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The purpose of this paper is to present analysis of the feedback predictive encoder-based analog-to-digital converter (ADC).

The use of feedback predictive encoder-based ADCs presents an alternative to the traditional two-stage pipeline ADC by replacing the input estimate producing first stage of the pipeline with a predictive loop that also produces an estimate of the input signal.

The overload condition for feedback predictive encoder ADCs is dependent on input signal amplitude and frequency, system gain and filter order. The limitation on the practical usable filter order is set by limit cycle oscillation. A boundary condition is defined for determination of maximum usable filter order. In a practical implementation of the predictive encoder ADC, the time allocated to the key functions of the gain stage and loop quantizer leads to optimization of the power consumption.

A practical switched capacitor implementation of the predictive encoder-based ADC is proposed. The power consumption of key circuit blocks is investigated.

This paper presents a methodology to optimize the bandwidth of predictive encoder ADCs. The overload and stability conditions may be used to determine the maximum input signal bandwidth for a given loop quantizer. Optimization of power consumption based on the allocation of time between the gain stage and the successive approximation register ADC operation is investigated. The lower bound of power consumption for this architecture is estimated.

The purpose of this paper is to present a hierarchical circuit synthesis system with a hybrid deterministic local optimization – multi‐objective genetic algorithm (DLO‐MOGA) optimization scheme for system‐level synthesis.

The use of a local optimization with a deterministic algorithm based on linear equations which is computationally efficient and improves the feasibility of designs, allows reduction in the number of MOGA generations required to achieve convergence.

This approach reduces the total number of simulation iterations required for optimization. Reduction in run time enables use of full transistor‐level models for simulation of critical system‐level sub‐blocks. Consequently, for system‐level synthesis, simulation accuracy is maintained. The approach is demonstrated for the design of pipeline analog‐to‐digital converters on a 0.35 μm process.

The use of a hybrid DLO‐MOGA optimization approach is a new approach to improve hierarchical circuit synthesis time while preserving accuracy.

A community-centred approach to health called Community Wellbeing Practices (CWP) is being offered to patients at all 17 GP practices in Halton in order to respond more appropriately to patients’ social needs, which are often an underlying reason for their presentation at primary care services. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Delivered in partnership with a local social enterprise this approach is centred on the integration of community assets and non-medical community-based support provided by the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. The core elements include community navigation, social prescribing and social action approaches.

The CWP initiative has supported more than 5,000 patients over the last four years and has evidenced demonstrable improvements in a range of health and social outcomes for patients.

The initiative has been well received by clinicians and social care professionals and has contributed to a cultural transformation in the way health and care professionals are responding to the identified needs of the community.

Using community-centred approaches in this way may help to augment clinical outcomes as well as reduce demand on over stretched public services.

Community-centred models such as the one in Halton have the potential to empower citizens to play an active role in creating healthier communities by catalysing a “people powered” social movement for health.

The CWP model in Halton is a good example of the way community-centred approaches to health can be integrated with health and care pathways to augment clinical outcomes and reduce demand on over stretched services.

This paper aims to study the sampling methods (or design of experiments) which have a large influence on the performance of the surrogate model. To improve the adaptability of modelling, a new sequential sampling method termed as sequential Chebyshev sampling method (SCSM) is proposed in this study.

The high-order polynomials are used to construct the global surrogated model, which retains the advantages of the traditional low-order polynomial models while overcoming their disadvantage in accuracy. First, the zeros of Chebyshev polynomials with the highest allowable order will be used as sampling candidates to improve the stability and accuracy of the high-order polynomial model. In the second step, some initial sampling points will be selected from the candidates by using a coordinate alternation algorithm, which keeps the initial sampling set uniformly distributed. Third, a fast sequential sampling scheme based on the space-filling principle is developed to collect more samples from the candidates, and the order of polynomial model is also updated in this procedure. The final surrogate model will be determined as the polynomial that has the largest adjusted R-square after the sequential sampling is terminated.

The SCSM has better performance in efficiency, accuracy and stability compared with several popular sequential sampling methods, e.g. LOLA-Voronoi algorithm and global Monte Carlo method from the SED toolbox, and the Halton sequence.

The SCSM has good performance in building the high-order surrogate model, including the high stability and accuracy, which may save a large amount of cost in solving complicated engineering design or optimisation problems.

This chapter focusses on multi-local families and more specifically on the ways in which children of separated parents, living in joint physical custody arrangements, define and construct their ‘home’ in a context of circular mobility. It is based on two case studies drawn from ongoing fieldwork conducted in Belgium with children aged 10–16 in the context of the ERC Starting Grant project ‘MobileKids’. The main aim is to understand how family relations structure children’s ‘life spaces’ and ‘lived space’ (di Meo, 2012). The authors explore in particular the meanings and feelings that family relations confer to the space of the ‘house’ in children’s experiences, including both the physicality of the place of residence, and the relations and emotions that children attach to it (Forsberg, Autonen-Vaaraniemi, & Kauko, 2016, p. 435). The authors also highlight the various strategies that children develop to mediate/influence their family relations through ‘space’, including strategies of spatial appropriation and territorialisation. The authors conclude by summarising the main findings and considering future developments.

This paper argues for the following sensitizing proposition. At its core, much of consumer behavior that involves brand meanings is an attempt to influence, or symbolically mark, interpersonal relationships.

This paper presents a conceptual argument based on a literature review.

First, I argue that our pervasive concern with other people is a basic genetic component of human beings, and discuss some possible evolutionary pressures that may have led to this result. Then I discuss how this pervasive concern influences consumer behavior related to brand meanings. This discussion is structured around two aspects of social relationships: interpersonal closeness and social status. Relationship closeness is discussed with regard to brand communities, gifts, special possessions and brand love, and the often hidden ways that social relationships permeate everyday consumer behavior. Social status is discussed with reference to materialism. Materialism is sometimes misunderstood as an obsession with physical object, or as occurring when people care more about products than they do about people. In contrast, I argue that materialism is better understood as a style of relating to people.

This paper integrates a range of disparate findings in support of a broadly applicable generalization that nothing matters more to people than other people. This generalization can function as a sensitizing proposition that managers and researchers can bear in mind as they seek to interpret and understand how brand meaning influences consumer behavior.

Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.Thomas Merton

To investigate possibilities for integrating recent interdisciplinary research on materiality with basic issues in consumer culture theory, this chapter discusses understandings of materiality-based concerns and concepts in consumer research and maps possibilities for the future.

A review focuses on concepts of materiality, agency, and intention that mark a shift to a relational metaphysics in consumption contexts. Drawing from design theory, digital humanities, and philosophy, notions of flickering and witnessing evoke models of relations and interactions between consumers and consumption objects.

In this chapter, a disciplinary proposition emerges: consumer research is a form of materiality studies wherein the consumer is designated an element of interest in the relationships and interactions that bring forth the world.

An awareness of the fundamental role played in consumer research by materiality-related assumptions may inspire concomitant animation and explication of a relational metaphysics, opening opportunities to recognize processes and practices at the core of consumer behavior previously obscured by prevailing interpretations governed by a singularly agentic, autonomous, and effective human subject. Power relations must not be ignored.

The chapter makes several contributions: organizes and explicates often taken for granted concepts such as materiality, materialism, and agency, connects consumer research to high-level theorizations of materiality, and synthesizes diverse discussions in consumer culture theory with the possibilities of new materialities.

The purpose of this paper is to invite further consideration of how people experience documents. By offering a model from Reader Response theory – Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory of Reading – as well as examples from research on numinous experiences with museum objects, the author hopes to open further avenues of information behavior studies about people and documents. The goal is to incorporate more aspects of lived experience and the aesthetic into practice with and research of documents.

Theoretical scope includes Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory of Reading, John Dewey's concepts of transaction and experience and lived experience concepts/methods derived from phenomenology.

Rosenblatt's Transactional Theory explicates the continuum of reader response, from the efferent to the aesthetic, stating that the act of “reading” (experience) involves a transaction between the reader (person) and the text (document). Each transaction is a unique experience in which the reader and text continuously act and are acted upon by each other. This theory of reading translates well into the realm of investigating the lived experience of documents and in that context, a concrete example and suggested strategies for future study are provided.

This paper provides a holistic approach to understanding lived experience with documents and introduces the concept of person-document transaction. It inserts the wider notion of document into a more specific theory of reading, expanding its use beyond the borders of text, print and literature. By providing an example of real document experiences and applying Rosenblatt's continuum, the value of this paper is in opening new avenues for information behavior inquiries.