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Multi-robot systems are increasingly deployed to provide services and accomplish missions whose complexity or cost is too high for a single robot to achieve on its own. Although multi-robot systems offer increased reliability via redundancy and enable the execution of more challenging missions, engineering these systems is very complex. This complexity affects not only the architecture modelling of the robotic team but also the modelling and analysis of the collaborative intelligence enabling the team to complete its mission. Existing approaches for the development of multi-robot applications do not provide a systematic mechanism for capturing these aspects and assessing the robustness of multi-robot systems. We address this gap by introducing ATLAS, a novel model-driven approach supporting the systematic design space exploration and robustness analysis of multi-robot systems in simulation. The ATLAS domain-specific language enables modelling the architecture of the robotic team and its mission and facilitates the specification of the team's intelligence. We evaluate ATLAS and demonstrate its effectiveness in three simulated case studies: a healthcare Turtlebot-based mission and two unmanned underwater vehicle missions developed using the Gazebo/ROS and MOOS-IvP robotic platforms, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. C. Penney, Inc., with headquarters in Plano, Texas, operates 872 department stores in 49 states and Puerto Rico. It sells family apparel and footwear, accessories, fine and fashion jewelry, beauty products, home furnishings, appliances, mattresses, and furniture as well as providing services, including salon, optical, portrait photography, and custom decorating. The company also sells its products through its website jcpenney.com utilizing its stores as fulfillment centers. It currently has 98,000 full-time employees. In the last seven years J.C. Penney has been struggling to redefine itself. Facing declining sales in 2011, it hired Ron Johnson as CEO to revitalize the company, but instead of attracting new customers, his strategies alienated its core customers and resulted in the loss of $5 billion in revenue and a loss of $1 billion in less than two years. In 2013, the Board of Directors fired Johnson and reinstated the previous CEO, Mike Ullman. His role was to stabilize the company until a new CEO could be hired. In 2015, Marvin Ellison, a former Home Depot executive, was hired and initiated his own strategies until leaving in the spring of 2018 to become CEO of Lowe's. Now, Jill Soltau, former CEO of JOANN stores, has been hired as the new CEO. This case gives students the opportunity to evaluate the company's turnaround strategies as it struggles to survive in a challenging retail environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies were conducted to investigate the Inventory of Therapist Work With Client Assets and Strengths (IT-WAS), a new measure constructed to assess the importance therapists place on incorporating strength-based approaches in their therapeutic work. In the first study, a combined sample (N = 225), comprising therapists in independent practice, graduate students and faculty in counseling-related fields, and counseling center staff at a large mid-Atlantic university was gathered to conduct an exploratory factor analysis. Results yielded three factors (Theory of Intervention, Assessment of Strengths, and Supporting Progress). The data also provided evidence for the IT-WAS’s internal consistency and validity, the latter being supported by correlations with measures of theoretically relevant constructs. In the second study, data from 31 counseling and clinical doctoral students provided evidence for the IT-WAS’s test–retest reliability over a 2-week period. Implications for clinical training and practice are discussed, and areas of future research are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of multiple, distributed nodes each with limited resources. With their strict resource constraints and application-specific characteristics, WSNs contain many challenging tradeoffs. This paper proposes a bioinspired load balancing approach, based on pheromone signalling mechanisms, to solve the tradeoff between service availability and energy consumption. We explore the performance consequences of the pheromone-based load balancing approach using (1) a system-level simulator, (2) deployment of real sensor testbeds to provide a competitive analysis of these evaluation methodologies. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with different scenario parameters and the required performance evaluation techniques are investigated on case studies based on sound sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, banks have lent money to those that have money because they are credit worthy. Under this approach, the rich get more credit to make even more money. The Microcredit approach is an attempt to get money into the hands of the poor by extending credit to the "have-nots". Microloans to the poor have, for the most part, been limited to the third world countries. This paper suggests that a need exists in the United States for such an approach. By comparing the financial success of the Microcredit program of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh to traditional banks in the United States, an economic justification can be made for making micro loans to the poor in America. The paper further suggests how this might be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]