Highly integrated and automated high-speed grinding system for printer heads constructed by combination materials

The fabrication of heavy-duty printer heads involves a great deal of grinding work. Previously in the printer manufacturing industry, four grinding procedures were manually conducted in four grinding machines, respectively. The productivity of the whole grinding process was low due to the long loading time. Also, the machine floor space occupation was large because of the four separate grinding machines. The manual operation also caused inconsistent quality. This paper reports the system and process development of a highly integrated and automated high-speed grinding system for printer heads. The developed system, which is believed to be the first of its kind, not only produces printer heads of consistently good quality, but also significantly reduces the cycle time and machine floor space occupation.

Tonal Modulation and Subjective Time

This work investigated listeners` sense of the temporal expression of tonal modulation. One experiment described the effects on retrospective reproductions of sudden and gradual modulations to close and distant keys. The results showed that modulations elicit time underestimations as an inverse function of interkey distances, with a major impact for sudden modulations. A proposed vectorial model - ""Expected Development Fraction"" (EDF) - describes the development of expectations when an interkey distance is traversed during a certain time interval. This expected development is longer than the perceived duration, leading to underestimation of the time.

QUADRANT-SEARCHING: A NEW TECHNIQUE TO REDUCE THE SEARCH SPACE OF THE INVERSE PROBLEM OF EIT USING BEM TO THE DIRECT PROBLEM

The image reconstruction using the EIT (Electrical Impedance Tomography) technique is a nonlinear and ill-posed inverse problem which demands a powerful direct or iterative method. A typical approach for solving the problem is to minimize an error functional using an iterative method. In this case, an initial solution close enough to the global minimum is mandatory to ensure the convergence to the correct minimum in an appropriate time interval. The aim of this paper is to present a new, simple and low cost technique (quadrant-searching) to reduce the search space and consequently to obtain an initial solution of the inverse problem of EIT. This technique calculates the error functional for four different contrast distributions placing a large prospective inclusion in the four quadrants of the domain. Comparing the four values of the error functional it is possible to get conclusions about the internal electric contrast. For this purpose, initially we performed tests to assess the accuracy of the BEM (Boundary Element Method) when applied to the direct problem of the EIT and to verify the behavior of error functional surface in the search space. Finally, numerical tests have been performed to verify the new technique.

Existence results for a damped second order abstract functional differential equation with impulses

In this work we study the existence and regularity of mild solutions for a damped second order abstract functional differential equation with impulses. The results are obtained using the cosine function theory and fixed point criterions. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The existence of solutions for impulsive neutral functional differential equations

This work deals with the existence of mild solutions for a class of impulsive functional differential equations of the neutral type associated with the family of linear closed (not necessarily bounded) operators {A(t) : t is an element of 1}. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Existence results for partial neutral functional differential equations with state-dependent delay

In this paper we study the existence of mild solutions for a class of first order abstract partial neutral differential equations with state-dependent delay. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Global solutions for abstract impulsive neutral differential equations

We study the existence of mild solutions for a class of impulsive neutral functional differential equation defined on the whole real axis. Some concrete applications to ordinary and partial neutral differential equations with impulses are considered. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Expectation Propagation with Factorizing Distributions: A Gaussian Approximation and Performance Results for Simple Models

We discuss the expectation propagation (EP) algorithm for approximate Bayesian inference using a factorizing posterior approximation. For neural network models, we use a central limit theorem argument to make EP tractable when the number of parameters is large. For two types of models, we show that EP can achieve optimal generalization performance when data are drawn from a simple distribution.

Biomimetic in silico devices

We introduce biomimetic in silico devices, and means for validation along with methods for testing and refining them. The devices are constructed from adaptable software components designed to map logically to biological components at multiple levels of resolution. In this report we focus on the liver; the goal is to validate components that mimic features of the lobule (the hepatic primary functional unit) and dynamic aspects of liver behavior, structure, and function. An assembly of lobule-mimetic devices represents an in silico liver. We validate against outflow profiles for sucrose administered as a bolus to isolated, perfused rat livers. Acceptable in silico profiles are experimentally indistinguishable from those of the in situ referent. This new technology is intended to provide powerful Dew tools for challenging our understanding of how biological functional units function in vivo.

Adaptation on the commons

This paper seeks to understand how software systems and organisations co-evolve in practice and how order emerges in the overall environment. Using a metaphor of timetable as a commons, we analyse the introduction of a novel academic scheduling system to demonstrate how Complex Adaptive Systems theory provides insight into the adaptive behaviour of the various actors and how their action is both a response to and a driver of co-evolution within the engagement.

Geospatial clustering in data-rich environments: Features and issues

Geospatial clustering must be designed in such a way that it takes into account the special features of geoinformation and the peculiar nature of geographical environments in order to successfully derive geospatially interesting global concentrations and localized excesses. This paper examines families of geospaital clustering recently proposed in the data mining community and identifies several features and issues especially important to geospatial clustering in data-rich environments.

Privacy and security enhanced offline oblivious transfer for massive data distribution

Unauthorized accesses to digital contents are serious threats to international security and informatics. We propose an offline oblivious data distribution framework that preserves the sender's security and the receiver's privacy using tamper-proof smart cards. This framework provides persistent content protections from digital piracy and promises private content consumption.