Benchmarking VisualStudio.NET for the development and implementation of a manufacturing execution system

The focus of this thesis is to show the utility of Microsoft\u27s\u27 .NET framework in developing and implementing a MES system. The manufacturing environment today, more than ever, is working towards achieving better yields, productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. Companies such as DELL are rapidly outgrowing their competition due to better management of their product lifecycles. The time between receiving a new order to the time the final product is shipped is getting shorter. Historically, business management applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been implemented without too much importance given to the operational and shop floor needs. The fact is that these business systems can be successful only when they are properly integrated with real-time data from the shop floor, which is the core of any manufacturing set-up. A Manufacturing Execution System or a MES is this link between the shop floor and the top floor. MESA international defines MES as Systems that deliver information enabling the optimization of production activities from order launch to finished goods Thus, a MES provides the right information to the right people at the right time in a right format, to help them make well-informed decisions. Thus, a necessity for an efficient MES is high capability of integration with the existing systems on the operational level. This is where Microsoft\u27s\u27 VS.NET fits in. Microsoft defines .NET as A set of software technologies for connecting information, people, systems and devices . The vision of .NET is to enable the end user to connect to information from any place at anytime, using any device and in a manner that is independent of the platform on which the service is based. The building block of the .NET framework is the Common Language Runtime or CLR, which is capable of converting data from its original format into a format understandable to .NET and then use that format to interface with its client. This feature that .NET provides holds the key in the context of a MES development and implementation. The aim of this applied research is to design a MES using VS.NET to control the working of a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) namely CAMCELL. The architecture used for the MES will then be gauged against an MES implementation done previously using a Siemens\u27 PC-based automation technology and Visual FoxPro. This study will integrate the Siemens\u27 technology with the .NET framework to enhance the resulting MES efficiency. The shop floor details or the real-time data collection will be done using the databases from WinCC and data aggregation and manipulation will be done within the .NET framework. The software architecture used for this study will achieve vertical integration between the CAMCELL ERP layer, the MES layer and the Control layer. The study will demonstrate how the data stored in a high level ERP database can be converted into useful information for the control layer for process control and also how real-time information gathered from the control layer can be filtered into useful information up to the ERP layer to facilitate the decision making process. VS.NET user interface screens will be proposed to support these activities. The performance of the proposed architecture will be compared to that from previous studies, thus benchmarking VS.NET for the implementation of the MES

Growth traits of the Dorper sheep. II. Genetic and phenotypic parameters

Presents results of a study undertaken at Magogo, Kenya, to analyse genetic and phenotypic correlations between adjacent weights, between weights and rates of growth, and among growth rates themselves, hence data on 969 lambs collected over a 10-year period (1978-1987) on Dorper sheep were used in the study. Lamb traits studied were weights from birth to yearling and absolute growth rates between adjacent stages of growth

Polymers for Delivering a Substance into a Cell

Disclosed herein are polymers that can be made cationic and used to deliver a substance into a cell. Also disclosed are pharmaceutical compositions comprising the polymers and methods of using the polymers

Can We Do Away With PTBD?

Percutaneous Transhepatic Biliary Drainage (PTBD) is performed in surgical jaundice to decompress the biliary tree and improve hepatic functions. However, the risk of sepsis is high in these patients due to immunosuppression and surgical outcome remains poor. This raises a question—can we do away with PTBD? To answer this query a study was carried out in 4 groups of patients bearing in mind the high incidence of sepsis and our earlier studies, which have demonstrated immunotherapeutic potential of Tinospora cordifolia (TC): (A) those undergoing surgery without PTBD (n = 14), (B) those undergoing surgery after PTBD (n = 13). The mortality was 57.14% in Group A as compared to 61.54% in Group B. Serial estimations of bilirubin levels carried out during the course of drainage (3 Wks) revealed a gradual and significant decrease from 12.52 ± 8.3 mg% to 5.85 ± 3.0 mg%. Antipyrine half-life did not change significantly (18.35 ± 4.2 hrs compared to basal values 21.96 ± 3.78 hrs). The phagocytic and intracellular killing (ICK) capacities of PMN remained suppressed (Basal: 22.13 ± 3.68% phago, and 19.1 ± 4.49% ICK; Post drainage: 20 ± 8.48% Phago and 11.15 ± 3.05% ICK). Thus PTBD did not improve the metabolic capacity ofthe liver and mortality was higher due to sepsis. Group (C) patientg received TC during PTBD (n = 16) and Group (D) patients received TC without PTBD (n = 14). A significant improvement in PMN functions occurred by 3 weeks in both groups (30.29 ± 4.68% phago, 30 ± 4.84% ICK in Group C and 30.4 ± 2.99% phago, 27.15 ± 6.19% ICK in Group D). The mortality in Groups C and D was 25% and 14.2% respectively during the preoperative period. There was no mortality after surgery. It appears from this study that host defenses as reflected by PMN functions play an important role in influencing prognosis. Further decompression of the biliary tree by PTBD seems unwarranted

Early growth, survival and litter size in Ethiopian Horro sheep

(South African J of Animal Science: 2000, 30, Supplement 1: 1-3

Valuing indigenous cattle breeds in Kenya: An empirical comparison of stated and revealed preference value estimates

In this study we compare revealed and stated-preference approaches to value live-stock traits of cattle in Kenya. The premise is that much can be learnt about non-market values of indigenous animal genetic resources (AnGRs) from the use of multi-attribute stated-preference methods, if these compare well with revealed-preference results. The objective is to investigate the performance of choice experiments (CEs) in Maasai cattle trading, by conducting an external test of preference consistency. This involves comparing value estimates for cattle attributes derived from CEs data with those obtained using a hedonic analysis of actual transactions by the same population of traders, in the same markets and over the same period. If CEs perform well, they can be used to investigate values of those genetically-determined livestock traits currently not prominent in pastoralists' populations, but desirable candidates for breeding or conservation programmes (e.g. disease resistance). It is argued that these methods are important in developing countries where livestock are kept for economic reasons and for cultural and risk management functions which are critical to livelihood strategies, but not valued by markets. The results indicate that CEs estimates pass the external test and appear to be adequately precise in estimating values for cattle traits that are relevant in market transactions for Maasai traders. They may be, therefore, a promising tool for valuing phenotypic traits expressed by indigenous AnGRs

Facilitating local level dairy innovation platform for smallholders in Kenya.

Projeto realizado na região de Oyugis, Homa Bay County, Kenya, visando desbloquear o potencial leiteiro de uma área anteriormente considerada inadequada para esta produção. O projeto capacitou os atores locais para se organizarem e resolverem problemas em comum, inspirando-os a desenvolver sua própria agenda de trabalho. Os produtores organizaram uma cooperativa, estão organizando um processamento mínimo de leite, muitos estão conservando melhor os volumosos para o gado, organizaram a Inseminação Artificial, entre outros. A comunidade deseja que um novo projeto dê continuidade ao trabalho, visando gerar avanços e inspirar outras comunidades.bitstream/item/127514/1/Livro-Sergio-Relatorio-Kenya.pdfTexto em português e inglês

AdANNS: A Framework for Adaptive Semantic Search

Web-scale search systems learn an encoder to embed a given query which is then hooked into an approximate nearest neighbor search (ANNS) pipeline to retrieve similar data points. To accurately capture tail queries and data points, learned representations typically are rigid, high-dimensional vectors that are generally used as-is in the entire ANNS pipeline and can lead to computationally expensive retrieval. In this paper, we argue that instead of rigid representations, different stages of ANNS can leverage adaptive representations of varying capacities to achieve significantly better accuracy-compute trade-offs, i.e., stages of ANNS that can get away with more approximate computation should use a lower-capacity representation of the same data point. To this end, we introduce AdANNS, a novel ANNS design framework that explicitly leverages the flexibility of Matryoshka Representations. We demonstrate state-of-the-art accuracy-compute trade-offs using novel AdANNS-based key ANNS building blocks like search data structures (AdANNS-IVF) and quantization (AdANNS-OPQ). For example on ImageNet retrieval, AdANNS-IVF is up to 1.5% more accurate than the rigid representations-based IVF at the same compute budget; and matches accuracy while being up to 90x faster in wall-clock time. For Natural Questions, 32-byte AdANNS-OPQ matches the accuracy of the 64-byte OPQ baseline constructed using rigid representations -- same accuracy at half the cost! We further show that the gains from AdANNS translate to modern-day composite ANNS indices that combine search structures and quantization. Finally, we demonstrate that AdANNS can enable inference-time adaptivity for compute-aware search on ANNS indices built non-adaptively on matryoshka representations. Code is open-sourced at https://github.com/RAIVNLab/AdANNS.Comment: 25 pages, 15 figures. NeurIPS 2023 camera ready publicatio

Emblica Officinalis: A Novel Therapy for Acute Pancreatitis — An Experimental Study

Acute necrotising pancreatitis is associated with an unacceptably high mortality for which no satisfactory remedy exists. Emblica officinalis (E.o.) is a plant prescribed in Ayurveda, the Indian traditional system of medicine, for pancreas-related disorders. This study was carried out to evaluate the protective effect of E.o. against acute necrotising pancreatitis in dogs. Pancreatitis was induced by injecting a mixture of trypsin, bile and blood into the duodenal opening of the pancreatic duct. Twenty eight dogs were divided into 4 groups (n = 6-8 each): GpI–control, GpII–acute pancreatitis, GpIII–sham-operated, GpIV–pretreatment with 28 mg E.o./kg/day for 15 days before inducing pancreatitis. Serum amylase increased from 541.99 ± 129.13 IU/ml to 1592.63 ± 327.83 IU (p<0.02) 2 hrs after the induction of pancreatitis in GpII. The rise in serum amylase in both GpIII and GpIV was not significant. On light microscopic examination, acinar cell damage was less and the total inflammatory score was significantly lower in the E.o. treated group as compared to GpII. Electron microscopy confirmed this and showed an increased amount of smooth, endoplasmic reticulum and small, condensed granules embedded in a vacuole. More studies are needed to explore the clinical potential of E.o. and its mechanism of action