Commercial prosthetic feet weigh about 25% of their equivalent physiological counterparts. The human body has a tendency to overcome the walking asymmetry resulting from the mass imbalance by exerting more energy. A two link passive walking kinematic model, with realistic masses for prosthetic, physiological legs and upper body, has been proposed to study the gait pattern with unbalanced leg masses. The 'heel to toe' rolling contact has significant influence on the dynamics of biped models. This contact is modelled using the roll-over shape defined in the local co-ordinate system aligned with the stance leg. The effect of rollover shape curvature and arc length has been studied on various gait descriptors such as average velocity, step period, inter leg angle (and hence step length), mechanical energy. The bifurcation diagrams have been plotted for point feet and different gain values. The insight gained by studying the bifurcation diagrams for different gain and length values is not only useful in understanding the stability of the biped walking process but also in the design of prosthetic feet. It is proposed that the stiffness and energy release mechanisms of prosthetic feet be designed to satisfy amputee's natural gait characteristics that are defined by an effective roll-over shape and corresponding ground reaction force combinations. Each point on the roll-over shape is mapped with a ground reaction force corresponding to its time step. The resulting discrete set of ground reaction force components are applied to the prosthetic foot sole and its stiffness profile is optimised to produce a desired deflection as given by the corresponding point on the roll-over shape. It is shown that the proposed methodology is able to provide valuable insights in the guidelines for selection of materials for a multi-material prosthetic foot.

Empreendedorismo tecnológico refere-se ao uso de tecnologia para criar e explorar oportunidades de forma a gerar valor, baseado nos conceitos de empreendedorismo, e tecnologia que podem gerar inovação. Com base nessa definição, o CNPq demonstrou necessidade de entender as empresas empreendedoras tecnológicas, uma vez que estas podem ser solução para a crise econômica nacional. Por isso, esta dissertação objetivou explorar o processo empreendedor tecnológico nas empresas do SIMPLÁS. Portanto, a revisão da literatura abrangeu os temas empreendedorismo, inovação e empreendedorismo tecnológico, bem como seus processos. O método de pesquisa foi de natureza aplicada, abordagem qualitativa e objetivo exploratório, sendo que para tanto foram realizadas entrevistas em profundidade a partir de roteiro semiestruturado. Finalmente, as entrevistas foram analisadas por meio de análise de conteúdo, o que resultou em três modelos de processo, os quais foram separados de acordo com a rotina e a maturidade do processo empreendedor tecnológico. Os resultados mostram que o processo empreendedor tecnológico nas empresas embrionárias possui risco e incerteza como ameaças constantes, os quais podem forçar as empresas a encecrrar o processo, mesmo que elas estejam cientes da importância de perseguir oportunidades tecnológicas. Já as empresas baseadas em tecnologia preocupam-se constantemente em perseguir novas oportunidades, mesmo que nem sempre tenham procedimentos e estruturas adequadas. Finalmente, as empresas maduras possuem rotinas definidas para perseguir oportunidades tecnológicas, as quais resultam em inovações de produto e processo, dessa forma são consideradas pioneiras nos mercados em que atuam. Entretanto, a estratégia da empresa determina a necessidade de prospectar e buscar oportunidades tecnológicas independente do nível de maturidade do processo empreendedor tecnológico. / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, CAPES / Technology entrepreneurship refers to the use of technology to create and explore business opportunities in order to generate value, based on entrepreneurship and technology that may generate innovation. Based on this definition, CNPq indicated the need to understand technology-based firms, since they may be a solution to the national economic crisis. Thus, this master dissertation aimed to explore the technology entrepreneurial process in SIMPLÁS companies. Therefore, the literature review comprehended entrepreneurship, innovation, technology entrepreneurship as well as their processes. The research method was of applied nature, qualitative approach and exploratory objective, with in-depth interviews conducted based on a semi structured questionnaire. Finally, interviews were analyzed by content analysis, what resulted in three process models, which were arranged according to routines and technology entrepreneurial process maturity. Findings show that the technology entrepreneurial process in embryonic companies has risk and uncertainty as constant threats, what may force companies to stop the process, even though they are aware of the importance of pursuing technological opportunities. On the other hand, technology-based companies are constantly concerned in pursuing new opportunities, even though they may not always have infrastructure and procedures required. Finally, mature companies have defined routines to pursue technological opportunities, which result in product and process innovation, thus, they are considered pioneers in their markets. Nevertheless, the company’s strategy determines the need to prospect and pursue technological opportunities regardless of their technology entrepreneurial process maturity level

Orientador: Hernani Maia Costa / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Economia / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-09T11:27:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marson_MichelDeliberali_M.pdf: 4442865 bytes, checksum: 262ec304211821a62a57b3f0b992f6b1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: A indústria brasileira durante a Grande Depressão tem sido estudada sob vários ângulos, mas são relativamente escassos trabalhos que tratam das eventuais mudanças no uso de recursos produtivos. Ainda mais escassos são os trabalhos que buscaram examinar as mudanças na indústria de bens de capital, urna indústria significativamente mais complexa em termos tecnológicos. O presente trabalho tentou contribuir com a historiografia econômica da industrialização brasileira estudando a indústria de bens de capital no estado de São Paulo em aspectos técnicos através de fontes de dados relativamente pouco utilizadas. Os principais resultados encontrados foram que entre 1928 e 1932 o crescimento da indústria de bens de capital é resultado de um aprofundamento do capital, ou seja, um ajuste para um nível mais alto de capital por trabalhador efetivo. Para o período de 1933 a 1937 o fator responsável pelo crescimento nessa indústria foi o progresso técnico ou o trabalho efetivo, dependendo da metodologia adotada / Abstract: The Brazilian industry during the Great Depression has been studied under several angles, but healthy relatively scarce works that are about the eventual changes in the use of produc~ive resources. Still scarcer they are the work.s that looked for to examine the changes in the industry 01' capital goods, an industry sígnificantly more complex in technological tenns. The present work tried to contribute with the economic historiography of the Brazílian industrialization studying the industry of capital goods in the state or.São Paulo in technical aspects through relatively a little used sources 01' data. The main found results were that between 1928 and 1932 the growth 01' the industry 01' capital goods is resulted 01' capital deepening, that is, an adjustment for a higher leveI 01' capital for etfectíve worker. For the period from 1933 to 1937 the responsible factor for the growth in that industry was the technical progress or the effective work, depending on the adopted methodology / Mestrado / Historia Economica / Mestre em Desenvolvimento Econômico

D. Ing. / The key objective of this thesis is clearly stated in its comprehensive title. In today’s fast moving, turbulent and highly competitive world, high tech companies and engineering-based organizations struggle possibly more than other businesses with the seemingly irrational, analogical events when most people in such organizations are rational, highly analytical persons. Value creation is one of the key objectives of modern high tech companies. Hence, the achievement of this ideal within the constraints and consideration of a myriad of factors requires a different approach and implies an ongoing transformation process which is not always based on rational aspects alone. If such a transformation is to be sustainable and takes place in a globally competitive framework, the approach has to be holistic and it has to consider many additional factors which tend to be considered as soft in the analytical world of high tech. The thesis formulates a management and leadership model which includes both the soft and hard factors in a comprehensive and collaborative manner. The model lends itself to understand and judiciously manipulate the dynamics of the high tech global business environment for sustained competitive advantage. The model recognizes and enables the manager and leader to address the many issues confronting them daily by giving a new strategic perspective with the help of sub-models. These sub-models form the anchors whereby a complex situation can be managed reasonably, effectively and hopefully wisely too. The suggested model is to a large degree independent of time and industry-space and is considered valid for a long time to come. Although aimed at providing a guideline at executive level of management in the high tech environment the suggested model is by no means limited to engineering nor is it limited to high tech companies. The framework and model anchors developed, are equally valid in other complexity-prone industries as can be confirmed by the author’s wide international practical experience in a number of industries, from Banking, Service provides, Health Systems, e-commerce, Petro-Chemical and others.

M.Inf. / As more publishers become involved in electronic publishing, information centres need to respond to the challenges of accommodating electronic journals in their collections, as electronic journals are becoming increasingly important to research. In this research the role of the electronic journal within the scholarly communication process is examined. The role played by information providers and information centres in facilitating access to particular content in electronic journals is also studied. Partnerships that are developing between publishers, secondary publishers and information centres are traced. The importance of the publisher in quality control is emphasized. The peer review process is identified as fundamental to the scholarly communication process. The research methods employed were to carry out a literature study and to examine methods of access to electronic journals on the WWW. The Websites of publishers, secondary publishers and information centres were examined, in order to discover how they simplify access to electronic journal content for end-users. A workflow model was devised to serve as a guideline in assisting information specialists in their management of e-journals. The important challenge facing the information specialist is to provide a value added electronic journal service. This can be achieved through producing indexes and abstracts and providing an evaluation of the different sources

This study investigates how knowledge is created in a small business organization. Knowledge creation refers to organizational learning which results in innovation. The research design was a qualitative, single site case study of three firms in the point of sale industry. Data collection took place during a six month field study and employed multiple methods including participant observations, interviews, document reviews, and field journal entries. The study was informed by a conceptual framework which focused on the importance of both tacit and explicit knowledge forms, multiple modes of knowledge conversion (socialization, externalization, combination, internalization), and a knowledge spiraling process. Six themes emerged from the data. The first theme, "the people are the business" indicated that individuals become a knowledge creating structure that transcends office boundaries. A second theme, "we just spend tons of time talking", emphasized the importance of dialogue and informal communication structures to the sharing of tacit knowledge. A third theme, "there hasn't been a new idea in a million years", illustrated the predominance of incremental rather than radical innovation, the strategy of mimicking concept successes, and the importance of learning with other organizations through strategic alliances. A fourth theme, "you learn from your mistakes", represented the experiential nature of learning within the firm. A fifth theme, "it's one of those crystal ball kind of things" depicted the intuitive nature of personal knowledge and its limitations. Finally, the sixth theme, "a day late and a dollar short" explored how time and money pressures both enhance and hinder knowledge creation within a small business context. By comparing the themes to the conceptual framework the study concluded that small business organizations create knowledge in accordance with the nature of interpersonal interactions as they occur in context. The theoretical knowledge spiral was reconceptualized as a web structure in order to accommodate more diversity of approaches to knowledge creation and the complex nature of innovations. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

Approaching the subject of 'orality' as a complex social-historical practice containing fissures of technological inversion and spatial-acoustic transgression, this thesis seeks to understand the implications of an electronically realised 'secondary orality'. In particular, it seeks to understand this idea as it is elaborated in the media theory of Marshall McLuhan. The approach taken here attests to a vitally important, if often' ghosted', materialism of acoustic space, a context which is immediately and ambivalently implicated in the institutionalising and ideologising of communications technology. It is argued that a cultural media theory must address those forms of managed communicative experience that serve to diminish the everyday vernacular. The Introduction of the thesis identifies developments that have brought the idea of a 'secondary orality' into being. Chapter One examines Havelock's and Innis's privileging of technology in the orality question, as well as the general denial of acoustic practice within the orality-literacy debate. Chapter Two explores Ong's ideas on 'presence' as well as Derrida' s critique of Western phonocentrism in terms of the larger historical denial of sound. Chapter Three explores McLuhan's position on the techno-evolutionary overcoming of rationalism in the new electronic landscape and argues that his 'electronic materialism' is a form of interiorisation. Chapter Four turns to a discussion of the ancient world to consider oral ambivalence and the paradox of orality in the transition to literacy. Consideration is also given to the early modern emergence of a paradigm of abstract visualisation. Chapter Five examines the modern emergence of an oral resistance found in the acoustic otherworld of the' chapbook' and the poetics of Wordsworth, Blake, and Clare. Chapter Six discusses issues of the oral 'other' as found in the theories of Bakhtin, Volosinov, and Kristeva. Chapter Seven investigates a varied postmodern neo-McLuhanism in relation to issues of ecology, intertextuality, and the feminisation of technology. The Conclusion argues that 'secondary orality' involves a technological inversion of oral powers serving an electronic hegemony. The mimetically engineered spatial disorientation of transgressive sociality is further considered.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

M.Sc. / We live in a modern world in which visual perception has become an absolute necessity. Navigating and walking around in a city without getting lost is a difficult enough task when using all senses, but if you are visually disabled, this becomes a near impossible task. All around us are signs, billboards, motorcars, buildings, computers, and other similar signs of modern times, which are most effectively observed visually. The next logical step in assisting the visually disabled to experience the world around them more freely, is to make more effective use of the technology that has created the shift to the visual world in the first place. It now appears possible to design a framework to incorporate not only current, but also future hardware and software into a solution to the above-mentioned problems. Such a framework has to be flexible to allow it to keep up not only with hardware, but software advances as well. Furthermore, it needs to take into account the needs of a typical blind user. One way of implementing this framework is to make use of a form of sensereplacement. Where the visual sense is impaired, technology can be used to analyze and interpret the visual world, obtain meaningful information from the scene, and then re-route this information to another sense. This dissertation is divided into three sections. The first section will provide an overview of the rest of the dissertation. It will also investigate similar research that is currently being undertaken, and provide a model for a possible solution to the above-mentioned problems. The second section will provide the background study needed to make informed decisions when implementing a prototype system. The third section will investigate the implementation of a prototype model, as well as the construction of a pilot project.

The purpose of this study is to investigate creativity, innovation and certain determining factors, which have an influence on creativity and innovation in the micro business environment and specifically in an information technology firm. The information and communications technology (ICT) sector is very dynamic and very fast paced both in the world and in South Africa. Businesses in this sector have to adapt, almost constantly, to incessantly changing technology, customer demands and macro-environmental variables. A vast amount of research exists to suggest that businesses have to adapt to and embrace change in order to survive in this environment. Creativity and innovation are central to change in the organisation. For the purposes of this study creativity is defined as an intellectual process evident in four discernible components, namely the creative person, the creative product, the creative process and the creative environment. Evidence for creativity and innovation includes novelty and usefulness of ideas and new or improved solutions to existing problems within a given context. Novelty and usefulness are therefore characteristic and typical evidence for the presence of creativity. All four components are important for the development and facilitation of creativity and innovation. The four components have a determining influence on creativity resulting in a feedback system. The study specifically focuses on creative environment and in this case - the organisational climate. Organisational climate is the observed recurring behavioural patterns and attitudes in the organisation. This climate influences creativity and innovation by supporting or inhibiting it. An organisation’s climate can also influence other psychological processes such as job satisfaction, decision-making, communication, team effort and motivation of workers across the organisation. The goal of this study was to identify and measure organisational climate factors known to have a significant, determining influence on the work environment, conducive to creativity and innovation. The organisational climate of a firm in the South African ICT sector was measured and analysed. The “Situational Outlook Questionnaire” (SOQ) was used to measure the organisational climate observable in the organisation. The SOQ is employed to assist organisations in assessing the organisational climate for its conduciveness to creativity and innovation, as well as the climate’s ability to foster and promote productivity and change within the organisation. The SOQ was developed over a period of fifty years and is proven to be a reliable and valid measuring instrument. The SOQ assesses nine dimensions that have a direct impact on a creative organisational climate. The nine dimensions are: Challenge/involvement, trust, risk-taking, playfulness/humour, freedom, conflict, debate, idea support, and idea-time. The results indicated the organisation that has been assessed has a strong climate supportive of and conducive to creativity and innovation. The organisation’s SOQ results across all dimensions, except the freedom and debate dimensions, compared very well with other innovative organisations. This could indicate that there is too much debate around decisions, resulting in too much talking before important issues are decided upon. The freedom score was also somewhat low because employees are probably not allowed to make independent decisions related to their jobs. Employees are under obligation to report to superiors before deciding important issues. This organisation’s management strives towards promoting and fostering a climate that is supportive of and conducive to creativity and innovation. This is evident in the results provided by the SOQ as well as the innovative products and services delivered to customers. / Prof. W.M. Conradie