Service Design Capabilities

This open access book discusses service design capabilities in innovation processes, and provides a framework that guides design students, practitioners and researchers towards a better understanding of operational aspects of service design processes. More specifically, it revisits service designers’ capabilities in light of the new roles that have opened up in innovation processes on different scales. After years of being inadequately defined, the professional profile of service designers is now taking shape. Today private and public institutions recognize service designers as essential contributors to their innovation and development processes. What are the capabilities that characterize a service designer? These essential capabilities are what service designers should acquire in their education and can sell when looking for a job

Zig-zag instability of an Ising wall in liquid crystals

We present a theoretical explanation for the interfacial zigzag instability that appears in anisotropic systems. Such an instability has been experimentally highlighted for an Ising wall formed in a nematic liquid crystal cell under homeotropic anchoring conditions. From an envelope equation, relevant close to the Freedericksz transition, we have derived an asymptotic equation describing the interface dynamics in the vicinity of its bifurcation. The asymptotic limit used accounts for a strong difference between two of the elastic constants. The model is characterized by a conservative order parameter which satisfies a Cahn-Hilliard equation. It provides a good qualitative understanding of the experiments.Comment: 4 pagess, 4 figures, lette

Response of discrete nonlinear systems with many degrees of freedom

We study the response of a large array of coupled nonlinear oscillators to parametric excitation, motivated by the growing interest in the nonlinear dynamics of microelectromechanical and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS). Using a multiscale analysis, we derive an amplitude equation that captures the slow dynamics of the coupled oscillators just above the onset of parametric oscillations. The amplitude equation that we derive here from first principles exhibits a wavenumber dependent bifurcation similar in character to the behavior known to exist in fluids undergoing the Faraday wave instability. We confirm this behavior numerically and make suggestions for testing it experimentally with MEMS and NEMS resonators.Comment: Version 2 is an expanded version of the article, containing detailed steps of the derivation that were left out in version 1, but no additional result

Dynamics of Multiferroic Domain Wall in Spin-Cycloidal Ferroelectric DyMnO3_{3}

We report the dielectric dispersion of the giant magnetocapacitance (GMC) in multiferroic DyMnO$_{3}$ over a wide frequency range. The GMC is found to be attributable not to the softened electromagnon but to the electric-field-driven motion of multiferroic domain wall (DW). In contrast to conventional ferroelectric DWs, the present multiferroic DW motion holds extremely high relaxation rate of $\sim$$10^{7}$ s$^{-1}$ even at low temperatures. This mobile nature as well as the model simulation suggests that the multiferroic DW is not atomically thin as in ferroelectrics but thick, reflecting its magnetic origin.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the universal thermal conductance

The effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the thermal conductance in mesoscopic systems at low temperatures is calculated using full elasticity theory. The low frequency behavior of the scattering shows novel power law dependences arising from the unusual properties of the elastic modes. This leads to new predictions for the low temperature depression of the thermal conductance below the ideal universal value. Comparison with the data of Schwab et al. [Nature 404, 974 (2000)] suggests that surface roughness on a scale of the width of the thermal pathway is important in the experiment.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Spring School on Language, Music, and Cognition: Organizing Events in Time

The interdisciplinary spring school “Language, music, and cognition: Organizing events in time” was held from February 26 to March 2, 2018 at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Cologne. Language, speech, and music as events in time were explored from different perspectives including evolutionary biology, social cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience of speech, language, and communication, as well as computational and biological approaches to language and music. There were 10 lectures, 4 workshops, and 1 student poster session. Overall, the spring school investigated language and music as neurocognitive systems and focused on a mechanistic approach exploring the neural substrates underlying musical, linguistic, social, and emotional processes and behaviors. In particular, researchers approached questions concerning cognitive processes, computational procedures, and neural mechanisms underlying the temporal organization of language and music, mainly from two perspectives: one was concerned with syntax or structural representations of language and music as neurocognitive systems (i.e., an intrapersonal perspective), while the other emphasized social interaction and emotions in their communicative function (i.e., an interpersonal perspective). The spring school not only acted as a platform for knowledge transfer and exchange but also generated a number of important research questions as challenges for future investigations

Universality in the one-dimensional chain of phase-coupled oscillators

We apply a recently developed renormalization group (RG) method to study synchronization in a one-dimensional chain of phase-coupled oscillators in the regime of weak randomness. The RG predicts how oscillators with randomly distributed frequencies and couplings form frequency-synchronized clusters. Although the RG was originally intended for strong randomness, i.e. for distributions with long tails, we find good agreement with numerical simulations even in the regime of weak randomness. We use the RG flow to derive how the correlation length scales with the width of the coupling distribution in the limit of large coupling. This leads to the identification of a universality class of distributions with the same critical exponent $\nu$. We also find universal scaling for small coupling. Finally, we show that the RG flow is characterized by a universal approach to the unsynchronized fixed point, which provides physical insight into low-frequency clusters.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Outlier ensembles: A robust method for damage detection and unsupervised feature extraction from high-dimensional data

Outlier ensembles are shown to provide a robust method for damage detection and dimension reduction via a wholly unsupervised framework. Most interestingly, when utilised for feature extraction, the proposed heuristic defines features that enable near-equivalent classification performance (95.85%) when compared to the features found (in previous work) through supervised techniques (97.39%) — specifically, a genetic algorithm. This is significant for practical applications of structural health monitoring, where labelled data are rarely available during data mining. Ensemble analysis is applied to practical examples of problematic engineering data; two case studies are presented in this work. Case study I illustrates how outlier ensembles can be used to expose outliers hidden within a dataset. Case study II demonstrates how ensembles can be utilised as a tool for robust outlier analysis and feature extraction in a noisy, high-dimensional feature-space

Perturbation of Tunneling Processes by Mechanical Degrees of Freedom in Mesoscopic Junctions

We investigate the perturbation in the tunneling current caused by non-adiabatic mechanical motion in a mesoscopic tunnel junction. A theory introduced by Caroli et al. \cite{bi1,bi2,bi3} is used to evaluate second order self-energy corrections for this non-equilibrium situation lacking translational invariance. Inelastic signatures of the mechanical degrees of freedom are found in the current-voltage $I(V)$ characteristics. These give rise to sharp features in the derivative spectrum, $d^2I/dV^2$.Comment: 22 pages LaTeX + 3 uuencoded PS picture