137 research outputs found
Design for manufacture: a methodology to evaluate an aircraft design in order to ensure its manufacturability
No full textThe aim of the research is to develop a methodological analysis of problems in the
area of design for manufacture in low volume high complex products found in the
writer’s workplace. The majority of research in this area has been around high
volume products, such as automotive products and little consideration has been given
to designing complex products from industries like aircraft manufacture.
This research evaluates design for manufacture (DFM) information in the design lifecycle
(DLC). The author’s research introduces a unique DLC process, one which
structures decisions and data transfer through the DLC. The research also looks at
current academic work and introduces industrial issues present in today’s
environment.
It is crucial to the design of a product to select the appropriate design environment in
which it operates, as it will structure the way the engineering activities are established
and developed. It is also important for the organisation to decide on the environment
in which the design definition should evolve. Therefore the research reviews the
different design definition environments, these were carefully analysed by the author.
The evaluation of a design to ensure its manufacturability is a major element in the
research, a review of previous work has highlighted that within current publications
there has been little work in this area. The research has developed a methodology to
evaluate the robustness of a design. It not only looks at the engineering design but
also evaluates its adherence to customer requirements and the effect on cost for the
overall product life-cycle. It also considers industrial needs for a reduction in the
length of design life-cycle, while ensuring a reduction in manufacturing costs. There
are two main contributors to this, firstly the use of key characteristics and secondly,
the ability to control the manufacturability of a design. The author has developed a
novel software tool enabling efficient evaluation of a design.
The author discusses his contribution to existing knowledge in three main areas of the
research. The most significant being the introduction of a tool to evaluate a design
early in the design life-cycle to ensure manufacturability. To validate the research the
author introduces the reader to three experimental phases. He validates his
methodology by analysing the design of various aircraft assemblies discussing his
findings of how manufacturable the designs are. This leads to the conclusion that the
author’s research adds substantial knowledge to the area of design for manufacture
Development of Design for Manufacturing Assembly (DFMA) Software in Bahasa Melayu
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to present a new DFMA software that is created in Bahasa Melayu. The software was developed to assist in teaching the subject Design for Manufacture and Assembly for undergraduate students. The software is created using Visual Basic and MySQL. The software is based on Boothroyd Dewhurst DFMA methodology. Currently, teaching this subject uses manual procedure which is time consuming but it helps to strengthen the foundation of Boothroyd Dewhurst method. The software saves up to 97% of the time needed for manual procedure. This software is developed in
Bahasa Melayu to differentiate it from the official Boothroyd Dewhurst software and any other software related. Even though the contents are in Malay, there are also English
translation as most terms are familiar in English. Since the university had yet to obtain Boothroyd Dewhurst software, the
author refer its content with the promo version of the original Boothroyd Dewhurst software that was supplied by vendors
Keep on Scrapping: The Salvage Drives of World War II
Get PDFDuring World War II Americans were called upon repeatedly to salvage raw materials for the war effort, often during brief, highly publicized "drives." Stories about the salvage drives are a staple in both popular and scholarly histories of the home front, and in film documentaries, because the drives appear to demonstrate the potential importance of non-economic motives such as patriotism and community spirit. Here I reexamine economic effects of five drives: aluminum, silk, cooking fat, and the two most important, iron and steel, and rubber. The drives, it turns out, had a more limited impact on the economy than might be imagined from some of the enthusiastic portrayals in the popular and historical literatures. At most, the drives increased scrap collections by relatively small margins above what would have been collected during a prosperous peacetime period. The impact of economic incentives on the supply of scrap materials, and the impact of the maneuvering of special interests for advantage, moreover, can be seen at every turn. If the drives were important it was through their impact on civilian morale.
The natural history of the order Cetacea, and the oceanic inhabitants of the Arctic regions
No full textSupplementary Material: Quantification of the effect of in-utero events on lifetime resilience in dairy cows
No full textSupplementary material for "Quantification of the effect of in-utero events on lifetime resilience in dairy cows
Agencies of Slavery: The Exploitation of Migrant Workers by Recruitment Agencies
Get PDFThis paper has been led by the desire to reinstate the concept of real consent back into the discourse on migration and the recruitment process. An examination of the concept of recruitment for employ ment and of recruitment agencies will reveal the important role such intermediaries play in the international migration process. This will be followed by a brief description of both the international and national regulations presently governing recruitment agencies. The experience of Ireland and its recent unique encounters with international migration for employment will be used as a case study to demonstrate the types of obstacles that prevent real consensual recruitment for employment. The lack of regulation at an international and national level causes these obstacles. It is this author\u27s opinion that certain measures are more effective than international action in this regard due to the inevitable flexibility and compromise inherent in international law. It is only when such obstacles are removed that real consent can finally be reinstated back into the lives of those migrating for employment, allowing the development of an open, transparent, and exploitation free recruitment process
Integrating Aboriginal values into strategic-level forest planning on the John Prince Research Forest, Central Interior, British Columbia.
Get PDFNo abstract available.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b122335
Developing reference conditions for ecological restoration of forests in sub-boreal British Columbia.
Get PDFNo abstract available.The original print copy of this thesis may be available here: http://wizard.unbc.ca/record=b123137
Hippocampal activation for autobiographical memories over the entire lifetime in healthy aged subjects: An fMRI study
Get PDFInternational audienceWe used functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine the cerebral structures required during the recollection of episodic autobiographical memories according to 5 time periods covering the whole lifespan to test the 2 concurring models of memory consolidation, which propose either a temporary (standard model) or a permanent (multiple-trace model) role of the hippocampus in episodic memory retrieval. The experimental paradigm was specially designed to engage subjects (67.17 +/- 5.22 years old) in the retrieval of episodic autobiographical memories, whatever the time period, from personally relevant cues selected by questioning a family member. Moreover, the nature of the memories was checked at debriefing by means of behavioral measures to control the degree of episodicity. Behavioral data showed that recollected memories were characterized by specificity and details whatever their remoteness. Main neuroimaging data (Statistical Parametric Mapping 99) revealed the activation of a network including the left superior frontal gyri, bilateral precuneus/posterior cingulate and lingual gyri, left angular gyrus, and left hippocampus, although the subtraction analyses detected subtle differences between certain time periods. Small volume correction centered on the hippocampus detected left hippocampal activation for all time periods and additional right hippocampal activation for the intermediate periods. Further confirmation was provided by using a 3-way analysis of variance on blood oxygen level-dependent values, which revealed hippocampal activation whatever the time interval. The present data challenge the standard model of memory consolidation and support the multiple-trace model, instead. The comparison with previous literature stresses the idea that a bilateral involvement of the hippocampus characterizes rich episodic autobiographical memory recollection
Mobile recommendation agents making online use of visual attention information at the point of sale
Get PDFPfeiffer T, Pfeiffer J, Meißner M. Mobile recommendation agents making online use of visual attention information at the point of sale. In: Davis F, Riedl R, Jan vom B, Léger P-M, Randolph A, eds. Proceedings of the Gmunden Retreat on NeuroIS 2013. 2013: 3-3.We aim to utilize online information about visual attention for developing mobile recommendation agents (RAs) for use at the point of sale. Up to now, most RAs are focussed exclusively at personalization in an e-commerce setting. Very little is known, however, about mobile RAs that offer information and assistance at the point of sale based on individual-level feature based preference models (Murray and Häubl 2009). Current attempts provide information about products at the point of sale by manually scanning barcodes or using RFID (Kowatsch et al. 2011, Heijden 2005), e.g. using specific apps for smartphones. We argue that an online access to the current visual attention of the user offers a much larger potential. Integrating mobile eye tracking into ordinary glasses would yield a direct benefit of applying neuroscience methods in the user’s everyday life. First, learning from consumers’ attentional processes over time and adapting recommendations based on this learning allows us to provide very accurate and relevant recommendations, potentially increasing the perceived usefulness. Second, our proposed system needs little explicit user input (no scanning or navigation on screen) making it easy to use. Thus, instead of learning from click behaviour and past customer ratings, as it is the case in the e-commerce setting, the mobile RA learns from eye movements by participating online in every day decision processes. We argue that mobile RAs should be built based on current research in human judgment and decision making (Murray et al. 2010). In our project, we therefore follow a two-step approach: In the empirical basic research stream, we aim to understand the user’s interaction with the product shelf: the actions and patterns of user’s behaviour (eye movements, gestures, approaching a product closer) and their correspondence to the user’s informational needs. In the empirical system development stream, we create prototypes of mobile RAs and test experimentally the factors that influence the user’s adoption. For example, we suggest that a user’s involvement in the process, such as a need for exact nutritional information or for assistance (e.g., reading support for elderly) will influence the user’s intention to use such as system. The experiments are conducted both in our immersive virtual reality supermarket presented in a CAVE, where we can also easily display information to the user and track the eye movement in great accuracy, as well as in real-world supermarkets (see Figure 1), so that the findings can be better generalized to natural decision situations (Gidlöf et al. 2013). In a first pilot study with five randomly chosen participants in a supermarket, we evaluated which sort of mobile RAs consumers favour in order to get a first impression of the user’s acceptance of the technology. Figure 1 shows an excerpt of one consumer’s eye movements during a decision process. First results show long eye cascades and short fixations on many products in situations where users are uncertain and in need for support. Furthermore, we find a surprising acceptance of the technology itself throughout all ages (23 – 61 years). At the same time, consumers express serious fear of being manipulated by such a technology. For that reason, they strongly prefer the information to be provided by trusted third party or shared with family members and friends (see also Murray and Häubl 2009). Our pilot will be followed by a larger field experiment in March in order to learn more about factors that influence the user’s acceptance as well as the eye movement patterns that reflect typical phases of decision processes and indicate the need for support by a RA
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