Use of Programmed Piezo Crystal Flexures for Economic Vapor Deposition of Parylene HT® on Unlimited Lengths of Magnet Wire

The electronics industry recognizes the need for high-temperature electronics (HTE) particularly for aerospace and geothermal applications. HTE is generally defined as robust operation in temperatures up to 300°C. A major constraint to HTE is high temperature magnet wire which is pervasive in electronic component windings and signal wire for sensors. The magnet wire constraint is caused by the temperature limits of the thin Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP) coatings applied to HT magnet wire that limits the operating temperature to 220°C. [1], [2] There are coatings, particularly parylene-based coatings such as parylene HT®, that would greatly improve HT magnet wire, signal wire, and create the potential for subminiature thermocouple (TC) sensors; however, the slow vapor deposition process required to apply parylene is generally thought impractical for use in pore-free coating of long lengths of small diameter wire. For this research, experiments were first performed coating small diameter, wire product prototypes in standard batch vacuum chambers utilizing static fixtures. Finding this approach impractical we devised a new process utilizing a piezo-crystal electrodynamically actuated fixture of 14” diameter by 18” height that supports a web of one 24,500’ long, continuous small-diameter wire. A prototype dynamic fixture was built and a trial run successfully coated a 1500’ length of 0.005” diameter copper wire with Parylene HT®. This successful demonstration was the basis for a DOL Phase I SBIR to explore the feasibility of electrodynamically actuated devises that would synchronize horizontal and vertical actuation to drive horizontal motion to the wire web to enable a continuous reel-to-reel operation for parylene vapor deposition. This is discussed in future work

Design Knowledge for the Lifecycle Management of Conversational Agents

Organizations spend extensive resources on artificial intelligence (AI) solutions in customer service in order to remain customer-focused and competitive. A rising language-based application of AI emerges in the context of conversational agents (CAs), such as chatbots, which represent increasingly intelligent, autonomous, scalable, and cost-effective service platforms. However, AI-based CAs bring new organizational challenges. They are underrepresented in current research, leading to many unanswered questions and research potential regarding the management of their introduction, operation, and improvement. To address this issue, we provide design knowledge that considers the organizational perspective of CAs. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) and qualitative interview study to reveal and analyze individual issues and challenges, develop meta-requirements, and finally, use them to create design principles. We contribute to the emerging field of CAs that has previously focused mainly on the individual, behavioral, interactional, or technical design

Integration of Domain Expert-Centric Ontology Design into the CRISP-DM for Cyber-Physical Production Systems

In the age of Industry 4.0 and Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPSs) vast amounts of potentially valuable data are being generated. Methods from Machine Learning (ML) and Data Mining (DM) have proven to be promising in extracting complex and hidden patterns from the data collected. The knowledge obtained can in turn be used to improve tasks like diagnostics or maintenance planning. However, such data-driven projects, usually performed with the Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM), often fail due to the disproportionate amount of time needed for understanding and preparing the data. The application of domain-specific ontologies has demonstrated its advantageousness in a wide variety of Industry 4.0 application scenarios regarding the aforementioned challenges. However, workflows and artifacts from ontology design for CPPSs have not yet been systematically integrated into the CRISP-DM. Accordingly, this contribution intends to present an integrated approach so that data scientists are able to more quickly and reliably gain insights into the CPPS. The result is exemplarily applied to an anomaly detection use case

Comparative Study on High Strain Rate Fracture Modelling Using the Application of Explosively Driven Cylinder Rings

The effect of different constitutive modelling choices is crucial under a high strain rate as encountered in ballistic applications. Natural fragmentation of explosively driven cylinder rings is chosen as a simplified example to describe the ability of numerical simulations to describe fractures. The main research interests are the importance of (i) material imperfections, (ii) the accuracy of fracture models vs. damage models, (iii) the plasticity algorithm (stress update), (iv) the introduction of a triaxiality cutoff criterion to the damage models, and (v) different constitutive models (plasticity and damage). Due to the complexity of the propagation and coalescense of multiple cracks in classical methods, smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is used as a tailor-made method to discretise the model. An elasto-plasticity model, a damage model and an equation of state describe the material behaviour. The required material parameters are determined based on stress–strain curves from quasi-static and dynamic tests. The Johnson–Cook model, with and without a modification of the strain rate term, and the Rusinek–Klepaczko model are used to describe plasticity. These plasticity models are combined either with the Johnson–Cook, the Lemaitre, or the Dolinski–Rittel damage model and the Mie–Grüneisen equation of state. The numerical results show that (i) a random distribution of initial damage increases irregularity of cracks, and gives more realistic fragment shapes, (ii) a coupling of plasticity model and fracture criterion has only a small effect on the fracture behaviour, (iii) using an iterative plasticity solver has a positive effect on the fracture behaviour, although this effect is marginal, (iv) adding a triaxiality cutoff criterion to the damage models improves the predicted fragment masses in the numerical simulations significantly, and (v) good accordance between experiments and numerical simulations are found for the Dolinski–Rittel and Lemaitre damage model with both plasticity models.Peer reviewe

Un/DoPack: Re-Clustering of Large System-on-Chip Designs with Interconnect Variation for Low-Cost FPGAs

{ marvint | davel | lemieux} @ ece.ubc.ca FPGA device area is dominated by interconnect, so low-cost FPGA architectures often have reduced interconnect capacity. This limited routing capacity creates a hard channel width constraint that can make it difficult for CAD tools to successfully map a circuit into these devices. Instead of migrating a design to a high-cost, resource-rich architecture that is easier to route, we present a cheaper alternative: a fully automated CAD flow (Un/DoPack) that finds local regions of high interconnect demand and reduces it by spreading out the logic in that region. This is done by introducing whitespace in the form of empty logic elements (LEs) within the configurable logic blocks (CLBs) of the congested region. After spreading, the congested region occupies more routing channels and so obtains access to greater aggregat

Against the Tide. A Critical Review by Scientists of How Physics and Astronomy Get Done

Nobody should have a monopoly of the truth in this universe. The censorship and suppression of challenging ideas against the tide of mainstream research, the blacklisting of scientists, for instance, is neither the best way to do and filter science, nor to promote progress in the human knowledge. The removal of good and novel ideas from the scientific stage is very detrimental to the pursuit of the truth. There are instances in which a mere unqualified belief can occasionally be converted into a generally accepted scientific theory through the screening action of refereed literature and meetings planned by the scientific organizing committees and through the distribution of funds controlled by "club opinions". It leads to unitary paradigms and unitary thinking not necessarily associated to the unique truth. This is the topic of this book: to critically analyze the problems of the official (and sometimes illicit) mechanisms under which current science (physics and astronomy in particular) is being administered and filtered today, along with the onerous consequences these mechanisms have on all of us.\ud \ud The authors, all of them professional researchers, reveal a pessimistic view of the miseries of the actual system, while a glimmer of hope remains in the "leitmotiv" claim towards the freedom in doing research and attaining an acceptable level of ethics in science

How Peer Support Specialists Uniquely Initiate and Build Connection with Young People Experiencing Homelessness

Young people experiencing homelessness are often apprehensive to engage in conventional service systems due to prior mistreatment by providers and others in their lives, as well as stigma associated with accessing services. Even when relationships between service providers and young people are initiated, they often end prematurely. Mutual aid, or peer-to-peer support, has a long and promising history within the mental health field, yet has received little empirical attention in work with young people experiencing homelessness. The present study used participatory qualitative methods to understand how peers uniquely initiate and build connection with young people experiencing homelessness. Through interviews and journaling with peer support specialists and program staff, this study found that peers initiate relationships with young people by becoming familiar faces in youth spaces, identifying themselves as peers, then formalizing relationships with young people. Peers build connection by showing they are on the “same side of the glass” as young people, establishing autonomy and availability over a preset agenda, and creating containers acceptable for failure. Peers, their supervisors, and organizations building mutual aid programs may consider these findings when working to build programs which flexibly and authentically engage young people experiencing homelessness in meaningful relationships

Leveraging the Potential of Conversational Agents: Quality Criteria for the Continuous Evaluation and Improvement

Contemporary organizations are increasingly adopting conversational agents (CAs) as intelligent and natural language-based solutions for providing services and information. CAs promote new forms of personalization, speed, cost-effectiveness, and automation. However, despite their hype in research and practice, organizations fail to sustain CAs in operations. They struggle to leverage CAs’ potential because they lack knowledge on how to evaluate and improve the quality of CAs throughout their lifecycle. We build on this research gap by conducting a design science research (DSR) project, aggregating insights from the literature and practice to derive a validated set of quality criteria for CAs. Our study contributes to CA research and guides practitioners by providing a blueprint to structure the evaluation of CAs to discover areas for systematic improvement