When dealing with the analysis of technical documents such m eengineenng drawings, diagrams or maps, it i s quite natural for people with a background in patlem recognilion and computer vision to consider the problem as a special case of scene analysis. However, at closer Imk. draftsmanship is also a language, and this linguistic pan must he taken into account in the interpretation process in o...

Products and services categorization standards (PSCS), like UNSPSC, eCl@ss, eOTD, or the RosettaNet Technical Dictionary (RNTD) form a valuable set of concepts from the product and services domain and reflect some degree of consensus. They are thus a promising foundation for the creation of products and services ontologies. Existing approaches for this task, however, do neither properly reflect...

Beam lifetime considerations and the limits of electron cooling restrict the thickness of internal targets to 1015 atoms/cm2. Gas jets or diffuse gas targets are possible schemes, but require a major technical effort to maintain sufficient vacuum adjacent to the target region. In addition, some important target materials are not available as gases. Dust targets have been used successfully, but ...

Risk measurement provides fundamental support to decision making within the insurance industry. In spite of this, the limitations of the common measures are not well appreciated and there is little nonspecialist awareness of the more powerful techniques. The published material on risk measurement is strong and has developed significantly in recent years. However, it is fragmented and is not alw...

We start the analysis considering three fundamental resources: the organizational structure (number of departments and how the interact), human resources distributed in work groups (micro groups) and the influence that organizational change provokes on the psychosocial climate. We are especially interested in the changes that facilitate the interaction under the direct impact of Information Tec...

Drawing on fieldwork among environmental activists and housing advocates in one of South Asia’s fastest-growing cities—and the capital of one of the world’s most politically volatile nation-states— this article explores how and when specific forms of urban housing were problematized and reformed through environmental logics. I ask when and how housing was framed as an environmental problem in K...

Technical drawing is very important for mechanical engineers. The ability to understand and work with technical drawings is a necessary skill for most of them. In general, first year students of mechanical engineering have difficulties in drawing orthographic views and perspectives, since they find it difficult to understand 3D shapes from 2D views. In this paper, we present several tools that ...

Recent debate amongst some sections of the diving community has concerned the relative benefits of using new ascent and decompression strategies based on calculations of the presence and behaviour of microbubbles. This debate has extended to concern over the relative safety of standard entry level agency decompression/no stop tables. The concern stems from the fact that recent research and opin...

EDICS (Engineering Design Instructional Computer Program) has proven to be a fun and intriguing means of conveying a wide variety of engineering design subjects to motivated students. The program consists of seven subjects which engineering students often have difficulty with even after completing their undergraduate studies. These subjects are: bearings, drawing and drafting, mounting of shaft...