Implementing Design and Operational Measures for Sustainable Mobility: Lessons from Zurich

Increasing mobility and urbanization is important for economic prosperity but leads to higher urban traffic congestion, which is associated with many negative externalities. Therefore, cities are in need of integrative solutions that reduce their transportation network’s spatial and environmental footprint, while maintaining the highest transportation efficiency possible. Focusing on a nontraditional and more sustainable cycle of urban transportation, this paper covers an integrated perspective by describing a combination of individual design and operational measures. To do so, a case study of the city of Zurich is presented, which consistently ranks highly across different indicators, from smart city to sustainability. This paper is therefore a qualitative review of different measures that the city has implemented to become more sustainable. The measures are compared with indicators from the existing literature and classify them into three clusters: (i) measures discouraging private motorized transport, (ii) measures encouraging public transport, and (iii) measures encouraging human-powered mobility. The discussion thereof allows us to integrate the different measures to define a sustainable transportation cycle, which potentially serves as a best-practice example.

ANALYSIS OF FOREIGN EXPERIENCE OF THE ARCHITECTURAL ORGANIZATION OF REHABILITATION CENTERS FOR MILITARY SERVICES

The article discusses the features of the architectural organization of rehabilitation centers in America. The article is aimed at searching for individual design solutions for rehabilitation centers, revealing regional and climatic features that correspond to modern programs, reflect the latest trends in the design of medical facilities

Naïve Poison Frog tadpoles use bi-modal cues to avoid insect predators but not heterospecific predatory tadpoles

For animals to survive until reproduction, it is crucial that juveniles successfully detect potential predators and respond with appropriate behavior. The recognition of cues originating from predators can be innate or learned. Cues of various modalities might be used alone or in multi-modal combinations to detect and distinguish predators but studies investigating multi-modal integration in predator avoidance are scarce. Here, we used wild, naive tadpoles of the Neotropical Poison Frog Allobates femoralis (Boulenger, 1884) to test their reaction to cues with two modalities from two different sympatrically occurring potential predators: heterospecific predatory Dendrobates tinctorius tadpoles and dragonfly larvae. We presented A. femoralis tadpoles with olfactory or visual cues, or a combination of both and compared their reaction to a water-control in a between-individual design. In our trials, A. femoralis tadpoles reacted to multimodal stimuli (a combination of visual and chemical information) originating from dragonfly larvae with avoidance but showed no reaction to uni-modal cues or cues from heterospecific tadpoles. In addition, visual cues from conspecifics increased swimming activity while cues from predators had no effect on tadpole activity. Our results show that A. femoralis tadpoles can innately recognize some predators and likely need both visual and chemical information to effectively avoid them. This is the first study looking at anti-predator behavior in Poison Frog tadpoles. We discuss how parental care might influence the expression of predator avoidance responses in tadpoles.

Development of a Perioperative Medication-Related Clinical Decision Support Tool to Prevent Medication Errors: An Analysis of User Feedback

Objectives Medication use in the perioperative setting presents many patient safety challenges that may be improved with electronic clinical decision support (CDS). The objective of this paper is to describe the development and analysis of user feedback for a robust, real-time medication-related CDS application designed to provide patient-specific dosing information and alerts to warn of medication errors in the operating room (OR). Methods We designed a novel perioperative medication-related CDS application in four phases: (1) identification of need, (2) alert algorithm development, (3) system design, and (4) user interface design. We conducted group and individual design feedback sessions with front-line clinician leaders and subject matter experts to gather feedback about user requirements for alert content and system usability. Participants were clinicians who provide anesthesia (attending anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and house staff), OR pharmacists, and nurses. Results We performed two group and eight individual design feedback sessions, with a total of 35 participants. We identified 20 feedback themes, corresponding to 19 system changes. Key requirements for user acceptance were: Use hard stops only when necessary; provide as much information as feasible about the rationale behind alerts and patient/clinical context; and allow users to edit fields such as units, time, and baseline values (e.g., baseline blood pressure). Conclusion We incorporated user-centered design principles to build a perioperative medication-related CDS application that uses real-time patient data to provide patient-specific dosing information and alerts. Emphasis on early user involvement to elicit user requirements, workflow considerations, and preferences during application development can result in time and money efficiencies and a safer and more usable system.

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS IN DESIGNING PRE-SCHOOL CENTERS, ON THE EXAMPLE OF GERMANY AND UKRAINE

The article considers the peculiarities of the architectural organization of children's preschool institutions in European countries on the example of Germany and Ukraine in the 20th century. The study examines examples of architectural design of preschool institutions in the dense urban development of foreign cities, which are of particular importance for further solving of domestic problems of preschool institutions location in Ukrainian urban settlements. The considered projects demonstrate individual design decisions of kindergartens with revealing of regional features and local traditions of the countries which at the same time correspond to modern educational programs of these countries and reflect the advanced world tendencies in designing of children's preschool institutions.

CLASSIFICATION OF TWO-DISC COULTERS BY TECHNOLOGICAL AND DESIGN PARAMETERS

High-quality sowing of grain crops depends on the design of the working bodies of agricultural machines. Based on analytical studies, it was proposed to develop a new classification of individual structural elements of coulters and their technological parameters. (Research purpose) The research purpose is in improvement of the digital classification table of coulter signs, the structure and form of representation of which would allow easily complementing the signs characterizing the studied working body without changing its formation algorithm. (Materials and methods) The coulter can be considered as a system consisting of a combination of individual design and technological features that are closely related to each other. A two-disc coulter was analyzed according to the proposed classification, and a digital coding system was proposed. This classification allows us to include not only the known types of coulters, but also to predict new designs for the specified technologi-cal parameters. (Results and discussion) The features and properties of coulters in the matrix are located vertically and horizontally, respectively, and are considered in in-teraction, coulters of one class are associated with many features and properties of coulters of another class. This classification allows you to replace the existing large classifications with ordinary numbers, to conduct digital coding of any coulters of sowing machines. (Conclusions) The proposed classification allows us to apply digi-tal coding of the entire variety of features and properties of existing and new designs of two-disc coulters, to use computer technologies for searching, storing and pro-cessing information on them. The classification is used to select a rational design of the working body.

Designing Inclusion: Using 3D Printing to Maximize Adapted Physical Education Participation

While assistive technology is often suggested as a way to increase, maintain, or improve functional ability for individuals with disabilities within physical activity (PA) settings, cost and availability of such items are often noted as barriers. In recent years, 3D printing has become available to the general public through the adoption of 3D printers in schools, libraries, and universities. Through individual design and rapid prototyping, 3D printing can support physical educators in accommodating student need for assistive technology through a multitude of modification possibilities. This article will highlight the capacity for 3D printed assistive technology within educational settings, and will illustrate how teachers, APE specialists, and other related service personnel can utilize this technology to support student success in PE and PA settings. This article will also assist practitioners with locating, uploading, and utilizing existing collections of 3D assistive technology models from open-source websites, such as Thingiverse.

Efficient One-pass Synthesis for Digital Microfluidic Biochips

Digital microfluidics biochips are a promising emerging technology that provides fluidic experimental capabilities on a chip (i.e., following the lab-on-a-chip paradigm). However, the design of such biochips still constitutes a challenging task that is usually tackled by multiple individual design steps, such as binding, scheduling, placement, and routing. Performing these steps consecutively may lead to design gaps and infeasible results. To address these shortcomings, the concept of one-pass design for digital microfluidics biochips has recently been proposed—a holistic approach avoiding the design gaps by considering the whole synthesis process as large. But implementations of this concept available thus far suffer from either high computational effort or costly results. In this article, we present an efficient one-pass solution that is runtime efficient (i.e., rarely needing more than a second to successfully synthesize a design) while, at the same time, producing better results than previously published heuristic approaches. Experimental results confirm the benefits of the proposed solution and allow for realizing really large assays composed of thousands of operations in reasonable runtime.

A prototype of an advanced ship autopilot implemented in the CPDev environment

Ship autopilots can be divided into conventional, only capable of maintaining a given course, and advanced, which can additionally follow a “track” connecting the given navigation points along the ship’s route. The article presents the structure of the prototype autopilot of the ship implemented in the CPDev environment and the formulas allowing to determine the settings of the course controller (PID) and track controller (PI) in the cascade control. For each of them, individual design parameters were adopted to define the dynamics of the closed control loop. These rules were applied in the software of the autopilot prototype, created in cooperation with a Dutch company designing control and visualization systems for ships.