At present e-Learning systems are widely introduced in education. There are various systems developed and implemented for learners. However, most of these systems are static and inflexible. These traditional systems are developed on the basis of “one-size-fit-all”. They cannot be adjusted to fit the individual’s capability. In this paper the user-centric approach is applied to improve the perfo...

There has been a growing trend among shoe manufacturers to introduce customized shoes to satisfy varying customer style, fit, and comfort needs, thus to increase the product’s added value. This study presents a computer-aided design (CAD) system for designing a customized shoe last based on the chosen shoe style and customer’s foot features. The CAD system first automatically extracts 18 import...

The last is the basic industrial component in footwear manufacturing, from which product development starts. Correct last grading ensures the best fit for the intended group of users of the footwear model to be produced. The size marked on the last should respect the specific intervals defined in the different international sizing systems, like the European, UK, US or Mondopoint systems, which ...

Slow life histories are characterized by high adult survival and few offspring, which are thought to allow increased investment per offspring to increase juvenile survival. Consistent with this pattern, south temperate zone birds are commonly longer-lived and have fewer young than north temperate zone species. However, comparative analyses of juvenile survival, including during the first few we...

Orthogonal Latin hypercubes (OLHs) are available for only a limited collection of run sizes. This paper presents a simple algorithm for constructing orthogonal designs that are nearly Latin hypercubes. The algorithm is based on the approach developed by Steinberg and Lin for OLH designs and can generate designs for all run sizes for which a Plackett-Burman design exists. The designs have good u...

Adsorption at surfaces can be modelled using a periodic supercell approach or using finite clusters. For many systems and properties these models are complementary and often the most productive way to work is to use a combination of these techniques. If reliable data is to be obtained it is essential that convergence is achieved with respect to the size of supercell and cluster. This work discu...

Many tests of asset-pricing models address only the pricing predictions, but these pricing predictions rest on portfolio choice predictions that seem obviously wrong. This paper suggests a new approach to asset pricing and portfolio choices based on unobserved heterogeneity. This approach yields the standard pricing conclusions of classical models but is consistent with very different portfolio...

A new diagnostic method for measuring transverse size of electron beam by nondestructive interaction of Compton scattering of laser beam has been proposed”). A first model of this spot size monitor is under construction for the FFIB SLAC experiment, in order to measure the electron beam size of 60 nanometer vertical by 1, micrometer horizontal, using Nd: YAGlaser of 1.064 p wavelength. In this ...

Antenna design for footwear is an essential part of enabling reliable wireless links with lower-limb sensors used in body centric networks. Sensors can report biomechanical pressure data to analyse kinematic and posture parameters for a range of medical and sporting applications. Consideration is given to antenna shapes, the fit with shoe shapes, the positioning on the shoe and the radiation pa...

This paper aims at testing the existence of yardstick competition by estimating a fully specified votefunction on a panel data set of 104 French local governments from 1989 to 2001. When comparing the performance of their incumbent to the one of their "neighbours", voters might consider their close geographical neighbours but also the nearby cities that are similar according to some socio-econo...