scholarly journals Advanced Joining Processes Unit

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-36
Author(s):  
Ricardo Carbas ◽  
Eduardo Marques ◽  
Lucas Da Silva

The Advanced Joining Processes (AJP) is an autonomous research unit at the Institute of Science and Innovation in Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (INEGI) that works closely with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP). This unit is staffed by professors, post-doctoral researchers, PhD students, MSc students and research fellows. The AJP unit has four key competences, established to support all aspects related to the study of advanced joining processes: testing, simulation, production and machine design. The AJP unit has robust and fully independent competences in the manufacture of experimental specimens and components. The unit operates a fully equipped laboratory with all facilities necessary to manufacture specimens, moulds, test fixtures and testing equipment. The unit has extensive experience in testing complex specimens’ geometry under a wide range of conditions. Research is carried out to determine the performance of structural joints under quasi-static loads, high strain rates, fatigue and creep conditions, among many others. Complementarily, the unit also has a strong machine design capability, being experienced in the development and manufacture of custom designed testing equipment (such as creep testing machines, drop-weight testing machines, torsion testing machines, split Hopkinson pressure bars and devices for glass transition temperature measurement). These experimental capabilities are complemented with robust numerical simulation competencies, which allow to streamline the design process by creating powerful models that can accurately predict the mechanical behaviour of advanced structural joints. These capabilities enable the AJP unit to undertake new and challenging research projects, reacting quickly to current industrial demands and scientific trends, due to its autonomy. This work methodology allows the AJP unit to simultaneously operate in two main fronts. One is fundamental academic research, resulting in MSc and PhD thesis and scientific publication, and the other is comprised of knowledge-transfer activities with industrial partners, which generate funding that can be used to support additional fundamental research. By combining these two approaches, the AJP unit proves that sound technological based educational processes can be achieved while undertaking cutting edge research with practical and industrial value.

Author(s):  
Alexey Shcherbakov ◽  
Valentin Zhezmer

Department of hydraulic engineering and hydraulics FGBNU «VNIIGiM them. A.N. Kostyakova «has a long history. For many years, the department’s staff has been such scientists and water engineers with extensive experience as M.A. Volynov, V.S. Verbitsky, S.S. Medvedev, N.V. Lebedev, B.C. Panfilov, T.G. Voynich-Syanozhentsky, V.A. Golubkova, G.V. Lyapin and others. The department solved a wide range of tasks, the main areas of research were the following: – theoretical and applied hydrodynamics and hydraulics, with reference to the open channel flows that affect the state and level of safety of the hydraulic structures; – integrated use and protection of water bodies – water sources and water sources of water resources used in land reclamation; – development of measures and technical solutions for the protection of objects from the negative effects of water; – theoretical substantiation of works to improve the safety level of the GTS (declaration); – development and implementation of digitalization methods for solving design, construction, operation and control of landreclamation facilities. Currently, promising areas of research is the development of a decision-making algorithm in the designation of measures to rationalize the provision of resources to water amelioration. The algorithm is developed on the basis of a detailed study, systematization and processing of data both on safety and on the efficiency of systems and structures, ensuring the delivery of irrigation water of the required quality and in sufficient quantity from a water source to the field.


Author(s):  
Alan Kelly

What is scientific research? It is the process by which we learn about the world. For this research to have an impact, and positively contribute to society, it needs to be communicated to those who need to understand its outcomes and significance for them. Any piece of research is not complete until it has been recorded and passed on to those who need to know about it. So, good communication skills are a key attribute for researchers, and scientists today need to be able to communicate through a wide range of media, from formal scientific papers to presentations and social media, and to a range of audiences, from expert peers to stakeholders to the general public. In this book, the goals and nature of scientific communication are explored, from the history of scientific publication; through the stages of how papers are written, evaluated, and published; to what happens after publication, using examples from landmark historical papers. In addition, ethical issues relating to publication, and the damage caused by cases of fabrication and falsification, are explored. Other forms of scientific communication such as conference presentations are also considered, with a particular focus on presenting and writing for nonspecialist audiences, the media, and other stakeholders. Overall, this book provides a broad overview of the whole range of scientific communication and should be of interest to researchers and also those more broadly interested in the process how what scientists do every day translates into outcomes that contribute to society.


Author(s):  
Takeuchi Ayano

AbstractPublic participation has become increasingly necessary to connect a wide range of knowledge and various values to agenda setting, decision-making and policymaking. In this context, deliberative democratic concepts, especially “mini-publics,” are gaining attention. Generally, mini-publics are conducted with randomly selected lay citizens who provide sufficient information to deliberate on issues and form final recommendations. Evaluations are conducted by practitioner researchers and independent researchers, but the results are not standardized. In this study, a systematic review of existing research regarding practices and outcomes of mini-publics was conducted. To analyze 29 papers, the evaluation methodologies were divided into 4 categories of a matrix between the evaluator and evaluated data. The evaluated cases mainly focused on the following two points: (1) how to maintain deliberation quality, and (2) the feasibility of mini-publics. To create a new path to the political decision-making process through mini-publics, it must be demonstrated that mini-publics can contribute to the decision-making process and good-quality deliberations are of concern to policy-makers and experts. Mini-publics are feasible if they can contribute to the political decision-making process and practitioners can evaluate and understand the advantages of mini-publics for each case. For future research, it is important to combine practical case studies and academic research, because few studies have been evaluated by independent researchers.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
José-Vicente Tomás-Miquel ◽  
Jordi Capó-Vicedo

AbstractScholars have widely recognised the importance of academic relationships between students at the university. While much of the past research has focused on studying their influence on different aspects such as the students’ academic performance or their emotional stability, less is known about their dynamics and the factors that influence the formation and dissolution of linkages between university students in academic networks. In this paper, we try to shed light on this issue by exploring through stochastic actor-oriented models and student-level data the influence that a set of proximity factors may have on formation of these relationships over the entire period in which students are enrolled at the university. Our findings confirm that the establishment of academic relationships is derived, in part, from a wide range of proximity dimensions of a social, personal, geographical, cultural and academic nature. Furthermore, and unlike previous studies, this research also empirically confirms that the specific stage in which the student is at the university determines the influence of these proximity factors on the dynamics of academic relationships. In this regard, beyond cultural and geographic proximities that only influence the first years at the university, students shape their relationships as they progress in their studies from similarities in more strategic aspects such as academic and personal closeness. These results may have significant implications for both academic research and university policies.


Author(s):  
Florentine U. Salmony ◽  
Dominik K. Kanbach

AbstractThe personality traits that define entrepreneurs have been of significant interest to academic research for several decades. However, previous studies have used vastly different definitions of the term “entrepreneur”, meaning their subjects have ranged from rural farmers to tech-industry start-up founders. Consequently, most research has investigated disparate sub-types of entrepreneurs, which may not allow for inferences to be made regarding the general entrepreneurial population. Despite this, studies have frequently extrapolated results from narrow sub-types to entrepreneurs in general. This variation in entrepreneur samples reduces the comparability of empirical studies and calls into question the reviews that pool results without systematic differentiation between sub-types. The present study offers a novel account by differentiating between the definitions of “entrepreneur” used in studies on entrepreneurs’ personality traits. We conduct a systematic literature review across 95 studies from 1985 to 2020. We uncover three main themes across the previous studies. First, previous research applied a wide range of definitions of the term “entrepreneur”. Second, we identify several inconsistent findings across studies, which may at least partially be due to the use of heterogeneous entrepreneur samples. Third, the few studies that distinguished between various types of entrepreneurs revealed differences between them. Our systematic differentiation between entrepreneur sub-types and our research integration offer a novel perspective that has, to date, been widely neglected in academic research. Future research should use clearly defined entrepreneurial samples and conduct more systematic investigations into the differences between entrepreneur sub-types.


Author(s):  
Zuowei Chen ◽  
Liquan Wang ◽  
Jiaping Lin ◽  
Lei Du

High-temperature phthalonitrile resins have a wide range of applications, and understanding their curing mechanism is of great importance for academic research and engineering applications. However, the actual curing mechanism is...


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asma A A Zahidi ◽  
Lee McIlreavy ◽  
Jonathan T Erichsen ◽  
J Margaret Woodhouse

Background/Aims: Children with Down's syndrome (DS) are known to have poorer visual acuity that neurotypical children. One report has shown that children with DS and nystagmus also have poor acuity when compared to typical children with nystagmus. What has not been established, is the extent of any acuity deficit due to nystagmus and whether nystagmus impacts on refractive error is within a population with DS. Methods: Clinical records from The Cardiff University Down's Syndrome Vision Research Unit were examined retrospectively. Binocular visual acuity and refraction data were available for 50 children who had DS and nystagmus (DSN) and 176 children who had DS but no nystagmus. Data were compared between the two groups, and with published data for neurotypical children with nystagmus. Results: The study confirms the deficit in acuity in DS, compared to neurotypical children, of approximately 0.2 LogMAR and shows a further deficit attributable to nystagmus of a further 0.2 logMAR beyond the first year of life. Children with DS and no nystagmus appear to have acuity that mirrors that of typical children with nystagmus, while children with both DS and nystagmus have a significant additional impairment. Children with DS have a wide range of refractive errors, but nystagmus increases the likelihood of myopia. Prevalence and axis direction of astigmatism, on the other hand appears unaffected by nystagmus. Conclusion: Nystagmus confers an additional visual impairment on children with Down's syndrome and must be recognised as such by families and educators. Children with both DS and nystagmus clearly need targeted support.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46
Author(s):  
Florian Spree

Predictive process monitoring is a subject of growing interest in academic research. As a result, an increased number of papers on this topic have been published. Due to the high complexity in this research area a wide range of different experimental setups and methods have been applied which makes it very difficult to reliably compare research results. This paper's objective is to investigate how business process models and their characteristics are used during experimental setups and how they can contribute to academic research. First, a literature review is conducted to analyze and discuss the awareness of business process models in experimental setups. Secondly, the paper discusses identified research problems and proposes the concept of a web-based business process model metric suite and the idea of ranked metrics. Through a metric suite researchers and practitioners can automatically evaluate business process model characteristics in their future work. Further, a contextualization of metrics by introducing a ranking of characteristics can potentially indicate how the outcome of experimental setups will be. Hence, the paper's work demonstrates the importance of business process models and their characteristics in the context of predictive process monitoring and proposes the concept of a tool approach and ranking to reliably evaluate business process models characteristics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document