No abstract

With the application of Internet of Things and services to manufacturing, the fourth stage of industrialization, referred to as Industrie 4.0, is believed to be approaching. For Industrie 4.0 to come true, it is essential to implement the horizontal integration of inter-corporation value network, the end-to-end integration of engineering value chain, and the vertical integration of factory inside. In this paper, we focus on the vertical integration to implement flexible and reconfigurable smart factory. We first propose a brief framework that incorporates industrial wireless networks, cloud, and fixed or mobile terminals with smart artifacts such as machines, products, and conveyors. Then, we elaborate the operational mechanism from the perspective of control engineering, that is, the smart artifacts form a self-organized system which is assisted with the feedback and coordination blocks that are implemented on the cloud and based on the big data analytics. In addition, we outline the main technical features and beneficial outcomes and present a detailed design scheme. We conclude that the smart factory of Industrie 4.0 is achievable by extensively applying the existing enabling technologies while actively coping with the technical challenges.

The proliferation of cyber-physical systems introduces the fourth stage of industrialization, commonly known as Industry 4.0. The vertical integration of various components inside a factory to implement a flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing system, i.e., smart factory, is one of the key features of Industry 4.0. In this paper, we present a smart factory framework that incorporates industrial network, cloud, and supervisory control terminals with smart shop-floor objects such as machines, conveyers, and products. Then, we provide a classification of the smart objects into various types of agents and define a coordinator in the cloud. The autonomous decision and distributed cooperation between agents lead to high flexibility. Moreover, this kind of self-organized system leverages the feedback and coordination by the central coordinator in order to achieve high efficiency. Thus, the smart factory is characterized by a self-organized multi-agent system assisted with big data based feedback and coordination. Based on this model, we propose an intelligent negotiation mechanism for agents to cooperate with each other. Furthermore, the study illustrates that complementary strategies can be designed to prevent deadlocks by improving the agents' decision making and the coordinator's behavior. The simulation results assess the effectiveness of the proposed negotiation mechanism and deadlock prevention strategies.

In a plant cell, a subset of actin filaments function as a scaffold that positions the endomembrane system and acts as a substrate on which organelle motility occurs. Other actin filament arrays appear to be more dynamic and reorganize in response to growth signals and external cues. The distorted group of trichome morphology mutants provides powerful genetic tools to study the control of actin filament nucleation in the context of morphogenesis. In this article, we report that DISTORTED3 (DIS3) encodes a plant-specific SCAR/WAVE homolog. Null alleles of DIS3, like those of other Arabidopsis thaliana WAVE and Actin-Related Protein (ARP) 2/3 subunit genes, cause trichome distortion, defects in cell–cell adhesion, and reduced hypocotyl growth in etiolated seedlings. DIS3 efficiently activates the actin filament nucleation and branching activity of vertebrate Arp2/3 and functions within a WAVE-ARP2/3 pathway in vivo. DIS3 may assemble into a WAVE complex via a physical interaction with a highly diverged Arabidopsis Abi-1–like bridging protein. These results demonstrate the utility of the Arabidopsis trichome system to understand how the WAVE and ARP2/3 complexes translate signaling inputs into a coordinated morphogenetic response

The exocyst complex regulates the last steps of exocytosis, which is essential to organisms across kingdoms. In humans, its dysfunction is correlated with several significant diseases, such as diabetes and cancer progression. Investigation of the dynamic regulation of the evolutionarily conserved exocyst-related processes using mutants in genetically tractable organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana is limited by the lethality or the severity of phenotypes. We discovered that the small molecule Endosidin2 (ES2) binds to the EXO70 (exocyst component of 70 kDa) subunit of the exocyst complex, resulting in inhibition of exocytosis and endosomal recycling in both plant and human cells and enhancement of plant vacuolar trafficking. An EXO70 protein with a C-terminal truncation results in dominant ES2 resistance, uncovering possible distinct regulatory roles for the N terminus of the protein. This study not only provides a valuable tool in studying exocytosis regulation but also offers a potentially new target for drugs aimed at addressing human disease.T he EXO70 (exocyst component of 70 kDa) protein is a component of the evolutionarily conserved octameric exocyst complex that tethers post-Golgi vesicles to the plasma membrane before SNARE-mediated membrane fusion (1). As an important component of the exocyst complex that mediates exocytosis, EXO70 regulates, for example, neurite outgrowth, epithelial cell polarity establishment, cell motility, and cell morphogenesis in animal cells (2-6). In plants, EXO70 proteins participate in polarized pollen tube growth, root hair growth, deposition of cell wall material, cell plate initiation and maturation, defense, and autophagy (7-12). In humans, EXO70 mediates the trafficking of the glucose transporter Glut4 to the plasma membrane that is stimulated by insulin and involved in the development of diabetes (13). A specific isoform of human EXO70 is also involved in cancer cell invasion (13-15). Endosidin2 (ES2) was identified from a plantbased chemical screen as an inhibitor of trafficking. We demonstrate that the target of ES2 is the EXO70 subunit of the exocyst and that ES2 is active in plants and mammalian systems. Significantly, no inhibitor of the exocyst complex has been reported, yet such compounds could be important for understanding the basic mechanisms of exocyst-mediated processes, for modifying secretion in biotechnological applications, and for the development of potential new drugs with higher affinity and more potent activity to control exocyst-related diseases. Results ES2 InhibitsTrafficking to the Plasma Membrane. ES2 is a previously identified plant endomembrane trafficking disruptor (Fig. 1A) that inhibits polarized growth of pollen tubes in a dose-dependent manner (Fig. S1 A and B) (16). Arabidopsis seedlings grown on media containing ES2 have shorter roots and fewer and shorter root hairs and are less sensitive to gravity stimulation (Fig. S1 C-G). ES2 disrupted the trafficking of proteins that are actively recycled between the plasma membrane and endosome...