A Seamless Convergence of the Digital and Physical Factory Aiming in Personalized Product Emergence Process (PPEP) for Smart Products within ESB Logistics Learning Factory at Reutlingen University

AbstractA seamless convergence of the digital and physical factory aiming in personalized Product Emergence Process (PPEP) for smart products within ESB Logistics Learning Factory at Reutlingen University.A completely new business model with reference to Industrie4.0 and facilitated by 3D Experience Software in today's networked society in which customers expect immediate responses, delightful experience and simple solutions is one of the mission scenarios in the ESB Logistics Learning Factory at ESB Business School (Reutlingen University).The business experience platform provides software solutions for every organization in the company respectively in the factory. An interface with dashboards, project management apps, 3D - design and construction apps with high end visualization, manufacturing and simulation apps as well as intelligence and social network apps in a collaborative interactive environment help the user to learn the creation of a value end to end process for a personalized virtual and later real produced product.Instead of traditional ways of working and a conventional operating factory real workers and robots work semi-intuitive together. Centerpiece in the self-planned interim factory is the smart personalized product, uniquely identifiable and locatable at all times during the production process – a scooter with an individual colored mobile phone – holder for any smart phone produced with a 3D printer in lot size one. Smart products have in the future solutions incorporated internet based services – designed and manufactured - at the costs of mass products. Additionally the scooter is equipped with a retrievable declarative product memory. Monitoring and control is handled by sensor tags and a raspberry positioned on the product. The engineering design and implementation of a changeable production system is guided by a self-execution system that independently find amongst others esplanade workplaces.The imparted competences to students and professionals are project management method SCRUM, customization of workflows by Industrie4.0 principles, the enhancements of products with new personalized intelligent parts, electrical and electronic self-programmed components and the control of access of the product memory information, to plan in a digital engineering environment and set up of the physical factory to produce customer orders. The gained action-orientated experience refers to the chances and requirements for holistic digital and physical systems

Working-class royalty: bees beat the caste system

The struggle among social classes or castes is well known in humans. Here, we show that caste inequality similarly affects societies of ants, bees and wasps, where castes are morphologically distinct and workers have greatly reduced reproductive potential compared with queens. In social insects, an individual normally has no control over its own fate, whether queen or worker, as this is socially determined during rearing. Here, for the first time, we quantify a strategy for overcoming social control. In the stingless bee Schwarziana quadripunctata, some individuals reared in worker cells avoid a worker fate by developing into fully functional dwarf queens

Bourgeois behavior and freeloading in the colonial orb web spider Parawixia bistriata (Araneae, Araneidae)

Spiders of the tropical American colonial orb weaver Parawixia bistriata form a communal bivouac in daytime. At sunset, they leave the bivouac and construct individual, defended webs within a large, communally built scaffolding of permanent, thick silk lines between trees and bushes. Once spiders started building a web, they repelled other spiders walking on nearby scaffolding with a "bounce" behavior. In nearly all cases (93%), this resulted in the intruder leaving without a fight, akin to the "bourgeois strategy," in which residents win and intruders retreat without escalated contests. However, a few spiders (6.5%) did not build a web due to lack of available space. Webless spiders were less likely to leave when bounced (only 42% left) and instead attempted to "freeload," awaiting the capture of prey items in nearby webs. Our simple model shows that webless spiders should change their strategy from bourgeois to freeloading satellite as potential web sites become increasingly occupied

Bourgeois behavior and freeloading in the colonial orb web spider Parawixia bistriata (Araneae, Araneidae).

Spiders of the tropical American colonial orb weaver Parawixia bistriata form a communal bivouac in daytime. At sunset, they leave the bivouac and construct individual, defended webs within a large, communally built scaffolding of permanent, thick silk lines between trees and bushes. Once spiders started building a web, they repelled other spiders walking on nearby scaffolding with a bounce behavior. In nearly all cases (93%), this resulted in the intruder leaving without a fight, akin to the bourgeois strategy, in which residents win and intruders retreat without escalated contests. However, a few spiders (6.5%) did not build a web due to lack of available space.Webless spiders were less likely to leave when bounced (only 42% left) and instead attempted to freeload, awaiting the capture of prey items in nearby webs. Our simple model shows that webless spiders should change their strategy from bourgeois to freeloading satellite as potential web sites become increasingly occupied

Wolbachia in the flesh: symbiont intensities in germ-line and somatic tissues challenge the conventional view of Wolbachia transmission routes

Symbionts can substantially affect the evolution and ecology of their hosts. The investigation of the tissue-specific distribution of symbionts (tissue tropism) can provide important insight into host-symbiont interactions. Among other things, it can help to discern the importance of specific transmission routes and potential phenotypic effects. The intracellular bacterial symbiont Wolbachia has been described as the greatest ever panzootic, due to the wide array of arthropods that it infects. Being primarily vertically transmitted, it is expected that the transmission of Wolbachia would be enhanced by focusing infection in the reproductive tissues. In social insect hosts, this tropism would logically extend to reproductive rather than sterile castes, since the latter constitute a dead-end for vertically transmission. Here, we show that Wolbachia are not focused on reproductive tissues of eusocial insects, and that non-reproductive tissues of queens and workers of the ant Acromyrmex echinatior, harbour substantial infections. In particular, the comparatively high intensities of Wolbachia in the haemolymph, fat body, and faeces, suggest potential for horizontal transmission via parasitoids and the faecal-oral route, or a role for Wolbachia modulating the immune response of this host. It may be that somatic tissues and castes are not the evolutionary dead-end for Wolbachia that is commonly thought

A New Route to Fluorescent SWNT/Silica Nanocomposites: Balancing Fluorescence Intensity and Environmental Sensitivity

We investigate the relationship between photoluminescence (PL) intensity and environmental sensitivity of surfactant-wrapped single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). SWNTs were studied under a variety of conditions in suspension as well as encapsulated in silica nanocomposites, which were prepared by an efficient chemical vapor into liquids (CViL) sol-gel process. The dramatically improved silica encapsulation process described here has several advantages, including fast preparation and high SWNT loading concentration, over other encapsulation methods used to prepare fluorescent SWNT/silica nanocomposites. Further, addition of glycerol to SWNT suspensions prior to performing the CViL sol-gel process allows for the preparation of freestanding fluorescent silica xerogels, which to the best of our knowledge is the first report of such nanocomposites. Our spectroscopic data on SWNTs suspended in aqueous surfactants or encapsulated in silica show that achieving maximum PL intensity results in decreased sensitivity of SWNT emission response to changes imparted by the local environment. In addition, silica encapsulation can be used to "lock-in" a surfactant micelle structure surrounding SWNTs to minimize interactions between SWNTs and ions/small molecules. Ultimately, our work demonstrates that one should consider a balance between maximum PL intensity and the ability to sense environmental changes when designing new SWNT systems for future sensing applications

Characterization of CdSe nanocrystals coated with amphiphiles. A capillary electrophoresis study

We have synthesized CdSe nanocrystals (NCs) possessing a trioctylphosphine surface passivation layer and modified with amphiphilic molecules to form a surface bilayer. The NCs covered with single amphiphiles are not stable in aqueous solution, but a mixed amphiphilic system is shown to provide stability in solution over several months. The solutions of the modified NCs were characterized by UV-Vis absorbance, photoluminescence, and transmission electron microscopy. An electrophoretic study revealed two operational modes. The first relies on the enrichment of NCs using a micellar plug as a tool. The accumulation of NCs at the plug-electrolyte buffer interface results in a sharp peak. By controlling the electrophoretic conditions, nanocrystals were forced to exit a micellar plug into an electrolyte buffer. We conclude that a system consisting of modified nanocrystals and a micellar plug can act as a mixed pseudomicellar system, where modified nanocrystals play the role of pseudomicelles

Capillary electrophoretic separation of nanoparticles

In the present work, CdSe nanocrystals (NCs) synthesized with a trioctylphosphine surface passivation layer were modified using amphiphilic molecules to form a surface bilayer capable of providing stable NCs aqueous solutions. Such modified nanocrystals were used as a test solute in order to analyze new electrophoretic phenomena, by applying a micellar plug as a separation tool for discriminating nanocrystals between micellar and micelle-free zones during electrophoresis. The distribution of NCs between both zones depended on the affinity of nanocrystals towards the micellar zone, and this relies on the kind of surface ligands attached to the NCs, as well as electrophoretic conditions applied. In this case, the NCs that migrated within a micellar zone can be focused using a preconcentration mechanism. By modifying electrophoretic conditions, NCs were forced to migrate outside the micellar zone in the form of a typical CZE peak. In this situation, a two-order difference in separation efficiencies, in terms of theoretical plates, was observed between focused NCs (N ~ 107) and a typical CZE peak for NCs (N ~ 105). By applying the amino-functionalized NCs the preconcentration of NCs, using a micellar plug, was examined, with the conclusion that preconcentration efficiency, in terms of the enhancement factor for peak height (SEFheight) can be, at least 20. The distribution effect was applied to separate CdSe/ZnS NCs encapsulated in silica, as well as surface-modified with DNA, which allows the estimation of the yield of conjugation of biologically active molecules to a particle surface