Loud, Proud and Prosperous! Report on the Mobility International USA International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities

[Excerpt] MIUSA designed the International Symposium on Microcredit for Women with Disabilities in response to recommendations from women leaders with disabilities at WILD, at the Symposium in Beijing, and from our own experience with US-based international development programs. It seemed apparent that economic empowerment of women with disabilities was not high on any agenda – international aid agencies, development organizations, women’s programs, or even disability rights movements. Women with disabilities expressed that they – women with disabilities – would need to take leadership in this area, and that they needed particular knowledge and skills to be effective as leaders in this area

Sand chair: Improving access to Cornish beaches through sustainable design

Sustainable Innovation 2016: ‘Circular Economy’ Sustainable Innovation & Design This paper is a case study describing a collaborative product design and development project between Falmouth University and local charity, Cornwall Mobility (CM), in Truro. The project focused on the design of a beach wheelchair, or ‘sand chair’. An opportunity was identified by CM for greater access to beach wheelchairs in Cornwall. This is part of a wider remit to explore how Cornish beaches can be made more accessible to people with physical disabilities and mobility difficulties to enjoy the physiological and psychological benefits that being by the sea can bring. Beach wheelchairs are frequently used by locals and visitors to Cornwall, including children and adults who are physically disabled through disease or injury, and elderly people who struggle with mobility. The current beach wheelchairs – until recently operated by Cornwall Council – are imported from the USA, are expensive and subject to import duty. In addition, a number of known faults and design improvements have already been recognised with the existing product sourced by CM. Working closely with CM, with the benefit of their expertise in this field, the case study examines the opportunity to develop a much improved designed product at a lower cost that could be manufactured locally, in Cornwall. The project demonstrates how a charity, such as CM, can be empowered through design, to provide improved access to products and services for their users. CM has supported important primary research activities in this product realm due to its advisory role to a large client base. The collaboration has allowed for engagement with CM clients for user centred design practice. As part of this process, CM clients with mobility ranging from paralysis to severe arthritis have been involved in the testing of Sand Chair prototypes. They evaluated the product against two competitor beach wheelchairs and participated in a research exercise to establish the key functional priorities of the product. The wider client base also affords marketing and retail opportunities for the product through CM's existing market networks. The developed product is easier to get in and out of and easier for the person pushing the chair to handle. It is also visually more attractive with aesthetic detailing synonymous with the seaside rather than a hospital. However, in addition to product usability, technical issues relating to materials and manufacturing have also been addressed. Early development saw the exploration of the potential of sheet material as a key structural component. This challenges the commonly prescribed stainless steel tube assembly seen on many beach wheelchairs. Sheet materials can be CNC machined, negating the need for specialist tooling, and provide flexibility in terms of component detailing. It becomes very easy to make bespoke details or component alterations. A dry joint system is used embracing design for disassembly, making the product consistently repairable or upgradable, and allows components to be easily separated for recycling. The assembly of the product does not require a high skill level. The product is now at a mature development stage with further prototype trials planned during summer 2016

Solvation Effects on Hole Mobility in the Poly G/Poly C Duplex

Theoretical calculations of solvation contribution to hole energy in a polynucleotide chain give very low hole mobility values at zero temperature, \mu < 10^{-3} cm^2/(V s). We calculated hole mobility at physiological temperature for the Poly G/Poly C DNA duplex, which gave substantially larger mobility values. Mobility over the temperature range 20-400 K was calculated. Taking stacking interaction into account substantially increased hole mobility

MoMo: a group mobility model for future generation mobile wireless networks

Existing group mobility models were not designed to meet the requirements for accurate simulation of current and future short distance wireless networks scenarios, that need, in particular, accurate, up-to-date informa- tion on the position of each node in the network, combined with a simple and flexible approach to group mobility modeling. A new model for group mobility in wireless networks, named MoMo, is proposed in this paper, based on the combination of a memory-based individual mobility model with a flexible group behavior model. MoMo is capable of accurately describing all mobility scenarios, from individual mobility, in which nodes move inde- pendently one from the other, to tight group mobility, where mobility patterns of different nodes are strictly correlated. A new set of intrinsic properties for a mobility model is proposed and adopted in the analysis and comparison of MoMo with existing models. Next, MoMo is compared with existing group mobility models in a typical 5G network scenario, in which a set of mobile nodes cooperate in the realization of a distributed MIMO link. Results show that MoMo leads to accurate, robust and flexible modeling of mobility of groups of nodes in discrete event simulators, making it suitable for the performance evaluation of networking protocols and resource allocation algorithms in the wide range of network scenarios expected to characterize 5G networks.Comment: 25 pages, 17 figure

Class Origins, Education and Occupational Attainment: Cross-cohort Changes among Men in Britain

Studies of intergenerational class mobility and of intragenerational occupational mobility have of late tended to diverge in their concerns and methodology. This reflects assumptions regarding the increasing part played by education in intergenerational mobility and the decreasing part played by class origins in intragenerational mobility, once educational attainment is controlled. The paper contributes to the questioning of these assumptions on empirical grounds. Analyses are made of the occupational mobility of men in three British birth cohorts over the course of their earlier working lives :i.e. men born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. It is found that while the most important effect on mobility chances is that of educational qualifications, the importance of education does not increase across the three cohorts; that class origins also have a significant effect on mobility chances, and one that does not decrease across the cohorts; and that features of worklife experience, in particular the frequency of occupational changes, likewise have a persisting effect on mobility chances, independently of both education and class origins. However, while secular changes in mobility processes are scarcely in evidence, the analyses do provide strong indications of a cohort effect. Men in the 1958 birth cohort, whose first years in the labour market coincided with a period of severe recession, de-industrialisation and high unemployment, would appear to have experienced various lasting disadvantages in their subsequent occupational histories

Smart mobility: opportunity or threat to innovate places and cities

The concept of the “smart mobility” has become something of a buzz phrase in the planning and transport fields in the last decade. After a fervent first phase in which information technology and digital data were considered the answer for making mobility more efficient, more attractive and for increasing the quality of travel, some disappointing has grown around this concept: the distance between the visionarypotentialthatsmartness is providingis too far from the reality of urban mobility in cities. We argue in particular that two main aspects of smart mobility should be eluded: the first refers to the merely application to technology on mobility system, what we called the techo-centric aspect; the second feature is the consumer-centric aspect of smart mobility, that consider transport users only as potential consumers of a service. Starting from this, the study critics the smart mobility approach and applications and argues on a“smarter mobility” approach, in which technologies are only oneaspects of a more complex system. With a view on the urgency of looking beyond technology and beyond consumer-oriented solutions, the study arguments the need for a cross-disciplinary and a more collaborative approach that could supports transition towards a“smarter mobility” for enhancing the quality of life and the development ofvibrant cities. The article does not intend to produce a radical critique of the smart mobility concept,denying a priori its utility. Our perspectiveisthat the smart mobility is sometimes used as an evocativeslogan lacking some fundamental connection with other central aspect of mobility planning and governance. Main research questions are: what is missing in the technology-oriented or in the consumers-oriented smart mobility approach? What are the main risks behind these approaches? To answer this questions the paper provides in Section 2 the rationale behind the paper;Section 3 provides a literature review that explores the evolution on smart mobility paradigm in the last decades analysing in details the “techno-centric”and the “consumer-centric” aspects. Section 4proposes an integrated innovative approach for smart mobility, providing examples and some innovative best practices in Belgium. Some conclusions are finally drawnin Section 5, based on the role of smart mobility to create not only virtual platforms but high quality urban places