associated with quartz veins, which have extremely high, localised concentrations of native gold, contained in microcrack networks within the quartz veins where they are folded. Here, we examine selected samples from Obuasi using a novel combination of quantitative electron backscatter diffraction analysis, ion microprobe imaging, synchrotron XFM mapping and geochemical modelling to investigate the origin of the unusually high gold concentrations. The auriferous arsenopyrites are shown to have undergone partial replacement (~15%) by Au-poor, nickeliferous arsenopyrite, during localised crystal-plastic deformation, intragranular microfracture and metamorphism (340-460 °C, 2 kbars). Our results show the dominant replacement mechanism was pseudomorphic dissolution-reprecipitation, driven by small volumes of an infiltrating fluid that had relatively low fS2 and carried aqueous NiCl2. We find that arsenopyrite replacement produced strong chemical gradients at crystal-fluid interfaces due to an increase in fS2 during reaction, which enabled efficient removal of gold to the fluid phase and development of anomalously gold-rich fluid (potentially 10 ppm or more depending on sulphur concentration). This process was facilitated by precipitation of ankerite, which removed CO2 from the fluid, increasing the relative proportion of sulphur for gold complexation and inhibited additional quartz precipitation. Gold re-precipitation occurred over distances of 10 µm to several tens of metres and was likely a result of sulphur activity reduction through precipitation of pyrite and other sulphides. We suggest this late remobilisation process may be relatively common in orogenic belts containing abundant mafic/ultramafic rocks, which act as a source of Ni and Co scavenged by chloride-bearing fluids. Both the preference of the arsenopyrite crystal structure for Ni and Co, rather than gold, and the release of sulphur during reaction, can drive gold remobilisation in many deposits across broad regions