Technology for designing innovative processes for creating products and services of a network enterprise using an i4.0 knowledge-based system

The creation of network enterprises based on the digital technologies of the Industrie 4.0 (the 4th Industrial Revolution, i4.0) opens broad opportunities for increasing production flexibility, customer focus and continuous innovation in products and services provided. At the same time, new opportunities necessitate the development of new methods and technologies for designing innovative processes in the context of digital i4.0 platforms, all of which highlights the relevance of the presented research topic. This work aims to define technologies for designing innovative processes to create products and services using i4.0 systems which are based on multi-agent interaction of asset administration shells (AAS), displaying digital twins of product components, and the use of ontological and cognitive methods for forming and justifying design decisions. The work presented here uses the Domain-Driven Design approach, an architectural framework for building i4.0 systems, methods of ontological engineering, quality function deployment (QFD), analysis of the types and consequences of potential inconsistencies (FMEA) and processing of fuzzy sets. The paper proposes principles for identifying bounded contexts of the domain under the design activities for the stages of the life cycle and products’ subsystems (components). For bounded contexts of the domain, it is envisaged to create AAS of i4.0 systems, with the help of which the innovative process is supported and the multi-agent interaction of its participants is carried out. As cognitive tools for making design decisions, we proposed to use services for assessing the importance of the determined quality characteristics of products and minimizing deviations of the proposed solutions from the formed functional and non-functional requirements. The methods of ontological engineering and data modelling allow us to dynamically develop an innovative project and support various versions of the project in the design process. Application of the proposed technology for designing innovative processes to create products and services at network enterprises using i4.0 systems will improve the quality of design decisions, increase the dynamism and continuous design of innovative projects.

A Distributed Hierarchical Control Framework for Economic Dispatch and Frequency Regulation of Autonomous AC Microgrids

Motivated by the single point of failure and other drawbacks of the conventional centralized hierarchical control strategy, in this paper, a fully distributed hierarchical control framework is formulated for autonomous AC microgrids. The proposed control strategy operates with a distinct three-layer structure, where: a conventional droop control is adopted at the primary layer; a distributed leaderless consensus-based control is adopted at the secondary layer for active power and, hence, frequency regulation of distributed generating units (DGUs); and the tertiary layer is also based on the distributed leaderless consensus-based control for the optimal power dispatch. Under the proposed strategy, the three constituent control layers work in a coordinated manner. Not only is the load dispatched economically with a negligible power mismatch, but also the frequencies of all the DGUs are regulated to the reference value. However, the frequency regulation is achieved without requiring any central leader agent that has been reported in the contemporary distributed control articles. As compared to the conventional centralized hierarchical control, the proposed strategy only needs local inter-agent interaction with a sparse communication network; thus, it is fully distributed. The formulated strategy is tested under load perturbations, on an autonomous AC microgrid testbed comprising both low-inertia-type (inverter-interfaced) and high-inertia (rotating)-type DGUs with heterogeneous dynamics, and found to successfully meet its targets. Furthermore, it can offer the plug-and-play operation for the DGUs. Theoretical analysis and substantial simulation results, performed in the MATLAB/Simulink environment, are provided to validate the feasibility of the proposed control framework.

MicroRNAs Encoded by Virus and Small RNAs Encoded by Bacteria Associated with Oncogenic Processes

Cancer is a deadly disease and, globally, represents the second leading cause of death in the world. Although it is a disease where several factors can help its development, virus induced infections have been associated with different types of neoplasms. However, in bacterial infections, their participation is not known for certain. Among the proposed approaches to oncogenesis risks in different infections are microRNAs (miRNAs). These are small molecules composed of RNA with a length of 22 nucleotides capable of regulating gene expression by directing protein complexes that suppress the untranslated region of mRNA. These miRNAs and other recently described, such as small RNAs (sRNAs), are deregulated in the development of cancer, becoming promising biomarkers. Thus, resulting in a study possibility, searching for new tools with diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to multiple oncological diseases, as miRNAs and sRNAs are main players of gene expression and host–infectious agent interaction. Moreover, sRNAs with limited complementarity are similar to eukaryotic miRNAs in their ability to modulate the activity and stability of multiple mRNAs. Here, we will describe the regulatory RNAs from viruses that have been associated with cancer and how sRNAs in bacteria can be related to this disease.

Like principal, like agent? Managerial preferences in employee-owned firms

The relationship between firms’ owners and managers is a quintessential example of costly principal–agent interaction. Optimal design of monetary incentives and supervision mechanisms are the two traditional ways of reducing agency costs in this relationship. In this paper, we show evidence which is consistent with a third mechanism: firms have managers whose economic preferences are aligned with owners' interests. We uncover differences in economic preferences between managers employed in firms controlled by two distinct classes of ‘patrons’: employee-owned firms (worker cooperatives) and conventional investor-owned firms. In a high-stakes lab-in-the-field experiment, we find that co-op managers are less risk-loving and more altruistic than their conventional counterparts. We do not observe differences between the two groups in terms of time preferences, reciprocity, and trust. Our findings are consistent with existing evidence on worker cooperatives, such as their tendency to self-select into less risky industries and their compressed compensation structures.

Enabling Game-Theoretical Analysis of Social Rules

In the field of normative multiagent systems, the relationship between a game structure and its underpinning agent interaction rules is hardly ever addressed in a systematic manner. In this work, we introduce the Action Situation Language (ASL), inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework, to bridge the gap between games and rules. The ASL provides a syntax for the description of agent interactions, and is complemented by an engine that automatically provides semantics for them as extensive-form games. The resulting games can then be analysed using standard game-theoretical solution concepts, hence allowing any community of agents to automatically perform what-if analysis of potential new interaction rules.