We present in this paper the concept of intelligent electronic catalogue for engineering and manufacturing as it results from the ESPRIT PLUS project and from the PLib standard (officially ISO 13584, Parts Library). We introduce the model of a semantic data dictionary that was developed together with IEC to identify and to define the different concepts involved in a particular catalogue or prod...

The efficient use of human capital is one of the most important factors in todays’ business competition. Competition is strongly influenced by qualified staff. In order to aid the human resources department to keep up with strategic decisions various skill management systems have been created that make the development of human resources easier and more precise. Skill management systems are only...

historical earthquakes play a notable role in engineering seismology. the historical kashan-sialk region, 3 km south of kashan, was surveyed in the viewpoint of historical earthquakes events. several devastating historical earthquakes, occurred in the bc time, identified based on archaeological studies and evidences gathered from field study. in this respect a variety of information, namely tim...

Catalogues have been discussed for centuries in libraries and it is generally accepted that finding relevant books in any science without a well organised catalogue is almost impossible. Nowadays the idea of a library with its catalogue entries is transported to all kinds of data, including books, maps, geographic layers, models. The correspondence to the catalogue entries are metadata, i.e. de...

An annotated taxonomic catalogue of the jewel beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) of Iran is given. Original descriptions and recent revisionary or catalogue data are included along with the distribution, both within and outside of Iran, ecological data and host plant associations, junior synonyms, and comments. A complete bibliography completes the catalogue. In total 428 species and 52 subspeci...

An unprecedented collaboration of marine researchers celebrated earlier this month the completion of the first check on marine species. Oceans comprise two-thirds of the Earth’s surface but have been neglected by biologists more focused on terrestrial ecosystems. But a 10-year international project — the Census of Marine Life — reported this month its final report on the survey of ocean species...

The recent invasion of the Amazon area by nonimmune people is creating serious health problems. Ten years ago the situation regarding malaria was much more satisfactory. I travelled extensively in the Amazon around that time, and the ministry campaign against malaria (SUCAM) had it fairly well controlled. Brazil was fortunate in that the major anophelene vector, Anopheles darlingi, had not deve...

This paper is an attempt to classify finite-time singularities of PDEs. Most of the problems considered describe free-surface flows, which are easily observed experimentally. We consider problems where the singularity occurs at a point, and where typical scales of the solution shrink to zero as the singularity is approached. Upon a similarity transformation, exact self-similar behaviour is mapp...