A Novel Method for Adaptive Control of Manufacturing Equipment in Cloud Environments

The ability to adaptively control manufacturing equipment, both in local and distributed environments, is becoming increasingly more important for many manufacturing companies. One important reason for this is that manufacturing companies are facing increasing levels of changes, variations and uncertainty, caused by both internal and external factors, which can negatively impact their performance. Frequently changing consumer requirements and market demands usually lead to variations in manufacturing quantities, product design and shorter product life-cycles. Variations in manufacturing capability and functionality, such as equipment breakdowns, missing/worn/broken tools and delays, also contribute to a high level of uncertainty. The result is unpredictable manufacturing system performance, with an increased number of unforeseen events occurring in these systems. Events which are difficult for traditional planning and control systems to satisfactorily manage. For manufacturing scenarios such as these, the use of real-time manufacturing information and intelligence is necessary to enable manufacturing activities to be performed according to actual manufacturing conditions and requirements, and not according to a pre-determined process plan. Therefore, there is a need for an event-driven control approach to facilitate adaptive decision-making and dynamic control capabilities. Another reason driving the move for adaptive control of manufacturing equipment is the trend of increasing globalization, which forces manufacturing industry to focus on more cost-effective manufacturing systems and collaboration within global supply chains and manufacturing networks. Cloud Manufacturing is evolving as a new manufacturing paradigm to match this trend, enabling the mutually advantageous sharing of resources, knowledge and information between distributed companies and manufacturing units. One of the crucial objectives for Cloud Manufacturing is the coordinated planning, control and execution of discrete manufacturing operations in collaborative and networked environments. Therefore, there is also a need that such an event-driven control approach supports the control of distributed manufacturing equipment. The aim of this research study is to define and verify a novel and comprehensive method for adaptive control of manufacturing equipment in cloud environments. The presented research follows the Design Science Research methodology. From a review of research literature, problems regarding adaptive manufacturing equipment control have been identified. A control approach, building on a structure of event-driven Manufacturing Feature Function Blocks, supported by an Information Framework, has been formulated. The Function Block structure is constructed to generate real-time control instructions, triggered by events from the manufacturing environment. The Information Framework uses the concept of Ontologies and The Semantic Web to enable description and matching of manufacturing resource capabilities and manufacturing task requests in distributed environments, e.g. within Cloud Manufacturing. The suggested control approach has been designed and instantiated, implemented as prototype systems for both local and distributed manufacturing scenarios, in both real and virtual applications. In these systems, event-driven Assembly Feature Function Blocks for adaptive control of robotic assembly tasks have been used to demonstrate the applicability of the control approach. The utility and performance of these prototype systems have been tested, verified and evaluated for different assembly scenarios. The proposed control approach has many promising characteristics for use within both local and distributed environments, such as cloud environments. The biggest advantage compared to traditional control is that the required control is created at run-time according to actual manufacturing conditions. The biggest obstacle for being applicable to its full extent is manufacturing equipment controlled by proprietary control systems, with native control languages. To take the full advantage of the IEC Function Block control approach, controllers which can interface, interpret and execute these Function Blocks directly, are necessary

The spectre of Austria---reappraising the rise of the Freedom Party from 1986 to 2000.

This thesis analyses the reasons behind the electoral successes of the FPO between 1986, when Jorg Haider assumed the leadership of the party, and 2000, when the party entered into a government coalition with the OVP. A widely held view is that the FPO's rise was caused predominantly by the party's right-wing extremist tendencies. The importance of the role of the party's populist critique of the Austrian elite has often been underestimated. The literature and public debate about the FPO is largely dominated by ideological assumptions rather than detailed empirical inquiry. This thesis evaluates the relative importance of the right-wing extremist and populist dimensions, drawing on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative sources, such as party documents, its yearbooks, speeches and statements of prominent members, election results and voter surveys. An in-depth analysis of the data demonstrates that the extent of the expression of right- wing extremist views in the party's rhetoric, programmes and policies was smaller than commonly assumed. Voters were drawn towards the party primarily by its critique of the SPO/OVP elite rule that had characterised the Austrian political landscape since the Second World War. By highlighting and often exaggerating the shortcomings of the elite and Austrian corporatism, the party under Jorg Haider managed to appeal to the electorate. With their support, the FPO became the second largest political party at the national elections in 1999, thereby ending the SPO/OVP dual elite rule. Once the FPO joined the OVP-led government, the party quickly started to disintegrate resulting ultimately in a split of the party - a fate shared with other populist parties. The FPO's rise to power and particularly the emerging new right-wing extremist parties in Europe call for a thorough investigation of the underlying factors behind the parties' success. The analysis and findings of this thesis therefore are of relevance beyond the Austrian context

Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay and Heavy Sterile Neutrinos

The experimental rate of neutrinoless double beta decay can be saturated by the exchange of virtual sterile neutrinos, that mix with the ordinary neutrinos and are heavier than 200 MeV. Interestingly, this hypothesis is subject only to marginal experimental constraints, because of the new nuclear matrix elements. This possibility is analyzed in the context of the Type I seesaw model, performing also exploratory investigations of the implications for heavy neutrino mass spectra, rare decays of mesons as well as neutrino-decay search, LHC, and lepton flavor violation. The heavy sterile neutrinos can saturate the rate only when their masses are below some 10 TeV, but in this case, the suppression of the light-neutrino masses has to be more than the ratio of the electroweak scale and the heavy-neutrino scale; i.e., more suppressed than the naive seesaw expectation. We classify the cases when this condition holds true in the minimal version of the seesaw model, showing its compatibility (1) with neutrinoless double beta rate being dominated by heavy neutrinos and (2) with any light neutrino mass spectra. The absence of excessive fine-tunings and the radiative stability of light neutrino mass matrices, together with a saturating sterile neutrino contribution, imply an upper bound on the heavy neutrino masses of about 10 GeV. We extend our analysis to the Extended seesaw scenario, where the light and the heavy sterile neutrino contributions are completely decoupled, allowing the sterile neutrinos to saturate the present experimental bound on neutrinoless double beta decay. In the models analyzed, the rate of this process is not strictly connected with the values of the light neutrino masses, and a fast transition rate is compatible with neutrinos lighter than 100 meV.Comment: Version published in NPB. More discussion of the 10 GeV bound, references adde

Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing; FAIM 2014

Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Flexible Automation & Intelligent Manufacturing, held May 20-23, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas, and organized by the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems, University of Texas at San Antonio; Includes bibliographical references; The increasing globalization is a trend which forces manufacturing industry of today to focus on more cost-effective manufacturing systems and collaboration within global supply chains and manufacturing networks. Cloud Manufacturing (CM) is evolving as a new manufacturing paradigm to match this trend, enabling the mutually advantageous sharing of resources, knowledge and information between distributed companies and manufacturing units. Providing a framework for collaboration within complex and critical tasks, such as manufacturing and design, it increases the companies’ ability to successfully compete on a global marketplace. One of the major, crucial objectives for CM is the coordinated planning, control and execution of discrete manufacturing operations in a collaborative and networked environment. This paper describes the overall concept of adaptive Function Block control of manufacturing equipment in Cloud environments, with the specific focus on robotic assembly operations, and presents Cloud Robotics as “Robot Control-as-a-Service” within C

Effective supervision of doctoral students in public and population health in Africa: CARTA supervisors’ experiences, challenges and perceived opportunities

The quality and success of postgraduate education largely rely on effective supervision. Since its inception in 2008, the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) has been at the forefront of providing training to both students and supervisors in the field of public and population health. However, there are few studies on supervisors’ perceptions on effective doctoral supervision. We used a mostly descriptive study design to report CARTA-affiliated doctoral supervisors’ reflections and perceptions on doctoral supervision, challenges and opportunities. A total of 77 out of 160 CARTA supervisors’ workshop participants responded to the evaluation. The respondents were affiliated with 10 institutions across Africa. The respondents remarked that effective supervision is a two-way process, involving both supervisor and supervisee’s commitment. Some reported that the requirements for effective supervision included the calibre of the PhD students, structure of the PhD programme, access to research infrastructure and resources, supervision training, multidisciplinary exposure and support. Male supervisors have significantly higher number of self-reported PhD graduates and published articles on Scopus but no difference from the females in h-index. We note both student and systemic challenges that training institutions may pursue to improve doctoral supervision in Africa