In this paper, we present House, a messaging platform for members of geographically disconnected families to stay connected. House is a lightweight, real-time interface designed to help such families communicate with each other. Specifically, it helps families re-discover the joys of communicating trivial and silly information between each other and is a departure from the objectives of current...

The smart-house technology aims to increase home automation and security with reduced energy consumption. A smart house consists of various intelligent sensors and actuators operating on different platforms with conflicting objectives. This paper proposes a multi-agent system (MAS) design framework to achieve smart house automation. The novelties of this work include the developments of (1) bel...

Under the auspices of the US Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory and the Coalition for Advanced Wood Structures (CAWS), the Southern Climatic Housing Research Team -a multidisciplinary group of wood scientists, architects, landscape architects, mechanical and civil engineers – is designing a research and demonstration house for the Southeastern United States on the campus of Mississippi S...

Plagues of the house mouse (Mus musculus) occur at irregular intervals throughout the agricultural regions of south-eastern Australia. This paper discusses these phenomena in terms of their impact on agricultural production, previous attempts to reduce damage and levels of infestation, and associated environmental implications. Consideration is also given to the accurate prediction of mouse pla...

House design may affect an individual's exposure to malaria parasites, and hence to disease. We conducted a randomized-controlled study using experimental huts in rural Gambia, to determine whether installing a ceiling or closing the eaves could protect people from malaria mosquitoes. Five treatments were tested against a control hut: plywood ceiling; synthetic-netting ceiling; insecticide-trea...

March 16, 2010. You should recently have received a letter concerning a possible change of name for MPS, to “Mathematical Optimization Society”. This issue has been discussed in earnest since ISMP 2009, where it was raised at the Council and Business meetings. Some of you were kind enough to send me your views following the mention in my column in Optima 80. Many (including me) believe that the...

Many real-life applications of house allocation problems are dynamic. For example, in the case of on-campus housing for college students, each year freshmen apply to move in and graduating seniors leave. Each student stays on campus for a few years only. A student is a “newcomer” in the beginning and then becomes an “existing tenant.” Motivated by this observation, we introduce a model of house...

We describe the design of a Base-Board to house Multi-Anode Photo-Multipliers for use in large-area arrays of light sensors. The goals, the design, the results of tests on the prototypes and future developments are presented.

OBJECTIVE To determine the hours, volume, and type of work undertaken by preregistration house officers. DESIGN Continuous observation of 472 hours of work performed by 12 preregistration house officers based in medical wards, using standard procedures for studying work patterns. SETTING A teaching hospital with 340 beds assigned to general medicine and coronary care. SUBJECTS 12 Of the 1...