Power-Assist Wheelchair Attachment

This senior design project sought to combine the best characteristics of manual and power wheelchairs by creating a battery-powered attachment to propel a manual wheelchair. The primary customer needs were determined to be affordability, portability, and travel on uneven surfaces. After the initial prototype, using a hub motor proved unsuccessful, so a second design was developed that consisted of a gear reduction motor and drive wheel connected to the back of the wheelchair by a trailing arm that could be easily attached/detached from the frame. The prototype of the second design succeeded in meeting most of the project goals related to cost, off-road capability, inclines, and range. Improvements can be made by reducing the attachment weight and improving user control of the device

Growing Pains: New Zealand Qualitative Evidence on Hurdles to Exporting Growth

This paper surveys qualitative evidence with the aim of identifying consistent issues surrounding the growth of New Zealand firms. The available literature is focussed on exporters and raises the possibility of two “hurdles” to growth for New Zealand firms. The first is the fixed-cost hurdle to entering exporting. The second is the hurdle of establishing the offshore distribution channels required for continued growth. While the evidence for these hurdles is far from conclusive, their existence is consistent with many of the available case studies. The hurdle to ongoing growth may explain why so many promising New Zealand companies are sold to foreign firms in the same industry. Overseas ownership by a firm in the same industry often solves the distribution problems of many small New Zealand firms and allows growth to continue. The outcome of overseas ownership is therefore not necessarily bad for New Zealand. The case study evidence suggests many plausible causes of these hurdles. These include New Zealand’s small market size and distant location and the fluctuating exchange rate. While the evidence on capital markets is mixed, case studies suggest a possible lack of specialised expertise on the part of New Zealand’s small venture capital industry may also be a hurdle to growth.Patterns of Firm Growth; Exporting

Overclocking Approach in Speeding-up a PC Performance

Overclocking can be defined as running a computer at a speed higher than the manufacturer intended. As technology evolves, the introduction of software-based overclocking solutions has widened the horizon of overclocking concept for all PC users. This concept originally designed to overcome money or price issues among the competing processor manufacturer. With this technology, user can achieve satisfaction as user will get boost on performance without spending a lot of money. This project called "Overclocking Approach in Speeding-up a PC Performance" will undermine all the relevant and important issues in developing a complete overclocked PC system with the right hardware and the right tools. This research discusses all the procedure needed in developing and testing the system stability within the capability of standard PC user using certain software. This research aim to achieve certain objectives that involve the procedures, legal issues, performance boost and skill development in overclocking concept as to ensure the topic are carefully chosen. For this project, the author is using the hybrid methodology of system development life cycle that include (Planning) Preliminary and feasibility study, Requirement specification, Design, Development and Testing. With this methodology, the author aim to develop a fully overclocked system in proving that overclocking approach can achieve higher overall performance result compare to standard system. Overclocking approach is designed for PC users to exploit the possibility of achieving higher system configuration and specification within the current hardware system with the help of sometweaking process and activities

SMEs and ICTs adoption : a new challenge to Regional Policies

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their widespread have produced profound changes at economic and social levels. We are now in what is known as Information Society. The ways in which people, firms, institutions and governments deal with ICTs and understand their impacts is an important issue. One of the main characteristics of Information Society is the growing competition between agents through innovation. By innovation we mean the capacity to manage creatively the knowledge as an answer to changes in social needs and in technology. Hence, innovation occurs as a means of competitive advantage. The paper addresses this issue by highlighting the importance of innovation for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which are by far the most relevant actors in European Economy. It is argued that the access and use of information as well as the existence of interaction between agents are key factors for innovation. ICTs, if used in a correct and efficient matter, can play an important role by inducing and help SMEs to innovate. In spite of helping firms overcoming a wide range of barriers, the adoption and the search for efficiency in ICTs use can however become a problem. This is even more significant concerning SMEs and particularly those located in peripheral regions. In fact, acknowledging the existence of a regional digital divide and a digital divide by company size, the European Commission is developing several actions in order to face and overcome these problems. The paper addresses several initiatives undertaken by the European Commission since the Lisbon summit at March 2000. More recently, the European regional policies have changed from simply getting SMEs connected to the Internet to the effective integration of ICTs into business processes. As a conclusion, the authors argue that Digital Policies should take into account that ICT adoption and use by SMEs, cannot be regarded as a panacea to solve the problems of firms and regional development. Regional policies to help SMEs to adopt ICT must be integrated (in a coherent way) within broader regional strategies.

Accuracy of Energy Model Calibration with IPMI

Energy consumption in Cloud computing is a significant issue and affects aspects such as the cost of energy, cooling in the data center and the environmental impact of cloud data centers. Monitoring and prediction provides the groundwork for improving the energy efficiency of data centers. This monitoring however is required to be fast and efficient without unnecessary overhead. It is also required to scale to the size of a data center where measurement through directly attached Watt meters is unrealistic. This therefore requires models that translate resource utilisation into the power consumed by a physical host. These models require calibrating and are hence subject to error. We discuss the causes of error within these models, focusing upon the use of IPMI in order to gather this data. We make recommendations on ways to mitigate this error without overly complicating the underlying model. The final result of these models is a Watt meter emulator that can provide values for power consumption from hosts in the data center, with an average error of 0.20W

Saving Energy, Saving Money : How South Carolina's Electric and Natural Gas Utilities Are Using Demand-Side Management to Help Customers Reduce Their Energy Bills

Demand-side management ("DSM") is a strategy that electric and natural gas utilities employ to decrease or defer demand for their energy services. South Carolina's three large investor-owned electric utilities (Duke Energy Carolinas, Progress Energy Carolinas, and South Carolina Electric & Gas Company) and state-owned Santee Cooper all offered a broad range of DSM programs in 2011