Survey of End-to-End Mobile Network Measurement Testbeds, Tools, and Services

Mobile (cellular) networks enable innovation, but can also stifle it and lead to user frustration when network performance falls below expectations. As mobile networks become the predominant method of Internet access, developer, research, network operator, and regulatory communities have taken an increased interest in measuring end-to-end mobile network performance to, among other goals, minimize negative impact on application responsiveness. In this survey we examine current approaches to end-to-end mobile network performance measurement, diagnosis, and application prototyping. We compare available tools and their shortcomings with respect to the needs of researchers, developers, regulators, and the public. We intend for this survey to provide a comprehensive view of currently active efforts and some auspicious directions for future work in mobile network measurement and mobile application performance evaluation.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials. arXiv does not format the URL references correctly. For a correctly formatted version of this paper go to http://www.cs.montana.edu/mwittie/publications/Goel14Survey.pd

Development and integration of a decision support system for electronic outsourcing into telemanufacturing service provider

The use of computers and Information Technology enables manufacturers, especially small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) to improve productivity and increase manufactuning flexibility. Telemanufactuning or manufacturing in virtual environment is one of the infrastructures that facilitate the use of information superhighways and computer technology to attain these goals. Broadly defined, Telemanufactuning is the utilization of services accessed via communication networks and across information superhighways to perform in real time, operations and processes essential to the design and production of items. It can be a key enabler for decentralized manufacturing using global resources and expert design teams. In addition to updating several of the existing modules of the Telemanufacturing infrastructure developed earlier, in this work an Electronic Outsourcing Decision Support System (DSS) is developed to aid manufacturers in establishing first cut outsourcing policies. The development of this DSS is motivated by the increasing use of outsourcing in businesses today to accomplish improvements in critical success factors such as quality, productivity, customer satisfaction, time to market, and to focus on one\u27s core competencies. The salient features of the DSS are cost analysis and engineening economy procedures to aid users in Telemanufactuning decisions as well as for appraising the value of capital investment alternatives. Further, the user-friendly environment inherent to the DSS makes analytical decision making simpler

Informing Intentional Use of Prototyping in Engineering Design: Context-Specific Novice Approaches and Stakeholder Feedback

Prototypes are essential tools that can be used strategically throughout the design process to increase the likelihood that a product achieves stakeholder needs. Prototyping allows physical or visual form to be given to an idea, and research has shown that prototypes have the potential to support communication and improve product requirements elicitation and design input by enabling stakeholders and designers to engage around a “shared space” – the prototype. Despite the numerous benefits of using prototypes throughout a design process, novice designers often limit their use of prototypes to test and verify a chosen concept during the later phases of their processes. Limited studies to date have investigated novice uses of prototypes during the front-end phases of design and the effects of context, stakeholder type, and prototype type on stakeholder feedback. This research leverages approaches from multiple disciplines to characterize 1) novice designers’ uses of prototypes and 2) the effects of various factors on stakeholder design input during engagement with prototypes. We conducted interviews with engineering design students in different contexts to investigate their use of prototypes. We also developed a prototyping best practice framework to evaluate the intentionality in novice designers’ use of prototypes during design. To deepen our understanding of how prototype type can influence stakeholder feedback, we presented various prototypes of a medical device concept to diverse stakeholders, including medical doctors, medical students and nurses and asked questions to elicit feedback on the design. Research findings indicated that novice designers lacked intentionality when using prototypes. Their prototyping behaviors often occurred unintentionally to satisfy course requirements or as a response to failure or setbacks. Novice designers from different contexts favored different prototype types, and all participants underutilized prototypes, particularly during the front-end phases of design and when engaging with stakeholders. Our results further showed that nuances like prototype type, stakeholder group, and question type influenced the quality of stakeholder feedback. Since variation in prototype type, stakeholder group, and question type had a significant effect on the quality of stakeholder feedback, and since most novice designers did not use prototypes intentionally, our findings point to missed opportunities that likely impact several areas: what novice designers learn about using prototypes, the prototyping practices with which they begin professional practice, and ultimately the human-centered design solutions they create. This research leveraged, and has implications for, engineering design, design education, industrial design, design science, and design research methods. We expect that some of our findings, specifically that 1) novice designers lacked intentionality and underutilized prototypes, and 2) the types of prototypes, stakeholders, and questions influenced stakeholder feedback, are transferable to, and can have a broader impact on, other contexts in which prototypes are used. The fact that novice designers lacked intentionality in prototype use suggests that repeated and reflective practice is needed and informs pedagogical and industrial approaches throughout the engineering education and practice spectrum. We recommend that educators encourage a broader, more frequent use of prototypes during engineering design processes. By doing so, novice designers can develop the knowledge structures necessary to use prototypes intentionally, and intentionally with stakeholders, during design.PHDDesign ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144132/1/midei_1.pd

The value of medical 3D printing : hope versus hype

3D printing has been growing fast in the medical field. While preliminary clinical results have been reported in the literature, it’s health economic value has not been analyzed yet. Medical 3D printing has found its main applications in surgery; especially orthopedics and reconstructive surgery. Its applications rage from anatomic models to surgical guides and implants. All of these can be seen as consecutive levels of integration. While papers often report improved clinical results, a great accuracy and an acceptable price, few of these are backed with numbers. We performed 3 health economic analyses using Markov models using a payer perspective on each of these 3 levels of integration. As a first level, we analyzed the impact of using anatomic models as a tool for surgical planning in congenital heart diseases for 9 different procedures. Results varied from not being cost effective for atrial septum defects, to being highly cost-effective in highly complex procedures such as a Norwood repair. Second, we analyzed the already well integrated use of surgical guides for primary total knee arthroplasty using Belgian registry data. The database approach showed an significantly reduced revision rate in the group using custom guides compared to the conventional approach. The Markov models showed the technology to be cost-effective if CT-based guides are used. At last, we analyzed the use of custom 3D printed acetabular implants for revision surgery in patients with acetabular defects compared to non-3D printed custom implants. The 3D printed implants showed to be cost effective, especially in younger patients. The final chapter gives an overview of the pitfalls encountered during these preliminary analyses and gives a glance at possible solutions to allow better analysis and faster adoption of medical innovations

Digital game-based learning for D&I: conceptual design of an educational digital game Chuzme

[EN] There is a demand for tools facilitating intercultural, diversity and inclusion (D&I) education. Video games are one of the most advanced new media technologies, so it is only natural to suppose that they can offer remarkable possibilities for fostering learning in the area of intercultural, D&I education. This article explores theoretical guidelines in the design of Chuzme, a serious educational game that focuses on raising cultural selfawareness, the acknowledgement of cultural bias, and aims to generate positive attitudes towards migrants, refugees and expatriates amongst its players and to train to be an inclusive leader. It is hoped that this will serve as a useful reference to guide the development of similar titles in the future.Shliakhovchuk, O.; Muñoz García, A. (2020). Digital game-based learning for D&I: conceptual design of an educational digital game Chuzme. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 409-419. https://doi.org/10.4995/INN2019.2019.10561OCS40941

Metaverse Retrieval: Finding the Best Metaverse Environment via Language

In recent years, the metaverse has sparked an increasing interest across the globe and is projected to reach a market size of more than \1000B by 2030. This is due to its many potential applications in highly heterogeneous fields, such as entertainment and multimedia consumption, training, and industry. This new technology raises many research challenges since, as opposed to the more traditional scene understanding, metaverse scenarios contain additional multimedia content, such as movies in virtual cinemas and operas in digital theaters, which greatly influence the relevance of the metaverse to a user query. For instance, if a user is looking for Impressionist exhibitions in a virtual museum, only the museums that showcase exhibitions featuring various Impressionist painters should be considered relevant. In this paper, we introduce the novel problem of text-to-metaverse retrieval, which proposes the challenging objective of ranking a list of metaverse scenarios based on a given textual query. To the best of our knowledge, this represents the first step towards understanding and automating cross-modal tasks dealing with metaverses. Since no public datasets contain these important multimedia contents inside the scenes, we also collect and annotate a dataset which serves as a proof-of-concept for the problem. To establish the foundation for it, we implement and analyze several solutions based on deep learning, whereas to promote transparency and reproducibility, we will publicly release their source code and the collected data

Development of a Tridimensional Measuring Application For iPads

In today’s fast-paced distribution centers workers and management alike are constantly searching for the quickest and most efficient way to package items for distribution. Even with the advancement of app-oriented solutions to a variety of problems across many industries there is a distinct unmet need in distribution environments for an application capable of increasing the efficiency and accuracy of packaging items. This senior project focused on the development and testing of an application utilizing the Structure Three Dimensional Sensor and a 4th generation iPad to scan an object or group of objects to be packaged and determine the overall dimensions (length, width, & height) of the minimum sized package necessary to contain the objects. In cooperation with a Computer Science student, two Industrial Technology students developed multiple iterations and alternate methods of testing to determine and optimize the accuracy and functionality of the application. This project has been developed in coordination with the technical advisers Industrial Technology professor Javier de la Fuente (PhD) and Computer Science professor John Clements (PhD)

The Designers Leap: Boundary Jumping to foster interdisciplinarity between Textile Design and Science

Creative thinking is an instinctive problem-solving process for designers however, designers alone cannot solve real-world problems. Collaboration between higher education and industry, and across design and science disciplines can create new paradigms of research to address societal and economic challenges. This paper argues from the perspective of fashion and textile designers, for design to be at the heart of the collaborative research process and advocates for co-design, speculative-design and scenario design to be considered as valid methodologies to foster interdisciplinarity. Perspectives on interdisciplinary partnerships across academic disciplines and with industry are typified by two very different reflections of collaborative projects between fashion designers, textile designers, scientists and industrial partners. The paper identifies commonalities and differences between scientists and designers, with particular relevance to textiles, in a bid to understand how they may collaborate more effectively in the context of interdisciplinary work, and the paper further identifies factors needed for establishing common enablers for engaging in co-design. This is an under-explored field and highlights the changing role of the designer, and as such is of value to researchers in textiles, fashion and product design