Strategic Planning for Employment Self-Containment in Metropolitan Sub-Regions

Metropolitan strategic plans often focus on strengthening local employment opportunities to address the congestion and commuting issues threatening city sustainability. The success of such strategies relies on a more equitable distribution of jobs between sub-regions and can be comparatively benchmarked through one of the three related measures of employment self-sufficiency, self-containment or jobs-housing balance. However, in practice, planning policy implementation to meet these targets seldom reduces automobile commuting. This paper investigates self-containment across a range of occupation and industry types to highlight large differences in commuting and employment patterns through a case study of Perth’s Northwest sub-region, Western Australia. Its findings suggest the application of current sub-regional policy and targets within Perth may reinforce the wage and skill disadvantage of outer metropolitan sub-regions over the inner core. It recommends a more nuanced understanding of these measures taking into account the complex dynamics of both employment opportunities and commuting patterns across sub-regions of a city.     

From utility disconnection to universal access

By some estimates, 31% of Americans face some sort of ‘energy insecurity,’ but the full extent of the issue and the magnitude of its effect are often difficult to quantify. This case study examines disconnection policies primarily in Minnesota and attempts to extrapolate lessons learned for other states and the nation as a whole. The case study concludes with a discussion about the relevance of U.S. universal access to the utility shut-off challenge.     

A survey of dynamic parameter setting methods for nature-inspired swarm intelligence algorithms

Neural Computing and Applications - Parameter settings for nature-inspired optimization algorithms are essential for their effective performance. Evolutionary algorithms and swarm intelligence...     

Data-driven placemaking: Public space canopy design through multi-objective optimisation considering shading,structural and social performance

In the context of ongoing densification of cities and aging urban populations, public spaces are a crucial infrastructure to support the physical and mental wellbeing of urban residents. The design of public space furniture elements is often standardised, and not considered in relation to environmental conditions and mechanisms of social interaction. This article presents a digital workflow to generate site-specific designs for shaded public seating, considering the relationships of local public places to their surroundings. A strategy for customised and site-specific design is developed through the use of multiple software tools, employing evolutionary algorithms and multi-objective optimisation. The method is applied to a small public space canopy prototype installed within a public housing estate in Hong Kong, incorporating additional criteria to achieve a low-cost and light-weight structure. Through multiple stages of refinement and optimisation, a material, structural and social performance-driven outcome was achieved that creates a shaded space for public seating, people watching and social interaction. As part of a larger research agenda exploring architectural form-finding and environmental psychology, the project represents potential new applications in the emerging field of socially driven computational design.     

Design and implementation of multiaxial force sensing gripper fingers

This paper focuses on the integration of elementary force sensors into the fingers of parallel grippers. The theory of the approach of integrating three sensor elements into a gripper finger is described and the results of the practical evaluations are given. Strain gauges are used as elementary sensor elements. Two different design approaches are evaluated. The first one uses H-shaped cut-outs to weaken the structure at designated areas. The measurement accuracy of this system is compared with a second approach without cut-outs, which is easier to manufacture. Finite element analysis is used in both approaches to simulate the behaviour and to determine the best locations for strain gauge application. The performances of both design concepts are experimentally evaluated. It can be seen that the results of the finite-element analysis are correct and that a satisfactory decoupling of the basic sensors can be achieved using a physical or mathematical approach. Both prototypes are able to measure the gripping force with sufficient accuracy.     

Surface Pre-treatment for Thermally Sprayed ZnAl15 Coatings

Pre-treatment of substrates is an important step in thermal spraying. It is widely accepted that mechanical interlocking is the dominant adhesion mechanism for most substrate-coating combinations. To prevent premature failure, minimum coating adhesion strength, surface preparation grades, and roughness parameters are often specified. For corrosion-protection coatings for offshore wind turbines, an adhesion strength ≥ 5 MPa is commonly assumed to ensure adhesion over service lifetime. In order to fulfill this requirement, Rz > 80 µm and a preparation grade of Sa3 are common specifications. In this study, the necessity of these requirements is investigated using the widely used combination of twin-wire arc-sprayed ZnAl15 on S355J2 + N as a test case. By using different blasting media and parameters, the correlation between coating adhesion and roughness parameters is analyzed. The adhesion strength of these systems is measured using a test method allowing measurements on real parts. The results are compared to DIN EN 582:1993, the European equivalent of ASTM-C633. In another series of experiments, the influence of surface pre-treatment grades Sa2.5 and Sa3 is considered. By combining the results of these three sets of experiments, a guideline for surface pre-treatment and adhesion testing on real parts is proposed for the considered system.     

Detection of Salmonella in food,feed and veterinary samples by EU laboratories

The European Union Reference Laboratory (EURL) for Salmonella organises interlaboratory comparison studies on bacteriological detection of Salmonella in different matrices (veterinary, food and animal feed) amongst National Reference Laboratories for Salmonella of the 27 European Member States (EU-MS). The EURL also gives non-EU Member States (EU candidate countries, member countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and third countries from outside Europe) the opportunity to participate in these studies. The objective of the studies is to test the ability of the participating laboratories to detect Salmonella at different contamination levels in the various matrices. In addition a comparison is made between the prescribed method of the food and animal feed studies (ISO 6579: RVS and MKTTn) and the prescribed method of the veterinary studies (annex D of ISO 6579: MSRV).This article describes the performance of the individual laboratories in the interlaboratory comparison studies as organised by the EURL for Salmonella in the period 2004-2010.The performance of the majority of the NRLs improved during the course of the studies. Overall the NRL laboratories performed well and were able to detect Salmonella in the different tested matrices. After improvement of the samples, it was possible to define criteria for good performance in the studies organised since 2006. In the eight interlaboratory comparison studies organised in the period 2006–2010, 15 laboratories found in total 19 deviations of which eight concerned a false positive blank result. The other deviations concerned sensitivity problems (false negative results). After checking and improving several technical aspects, the underperforming participating laboratories were able to improve their performance in a follow-up study.