Materials Chemistry of Nanoultrasonic Biomedicine

As a special cross‐disciplinary research frontier, nanoultrasonic biomedicine refers to the design and synthesis of nanomaterials to solve some critical issues of ultrasound (US)‐based biomedicine. The concept of nanoultrasonic biomedicine can also overcome the drawbacks of traditional microbubbles and promote the generation of novel US‐based contrast agents or synergistic agents for US theranostics. Here, we discuss the recent developments of material chemistry in advancing the nanoultrasonic biomedicine for diverse US‐based bio‐applications. We initially introduce the design principles of novel nanoplatforms for serving the nanoultrasonic biomedicine, from the viewpoint of synthetic material chemistry. Based on these principles and diverse US‐based bio‐application backgrounds, the representative proof‐of‐concept paradigms on this topic are clarified in detail, including nanodroplet vaporization for intelligent/responsive US imaging, multifunctional nano‐contrast agents for US‐based multi‐modality imaging, activatable synergistic agents for US‐based therapy, US‐triggered on‐demand drug releasing, US‐enhanced gene transfection, US‐based synergistic therapy on combating the cancer and potential toxicity issue of screening various nanosystems suitable for nanoultrasonic biomedicine. It is highly expected that this novel nanoultrasonic biomedicine and corresponding high performance in US imaging and therapy can significantly promote the generation of new sub‐discipline of US‐based biomedicine by rationally integrating material chemistry and theranostic nanomedicine with clinical US‐based biomedicine.     

The Recent Growth Performance of US Firms in the Industrial Design Sector: An Exploratory Study

This paper assesses the competitive factors associated with company growth in the US industrial design sector. This small but technologically advanced sector delivers critical innovation inputs to firms that produce durable goods. Evidence from a survey of 85 US design companies suggests that competitive success hinges upon service diversity. Specifically, the most commercially buoyant companies have diversified their service offerings beyond product or component design. These firms have developed strategic competencies in fields such as contract research, prototype development, product testing, technological forecasting, market analysis and even advertising. Although most US design companies are small-to-medium-sized enterprises, successful firms do not differ from their less successful counterparts in terms of employment size, occupational structure, regional location or market focus (client sectors). Instead, the key differences lie in service diversity and the quality of human capital. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the implications of the empirical findings for future research on the dynamics of the design industry.     

ULA-OP: an advanced open platform for ultrasound research

The experimental test of novel ultrasound (US) investigation methods can be made difficult by the lack of flexibility of commercial US machines. In the best options, these only provide beamformed radiofrequency or demodulated echo-signals for acquisition by an external PC. More flexibility is achieved in high-level research platforms, but these are typically characterized by high cost and large size. This paper presents a powerful but portable US system, specifically developed for research purposes. The system design has been based on high-level commercial integrated circuits to obtain the maximum flexibility and wide data access with minimum of electronics. Preliminary applications involving nonstandard imaging transmit/receive strategies and simultaneous B-mode and multigate spectral Doppler mode are discussed.     

Analytical and experimental study of load attractions and fatigue crack growths in two-sided bonded repairs

With an increasing use of bonded composite patches for repairing fatigue and other damage on metallic aircraft structures, a research program under the sponsorship of the US Air Force Research Laboratory has been conducted for the advancement of this bonded composite technology. Through this research program, analytical methods for design and analysis of bonded patches have been developed and integrated into a PC-based computer code called CRAS (Composite Repair of Aircraft Structure) software. These analytical methods are reviewed briefly in this paper and they are validated with test results.     

Impact of the NSF State/Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on low-cost,high-speed polymer composites processing on the research and educational programs at Michigan State University

The objectives of the National Science Foundation (NSF) State of Michigan/Industry/University Cooperative Research Center on low-cost, high-speed polymer composites processing at Michigan State University (MSU) are design, development and deployment of technology and knowledge-based systems that will reduce costs of polymer composites processing by (a) insuring faster processes, (b) reducing component costs, and (c) reducing implementation times of new composite designs. Significant accomplishments have been made in research, education and technology transfer in the areas of novel processing, liquid molding, thermoplastic processing, intelligent design and process modeling, and interphases and joining. The Center's primary educational activities were supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology-Advanced Technology Program (NIST-ATP) with General Motors and General Electric, and the Technology Reinvestment Project (TRP) with the University of Delaware and the US Department of Defense.The Center's role in the four-year NIST-ATP was to disseminate injection-molded thermoplastics design methodologies to automotive, appliance, computer and other key US industries. The program enabled the Center to develop course material, a CD-ROM design manual, and workshop materials on state of the art thermoplastics design knowledge. To date, hundreds of individuals have participated in the workshops, and the material developed in this program is being integrated into undergraduate, graduate and continuing education offerings. The TRP program brought together the NSF Center at MSU and the composite materials center at the University of Delaware (UD) in a collaborative composite materials education and training effort for the Department of Defense and the durable goods industry. Educational developments included incorporation of knowledge derived from the TRP program into 49 new or existing engineering courses (23 at MSU and 26 at UD); six experiments for a new teaching laboratory; four workshops; four videotaped instructional modules (two each for liquid molding RTM technology and the injection molding technology); interactive WEB-based simulations and tutorials; and development of knowledge-based software.     

The Politics of US Military Research in Greenland in the Early Cold War

The focus of this article is US military research in Greenland and its role in Danish‐American political relations in the early Cold War period 1945–1968. This was a period of intense US research activity that aimed to overcome the hostile Greenlandic environment and harness it for military purposes. In the US‐Danish defense agreement on Greenland of 1951 the USA got a free hand to develop three so‐called defense areas for military purposes, while it had to seek Danish permission for research and other activities outside these areas. The two partners had differing, but mainly compatible, interests in this process. The US interest was freedom to do research on the gigantic Greenland Icecap, while the Danish authorities emphasized the protection of its sovereignty over Greenland. The article follows the US research programs in the 1950s and 1960s and Danish responses in some detail, including the intriguing and still mysterious Camp Century project and its relationship with the US Army's Iceworm plan to deploy strategic missiles beneath the surface of the Greenland Icecap.     

Crashworthiness design optimization using successive response surface approximations

 Finite Element (FE) method is among the most powerful tools for crash analysis and simulation. Crashworthiness design of structural members requires repetitive and iterative application of FE simulation. This paper presents a crashworthiness design optimization methodology based on efficient and effective integration of optimization methods, FE simulations, and approximation methods. Optimization methods, although effective in general in solving structural design problems, loose their power in crashworthiness design. Objective and constraint functions in crashworthiness optimization problems are often non-smooth and highly non-linear in terms of design variables and follow from a computationally costly (FE) simulation. In this paper, a sequential approximate optimization method is utilized to deal with both the high computational cost and the non-smooth character. Crashworthiness optimization problem is divided into a series of simpler sub-problems, which are generated using approximations of objective and constraint functions. Approximations are constructed by using statistical model building technique, Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and a Genetic algorithm. The approximate optimization method is applied to solve crashworthiness design problems. These include a cylinder, a simplified vehicle and New Jersey concrete barrier optimization. The results demonstrate that the method is efficient and effective in solving crashworthiness design optimization problems. Received: 30 January 2002 / Accepted: 12 July 2002 Sponsorship for this research by the Federal Highway Administration of US Department of Transportation is gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Nielen Stander at Livermore Software Technology Corporation is also gratefully acknowledged for providing subroutines to create D-optimal experimental designs and the simplified vehicle model.     

计量性及计量性设计

从测量的对象分析入手,比较了《计量法》、《国防计量监督管理条例》和《中国人民解放军计量条例》,提出了测量的计量性问题;通过对美军标MIL-STD-1839D《美国国防部校准和测量要求》的分析,为确保系统运行的一致性和准确性,提出了必须开展计量性设计的研究工作;最后,基于系统、便捷、快速的计量保障保证系统始终处于良好技术状态的前提下,提出了计量性设计方法和设计原则。     

Global Bioregions: Knowledge Domains, Capabilities and Innovation System Networks

In this paper, regional capabilities and knowledge domain theses are proposed and global biotechnology dynamics are analysed. Detailed research on Europe's leading bioeconomy, the UK, is presented. Global network analysis is performed based on research into collaborations between 'star' scientists and their institutes in bioregions at a global scale. This is with regard to joint publication of bioscientific articles in US and EU Science Citation Index representative and leading cited journals. New evidence lies in identifying the hierarchical structure and main network axes in the global bioscientific research system. The results show that the strongest bioregions are in North America, particularly around Boston, San Diego and San Francisco. For collaboration, using this measure, the UK is revealed as a strong European research base, as is Sweden. New bioregions are found rising in Asia, but many 'global cities' fail to appear in the bioregional ranking.     

How the European Union writes about ophthalmology

This study evaluates the distribution of papers published by European Union (EU) authors in ophthalmological journals from 1995 to 1997. The impact of ophthalmological research in the EU is compared with that produced in other countries and trends of research are highlighted through the keywords analysis. Data of articles published in ophthalmological journals (ISI Subject Category) were downloaded. Mean Impact Factor, source country population and gross domestic product were analyzed. A special purpose software for keyword elaboration was utilized. 11,219 papers were published in the world in the ophthalmological journals: 34.8% came from the EU (UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands ranking at the top) and 40.7% from the US. The mean Impact Factor of EU papers was 0.8 in comparison with 1.5 in the US. Despite the limitations of the existing methods, bibliometric findings are useful for the monitoring of research trends. The keywords analysis shows that the leading fields of research were retinal pathologies for diseases and keratoplasty for surgical procedures. It also suggests that keywords are overused, and urges minimization of this as well as standardization among journal editors. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Governing Decentralized Production: Institutions,Public Policy,and the Prospects for Inter-firm Collaboration in US Manufacturing

Much of the literature on the changing face of US manufacturing acknowledges that successful governance of decentralized production is vital to its future but questions whether in practice firms will engage in the collaborative relationships envisaged by optimistic theorists of a "new production paradigm". Our interview-based field research on large and small metalworking firms in the US upper Midwest shows that although large manufacturers are actively seeking to improve collaboration by sharing strategic information and engaging in joint design, pervasive organizational dysfunctions create systemic barriers to the fuller development of cooperative relations with suppliers. But these barriers do not appear insurmountable. The example of a Wisconsin policy experiment is used to demonstrate the viability of institutional solutions that can help resolve inter- and intra-organizational blockages, while encouraging manufacturing firms to follow through on the collaborative strategies they officially espouse.     

Governing Decentralized Production: Institutions, Public Policy, and the Prospects for Inter-firm Collaboration in US Manufacturing

Much of the literature on the changing face of US manufacturing acknowledges that successful governance of decentralized production is vital to its future but questions whether in practice firms will engage in the collaborative relationships envisaged by optimistic theorists of a "new production paradigm". Our interview-based field research on large and small metalworking firms in the US upper Midwest shows that although large manufacturers are actively seeking to improve collaboration by sharing strategic information and engaging in joint design, pervasive organizational dysfunctions create systemic barriers to the fuller development of cooperative relations with suppliers. But these barriers do not appear insurmountable. The example of a Wisconsin policy experiment is used to demonstrate the viability of institutional solutions that can help resolve inter- and intra-organizational blockages, while encouraging manufacturing firms to follow through on the collaborative strategies they officially espouse.     

Towards a deeper understanding of managerial green investment patterns – a USA–Germany comparison

Green investments are crucial mechanisms for translating green operation strategies into managerial action. We examine the impact of external pressures on green investment patterns in terms of their scope, type and time horizon across 251 German and US managers. A scenario-based experiment was conducted using a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design in which managers were assigned to high and low consumer, community, and resource treatment groups before being asked to make green investment decisions. Our hypotheses are developed based on resource advantage theory and tested in a number of regression models. The results demonstrate that German and US managers respond differently to external pressures in their green investment decisions. Regarding the scope of green investments, German and US managers invest differently if end consumer pressure increases and partially differently if resource scarcity increases, but they act in a similar way if community pressure increases. Moreover, we detected specific variations in the type and time horizon of green investments across US and German managers. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings for green operations management research and for firms operating in multinational settings are explained.     

US science and technology: An uncoordinated system that seems to work

The US has emerged as the world leader in science and technology research and development in the 60 years following World War II. This status is due, in part, to a successful public–private partnership in research and higher education fostered after the war, and to the fiercely competitive and innovative nature of US industry. This paper provides some background to the complexities of US federal funding of research and development, as well as a brief history of US science and technology policy following World War II. The paper describes how research is managed and funded in the US; outlines how the US federal government interacts with universities and private industry; remarks on the nature of international cooperation; and comments on the future direction of US science and technology policy, including growing challenges to its position of leadership.     

Tissue ultrasound absorption measurement with MRI calorimetry

The renewed interest in the use of high intensity focused ultrasound (US) for minimally invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided thermal therapy has stimulated a review of the interaction mechanisms of US with tissue. Although the study of tissue US properties has been conducted extensively, agreements on the measured values of tissue US absorption are poor. We propose a noninvasive approach to measure tissue US absorption based on a form of MRI calorimetry. US absorption is measured in a small tissue sample through a knowledge of the US intensity distribution incident on the tissue and an MRI measurement of total absorbed energy arising from US exposure. US absorption measurements were conducted at room temperature for ex-vivo bovine liver tissue at 1 MHz, which led to a measured US absorption coefficient of 0.058 Np/cm or 0.504 dB/cm. Because this approach is noninvasive, the experimental complications exhibited in earlier studies are not present. Furthermore, this approach can be applied over a range of frequencies, tissues, and temperatures, which will aid in understanding of biothermal effects of high intensity US to improve thermal therapy.     

基于文献计量的可穿戴产品设计发展与趋势分析

为了梳理可穿戴产品设计的研究发展态势,从文献计量可视化的角度对近20年国内外关于可穿戴产品设计的研究现状、研究热点进行系统化地梳理和分析。同时,明确可穿戴产品设计研究存在的局限及未来的发展方向。以2002—2022年CNKI和WOS数据库中与可穿戴产品设计主题相关的期刊文献作为研究数据源,通过知识图谱分析国内外可穿戴产品设计研究的概况和热点,提出未来发展趋势。中国、美国是可穿戴产品设计研究的主要力量,其中中国科学院、电子科技大学、乔治亚理工学院等高校是主要研究机构;人机交互、交互设计、用户体验是国内外对可穿戴产品设计研究的重要方向;可穿戴产品的医疗康养与适老化设计将是学者与决策者持续关注的课题。2002—2022年国内外可穿戴产品设计的研究历程可分为缓慢发展期、快速增长期、增速变缓期三个阶段,文献发表数量整体呈上升趋势;国内的研究热度、发文频次高于国外,以人机交互领域研究尤为突出,研究重点在发热理疗、医疗监测系统、人体无线传感器网络及智能产品设计模式;而国外研究以生理数据监测、电子纺织品和传感器网络等方面为主。综观研究现状和趋势,从人本智能形态、多学科研究和人口老龄化设计策略进行深入探讨,提出可穿戴产品设计新发展趋势。     

Drawings and the design process: A review of protocol studies in design and other disciplines and related research in cognitive psychology

A characteristic of the design process in all areas of design is the use of a number of different types of drawings. The different types of drawings are associated with different stages of the process with one type, the relatively unstructured and ambiguous sketch, occurring early in the process. Designers place great emphasis on the sketch often because it is thought to be associated with innovation and creativity. Because of this emphasis researchers have also begun to focus on the sketch and its role in design. The first aim of this paper is to collect together and review the results of this research and to relate it to similar research that has looked at the role of drawings in problem solving in other disciplines. Recently, however, researchers in the design area have begun to relate their work to a number of areas of research in cognitive psychology and cognitive science. This work provides theoretical frameworks, experimental methodologies and a considerable body of research results that are of great potential importance to design research. The second aim of this paper is to review three of these areas, working memory, imagery reinterpretation and mental synthesis, and to examine their implications for design research generally but with a particular emphasis on the role of sketching in design.     

服务设计中的接触点:定义、研究现状与趋势

目的 在30多年的发展中,服务设计学科的研究目标从论证为什么需要对服务进行设计,以及对设计实践的分析总结,逐步转向对服务设计所需的理论框架、方法和工具的深入探索。接触点是服务设计核心研究领域之一,关于这一概念的理解和应用,对在服务设计领域建立可靠的研究和实践路径有着极为重要的作用。方法 通过综合调研国内外相关学术研究成果,梳理了“接触点”概念在服务设计领域的起源、定义、分类、意义、研究现状与趋势,有助于设计研究者在此基础上更好地理解、观察和设计复杂服务。结论 接触点是服务提供者与用户之间互动的联系点,具备实体性、交互性、时间性、体验性等多个属性。一系列接触点的整合体验构成了用户体验。同时,接触点是服务建模的中心材料和主要可设计构件,可以成为服务创新的源泉基点。接触点相关的理论研究及设计工具的开发是服务设计的重要发展方向。     

产品设计中的触觉体验研究

目的产品触觉体验是情感化设计的重要方面,通过整理、归纳目前较为零散的触觉体验研究成果,为同行研究提供参考。方法通过对国内外相关文献的综述,讨论了触觉体验概念及其现有研究角度。首先,从用户期待视角,解析期待及期待效应的内涵,阐述期待理论及其在触觉体验中的研究现状。然后,从材质设计视角,归纳两类材质触觉体验设计研究类型,即单触觉模态与跨模态下的材质设计,并阐述层次化研究方法,以及现有研究中相应的情感与情绪层、感知维度层、物理属性层的研究内容。结论总结产品设计中触觉体验的研究现状和国内外文献。在此基础上,提出现有研究存在的不足和未来的研究趋势,为产品设计领域中的触觉体验研究指明方向。     

An efficient design procedure for flexural strengthening of RC beams based on ACI 440.2R-08

The technology of using FRP composites to strengthen concrete members has proven its effectiveness over the years. Accordingly, design guides have been developed to aid engineers in applying this technology. ACI 440.2R-08 is one of the major design guides used in the US and elsewhere in the world. Due to the existence of two major sectional tensile forces in steel and FRP as well as the likelihood of different failure modes, the ACI 440.2R-08 flexural strengthening design procedure leads to an iterative process. In this study an efficient design procedure that eliminates the need for iterations is developed. The FRP area determined from the developed design procedure has been shown to correlate very accurately to the exact area obtained iteratively according to the ACI 440.2R-08 document. Several design examples are solved to illustrate the potential use of this efficient and simple design procedure in expediting the current design computations.