scholarly journals Application Search in Solution-Driven Biologically Inspired Design

Author(s):  
Torben Anker Lenau

AbstractIn solution-driven BID (sol-BID) a challenge is to identify suited applications that will benefit from the solutions principles found in nature. A well-known example of sol-BID is the self-cleaning lotus plant, that has inspired lotus paint and other coating methods. However, sol-BID is often performed by biologists with insight into the biological strategy and organism and typically only little knowledge of technical applications and design methodology. Searching for applications is therefore a challenge to many. Sol-BID has many things in common with technical application search where new applications are sought for a specific production technology or another competence characterizing a company. Experiences from technical application search could therefore form a valuable input for how to perform sol-BID. The paper presents two case studies of application search and proposes a procedure to be used in solution driven BID.

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markku Kuula ◽  
Antero Putkiranta ◽  
Jarmo Toivanen

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze changes in the supply chain and production process, and the effects these changes have had on competitive performance. Design/methodology/approach – The study is longitudinal and was conducted in 1993, 2004 and 2010 with a standard questionnaire. The data have been analyzed by using the Mann-Whitney U-test. Findings – The study indicates that changing a role within the supply chain may help a company to adapt to surrounding changes, but there is no single best way to react to such changes. Companies must be able to position themselves in the new situation. Research limitations/implications – Even though the study itself and the data are unique, there are still some limitations. Although the results are limited to the sample, they nevertheless give a good insight into the changes that occurred within the sample. Originality/value – This study is the only longitudinal study in this field to compare three periods of time. This gives a unique perspective to study the changes that have occurred during the last 15 years.


2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bogue

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an introduction to smart materials, with an emphasis on their capabilities and applications. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction, this paper first considers what smart materials are and what they can do. It then discusses existing and emerging applications of shape changing, self-actuating, self-healing, self-diagnostic and self-sensing materials. Findings – Although difficult to define unambiguously, smart materials offer a range of unique characteristics and have been used in a multitude of products, ranging from household goods and novelty items to automotive components and medical devices. They are the topic of extensive research and all manner of new applications will emerge in the future, reflecting both technological developments and a growing awareness of their capabilities. Originality/value – This paper provides an insight into the rapidly developing technology and applications of smart materials.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-332
Author(s):  
Kate Zebiri

This article aims to explore the Shaykh-mur?d (disciple) or teacher-pupil relationship as portrayed in Western Sufi life writing in recent decades, observing elements of continuity and discontinuity with classical Sufism. Additionally, it traces the influence on the texts of certain developments in religiosity in contemporary Western societies, especially New Age understandings of religious authority. Studying these works will provide an insight into the diversity of expressions of contemporary Sufism, while shedding light on a phenomenon which seems to fly in the face of contemporary social and religious trends which deemphasize external authority and promote the authority of the self or individual autonomy.


2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-119
Author(s):  
Matthias Bickenbach

Eine der zentralen Fragen moderner Poetik ist, wie der Werkentstehungsprozeß von kreativer Materialfülle zur ästhetischen Bestimmtheit des Erzählten als autonomem Kunstwerk übergeht. Sten Nadolnys Poetikvorlesung gibt überraschende Einsichten in die Selbstorganisation von Steuerungsbewegungen, die noch unterhalb der Ebene des Schreibens liegen und die als Theorie der Eigenwerte in der Literatur herauszustellen ist. One of the central questions in modern poetics is, how literary writing proceeds from the creative richness of its material to an aesthetic determination as autonomous art. Sten Nadolnys lectures on his poetics enable an astonishing insight into the self-organisation of operations beyond writing, which can be considered as a theory of self-values in literature.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph John Pyne Simons ◽  
Ilya Farber

Not all transit users have the same preferences when making route decisions. Understanding the factors driving this heterogeneity enables better tailoring of policies, interventions, and messaging. However, existing methods for assessing these factors require extensive data collection. Here we present an alternative approach - an easily-administered single item measure of overall preference for speed versus comfort. Scores on the self-report item predict decisions in a choice task and account for a proportion of the differences in model parameters between people (n=298). This single item can easily be included on existing travel surveys, and provides an efficient method to both anticipate the choices of users and gain more general insight into their preferences.


Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.


2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 1070-1091 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Anthony Carrillat ◽  
Alain d’Astous

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to contrast athlete endorsement vs athlete sponsorship from a power imbalance perspective when a scandal strikes the athlete. Design/methodology/approach – A first study was conducted with a probabilistic sample of 252 adult consumers where the type of brand–athlete relationship (endorsement or sponsorship) and the level of congruence between the two entities (low or high) were manipulated in a mixed experimental design. A second study with a probabilistic sample of 118 adult consumers was conducted to demonstrate that consumers perceive that the balance of power between the brand and the athlete is not the same in endorsement and sponsorship situations. Findings – The results of the first study showed that when an athlete is in the midst of a scandal, the negative impact on the associated brand is stronger in the case of an endorsement than in the case of a sponsorship. However, this occurs only when the brand–athlete relationship is congruent. The results of the second study showed that the athlete’s power relative to the brand is greater in an endorsement than in a sponsorship context. Research limitations/implications – The findings suggest that a company that worries about the possibility that the athlete with whom it wants to build a relationship be eventually associated with some negative event (e.g. a scandal) should consider sponsorship rather than endorsement as a strategy. Originality/value – This study is the first to compare the athlete endorsement and sponsorship strategies in general and the first to put forward the notion of power imbalance in brand–athlete partnerships, its impact on how the two entities are represented in consumers’ memory networks and the consequences on brand attitude when the athlete is associated with a negative event.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Agboola-Dobson ◽  
Guowu Wei ◽  
Lei Ren

Recent advancements in powered lower limb prostheses have appeased several difficulties faced by lower limb amputees by using a series-elastic actuator (SEA) to provide powered sagittal plane flexion. Unfortunately, these devices are currently unable to provide both powered sagittal plane flexion and two degrees of freedom (2-DOF) at the ankle, removing the ankle’s capacity to invert/evert, thus severely limiting terrain adaption capabilities and user comfort. The developed 2-DOF ankle system in this paper allows both powered flexion in the sagittal plane and passive rotation in the frontal plane; an SEA emulates the biomechanics of the gastrocnemius and Achilles tendon for flexion while a novel universal-joint system provides the 2-DOF. Several studies were undertaken to thoroughly characterize the capabilities of the device. Under both level- and sloped-ground conditions, ankle torque and kinematic data were obtained by using force-plates and a motion capture system. The device was found to be fully capable of providing powered sagittal plane motion and torque very close to that of a biological ankle while simultaneously being able to adapt to sloped terrain by undergoing frontal plane motion, thus providing 2-DOF at the ankle. These findings demonstrate that the device presented in this paper poses radical improvements to powered prosthetic ankle-foot device (PAFD) design.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 7-9
Author(s):  
Israel Odede

Purpose The paper aims to critically examine the bibliographic utility as a roadmap to increase library consortia and provide an insight into a new library consortia strategy that integrates librarians into a system of sharing both resources and knowledge. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a literature review approach with a focus on bibliographic utility as a necessary prerequisite for effective library consortia, which is a paradigm shift from the concept of individual ownership to a collective access of distributed network resources and knowledge. Findings The reviewed literature indicated that significant bibliographic utilities and integrated library systems are factors that shaped and developed consortia activities in libraries. Originality/value The bibliographic utility has limited literature, and a few published scholarly studies have combined bibliographic utility and library consortia as strategies to share resources and knowledge


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