Drama,play-making and ambiguity in the early stages of design

A number of techniques from drama and theatre have been appropriated for use in design to stage performances with and about users. In this paper, we address how drama and play-making can benefit design at moments other than staging. Building on the work of drama-in-education scholar Gavin Bolton, we articulate design-relevant learning qualities of using drama in design. We recognise that significant moments of learning about human conditions and technology take place in making and managing staged performances. We point to how significant but often implicit design decisions are taken in the making of a play and study their conditioning effect on the continuation of a design process. The focus of our inquiry is on the development of an oblique angle and its indirect directive qualities as a pre-set framing for using drama in design as well as an emergent framing that follows from using drama in design.     

Metallurgical effects and distortions in laser welding of thin sheet steels with variations in strength

Geometrical distortions occur while welding, but the understanding of how and why they occur and how to control them is limited. The relation between the weld width, weld metal volume, total energy input, width of hard zone and distortions when laser welding three different thin sheet steels with varying strength has therefore been studied. Weld metal volume and total energy input show a good correlation with distortion for one steel at a time. The best correlation with the when including all three steel grades was the width of the hard zone composed of weld metal and the martensitic area in the heat affected zone.     

Recent advances in constructed wetland‐microbial fuel cells for simultaneous bioelectricity production and wastewater treatment: A review

The coupling of constructed wetlands (CWs) to microbial fuel cells (MFCs) has turned out to be a source of renewable energy for the production of bioelectricity and for the simultaneous wastewater treatment. Both technologies have an aerobic zone in the air‐water interface and an anaerobic zone in the lower part, where the anode and the cathode are strategically placed. This hybridization is a promising bioelectrochemical technology that exerts a symbiosis between plant‐bacteria in the rhizosphere of an aquatic plant, converting solar energy into bioelectricity through the formation of root exudates as an endogenous substrate and a microbial activity. The difference between CW‐MFC and MFC conventional lies in the bioelectricity and substrate production in situ, where exogenous substrates are not required for example wastewater. However, CW‐MFC can take organic content present in wastewater, promoting the removal of some pollutants. Different areas that comprise the study of a CW‐MFC have been explored, including the structures and their operation. This review aims to provide concise information on the state of the art of CW‐MFC systems, where a summary on important aspects of the development of this technology, such as bioelectricity production, configurations, plant species, rhizodeposits, electrode materials, wastewater treatment, and future perspectives, is presented. This system is a promising technology, not only for the production of bioenergy but also to maintain a clean environment, since during its operation, no toxic byproducts were formed.     

A duality relationship between fuzzy metrics and metrics

Based on the duality relationship between indistinguishability operators and (pseudo-)metrics, we address the problem of establishing whether there is a relationship between the last ones and fuzzy (pseudo-)metrics. We give a positive answer to the posed question. Concretely, we yield a method for generating fuzzy (pseudo-)metrics from (pseudo)-metrics and vice versa. The aforementioned methods involve the use of the pseudo-inverse of the additive generator of a continuous Archimedean t-norm. As a consequence, we get a method to generate non-strong fuzzy (pseudo-)metrics from (pseudo-)metrics. Examples that illustrate the exposed methods are also given. Finally, we show that the classical duality relationship between indistinguishability operators and (pseudo)-metrics can be retrieved as a particular case of our results when continuous Archimedean t-norms are under consideration.