The technology base for agile manufacturing

The effective use of information is a critical problem faced by manufacturing organizations that must respond quickly to market changes. As product runs become shorter, rapid and efficient development of product manufacturing facilities becomes crucial to commercial success. Effective information utilization is a key element to successfully meeting these requirements. This paper reviews opportunities for developing technical solutions to information utilization problems within a manufacturing enterprise and outlines a research agenda for solving these problems

Characterisation of strip silicon detectors for the ATLAS Phase-II Upgrade with a micro-focused X-ray beam

The planned HL-LHC (High Luminosity LHC) in 2025 is being designed to maximise the physics potential through a sizable increase in the luminosity up to 6 · 1034 cm−2 s −1 . A consequence of this increased luminosity is the expected radiation damage at 3000 fb−1 after ten years of operation, requiring the tracking detectors to withstand fluences to over 1 · 1016 1 MeV neq/cm2 . In order to cope with the consequent increased readout rates, a complete re-design of the current ATLAS Inner Detector (ID) is being developed as the Inner Tracker (ITk). Two proposed detectors for the ATLAS strip tracker region of the ITk were characterized at the Diamond Light Source with a 3 µm FWHM 15 keV micro focused X-ray beam. The devices under test were a 320 µm thick silicon stereo (Barrel) ATLAS12 strip mini sensor wire bonded to a 130 nm CMOS binary readout chip (ABC130) and a 320 µm thick full size radial (end-cap) strip sensor - utilizing bi-metal readout layers - wire bonded to 250 nm CMOS binary readout chips (ABCN-25). A resolution better than the inter strip pitch of the 74.5 µm strips was achieved for both detectors. The effect of the p-stop diffusion layers between strips was investigated in detail for the wire bond pad regions. Inter strip charge collection measurements indicate that the effective width of the strip on the silicon sensors is determined by p-stop regions between the strips rather than the strip pitch

Staphylococcus aureus wall teichoic acid is a pathogen-associated molecular pattern that is recognized by langerin (CD207) on skin Langerhans cells

Staphylococcus aureus is a major cause of skin and soft tissue infections and aggravator of the inflammatory skin disease atopic dermatitis (AD). Langerhans cells (LCs) initiate a Th17 response upon exposure to S. aureus, which contributes to host defense but also to AD pathogenesis. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the unique pro-inflammatory capacities of S. aureus remain unclear. We demonstrate that human LCs directly interact with S. aureus through the pattern-recognition receptor langerin (CD207), which specifically recognizes the conserved β-N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) modifications of wall teichoic acid (WTA) that are not expressed by other staphylococcal species. The WTA glycoprofile strongly influences the production of Th1- and Th17-polarizing cytokines by LCs. Specifically, β-GlcNAc activates LCs, whereas co-decoration of WTA with α-GlcNAc through the enzyme TarM, uniformly present in the AD-associated CC1 lineage, attenuates LC immune activation. Our findings provide important mechanistic insights into the role of S. aureus in inflammatory skin disease