Intelligent design guidance

This paper presents results from an investigation regarding the use of the Design Structure Matrix (DSM) as a means to guide a designer through the calculation of numerical relationships within the early design system Designer. Characteristics, relationships and goals are used within Designer to enable the evaluation and approximation of the design model and are represented within the system as a digraph. Despite being a useful representation of the interactions within the design model, the digraph does not aid the designer in identifying a sequence of activities that need to be performed in order to evaluate the model. The DSM system was used to represent the characteristics and the dependencies obtained through the relationships. The sequence of characteristics within the DSM was optimised and used to produce a design process to guide the designer in model evaluation. The objective of the optimisation was to minimise the amount of iteration within the design process. The process enabled a designer who is unfamiliar with the model to evaluate it and satisfy the design goals and requirements. Both the DSM system and the Designer system are generic in nature andmay be applied to any design problem

A Study to Determine the Relationship Between Formal TAC-3/TAC-4 Computer Operations Training and TAC-3/TAC-4 Computer System Trouble Calls

The following goals were established to guide this problem: 1. Identify the types of computer problems that are called into the trouble desk by the five aircraft carriers home ported in Norfolk, Virginia; 2. Identify if the operator having the computer problem had attended the formal TAC-3/TAC-4 operator course; 3. Identify if the trouble call is related to the subject matter taught in the formal TAC-3/TAC-4 operator course; 4. Determine if there is any relationship between the training and the trouble calls

Dark matter relic density in Gauss-Bonnet braneworld cosmology

The relic density of symmetric and asymmetric dark matter in a Gauss-Bonnet (GB) modified Randall-Sundrum (RS) type II braneworld cosmology is investigated. The existing study of symmetric dark matter in a GB braneworld (Okada and Okada, 2009) found that the expansion rate was reduced compared to that in standard General Relativity (GR), thereby delaying particle freeze-out and resulting in relic abundances which are suppressed by up to O(10^−2). This is in direct contrast to the behaviour observed in RS braneworlds where the expansion rate is enhanced and the final relic abundance boosted. However, this finding that relic abundances are suppressed in a GB braneworld is based upon a highly contrived situation in which the GB era evolves directly into a standard GR era, rather than passing through a RS era as is the general situation. This collapse of the RS era requires equating the mass scale m(α) of the GB modification and the mass scale m(σ) of the brane tension. However, if the GB contribution is to be considered as the lowest order correction from string theory to the RS action, we would expect m(α) > m(σ). We investigate the effect upon the relic abundance of choosing more realistic values for the ratio Rm ≡ mα/mσ and find that the relic abundance can be either enhanced or suppressed by more than two orders of magnitude. However, suppression only occurs for a small range of parameter choices and, overwhelmingly, the predominant situation is that of enhancement as we recover the usual Randall-Sundrum type behaviour in the limit Rm >> 1. We use the latest observational bound Ω(DM)h^2 = 0.1187 ± 0.0017 to constrain the various model parameters and briefly discuss the implications for direct/indirect dark matter detection experiments as well as dark matter particle models

Comparison of markets for organic food in six EU states.

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Recent research confirms that the decision to convert is now highly influenced by financial incentives arising from EU regulations but the exact mix of incentives depends on prevailing government policies and access to premium markets so that the organic sector in most countries is now referred to as either government-led or market-driven. The objective of the paper is to compare development of the sector along these two polarities but set within the context of "common elements of interest" within new agrifood methodologies: time, space, power, and meaning (Cooke, Uranga and Etxebarria 1998; Morgan and Murdoch 2000). The paper presents preliminary findings relating to six EU States: UK, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Portugal and Italy, and through the application of "worlds of production" to market outlets and suggests discourses that define these outlets. The analysis aims to inform the further study of farmer marketing decisions and practices

P-Code-Enhanced Encryption-Mode Processing of GPS Signals

A method of processing signals in a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver has been invented to enable the receiver to recover some of the information that is otherwise lost when GPS signals are encrypted at the transmitters. The need for this method arises because, at the option of the military, precision GPS code (P-code) is sometimes encrypted by a secret binary code, denoted the A code. Authorized users can recover the full signal with knowledge of the A-code. However, even in the absence of knowledge of the A-code, one can track the encrypted signal by use of an estimate of the A-code. The present invention is a method of making and using such an estimate. In comparison with prior such methods, this method makes it possible to recover more of the lost information and obtain greater accuracy