Hva er viktigheten av digital strategi, innovasjon og ledelse for en vellykket digital transformasjon?

Master's thesis in Industrial economicsHensikten med denne oppgaven var å utforske viktigheten av digital strategi, innovasjon og ledelse for at bedrifter skal lykkes med en digital transformasjon. Samfunnet har utviklet seg mot en mer digital hverdag og virksomheter må forbedre sine prosesser ved å inkludere digitale verktøy. Denne forskningen er viktig, fordi organisasjoner som neglisjerer digitaliserings-prosesser risikerer deres posisjon på markedet. Digitalisering har fått mye oppmerksomhet fra næringslivet, hvorav flere etablerte bedrifter har valgt det som et nytt satsningsområdet. Mangelen på kunnskap om digitale verktøy og hvordan det bør implementeres er blant utfordringene som organisasjonene opplever. I tillegg stilles det nye krav til de ansatte og ledernes ansvarsområder og egenskaper. Utformingen av resultatene var basert på en kvalitativ metode hvor intervjurunder ble gjennomført. Deretter ble en tematisk analyse benyttet for å identifisere aktuelle temaer. Denne analysen var basert på transkriberte intervjuer, hvor personer fra olje- og gassindustrien delte sine erfaringer og meninger knyttet til digitaliseringsprosesser. Funnene fra oppgaven viser at tydelig kommunikasjon av bedriftens målsetning og strategi er essensielt for å lykkes med en digital transformasjon. Fra toppledelsen til det nederste organisasjonsnivået må det være en klar plan på hvordan nye kortsiktige løsninger skal bidra til å oppnå det langsiktige målet. Det innebærer at ledelsen har tillit og tilrettelegger for alle ansatte. Ved å fordele innovasjonsansvaret utover bedriften vil det forbedre bedriftens innovasjonsevne. Den raske teknologiutviklingen medfører at digitalisering må være en del av virksomhetenes fokus for at de skal være konkurransedyktige i fremtiden. Det krever at alle involverte (ansatte og ledelsen) trekker i samme retning for at en vellykket digital transformasjon blir gjennomført

AAO Starbugs: software control and associated algorithms

The Australian Astronomical Observatory's TAIPAN instrument deploys 150 Starbug robots to position optical fibres to accuracies of 0.3 arcsec, on a 32 cm glass field plate on the focal plane of the 1.2 m UK-Schmidt telescope. This paper describes the software system developed to control and monitor the Starbugs, with particular emphasis on the automated path-finding algorithms, and the metrology software which keeps track of the position and motion of individual Starbugs as they independently move in a crowded field. The software employs a tiered approach to find a collision-free path for every Starbug, from its current position to its target location. This consists of three path-finding stages of increasing complexity and computational cost. For each Starbug a path is attempted using a simple method. If unsuccessful, subsequently more complex (and expensive) methods are tried until a valid path is found or the target is flagged as unreachable.Comment: 10 pages, to be published in Proc. SPIE 9913, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy IV; 201

BridgeData V2: A Dataset for Robot Learning at Scale

We introduce BridgeData V2, a large and diverse dataset of robotic manipulation behaviors designed to facilitate research on scalable robot learning. BridgeData V2 contains 60,096 trajectories collected across 24 environments on a publicly available low-cost robot. BridgeData V2 provides extensive task and environment variability, leading to skills that can generalize across environments, domains, and institutions, making the dataset a useful resource for a broad range of researchers. Additionally, the dataset is compatible with a wide variety of open-vocabulary, multi-task learning methods conditioned on goal images or natural language instructions. In our experiments, we train 6 state-of-the-art imitation learning and offline reinforcement learning methods on our dataset, and find that they succeed on a suite of tasks requiring varying amounts of generalization. We also demonstrate that the performance of these methods improves with more data and higher capacity models, and that training on a greater variety of skills leads to improved generalization. By publicly sharing BridgeData V2 and our pre-trained models, we aim to accelerate research in scalable robot learning methods. Project page at https://rail-berkeley.github.io/bridgedataComment: 9 page

Small instanton-induced flavor invariants and the axion potential

Small instantons which increase the axion mass due to an appropriate modification of QCD at a UV scale $\Lambda_{\rm SI}$, can also enhance the effect of CP-violating operators to shift the axion potential minimum by an amount, $\theta_{\rm ind}$, proportional to the flavorful couplings in the SMEFT. Since physical observables must be flavor basis independent, we construct a basis of determinant-like flavor invariants that arise from instanton calculations containing the effects of dimension-six CP-odd operators at the scale \require{cancel}\Lambda_{\cancel{\rm CP}}. This new basis provides a more reliable estimate of the shift $\theta_{\rm ind}$, that is severely constrained by neutron electric dipole moment experiments. In particular, for the case of four-quark, semi-leptonic and gluon dipole operators, these invariants are then used to provide improved limits on the ratio of scales \require{cancel}\Lambda_{\rm SI}/\Lambda_{\cancel{\rm CP}} for different flavor scenarios. The CP-odd flavor invariants also provide a classification of the leading effects from Wilson coefficients, and as an example, we show that a semi-leptonic four-fermion operator is subdominant compared to the four-quark operators. More generally, the flavor invariants, together with an instanton NDA, can be used to more accurately estimate small instanton effects in the axion potential that arise from any SMEFT operator

Characterization of the Poly-β-1,6-N-Acetylglucosamine Polysaccharide Component of Burkholderia Biofilms ▿

We demonstrated the production of poly-β-1,6-N-acetylglucosamine (PNAG) polysaccharide in the biofilms of Burkholderia multivorans, Burkholderia vietnamiensis, Burkholderia ambifaria, Burkholderia cepacia, and Burkholderia cenocepacia using an immunoblot assay for PNAG. These results were confirmed by further studies, which showed that the PNAG hydrolase, dispersin B, eliminated immunoreactivity of extracts from the species that were tested (B. cenocepacia and B. multivorans). Dispersin B also inhibited biofilm formation and dispersed preformed biofilms of Burkholderia species. These results imply a role for PNAG in the maintenance of Burkholderia biofilm integrity. While PNAG was present in biofilms of all of the wild-type test organisms, a ΔpgaBC mutant of B. multivorans (Mu5) produced no detectable PNAG, indicating that these genes are needed for Burkholderia PNAG formation. Furthermore, restoration of PNAG production in PNAG negative E. coli TRXWMGΔC (ΔpgaC) by complementation with B. multivorans pgaBCD confirmed the involvement of these genes in Burkholderia PNAG production. While the confocal scanning laser microscopy of untreated wild-type B. multivorans showed thick, multilayered biofilm, Mu5 and dispersin B-treated wild-type biofilms were thin, poorly developed, and disrupted, confirming the involvement of PNAG in B. multivorans biofilm formation. Thus, PNAG appears to be an important component of Burkholderia biofilms, potentially contributing to its resistance to multiple antibiotics and persistence during chronic infections, including cystic fibrosis-associated infection