An exploration into aesthetic association of product form

Creating a relevant and pleasing design aesthetic is a fundamental aim designers endeavour to achieve. Perception of aesthetics takes place both during the design process when the designer creates a form, and later, through the users’ interpretation of the form. Within the perception process, association plays a significant role. This paper addresses the stage research results of our exploration into the associative meanings of a product. By analysing the evaluation of a series of top award winning designs, it was found that some associative meanings (represented by descriptive words) are correlated, such as ‘pure-architecturalgeometrical’, ‘delicate-curvaceous-organic’ etc. By conducting a series of workshops, both in the UK and China, we have been able to explore the extent to which young designers are able to manipulate form, style and create an overall perception of a positive aesthetic. One of the main outputs during the workshops was to design a MP3 player with speaker units, styled in line with three topics of aesthetic association: topic 1 – pure, architectural, geometrical and technical; topic 2 – curvaceous, organic, and fun; topic 3 – graceful, cheerful, and powerful. Three non-correlated associative descriptors were deliberately used in topic 3. Results suggest that young designers tend to differ in their ability and success of manipulating form to match different aesthetic targets. When the descriptive words in one aesthetic topic are correlated, student designers seem to find it easier to manipulate the form matching the topic. Comparative analysis between the results from the workshops in the UK (Southampton Solent University) and in China (Tsinghua University) is also presented in the paper

The influence of bulk particulate properties on pneumatic conveying performance

Interest in the use of dense phase conveying has grown considerably in recent years. However, not all products are capable of being conveyed in dense phase and it is often difficult to predict which products have dense phase capability without carrying out pilot conveying trials. The main objective of this work was to investigate the effect of bulk particular properties on pneumatic conveying performance. To achieve this, an extensive programme of conveying trials was carried out and each product tested was subjected to a series of bench scale tests to evaluate the bulk properties of the material. A phase diagram is proposed, based on the aeration properties of a material, which groups together products of similar conveying potential. The phase diagram gives a first indication on the basis of a small sample of material whether or not a product is capable of dense phase conveying. Further, it will predict the most appropriate mode of flow. For products capable of dense phase in a moving bed type flow regime, a further correlation is proposed which predicts the likely conveying performance in the pipeline in terms of mass throughput of product for given conditions based on the air retention characteristics of a product. The correlation has been generalised to extend its applicability to a range of pipeline configurations. The combination of the phase diagram and the correlation for dense phase moving bed type flow (the most commonly used form of dense phase conveying) provides a powerful design tool which will reduce the need for full conveying trials. In addition, the effect of material bulk properties on blow tank performance has also been investigated and a correlation between aeration properties and blow tank discharge characteristics is proposed

Millimetre Wave Power Measurement

There is currently no traceable power sensor for millimetre wave frequencies above 110 GHz. This thesis investigates a novel approach to remove this limitation by combining the placement of a uniquely designed microchip directly in waveguide. The design of the chip is novel in that it does not rely on a supporting structure or an external antenna when placed in the waveguide. The performance of the design was primarily analysed by computer simulation and verified with the measurement of a scale model. The results show that it is feasible to measure high frequency power by placing a chip directly in waveguide. It is predicted that the chip is able to absorb approximately 60% of incident power. Any further efficiency would require modification of the chip substrate. However, this proposed design should allow the standards institutes a reference that will enable the calibration of equipment to beyond 110 GHz

Parameterized Algorithms for Load Coloring Problem

One way to state the Load Coloring Problem (LCP) is as follows. Let $G=(V,E)$ be graph and let $f:V\rightarrow \{{\rm red}, {\rm blue}\}$ be a 2-coloring. An edge $e\in E$ is called red (blue) if both end-vertices of $e$ are red (blue). For a 2-coloring $f$, let $r'_f$ and $b'_f$ be the number of red and blue edges and let $\mu_f(G)=\min\{r'_f,b'_f\}$. Let $\mu(G)$ be the maximum of $\mu_f(G)$ over all 2-colorings. We introduce the parameterized problem $k$-LCP of deciding whether $\mu(G)\ge k$, where $k$ is the parameter. We prove that this problem admits a kernel with at most $7k$. Ahuja et al. (2007) proved that one can find an optimal 2-coloring on trees in polynomial time. We generalize this by showing that an optimal 2-coloring on graphs with tree decomposition of width $t$ can be found in time $O^*(2^t)$. We also show that either $G$ is a Yes-instance of $k$-LCP or the treewidth of $G$ is at most $2k$. Thus, $k$-LCP can be solved in time $O^*(4^k).

Identifying the task variables that predict object assembly difficulty.

We investigated the physical attributes of an object that influence the difficulty of its assembly. Identifying attributes that contribute to assembly difficulty will provide a method for predicting assembly complexity

Kernels for Below-Upper-Bound Parameterizations of the Hitting Set and Directed Dominating Set Problems

In the {\sc Hitting Set} problem, we are given a collection $\cal F$ of subsets of a ground set $V$ and an integer $p$, and asked whether $V$ has a $p$-element subset that intersects each set in $\cal F$. We consider two parameterizations of {\sc Hitting Set} below tight upper bounds: $p=m-k$ and $p=n-k$. In both cases $k$ is the parameter. We prove that the first parameterization is fixed-parameter tractable, but has no polynomial kernel unless coNP$\subseteq$NP/poly. The second parameterization is W[1]-complete, but the introduction of an additional parameter, the degeneracy of the hypergraph $H=(V,{\cal F})$, makes the problem not only fixed-parameter tractable, but also one with a linear kernel. Here the degeneracy of $H=(V,{\cal F})$ is the minimum integer $d$ such that for each $X\subset V$ the hypergraph with vertex set $V\setminus X$ and edge set containing all edges of $\cal F$ without vertices in $X$, has a vertex of degree at most $d.$ In {\sc Nonblocker} ({\sc Directed Nonblocker}), we are given an undirected graph (a directed graph) $G$ on $n$ vertices and an integer $k$, and asked whether $G$ has a set $X$ of $n-k$ vertices such that for each vertex $y\not\in X$ there is an edge (arc) from a vertex in $X$ to $y$. {\sc Nonblocker} can be viewed as a special case of {\sc Directed Nonblocker} (replace an undirected graph by a symmetric digraph). Dehne et al. (Proc. SOFSEM 2006) proved that {\sc Nonblocker} has a linear-order kernel. We obtain a linear-order kernel for {\sc Directed Nonblocker}

Design study of a thermocouple power sensor as a monolithic fin-line

Making traceable power measurements above 110 GHz using current measurement technologies is challenging. We investigate a design of power sensor consisting of a thermocouple-based integrated circuit (IC) mounted as a finline component in WR-6 waveguide. The design is original in that it contains an antenna, terminating resistor and thermocouples on-chip. We detail the design and report results from simulations and measurements made on a two-port 16:1 scale model. Our design of scale model provides both insertion and reflection loss measurements. Electromagnetic simulation and easily-calibrated model measurements confirm that the short antenna fins feasible on a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) can achieve acceptable specifications. The design proves to be relatively insensitive to the value of the terminating resistance or the size of the antenna fins

An improved simulated annealing algorithm for standard cell placement

Simulated annealing is a general purpose Monte Carlo optimization technique that was applied to the problem of placing standard logic cells in a VLSI ship so that the total interconnection wire length is minimized. An improved standard cell placement algorithm that takes advantage of the performance enhancements that appear to come from parallelizing the uniprocessor simulated annealing algorithm is presented. An outline of this algorithm is given

Graph inverse semigroups: their characterization and completion

Graph inverse semigroups generalize the polycyclic inverse monoids and play an important role in the theory of C*-algebras. This paper has two main goals: first, to provide an abstract characterization of graph inverse semigroups; and second, to show how they may be completed, under suitable conditions, to form what we call the Cuntz-Krieger semigroup of the graph. This semigroup is the ample semigroup of a topological groupoid associated with the graph, and the semigroup analogue of the Leavitt path algebra of the graph.Comment: Some minor corrections made and tangential material remove