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This chapter focuses on ‘openness’. An increasing number of fields describe themselves as ‘open’. The term most frequently connotes access to, and the ability to reuse data and information, but within those connotations, there is a tension between maximising the use of content, and preventing it from being re-closed (use maximisation, and anti-closure). This is not all. Transparency in governance (including access to and influence of the decision making process) is frequently connoted by the term ‘open’, as is a rejection of structures which would allow dominance by a specific entity or group of entities: ‘lock-in’. The four connotations can be described as use-freedom, transparency, open participation, and anti-lock-in. An understanding of these four different connotations assists in determining the commonality between the many different open fields.

This chapter explores open source hardware. Open source hardware is a relative newcomer in comparison with open source software. As a field it has adopted many assumptions and models from the world of open source software, but its latecomer status gives it the advantage of being able to learn from what has gone before. At this juncture, there are far fewer businesses operating in the world of open hardware, and those businesses are less prominent and successful (although there are signs that this is rapidly changing). There are also far fewer specific open hardware licences than open source software licences, and there are still fundamental questions about the applicability of various different forms of intellectual property right to different aspects of hardware.

More engineering students are needed to address climate change in their careers. These students are necessary because engineering includes designing and building machines, structures, and component...

This paper presents a tri-dexel geometric engine integrated simulation model for the gear hobbing operation. The process kinematics are modeled and validated using CNC signals from a Liebherr LC500 hobbing machine. Workpiece geometry updating and cutter-workpiece engagement (CWE) calculations are efficiently realized in the tri-dexel engine. 3D force contributions at discretized nodes along the hob's cutting edges are computed considering the localized principal cutting directions, and rake and inclination angles. To measure cutting forces, a rotary dynamometer is successfully adapted and used alongside a Kalman filter to compensate for structural dynamics. The predicted forces agree well with their experimental counterparts.

To provide food security for a growing world population, it will be necessary to increase yields of staple crops such as wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Yield is a complex, polygenic trait influenced by grain weight and number, which are negatively correlated with one another. Spikelet number is an important determinant of grain number, but allelic variants impacting its expression are often associated with heading date, constraining their use in wheat germplasm that must be adapted for specific environments. Identification and characterization of genetic variants affecting spikelet number will increase selection efficiency through their deployment in breeding programs. In this study, a quantitative trait locus (QTL) on chromosome arm 6BL for spikelet number was identified and validated using an association mapping panel, a recombinant inbred line population, and seven derived heterogeneous inbred families. The superior allele, QSn.csu-6Bb, was associated with an increase of 0.248 to 0.808 spikelets per spike across multiple environments that varied for mean spikelet number. Despite epistatic interactions between QSn.csu-6B and three other loci (WAPO-A1, VRN-D3, and PPD-B1), genotypes with a greater number of superior alleles at these loci consistently exhibit higher spikelet number. The frequency of superior alleles at these loci varies among winter wheat varieties adapted to different latitudes of the US Great Plains, revealing opportunities for breeders to select for increased spikelet number using simple molecular markers. This work lays the foundation for the positional cloning of the genetic variant underlying the QSn.csu-6B QTL to strengthen our understanding of spikelet number determination in wheat.

Background Despite the critical role of faculty diversity in the persistence and academic experiences of undergraduate students as well as in the development of engineering innovations, women of color (WoC) faculty are still underrepresented in engineering programs across the United States. Purpose/Hypothesis This study identifies whether the demographic composition of undergraduate engineering students is correlated with the representation of WoC faculty. It also highlights the institutional- and departmental-level factors that contribute to the race-gender diversification of the engineering professoriate. Design/Method Informed by organizational demography as the theoretical framework, the methods include linear and logit regression analyses. Data come from the American Society for Engineering Education, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, and the American Community Survey, and include engineering departmental-level observations across 345 institutions over 12 years. Results Engineering departments that award more bachelor's degrees to women African American/Black undergraduate students are more likely to employ relatively more African American/Black women faculty. This positive relationship is also found among Asian Americans and Hispanics/Latinas. Conclusions Research findings demonstrate the relationship between engineering undergraduate composition, as well as other departmental- and institutional-level factors, and the prevalence of WoC faculty. The findings highlight important areas for stakeholders and academic administrators to consider when developing strategies and programs to diversify the composition of engineering faculty. National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [1535456, 1535327, 1712618] National Science Foundation, Grant/Award Numbers: 1535456, 1535327, 1712618

Engineers play an important role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations, which aim to provide a more sustainable environment for future generations. Through design thinking, creativity, and innovation, sustainable engineering solutions can be developed. Future engineers need to acquire skills in their engineering curriculum to feel equipped to address sustainable design challenges in their career. This paper focuses on the impact of perceived design thinking traits and active learning strategies in design courses to increase senior engineering students’ motivation to engage in energy sustainability in their career. A national survey was distributed to senior engineering students in the United States (n = 4364). The survey asked students about their motivation to engage in sustainable design, their perceived design thinking traits (i.e., integrative feedback, collaboration), and if they experienced active learning strategies in design courses (i.e., learning by doing). The results highlight that higher perceived design thinking ability increases senior engineering students’ interests in designing solutions related to energy sustainability. Active learning experiences positively influence senior engineering students’ interests in designing solutions related to energy sustainability. These findings show the importance of teaching design thinking in engineering courses to empower future engineers to address sustainable challenges through design and innovation.

Civil engineers will face increasing challenges in their careers due to climate change. The infrastructure they design and construct will directly contribute to or mitigate it. Action to re...

To improve the efficiency of high-density genotype data storage and imputation in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), we applied the Practical Haplotype Graph (PHG) tool. The Wheat PHG database was built using whole-exome capture sequencing data from a diverse set of 65 wheat accessions. Population haplotypes were inferred for the reference genome intervals defined by the boundaries of the high-quality gene models. Missing genotypes in the inference panels, composed of wheat cultivars or recombinant inbred lines genotyped by exome capture, genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS), or whole-genome skim-seq sequencing approaches, were imputed using the Wheat PHG database. Though imputation accuracy varied depending on the method of sequencing and coverage depth, we found 92% imputation accuracy with 0.01× sequence coverage, which was slightly lower than the accuracy obtained using the 0.5× sequence coverage (96.6%). Compared to Beagle, on average, PHG imputation was ∼3.5% (P-value < 2 × 10−14) more accurate, and showed 27% higher accuracy at imputing a rare haplotype introgressed from a wild relative into wheat. We found reduced accuracy of imputation with independent 2× GBS data (88.6%), which increases to 89.2% with the inclusion of parental haplotypes in the database. The accuracy reduction with GBS is likely associated with the small overlap between GBS markers and the exome capture dataset, which was used for constructing PHG. The highest imputation accuracy was obtained with exome capture for the wheat D genome, which also showed the highest levels of linkage disequilibrium and proportion of identity-by-descent regions among accessions in the PHG database. We demonstrate that genetic mapping based on genotypes imputed using PHG identifies SNPs with a broader range of effect sizes that together explain a higher proportion of genetic variance for heading date and meiotic crossover rate compared to previous studies.

This paper describes a new virtual model for predicting the uncut chip geometry and cutting forces in power skiving, which is a high-speed, versatile gear cutting process. The developevd kinematic model is applied in a dexel-based solid modeling engine to extract three-dimensional uncut chip geometry, from which the two-dimensional cross section is obtained via Delaunay triangulation. Cutting velocities along discretized cutter edges are calculated and used to determine the effective rake and oblique angles. Then, force predictions are made using the oblique cutting model and validated using measurements from power skiving trials performed on a DMG MORI NT5400DCG mill-turn machine.

In the Spring of 2018, Western Digital Corporation commissioned Andrew Katz of Moorcrofts LLP to prepare a survey of open processor core licensing. This is an edited version of that report.

When a public sector organisation (PSO) uses a software as a service (SaaS) solution from a global provider this imposes risks for different types of lock-in effects. In turn, use of such solutions by PSOs may prevent full control of digital assets that need to be created, processed, maintained, and archived for use and reuse over long life-cycles. This paper addresses perceived and actual lock-in effects related to use of SaaS solutions in the public sector. We review perceptions of lock-in amongst government agencies and investigate how 46 PSOs have addressed challenges related to obtaining licences and an effective exit plan related to use of the Microsoft Office 365 SaaS solution. Through a review of responses to a survey conducted by the Swedish Government Offices we find significant misconceptions concerning lock-in effects. We find that every one of the 46 PSOs investigated neither obtained necessary licences nor established an effective exit strategy to allow the PSO to independently access, process and maintain digital assets processed by the SaaS solution after decommissioning. We present recommendations for any PSO considering use of a SaaS solution. CC BY 4.0Also part of the Information Systems and Applications, incl. Internet/Web, and HCI book sub series (LNISA, volume 12850)

16 Pags.- 8 Figs. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License., Our understanding of polyploid genome evolution is constrained because we cannot know the exact founders of a particular polyploid. To differentiate between founder effects and post polyploidization evolution, we use a pan-genomic approach to study the allotetraploid Brachypodium hybridum and its diploid progenitors. Comparative analysis suggests that most B. hybridum whole gene presence/absence variation is part of the standing variation in its diploid progenitors. Analysis of nuclear single nucleotide variants, plastomes and k-mers associated with retrotransposons reveals two independent origins for B. hybridum, ~1.4 and ~0.14 million years ago. Examination of gene expression in the younger B. hybridum lineage reveals no bias in overall subgenome expression. Our results are consistent with a gradual accumulation of genomic changes after polyploidization and a lack of subgenome expression dominance. Significantly, if we did not use a pan-genomic approach, we would grossly overestimate the number of genomic changes attributable to post polyploidization evolution., The work conducted by the US DOE Joint Genome Institute is supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231 and User Agreement No. FP00006675 between the University of Zaragoza (User) and the DOE (Community Science Program 503504 proposal); S.J. was supported by the DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program; P.C., B.C.-M., A.D.P., and R.S. were supported by a Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness grant CGL2016-79790-P; P.C., A.D.P., and R.S. were supported by a Bioflora A01-17 grant co-funded by the Spanish Aragon Government and the European Social Fund. R.H., E.W., and J.L. were supported by the National Science Centre Poland (grants DEC-2012/04/A/NZ3/00572 and DEC-2014/14/M/NZ2/00519). J.H.D. and C.N. were supported by Leverhulme Trust (grant no. 10754). A.C.E. and A.D. were supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no [GA335691 “Effectomics”], the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): [P27429-B22, P27818-B22, I 3033-B22], and the Austrian Academy of Science (OEAW).

This paper focuses on the problem of unsupervised relation extraction. Existing probabilistic generative model-based relation extraction methods work by extracting sentence features and using these features as inputs to train a generative model. This model is then used to cluster similar relations. However, these methods do not consider correlations between sentences with the same entity pair during training, which can negatively impact model performance. To address this issue, we propose a Clustering-based Unsupervised generative Relation Extraction (CURE) framework that leverages an "Encoder-Decoder" architecture to perform self-supervised learning so the encoder can extract relation information. Given multiple sentences with the same entity pair as inputs, self-supervised learning is deployed by predicting the shortest path between entity pairs on the dependency graph of one of the sentences. After that, we extract the relation information using the well-trained encoder. Then, entity pairs that share the same relation are clustered based on their corresponding relation information. Each cluster is labeled with a few words based on the words in the shortest paths corresponding to the entity pairs in each cluster. These cluster labels also describe the meaning of these relation clusters. We compare the triplets extracted by our proposed framework (CURE) and baseline methods with a ground-truth Knowledge Base. Experimental results show that our model performs better than state-of-the-art models on both New York Times (NYT) and United Nations Parallel Corpus (UNPC) standard datasets., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures