Exploring design trade-offs for achieving social inclusion in multi-tiered design problems

ABSTRACT

The digital age of the future is ‘not out there to be discovered’, but it needs to be ‘designed’. The design challenge has to address questions about how we want to live, work, and learn (as individuals and as communities) and what we value and appreciate, e.g.: reflecting on quality of life and creating inclusive societies. An overriding design trade-off for the digital age is whether new developments will increase the digital divide or will create more inclusive societies. Sustaining inclusive societies means allowing people of all ages and all abilities to exploit information technologies for personally meaningful activities. Meta-design fosters the design of socio-technical environments that end-user developers can modify and evolve at use time to improve their quality of life and favour their inclusion in the society. This paper describes three case studies in the domain of assistive technologies in which end users themselves cannot act as end-user developers, but someone else (e.g.: a caregiver or a clinician) must accept this role requiring multi-tiered architectures. The design trade-offs and requirements for meta-design identified in the context of the case studies and other researchers’ projects are described to inform the development of future socio-technical environments focused on social inclusion.     

Workers’ rest allowance and smoothing of the workload in assembly lines

Ergonomic aspects have a crucial role in manual assembly systems. They impact on the workers’ health, final product quality and productivity. For these reasons, there is the necessity to integrate them into the assembly line balancing phase as, whereas, only time and cost variables are considered. In this study, human energy expenditures are considered as ergonomic aspects and we integrate them, for the first time, into the assembly line balancing problem type 2 through the rest allowance evaluation. We consider as an objective function the minimization of the smoothness index. Firstly, a new optimal method based on mixed integer linear programming and a new linearization methodology are proposed. Then, a heuristic approach is introduced. To complete the study, a computational experimentation is presented to validate the mathematical model and to compare the methodologies proposed in terms of computational time, complexity and solution. Additionally, we provide a detailed analysis of the impact that rest allowance evaluation can have on productivity comparing the results obtained, taking into account the rest allowance integration before, during and after the assembly balancing process.     

One-Pot Methods for the Protection and Assembly of Sugars

In recent years, there has been rapid expansion of glycan synthesis, fueled by the recognition that the structural complexity of sugars translates to a myriad of biological functions. Such chemical syntheses involve many challenges, mostly due to the regio- and stereochemical aspects of glycosidic bond formation. One-pot strategies were developed to assist in attaining faster and more economical access to the glycan constructs. In this front, achievements in protecting group manipulation, glycosylation, and combinations of these have been reported. Protecting group manipulations in one pot take advantage of the reaction compatibility of commonly used transformations, many of which occur in high regioselectivity. Sequential glycosylations, on the other hand, rely on leaving group orthogonalities and reactivity tuning, as well as the preactivation technique. Altogether, these approaches offer attractive means to the much needed glycan structures and, consequently, help usher in advances in glycoscience.     

加油站油品防盗的措施

为防止加油站油品被盗，应采取加强夜间值班管理、加强油品的计量管理和加强安全管理的高科技建设三项措施。     

238C防盗报警系统的改进

漯河中波台自安装238C防盗报警系统以来,多次出现误报现象,严重影响了发射及其他工作的正常进行。首先对该系统的工作原理进行了简单介绍,然后对误报故障现象进行了分析、处理,并改进了电路设计中存在的不足。改进后的运行数据表明,系统误报率明显下降,达到了预期的目的。最后,对本系统的设计提出了进一步完善的建议。     

由乙腈一步法制备乙酸丁酯的研究

以丁醇和制备丙烯腈的副产物乙腈为原料 ,采用一步法合成了乙酸丁酯。通过正交实验得到了影响反应的 4种因素。确定了最佳的工艺条件为 :催化剂的量为样品质量的 40 % ;n(CH3CN)∶ n(C4 H9OH) =1∶ 1 .0 5 ;反应温度为 1 0 5℃ ;反应时间为 8h。在此反应条件下 ,乙酸丁酯的收率为 88.8% ,纯度可达 99.5 %。并用气相色谱及红外光谱对产品的纯度进行了表征     

Critical Configurations for 1-View in Projections from ℙ<Superscript>k</Superscript> → ℙ<Superscript>2</Superscript>

In this paper we describe, from a theoretical point of view, critical configurations for the projective reconstruction of a set of points, for a single view, i.e. for calibration of a camera, in the case of projections from ℙ^k to ℙ² for k ≥ 4. We give first a general result describing these critical loci in ℙ^k, which, if irreducible, are algebraic varieties of dimension k−2 and degree 3. If k=4 they can be either a smooth ruled surface or a cone and if k = 5 they can be a smooth three dimensional variety, ruled in planes, or a cone. If k≥ 6, the variety is always a cone, the vertex of which has dimension at least k − 6. The reducible cases are studied in Appendix A. These results are then applied to determine explicitly the critical loci for the projections from ℙ^k which arise from the dynamic scenes in ℙ³ considered in [13]. Marina Bertolini is currently Associate Professor of Geometry at the Department of Mathematics at the Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Her main field of research is Complex Projective Algebraic Geometry, with particular interest for the classification of projective varieties and for the geometry of Grassmann varieties. On these topics M. Bertolini has published more than twenty reviewed papers on national and international journals. She has been for some years now interested also in applications of Algebraic Geometry to Computer Vision problems. Cristina Turrini is Associate Professor of Geometry at the Department of Mathematics of Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Her main research interest is Complex Projective Algebraic Geometry: subvarieties of Grassmannians, special varieties, automorphisms, classification. In the last two years she has started to work on applications of Algebraic Geometry to problems of Computer Vision. She is author or co-author of about thirty reviewed papers. She is also involved in popularization of Mathematics, and on this subject she is co-editor of some books.     

从《左传》录诗看孔子是否删诗

孔子是否删诗，这是一个历史遗留问题。司马迁首言在前，孔颖达怀疑在后。宋之后，争议遂起，延至近代。今人夏传才先生断日：孔子是否删诗，“在没有发掘出新史料的情况下，哪怕再争论八百年，也是搞不清楚的”。以此止息纷争。话虽不错，但问题并没有解决。我认为，在没有发掘出新史料的情况下，可以从《左传》入手，来考察孔子是否删诗。     

Fast and accurate 4‐node quadrilateral

An accurate and variationally consistent 4‐node quadrilateral element is introduced where high coarse mesh accuracy and low mesh distortion sensitivity are characteristic qualities, even when incompressibility is approached for plane strain. One‐point quadrature integration procedure is adopted and a new improved stabilization technique is developed. Orthogonality conditions are utilized so that the patch test is satisfied for arbitrary quadrilaterals. Several numerical examples including a convergence rate study are presented which confirm the excellent performance of this element. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

1,2,4-三唑酮-3衍生物的制备

研究了１，２，４－三唑酮－３（ＴＯ）衍生物的合成，结果表明ＴＯ在多种硝化条件下均可制得３－硝基－１，２，４－三唑酮－５，同时还合成了ＴＯ的二取代硝基苯衍生物。