What is Conceptual Engineering and What Should it Be?

Conceptual engineering is the design, implementation, and evaluation of concepts. Conceptual engineering includes or should include de novo conceptual engineering (designing a new concept) as well as conceptual re-engineering (fixing an old concept). It should also include heteronymous (different-word) as well as homonymous (same-word) conceptual engineering. I discuss the importance and the difficulty of these sorts of conceptual engineering in philosophy and elsewhere

A comparison of processing techniques for producing prototype injection moulding inserts.

This project involves the investigation of processing techniques for producing low-cost moulding inserts used in the particulate injection moulding (PIM) process. Prototype moulds were made from both additive and subtractive processes as well as a combination of the two. The general motivation for this was to reduce the entry cost of users when considering PIM. PIM cavity inserts were first made by conventional machining from a polymer block using the pocket NC desktop mill. PIM cavity inserts were also made by fused filament deposition modelling using the Tiertime UP plus 3D printer. The injection moulding trials manifested in surface finish and part removal defects. The feedstock was a titanium metal blend which is brittle in comparison to commodity polymers. That in combination with the mesoscale features, small cross-sections and complex geometries were considered the main problems. For both processing methods, fixes were identified and made to test the theory. These consisted of a blended approach that saw a combination of both the additive and subtractive processes being used. The parts produced from the three processing methods are investigated and their respective merits and issues are discussed

Reducing risk in pre-production investigations through undergraduate engineering projects.

This poster is the culmination of final year Bachelor of Engineering Technology (B.Eng.Tech) student projects in 2017 and 2018. The B.Eng.Tech is a level seven qualification that aligns with the Sydney accord for a three-year engineering degree and hence is internationally benchmarked. The enabling mechanism of these projects is the industry connectivity that creates real-world projects and highlights the benefits of the investigation of process at the technologist level. The methodologies we use are basic and transparent, with enough depth of technical knowledge to ensure the industry partners gain from the collaboration process. The process we use minimizes the disconnect between the student and the industry supervisor while maintaining the academic freedom of the student and the commercial sensitivities of the supervisor. The general motivation for this approach is the reduction of the entry cost of the industry to enable consideration of new technologies and thereby reducing risk to core business and shareholder profits. The poster presents several images and interpretive dialogue to explain the positive and negative aspects of the student process

Return to China One Day

This open access book is intended for common readers who are interested in the life story of Qian Xuesen (also know as Tsien Hsue-Shen). Based on a large number of original archives and historical materials, this book focuses on Qian Xuesen’s years of seeking knowledge from his birth in 1911 to his return to China in 1955 and describes how he grows into a world-known scientist from the aspect of humanity. This book can be used as reference material for Qian Xuesen’s earlier years

Mustang Daily, February 14, 2003

Student newspaper of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA.https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/studentnewspaper/6976/thumbnail.jp

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 54 Number 2, Fall 2012

18 - WE, ROBOTS By John Deever. Adventures with the Robotics Systems Laboratory by land, sea, and sky. And in orbit. 20 - SARAH KATE WILSON VS. GODZILLA By Jeff Gire. Tackling big problems- like attracting more women to engineering and transferring mountains of data through the air. 22 - DELUGE AND DROUGHT By Erica Klarreich. Lessons in how to wedge more data into less space-and build a smarter energy grid. 24 - BUILDING BIOMEDICAL TESTS By Melissae Fellet. Where engineering meets biology, the work ranges from diagnosing voice disorders to tracking toxicity in the brain. 26 - THE LONG VIEW By Justin Gerdes. Construction and design: Make it safer, stronger, and do it all sustainably. 28 - Drago\u27s gold By Sam Scott \u2796. From an Olympic water polo medal to designing systems for the rocket that put men on the Moon. 30 - WINGs By Paul Totah \u2779. For a century, John J. Montgomery has been given short shrift when it comes to his role as an aviation pioneer. It\u27s time to set things right. 32 - CAN YOU STAND THE HEAT? By Steven Boyd Saum. To design a heat shield that could get the Curiosity rover through the atmosphere of Mars, NASA turned to a team headed by Robin Beck \u2777. 34 - THE MILLION-DOLLAR LEAVEY CHALLENGE By Jeff Gire. SCU can receive a major grant- but needs gifts from 9,000 undergraduate alumni to make it happen.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/sc_mag/1002/thumbnail.jp

Rich Socio-Cognitive Agents for Immersive Training Environments: Case of NonKin Village

Demand is on the rise for scientifically based human-behavior models that can be quickly customized and inserted into immersive training environments to recreate a given society or culture. At the same time, there are no readily available science model-driven environments for this purpose (see survey in Sect. 2). In researching how to overcome this obstacle, we have created rich (complex) socio-cognitive agents that include a large number of social science models (cognitive, sociologic, economic, political, etc) needed to enhance the realism of immersive, artificial agent societies. We describe current efforts to apply model-driven development concepts and how to permit other models to be plugged in should a developer prefer them instead. The current, default library of behavioral models is a metamodel, or authoring language, capable of generating immersive social worlds. Section 3 explores the specific metamodels currently in this library (cognitive, socio-political, economic, conversational, etc.) and Sect. 4 illustrates them with an implementation that results in a virtual Afghan village as a platform-independent model. This is instantiated into a server that then works across a bridge to control the agents in an immersive, platform-specific 3D gameworld (client). Section 4 also provides examples of interacting in the resulting gameworld and some of the training a player receives. We end with lessons learned and next steps for improving both the process and the gameworld. The seeming paradox of this research is that as agent complexity increases, the easier it becomes for the agents to explain their world, their dilemmas, and their social networks to a player or trainee

RISK REDUCTION THROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL CONTROL OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

Abuse and harm to individuals, through harassment and bullying, coexist with Identity Theft as criminal behaviours supported by the ready availability of personal information. Incorporating privacy protection measures into software design requires a thorough understanding about how an individual's privacy is affected by Internet technologies. This research set out to incorporate such an understanding by examining privacy risks for two groups of individuals, for whom privacy was an important issue, domestic abuse survivors and teenagers. The purpose was to examine the reality of the privacy risks for these two groups. This research combined a number of approaches underpinned by a selection of foundation theories from four separate domains: software engineering; information systems; social science; and criminal behaviour. Semi-structured interviews, focus groups, workshops and questionnaires gathered information from managers of refuges and outreach workers from Women's Aid; representatives from probation and police domestic violence units; and teenagers. The findings from these first interactions provided specific examples of risks posed to the two groups. These findings demonstrated that there was a need for a selection of protection mechanisms that promoted awareness of the potential risk among vulnerable individuals. Emerging from these findings were a set of concepts that formed the basis of a novel taxonomy of threat framework designed to assist in risk assessment. To demonstrate the crossover between understanding the social environment and the use of technology, the taxonomy of threat was incorporated into a novel Vulnerability Assessment Framework, which in turn provided a basis for an extension to standard browser technology. A proof-of-concept prototype was implemented by creating an Internet Explorer 7.0 browser helper object. The prototype also made use of the Semantic Web protocols of Resource Description Framework and the Web Ontology Language for simple data storage and reasoning. The purpose of this combination was to demonstrate how the environment in which the individual primarily interacted with the Internet could be adapted to provide awareness of the potential risk, and to enable the individual to take steps to reduce that risk. Representatives of the user-groups were consulted for evaluation of the acceptability of the prototype approach. The favourable ratings given by the respondents demonstrated the acceptability of such an approach to monitoring personal information, with the provision that control remained with the individual. The evaluation exercise also demonstrated how the prototype would serve as a useful tool to make individuals aware of the dangers. The novel contribution of this research contains four facets: it advances understanding of privacy protection for the individual; illustrates an effective combination of methodology frameworks to address the complex issue of privacy; provides a framework for risk assessment through the taxonomy of threat; and demonstrates the novel vulnerability assessment framework through a proof-of-concept prototype

Innovator - Fall 2010

2 - TEXTILE LEGACY LEADING TO BIOMEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS PhilaU researchers developing a cardiac patch 6 - PRESIDENT SPINELLI COMMENTARY A Great Return on Investment 8 - THE BUSINESS OF FASHIONFashion thinking zeros in on bottom line 14 - MEN IN FLIGHTGuggenheim Fellow chronicles history of male flight attendants 18 - PHILAU NEWS 22 - Q&A WITH NATHAN VANHOOK ’03 Alumnus designs new Nike shoe “Aina Chukka” 24 - PROFILES 28 - PHILAU AROUND THE WORLDAlumni, faculty and students’ global impact 33 - AWARDS AND HONORS 34 - A THIRD DIMENSION TO THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS EXPERIENCEFaculty commentary by D.K. Malhotra, Ph.D. 38 - FACULTY ACCOMPLISHMENTS 44 - IN THE NEWS 46 - ATHLETICS Pioneers on the Water: a look at the women’s rowing team 54 - ALUMNI EVENTS 56 - CLASS NOTES 61 - IN MEMORIAM 62 - SCHEDULE OF EVENT