An Agent-based approach to modelling integrated product teams undertaking a design activity.

The interactions between individual designers, within integrated product teams, and the nature of design tasks, all have a significant impact upon how well a design task can be performed, and hence the quality of the resultant product and the time in which it can be delivered. In this paper we describe an ongoing research project which aims to model integrated product teams through the use of multi-agent systems. We first describe the background and rationale for our work, and then present our initial computational model and results from the simulation of an integrated product team. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the model will evolve to improve the accuracy of the simulation

Agricultural Productivity in the United States

Increased productivity is a key to a healthy and thriving economy. Consequently, the trend in productivity, economywide, is one of the most closely watched of our common economic performance indicators. Agriculture, in particular, has been a very successful sector of the U.S. economy in terms of productivity growth. The U.S. farm sector has provided an abundance of output while using inputs efficiently. Agricultural productivity growth has been an important source of U.S. economic growth throughout the century, but the years since 1940 have seen an even faster growth in agricultural productivity. The annual average increase in productivity from 1948 to 1994 was 1.94 percent. This reflects an annual growth in output of 1.88 percent per year and an actual decline in agricultural inputs of 0.06 percent per year. This report describes changes in U.S. agricultural productivity, and its output and input components, for 1948-94. The report also discusses factors that have affected productivity trends and provides detailed, technical information about the USDA system for calculating productivity.productivity, efficiency, agricultural production, outputs, inputs, Productivity Analysis,

Design and modelling of photonic band-gap response from doubly periodic arrays

Currently much research is aimed at using light as an information carrier in systems. Photonic crystals are materials with varying dielectric properties designed to interact with photons. If these crystals are arranged in a periodic structure they can control the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the structure. Photonic Bandgap (PBG) crystal is a periodic structure that prohibits propagation of all electromagnetic waves within a particular frequency band. Original PBG research was done in the optical region, but PBG properties are scalable and applicable to a wide range of frequencies. In recent years, there has been increasing interest in microwave and millimetre-wave applications of PBG structures. Currently, research has also extended to Metallo-Dielectric Photonic Crystal (MDPC) which is replacing the photonic crystal with periodic metal elements in low dielectric region. [Continues.

Studies on arene ruthenium thiolate and related complexes

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

A systematic review of success factors in the community management of rural water supplies over the past 30 years

Community management is the accepted management model for rural water supplies in many low and middleincome countries. However, endemic problems in the sustainability and scalability of this model are leading many to conclude we have reached the limits of an approach that is too reliant on voluntarism and informality. Accepting this criticism but recognising that many cases of success have been reported over the past 30 years, this study systematically reviews and analyses the development pattern of 174 successful community management case studies. The synthesis confirms the premise that for community management to be sustained at scale, community institutions need a ‘plus’ that includes long-term external support, with the majority of high performing cases involving financial support, technical advice and managerial advice. Internal community characteristics were also found to be influential in terms of success, including collective initiative, strong leadership and institutional transparency. Through a meta-analysis of success in different regions, the paper also indicates an important finding on the direct relationship between success and the prevailing socio-economic wealth in a society. This holds implications for policy and programme design with a need to consider how broad structural conditions may dictate the relative success of different forms of community management

Sost and its paralog Sostdc1 coordinate digit number in a Gli3-dependent manner.

WNT signaling is critical in most aspects of skeletal development and homeostasis, and antagonists of WNT signaling are emerging as key regulatory proteins with great promise as therapeutic agents for bone disorders. Here we show that Sost and its paralog Sostdc1 emerged through ancestral genome duplication and their expression patterns have diverged to delineate non-overlapping domains in most organ systems including musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, nervous, digestive, reproductive and respiratory. In the developing limb, Sost and Sostdc1 display dynamic expression patterns with Sost being restricted to the distal ectoderm and Sostdc1 to the proximal ectoderm and the mesenchyme. While Sostdc1(-/-) mice lack any obvious limb or skeletal defects, Sost(-/-) mice recapitulate the hand defects described for Sclerosteosis patients. However, elevated WNT signaling in Sost(-/-); Sostdc1(-/-) mice causes misregulation of SHH signaling, ectopic activation of Sox9 in the digit 1 field and preaxial polydactyly in a Gli1- and Gli3-dependent manner. In addition, we show that the syndactyly documented in Sclerosteosis is present in both Sost(-/-) and Sost(-/-); Sostdc1(-/-) mice, and is driven by misregulation of Fgf8 in the AER, a region lacking Sost and Sostdc1 expression. This study highlights the complexity of WNT signaling in skeletal biology and disease and emphasizes how redundant mechanism and non-cell autonomous effects can synergize to unveil new intricate phenotypes caused by elevated WNT signaling