Today's Measurement Research Articles

SCADA System for Process Data Exchange in Master Slave RF and Iot Network

In every aspect of our lives, we can observe how automation plays a facilitating role in the performance of responsibilities of a comprehensive rank. Thanks to the development of electronics, today's process measurement systems enable the measurement values of process quantities to be visualized on display, sent remotely, and stored in a file, compatible with future user processing. In this paper are represented results of the development, design and practical implementation of the SCADA system, which enables data exchange between SCADA screen, MASTER and SLAVE stations. The MASTER station is installed in one industrial plant and the SLAVE is installed in another plant. The SCADA monitoring system is built into the MASTER station. The SLAVE station is connected by RF (radio frequency connection) to the MASTER station. In the MASTER and SLAVE station two microcomputers units, as well as appropriate RF modules, are installed. The microcomputer in the MASTER station is serially connected to the IoT microcomputer, for the transfer of measurement data in the Internet network. The solution provides visualization, data log file, and transfer to the IoT network of process data from the two industrial plants.

Empirical derivation of the metallicity evolution with time and radius using TNG50 Milky Way and Andromeda analogues

Recent works use a linear birth metallicity gradient to estimate the evolution of the Fe/H profile in the Galactic disk over time, and infer stellar birth radii (R$_ birth $) from Fe/H and age measurements. These estimates rely on the evolution of Fe/H at the Galactic center ( Fe/H (0, tau )) and the birth metallicity gradient (nabla Fe/H over time --- quantities that are unknown and inferred under key assumptions. In this work, we use the sample of Milky Way and Andromeda analogues from the TNG50 simulation to investigate the ability to recover Fe/H (R, tau ) in a variety of galaxies. Using stellar disk particles, we tested the assumptions required in estimating R$_ birth Fe/H (0, tau ), and nabla Fe/H using recently proposed methods to understand when they are valid. We show that nabla Fe/H can be recovered in most galaxies to within 26<!PCT!> from the range in Fe/H across age, with better accuracy for more massive and stronger barred galaxies. We also find that the true central metallicity is unrepresentative of the genuine disk Fe/H profile; thus we propose to use a projected central metallicity instead. About half of the galaxies in our sample do not have a continuously enriching projected central metallicity, with a dilution in Fe/H correlating with mergers. Most importantly, galaxy-specific Fe/H (R, tau ) can be constrained and confirmed by requiring the R$_ birth $ distributions of mono-age, solar neighborhood populations to follow inside-out formation. We conclude that examining trends with R$_ birth $ is valid for the Milky Way disk and similarly structured galaxies, where we expect R$_ birth $ can be recovered to within 20<!PCT!> assuming today's measurement uncertainties in TNG50.

Nuclear explosion monitoring network design considerations

Design of an efficient monitoring network requires information on the type and size of releases to be detected, the accuracy and reliability of the measuring equipment, and the desired network performance. This work provides a scientific basis for optimizing or minimizing networks of 133Xe samplers to achieve a desired performance level for different levels of release. The approach of this work varies the density of sampling locations to find optimal location subsets, and to explore the properties of variations of those subsets – how crucial is a specific subset; are substitutions problematic? The choice of possible station locations is arbitrary but constrained to some extent by the location of islands, land masses, difficult topography (mountains, etc.) and the places where infrastructure exists to run and support a sampler. Performance is evaluated using hypothetical releases and atmospheric transport models that cover an entire year.Three network performance metrics are calculated: the probability of detecting the releases, the expected number of stations to detect the releases, and the expected number of samples that detect the releases. The quantitative measures support picking optimal or near-optimal network of a specific station density. If a detection probability of 90% (high) was desired for a design basis release of 1014 Bq (1% of 133Xe production from a 1 kt explosion), then a very high density would be required using today's sampling and measurement technology. If the design basis release were raised to 1015 Bq, then the station density could be lowered by a factor of 3. To achieve a location goal of three station detections on average, posited here for the first time, would also require very high station density for a release of 1014 Bq.

Surface Currents and Significant Wave Height Gradients: Matching Numerical Models and High‐Resolution Altimeter Wave Heights in the Agulhas Current Region

AbstractAdvances in the understanding and modeling of surface currents have revealed the importance of internal waves, mesoscale and submesoscale features. Indeed, all these features should have a large influence on wind waves and in particular on wave heights. Still, the quantitative impact of currents on waves is not well known due to the complexity of the random wavefields and currents that are found in the ocean and the lack of observations of both currents and waves at scales shorter than 150 km. Here, we compare novel satellite altimetry data and state of the art phase‐averaged numerical wave models forced both by wind and currents. Currents used are taken from the oceanic model Coastal and Regional Ocean COmmunity, run at high resolution. The influence of current field resolution is investigated by applying Gaussian filters of different width to that same high‐resolution current field. We find that a numerical wave model that uses currents with resolutions of ∼30 km or less and a directional resolution of 7.5° can provide accurate representations of the significant wave height gradients found in the Agulhas current. Using smoother current fields such as derived from altimeters measurements alone, coarse directional spectral resolution or larger directional spread of the wave model generally underestimates gradients and extreme wave heights. Hence, satellite altimetry provides high‐resolution wave height with a gradient magnitude that is highly sensitive to underlying surface current gradients, at resolutions that may not be resolved by today's altimeters measurements. This is demonstrated here for relatively steady currents averaged over 3 years.

A Blockchain Based Lifelong Learning Platform: The Smart University

According to today's education system, the content, applicability, quality and performance measurement criteria of the courses may vary according to countries, educational institutions and educators. Because of incorrect performance measurement, hidden skills disappear before they appear. Thanks to the graduation diploma it is observed that people with less than professional knowledge and skills come to better places than those who are more knowledgeable and skilled. In addition, due to the lack of a proper training plan according to the target learning community, boredom and financial problems may arise due to long periods of education. In this study, while trying to avoid material and temporal problems, a blockchain-based lifelong learning platform whose content, processing, reliability, decentralized, open to continuous and rapid accessibility, and evaluation criteria and method is completely objective is proposed. Thanks to this platform, the diplomas to be received by the students who have successfully passed the end-of-education exams will be time-stamped, immutable, safe and traceable. At the same time, all these documents, storage of training contents, diplomas, certificates, post-training exams and all related files , will be kept accessible, secure and immutable thanks to IPFS, the Inter Planetary File System. Achievements, employer and employee pools to be created according to the achievements, and a recruitment contract to be realized will be controlled by smart contracts and absolute reliability and objectivity will be ensured. All these concepts will be made available through a decentralized application (DApp) which will run on a private blockchain network that requires a partial permission to be established.

Extraction of Doppler signature of micro‐to‐macro rotations/motions using continuous wave radar‐assisted measurement system

Mechanical–structural vibration and/or rotational parts of the targets will induce micro-Doppler frequency in addition to the main Doppler components. In the today's military era, detections, measurements and decision making have to be made after the thorough analysis of main and micro-Doppler signatures of the targets to get their full profile particularly for defence applications. In addition, few of the low radar cross-section targets can be detected only by extracting and processing the micro-Doppler signatures corresponding to the rotations of their propellant rotor blades. Therefore, experimental studies to measure the micro-to-macro rotation/motion generated Doppler frequency and performing its associated measurements become significant. The authors built a C-band (5.3 GHz) continuous wave radar and used it to measure the Doppler frequency generated by micro-to-macro rotations/motions. The detection and measurement accuracy of the developed radar is assessed by series of different open-environment experimental case studies: revolution per minute measurement of rotating blades, separation of multiple rotating blades, oscillation per minute measurement of a swinging pendulum, detection of approaching/receding motion and the Doppler signature extraction of walking/jogging/cycling person. All these measurement values are validated against the standard master instrument readings and theoretical calculations. Finally, the limitations of this system and required near-future research works to enhance its performance are listed.

Anti-stain algorithm of angular displacement based on a single image sensor.

The displacement measuring technique is prone to failure within the industrial environment due to the influence of dust, oil, and other contaminants that stain the equipment. There is urgent demand for new anti-stain techniques. In today's image angular displacement measurement technology, the pixel array is used instead of the traditional photoelectric conversion element; this creates room for anti-stain improvement based on the image processing components. Based on a previous study on image-type angular displacement measurement technology, a single head image-type anti-stain algorithm is proposed in this paper that can remove the interference of small stains and ensure correct measurement value outputs. The influence of the stain on the calibration grating is first assessed based on the principle of image angular displacement measurement technology. An anti-stain algorithm based on the metal grating and multi-line fusion is proposed accordingly. The proposed algorithm is then tested on a circular grating with 38 mm diameter and ${{2}^{N}}\; = \;{256}$2N=256 lines in the circle. The results show that angle measurement output accuracy can be guaranteed when the number of lines covered by the stains is less than half of the coding-bits. This work may provide a technical basis for enhancing stain resistance in high-performance displacement measurement technology.

Reducing Variation of Risk Estimation by Using Importance Sampling

In today's world, risk measurement and risk management are of great importance for various economic reasons. Especially in the crisis periods, the tail risk becomes very important in risk estimation. Many methods have been developed for accurate measurement of risk. The easiest of these methods is the Value at Risk (VaR) method. However, standard VaR methods are not very effective in tail risks. This study aims to demonstrate the usage of delta normal method, historical simulation method, Monte Carlo simulation, and importance sampling to calculate the value at risk and to show which method is more effective by applying them to the S&P index between 1993 and 2003.

A weighting intersection point prediction iteration optimization algorithm used in photogrammetry for port hoisting machinery

As a mature technology, photogrammetry is widely applied in today's engineering measurement field. However, because of the limitation of the port condition, it is impossible to obtain photos that are taken at ideal angles and distances when photogrammetry is used to measure port hoisting machinery, and this leads to invalid measurements with low accuracy data. To solve this problem, a new algorithm is proposed in this work. First, the proposed method introduces redundant measurements through an intersection point prediction algorithm to improve the measurement data’s accuracy. Second, a weighting algorithm based on the lens distortion model is then provided to further improve accuracy. Third, an iterative method is established from the threshold setting method based on the weighting algorithm. Thus, the quality of the final measurement could be controllable. Finally, an experiment is devised for the characteristics of the algorithm and the port condition. The results demonstrate that the method described in this paper significantly improves the accuracy of the measuring results of photogrammetry while photos used for the calculation were taken at unsatisfactory angles and distances caused by the limitation of the port condition.

A Measurement Experimentation Platform at the Internet's Edge

Poor visibility into the network hampers progress in a number of important research areas, from network troubleshooting to Internet topology and performance mapping. This persistent, well-known problem has served as motivation for numerous proposals to build or extend existing Internet measurement platforms by recruiting larger, more diverse vantage points. Capturing the edge of the network, however, remains an elusive goal. We argue that at its root the problem is one of incentives. Today's measurement platforms build on the assumption that the goals of experimenters and those hosting the platform are the same. As much of the Internet growth occurs in residential broadband networks, this assumption no longer holds. We present a measurement experimentation platform that reaches the network edge by explicitly aligning the objectives of the experimenters with those of the users hosting the platform. Dasu—our current prototype—is designed to support both network measurement experimentation and broadband characterization. Dasu has been publicly available since July 2010 and has been installed by over 100 $\,$ 000 users with a heterogeneous set of connections spreading across 2431 autonomous systems (ASs) and 166 countries. We discuss some of the challenges we faced building and using a platform for the Internet's edge, describe its design and implementation, and illustrate the unique perspective its current deployment brings to Internet measurement.

Machine Vision-Based Pilling Assessment: A Review

Pilling is an undesired defect of textile fabrics, consisting of a surface characterized by a number of roughly spherical masses made of entangled fibers. Mainly caused by the abrasion of fabric surface occurring during washing and wearing of fabrics, this defect needs to be accurately controlled and measured by companies working in the textile industry. Pilling measurement is traditionally performed using manual procedures involving visual control of fabric surface by human experts. Since the early nineties, great efforts in developing automatic and non-intrusive methods for pilling measurement have been made all around the world with the final aim of overcoming traditional, visual-based and subjective procedures. Machine Vision proved to be among the best options to perform such defect assessment since it provided increasingly performing measurement equipment and tools, serving the purpose of automatic control. In particular, a relevant number of interesting works have been proposed so far, sharing the idea of helping (or even replacing) traditional measurement methods using image processing-based ones. The present work provides a rational and chronological review of the most relevant methods for pilling measurement proposed so far. This work serves the purposes of 1) understanding whether today's automatic machine vision-based pilling measurement techniques are ready for supplanting traditional pilling measurement and 2) providing textile technology researchers with a bird's eye view of the main methods studied to confront with this problem.

Toward Drilling Automation: On the Necessity of Using Sensors That Relate to Physical Models

Summary Current topside and downhole instrumentation at the wellsite has been developed to manually conduct drilling operations. The emergence of automatic drilling-analysis software shows the limitations of today's measurement capabilities. It is therefore time to analyze the requirements for on-site instrumentation to implement new, efficient drilling-automation technologies. On one hand, drilling is facing more and more difficult conditions with narrow geopressure windows, deepwater, or high-pressure/high-temperature (HP/HT) conditions. On the other hand, unconventional hydrocarbon reserves may require a considerable amount of wells to be profitable. Drilling automation, by means of smart safeguards, automatic safety triggers, managed-pressure drilling (MPD), and ultimately complete or semiautonomous drilling rigs, can provide the solution to safely construct wells in these challenging settings. The common denominator for the vast majority of drilling-automation solutions is the use of physical models of the drilling process in the form of heat-transfer, mechanical, and hydraulic models. By analyzing the requirements of those models for necessary boundary conditions, it is possible to derive which measurements should be made both at surface and downhole to obtain stable and accurate calculations. This analysis also provides a way to estimate the necessary accuracy of the boundary conditions to ensure reaching the target control tolerance. By use of the boundary-condition analysis, it is possible to derive precisely which measurements should be performed and where they should be performed. As a result, a typical organization of sensors that is compatible with the implementation of drilling-automation solutions is derived.

Hybrid Rendering with Scheduling under Uncertainty.

As scientific data of increasing size is generated by today's simulations and measurements, utilizing dedicated server resources to process the visualization pipeline becomes necessary. In a purely server-based approach, requirements on the client-side are minimal as the client only displays results received from the server. However, the client may have a considerable amount of hardware available, which is left idle. Further, the visualization is put at the whim of possibly unreliable server and network conditions. Server load, bandwidth and latency may substantially affect the response time on the client. In this paper, we describe a hybrid method, where visualization workload is assigned to server and client. A capable client can produce images independently. The goal is to determine a workload schedule that enables a synergy between the two sides to provide rendering results to the user as fast as possible. The schedule is determined based on processing and transfer timings obtained at runtime. Our probabilistic scheduler adapts to changing conditions by shifting workload between server and client, and accounts for the performance variability in the dynamic system.

Wideband radio frequency measurements: From instrumentation to sampling theory

Whether listening to broadcast radio or testing developed wireless devices, for civilian or military applications, based on terrestrial or spatial links, a radio frequency (RF) receiver with good measurement capabilities that preserves the received signal information is required. Today's RF measurement receivers with wideband capabilities are split into two groups based on the measurement strategy they adopt. Both groups produce a time domain waveform with both amplitude and phase information that is constructed either from a transformation of its frequency contents or directly from its time-domain samples.

Super Bowl ad likeability: Enduring and emerging predictors

US advertisers love the Super Bowl because it reaches a huge and highly receptive audience. One metric that Super Bowl advertisers watch closely is ad likeability as this is correlated with sales success. Tomkovick, Yelkur, and Christians (2001, Journal of Marketing Communications 7: 89–108) studied ad likeability for Super Bowl ads in the 1990s. In this paper, we replicate and extend their research using USA Today's measurement of Super Bowl ad likeability in the decade of the 2000s as our dependent variable of interest. Our findings on 438 Super Bowl ads show that humor, animals, and product category were enduring predictors of ad likeability. Product information and the presence of children in Super Bowl ads were found to be emerging predictors of ad likeability. Most notably, the amount of product information provided in Super Bowl commercials was inversely related to ad likeability. Implications for advertisers are presented, as are conclusions, study limitations and directions for future research.

Comments on Neil Dorans's NCME Career Award Address:The Contestant Perspective on Taking Tests: Emanations From the Statue Within

Neil Dorans has made a career of advocating for the examinee. He continues to do so in his NCME career award address, providing a thought‐provoking commentary on some current trends in educational measurement that could potentially affect the integrity of test scores. Concerns expressed in the address call attention to a conundrum that faces today's measurement practitioners, namely, that technology‐driven assessment, while very appealing, is prone to less controlled conditions of measurement. The commentary given here focuses on the message and implications of Neil Dorans's career award address. It discusses some specific points of note, elaborates on the conundrum, gives a view of the future, and makes a call for a dialogue among test developers and measurement practitioners on how to compensate for the loss in controlled conditions of measurement associated with the use of technology.

Optimal Perturbations for the Identification of Stochastic Reaction Dynamics

Identification of stochastic reaction dynamics inside the cell is hampered by the low-dimensional readouts available with today's measurement technologies. Moreover, such processes are poorly excited by standard experimental protocols, making identification even more ill-posed. Recent technological advances provide means to design and apply complex extra-cellular stimuli. Based on an information-theoretic setting we present novel Monte Carlo sampling techniques to determine optimal temporal excitation profiles for such stochastic processes. We give a new result for the controlled birth-death process and provide a proof of principle by considering a simple model of regulated gene expression.

Quantification of Drillstring-Integrity-Failure Risk Using Real-Time Vibration Measurements

Summary Vibration measurements have traditionally targeted the improvement of downhole-tool reliability. This paper targets the effects of vibration on the complete drillstring. Failures associated with drillstring vibration continue to happen despite the sophistication of today's measurements. These failures represent a very significant amount of lost time, which we target to improve. The industry has a very limited database for evaluating indices to manage or quantify risks of vibration to the complete drillstring. This fact makes the use of the methods in the field heavily depend on the past experience of the drillers and on the rig types. Operators are faced with an unknown quantification of the risk severity when attempting to mitigate vibration. By quantifying the risk, this work demonstrates how the prevention of incidents can be achieved. These incidents include but are not limited to, twistoffs, backoffs, and bottomhole-assembly (BHA) component failures. The proposed solution is based on real-time measurements of drillstring vibration to estimate an ongoing drillstring-integrity risk, which is used as a guideline to improve decisions while drilling the well. This solution has been developed through use of advanced vibration sensors to discriminate between different types of vibration. This was critical to estimating realistic cumulative damage to the drillstring, which is highly dependent on the type of vibration suffered by the assembly and the onset of vibration-mode coupling. This paper shows that approximately 80% of drillstring-integrity failures analyzed can be identified and prevented through use of the proposed risk-quantification solution. This result has been obtained despite unknown fatigue or wear of drillstring components before a run, and vibration sensors were located at a single position in the drillstring. This indicates that the primary contributor to drillstring failures is the drilling conditions for any given run.

Integrated approach to drilling dynamics challenges in the Browse Basin

The use of drilling dynamics measurements has traditionally focused on improving downhole tool reliability. This, however, is a limited scope and in recognition of this, drilling dynamics is approached as a process that starts early in the planning stage of a project and targets the performance of the complete drillstring. Failures or inefficiencies associated with drillstring dynamics continue to occur in spite of the sophistication of today's measurements, particularly in exploratory projects that extend the present drilling envelope. Several methodologies were integrated to address the challenges of drilling dynamics and overcome frequent failures observed on the initial exploratory work on the Browse Basin. A steep learning curve was achieved by accelerating the improvement cycle using advanced modelling techniques and obtaining optimum designs without the need of multiple trial and error cycles. This extended abstract also describes the use of real-time dynamics measurements to quantify the risks related to drillstring vibration, a critical need for the drilling environment observed in the basin that ties planning work into the execution stage. Finally, the project cycle is closed with the evaluation of drilling performance using data-handling tools that allow the effective use of large amounts of drilling data generated during the execution and feedback into a new planning cycle. The extended abstract describes the implementation of drilling dynamics modelling to assist performance improvement, but more importantly, the methodology to incorporate it into a real-time decision-making process that maximises the value of technology implementation.

Cosmic string constraints from WMAP and the South Pole Telescope data

The predictions of the inflationary $\ensuremath{\Lambda}\mathrm{CDM}$ paradigm match today's high-precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy extremely well. The same data put tight limits on other sources of anisotropy. Cosmic strings are a particularly interesting alternate source to constrain. Strings are topological defects, remnants of inflationary-era physics that persist after the big bang. They are formed in a variety of models of inflation, including string theory models such as brane inflation. We assume a ``Nambu-Goto'' model for strings, approximated by a collection of unconnected segments with zero-width, and show that measurements of temperature anisotropy by the South Pole Telescope break a parameter degeneracy in the WMAP data, permitting us to place a strong upper limit on the possible string contribution to the CMB anisotropy: the power sourced by zero-width strings must be $<1.75%$ (95% CL) of the total or the string tension $G\ensuremath{\mu}<1.7\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}7}$. These limits imply that the best hope for detecting strings in the CMB will come from B-mode polarization measurements at arcminute scales rather than the degree scale measurements pursued for gravitational wave detection.