963 resultados para Engineering, Industrial|Engineering, System Science|Operations Research


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Aims There is scant information on pelvic floor muscle training (PFMT) adherence barriers and facilitators. A web-based survey was conducted (1) to investigate whether responses from health professionals and the public broadly reflected findings in the literature, (2) if responses differed between the two groups, and (3) to identify new research directions. Methods Health professional and public surveys were posted on the ICS website. PFMT adherence barriers and facilitators were divided into four categories: physical/condition, patient, therapy, and social-economic. Responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics from quantitative data and thematic data analysis for qualitative data. Results Five hundred and fifteen health professionals and 51 public respondents participated. Both cohorts felt “patient-related factors” constituted the most important adherence barrier, but differed in their rankings of short- and long-term barriers. Health professionals rated “patient-related” and the public “therapy-related” factors as the most important adherence facilitator. Both ranked “perception of PFMT benefit” as the most important long-term facilitator. Contrary to published findings, symptom severity was not ranked highly. Neither cohort felt the barriers nor facilitators differed according to PFM condition (urinary/faecal incontinence, pelvic organ prolapse, pelvic pain); however, a large number of health professionals felt differences existed across age, gender, and ethnicity. Half of respondents in both cohorts felt research barriers and facilitators differed from those in clinical practice. Conclusions An emphasis on “patient-related” factors, ahead of “condition-specific” and “therapy-related,” affecting PFMT adherence barriers was evident. Health professionals need to be aware of the importance of long-term patient perception of PFMT benefits and consider enabling strategies.

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Mode of access: Internet.

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Policy makers increasingly recognise that an educated workforce with a high proportion of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates is a pre-requisite to a knowledge-based, innovative economy. Over the past ten years, the proportion of first university degrees awarded in Australia in STEM fields is below the global average and continues to decrease from 22.2% in 2002 to 18.8% in 2010 [1]. These trends are mirrored by declines between 20% and 30% in the proportions of high school students enrolled in science or maths. These trends are not unique to Australia but their impact is of concern throughout the policy-making community. To redress these demographic trends, QUT embarked upon a long-term investment strategy to integrate education and research into the physical and virtual infrastructure of the campus, recognising that expectations of students change as rapidly as technology and learning practices change. To implement this strategy, physical infrastructure refurbishment/re-building is accompanied by upgraded technologies not only for learning but also for research. QUT’s vision for its city-based campuses is to create vibrant and attractive places to learn and research and to link strongly to the wider surrounding community. Over a five year period, physical infrastructure at the Gardens Point campus was substantially reconfigured in two key stages: (a) a >$50m refurbishment of heritage-listed buildings to encompass public, retail and social spaces, learning and teaching “test beds” and research laboratories and (b) destruction of five buildings to be replaced by a $230m, >40,000m2 Science and Engineering Centre designed to accommodate retail, recreation, services, education and research in an integrated, coordinated precinct. This landmark project is characterised by (i) self-evident, collaborative spaces for learning, research and social engagement, (ii) sustainable building practices and sustainable ongoing operation and; (iii) dynamic and mobile re-configuration of spaces or staffing to meet demand. Innovative spaces allow for transformative, cohort-driven learning and the collaborative use of space to prosecute joint class projects. Research laboratories are aggregated, centralised and “on display” to the public, students and staff. A major visualisation space – the largest multi-touch, multi-user facility constructed to date – is a centrepiece feature that focuses on demonstrating scientific and engineering principles or science oriented scenes at large scale (e.g. the Great Barrier Reef). Content on this visualisation facility is integrated with the regional school curricula and supports an in-house schools program for student and teacher engagement. Researchers are accommodated in a combined open-plan and office floor-space (80% open plan) to encourage interdisciplinary engagement and cross-fertilisation of skills, ideas and projects. This combination of spaces re-invigorates the on-campus experience, extends educational engagement across all ages and rapidly enhances research collaboration.

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In this paper, an interactive planning and scheduling framework are proposed for optimising operations from pits to crushers in ore mining industry. Series of theoretical and practical operations research techniques are investigated to improve the overall efficiency of mining systems due to the facts that mining managers need to tackle optimisation problems within different horizons and with different levels of detail. Under this framework, mine design planning,mine production sequencing and mine transportation scheduling models are integrated and interacted within a whole optimisation system. The proposed integrated framework could be used by mining industry for reducing equipment costs, improving the production efficiency and maximising the net present value.

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This research identifies factors that are crucial to the success of a knowledge management system (KMS) implementation in a prominent Australian engineering consultancy firm. The study employs the Delphi method to solicit the opinions of experienced market leaders in the Australian construction industry, and then benchmarks the organisational profile of the consultancy firm against the Delphi findings. From this comparative case study, recommendations are made pertaining to the organisational and cultural changes required within the consultancy firm in order to improve its readiness to successfully implement a KMS.

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Hot metal carriers (HMCs) are large forklift-type vehicles used to move molten metal in aluminum smelters. This paper reports on field experiments that demonstrate that HMCs can operate autonomously and in particular can use vision as a primary sensor to locate the load of aluminum. We present our complete system but focus on the vision system elements and also detail experiments demonstrating reliable operation of the materials handling task. Two key experiments are described, lasting 2 and 5 h, in which the HMC traveled 15 km in total and handled the load 80 times.

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The identification of non-linear systems using only observed finite datasets has become a mature research area over the last two decades. A class of linear-in-the-parameter models with universal approximation capabilities have been intensively studied and widely used due to the availability of many linear-learning algorithms and their inherent convergence conditions. This article presents a systematic overview of basic research on model selection approaches for linear-in-the-parameter models. One of the fundamental problems in non-linear system identification is to find the minimal model with the best model generalisation performance from observational data only. The important concepts in achieving good model generalisation used in various non-linear system-identification algorithms are first reviewed, including Bayesian parameter regularisation and models selective criteria based on the cross validation and experimental design. A significant advance in machine learning has been the development of the support vector machine as a means for identifying kernel models based on the structural risk minimisation principle. The developments on the convex optimisation-based model construction algorithms including the support vector regression algorithms are outlined. Input selection algorithms and on-line system identification algorithms are also included in this review. Finally, some industrial applications of non-linear models are discussed.

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Companies are currently choosing to integrate logics and systems to achieve better solutions. These combinations also include companies striving to join the logic of material requirement planning (MRP) system with the systems of lean production. The purpose of this article was to design an MRP as part of the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) in a company that produces agricultural implements, which has used the lean production system since 1998. This proposal is based on the innovation theory, theory networks, lean production systems, ERP systems and the hybrid production systems, which use both components and MRP systems, as concepts of lean production systems. The analytical approach of innovation networks enables verification of the links and relationships among the companies and departments of the same corporation. The analysis begins with the MRP implementation project carried out in a Brazilian metallurgical company and follows through the operationalisation of the MRP project, until its production stabilisation. The main point is that the MRP system should help the company's operations with regard to its effective agility to respond in time to demand fluctuations, facilitating the creation process and controlling the branch offices in other countries that use components produced in the matrix, hence ensuring more accurate estimates of stockpiles. Consequently, it presents the enterprise knowledge development organisational modelling methodology in order to represent further models (goals, actors and resources, business rules, business process and concepts) that should be included in this MRP implementation process for the new configuration of the production system.

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The concept of smartness of energy efficient products and systems from a business perspective has been investigated by several authors. The problem of understanding, designing, engineering and governing these technologies requires new concepts. The emergence of these modern technologies causes a myriad of interconnected systems, which are working together to satisfy the necessities of modern life. The problem of understanding, designing, engineering, and governing these technologies requires new concepts. Development of System of System Engineering (SoSE) is an attempt by the systems engineering and science community to fulfill this requirement.

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This paper describes the development of a simulation model for operating theatres. Elective patient scheduling is complicated by several factors; stochastic demand for resources due to variation in the nature and severity of a patient’s illness, unexpected complications in a patient’s course of treatment and the arrival of non-scheduled emergency patients which compete for resources. Extend simulation software was used for its ability to represent highly complex systems and analyse model outputs. Patient arrivals and lengths of surgery are determined by analysis of historical data. The model was used to explore the effects increasing patient arrivals and alternative elective patient admission disciplines would have on the performance measures. The model can be used as a decision support system for hospital planners.

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This paper presents a practical framework to synthesize multi-sensor navigation information for localization of a rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle (RUAV) and estimation of unknown ship positions when the RUAV approaches the landing deck. The estimation performance of the visual tracking sensor can also be improved through integrated navigation. Three different sensors (inertial navigation, Global Positioning System, and visual tracking sensor) are utilized complementarily to perform the navigation tasks for the purpose of an automatic landing. An extended Kalman filter (EKF) is developed to fuse data from various navigation sensors to provide the reliable navigation information. The performance of the fusion algorithm has been evaluated using real ship motion data. Simulation results suggest that the proposed method can be used to construct a practical navigation system for a UAV-ship landing system.

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Many computationally intensive scientific applications involve repetitive floating point operations other than addition and multiplication which may present a significant performance bottleneck due to the relatively large latency or low throughput involved in executing such arithmetic primitives on commod- ity processors. A promising alternative is to execute such primitives on Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) hardware acting as an application-specific custom co-processor in a high performance reconfig- urable computing platform. The use of FPGAs can provide advantages such as fine-grain parallelism but issues relating to code development in a hardware description language and efficient data transfer to and from the FPGA chip can present significant application development challenges. In this paper, we discuss our practical experiences in developing a selection of floating point hardware designs to be implemented using FPGAs. Our designs include some basic mathemati cal library functions which can be implemented for user defined precisions suitable for novel applications requiring non-standard floating point represen- tation. We discuss the details of our designs along with results from performance and accuracy analysis tests.

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BACKGROUND There is little doubt that our engineering graduates’ ability to identify cultural differences and their potential to impact on engineering projects, and to work effectively with these differences is of key importance in the modern engineering practice. Within engineering degree programs themselves there is also a significant need to recognise the impact of changing student and staff profiles on what happens in the classroom. The research described in this paper forms part of a larger project exploring issues of intercultural competence in engineering. PURPOSE This paper presents an observational and survey study of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students from four institutions working in groups on tasks with a purely technical focus, or with a cultural and humanitarian element. The study sought to explore how students rate their own intercultural competence and team process and whether any differences exist depending on the nature of the task they are working on. We also investigated whether any differences were evident between groups of first year, second year and postgraduate students. DESIGN/METHOD The study used the miniCQS instrument (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008) and a Bales Interaction Process Analysis based scale (Bales, 1950; Carney, 1976) to collect students self ratings of group process, task management, and cultural experience and behaviour. The Bales IPA was also used for coding video observations of students working in groups. Survey data were used to form descriptive variables to compare outcomes across the different tasks and contexts. Observations analysed in Nvivo were used to provide commentary and additional detail on the quantitative data. RESULTS The results of the survey indicated consistent mean scores on each survey item for each group of students, despite vastly different tasks, student backgrounds and educational contexts. Some small, statistically significant mean differences existed, offering some basic insights into how task and student group composition could affect self ratings. Overall though, the results suggest minimal shift in how students view group function and their intercultural experience, irrespective of differing educational experience. CONCLUSIONS The survey results, contrasted with group observations, indicate that either students are not translating their experience (in the group tasks) into critical self assessment of their cultural competence and teamwork, or that they become more critical of team performance and cultural competence as their competence in these areas grows, so their ratings remain consistent. Both outcomes indicate that students need more intensive guidance to build their critical self and peer assessment skills in these areas irrespective of their year level of study.

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BACKGROUND The work described in this paper has emerged from an ALTC/OLT funded project, Exploring Intercultural Competency in Engineering. The project indentified many facets of culture and intercultural competence that go beyond a culture-as-nationality paradigm. It was clear from this work that resources were needed to help engineering educators introduce students to the complex issues of culture as they relate to engineering practice. A set of learning modules focussing on intercultural competence in engineering practice were developed early on in the project. Through the OLT project, these modules have been expanded into a range of resources covering various aspects of culture in engineering. Supporting the resources, an eBook detailing the ins and outs of intercultural competency has also been developed to assist engineering educators to embed opportunities for students to develop skills in unpacking and managing cross-cultural challenges in engineering practice. PURPOSE This paper describes the key principles behind the development of the learning modules, the areas they cover and the eBook developed to support the modules. The paper is intended as an introduction to the approaches and resources and extends an invitation to the community to draw from, and contribute to this initial work. DESIGN/METHOD A key aim of this project was to go beyond the culture-as-nationality approach adopted in much of the work around intercultural competency (Deardorff, 2011). The eBook explores different dimensions of culture such as workplace culture, culture’s influence on engineering design, and culture in the classroom. The authors describe how these connect to industry practice and explore what they mean for engineering education. The packaged learning modules described here have been developed as a matrix of approaches moving from familiar known methods through complicated activities relying to some extent on expert knowledge. Some modules draw on the concept of ‘complex un-order’ as described in the ‘Cynefin domains’ proposed by Kurtz and Snowden (2003). RESULTS Several of the modules included in the eBook have already been trialled at a variety of institutions. Feedback from staff has been reassuringly positive so far. Further trials are planned for second semester 2012, and version 1 of the eBook and learning modules, Engineering Across Cultures, is due to be released in late October 2012. CONCLUSIONS The Engineering Across Cultures eBook and learning modules provide a useful and ready to employ resource to help educators tackle the complex issue of intercultural competency in engineering education. The book is by no means exhaustive, and nor are the modules, they instead provide an accessible, engineering specific guide to bringing cultural issues into the engineering classroom.