An evaluation methodology for ergonomic design of electronic consumer products based on fuzzy axiomatic design

This article is posted with permission of OCP Science imprint. Copyright @ 2008 Old City Publishing Group.The development life cycle of software and electronic products has been shortened by the growth of rapid prototyping techniques. The evaluation of electronic consumer products should consider hardware and software as well as the ergonomic usability, emotional appeal and aesthetic integrity of the design. This research follows a systematic approach to develop an evaluation methodology for electronic mobile products on ergonomic design. The proposed methodology is based on fuzzy multi attribute decision making and fuzzy axiomatic design realized in three steps; determination of ergonomic attributes for electronic consumer products, determination of a representative set of alternatives, and selection of the best alternative in terms of ergonomic design by utilizing fuzzy axiomatic design. A case study is also provided to support the proposed methodology

Projecting health trajectories in Europe using microsimulation

This working paper presents an innovative methodological framework for projecting the health of individuals with a set of risk factors using a microsimulation model. The model developed, called ATHLOS-Mic, projects the health of cohorts born before 1960 and a set of risk factors for the horizon 2060 for some European countries. It simulates the lives of individuals using statistical models that explicitly take into account interactions between the different dimensions, either biological and behavioral risk factors (smoking, obesity, depression, arterial hypertension and physical activity), socioeconomic characteristics (education), a health metric, and mortality. Using data from SHARE-HD, we used parameters from statistical models to project dynamically changes in risk factors with a set of covariates and their impact on a health metric. The health metric is then used to modulate the probability of survival. A set of analytical scenarios are built showing the effect of each risk factors on future health trajectories. Results show that driven by a better educational attainment, each generation will be healthier than the previous one at same age. In average, an individual of our base population will live about 18 more years, but only 5 in good health. The scenario removing the effect of having a low level of education on the health metric is the one having the largest effect on both the projected average health metric, the average number of years lived per person, and the average number of years lived in good health. Summing up, removing all risk factors would add 2 years of life, but 6 years in good health

Global analysis of fragmentation functions for pions and kaons and their uncertainties

We present new sets of pion and kaon fragmentation functions obtained in NLO combined analyses of single-inclusive hadron production in electron-positron annihilation, proton-proton collisions, and deep-inelastic lepton-proton scattering with either pions or kaons identified in the final state. At variance with all previous fits, the present analyses take into account data where hadrons of different electrical charge are identified, which allow to discriminate quark from anti-quark fragmentation functions without the need of non trivial flavor symmetry assumptions. The resulting sets are in good agreement with all data analyzed, which cover a much wider kinematical range than in previous fits. An extensive use of the Lagrange multiplier technique is made in order to assess the uncertainties in the extraction of the fragmentation functions and the synergy from the complementary data sets in our global analysis.Comment: 28 pages, 25 figure

Investigation of the coupling asymmetries at double-slit interference experiments

Double-slit experiments inferring the phase and the amplitude of the transmission coefficient performed at quantum dots (QD), in the Coulomb blockade regime, present anomalies at the phase changes depending on the number of electrons confined. This phase change cannot be explained if one neglects the electron-electron interactions. Here, we present our numerical results, which simulate the real sample geometry by solving the Poisson equation in 3D. The screened potential profile is used to obtain energy eigenstates and eigenvalues of the QD. We find that, certain energy levels are coupled to the leads stronger compared to others. Our results give strong support to the phenomenological models in the literature describing the charging of a QD and the abrupt phase changes.Comment: conference paper, 50th anniversary of Aharonov-Bohm effec

Diffractive parton distributions from H1 data

We analyse the latest H1 large rapidity gap data to obtain diffractive parton distributions, using a procedure based on perturbative QCD, and compare them with distributions obtained from the simplified Regge factorisation type of analysis. The diffractive parton densities and structure functions are made publically available.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Fortran code for diffractive parton densities and structure functions can be found at http://durpdg.dur.ac.uk/hepdata/mrw.html . Version to appear in Phys. Lett. B; final paragraph added, with curves from H1 incl.+dijet fit added to Fig.

Suppression factors in diffractive photoproduction of dijets

After new publications of H1 data for the diffractive photoproduction of dijets, which overlap with the earlier published H1 data and the recently published data of the ZEUS collaboration, have appeared, we have recalculated the cross sections for this process in next-to-leading order (NLO) of perturbative QCD to see whether they can be interpreted consistently. The results of these calculations are compared to the data of both collaborations. We find that the NLO cross sections disagree with the data, showing that factorization breaking occurs at that order. If direct and resolved contributions are both suppressed by the same amount, the global suppression factor depends on the transverse-energy cut. However, by suppressing only the resolved contribution, also reasonably good agreement with all the data is found with a suppression factor independent of the transverse-energy cut.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, 3 table