Mature industries are characterised by static or declining sales, low average margins and intense competition between firms for market share. This paper develops a typology of strategic options for small firms in the furniture industry and examines the extent to which firms are adopting simple or complex strategies. Empirical analysis is based on data from 39 firms with between 10 and 100 emplo...

Information Technologies until recently mainly have been focused on very constrained artifacts like desktop computers, set-top boxes or handheld. There is now a shift towards integrating technologies in everyday artifacts, ranging from tables to walls and even carpets or kitchen furniture. In this paradigm, the computer disappears and objects take advantage of computation capabilities to suppor...

Current bed bug, Cimex lectularius L., control usually involves insecticide applications that pose a high risk of insecticide exposure to residents and applicators. To minimize these risks and the amount of insecticides used, we designed and evaluated a dust band treatment technique. The laboratory assay showed that 1% cyßuthrin dust treated bands are highly effective in killing bed bugs. We fu...

In both these cases the nature of the foreign body in the palate defied diagnosis by either the parents or clinicians. Although this led to considerable delay in presentation, removal was simple and the palate left unscathed. The risks of dislodgement and aspiration of the plastic screwhead cap into the tracheobronchial tree, however, rendered this a potentially serious condition. Because screw...

The prevalence of perceptions of odors and sensations of air humidity and sick building syndrome symptoms in domestic environments were studied using responses to a questionnaire on the home environment. Parents of 4530 1-8 year old children from randomly selected kindergartens in Chongqing, China participated. Stuffy odor, unpleasant odor, pungent odor, mold odor, tobacco smoke odor, humid air...

Learning effect The learning effect is concerned with cumulative production over time—not the manufacture of a single product/batch at a particular moment in time—and recognises that it takes less time to assemble a product the more times that product is made by the same worker, or group of workers. The most effective way of describing the learning effect is to consider the assembly of selfasse...

Older adults' preferences to remain independent in their own homes along with the high costs of nursing home care have motivated the development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies which aim at improving the safety, health conditions and wellness of the elderly. This paper reports hands-on experiences in designing, implementing and operating UbiCare, an AAL based prototype system for ...

Since the 1940s there has been an increase in the number of patients submitted for surgery of the spinal axis necessitating use of the prone position. Specifically designed operating tables were both rare and expensive, and probably only existed in a few highly specialized centres. Apparatus which could be easily made locally and used in conjunction with normal operating tables has been invente...

In this data article, laboratory experimental investigation results on drying kinetic properties: the drying temperature (T), drying air velocity (V) and dewatering time (Te), each of the factors has five levels, and the experiment was replicated three times and the output: drying rate and drying time obtained, were observed. The experiment was conducted at National Centre for Agricultural Mech...