Race, class, and community in a southern forest-dependent region

Based on a Community and Environment in Rural America survey, this brief looks at four counties in Alabama. It finds blacks and whites have different outcomes in the community, despite expectations of regional stability and greater equality. Though they reported similar rates of social mobility, African Americans in the Black Belt of Alabama are disproportionately poorer and employed in lower-skill jobs than whites

Derivations and Dirichlet forms on fractals

We study derivations and Fredholm modules on metric spaces with a local regular conservative Dirichlet form. In particular, on finitely ramified fractals, we show that there is a non-trivial Fredholm module if and only if the fractal is not a tree (i.e. not simply connected). This result relates Fredholm modules and topology, and refines and improves known results on p.c.f. fractals. We also discuss weakly summable Fredholm modules and the Dixmier trace in the cases of some finitely and infinitely ramified fractals (including non-self-similar fractals) if the so-called spectral dimension is less than 2. In the finitely ramified self-similar case we relate the p-summability question with estimates of the Lyapunov exponents for harmonic functions and the behavior of the pressure function.Comment: to appear in the Journal of Functional Analysis 201

Development of an intelligent self-learning product assembly system using visual identification

Thesis (Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2018Modern automation systems rely on fixed programming to carry out their production routines. These systems are effective for production outputs but do not allow any flexibility within the production routine. Effort is required to change the ongoing production routine through reprogramming, redesign or complete overhaul of the system to cater for new production outputs. These efforts require down time and result in a loss of revenue. If a completely automated flexible system is introduced into such a production line, the complete reprogramming process required to cater for new production needs could be automated without losing production time. Within this study, a real-time KUKA Robotic Control system is introduced. The KUKA Robotic Controller maintains its original programming methods with no reprogramming required when executing a new production assembly. This is achieved through manoeuvring the KUKA Robotic System in real-time to new destinations based on image-processing outputs and feedback. For demonstration purposes and proof of concept, the system learns a design presented to it by an end user and then reproduces this seen design based on the image-processing results in terms of location and orientation. Therefore, instead of reprogramming each new required position, the system takes over real-time control of the KUKA Robotic System and carries out the required steps autonomously. The benefit of such a system would be that the KUKA Robotic System would not require reprogramming to carry out new routines. It is controlled in a real-time environment to carry out new procedures based on external sensors (in this case, image-processing outputs). KUKA Robotic Sensor Interface (RSI) software is used to implement real-time control of the KUKA Robotic System and is explored extensively throughout this study