The research involves the testing of Overall and Experimental Hypotheses concerning the nature of design activity and the relationship between designers' cognition and their use of CAD systems. In particular, a lack of understanding of the design process was perceived together with a need to utilize aspects of designers internal problem solving capabilities in the specification of electronio design aids. A multidisciplinary approach is used in review and experimental methods in order to associate theoretical aspects of design behaviour with the measurement of practice. The social, economic and industrial implications of new technology are reviewed in the light of their e~~ects upon intellectual industrial tasks, such as designing within the textile and other industries. Also considered are the theoretical aspects o~ designing and in particular the designers' cognitive activity is described in behavioural terms. Such theories are tested in experimental situations where the problem solving aspects are elicited from designers in relation to their internal schematic representation o~ design problems. Speci~ic conclusions in the area o~ person-system interaction concern both Hypotheses. Adaptation was ~ound to be best considered as another aspect of the holistio representation that a designer has of his task. This resulted ~rom a recognition o~ the individuals own methods o~ problem solving within the con~ines of the task. The use o~ repertory grid techniques ~or the investigation of designing did not prove however that a designer's internal spaoe is completely measurable. Indeed, it resulted that some phenomena associated with design appear ~undamentally subjective although it was £ound that identi~iable and individual oriteria are used by designers. The particular contribution that this work makes is in the assooiation o~ psychological, sociologioal and industrial aspects o~ designing in an approach to the adaptive behaviour of designers in their use of CAD "systems

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No description available.

Industrial robots are the most widely manufactured and utilized type of robots in industries. Improving the design process of industrial robots would lead to further developments in robotics industries. Consequently, other dependant industries would be benefited. Therefore, there is an effort to make the design process more and more efficient and reliable. The design of industrial robots requires studies in various fields. Engineering softwares are the tools which facilitate and accelerate the robot design processes such as dynamic simulation, structural analysis, optimization, control and so forth. Therefore, designing a framework to automate the robot design process such that different tools interact automatically would be beneficial. In this thesis, the goal is to investigate the feasibility of integrating tools from different domains such as geometry modeling, dynamic simulation, finite element analysis and optimization in order to obtain an industrial robot design and optimization framework. Meanwhile, Meta modeling is used to replace the time consuming design steps. In the optimization step, various optimization algorithms are compared based on their performance and the best suited algorithm is selected. As a result, it is shown that the objectives are achievable in a sense that finite element analysis can be efficiently integrated with the other tools and the results can be optimized during the design process. A holistic framework which can be used for design of robots with several degrees of freedom is introduced at the end.

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Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified up to 30 loci that associate with increased risk of coronary artery disease or myocardial infarction. Here, I tested the function of one locus that changed the amino acid sequence of a mitochondrial matrix protease called paraplegin (SPG7) that performs critical quality assurance functions. Loss-of-function mutations in this protease are associated with hereditary spastic paraplegia. Here, I show that this variant that changes an arginine to a glutamine at position 688 within the protease domain is a gain-of-function. Cells bearing this variant have increased mitochondrial fusion and number, produce higher levels of reactive oxygen species and have increased cellular proliferation. Importantly, when expressed in yeast, the Q688 variant of SPG7 rescues the growth arrest caused by a protease-deficient mutation in AFG3L2. My study identifies a novel functional variant of SPG7 and highlights the need to go beyond the GWAS paradigm.

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No description available.

Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 1997

Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2001