Industrial aspects and literature survey: Combined inventory management and routing

This paper describes industrial aspects of combined inventory management and routing in maritime and road-based transportation, and gives a classification and comprehensive literature review of the current state of the research.The literature is contrasted with aspects of industrial applications from a constructive, but critical, viewpoint. Based on the status and trends within the field, future research is suggested with regard to both further development of the research area and industrial needs. By highlighting the industrial aspects, practitioners will hopefully see the benefit of using advanced decision support systems in complex situations related to combined inventory management and routing in their business. In addition, a classification and presentation of the research should help and motivate researchers to further focus on inventory management and routing challenges.     

Use of the Cone Calorimeter and ConeTools software for development of innovative intumescing graphite systems

The Cone Calorimeter test method has been one of the most used small‐scale fire test method for years now and is at present widely spread over the world. In contrast to many other fire test methods, the Cone Calorimeter provides a range of data with sound scientific basis, which allows a wide range of applications. It can be used for modelling and also for enhanced product development. This paper describes the use of the Cone Calorimeter for the development of new innovative materials in combination with a mathematical model. As example, the cost effective development of an innovative intumescing graphite system for protecting particle board is explained. The performance goal of the project is to obtain the threshold values for a B class in the Single Burning Item (SBI) test method used for the newly developed Euroclass system. The focus of this paper is on the development tools and not on the chemical development of the protective system. During the research it was necessary to develop a new sample holder for the Cone Calorimeter. The results from the project show that the industry can save development time and resources by using the Cone Calorimeter in combination with a simple mathematical model. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Agglomeration and productivity: evidence from firm-level data

Do agglomerations stimulate productivity? An extensive literature on agglomeration economies, or urban increasing returns, has analyzed this question with aggregated spatial data. This paper estimates the relationship between agglomeration and productivity at the firm level using static and dynamic models. It makes use of a rich dataset comprising register information on all manufacturing firms in Sweden with 10 or more employees over the period 1997–2004. Three things emerge. First, firms located in larger regions are more productive when controlling for size, human capital, physical capital, ownership structure, import and export, industry classification, and time trend. Second, results from dynamic panel estimations suggests a learning effect in that agglomeration enhances firms’ productivity. Third, the role of agglomeration phenomena does not seem to have a clear coupling to firm size.     

Phase-based multidimensional volume registration

We present a method for accurate image registration and motion compensation in multidimensional signals, such as two-dimensional (2-D) X-ray images and three-dimensional (3-D) computed tomography/magnetic resonance imaging volumes. The method is based on phase from quadrature filters, which makes it robust to noise and temporal intensity variations. The method is equally applicable to signals of two, three or higher number of dimensions. We use parametric models, e.g., affine models, finite elements or local affine models with global regularization. Experimental results show high accuracy for 2-D and 3-D motion compensation.     

Differences in cause-specific patterns of unintentional injury mortality among 15-44-year-olds in income-based country groups

OBJECTIVES: The aim of the present study was to investigate the cause-specific patterns of unintentional injury mortality among 15-44-year-olds in various income-based country groups, and to analyze which specific causes contribute the most to the unintentional injury mortality in each country group. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cross-sectional data on the five most common causes of unintentional injury mortality by age-sex specific subgroups were compiled for 57 countries from the World Health Statistics Annuals for the year 1993 (1991-1994 if information for 1993 was unavailable). Data were categorized into four income-based country groups according to their gross national product (GNP) per capita for the year 1993. The differences between means and rate ratios of low, lower-middle, and upper-middle income countries were calculated by comparing them with those of the high-income countries. Regression analysis was performed to determine the trends in the direction of income for each specific cause of unintentional injury mortality by age-sex. RESULTS: For any of the specific causes of unintentional injury mortality there was an inverse relationship between mortality rates and GNP per capita except for motor vehicle traffic (MVT) among the 15-24-year-old age group. MVT accidents were the most common cause and contributed 26-77% of all unintentional injury mortality. The second most common cause was poisoning in all country groups except low-income countries where drowning dominated for males and mixed causes for females. Upper-middle income countries represented the highest MVT mortality in all age-sex subgroups except among 15-24-year-old females for which high-income countries displayed the highest rate. For other causes, lower-middle income represented the highest rates with a few exceptions. In the 15-24-year age group, the rate ratio of motor vehicle traffic mortality was higher in high-income countries compared to low-income countries, while in the 35-44-year age group, all other country groups showed a higher rate ratio than high-income countries. Drowning for males and burns for females in the low and middle-income countries were significantly higher than in high-income countries.     

SenToy in FantasyA: Designing an Affective Sympathetic Interface to a Computer Game

We describe the design process of an affective control toy, named SenToy, used to control a synthetic character in a computer game. SenToy allows players to influence the emotions of a synthetic character placed in FantasyA, a 3D virtual game. By expressing gestures associated with anger, fear, surprise, sadness and joy through SenToy, players influence the emotions of the character they control in the game. When designing SenToy we hypothesized that players would manipulate the toy to express emotions using a particular set of gestures. Those gestures were drawn from literature on how we express emotions through bodily movements and from emotion theories. To evaluate our idea we performed a Wizard Of Oz study [1]. The results of the study show that there are behaviours that players easily pick up for expressing emotions through the gestures with the toy, though not necessarily the ones extracted from literature. The study also provided some indication on what type of toy we should build, in particular, its ‘look and feel’. Correspondence to: Ms A. Paiva, IST & Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores, Rua Alves Redol 9, 1000 Lisboa, Portugal. Email: Ana.Paiva@inesc.pt     

TV shearography: quantitative measurement of shear-magnitude fields by use of digital speckle photography

Digital speckle photography combined with TV shearography is developed for precise measurement of the magnitude of the shear field in a linear shear configuration. As an application the method is implemented to determine the slope-change variations of a three-dimensional object with TV shearography in which the shear magnitude is obtained with the digital speckle photography technique.     

Optical configuration for TV holography measurement of in-plane and out-of-plane deformations

A novel TV holography method is proposed for parallel evaluation of in-plane and out-of-plane deformation fields. The method permits a trade-off between in-plane and out-of-plane measuring sensitivity. A four-exposure, four-frame phase shifting technique is used in the experiments; the experimental results for an aluminum specimen subjected to both rotation in its own plane and a bending couple load at the center are presented.     

A 640 by 480 Pixels Readout Circuit for IR Imaging

A readout circuit for a 640 × 480 pixels FPA (focal plane array) has been successfully designed, fabricated and tested. The circuit solution is based on a per pixel source-follower direct injection (SFDI) pre-amplifier. Signal multiplexing is performed in both X and Y direction. The pixel size is 25 m × 25m. The chip is optimized for a QWIP (quantum well infrared photodetector) operating at a temperature of 70 K. The circuit has been realized in a standard 0.8 m CMOS process.     

Voltage stability indices for stressed power systems

The use of static voltage stability indices based on a singular value decomposition of the power flow Jacobian matrix and matrices derived from the Jacobian matrix is discussed. It is shown that such indices, together with the singular vectors, contain substantial and important information about the proximity to voltage instability and also about critical buses and disturbances from a voltage instability point of view. This is done by a theoretical analysis of the linear power flow equations and an analysis from model power systems as well as realistic power systems (1033 nodes). It is argued that indices based on these matrices are useful for the system analyst in planning and operations planning