Suchergebnisse

Predicting the future shows the changes and development of design perspectives and design thinking. Its main function is to find opportunities to innovate current design in the process of predicting the future trend. Instead of blindly following the trend of technological development, it is better to actively participate in the design of the future. During this process, many design concepts and thoughts are employed to explore the essential signals existing in the past, current and future design trend, such as design opportunity evaluation method, socio-cultural research, political-economic-environmental evaluation, non-linear thinking, and multi-dimensional future prediction method. Finally, a series of design practices in the field of traffic equipment in the near future are completed by using the future prediction methods. It is concluded that the design procedures and methods for detecting and predicting the future have great significance for design innovation and prediction.

Abstract. The b-value in the Gutenberg-Richter frequency-magnitude distribution, which is assumed to be related to stress heterogeneity or asperities, was mapped along the Longmenshan fault zone which accommodated the 12 May 2008, Wenchuan, MS 8.0 earthquake. Spatial distributions of b-value before and after the Wenchuan earthquake, respectively, were compared with the slip distribution of the mainshock. It is shown that the mainshock rupture nucleated near to, but not within, the high-stress (low b-value) asperity in the south part of the Longmenshan fault, propagating north-eastward to the relatively low stress (high b-value) region. Due to the significant difference between the rupture process results from different sources, the comparison between slip distribution and pre-seismic b-value distribution leads to only conclusion of the rule-of-thumb. The temporal change of b-value before the mainshock shows a weak trend of decreasing, being hard to be used as an indicator of the approaching of the mainshock. Distribution of b-values for the aftershocks relates the termination of the mainshock rupture to the harder patch along the Longmenshan fault to the north.

This paper examines whether the government support in favour of firms located in the Haidian district of Beijing, which includes the Zhongguancun Science Park, was effective in terms of innovation and economic performance. We use a dataset of 500 manufacturing firms that results from a merger of the 2007 nation-wide innovation survey and the Annual Survey of Industrial Enterprises databases from the National Bureau of Statistics. We find that among all firms (state- or collectively-owned, nonstate- or collectively-owned and Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan or other foreign-funded firms) that received direct government support for innovative activities only the non-state- or collectively-owned domestic firms invested more in innovation than the firms that did not receive such support. However, despite higher government support, domestic firms have lower labour productivity than foreign-funded firms, including those funded from Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan.

ABSTRACTThe paper (a) discusses the use of polymers for conditioning alum sludge derived from the coagulation of low turbidity coloured waters, and (b) reviews the factors which control the optimum dosage vis a vis individual test methods such as specific resistance to filtration and capillary suction time. It was demonstrated that good estimates of the solids feed could be obtained via the suspended‐solids concentration in the flocculators. An algorithm based on water‐quality parameters was recommended for planning purposes. Difficulties arising from variations in the solids delivery to the thickeners were shown to influence the separation efficiency. The paper also includes a survey of polymer routeing within a water‐treatment plant in which there was multiple polymer use and extensive recycling; this identified a number of quality‐control issues and demonstrated the value of polymer measurement.

The green supply chain realizes the unification of economic and environmental benefits through green manufacturing, green circulation and reverse logistics, and represents an important way to reduce emissions. The characteristics of the green supply chain network, however, can encourage some companies to exhibit "free- riding" behavior, participating without being willing to reduce emissions directly themselves. This paper applies an evolutionary game model to a two-level green supply chain composed of green suppliers and green manufacturers in order to analyze a variety of internal and external factors that affect the behavior of both parties in the game, and thence numerically simulate the evolution and stability trend of coordinated reductions in emissions. The results identify many cases of system evolution but the only stable evolution strategy is when both (1) the sum of collaborative emission reduction benefits and government subsidies is greater than the sum of collaborative emission reduction input costs and "free rider" benefits, and (2) the increased rate of unilateral emission reduction benefits is greater than the ratio of costs to original benefits. Income arising from collaborative reductions in emissions, enterprise original income, income from unilateral reductions in emissions in- crease ratio, government subsidy coefficient and achievement reward base can directly affect the system evolution path. The larger these value, the greater the probability of green suppliers and green manufacturers choosing collaborative reductions in emissions, and the faster the system convergence speed. Only the imposition of regulatory punishments above the threshold will affect the "free riding" behavior of enterprises and drive the upstream and downstream enterprises of the green supply chain to reduce emissions faster.