The role of algorithm and result comprehensibility of automated scheduling on complacency

Several studies have stressed that even expert operators who are aware of a machine's limits could adopt its proposals without questioning them (i.e., the complacency phenomenon). In production scheduling for manufacturing, this is a significant problem, as it is often suggested that the machine be allowed to build the production schedule, confining the human role to that of rescheduling. This article evaluates the characteristics of scheduling algorithms on human rescheduling performance, the quality of which was related to complacency. It is suggested that scheduling algorithms be characterized as having result comprehensibility (the result respects the scheduler's expectations in terms of the discourse rules of the information display) or algorithm comprehensibility (the complexity of the algorithm hides some important constraints). The findings stress, on the one hand, that result comprehensibility is necessary to achieve good production performance and to limit complacency. On the other hand, algorithm comprehensibility leads to poor performance due to the very high cost of understanding the algorithm. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Occupational health problems and injuries among Quebec's physical educators

The purpose of this study was to describe the traumatology of teaching physical education (PE) and to document the causes and mechanisms of injuries in this occupation. Our sample was composed of 314 physical educators (PEs) teaching at three school levels (primary school, secondary school and college) who responded to a questionnaire survey. The results showed a 0.55 rate of recent lesion per teacher per year (0.65 for women and 0.51 for men). A total of 37.6% of subjects were affected by a lesion during the last year at work. Subjects with a higher weekly frequency of leisure physical activities or endurance activities (five times and more) were less affected by chronic lesions as well as those who frequently practiced aerobic physical activities. Prevalence of chronic injuries was higher in older teachers. Our results confirm that the rate of lesions in this group of workers is high, and that school level and respondent age may influence the rate of lesion and the characteristics of risk factors. In particular, the effect of ageing and teaching specialization on the incidence of occupational problems in PEs warrants further research. Given the relatively high rate of injuries among PE teachers, we suggest that it is necessary to further explore preventive strategies to reduce occupational risk in these workers. In particular, prophylactic physical activity outside of work may represent such a strategy since PEs more active outside their work have lower chronic injury prevalence. PEs gave long periods of standing the highest rating for movements or positions most likely to cause them occupational injuries. It can thus be suggested to find ways to reduce standing position sustained for long periods.     

智能RLED动态目标中机器手的模糊鲁棒控制系统

给出了一种电机驱动机器手中非线性机电模型的模糊鲁棒闭环控制系统,此控制系统可处理非结构环境下的三个主要的智能机器人导航问题：自动化规划、快速连续导航中的避障、处理结构和（或）非结构不确定性。     

Using visual cues of contact to improve interactive manipulation of virtual objects in industrial assembly/maintenance simulations

This paper describes a set of visual cues of contact designed to improve the interactive manipulation of virtual objects in industrial assembly/maintenance simulations. These visual cues display information of proximity, contact and effort between virtual objects when the user manipulates a part inside a digital mock-up. The set of visual cues encloses the apparition of glyphs (arrow, disk, or sphere) when the manipulated object is close or in contact with another part of the virtual environment. Light sources can also be added at the level of contact points. A filtering technique is proposed to decrease the number of glyphs displayed at the same time. Various effects--such as change in color, change in size, and deformation of shape- can be applied to the glyphs as a function of proximity with other objects or amplitude of the contact forces. A preliminary evaluation was conducted to gather the subjective preference of a group of participants during the simulation of an automotive assembly operation. The collected questionnaires showed that participants globally appreciated our visual cues of contact. The changes in color appeared to be preferred concerning the display of distances and proximity information. Size changes and deformation effects appeared to be preferred in terms of perception of contact forces between the parts. Last, light sources were selected to focus the attention of the user on the contact areas.     

A semidynamic construction of higher-order voronoi diagrams and its randomized analysis

Thek-Delaunay tree extends the Delaunay tree introduced in [1], and [2]. It is a hierarchical data structure that allows the semidynamic construction of the higher-order Voronoi diagrams of a finite set ofn points in any dimension. In this paper we prove that a randomized construction of thek-Delaunay tree, and thus of all the orderk Voronoi diagrams, can be done inO(n logn+k ³n) expected time and O(k²n) expected storage in the plane, which is asymptotically optimal for fixedk. Our algorithm extends tod-dimensional space with expected time complexityO(k ^(d+1)/2+1 n ^(d+1)/2) and space complexityO(k ^(d+1)/2 n ^(d+1)/2). The algorithm is simple and experimental results are given.This work has been supported in part by the ESPRIT Basic Research Action No. 3075 (ALCOM).     

Software assessment using metrics: A comparison across large C++ and Java systems

This paper presents an assessment method to evaluate the quality of object oriented software systems. The assessment method is based on source code abstraction, object–oriented metrics and graphical representation. The metrics used and the underlying model representing the software are presented. The assessment method experiment is part of an industrial research effort with the Bell Canada Quality Engineering and Research Group. It helps evaluators assess the quality and risks associated with software by identifying code fragments presenting unusual characteristics. The assessment method evaluates object–oriented software systems at three levels of granularity: system level, class level and method level. One large C++ and eight Java software systems, for a total of over one million lines of code, are presented as case studies. A critical analysis of the results is presented comparing the systems and the two languages.     

Plant algae method for arsenic removal from arsenic contaminated groundwater

Field studies were carried out in Urumqi River Basin in Northwest China. The study focused on experimentation on a plant algae method that was tested by taking various water chemistries into consideration. The results from a greenhouse experiment evaluated for four doses of P (0, 100, 200, and 300 μmol/L) using two ferns (30 and 60 day old) on 15 L of contaminated groundwater per plant revealed that the biomass of 30-day old ferns gained was higher than 60-day fern. As solution-P increased from 0 to 450 μmol/L, Phosphorus concentration in the fronds increased from 1.9 to 3.9 mg/kg and 1.95 to 4.0 mg/kg for 30-d and 60-d ferns respectively. This study showed that the plant algae method may be a good solution to maximize arsenic uptake in the short term under normal climatic conditions.     

GPU Shape Grammars

GPU Shape Grammars provide a solution for interactive procedural generation, tuning and visualization of massive environment elements for both video games and production rendering. Our technique generates detailed models without explicit geometry storage. To this end we reformulate the grammar expansion for generation of detailed models at the tesselation control and geometry shader stages. Using the geometry generation capabilities of modern graphics hardware, our technique generated massive, highly detailed models. GPU Shape Grammars integrate within a scalable framework by introducing automatic generation of levels of detail at reduced cost. We apply our solution for interactive generation and rendering of scenes containing thousands of buildings and trees.