Why do we readily dispose of some things, whereas we keep and maintain others for years, despite their obvious wear and tear? Can a greater understanding of aesthetic value lead to a more strategic and sustainable approach to product design? Aesthetic Sustainability: Product Design and Sustainable Usage offers guidelines for ways to reduce, rethink, and reform consumption. Its focus on aesthetics adds a new dimension to the creation, as well as the consumption, of sustainable products. The chapters offer innovative ways of working with expressional durability in the design process. Aesthetic Sustainability: Product Design and Sustainable Usage is related to emotional durability in the sense that the focus is on the psychological and sensuous bond between subject and object. But the subject-object connection is based on more than emotions: aesthetically sustainable objects continuously add nourishment to human life. This book explores the difference between sentimental value and aesthetic value, and it offers suggestions for operational approaches that can be implemented in the design process to increase aesthetic sustainability. This book also offers a thorough presentation of aesthetics, focusing on the correlation between the philosophical approach to the aesthetic experience and the durable design experience. The book is of interest to students and scholars working in the fields of design, arts, the humanities and social sciences; additionally, it will speak to designers and other professionals with an interest in sustainability and aesthetic value.

In recent years, both Networks-on-Chip, as an architectural solution for high-speed interconnect, and power consumption, as a key design constraint, have continued to gain interest in the design and research communities. This book offers a single-source reference to some of the most important design techniques proposed in the context of low-power design for networks-on-chip architectures.

Geometric tolerances are changing the way we design and manufacture industrial products. Geometric Tolerances covers their impact on the world of design and production, highlighting new perspectives, possibilities, current issues and future challenges. The topics covered are designed to be relevant to readers from a variety of backgrounds, ranging from product designers and manufacturers to quality inspection engineers and quality engineers involved in statistical process monitoring. Areas included are: * selection of appropriate geometric tolerances and how they stack up in assembled products; * inspection of parts subjected to geometric tolerancing from the macro to the micro and sub-micro scales; and * enhancement of efficiency and efficacy of quality monitoring. Geometric Tolerances provides the reader with the most recent scientific research in the field, as well as with a significant amount of real-life industrial case studies, delivering a multidisciplinary, synoptic view of one of the hottest and most strategic topics in industrial production.

Product Integrity and Reliability in Design is intended to serve either as a text for graduate students or as a reference for practicing engineers. The book develops the root-cause approach to reliability - often referred to as "physics of failure" in the reliability engineering field. It approaches the subject from the point of view of a process and integrates the necessary methods to support that process. The book can be used to teach first- or second-year postgraduate students in mechanical, electrical, manufacturing and materials engineering about addressing issues of reliability during product development. It will also serve practicing engineers involved in the design and development of electrical and mechanical components and systems, as a reference.The book takes an interdisciplinary approach appropriate to system engineering, stressing concepts that can be integrated into design and placing less emphasis on traditional assumptions about reliability and analysis as a separate development activity. Several case studies emphasize the understanding of failure mechanisms and failure prevention and show how reliability methods, including simulation and testing can be integrated into design and development.

Optimization in Science and Engineering is dedicated in honor of the 60th birthday of Distinguished Professor Panos M. Pardalos. Pardalos's past and ongoing work has made a significant impact on several theoretical and applied areas in modern optimization. As tribute to the diversity of Dr. Pardalos's work in Optimization, this book comprises a collection of contributions from experts in various fields of this rich and diverse area of science. Topics highlight recent developments and include: * Deterministic global optimization* Variational inequalities and equilibrium problems* Approximation and complexity in numerical optimization* Non-smooth optimization * Statistical models and data mining* Applications of optimization in medicine, energy systems, and complex network analysis This volume will be of great interest to graduate students, researchers, and practitioners, in the fields of optimization and engineering.

Recent years have witnessed an explosion of technological advances, which has transformed virtually every aspect of human existence. Prominent among these advances are assistive technologies, which have been employed to improve the quality of life for individuals with disabilities. In this volume, recent advances in technological applications for individuals with learning and behavioural disabilities are described and discussed, in a collection that includes reviews of research, and original research reports. Technologies in this area have provided a multiplicity of uses, from advances in tools for basic research to text and content-enhancements to promote learning and behaviour change in educational environments. Discussed in this volume are technologies for improving our understanding of eye movements in learning from text, as well as technological applications in reading and literacy development. These technologies are employed to promote learning within classrooms, and also to connect learners with mentors outside the classroom. Beyond text, the use of virtual reality has been employed to promote understanding of complex concepts in physics. In many cases, these technologies have been employed effectively with students with emotional or behavioural disorders. Also discussed are issues in technological applications, including considerations of the most effective and appropriate uses of technology, where research is or should be heading, and teachers' understandings of the uses of technology with students with learning and behavioral disabilities. Also included in this volume are discussions of issues in learning disabilities, including discussions of significant issues in discrepancy models, and strategic coherence of individuals with learning difficulties. Overall, the ten chapters in this volume aim to provide some of the most current thinking and applications in learning and behavioural disabilities.

Forever Chemicals: Environmental, Economic, and Social Equity Concerns with PFAS in the Environment provides the reader with an understanding of the complex and interwoven issues associated with per- and polyfluorinated substances (PFAS) in our environment. The chapters provide in-depth perspective into various issues, including health, regulation, detection, clean-up strategies and technologies, and more. Taken together or as the reader's interests lead them, the variety of topics covered in the book present a balanced perspective on this complex topic. It will address the current state of PFAS and where indicators are pointing for future developments. The book is also a deeper investigation of the regulatory challenges, analytical hurdles, and toxicological progress to date for the suite of PFAS chemicals. Features Explains the trends that will affect future policy and regulatory decisions Looks holistically at 4000+ PFAS chemicals Includes PFAS risk assessments at contaminated sites and biomonitoring insights Provides in-depth discussions on remediation technologies Illustrates quality and diversified content Provides a balanced perspective on this complex topic

The fundamental motivation of this book is to contribute to the future advancement of Asset Management in the context of industrial plants and infrastructures. The book aims to foster a future perspective that takes advantage of value-based and intelligent asset management in order to make a step forward with respect to the evolution observed nowadays. Indeed, the current understanding of asset management is primarily supported by well-known standards. Nonetheless, asset management is still a young discipline and the knowledge developed by industry and academia is not set in stone yet. Furthermore, current trends in new organizational concepts and technologies lead to an evolutionary path in the field. Therefore, this book aims to discuss this evolutionary path, starting first of all from the consolidated theory, then moving forward to discuss: * The strategic understanding of value-based asset management in a company; * An operational definition of value, as a concept on the background of value-based asset management; * The identification of intelligent asset management, with the aim to frame a set of "tools" recommended to support the asset-related decision-making process over the asset lifecycle; * The emergence of new technologies such as cyber physical systems and digital twins, and the implications of this on asset management.

Boundary representation is the principal solid modelling method used in modern CAD/CAM systems. There have been a long series of developments on which currently available systems are based, full details of which are only partially known. Ian Stroud's thorough coverage of these developments puts this technology in perspective and provides the most complete presentation of boundary representation solid modelling yet published.

We describe in this book, new methods and applications of hybrid intelligent systems using soft computing techniques. Soft Computing (SC) consists of several intelligent computing paradigms, including fuzzy logic, neural networks, and evolutionary al- rithms, which can be used to produce powerful hybrid intelligent systems. The book is organized in five main parts, which contain a group of papers around a similar subject. The first part consists of papers with the main theme of intelligent control, which are basically papers that use hybrid systems to solve particular problems of control. The second part contains papers with the main theme of pattern recognition, which are basically papers using soft computing techniques for achieving pattern recognition in different applications. The third part contains papers with the themes of intelligent agents and social systems, which are papers that apply the ideas of agents and social behavior to solve real-world problems. The fourth part contains papers that deal with the hardware implementation of intelligent systems for solving particular problems. The fifth part contains papers that deal with modeling, simulation and optimization for real-world applications.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is. Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut The ?ow of academic ideas in the area of computational intelligence has penetrated industry with tremendous speed and persistence. Thousands of applications have proved the practical potential of fuzzy logic, neural networks, evolutionary com- tation, swarm intelligence, and intelligent agents even before their theoretical foundation is completely understood. And the popularity is rising. Some software vendors have pronounced the new machine learning gold rush to "Transfer Data into Gold." New buzzwords like "data mining," "genetic algorithms," and "swarm optimization" have enriched the top executives' vocabulary to make them look more "visionary" for the 21st century. The phrase "fuzzy math" became political jargon after being used by US President George W. Bush in one of the election debates in the campaign in 2000. Even process operators are discussing the perf- mance of neural networks with the same passion as the performance of the Dallas Cowboys. However, for most of the engineers and scientists introducing computational intelligence technologies into practice, looking at the growing number of new approaches, and understanding their theoretical principles and potential for value creation becomes a more and more dif?cult task.

Investigates theoretically and empirically what it means to design technological artefacts while embracing the large number of practices which practitioners engage with when handling technologies. The authors discusses the fields of design and sociomateriality through their shared interests towards the basic nature of work, collaboration, organization, technology, and human agency, striving to make the debates and concepts originating in each field accessible to each other, and thus moving sociomateriality closer to the practical concerns of design and providing a useful analytical toolbox to information system designers and field researchers alike. Sociomaterial-Design: Bounding Technologies in Practice takes on the challenge of redefining design practices through insights from the emerging debate on sociomateriality. It does so by bringing forward a comparative examination of two longitudinal ethnographic studies of the practices within two emergency departments - one in Canada and one in the United States of America. A particular focus is placed upon the use of current collaborative artefacts within the emergency departments and the transformation into digital artefacts through design.

This book offers meaningful insights into an impending challenge for the energy industry, namely the increasing role of asset management amongst the utilities' core operations. In the aftermath of energy digitalization, power and gas companies will be able to seize asset productivity-through risk-based operation and maintenance-and better balance capital and operational expenditures. By addressing the asset management of both power and gas infrastructures, and by adopting a comprehensive approach-including regulation and business models, as well as a solid technology background-this book offers a unique perspective on the energy utilities' transformation journey and the road to optimal decision-making for both asset portfolio expansion and replacement. The asset management end-to-end mission requires appropriate internal governance-depending on the business framework-and the development of decision aid models (for asset replacement and maintenance), supported on probabilistic risk and reliability indexes. This book advocates systematically digitalizing the power and gas assets, addressing both data governance and infrastructure, alongside real-time equipment condition monitoring. It also provides a meaningful methodology for designing data-centric asset management and predictive operation and maintenance, using artificial intelligence and engineering-based approaches. As such, it provides valuable strategy, methods and models-illustrated by case studies and proofs of concept-for a wide range of stakeholders, including utilities and industry professionals, regulators, policy-makers, researchers and students.

This is the right book for users who liked the author's "Beginning AutoCAD" workbook and want to learn more about AutoCAD's features, including Xref, Attributes, and 3D solids. This clear, no nonsense, easy-to-follow text is totally updated for AutoCAD 2016 and 2016 LT, and it offers several new and improved features. All exercises are easy to print on standard 8 1/2" x 11" paper. For use with the PC version of AutoCAD 2016 only. New Features include ... * Start Tab page, containing two sliding content frames, Learn and Create, enabling you to quickly access recent drawing files, templates, product updates, and online resources. * DIM command, allowing you to create dimensions based on a selected object. Improved Features include ... * Enhanced Status Bar, giving you greater control of the tools you want displayed. * Isometric Grid Pattern now displays Lines instead of Dots. * Command Preview is enhanced to allow for Blend, Erase, Scale, Stretch, and Rotate commands. * Improved graphics with Line Smoothing and the display of perfect curves. Cheryl Shrock recently retired as Professor and Chairperson of Computer Aided Design at Orange Coast College in California, where she had taught since 1990. She is an Autodesk (R) registered author. Previous to teaching, she owned and operated a commercial product and machine design company, using CAD to create and document designs. This book draws upon both her teaching and industry experience. Steve Heather has 30-plus years of experience as a practicing mechanical engineer and has taught AutoCAD to engineering and architectural students at the college level. He is an authorized AutoCAD beta tester and a member of AutoCAD Connected Desktop Customer Council. Steve lives near Canterbury, England, and welcomes your questions or comments at: [email protected].

Computer Architectures is a collection of multidisciplinary historical works unearthing sites, concepts, and concerns that catalyzed the cross-contamination of computers and architecture in the mid-20th century. Weaving together intellectual, social, cultural, and material histories, this book paints the landscape that brought computing into the imagination, production, and management of the built environment, whilst foregrounding the impact of architecture in shaping technological development. The book is organized into sections corresponding to the classic von Neumann diagram for computer architecture: program (control unit), storage (memory), input/output and computation (arithmetic/logic unit), each acting as a quasi-material category for parsing debates among architects, engineers, mathematicians, and technologists. Collectively, authors bring forth the striking homologies between a computer program and an architectural program, a wall and an interface, computer memory and storage architectures, structures of mathematics and structures of things. The collection initiates new histories of knowledge and technology production that turn an eye toward disciplinary fusions and their institutional and intellectual drives. Constructing the common ground between design and computing, this collection addresses audiences working at the nexus of design, technology, and society, including historians and practitioners of design and architecture, science and technology scholars, and media studies scholars.

Constructive design research, is an exploratory endeavor building exemplars, arguments, and evidence. In this monograph, it is shown how acts of designing builds relevance and articulates knowledge in combination. Using design acts to build new knowledge, invite reframing of questions and new perceptions to build up. Respecting the emergence of new knowledge in the process invite change of cause and action. The authors' term for this change is drifting; designers drift; and they drift intentionally, knowing what they do. The book details how drifting is a methodic practice of its own and provides examples of how and where it happens. This volume explores how to do it effectively, and how it depends on the concept of knowledge. The authors identify four epistemic traditions in constructive design research. By introducing a Knowledge/Relevance model they clarify how design experiments create knowledge and what kinds of challenges and contributions designers face when drifting. Along the lines of experimental design work the authors identify five main ways in which constructive experiments drift. Only one of them borrows its practices from experimental science, others build on precedents including arts and craft practices. As the book reveals, constructive design research builds on a rich body of research that finds its origins in some of the most important intellectual movements of 20th century. This background further expands constructive design research from a scientific model towards a more welcoming understanding of research and knowledge. This monograph provides novel actionable models for steering and navigating processes of constructive design research. It helps skill the design researcher in participating in the general language games of research and helps the design researcher build research relations beyond the discipline.

Brain and Behavior Computing offers insights into the functions of the human brain. This book provides an emphasis on brain and behavior computing with different modalities available such as signal processing, image processing, data sciences, statistics further it includes fundamental, mathematical model, algorithms, case studies, and future research scopes. It further illustrates brain signal sources and how the brain signal can process, manipulate, and transform in different domains allowing researchers and professionals to extract information about the physiological condition of the brain. Emphasizes real challenges in brain signal processing for a variety of applications for analysis, classification, and clustering. Discusses data sciences and its applications in brain computing visualization. Covers all the most recent tools for analysing the brain and it's working. Describes brain modeling and all possible machine learning methods and their uses. Augments the use of data mining and machine learning to brain computer interface (BCI) devices. Includes case studies and actual simulation examples. This book is aimed at researchers, professionals, and graduate students in image processing and computer vision, biomedical engineering, signal processing, and brain and behavior computing.

This book presents articles from The Australasian Conference on the Mechanics of Structures and Materials (ACMSM25 held in Brisbane, December 2018), celebrating the 50th anniversary of the conference. First held in Sydney in 1967, it is one of the longest running conferences of its kind, taking place every 2-3 years in Australia or New Zealand. Bringing together international experts and leaders to disseminate recent research findings in the fields of structural mechanics, civil engineering and materials, it offers a forum for participants from around the world to review, discuss and present the latest developments in the broad discipline of mechanics and materials in civil engineering.

This volume contains the refereed and revised papers of the Fourth International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition (DCC'10), held in Stuttgart, Germany. The material in this book represents the state-of-the-art research and developments in design computing and design cognition.

The papers are grouped under the following nine headings, describing both advances in theory and application and demonstrating the depth and breadth of design computing and design cognition: Design Cognition; Framework Models in Design; Design Creativity; Lines, Planes, Shape and Space in Design; Decision-Making Processes in Design; Knowledge and Learning in Design; Using Design Cognition; Collaborative/Collective Design; and Design Generation.

This book is of particular interest to researchers, developers and users of advanced computation in design across all disciplines and to those who need to gain better understanding of designing.

Military robots and other, potentially autonomous robotic systems such as unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAVs) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) could soon be introduced to the battlefield. Look further into the future and we may see autonomous micro- and nanorobots armed and deployed in swarms of thousands or even millions. This growing automation of warfare may come to represent a major discontinuity in the history of warfare: humans will first be removed from the battlefield and may one day even be largely excluded from the decision cycle in future high-tech and high-speed robotic warfare. Although the current technological issues will no doubt be overcome, the greatest obstacles to automated weapons on the battlefield are likely to be legal and ethical concerns. Armin Krishnan explores the technological, legal and ethical issues connected to combat robotics, examining both the opportunities and limitations of autonomous weapons. He also proposes solutions to the future regulation of military robotics through international law.

These proceedings summarize the best papers in each research field represented at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (GfA) in the German-speaking area, held at Institute of Industrial Engineering and Ergonomics of RWTH Aachen University from March 2-4. The meeting featured more than 200 presentations and 36 posters reflecting the diversity of subject matter in the field of human and industrial engineering. This volume addresses human factors and safety specialists, industrial engineers, work and organizational psychologists, occupational medicines as well as production planners and design engineers.

There were an estimated 50 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2017 and this number will almost double every 20 years, reaching 82 million in 2030. Design has significant potential to contribute to managing this global concern. This book is the first to synthesise the considerable research and projects in dementia and design. Design interactions is a new way of considering how we can improve the relationship between people, products, places and services and of course technology trends, such as the 'internet of things', offer great opportunities in providing new ways to connect people with services and products that can contribute to healthier lifestyles and mechanisms to support people with acute and chronic conditions. In light of this, the book explores the contribution and future potential of design for dementia through the lens of design interactions, such as people, contexts, material and things. Design for People Living with Dementia is a guide to this innovative and cutting-edge field in healthcare. This book is essential reading for healthcare managers working to provide products, services and care to people with dementia, as well as design researchers and students. .

Weed management Decision Support Systems (DSS) are increasingly important computer-based tools for modern agriculture. Nowadays, extensive agriculture has become highly dependent on external inputs and both economic costs, as well the negative environmental impact of agricultural activities, demands knowledge-based technology for the optimization and protection of non-renewable resources. In this context, weed management strategies should aim to maximize economic profit by preserving and enhancing agricultural systems. Although previous contributions focusing on weed biology and weed management provide valuable insight on many aspects of weed species ecology and practical guides for weed control, no attempts have been made to highlight the forthcoming importance of DSS in weed management. This book is a first attempt to integrate `concepts and practice' providing a novel guide to the state-of-art of DSS and the future prospects which hopefully would be of interest to higher-level students, academics and professionals in related areas.

Efficient assembly line design is a problem of considerable industrial importance. Unfortunately, like many other design processes, it can be time-consuming and repetitive. In addition to this, assembly line design is often complex owing to the number of multiple components involved: line efficiency, cost, reliability and space for example. The main objective is to integrate the design with operations issues, thereby minimising its costs.

Since it is impossible to replace a designera (TM)s intelligence, experience and creativity, it is important to provide him with a set of assistance tools in order to meet the conflicting objectives involved. Assembly Line Design presents three techniques based on the Grouping Genetic Algorithm (a powerful and broadly applicable optimisation and stochastic search technique) which can be used to aid efficient assembly line design:

a [ a ~equal piles for assembly linesa (TM), a new algorithm introduced to deal with assembly line balancing (balancing stationsa (TM) loads);

a [ a new method based on a multiple objective grouping genetic algorithm (MO-GGA) aiming to deal with resource planning (selection of equipment to carry out assembly tasks);

a ~a [ balance for operationa (TM) (BFO), introduced to deal with the changes during the operation phase of assembly lines.

Assembly Line Design will be of interest to technical personnel working in design, planning and production departments in industry as well as managers in industry who want to learn more about concurrent engineering. This book will also be of value to researchers and postgraduate students in mechanical, manufacturing or micro-engineering.