A study of influential factors in designing self-reconfigurable robots for green manufacturing

© 2018 ACIS2018.org. All rights reserved. There is incremental growth in adopting self-reconfigurable robots in automating manufacturing conventional product lines. Using this class of robots adapting themselves with ever-changing environmental conditions has been acclaimed as a promising way of reducing energy consumption and environmental impact and thus enabling green manufacturing. Whilst the majority of existing research focuses on highlighting the efficacy of self-reconfigurable robots in energy reduction with technical driven solutions, the research on exploring the salient factors in design and development self-reconfigurable robots that directly enable or hinder green manufacturing is non-extant. This interdisciplinary research contributes to the nascent body of the knowledge by empirical investigation of design-time, run-time, and hardware aspects which should be contingently balanced when developing green-aware self-reconfigurable robots

Shaping a true German identity : narratives in Hermann, Missouri, 1837-1857

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on June 9, 2009)Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2008.Often in social historical research immigrants are presented in a monolithic fashion that suggests all persons sharing an ethnicity, heritage, or language act in similar ways in response to social situations and to the forces of assimilation. With the Colony at Hermann, Missouri being established as a true German community, there is the implication that there was some "true" identity that could be captured and reproduced. I argue that that the identity embraced by the German immigrants in that region was the result of a complex intersection of narratives that helped the immigrants locate themselves within their new homeland. This position is a direct challenge to conceptions that there are some innate and immutable characteristics that come to shape identity. Drawing upon the conception of narrative identity as put forth by Margaret Somers (1998, 1994) and Margaret Somers and Gloria Gibson (1998) I utilize historical data from the early years of Hermann, Missouri to outline the narratives that were instrumental in shaping a German identity. I show that the narratives of Yankeedom, Old Prejudice, and Authentic Germans call into question the possibility of there being a "true" identity for the immigrants. I conclude that the processes of blending various narratives indicates that the Germans in the Hermann area took and active role in defining what beliefs and behaviors constituted being a proper German. As a result of this process, the boundaries established to separate the true German from the rest of the population were not based upon innate qualities within individuals but rather those behaviors and values that could be expressed in a "proper" fashion.Includes bibliographical reference

Temporal and spatial variations in maximum river discharge from a new Russian data set

Floods cause more damage in Russia than any other natural disaster, and future climate model projections suggest that the frequency and magnitude of extreme hydrological events will increase in Russia with climate change. Here we analyze daily discharge records from a new data set of 139 Russian gauges in the Eurasian Arctic drainage basin with watershed areas from 16.1 to 50,000 km2 for signs of change in maximum river discharge. Several hypotheses about changes in maximum daily discharge and their linking with trends in precipitation over the cold season were tested. For the magnitude of maximum daily discharge we found relatively equal numbers of significant positive and negative trends across the Russian Arctic drainage basin, which draws into question the hypothesis of an increasing risk of extreme floods. We observed a significant shift to earlier spring discharge, which is consistent with documented changes in snowmelt and freeze‐thaw dates. Spatial analysis of changes in maximum discharge and cold season precipitation revealed consistency across most of the domain, the exception being the Lena basin. Trends in maximum discharge of the small‐ to medium‐sized rivers were generally consistent with aggregated signals found for the downstream gauges of the six largest Russian rivers. Although we observe regional changes in maximum discharge across the Russian Arctic drainage basin, no evidence of widespread trends in extreme discharge can be assumed from our analysis

Additions to the Vascular Plant Type Collection of the Ohio State University Herbarium

Author Institution: Department of Botany, The Ohio State UniversityFifty-three type specimens of vascular plants are reported as additions to the type collection of The Ohio State University Herbarium, bringing the total number to 276. These include both recent acquisitions and newly recognized type material already in the collection. For each specimen, the name of the taxon, collection data, kind of type specimen, and source are provided

Grass-finished beef pilot project: Cattle performance and welfare

The study compared growth results for Angus cattle raised under feedlot conditions and under a grass-finishing regimen. Outcomes used to answer this question included growth and carcass characteristics, behavior and animal welfare parameters for weaned cattle that were raised using grain feeding or pasture management systems

Researchers explore Arctic freshwater\u27s role in ocean circulation

A critical, but insufficiently understood, component of global change is the influence of Arctic freshwater input on water mass exchange between the Arctic Ocean and Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Four of the Earth\u27s 10 largest river systems, the Mackenzie, Ob,Yenisei, and Lena, contribute water to the Arctic shore (Figure 1) from a vast watershed that drains continental interiors. This river discharge flows into the world\u27s largest contiguous continental shelf and supplies over 50% (1823 km3 ) of the riverine input to the Arctic Ocean

Half a century of computer methods and programs in biomedicine: A bibliometric analysis from 1970 to 2017

© 2019 Background and Objective: Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine (CMPB) is a leading international journal that presents developments about computing methods and their application in biomedical research. The journal published its first issue in 1970. In 2020, the journal celebrates the 50th anniversary. Motivated by this event, this article presents a bibliometric analysis of the publications of the journal during this period (1970–2017). Methods: The objective is to identify the leading trends occurring in the journal by analysing the most cited papers, keywords, authors, institutions and countries. For doing so, the study uses the Web of Science Core Collection database. Additionally, the work presents a graphical mapping of the bibliographic information by using the visualization of similarities (VOS) viewer software. This is done to analyze bibliographic coupling, co-citation and co-occurrence of keywords. Results: CMPB is identified as a leading and core journal for biomedical researchers. The journal is strongly connected to IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering and IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging. Paper from Wang, Jacques, Zheng (published in 1995) is its most cited document. The top author in this journal is James Geoffrey Chase and the top contributing institution is Uppsala U (Sweden). Most of the papers in CMPB are from the USA followed by the UK and Italy. China and Taiwan are the only Asian countries to appear in the top 10 publishing in CMPB. A keyword co-occurrences analysis revealed strong co-occurrences for classification, picture archiving and communication system (PACS), heart rate variability, survival analysis and simulation. Keywords analysis for the last decade revealed that machine learning for a variety of healthcare problems (including image processing and analysis) dominated other research fields in CMPB. Conclusions: It can be concluded that CMPB is a world-renowned publication outlet for biomedical researchers which has been growing in a number of publications since 1970. The analysis also conclude that the journal is very international with publications from all over the world although today European countries are the most productive ones

Singing whales generate high levels of particle motion : implications for acoustic communication and hearing?

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of The Royal Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Biology Letters 12 (2016): 20160381, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2016.0381.Acoustic signals are fundamental to animal communication and cetaceans are often considered bioacoustic specialists. Nearly all studies of their acoustic communication focus on sound pressure measurements, overlooking the particle motion components of their communication signals. Here we characterize the levels of acoustic particle velocity (and pressure) of song produced by humpback whales. We demonstrate that whales generate acoustic fields that include significant particle velocity components that are detectable over relatively long distances sufficient to play a role in acoustic communication. We show that these signals attenuate predictably in a manner similar to pressure and that direct particle velocity measurements can provide bearings to singing whales. Whales could potentially use such information to determine the distance of signaling animals. Additionally, the vibratory nature of particle velocity may stimulate bone conduction, a hearing modality similar to other low-frequency specialized mammals, offering a parsimonious mechanism of acoustic energy transduction into the massive ossicles of whale ears. With substantial concerns regarding the effects of increasing anthropogenic ocean noise and major uncertainties surrounding mysticete hearing, these results highlight both an unexplored avenue that may be available for whale acoustic communication and the need to better understand the biological role of acoustic particle motion.WHOI’s Independent Study Award to T.A.M

BeppoSAX observations of low-energy spectral features in AGN

The combination of the broad band coverage and moderate spectral resolution of the LECS and MECS instruments on-board BeppoSAX allow the spectra of AGN to be studied in unprecedented detail down to 0.1 keV. We describe the calibration and the performance of the LECS and report on observations of low-energy absorption features in the spectra of both a low (MCG-6-30-15) and a high luminosity (3C 273) AGN. These features provide important diagnostics on the location and nature of the material surrounding the AGN. A comparison of LECS and ASCA/SIS low energy performance is also presented in the case of 3C 273.Comment: 5 pages. To appear in symposium proceedings: The Active X-Ray Sky, Rome, October 199