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This bibliography is offered as a practical guide to published papers, conference proceedings papers and theses/dissertations on the finite element (FE) and boundary element (BE) applications in different fields of biomechanics between 1976 and 1991. The aim of this paper is to help the users of FE and BE techniques to get better value from a large collection of papers on the subjects. Categories in biomechanics included in this survey are: orthopaedic mechanics, dental mechanics, cardiovascular mechanics, soft tissue mechanics, biological flow, impact injury, and other fields of applications. More than 900 references are listed.

Currently, academic as well as industrial research investigates the design of social skills for a robot, which could facilitate the robot’s interaction with humans. Work in this area pointed out three important abilities required by the robot, namely the capacity for communicating, for learning and for imitating. The work presented in this paper integrates these three aspects by building robots capable of learning a language through the observation and imitation of a teacher agent. This paper presents DRAMA, an artificial neural network architecture which allows on‐line learning of spatio‐temporal regularities and time series in a robot’s sequence of perceptions. The model has been implemented in a number of experiments, using wheeled robots, in which the robot learned the topography of its environment relative to fixed landmarks. This paper presents the latest implementation of the model in Robota, a doll robot, which is taught a synthetic proto‐language.

Looks at the eighth published year of the ITCRR and the research, from far and near, involved in this. Muses on the fact that, though all the usual processes are to the fore, the downside part of the industry is garment making which is the least developed side. Posits that the manufacture of clothing needs to become more technologically advanced as does retailing. Closes by emphasising support for the community in all its efforts.

Discusses the 6th ITCRR, its breadth of textile and clothing research activity, plus the encouragement given to workers in this field and its related areas. States that, within the newer research areas under the microscope of the community involved, technical textiles focuses on new, ‘smart’ garments and the initiatives in this field in both the UK and the international community at large. Covers this subject at length.

Physical Education remains a contested concept across the world maintaining links in various ways and in varying degrees to education, sport and health. The close and historical links of these areas upon Physical Education have continued to influence both policy and practice and have impacted significantly upon areas such as inclusive pedagogy. This chapter firstly seeks to explain the unique landscape of Physical Education before considering specific issues of inclusion within Physical Education. A move towards inclusive pedagogies within Physical Education is then explained before lesson examples are offered for both the primary and secondary Physical Education practitioner.

To provide an opinion as to the demise or metamorphosis of the UK clothing industry within the wider European context. Recently conducted research, along with a range of pertinent published (1978‐2004) statistical data are used to inform the authors' viewpoint on the development of the UK clothing industry. The statistical evidence describing the change in import penetration, employment levels and the impact of the national minimum wage support the view that a new typology of the clothing industry is emerging from the ashes of a rapidly declined manufacturing base. Some of the detail of garment types is hidden by the SIC system. Conversely, at times, the very categories used appear to have little contemporary relevance. Three areas of concern would remain: first, that over time the cluster itself would lose its critical mass; second, that the cluster might collapse if the central core of manufacturing is hollowed out; and third, that over time some of the “knowledge based” tasks such as design and product development might themselves be subject to migration to lower‐cost locations. This paper contributes a carefully considered, and compiled, viewpoint from experienced observers of the UK clothing industry that augments the debate centred on the development of the EU clothing industry.

One of the recommendations in process-based cognitive therapies suggests that functional analysis created by the clinician should be supported by empirical data collected through daily sampling. It enables the computing of a dynamic network of psychological processes and symptoms supporting clinical decisions but also therapeutic progress monitoring. However, the experience sampling solutions available in the market do not enable the automatic creation of this kind of network; thus, the use of this approach in clinical practice is practically impossible without advanced statistical skills and significant time investment. The purpose of the present paper is to describes a protocol of a research project based on a participatory approach aiming to create a solution enabling therapists not only to set up a personalized daily sampling for their patients and collect the data but also providing a fully automated visualization of the network adapted for therapeutic purposes.

The project will require creating a platform for therapists where they can set up monitoring and receive dynamic networks visualization, creating an experience sampling application for patients connected to the platform and creating an optimal data visualization system that will enable therapists to accurately and quickly interpret the network. A series of participatory workshops, qualitative and quantitative studies are described.

The presented studies will enable us to evaluate the ergonomy of use of both platform and app in laboratory and ecological settings along with the evaluation of network interpretation accuracy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first participatory design protocol for creating a solution that might enable clinicians to use a dynamic network approach in their everyday clinical practice. The challenges and opportunities of creating this kind of mHealth solution are discussed.

This work highlights the optimization of the consumed amount of sewing thread required to make up a pair of jeans using three different metaheuristic methods; particular swarm optimization (PSO), ant colony optimization (ACO) and genetic algorithm (GA) techniques. Indeed, using metaheuristic optimization techniques enable industrialists to reach the lowest sewing thread quantities in terms of bobbins per garments. Besides, the compared results of this research can obviously prove the impact of each input parameter on the optimization of the sewing thread consumption per pair of jeans.

To assess objectively the sewing thread consumption, the optimized sewing conditions such as thread composition, needle size and fabric composition are investigated and discussed. Hence, a Taguchi design was elaborated to evaluate and optimize objectively the linear model consumption. Thanks to its principal characteristics and popularity, denim fabric is selected to analyze objectively the effects of studied input parameters. In addition, having workers with same skills and qualifications to repeat each time the same sewing process will involve having the same sewing thread consumption values. This can occur in some levels such as end of sewing, the number of machine failures, the kind of failure and its complexity, the competency of the mechanic and his way to repair failure, the loss of thread caused by threading and its frequency. Seam repetition due to operator lack of skill will obviously affect clothing appearance and hence quality decision. Interesting findings and significant relationship between input parameters and the amount of sewing thread consumption are established.

According to the comparative results obtained using metaheuristic methods, the PSO and ACO technique gives the lowest values of the consumption within the best combination of input parameters. The results show the accuracy of the applied metaheuristic methods to optimize the consumed amount needed to sew a pair of jeans with a notable superiority of both PSO and ACO methods compared to experimental ones. However, compared to GA method, ACO and PSO algorithms remained the most accurate techniques allowing industrials to minimize the consumed thread used to sew jeans. They can also widely optimize and predict the consumed thread in the investigated experimental design of interest. Consequently, compared to experimental results and regarding the low error values obtained, it may be concluded that the metaheuristic methods can optimize and evaluate both studied input and output parameters accurately.

This study is most useful for denim industrial applications, which makes it possible to anticipate, calculate and minimize the high consumption of sewing threads. This paper has not only practical implications for clothing appearance and quality but also for reduction in thread wastage occurring during shop floor conditions like machine running, thread breakage, repairs, etc. (Kawabata and Niwa, 1991). Unless the used sewing machine is equipped within a thread trimmer improvement in garment seam appearance cannot be achieved. By comparing and analyzing the operating activities of the regular lock stitch 301 machine with and without a thread trimmer, a difference in time processing can be grasped (Magazine JUKI Corporation, 2008). Time consumed in trimming by a lockstitch machine without a thread trimmer equals 3.1 s compared to 2.6 s by a thread trimming one. Hence, the reduction rate in the time processing equals 16.30%. This paper aimed to implement the optimal consumption (thread waste outstanding number of trials). Unless highly skilled workers are selected and well-motivated, the previous recommended changes will not be applied. The saved cost of the sewing thread reduction can be used to buy a better quality of fabric and/or thread. However, these factors are not always the same as they can vary according to customer's requirements because thread consumption is never a standard for sewn product categories such as trousers, shirts and footwear (Khedher and Jaouachi, 2015).

Until now, there is no work dealing with the investigation of the metaheuristic optimization of the consumed thread per pair of jeans to minimize accurately the amount of sewing thread as well as the sewing thread wastage. Even though these techniques of optimization are currently in full development due to some advantages such as generality and possible application to a large class of combinatorial and constrained assignment problems, efficiency for many problems in providing good quality approximate solutions for a large number of classical optimization problems and large-scale real applications, etc., are not applied yet to decrease sewing thread consumption. Some recent published works used statistical techniques (Taguchi, factorial, etc.), to evaluate approximate consumptions; conversely, other geometrical and mathematical approaches, considering some assumptions, used stitch geometry and remained insufficient to give the industrialists an implemented application generating the exact value of the consumed amount of sewing thread. Generally, in the clothing field 10–15% of sewing thread wastage should be added to the experimental approximate consumption value. Moreover, all investigations are focused on the approximative evaluations and theoretical modeling of sewing thread consumption as function of some input parameters. Practically, the obtained results are successfully applied and the ACO method gives the most accurate results. On the other hand, in the point of view of industrialists the applied metaheuristic methods (based on algorithms) used to decrease the amount of consumed thread remained an easy and fruitful solution that can allow them to control the number of sewing thread bobbin per garments.