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

Demonstration of CO2 conversion to synthetic transport fuel at flue gas concentrations

A mixture of 1-and 2-butanol was produced using a stepwise synthesis starting with a methyl halide. The process included a carbon dioxide utilization step to produce an acetate salt which was then converted to the butanol isomers by Claisen condensation of the esterified acetate followed by hydrogenation of the resulting ethyl acetoacetate. Importantly, the CO 2 utilization step uses dry, dilute carbon dioxide (12% CO 2 in nitrogen) similar to those found in post-combustion flue gases. The work has shown that the Grignard reagent has a slow rate of reaction with oxygen in comparison to carbon dioxide, meaning that the costly purification step usually associated with carbon capture technologies can be omitted using this direct capture-conversion technique. Butanol isomers are useful as direct drop-in replacement fuels for gasoline due to their high octane number, higher energy density, hydrophobicity, and low corrosivity in existing petrol engines. An energy analysis shows the process to be exothermic from methanol to butanol; however, energy is required to regenerate the active magnesium metal from the halide by-product. The methodology is important as it allows electrical energy, which is difficult to store using batteries over long periods of time, to be stored as a liquid fuel that fits entirely with the current liquid fuels infrastructure. This means that renewable, weather-dependent energy can be stored across seasons, for example, production in summer with consumption in winter. It also helps to avoid new fossil carbon entering the supply chain through the utilization of carbon dioxide that would otherwise be emitted. As methanol has also been shown to be commercially produced from CO 2 , this adds to the prospect of the general decarbonization of the transport fuels sector. Furthermore, as the conversion of CO 2 to butanol requires significantly less hydrogen than CO 2 to octanes, there is a potentially reduced burden on the so-called hydrogen economy

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

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

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

A network mobility indicator using a fuzzy logic approach

This paper introduces a methodology to assess the mobility of a road transport network from the 3 network perspective. In this research, the mobility of the road transport network is defined as the 4 ability of the road transport network to connect all the origin-destination pairs within the network with 5 an acceptable level of service. Two mobility attributes are therefore introduced to assess the physical 6 connectivity and the road transport network level of service. Furthermore, a simple technique based 7 on a fuzzy logic approach is used to combine mobility attributes into a single mobility indicator in 8 order to measure the impact of disruptive events on road transport network functionality. 9 The application of the proposed methodology on a hypothetical Delft city network shows the ability of the technique to estimate variation in the level of mobility under different scenarios. The method allows the study of demand and supply side variations on overall network mobility, providing a new tool for decision makers in understanding the dynamic nature of mobility under various events. The method can also be used as an evaluation tool to gauge the highway network mobility level, and to highlight weaknesses in the network

Wage mobility, Job mobility and Spatial mobility in the Portuguese economy

This paper intends to analyse to what extent does a worker who, along with a job move undergoes a spatial move, gain a wage increase. For that matter, a sample of Quadros de Pessoal is used with information gathered regarding all the workers that are part of those tables, simultaneously for the years 1997 and 1998 as well as their working places. This information is initially used to carry out a bivariate analysis allowing characterizing the workers that change jobs, those who change working places and those who experience both changes. Afterwards, a wage equation is estimated, namely an Augmented Mincer Equation, taking into account both the hourly wage and the wage, making it possible to verify the influence of spatial mobility (through three levels of mobility, according to the distance between the old and new jobs) on the wage. In fact, the results of these estimations suggest that the longer the distance between the old and the new job, higher wage the moving worker will get. KEYWORDS Wage mobility, job mobility, spatial mobility, Portugal JEL Classification: J31, J61, J62, R23