Development of an Integrated Tool for Small-Scale Maize Farming in Uganda

About 62% of the maize produced in developing countries is cultivated manually owing to limited access to appropriate technology. Available technologies perform a single operation, necessitating farmers to buy multiple implements, which is expensive. In this study, an ox-drawn tool integrating a plough, planter and cultivator for small-scale maize farming was developed and its performance evaluated. Planting and cultivating units were designed and fabricated for assembly onto an existing standard ox-plough beam. The integrated tool was tested in the field to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of cultivation and planting of maize. Results showed that the planting unit had an average seed rate of 35.4 kg/ha with a seed damage of 4% and an effective field capacity of 0.15 ha/h at a field efficiency of 87.3%. The cultivating unit had an effective field capacity of 0.1 ha/h and a weeding efficiency of 86%. The efficiency, effectiveness and reliability for field operations are superior to manual operations currently used by farmers and are comparable to single-unit prototypes developed in other countries. This demonstrates the technical feasibility of integrating planting and cultivation units onto an existing mould board plough instead of buying multiple tools.

Research and design on a kind of CASE environment architectural style based on ToolBus

Because CASE (computer aided software engineering) environment is a kind of complex system software, its software architecture is very important. From the viewpoint of software architecture, this paper first presents TBus architectural style, which is a kind of CASE environment architectural style based on ToolBus, then describes the architectural model and system's behavior in formal method, researches and analyzes the corresponding tool structural model. Last the paper implements a TBus architectural instance-LambdaBridge, which proves the validity of ToolBus and TBus architectural styles.

Combination of Loosely and Compactly Coupled Integrations of CAD Tools and Its Applications In SAW D

A combination of the loosely and compactly coupled integrations of CAD tools and its applications in the design and fabrication of surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices are proposed in this paper. Three core modules are developed as design and mask pattern verification module,database module, and device characteristics simulation module. All the operations are controlled under Microsoft Windows GUI interface. This leads to a reduced design and fabrication cycle, workload and cost. With the knowledge-based library for intelligent design and Lotus Notes database for distributed and networked engineering database management (EDM) and effective control of documents, a new enterprise-leveled, computer-integrated design and manufacturing system (CIDMS)can be established for monolithic and hybrid device design (not only confined to SAW device).

NEW INSIGHTS INTO PRINCIPLES FOR DESIGNING ARCHITECTURE OF ENVIRONMENT SYSTEM FOR TOOL INTEGRATION ─IN THE CASE OF PRODUCTION MACHINES DESIGN

CAD/CAM integration is broadly viewed as tool integration. From this point of view, both CAD/CAM software and hardware are considered as tools. A great advantage of this view point is that a very flexible paradigm is introduced, in which the CAD/CAM system for a particular industrial application can be customized and built by selecting a set of tools. This paper intends to shed some lights on the principles for designing the architecture of such a tool integration environment. Although such an environment is no more than a computer program sys. tem itself, its particular characteristics arising from its unique role, i.e., tool integration, make the discussion on the designing of an environment architecture nontrivial. The paper externalizes the author's experiences in implementing an tool integration environment for production machines.In particular, the discussion renders some insights into the concepts such as tool integration models, various views of an environment architecture, classification of data into tool-data and environment data, and employment of the information relativity principle in making an environment architecture flexible. The paper will take production machines design as a target application that an environment system is developed for, owing to its extreme complexity and thus make sense of coverage of other engineering applications.

Strategic Planning for Avoidance of Catastrophic Flood Consequences

The present study is to deal with the strategic planning in avoidance of all catastrophic consequences of major flood in West Attica region in 2017 and is divided into three main sections.The first one comprises the study of the internal and external environment of the Regional Unit of West Attica with analysis of resources,procedures,culture that governs the internal environment,external bodies and mapping through PESTEL(Political,Economic,Socio-Cultural and Technological)analysis as components of the external environment.The second section comprises the vision and mission of this strategic plan and specializes in reporting and analyzing the strategic objectives as well as the actions that characterize them in order to complete the mission that has been set and to achieve the vision that has been planned.The last section focuses on the feasibility of the above proposals formulated in the midst of actions and strategic objectives with the help of SWOT(Strength,Weakness,Opportunity,and Threat)analysis and concludes with a proposal for the implementation of strategic planning with the implementation of the Integrated Spatial Investment tool.

THE TRACE IDENTITY, A POWERFUL TOOL FOR CONSTRUCTING THE HAMILTONIAN STRUCTURE OF INTEGRABLE SYSTEMS (Ⅱ)

An isospectral problem with four potentials is discussed. The corresponding hierarchy of nonlinearevolution equations is derived. It is shown that the AKNS, Levi, D-AKNS hierarchies and a new oneare reductions of the above hierarchy. In each case the relevant Hamiltonian form is established bymaking use of the trase identity.