Search results for "USable"
showing 10 items of 45 documents
Open Access Publishing as an Incorporator of Research and Innovation Cycle
2005
Even though basic research doesn’t often result in immediately usable products, it plays an essential role in technological innovations, as it has formed the basis for many groundbreaking advances in product development over the decades. For instance, Maxwell’s 19 century research into electricity and magnetic fields (Copeland, 2000) has resulted in a vast array of products that many of us take for granted in modern daily life. And Turing’s intuitive consideration of the way mathematicians think paved the way for the development of computers (Friedel, 2002) and eventually to many digital technologies. A multitude of similar examples that demonstrate the connection between ideas emerging fro…
Explaining the willingness of consumers to bring their own reusable coffee cups under the condition of monetary incentives
2022
An increasing number of hospitality firms attempt to foster sustainable practices among their customers. Amongst these, incentives for customers to bring their own reusable products stand out. In this study, we first analyse whether consumers are willing to bring a reusable coffee cup (RCC) under the condition of a monetary incentive (qualitative decision) and the minimum discount required for individuals to be willing to use an RCC (quantitative decision). Second, we analyse the explanatory factors impacting these two decisions. Several factors are proposed to explain an individual's willingness to bring an RCC including their environmental knowledge and involvement, and personal restricti…
Discounted Prototyping of Virtual Reality Solutions for Science Education
2017
Science education requires experimental work for learners to achieve the intended learning outcomes, which sometimes involve abstract concepts by nature. Advances in digital technology can help learners to undertake experimental work, which would otherwise be costly, either due to the scarcity of laboratory equipment or safety requirements. However, one of the major concerns resides into how to design usable learning solutions from the users’ perspective. That would require the involvement of users at all stages of design and development process, even if the technology itself could still be in its infancy. It can be very helpful to present the new design concepts to potential users at a ver…
A multi-perspective knowledge-driven approach for analysis of the demand side of the Open Government Data portal
2021
Abstract Open data are freely available and can be used by every stakeholder for its own purposes. However, the practice demonstrates that it is important to ensure that the source from which they are available is usable and facilitates the re-use of data to the widest possible range of stakeholders. This task is carried out by open government data (OGD) portals. Therefore, this study proposes a multi-perspective approach where an OGD portal is analyzed from (1) citizens' perspective, (2) users' perspective, (3) experts' perspective, and (4) state of the art. By considering these perspectives, we can define how to improve the portal in question by focusing on its demand side. In view of the…
Optimal Design of New Steel Connections
2018
The Limited Resistance Rigid Perfectly Plastic Hinge (LRPH) are special steel connections mainly usable to join beam elements of plane or spatial steel frames. The fundamental characteristics of these devices are the mutual independence of their own resistance and stiffness features as well as the respect of assigned constraints related to the elastic and limit behaviour of the joined elements. Within the frame structural scheme, the device plays the role of a rigid perfectly plastic hinge, constituted by a suitably sized sandwich section. The efficient use of the LRPH in the relevant frame depends on the appropriate design of the device geometry. In the present paper, a new approach devote…
Significance and Current Status of Wastewater Reuse in Sicily
1991
In Sicily wastewater is being regarded as a supplemental source of water, especially for agricultural use, which represents the greatest demand at present and in the future. That is because water demand is already approaching total usable resources, and severe shortage is experienced almost everywhere and in every sector. To help overcome possible implementation problems due to high salinity and pollutant concentrations, lack in monitoring capabilities, and emotional public perception of possible health risks, major field research programs have been undertaken, including an experimental station with a pilot plant and a series of field plots.
A hybrid storage system for wireless sensor nodes powered with energy harvesting
2019
With the recent development of Internet of Things (IoT) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), research and industry have been increasingly focusing on the opportumty of collecting the energy arising from the environment. The Energy Harvesting provides the possibility to supply devices which are placed out of reach or in hazardous spots, e.g. the Wireless Sensor Nodes. Among the different parts belonging to an Energy Harvesting system, the power management network represents a challenging topic. In this paper a Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) usable for a WSN powered with Energy Harvesting, based on a battery-capacitor integration, is presented. The experimental results concerning the asse…
The long and winding road: Accidents and tinkering in software standardization
2021
Software is based on universal principles but not its development. Relating software to hardware is never automatic or easy. Attempts to optimize software production and drastically reduce their costs (like in hardware) have been very restricted. Instead, highly-skilled and experienced individuals are ultimately responsible for project success. The long and convoluted path towards useful and reliable software is often plagued by idiosyncratic accidents and emergent complexity. It was expected that software standardisation would remove these sources of unwanted diversity by aiming to controllable development processes, universal programming languages, and toolkits of reusable software compon…
An innovative mechanical converter for sea wave application
2017
This paper describes an innovative mechanical converter, usable in sea wave energy sector. This system transforms a variable bidirectional linear motion into a unidirectional rotary motion.
Expressive and efficient pattern languages for tree-structured data (extended abstract)
2000
It would be desirable to have a query language for tree-structured data that is (1) as easily usable as SQL, (2) as expressive as monadic second-order logic (MSO), and (3) efficiently evaluable. The paper develops some ideas in this direction. Towards (1) the specification of sets of vertices of a tree by combining conditions on their induced subtree with conditions on their path to the root is proposed. Existing query languages allow regular expressions (hence MSO logic) in path conditions but are limited in expressing subtree conditions. It is shown that such query languages fall short of capturing all MSO queries. On the other hand, allowing a certain guarded fragment of MSO-logic in the…