Performance adaptive manufacturing processes

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 296-301.Energy efficiency is of increasing importance towards sustainable manufacturing in the automotive industry, in particular due to growing environment regulations and rising electricity costs. Approaches within the manufacturing planning phase are insufficient to address dynamic influences during run-time (e.g., electricity tariffs or workload). Additionally, conventional production monitoring and control systems consider the ‘Overall Equipment Effectiveness‘ of manufacturing systems, but do not include related energy efficiency. This paper introduces a novel approach that combines these both aspects and provides more effectiveness based on socalled production variants. The latter are designed during the planning phase and used to adapt manufacturing behavior when facing dynamically changes during run-time. A simulation shows how dynamic adjustments of cycle times lead to a high reduction of energy costs while maintaining high throughputs

Genome-Wide Association between Transcription Factor Expression and Chromatin Accessibility Reveals Regulators of Chromatin Accessibility.

To better understand genome regulation, it is important to uncover the role of transcription factors in the process of chromatin structure establishment and maintenance. Here we present a data-driven approach to systematically characterise transcription factors that are relevant for this process. Our method uses a linear mixed modelling approach to combine datasets of transcription factor binding motif enrichments in open chromatin and gene expression across the same set of cell lines. Applying this approach to the ENCODE dataset, we confirm already known and imply numerous novel transcription factors that play a role in the establishment or maintenance of open chromatin. In particular, our approach rediscovers many factors that have been annotated as pioneer factors

Fast and Rigorous Computation of Gene and Pathway Scores from SNP-Based Summary Statistics.

Integrating single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) p-values from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) across genes and pathways is a strategy to improve statistical power and gain biological insight. Here, we present Pascal (Pathway scoring algorithm), a powerful tool for computing gene and pathway scores from SNP-phenotype association summary statistics. For gene score computation, we implemented analytic and efficient numerical solutions to calculate test statistics. We examined in particular the sum and the maximum of chi-squared statistics, which measure the strongest and the average association signals per gene, respectively. For pathway scoring, we use a modified Fisher method, which offers not only significant power improvement over more traditional enrichment strategies, but also eliminates the problem of arbitrary threshold selection inherent in any binary membership based pathway enrichment approach. We demonstrate the marked increase in power by analyzing summary statistics from dozens of large meta-studies for various traits. Our extensive testing indicates that our method not only excels in rigorous type I error control, but also results in more biologically meaningful discoveries

Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Novel Regulators of Growth in Drosophila melanogaster.

Organismal size depends on the interplay between genetic and environmental factors. Genome-wide association (GWA) analyses in humans have implied many genes in the control of height but suffer from the inability to control the environment. Genetic analyses in Drosophila have identified conserved signaling pathways controlling size; however, how these pathways control phenotypic diversity is unclear. We performed GWA of size traits using the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel of inbred, sequenced lines. We find that the top associated variants differ between traits and sexes; do not map to canonical growth pathway genes, but can be linked to these by epistasis analysis; and are enriched for genes and putative enhancers. Performing GWA on well-studied developmental traits under controlled conditions expands our understanding of developmental processes underlying phenotypic diversity

Contact angles mediate equilibrium fractionation between soil water and water vapor

Soil water potential is a function of grain size, adhesion and cohesion energy. The mechanical equilibrium between the interfacial free energies between water-gas, water-solid and solid-gas, leads to a particular contact angle at the three phase boundary water-solid-gas. The contact angle of the solid-soil affects the water retention in soils. Contact angles >0 lead to a shift of the water retention curve to simulating a coarser soil texture. Thus, a certain amount of water is stronger bound in a soil with a low contact angle compared to the same soil with a high contact angle. The relationship between the contact angle and the fractionation of water stable isotopes between soil water and water vapor has yet not been studied. We present a simple laboratory experiment with soil samples ranging from sand to silt to clay. Two subsamples were hydrophobized (or treated with) using dichlorodimethylsilane to produce different contact angles. Subsamples were transferred into Ziploc bags spiked with water of known isotopic composition and the headspace filled with dry air. After equilibration (at least 24h) the headspace was measured for its isotopic signature with a Laserspectrometer. Soil water potential was measured with a soil water potential meter and the contact angle determined with the Wilhelmy-plate-method (WPM). The working hypothesis is that the equilibrium between water and water vapor depends on the matric potential. Having the same pore and the same water content water repellency affects the soil water potential. Therefore the hydrophobized soil will change the equilibrium fractionation between water and water vapor. Hence, the contact angle between adsorbed water and water vapor is related to isotope effects

On the energy demands of small appliances in homes

Understanding the use of electrical appliances in households is crucial for improving the accuracy of electricity and energy loads forecasts. In particular, bottom-up techniques provide a powerful tool, not only for predicting demands considering socio-demographic characteristics of the occupants, but also to better resolve and implement demand side management strategies in homes. With this purpose, a study of the temporal energy use of low-load appliances (meaning those whose annual energy share is individually negligible but relevant when considered as a group) has been carried out, with the longer term objective of finding a parsimonious approach to modelling them, and which considers an appropriate aggregation of appliances. In this work, a discrete-time stochastic process has been implemented for a specific classification of low-load appliances. More precisely, a time-inhomogeneous Markov chain has been used to model energy variations over time for four different categories of appliances and its prediction capabilities have been tested and compared

Impacts of land-use and land-cover change on stream hydrochemistry in the Cerrado and Amazon biomes

Studies on the impacts of land-use and land-cover change on stream hydrochemistry in active deforestation zones of the Amazon agricultural frontier are limited and have often used low-temporal-resolution datasets. Moreover, these impacts are not concurrently assessed in well-established agricultural areas and new deforestations hotspots. We aimed to identify these impacts using an experimental setup to collect high-temporal-resolution hydrological and hydrochemical data in two pairs of low-order streams in catchments under contrasting land use and land cover (native vegetation vs. pasture) in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. Our results indicate that the conversion of natural landscapes to pastures increases carbon and nutrient fluxes via streamflow in both biomes. These changes were the greatest in total inorganic carbon in the Amazon and in potassium in the Cerrado, representing a 5.0- and 5.5-fold increase in the fluxes of each biome, respectively. We found that stormflow, which is often neglected in studies on stream hydrochemistry in the tropics, plays a substantial role in the carbon and nutrient fluxes, especially in the Amazon biome, as its contributions to hydrochemical fluxes are mostly greater than the volumetric contribution to the total streamflow. These findings demonstrate that assessments of the impacts of deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes should also take into account rapid hydrological pathways; however, this can only be achieved through collection of high-temporal-resolution data

An angle balanced polarization resolved femtosecond VIS pump–IR probe study

Photoisomerization of biliverdin (BV) chromophore triggers the photoresponse in native Agp1 bacteriophytochrome. We discuss heterogeneity in phytochrome Pr form to account for the shape of the absorption profile. We investigated different regions of the absorption profile by angle balanced polarization resolved femtosecond VIS pump–IR probe spectroscopy. We studied the Pr form of Agp1 with its natural chromophore and with a sterically locked 18Et-BV (locked Agp1). We followed the dynamics and orientations of the carbonyl stretching vibrations of ring D and ring A in their ground and electronically excited states. Photoisomerization of ring D is reflected by strong signals of the ring D carbonyl vibration. In contrast, orientational data on ring A show no rotation of ring A upon photoexcitation. Orientational data allow excluding a ZZZasa geometry and corroborates a nontwisted ZZZssa geometry of the chromophore. We found no proof for heterogeneity but identified a new, to our knowledge, electronic transition in the absorption profile at 644 nm (S0→S2). Excitation of the S0→S2 transition will introduce a more complex photodynamics compared with S0→S1 transition. Our approach provides fundamental information on disentanglement of absorption profiles, identification of chromophore structures, and determination of molecular groups involved in the photoisomerization process of photoreceptors

Correction:Prevalence and Cardiovascular Associations of Diabetic Retinopathy and Maculopathy: Results from the Gutenberg Health Study

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is the leading cause of blindness in people of working age. The purpose of this paper is to report the prevalence and cardiovascular associations of diabetic retinopathy and maculopathy (DMac) in Germany.The Gutenberg Health Study (GHS) is a population-based study with 15,010 participants aged between 35 at 74 years from the city of Mainz and the district of Mainz-Bingen. We determined the weighted prevalence of DR and DMac by assessing fundus photographs of persons with diabetes from the GHS data base. Diabetes was defined as HbA1c ≥ 6.5%, known diagnosis diabetes mellitus or known diabetes medication. Furthermore, we analysed the association between DR and cardiovascular risk factors and diseases.Overall, 7.5% (1,124/15,010) of the GHS cohort had diabetes. Of these, 27.7% were unaware of their disease and thus were newly diagnosed by their participation in the GHS. The prevalence of DR and DMac was 21.7% and 2.3%, respectively among patients with diabetes. Vision-threatening disease was present in 5% of the diabetic cohort. In the multivariable analysis DR (all types) was associated with age (Odds Ratio [95% confidence interval]: 0.97 [0.955-0.992]; p = 0.006) arterial hypertension (1.90 [1.190-3.044]; p = 0.0072) and vision-threatening DR with obesity (3.29 [1.504-7.206]; p = 0.0029). DR (all stages) and vision-threatening DR were associated with duration of diabetes (1.09 [1.068-1.114]; p<0.0001 and 1.18 [1.137-1.222]; p<0.0001, respectively).Our calculations suggest that approximately 142 000 persons aged between 35 and 74 years have vision threatening diabetic retinal disease in Germany [corrected].Prevalence of DR was lower in the GHS compared to East-Asian studies. Associations were found with age, arterial hypertension, obesity, and duration of diabetes mellitus

Ontology-Based Integration of Streaming and Static Relational Data with Optique

An important application of semantic technologies in industry has been the formalisation of information models usingOWL 2 ontologies and the use of RDF for storing and exchanging application data. Moreover, legacy data can be virtualised asRDF using ontologies following the ontology-based data access (OBDA) approach. In all these applications, it is important toprovide domain experts with query formulation tools for expressing their information needs in terms of queries over ontologies. Inthis work, we present such a tool, OptiqueVQS, which is designed based on our experience with OBDA applications in Statoil andSiemens and on best HCI practices for interdisciplinary engineering environments. OptiqueVQS implements a number of uniquetechniques distinguishing it from analogous query formulation systems. In particular, it exploits ontology projection techniquesto enable graph-based navigation over an ontology during query construction. Secondly, while OptiqueVQS is primarily ontologydriven, it exploits sampled data to enhance selection of data values for some data attributes. Finally, OptiqueVQS is built onwell-grounded requirements, design rationale, and quality attributes. We evaluated OptiqueVQS with both domain experts andcasual users and qualitatively compared our system against prominent visual systems for ontology-driven query formulation andexploration of semantic data. OptiqueVQS is available online and can be downloaded together with an example OBDA scenario