1,720,972 research outputs found
Designing support for manufacturing SMEs approaching ecodesign and cleaner production - Learning from UK survey results
No full textProponents of ecodesign and cleaner production have had mixed success in penetrating small and medium sized manufacturing companies in the UK. Existing schemes, such as Envirowise and EnviroINNOVATE in the West Midlands, typically rely on external funding and leave a gap in provision for deeper intervention in smaller companies. Design criteria for effective support of these smaller manufacturers are presented based on an understanding of drivers, barriers and enablers for cleaner manufacturing from four surveys of UK SMEs. This contributes to strategies for enhancing eco-product innovation and cleaner production in SMEs; part of an ongoing project at Warwick Manufacturing Group.</p
Development of a management tool for assessing environmental performance in SMEs' design and production
No full textSmall and medium sized manufacturers offer opportunities in reducing life cycle impacts, as green demand cascades through supply chains, and challenges due to their lack of environmental management and life cycle engineering skills. This research explored existing management tools to meet manufacturing SMEs reported need for self assessment. Drawing on the principles of environmental performance evaluation, this paper presents the development and application of a spreadsheet tool for diagnosing environmental performance in SMEs' product design and production and relates it to the tools used recently in the UK by Perform and Benchmark Index and the ecoBiz assessment used in Australia.</p
Engineering design - does AI change the path of evolution in methods & teaching?
No full textEngineering design tools are evolving, where AI can enhance speed and quality. Which of the current and future developments will change the teaching of engineering design? Text-to-image tools appear to be a precursor to text-to-design tools which will offer sensible-looking outputs in areas where many design precedents enable interpolation. However, where novelty is the goal, especially in new design spaces, human understanding of multivariate decisions, including where empathy for welfare and delight are considerations, is hard to express as merit functions for machines to learn. AI is already improving productivity in collating information relevant to discovering and defining performance requirements, and information on design precedents and available supplies. It can also improve the validity of simulation during the creation and refinement of design solutions and automate the application of engineering drawing language to a final design specification. We suggest engineering students' future selves will value their, i) learning to use human interaction to characterise performance requirements, ii) gaining knowledge as to how (well) and why existing engineering designs work, iii) practicing sketching as a means to visually communicate design ideas, iv) using CAD to experiment with state of the art modelling and simulation functionality while creating their own system designs, v) developing proficiency in engineering drawing language, and, vi) learning to make, break and tinker in workshops and to explore the potential & limitations of production. A familiar path, in which to add AI experiments.</p
Review: The role of business in realising sustainable consumption and production
No full textThis chapter discusses the contribution of business to sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and the way in which this may be advanced through recognising the drivers and the experience of current approaches. It suggests opportunities for innovation and business models contributing to SCP.</p
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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