Tactile sense discrimination of six nursery school children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was any difference in tactile discrimination of six nursery school children before and after a tactually depriving experience. Each subject was asked to report verbally his discrimination of heat, pressure, and texture stimuli, applied by specially devised instruments, on a specific area of the volar surface of the right forearm. A plaster cast, which extended from below the elbow distally to above the wrist of the right arm, was worn for 48 hours to provide the tactually depriving experience. Tactile discrimination of heat, pressure, and texture stimuli was measured before application, immediately after removal, and again 96 hours after removal of the cast

Review and prioritization of investment projects in the Waste Management organization of Tabriz Municipality with a Rough Sets Theory approach

Purpose: Prioritization of investment projects is a key step in the process of planning the investment activities of organizations. Choosing the suitable projects has a direct impact on the profitability and other strategic goals of organizations. Factors affecting the prioritization of investment projects are complex and the use of traditional methods alone cannot be useful, so there is a need to use a suitable model for prioritizing projects and investment plans. The purpose of this study is to prioritize projects and investment methods for projects (10 projects) considered by the Waste Management Organization of Tabriz Municipality. Methodology: The method of analysis used is the theory of rough, so that first the important investment projects in the field of waste management were determined using the research background and opinion of experts and the weight and priority of the projects were obtained using the Rough Sets Theory. Then, the priority of appropriate investment methods (out of 6 methods) of each project was obtained using Rough numbers, the opinion of experts and other aspects. Findings: The result of the research has been that construction project of a specialized recycling town, plastic recycling project, and recycled tire recycling project are three priority projects of Tabriz Municipality Waste Management Organization, respectively. Three investment methods, civil partnership agreements, BOT, and BOO can be used for them. Originality/Value: Tabriz Municipality Waste Management is an important and influential organization in the activities of the city, in which the investment methods in its projects are mostly based on common contracts and are performed in the same way for all projects. This research offers new methods for projects and their diversity according to Rough Sets technique

Numerical taxonomic studies of the East African highland bananas (Musa AAA - East Africa) in Uganda

The purpose of this study was to determine the variation pattern that exists in the East African Highland bananas (Musa AAA) grown in Uganda, estimate levels of dissimilarity caused by different growing conditions, and establish a flexible provisional classification and identification system. Techniques of numerical taxonomy were employed to determine the variation pattern. Sixty-one morphological characters were employed to determine differences among the 238 accessions available for the study. The East African Highland bananas have been kept as a subgroup within a group (Musa AAA). The smallest distinguishable units in the subgroup are clones and they have been grouped into clone sets. Five clone sets were delineated, based mainly on qualitative characters. The clone sets were distinct enough for new accessions to be fitted into them. These data can now be used to develop hypotheses concerning the evolutionary background of the East African Highland bananas and to exploit vigour, pest and disease resistance in the representative clones of the different clone sets proposed

Production Engineering and Management

The annual International Conference on Production Engineering and Management takes place for the sixth time his year, and can therefore be considered a well - established event that is the result of the joint effort of the OWL University of Applied Sciences and the University of Trieste. The conference has been established as an annual meeting under the Double Degree Master Program ‘Production Engineering and Management’ by the two partner universities. The main goal of the conference is to provide an opportunity for students, researchers and professionals from Germany, Italy and abroad, to meet and exchange information, discuss experiences, specific practices and technical solutions used in planning, design and management of production and service systems. In addition, the conference is a platform aimed at presenting research projects, introducing young academics to the tradition of Symposiums and promoting the exchange of ideas between the industry and the academy. Especially the contributions of successful graduates of the Double Degree Master Program ‘Production Engineering and Management’ and those of other postgraduate researchers from several European countries have been enforced. This year’s special focus is on Direct Digital Manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0, a topic of great interest for the global industry. The concept is spreading, but the actual solutions must be presented in order to highlight the practical benefits to industry and customers. Indeed, as Henning Banthien, Secretary General of the German ‘Plattform Industrie 4.0’ project office, has recently remarked, “Industry 4.0 requires a close alliance amongst the private sector, academia, politics and trade unions” in order to be “translated into practice and be implemented now”. PEM 2016 takes place between September 29 and 30, 2016 at the OWL University of Applied Sciences in Lemgo. The program is defined by the Organizing and Scientific Committees and clustered into scientific sessions covering topics of main interest and importance to the participants of the conference. The scientific sessions deal with technical and engineering issues, as well as management topics, and include contributions by researchers from academia and industry. The extended abstracts and full papers of the contributions underwent a double - blind review process. The 24 accepted presentations are assigned, according to their subject, to one of the following sessions: ‘Direct Digital Manufacturing in the Context of Industry 4.0’, ‘Industrial Engineering and Lean Management’, ‘Management Techniques and Methodologies’, ‘Wood Processing Technologies and Furniture Production’ and ‘Innovation Techniques and Methodologies

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1982-1983 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans

Modeling Transport Mode Decisions Using Hierarchical Binary Spatial Regression Models with Cluster Effects

This work is motivated by a mobility study conducted in the city of Munich, Germany. The variable of interest is a binary response, which indicates whether public transport has been utilized or not. One of the central questions is to identify areas of low/high utilization of public transport after adjusting for explanatory factors such as trip, individual and household attributes. The goal is to develop flexible statistical models for a binary response with covariate, spatial and cluster effects. One approach for modeling spatial effects are Markov Random Fields (MRF). A modification of a class of MRF models with proper joint distributions introduced by Pettitt et al. (2002) is developed. This modification has the desirable property to contain the intrinsic MRF in the limit and still allows for efficient spatial parameter updates in Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms. In addition to spatial effects, cluster effects are taken into consideration. Group and individual approaches for modeling these effects are suggested. The first one models heterogeneity between clusters, while the second one models heterogeneity within clusters. A naive approach to include individual cluster effects results in an unidentifiable model. It is shown how an appropriate reparametrization gives identifiable parameters. This provides a new approach for modeling heterogeneity within clusters. For hierarchical spatial binary regression models with individual cluster effects two MCMC algorithms for parameter estimation are developed. The first one is based on a direct evaluation of the likelihood. The second one is based on the representation of binary responses with Gaussian latent variables through a threshold mechanism, which is particularly useful for probit models. Simulation results show a satisfactory behavior of the MCMC algorithms developed. Finally the proposed model classes are applied to the mobility study and results are interpreted

Reports to the President

A compilation of annual reports for the 1985-1986 academic year, including a report from the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as reports from the academic and administrative units of the Institute. The reports outline the year's goals, accomplishments, honors and awards, and future plans