Impact of Intellectual Property Rights on the Governance Mode Decisions of Engineering Managers During the Establishment of Research Alliances With Publicly Funded Entities

Strengthening intellectual property rights for publicly financed research and development (R&D) ensures that research organizations maximize the full national value of the intellectual property that they generate, but potential negative spillover effects on the perceived value of a research alliance might deter an existing alliance partner from continued collaboration or a potential alliance partner from future collaboration. This study, performed in 2010 within the context of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa, aimed to develop a structural equation modeling-based value-mediation governance decision-making model that will enable engineering managers at publicly financed R&D organizations to select optimal governance modes for the research alliances they are establishing to grow their organizations’ R&D capabilities.     

Measuring Project Management Performance: Case of Construction Industry

This study develops construction-specific determinants and indicators of project management performance based on the 14 knowledge areas of the project management body of knowledge guide. Interrelations among the knowledge areas and influence of these factors on performance are investigated. Data collected from 121 construction projects are analyzed using structural equation modeling. Research findings suggest that project integration, communications, safety, risk, human resources, financial, and cost management have a direct impact, whereas scope and time management have an indirect effect on performance. The findings reported in this study are expected to help construction project managers devise and implement strategies and develop actions to improve project success. An engineering manager can use the framework developed in this research to define the underlying factors of efficient project management practices.     

复合张力模糊控制系统设计

张力控制是光纤弹性材料缠绕工艺中的一项关键技术,它直接影响到缠绕制品的质量,因此提出一种基于线速度差张力产生原理、交流伺服电机和微特直流力矩电机为施力机构的复合张力控制系统总体方案,实现对张力的精密控制;在对复合张力控制系统进行了建模分析基础上,模拟真实光纤环缠绕环境,采用模糊控制策略,仿真验证了复合张力控制系统的控制效果,表明复合张力模糊控制系统具有响应快、超调量小及精度高的优点。     

The role of topology in engineering design research

Aspects of the mathematical specialty of topology appear within several seemingly distinct areas of engineering design and engineering design theory. Indeed, the expression topology of a design is often used informally. In this article a primary intent is to demonstrate the diversity of applications of topology within engineering design. A complementary goal is to introduce the engineering design community to topology as a rich, formal, well-established mathematical discipline that may be of value for wider study. Upon reviewing some of these topological applications, it appears that topology holds promise as a basis for formalizing engineering design theory. This article considers topology as a basis for unifying design abstractions. The potential benefit may be the realization of commonalities between design aspects previously considered separately, where each now has its own attendant specialized, expensive analyses.     

Orthogonal variant moments features in image analysis

Moments are statistical measures used to obtain relevant information about a certain object under study (e.g., signals, images or waveforms), e.g., to describe the shape of an object to be recognized by a pattern recognition system. Invariant moments (e.g., the Hu invariant set) are a special kind of these statistical measures designed to remain constant after some transformations, such as object rotation, scaling, translation, or image illumination changes, in order to, e.g., improve the reliability of a pattern recognition system. The classical moment invariants methodology is based on the determination of a set of transformations (or perturbations) for which the system must remain unaltered. Although very well established, the classical moment invariants theory has been mainly used for processing single static images (i.e. snapshots) and the use of image moments to analyze images sequences or video, from a dynamic point of view, has not been sufficiently explored and is a subject of much interest nowadays. In this paper, we propose the use of variant moments as an alternative to the classical approach. This approach presents clear differences compared to the classical moment invariants approach, that in specific domains have important advantages. The difference between the classical invariant and the proposed variant approach is mainly (but not solely) conceptual: invariants are sensitive to any image change or perturbation for which they are not invariant, so any unexpected perturbation will affect the measurements (i.e. is subject to uncertainty); on the contrary, a variant moment is designed to be sensitive to a specific perturbation, i.e., to measure a transformation, not to be invariant to it, and thus if the specific perturbation occurs it will be measured; hence any unexpected disturbance will not affect the objective of the measurement confronting thus uncertainty. Furthermore, given the fact that the proposed variant moments are orthogonal (i.e. uncorrelated) it is possible to considerably reduce the total inherent uncertainty. The presented approach has been applied to interesting open problems in computer vision such as shape analysis, image segmentation, tracking object deformations and object motion tracking, obtaining encouraging results and proving the effectiveness of the proposed approach.     

A review of vision-based systems for soccer video analysis

This paper presents a survey of soccer video analysis systems for different applications: video summarization, provision of augmented information, high-level analysis. Computer vision techniques have been adapted to be applicable in the challenging soccer context. Different semantic levels of interpretation are required according to the complexity of the corresponding applications. For each application area we analyze the computer vision methodologies, their strengths and weaknesses and we investigate whether these approaches can be applied to extensive and real time soccer video analysis.     

基于SVM用户建模的核函数选择研究

用户建模是从用户偏好数据中建立用户偏好模型的过程,用户偏好数据具有系统运行初期的稀疏性和非线形的特点。支持向量机(Support Vector Machine,简称SVM)具有小样本学习、非线形处理的能力,是合适的用户建模工具。SVM的非线形处理能力主要依赖于核函数,采用不同的核函数进行建模对模型的预测效果有重大影响。本文重点研究核函数的选择对基于SVM建模方法的影响,从中选取了表现较优的小波核函数,构建性能突出的SVM进行用户建模。实验证明该建模方法可以有效地从小样本数据中学习用户偏好信息,建立反映用户真实偏好的用户模型。     

Image‐Based Edge Bundles: Simplified Visualization of Large Graphs

We present a new approach aimed at understanding the structure of connections in edge‐bundling layouts. We combine the advantages of edge bundles with a bundle‐centric simplified visual representation of a graph's structure. For this, we first compute a hierarchical edge clustering of a given graph layout which groups similar edges together. Next, we render clusters at a user‐selected level of detail using a new image‐based technique that combines distance‐based splatting and shape skeletonization. The overall result displays a given graph as a small set of overlapping shaded edge bundles. Luminance, saturation, hue, and shading encode edge density, edge types, and edge similarity. Finally, we add brushing and a new type of semantic lens to help navigation where local structures overlap. We illustrate the proposed method on several real‐world graph datasets.     

Modeling organizational performance indicators

Performance measurement and analysis is crucial for steering the organization to realize its strategic and operational goals. Relevant performance indicators and their relationships to goals and activities need to be determined and analyzed. Current organization modeling approaches do not reflect this in an adequate way. This paper attempts to fill the gap by presenting a framework for modeling performance indicators within a general organization modeling framework.     

Integrated simulation framework for the process planning of ships and offshore structures

Recently, requests for accurate process planning using simulation have been increasing in many engineering fields, including the shipbuilding industry. To date, designers of shipyards have developed in-house simulation systems or used commercial systems such as the QUEST by Dassault system when requests for the simulation of process planning have occurred. However, these methods have some limitations. First, it requires a lot of time to develop a new in-house simulation system. In addition, it is hard to reuse previously developed systems when developing a new one and it is also hard for these to satisfy the various needs of shipyards effectively.