Although solid models play a central role in modern CAD systems, 2D CAD systems are still commonly used for designing products without complex curved faces. Therefore, an important task is to convert 2D drawings to solid models, and this is usually carried out manually even in present CAD systems. Many methods have been proposed to automatically convert orthographic part drawings of solid objec...

This study aimed at examining the merit of crop diversification as a strategy for agricultural growth in Bangladesh. Specifically, the existence of economies of diversification, scale economies and diversification efficiencies at the farm level were examined using a stochastic input-distance function approach. Results reveal strong evidence of diversification economies amongst most crop enterpr...

Research on ‘‘modularity’’ has made an important contribution to the study of technical change and economic institutions. It demonstrates that progress in the division of labor in design (technical modularity) has created new opportunities for the organization of firms beyond vertical integration, by fostering vertical specialization in both manufacturing and innovation. However, a small, but g...

The development of advanced CAD systems is primarily directed towards a system controlled representation of the design semantics due to the interdependencies among the technical objects in the technical design process. In this paper, we introduce technical-functional dependencies to represent these relationships in an explicit manner. After that, a proposal for the modelling and the managing of...

Nowadays, launching new products in short intervals is a critical factor for success to persist on the global market. At the same time many enterprises call for cost reduction in all of their divisions. Especially development departments have to increase their effectiveness and efficiency by lowering development time and costs to preserve the competitiveness of the company. Since development pr...

In recent years, there have been attempts to discover the principles that determine the value of aesthetics in the domain of computing. Many and diverse studies have tried in some way to capture these principles through technical characteristics. To this end, helped by the ease of Internet data acquisition, datasets of images have been published which were obtained online at random from website...

Drawing upon the expectancy violation-realignment theory of autonomy development, this qualitative study examined African American and Hmong adolescent autonomy-seeking behaviors and parent–child communication about activities and relationships with peers. Twentytwo African American and 11 Hmong adolescents in grades 6–12 and 14 African American and 8 Hmong primary caregivers were interviewed. ...

Information and computing technologies have gone wild; broken free as servants of organizational ends and launched off the desktop, computing artefacts are finding new forms, new rationales and new circumstance of use. In some cases this change is purposeful and deliberate, but in others an intriguing socio-technical drift is at work, and the influences over that drift are yet to be understood....

Résumé—MOPED (an acronym for Model of Peloton Dynamics) is a proposed model for peloton dynamics in competitive cycling. Using an agent-based approach, it aims to generate the very complex behaviour observed in real-life competitive cycling from a collective of agents with very simple rules themselves. Cyclists try to minimize the average energy expenditure by riding behind other cyclists, in a...

The chapter describes an empirical study of a sociotechnical community—as an extended part of an institution—with the aim of revealing its changing processes. One hypothesis is that structures of socio-technical communities evolve from being less defined and informal to being more formal structures supported by evolving social control mechanisms, regulations and rules. The focus is the new emer...