Search results

The main objectives of the current study are to assess the existing situation of historical city centers in Iran and to offer prioritized appropriate regeneration strategies for their sustainable development.

The study is based on a questionnaire-based survey in four historical city centers of Iran: Kashan, Naeen, Ardakan and Yazd. The required data have been collected using multiple tools including questionnaires and interviews with local residents and officials in the aforementioned case studies. Using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) technique, a set of appropriate strategies for the sustainable regeneration of these valuable fabrics has been proposed and the best of them have been prioritized employing quantitative strategic planning matrix (QSPM) matrix.

The results show that the current situation in all the case studies is not in line with sustainability and cultural heritage protection. Their multiple problems are mostly associated with their weaknesses, whilst their strengths, including a considerable potential as a tourism attraction, are scarcely exploited. The experts and residents surveyed for this research have provided basic information to establish the conservative strategies that should take priority when preparing the urban regeneration process of these areas.

Since most of the adopted regeneration strategies in Iran are not supported by empirical studies, the current study largely fulfills this shortcoming by setting up a proper diagnosis of historical city centers in Iran and proposes the most appropriate regeneration strategies based on the findings.

Today, most of the high technology products around us require high performance semiconductors, and information technology (IT) is fully utilized in these products. The IT revolution is due largely to the remarkable progress of semi‐conductor technology. Robots are expected to handle larger size wafers under various levels of vacuum and clean environments, in order to permit semi‐conductor manufacturing equipment to realize higher density and performance in the twenty‐first century. Twenty years have passed since liquid crystal Displays (LCD) were introduced into the market and now LCDs are used widely. LCDs, which are based on thin film transistors (TFT) have been used especially in displays for PCs, mobile telephones and digital cameras, and now recently in flat‐screen TVs. Under these circumstances, LCD device makers are enlarging the size of glass plates in order to achieve higher productivity. Along with these trends, the robots used in LCD manufacturing systems are required to cope with the market needs for enlarging the size of glass plates. This paper introduces the trend in the next generation of robot technology for the semi‐conductor and LCD industries, coping with larger wafers, higher density and larger LCD glass plates.

The paper presents different topologies of inherent stable magnetic support systems consisting of monolithic high temperature superconductors (HTSC) and permanent magnets (PM). They may be used as contactless magnetic bearings for high speed rotating machines. Depending on the application, cylindric, conic or disk shaped HTSC‐PM arrangements with increased both radial and/or axial forces and stiffnesses are proposed. The dependencies of optimal pole pitch on the air gap are given including the effects of limited current densities associated with the behaviour of real monolithic superconductors. Furthermore, the effect of zero field and maximum field frozen HTSCs on the performance of magnetic HTSC bearings are represented. To compute the magnetic HTSC‐PM interaction a new extended finite element (EFEM) program is applied.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new elemental enrichment technique to improve the accuracy of the simulations of thermal problems containing weak discontinuities.

The enrichment is introduced in the elements cut by the materials interface by means of adding additional shape functions. The weak form of the problem is obtained using Galerkin approach and subsequently integrating the diffusion term by parts. To enforce the continuity of the fluxes in the “cut” elements, a contour integral must be added. These contour integrals named here the “inter-elemental heat fluxes” are usually neglected in the existing enrichment approaches. The proposed approach takes these fluxes into account.

It has been shown that the inter-elemental heat fluxes cannot be generally neglected and must be included. The corresponding method can be easily implemented in any existing finite element method (FEM) code, as the new degrees of freedom corresponding to the enrichment are local to the elements. This allows for their static condensation, thus not affecting the size and structure of the global system of governing equations. The resulting elements have exactly the same number of unknowns as the non-enriched finite element (FE).

It is the first work where the necessity of including inter-elemental heat fluxes has been demonstrated. Moreover, numerical tests solved have proven the importance of these findings. It has been shown that the proposed enrichment leads to an improved accuracy in comparison with the former approaches where inter-elemental heat fluxes were neglected.

Based on a synthesis of findings from psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning, we propose a unified theory of curiosity as a form of motivated cognition. Curiosity, we propose, is comprised of a family of mechanisms that range in complexity from simple heuristics based on novelty, salience, or surprise, to drives based on reward and uncertainty reduction and finally, to self-directed metacognitive processes. These mechanisms, we propose, have evolved to allow agents to discover useful regularities in the world – steering them toward niches of maximal learning progress and away from both random and highly familiar tasks. We emphasize that curiosity arises organically in conjunction with cognition and motivation, being generated by cognitive processes and in turn, motivating them. We hope that this view will spur the systematic study of curiosity as an integral aspect of cognition and decision making during development and adulthood.

The objective of this paper is to examine the continuing debate over the nature, scope and definition of facilities management and the implications of FM practice in the field of outsourcing for the development of the field and the profession.

The paper offers both a conceptual review of key issues in the definition of facilities management and a critique of these definitions in the context of the popular identity of facilities management as a means of generating cost savings through outsourcing.

The discussion asserts that, perhaps contrary to the many published doubts expressed over the possibility of achieving consensus on the scope of facilities management, an emerging and broadly consensual model of facilities management can be discerned. This model, it is suggested, is inhibited from further development primarily because of a lack of leadership in the professional and academic communities together with a preoccupation by necessity of the FM profession with operational imperatives.

The paper, through synthesis and critique, offers a variant perspective on the debate about the nature of facilities management.

Various revolutions continue in the technology of semiconductor manufacturing and equipment. The transfer system used in a vacuum is indispensable to the semiconductor manufacturing process, and the vacuum manipulator is the main component of this system. Yaskawa, which is the supplier of the electrically controlled industrial robot known well as “Motoman”, supplies a manipulator that can be used in a vacuum. For this manipulator, Yaskawa adopts the direct drive method with an original motor for the vacuum environment. Moreover, the manipulator has a specially designed controller for direct drive in a vacuum, and software functions for the transfer system. These provide Yaskawa’s vacuum manipulator with various features such as high reliability, high speed and high accuracy.

In October 1984, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in St. Louis, Missouri, directed that each of the company's major components establish a competitive intelligence organization to improve its understanding of the competition. One premise behind this directive was that an assessment of the competition in the marketplace was essential, and that the company's current informal methods of competitive‐intelligence gathering were inadequate. Another premise was that only ethical and legal data‐gathering techniques were to be used, especially since there was so much information available from a wide variety of public sources. The directive specified that the overall process must be action oriented with a focus on analysis, assessment, and communication.

This paper aims to develop an understanding of the potential for application of facilities management concepts and principles in the context of the “zoo sector”.

The paper is a conceptual one and begins with a narrative designed to provide sufficient background to understanding key issues relevant to the practice of facilities management in zoological and similar institutions, including the implications of conservational/scientific and display imperatives of zoological facilities for facilities management. We then consider how these issues can be worked through in the context of four broad dimensions of facilities management: strategies for the management of stakeholder behaviour (non-human animals, personnel and visitors); building and environmental design (including space usage); safety, security and health; and “miscellaneous” services. The paper concludes by providing a provisional framework for further research into facilities management in the zoo sector.

As a conceptual paper, there are no empirical findings. Conceptually, the paper offers an initial and simple framework for interpreting the possible application of facilities management in zoological and related facilities.

In a search of the two principal journals in the field of facilities management, nothing could be found of direct relevance to the management of facilities in zoological and similar organizations. This paper is thus a singular contribution to the field. Conceptually, the authors attribute neglect of the topic to the distinctive traditions in the study of facilities management, which, at the risk of caricature, emphasise either the pre-eminence of a building and building services approach to facilities management, or an approach which is almost exclusively focused on the “human” dimensions to the discipline.

The lead user concept developed by Eric von Hippel is perhaps the only formal method designed specifically for identifying innovators. This paper discusses the applicability of von Hippel's lead user concept in the architectural industry where technological innovations are necessary yet gravely scarce. In order to examine the applicability of the lead user method, a set of seven case studies of novel energy efficient solutions found in built facilities in Europe and North America were analyzed. The result of the study indicates that the method may not be suitable for identifying the likely source of innovation if the innovation does not focus on an individual's needs; combined efforts are mandatory to create the innovation; and the size and complexity of the innovation make it impossible for a user or an individual to deliver or to test it out on his/her own. The concept of lead provider is introduced and several characteristics are identified.