Optimising multi-disciplinary contributions for the smart clothing development process

This research aims to introduce a strategic approach to overcome the creative boundaries and optimize multidisciplinary contributions in Smart Clothing development, since the former research results revealed that these issues are key to achieving fully integrated Smart Clothes. Therefore, this paper examines collaborative projects that are shown to break through the creative boundary and integrate multidisciplinary contributions, and identifies how individual designers overcome their creative constraints and collaborate with others, in order to identify a practical method. The research result indicates that a clear description of Smart Clothing’s context will provide a new framework for the developers to work on

Does innovation stimulate employment? A firm-level analysis using comparable micro-data from four European countries

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on employment growth in these firms. A simple model that relates employment growth to process innovations and to the growth of sales separately due to innovative and unchanged products is developed and estimated using comparable firm-level data from France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Results show that displacement effects induced by productivity growth in the production of old products are large, while those associated with process innovations, which are likely to be compensated by price decreases, appear to be small. The effects related to product innovations are, however, strong enough to overcompensate these displacement effects

A virtual engineering based approach to verify structural complexity of component-based automation systems in early design phase

Highly diverse factors including technological advancements, uncertain global market and mass personalisation are believed to be main causes of ever-growing complexity of manufacturing systems. Although complex systems may be needed to achieve global manufacturing requirements, complexity affects on various factors, such as: system development effort and cost, ease of re-configuration, level of skill required across the system life-cycle (e.g. design, operate and maintain). This article aims to develop a scientifically valid and industrially applicable complexity assessment approach to support early life-cycle phases of component-based automation systems against unwanted implications of structural system complexity

Does innovation stimulate employment? A firm-level analysis using comparable micro data on four European countries

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on their employment growth. A model that relates employment growth to process innovations and to the growth of sales due to innovative and unchanged products is derived and estimated using a unique source of comparable firm-level data from France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Results for manufacturing show that, although process innovation tends to displace employment, compensation effects are prevalent, and product innovation is associated with employment growth. In the service sector there is less evidence of displacement effects, and growth in sales of new products accounts for a non-negligible proportion of employment growth. Overall the results are similar across countries, with some interesting exceptions

Polymeric foams from cross-linkable poly-N-ary lenebenzimidazoles

Foamed cross-linked poly-N-arylenebinzimidazoles are prepared by mixing an organic tetraamine and an ortho substituted aromatic dicarboxylic acid anhydride in the presence of a blowing agent, and then heating the prepolymer to a temperature sufficient to complete polymerization and foaming of the reactants. In another embodiment of the process, the reactants are heated to form a prepolymer. The prepolymer is then cured at higher temperatures to complete foaming and polymerization

Generation of Cosmological Seed Magnetic Fields from Inflation with Cutoff

Inflation has the potential to seed the galactic magnetic fields observed today. However, there is an obstacle to the amplification of the quantum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field during inflation: namely the conformal invariance of electromagnetic theory on a conformally flat underlying geometry. As the existence of a preferred minimal length breaks the conformal invariance of the background geometry, it is plausible that this effect could generate some electromagnetic field amplification. We show that this scenario is equivalent to endowing the photon with a large negative mass during inflation. This effective mass is negligibly small in a radiation and matter dominated universe. Depending on the value of the free parameter of the theory, we show that the seed required by the dynamo mechanism can be generated. We also show that this mechanism can produce the requisite galactic magnetic field without resorting to a dynamo mechanism.Comment: Latex, 16 pages, 2 figures, 4 references added, minor corrections; v4: more references added, boundary term written in a covariant form, discussion regarding other gauge fields added, submitted to PRD; v5: matched with the published versio

Dip coating process: Silicon sheet growth development for the large-area silicon sheet task of the low-cost silicon solar array project

The research program to investigate the technical and economic feasibility of producing solar-cell-quality sheet silicon by dip-coating one surface of carbonized ceramic substrates with a thin layer of large-grain polycrystalline silicon is reported. The initial effort concentrated on the design and construction of the experimental dip-coating facility. The design was completed and its experimental features are discussed. Current status of the program is reported, including progress toward solar cell junction diffusion and miscellaneous ceramic substrate procurement

Convertibility Evaluation of Automated Assembly System Designs for High Variety Production

© 2017 The Authors. The recent advancements in technology and the high volatility in automotive market compel industries to design their production systems to offer the required product variety. Although, paradigms such as reconfigurable modular designs, changeable manufacturing, holonic and agent based systems are widely discussed to satisfy the need for product variety management, it is essential to practically assess the initial design at a finer level of granularity, so that those designs deemed to lack necessary features can be flagged and optimised. In this research, convertibility expresses the ability of a system to change to accommodate product variety. The objective of this research is to evaluate the system design and quantify its responsiveness to change for product variety. To achieve this, automated assembly systems are decomposed into their constituent components followed by an evaluation of their contribution to the system's ability to change. In a similar manner, the system layout is analysed and the measures are expressed as a function of the layout and equipment convertibility. The results emphasize the issues with the considered layout configuration and system equipment. The proposed approach is demonstrated through the conceptual design of battery module assembly system, and the benefits of the model are elucidated

Maxwell Fields in Spacetimes Admitting Non-Null Killing Vectors

We consider source-free electromagnetic fields in spacetimes possessing a non-null Killing vector field, $\xi^a$. We assume further that the electromagnetic field tensor, $F_{ab}$, is invariant under the action of the isometry group induced by $\xi^a$. It is proved that whenever the two potentials associated with the electromagnetic field are functionally independent the entire content of Maxwell's equations is equivalent to the relation \n^aT_{ab}=0. Since this relation is implied by Einstein's equation we argue that it is enough to solve merely Einstein's equation for these electrovac spacetimes because the relevant equations of motion will be satisfied automatically. It is also shown that for the exceptional case of functionally related potentials \n^aT_{ab}=0 implies along with one of the relevant equations of motion that the complementary equation concerning the electromagnetic field is satisfied.Comment: 7 pages,PACS numbers: 04.20.Cv, 04.20.Me, 04.40.+

Magnetic oscillations in a two-dimensional network of compensated electron and hole orbits

The FS of (ET)8Hg4Cl12(C6H5Br)2 can be regarded as a 2D network of compensated electron and hole orbits coupled by magnetic breakthrough. Simultaneous measurements of the interlayer magnetoresistance and magnetic torque have been performed up to 28 T. Magnetoresistance and de dHvA oscillations spectra exhibit frequency combinations typical of such a network. Even though some of the observed magnetoresistance oscillations cannot be interpreted on the basis of neither conventional SdH oscillations nor quantum interference, the temperature and magnetic field (both orientation and magnitude) dependence of all the Fourier components of the dHvA spectra can be consistently accounted for by the LK formula. This behaviour is at variance with that currently reported for compounds illustrating the linear chain of coupled orbits model.Comment: accepted for publication in europhysics Letter