Academic literature on the topic 'Dog accessories'

AbstractEthnographic interviews were conducted with 28 pit bull "owners" to explore the sociological experience of having a dog with a negative image. Results indicate that the vast majority of respondents felt that these dogs were stigmatized because of their breed. Respondents made this conclusion because friends, family, and strangers were apprehensive in the presence of their dogs and because they made accusations about the breed's viciousness and lack of predictability. In the face of this stigma, respondents resorted to using a variety of interactional strategies to lessen the impact of this perception or prevent it from occurring. These strategies included passing their dogs as breeds other than pit bulls, denying that their behavior is biologically determined, debunking adverse media coverage, using humor, emphasizing counter-stereotypical behavior, avoiding stereotypical equipment or accessories, taking preventive measures, or becoming breed ambassadors.

Background. The assortment of products for pets is very wide and includes va­rious subgroups. The promising market for these products is supported by data from the pet food market, which is one of the most dynamic in the world. However, other sub­groups of these products are practically not covered in the domestic literature, there are no works on the classification of the assortment of goods for animals. The aim of the article is to develop a classification of food for them based on an analysis of the assortment of products for pets. Materials and methods. General scientific and special methods of cognition of economic processes are applied: analysis and synthesis, system approach, comparison and generalization. Information base of the research: official data of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine and the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine, as well as the assortment of goods for animals presented in online stores. Results. In accordance with the current classifiers, separate groupings that directly relate to products for pets are provided only for feed and brushes for caring for animals. At the UKTZED product category level, dog or cat food packaged for retail is classified according to the content of starch, glucose or glucose syrup, maltodextrin or maltodextrin syrup, lactic products. According to the results of the analysis of the assortment of goods in the category "Products for animals" (or "Pet goods") in most online stores, including specialized ones, the attribute "Animal species" is used at the highest level of classification. At the next level of classification, products for a particular species of animals are divided into the groups "Food", "Care and hygiene", "Toys", "Utensils" and others. Another method to grou­ping this category is that the assortment of these goods is divided into 2–4 subgroups according to their functional purpose ("Food", "Toys", "Accessories", "Hygiene and care"), and at the next level – by species of animals for which the goods are intended. The largest share in the assortment of products for pets is food. The assortment of food for dogs and cats is classified according to almost identical characteristics: depen­ding on the age, breed, activity and state of the animal’s body, by the type of food, the main source of protein in the food, therapeutic and prophylactic purposes, class, type of packaging, mass or volume of feed in the package. The assortment of food for birds and fish is also complex: the proposed classification includes 9 characteristics. Significantly fewer traits were used to classify the assortment of food for rodents and reptiles (5 and 7 traits, respectively). Conclusion.The market of goods for pets in Ukraine is promising, given its large potential capacity, which today is limited by the low paying capacity of the population. The assortment of goods for pets is wide and includes a significant number of assortments grouped and types of goods. The classification of pet food developed in this work indi­cates that the assortment of these products is complex and can be classified in at least 5-10 signs, depending on the type of pet for which the feed is assigned.

SummaryA 20-month-old male Rottweiler dog was presented with the complaint of chronic right forelimb lameness that was unresponsive to conservative treatment. Physical examination allowed for the topographical identification of the source of the problem as a firm enlargement of the soft tissues that was partially movable from humeral bone and compatible with an alteration of the triceps brachii muscle. Radiographic images showed signs that were highly suggestive of myositis ossificans. Computed tomography allowed for a more accurate characterization of the lesion, to exclude involvement of the elbow joint and humeral bone, and to localize anatomically the lesion in the caput accessorium and longum of the triceps brachii muscle. Surgical excision of the ossified portion of the triceps muscle was performed. Histological examination of the excised tissue substantiated the diagnosis of myositis ossificans. A one year clinical and radiographic follow-up examination showed a complete recovery, with no evidence of complications or recurrence. Despite myositis ossificans in dogs having previously been identified in the hindlimbs, this case of myositis ossificans circumscripta of the triceps muscle suggests that it may also occur in the muscles of the forelimb.

The development of genetic maps for auto-incompatible species, such as the yellow passion fruit (Passiflora edulis Sims f. flavicarpa Deg.) is restricted due to the unfeasibility of obtaining traditional mapping populations based on inbred lines. For this reason, yellow passion fruit linkage maps were generally constructed using a strategy known as two-way pseudo-testcross, based on monoparental dominant markers segregating in a 1:1 fashion. Due to the lack of information from these markers in one of the parents, two individual (parental) maps were obtained. However, integration of these maps is essential, and biparental markers can be used for such an operation. The objective of our study was to construct an integrated molecular map for a full-sib population of yellow passion fruit combining different loci configuration generated from amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) and microsatellite markers and using a novel approach based on simultaneous maximum-likelihood estimation of linkage and linkage phases, specially designed for outcrossing species. Of the total number of loci, ≈76%, 21%, 0.7%, and 2.3% did segregate in 1:1, 3:1, 1:2:1, and 1:1:1:1 ratios, respectively. Ten linkage groups (LGs) were established with a logarithm of the odds (LOD) score ≥ 5.0 assuming a recombination fraction ≤0.35. On average, 24 markers were assigned per LG, representing a total map length of 1687 cM, with a marker density of 6.9 cM. No markers were placed as accessories on the map as was done with previously constructed individual maps.

The lifestyle of the Indonesian people has experienced the development of becoming more modern which is more practical and wants ease in all its activities. This study aims to explain and analyze changes in women's consumptive lifestyles in using online shops. This study uses descriptive qualitative research method, namely research that seeks to describe the object being examined and also dig up as much information as possible about the problem that is the topic of research based on facts that exist in the field, using key informants and informants as data sources. The data presented uses primary data and secondary data through in-depth interviews, field observations, references relating to this research and internet data. Data analysis in this study refers to the interactive analysis model of Matthew B. Miles and A. Michael Huberman. The results of this study that it can be concluded, Women in using online shops that have been active become increasingly consumptive in terms of shopping online to meet needs based on the desire to maintain appearance as a form of self-identity. The women used to buy items such as clothes, hijab, bags, shoes, cosmetics and accessories on an online shop on the basis of supporting the appearance to look beautiful and attractive, fulfilling a more trendy and current lifestyle, then buying the product because of the appearance of judgment that good products or high-priced products will create high self-esteem. They say that products that are purchased online all this time are their main need to maintain their appearance. But in reality unwittingly tends to be excessive and is an elaboration of understanding the theory of consumptive behavior.

The distribution of chilled water flow rate in terminal unit is an important factor used to evaluate the performance of central air conditioning unit. A prototype of A/C unit has been made, which contains three terminal units with a complete set of accessories (3-way valve, 2-way valve, and sensors) to study the effect of the main parameters, such as total water flow rate and chilled water supply temperature with variable valve opening. In this work, 40 tests were carried out. These tests were in two groups, 20 test for 3-way valve case and 20 test for 2-way valve case. These tests were performed at three levels of valve opening, total water flow rate and water supply temperature according to the design matrices established by Design of Experiment (DOE) software 'version 7' with Response surface methodology (RSM) technique. The model was conducted for each case of total heat rate, then checked statistically for adequacy by Analysis of variance (ANOVA), and found good with 95% confidence level. The results showed that the water supply temperature has a significant effect on the total heat rate of two cases. It was found that the optimum solution for maximum total heat rate and minimum flow deviation represented by standard deviation was obtained at 10°C water supply temperature, 5.5 l/min total water flow rate and 70% valve opening. The total heat rate and standard deviation were (890.249 Watt), (0.000513), respectively in three-way valve case and (743.155 Watt), (0.00277), respectively in two-way valve case. Finally, the predicted and experimental results of total heat rate and standard deviation were in agreement with a maximum error of 6.6 % in three-way valve case and 1.4% in two-way valve case.

Dog snacks consist of their flour-based production, which is extracted from crickets, these snacks contain the same protein as producing a pound of beef which consumes two thousand times more water than producing a pound of crickets , plus more land and energy, and emits 100 times more greenhouse gases. On the other hand, insects have as much protein as beef or chicken, and even have more vitamins. PRODUCT Dog biscuits based on cricket flour. PRICE The price to the public is $100 MXN. 450 Gr. (12 pcs). PLAZA Supermarket, Convenience Stores, Pet Stores, Veterinary, Pet Accessories Stores and Website. Promotion - Online Coupons - Discounts on special dates - Quantity discounts - Free shipping from a certain amount of purchase on the website - Giveaways by Social Media General Objective. Get information to see the commercial viability of selling snacks for canines on the ZMG. Methodology. A quantitative study was conducted on pet owners, specifically dogs; having as an instrument of data collection a survey applied in the Metropolitan Zone of Guadalajara to a representative sample of 380 surveys of men and women over the age of 18 with previous filter question with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of 5% error. The survey was conducted by simple random subsampling by clusters and random home routes. Contribution. This study has three important purposes: 1. Incorporation and participation of students from the career of Engineering in Development and Business Innovation in project initiated pro students of TSU Environmental Technology to identify areas of commercial opportunity of the product. 2. Awareness and active participation of the university community, consumers and the general public in relation to the sustainability and care of the environment. 3. The results of the study will serve as the basis for the design and realization of a business plan

This paper presents the mathematical modelling of Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) based on the depth-of-discharge (DOD) for range estimation of the vehicle using MATLAB/Simulink software. In this scheme, the lead acid battery and lithium ion battery are considered for depth of discharge computation and the range is estimated for the Simplified Federal Urban Drive Cycle (SFUDC) and European urban drive cycle. The analysis comprises with the tractive effort, machine and accessories losses are accounted. The potential values of the BEV are assessed with design, type and parameters of the vehicle. The complete mathematical model is simulated and the comprehensive results are tabulated.

In many aero-engines, the power to drive accessories is transmitted through high speed bevel gears in a chamber in the center of the engine. The windage power loss (WPL) associated with these gears makes a significant contribution to the overall heat generation within the chamber. Shrouding the gears provides an effective method of reducing this WPL and managing the flow of lubricating oil. Experimental and computational programs at the University of Nottingham Technology Centre in Gas Turbine Transmission Systems are providing an improved understanding of shroud performance and design. This paper presents the results from a pair of shrouded meshing gears run at representative speeds and oil flow in a rig with speed and torque measurement. A previously published study of a single bevel gear operating in air (Johnson et al., 2007, “Experimental Investigation Into Windage Power Loss From a Shrouded Spiral Bevel Gear” ASME Paper No. GT2007-27885) found a reduction in torque of up to 70% from shrouding. In this work, the addition of oil and the pinion gear did not lead to high torque due to the buildup of oil under the shrouds, but the reduction in torque due to fitting the shrouds is significantly less than was found for the same gear in air alone. In order to isolate the various parameters, further testing with a single gear was carried out. A fully (360 deg) shrouded gear shows a big improvement over an unshrouded gear when running in air alone, but much of this benefit disappears as soon as a very small amount of oil is introduced under the shroud. This implies that the oil is recirculating under the shroud. Increasing the oil flow beyond this initial level increases the torque by the amount required to accelerate the oil mass flow up to the peripheral speed of the gear. Providing a full width slot in the shroud downstream of the oil jet allows the oil to escape without any recirculation and restores much of the benefit of the shroud. Further insight into the oil behavior is obtained from torque measurements and observations through a transparent shroud and with various slot configurations. Video observation shows evidence of a vortex flow under the shroud that carries some of the oil toward the inner diameter of the gear. The three main windage contributors, air alone, recirculation of oil under the shroud, and acceleration of the feed oil, are quantified and methods for achieving the optimum design are discussed.

When George Orwell encountered ideas of a technological utopia sixty-five years ago, he acted the grumpy middle-aged man Reading recently a batch of rather shallowly optimistic “progressive” books, I was struck by the automatic way in which people go on repeating certain phrases which were fashionable before 1914. Two great favourites are “the abolition of distance” and “the disappearance of frontiers”. I do not know how often I have met with the statements that “the aeroplane and the radio have abolished distance” and “all parts of the world are now interdependent” (1944). It is worth revisiting the old boy’s grumpiness, because the rhetoric he so niftily skewers continues in our own time. Facebook features “Peace on Facebook” and even claims that it can “decrease world conflict” through inter-cultural communication. Twitter has announced itself as “a triumph of humanity” (“A Cyber-House” 61). Queue George. In between Orwell and latter-day hoody cybertarians, a whole host of excitable public intellectuals announced the impending end of materiality through emergent media forms. Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Daniel Bell, Ithiel de Sola Pool, George Gilder, Alvin Toffler—the list of 1960s futurists goes on and on. And this wasn’t just a matter of punditry: the OECD decreed the coming of the “information society” in 1975 and the European Union (EU) followed suit in 1979, while IBM merrily declared an “information age” in 1977. Bell theorized this technological utopia as post-ideological, because class would cease to matter (Mattelart). Polluting industries seemingly no longer represented the dynamic core of industrial capitalism; instead, market dynamism radiated from a networked, intellectual core of creative and informational activities. The new information and knowledge-based economies would rescue First World hegemony from an “insurgent world” that lurked within as well as beyond itself (Schiller). Orwell’s others and the Cold-War futurists propagated one of the most destructive myths shaping both public debate and scholarly studies of the media, culture, and communication. They convinced generations of analysts, activists, and arrivistes that the promises and problems of the media could be understood via metaphors of the environment, and that the media were weightless and virtual. The famous medium they wished us to see as the message —a substance as vital to our wellbeing as air, water, and soil—turned out to be no such thing. Today’s cybertarians inherit their anti-Marxist, anti-materialist positions, as a casual glance at any new media journal, culture-industry magazine, or bourgeois press outlet discloses. The media are undoubtedly important instruments of social cohesion and fragmentation, political power and dissent, democracy and demagoguery, and other fraught extensions of human consciousness. But talk of media systems as equivalent to physical ecosystems—fashionable among marketers and media scholars alike—is predicated on the notion that they are environmentally benign technologies. This has never been true, from the beginnings of print to today’s cloud-covered computing. Our new book Greening the Media focuses on the environmental impact of the media—the myriad ways that media technology consumes, despoils, and wastes natural resources. We introduce ideas, stories, and facts that have been marginal or absent from popular, academic, and professional histories of media technology. Throughout, ecological issues have been at the core of our work and we immodestly think the same should apply to media communications, and cultural studies more generally. We recognize that those fields have contributed valuable research and teaching that address environmental questions. For instance, there is an abundant literature on representations of the environment in cinema, how to communicate environmental messages successfully, and press coverage of climate change. That’s not enough. You may already know that media technologies contain toxic substances. You may have signed an on-line petition protesting the hazardous and oppressive conditions under which workers assemble cell phones and computers. But you may be startled, as we were, by the scale and pervasiveness of these environmental risks. They are present in and around every site where electronic and electric devices are manufactured, used, and thrown away, poisoning humans, animals, vegetation, soil, air and water. We are using the term “media” as a portmanteau word to cover a multitude of cultural and communications machines and processes—print, film, radio, television, information and communications technologies (ICT), and consumer electronics (CE). This is not only for analytical convenience, but because there is increasing overlap between the sectors. CE connect to ICT and vice versa; televisions resemble computers; books are read on telephones; newspapers are written through clouds; and so on. Cultural forms and gadgets that were once separate are now linked. The currently fashionable notion of convergence doesn’t quite capture the vastness of this integration, which includes any object with a circuit board, scores of accessories that plug into it, and a global nexus of labor and environmental inputs and effects that produce and flow from it. In 2007, a combination of ICT/CE and media production accounted for between 2 and 3 percent of all greenhouse gases emitted around the world (“Gartner Estimates,”; International Telecommunication Union; Malmodin et al.). Between twenty and fifty million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) are generated annually, much of it via discarded cell phones and computers, which affluent populations throw out regularly in order to buy replacements. (Presumably this fits the narcissism of small differences that distinguishes them from their own past.) E-waste is historically produced in the Global North—Australasia, Western Europe, Japan, and the US—and dumped in the Global South—Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, Southern and Southeast Asia, and China. It takes the form of a thousand different, often deadly, materials for each electrical and electronic gadget. This trend is changing as India and China generate their own media detritus (Robinson; Herat). Enclosed hard drives, backlit screens, cathode ray tubes, wiring, capacitors, and heavy metals pose few risks while these materials remain encased. But once discarded and dismantled, ICT/CE have the potential to expose workers and ecosystems to a morass of toxic components. Theoretically, “outmoded” parts could be reused or swapped for newer parts to refurbish devices. But items that are defined as waste undergo further destruction in order to collect remaining parts and valuable metals, such as gold, silver, copper, and rare-earth elements. This process causes serious health risks to bones, brains, stomachs, lungs, and other vital organs, in addition to birth defects and disrupted biological development in children. Medical catastrophes can result from lead, cadmium, mercury, other heavy metals, poisonous fumes emitted in search of precious metals, and such carcinogenic compounds as polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, polyvinyl chloride, and flame retardants (Maxwell and Miller 13). The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by 2007 US residents owned approximately three billion electronic devices, with an annual turnover rate of 400 million units, and well over half such purchases made by women. Overall CE ownership varied with age—adults under 45 typically boasted four gadgets; those over 65 made do with one. The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) says US$145 billion was expended in the sector in 2006 in the US alone, up 13% on the previous year. The CEA refers joyously to a “consumer love affair with technology continuing at a healthy clip.” In the midst of a recession, 2009 saw $165 billion in sales, and households owned between fifteen and twenty-four gadgets on average. By 2010, US$233 billion was spent on electronic products, three-quarters of the population owned a computer, nearly half of all US adults owned an MP3 player, and 85% had a cell phone. By all measures, the amount of ICT/CE on the planet is staggering. As investigative science journalist, Elizabeth Grossman put it: “no industry pushes products into the global market on the scale that high-tech electronics does” (Maxwell and Miller 2). In 2007, “of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer products ready for end-of-life management, 18% (414,000 tons) was collected for recycling and 82% (1.84 million tons) was disposed of, primarily in landfill” (Environmental Protection Agency 1). Twenty million computers fell obsolete across the US in 1998, and the rate was 130,000 a day by 2005. It has been estimated that the five hundred million personal computers discarded in the US between 1997 and 2007 contained 6.32 billion pounds of plastics, 1.58 billion pounds of lead, three million pounds of cadmium, 1.9 million pounds of chromium, and 632000 pounds of mercury (Environmental Protection Agency; Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition 6). The European Union is expected to generate upwards of twelve million tons annually by 2020 (Commission of the European Communities 17). While refrigerators and dangerous refrigerants account for the bulk of EU e-waste, about 44% of the most toxic e-waste measured in 2005 came from medium-to-small ICT/CE: computer monitors, TVs, printers, ink cartridges, telecommunications equipment, toys, tools, and anything with a circuit board (Commission of the European Communities 31-34). Understanding the enormity of the environmental problems caused by making, using, and disposing of media technologies should arrest our enthusiasm for them. But intellectual correctives to the “love affair” with technology, or technophilia, have come and gone without establishing much of a foothold against the breathtaking flood of gadgets and the propaganda that proclaims their awe-inspiring capabilities.[i] There is a peculiar enchantment with the seeming magic of wireless communication, touch-screen phones and tablets, flat-screen high-definition televisions, 3-D IMAX cinema, mobile computing, and so on—a totemic, quasi-sacred power that the historian of technology David Nye has named the technological sublime (Nye Technological Sublime 297).[ii] We demonstrate in our book why there is no place for the technological sublime in projects to green the media. But first we should explain why such symbolic power does not accrue to more mundane technologies; after all, for the time-strapped cook, a pressure cooker does truly magical things. Three important qualities endow ICT/CE with unique symbolic potency—virtuality, volume, and novelty. The technological sublime of media technology is reinforced by the “virtual nature of much of the industry’s content,” which “tends to obscure their responsibility for a vast proliferation of hardware, all with high levels of built-in obsolescence and decreasing levels of efficiency” (Boyce and Lewis 5). Planned obsolescence entered the lexicon as a new “ethics” for electrical engineering in the 1920s and ’30s, when marketers, eager to “habituate people to buying new products,” called for designs to become quickly obsolete “in efficiency, economy, style, or taste” (Grossman 7-8).[iii] This defines the short lifespan deliberately constructed for computer systems (drives, interfaces, operating systems, batteries, etc.) by making tiny improvements incompatible with existing hardware (Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 33-50; Boyce and Lewis). With planned obsolescence leading to “dizzying new heights” of product replacement (Rogers 202), there is an overstated sense of the novelty and preeminence of “new” media—a “cult of the present” is particularly dazzled by the spread of electronic gadgets through globalization (Mattelart and Constantinou 22). References to the symbolic power of media technology can be found in hymnals across the internet and the halls of academe: technologies change us, the media will solve social problems or create new ones, ICTs transform work, monopoly ownership no longer matters, journalism is dead, social networking enables social revolution, and the media deliver a cleaner, post-industrial, capitalism. Here is a typical example from the twilight zone of the technological sublime (actually, the OECD): A major feature of the knowledge-based economy is the impact that ICTs have had on industrial structure, with a rapid growth of services and a relative decline of manufacturing. Services are typically less energy intensive and less polluting, so among those countries with a high and increasing share of services, we often see a declining energy intensity of production … with the emergence of the Knowledge Economy ending the old linear relationship between output and energy use (i.e. partially de-coupling growth and energy use) (Houghton 1) This statement mixes half-truths and nonsense. In reality, old-time, toxic manufacturing has moved to the Global South, where it is ascendant; pollution levels are rising worldwide; and energy consumption is accelerating in residential and institutional sectors, due almost entirely to ICT/CE usage, despite advances in energy conservation technology (a neat instance of the age-old Jevons Paradox). In our book we show how these are all outcomes of growth in ICT/CE, the foundation of the so-called knowledge-based economy. ICT/CE are misleadingly presented as having little or no material ecological impact. In the realm of everyday life, the sublime experience of electronic machinery conceals the physical work and material resources that go into them, while the technological sublime makes the idea that more-is-better palatable, axiomatic; even sexy. In this sense, the technological sublime relates to what Marx called “the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour” once they are in the hands of the consumer, who lusts after them as if they were “independent beings” (77). There is a direct but unseen relationship between technology’s symbolic power and the scale of its environmental impact, which the economist Juliet Schor refers to as a “materiality paradox” —the greater the frenzy to buy goods for their transcendent or nonmaterial cultural meaning, the greater the use of material resources (40-41). We wrote Greening the Media knowing that a study of the media’s effect on the environment must work especially hard to break the enchantment that inflames popular and elite passions for media technologies. We understand that the mere mention of the political-economic arrangements that make shiny gadgets possible, or the environmental consequences of their appearance and disappearance, is bad medicine. It’s an unwelcome buzz kill—not a cool way to converse about cool stuff. But we didn’t write the book expecting to win many allies among high-tech enthusiasts and ICT/CE industry leaders. We do not dispute the importance of information and communication media in our lives and modern social systems. We are media people by profession and personal choice, and deeply immersed in the study and use of emerging media technologies. But we think it’s time for a balanced assessment with less hype and more practical understanding of the relationship of media technologies to the biosphere they inhabit. Media consumers, designers, producers, activists, researchers, and policy makers must find new and effective ways to move ICT/CE production and consumption toward ecologically sound practices. In the course of this project, we found in casual conversation, lecture halls, classroom discussions, and correspondence, consistent and increasing concern with the environmental impact of media technology, especially the deleterious effects of e-waste toxins on workers, air, water, and soil. We have learned that the grip of the technological sublime is not ironclad. Its instability provides a point of departure for investigating and criticizing the relationship between the media and the environment. The media are, and have been for a long time, intimate environmental participants. Media technologies are yesterday’s, today’s, and tomorrow’s news, but rarely in the way they should be. The prevailing myth is that the printing press, telegraph, phonograph, photograph, cinema, telephone, wireless radio, television, and internet changed the world without changing the Earth. In reality, each technology has emerged by despoiling ecosystems and exposing workers to harmful environments, a truth obscured by symbolic power and the power of moguls to set the terms by which such technologies are designed and deployed. Those who benefit from ideas of growth, progress, and convergence, who profit from high-tech innovation, monopoly, and state collusion—the military-industrial-entertainment-academic complex and multinational commandants of labor—have for too long ripped off the Earth and workers. As the current celebration of media technology inevitably winds down, perhaps it will become easier to comprehend that digital wonders come at the expense of employees and ecosystems. This will return us to Max Weber’s insistence that we understand technology in a mundane way as a “mode of processing material goods” (27). Further to understanding that ordinariness, we can turn to the pioneering conversation analyst Harvey Sacks, who noted three decades ago “the failures of technocratic dreams [:] that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed.” Such fantasies derived from the very banality of these introductions—that every time they took place, one more “technical apparatus” was simply “being made at home with the rest of our world’ (548). Media studies can join in this repetitive banality. Or it can withdraw the welcome mat for media technologies that despoil the Earth and wreck the lives of those who make them. In our view, it’s time to green the media by greening media studies. References “A Cyber-House Divided.” Economist 4 Sep. 2010: 61-62. “Gartner Estimates ICT Industry Accounts for 2 Percent of Global CO2 Emissions.” Gartner press release. 6 April 2007. ‹http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867›. Basel Action Network and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Exporting Harm: The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. Seattle: Basel Action Network, 25 Feb. 2002. Benjamin, Walter. “Central Park.” Trans. Lloyd Spencer with Mark Harrington. New German Critique 34 (1985): 32-58. Biagioli, Mario. “Postdisciplinary Liaisons: Science Studies and the Humanities.” Critical Inquiry 35.4 (2009): 816-33. Boyce, Tammy and Justin Lewis, eds. Climate Change and the Media. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Commission of the European Communities. “Impact Assessment.” Commission Staff Working Paper accompanying the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) (recast). COM (2008) 810 Final. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities, 3 Dec. 2008. Environmental Protection Agency. Management of Electronic Waste in the United States. Washington, DC: EPA, 2007 Environmental Protection Agency. Statistics on the Management of Used and End-of-Life Electronics. Washington, DC: EPA, 2008 Grossman, Elizabeth. Tackling High-Tech Trash: The E-Waste Explosion & What We Can Do about It. New York: Demos, 2008. ‹http://www.demos.org/pubs/e-waste_FINAL.pdf› Herat, Sunil. “Review: Sustainable Management of Electronic Waste (e-Waste).” Clean 35.4 (2007): 305-10. Houghton, J. “ICT and the Environment in Developing Countries: Opportunities and Developments.” Paper prepared for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2009. International Telecommunication Union. ICTs for Environment: Guidelines for Developing Countries, with a Focus on Climate Change. Geneva: ICT Applications and Cybersecurity Division Policies and Strategies Department ITU Telecommunication Development Sector, 2008. Malmodin, Jens, Åsa Moberg, Dag Lundén, Göran Finnveden, and Nina Lövehagen. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Operational Electricity Use in the ICT and Entertainment & Media Sectors.” Journal of Industrial Ecology 14.5 (2010): 770-90. Marx, Karl. Capital: Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, 3rd ed. Trans. Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, Ed. Frederick Engels. New York: International Publishers, 1987. Mattelart, Armand and Costas M. Constantinou. “Communications/Excommunications: An Interview with Armand Mattelart.” Trans. Amandine Bled, Jacques Guot, and Costas Constantinou. Review of International Studies 34.1 (2008): 21-42. Mattelart, Armand. “Cómo nació el mito de Internet.” Trans. Yanina Guthman. El mito internet. Ed. Victor Hugo de la Fuente. Santiago: Editorial aún creemos en los sueños, 2002. 25-32. Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. Greening the Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Nye, David E. American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. Nye, David E. Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 2007. Orwell, George. “As I Please.” Tribune. 12 May 1944. Richtel, Matt. “Consumers Hold on to Products Longer.” New York Times: B1, 26 Feb. 2011. Robinson, Brett H. “E-Waste: An Assessment of Global Production and Environmental Impacts.” Science of the Total Environment 408.2 (2009): 183-91. Rogers, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage. New York: New Press, 2005. Sacks, Harvey. Lectures on Conversation. Vols. I and II. Ed. Gail Jefferson. Malden: Blackwell, 1995. Schiller, Herbert I. Information and the Crisis Economy. Norwood: Ablex Publishing, 1984. Schor, Juliet B. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York: Penguin, 2010. Science and Technology Council of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Digital Dilemma: Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Motion Picture Materials. Los Angeles: Academy Imprints, 2007. Weber, Max. “Remarks on Technology and Culture.” Trans. Beatrix Zumsteg and Thomas M. Kemple. Ed. Thomas M. Kemple. Theory, Culture [i] The global recession that began in 2007 has been the main reason for some declines in Global North energy consumption, slower turnover in gadget upgrades, and longer periods of consumer maintenance of electronic goods (Richtel). [ii] The emergence of the technological sublime has been attributed to the Western triumphs in the post-Second World War period, when technological power supposedly supplanted the power of nature to inspire fear and astonishment (Nye Technology Matters 28). Historian Mario Biagioli explains how the sublime permeates everyday life through technoscience: "If around 1950 the popular imaginary placed science close to the military and away from the home, today’s technoscience frames our everyday life at all levels, down to our notion of the self" (818). [iii] This compulsory repetition is seemingly undertaken each time as a novelty, governed by what German cultural critic Walter Benjamin called, in his awkward but occasionally illuminating prose, "the ever-always-the-same" of "mass-production" cloaked in "a hitherto unheard-of significance" (48).

The master’s thesis focuses on the elaboration of a business plan for establishing a company for the production and sale of dog accessories. The analytical part is devoted to the validation of the initial business idea using selected analytical-research methods, on the basis whitch of is subsequently selected a suitable business strategy, including a business model. The design part contains the elaboration of individual parts of the business plan.

Dissertação de mestrado em Design e Marketing
O desenvolvimento sustentável tem sido um fator relevante para o contributo de uma conscientização do problema ambiental atual com o qual a sociedade de hoje se depara, causado pelo desenvolvimento convencional e massificado da indústria de moda e que ainda pouco se inquieta com questões ambientais e sociais. Diante desta realidade, a presente investigação debruça-se sobre a aplicação de valor sustentável no desenvolvimento de calçado através da reintegração de resíduos gerados pela própria indústria do setor. Incidindo especificamente no reaproveitamento da pele residual, visto que esta é uma das matérias-primas descartadas de maior impacto ambiental presente no seio industrial. A abordagem metodológica surge a partir de um procedimento exploratório baseado nos processos criativos do design thinking aplicados a uma empresa em particular, que se tornou o caso de estudo. Os seus espaços fásicos permitem a ligação de várias técnicas e ferramentas aplicadas na pesquisa do teor problemático residual da empresa e no levantamento de dados pormenorizados desses resíduos gerados pela matéria-prima durante a produção convencional do calçado. Com posterior desenvolvimento conceptual de novos produtos, através da formação de novas superfícies reutilizando a pele residual gerada pela produção da empresa, recorrendo à aplicação frequente da técnica upcycling para a construção de acessórios de moda mais sustentáveis. Os desenvolvimentos técnicos destes produtos sustentáveis foram realizados de modo industrial, a partir da construção mecânica de calçado, voltado para uma vertente ecológica da sustentabilidade, e de modo artesanal, através da confeção manual de acessórios de moda voltada para uma vertente social da sustentabilidade. O que, deste modo, proporcionou inovações que atendam a interação da indústria de calçado em colaboração com novas relações ecológicas e sociais.
Sustainable development has been a relevant factor for the contribution of an awareness of current environmental problem that today's society is facing, caused by conventional development and massiveness of the fashion industry and that’s still a little uneasy with environmental and social issues. Given this reality, this research focuses on the application of sustainable value in the development of footwear through the reintegration of wastes generated by the industry itself. Leaning specifically in the reuse of leather waste, because is the one of most raw materials discarded with higher environmental impact present inside of the industry. The methodological approach arises from an exploratory procedure based on the creative processes of design thinking applied to a particular company, which became the case study. The phasic spaces of this approach allow the connection of various techniques and tools applied in research of waste problematic content of the company and the survey with detailed data from these waste generated by the raw material of the footwear conventional production. With further conceptual development of new products, by forming new surfaces, reusing the leather waste generated by the production company, with the extensive use of the upcycling technique for the construction of fashion accessories more sustainable. Technical developments of these sustainable products were performed in industrial mode, from the mechanical construction of shoes, facing an ecological aspect of sustainability, and in craftsmanship way through the manual confection of fashion accessories dedicated to a social pillar of sustainability. This thus provides innovations that address the interaction of the footwear industry in collaboration with new ecological and social relations.

Consumers increasingly prefer to use mobile phones to surf the internet and make purchases. Mobile applications are also being more used in the area of trade between consumers. This study seeks to understand how satisfaction is generated in the context of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) commerce via mobile applications for buying and selling second-hand fashion products (e.g., clothing, accessories). The research model was empirically evaluated using data collected by an online survey and analysed through partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results show that trust, perceived usefulness and mobility have significant and positive impacts on consumer satisfaction with C2C mobile applications in fashion sales. Conversely, factors such as security, privacy and enjoyment do not have significant influence.

The article discusses allusions and reminiscences in the lyrics of K.R., re flecting the mythology of the estate in the minds of its active participant and writer. Based on the image of the poet that has developed in literary criticism, whose works DOI: 10.22455/978-5-9208-0627-7-174-185 175 have been assessed ambiguously by both contemporaries and descendants, with a pri mary focus on his “imitative” character, the author addresses the attribute analysis of the spatial model of “estate topos”, “responding” with images of the previous literary era, however creatively rethought by K.R. Addressing the semantics and stylistics of the interior details in the main estate house, accessories and symbols located on the territory of the landscape park and gar den — “ancient garden imprinted”, “Garden of Eden”, the author identifies cases of continuity in the development of the mythology of the “noble nest” in the lyrics of K. R. in relation to the poets of the early to mid-nineteenth century, revealing similarities and differences in the development of the estate theme, corresponding to the traditional and innovative interpretation of the image that has developed in classical literature.

Many real-world applications depend on temperature sensing and/or control. This includes a wide range of industrial processes, chemical reactors, and SCADA systems, in addition to other physical, mechanical, and biological systems. With the advancement of technology, it became possible to produce a new generation of smart and compact temperature sensors, which are capable of providing digital outputs that are more accurate, robust, and easily interfaced and integrated into measurement and control systems. This chapter first surveys traditional analog temperature sensors, such as RTDs and thermocouples, to provide a strong motivation for the need to adopt better and smarter techniques that mainly rely on digital technology (e.g., CMOS designs). Different interfacing techniques that do not need ADCs are introduced, including the programmable Arduino microcontrollers. Different applications will be explored that include automotive accessories, weather forecast, healthcare, industrial processing, firefighting, and consumer electronics. Both wired and wireless technologies, including the IoT, will be investigated as means for transmitting the sensed data for further processing and data logging. A special case study to provide information redundancy in industrial SCADA systems will be analyzed to illustrate the advantages and limitations of smart temperature sensors. The chapter concludes with a summary of the design effort, accuracy, performance, and cost effectiveness of smart temperature sensors while highlighting future trends in this field for different applications.

Over 30 years ago, TV shows from The Jetsons to Star Trek suggested that by the millennium’s end computers would read, talk, recognize, walk, converse, think, and maybe even feel. People do these things easily, so how hard could it be? However, in general we still don’t talk to our computers, cars, or houses, and they still don’t talk to us. The Roomba, a successful household robot, is a functional flat round machine that neither talks to nor recognizes its owner. Its “smart” programming tries mainly to stop it getting “stuck,” which it still frequently does, either by getting jammed somewhere or tangling in things like carpet tassels. The idea that computers are incredibly clever is changing, as when computers enter human specialties like conversation, many people find them more stupid than smart, as any “conversation” with a computer help can illustrate. Computers do easily do calculation tasks that people find hard, but the opposite also applies, for example, people quickly recognize familiar faces but computers still cannot recognize known terrorist faces at airport check-ins. Apparently minor variations, like lighting, facial angle, or expression, accessories like glasses or hat, upset them. Figure 1 shows a Letraset page, which any small child would easily recognize as letter “As” but computers find this extremely difficult. People find such visual tasks easy, so few in artificial intelligence (AI) appreciated the difficulties of computer-vision at first. Initial advances were rapid, but AI has struck a 99% barrier, for example, computer voice recognition is 99% accurate but one error per 100 words is unacceptable. There are no computer controlled “auto-drive” cars because 99% accuracy means an accident every month or so, which is also unacceptable. In contrast, the “mean time between accidents” of competent human drivers is years not months, and good drivers go 10+ years without accidents. Other problems easy for most people but hard for computers are language translation, speech recognition, problem solving, social interaction, and spatial coordination.

Over 30 years ago, TV shows from The Jetsons to Star Trek suggested that by the millennium’s end computers would read, talk, recognize, walk, converse, think, and maybe even feel. People do these things easily, so how hard could it be? However, in general we still don’t talk to our computers, cars, or houses, and they still don’t talk to us. The Roomba, a successful household robot, is a functional flat round machine that neither talks to nor recognizes its owner. Its “smart” programming tries mainly to stop it getting “stuck,” which it still frequently does, either by getting jammed somewhere or tangling in things like carpet tassels. The idea that computers are incredibly clever is changing, as when computers enter human specialties like conversation, many people find them more stupid than smart, as any “conversation” with a computer help can illustrate. Computers do easily do calculation tasks that people find hard, but the opposite also applies, for example, people quickly recognize familiar faces but computers still cannot recognize known terrorist faces at airport check-ins. Apparently minor variations, like lighting, facial angle, or expression, accessories like glasses or hat, upset them. Figure 1 shows a Letraset page, which any small child would easily recognize as letter “As” but computers find this extremely difficult. People find such visual tasks easy, so few in artificial intelligence (AI) appreciated the difficulties of computer-vision at first. Initial advances were rapid, but AI has struck a 99% barrier, for example, computer voice recognition is 99% accurate but one error per 100 words is unacceptable. There are no computer controlled “auto-drive” cars because 99% accuracy means an accident every month or so, which is also unacceptable. In contrast, the “mean time between accidents” of competent human drivers is years not months, and good drivers go 10+ years without accidents. Other problems easy for most people but hard for computers are language translation, speech recognition, problem solving, social interaction, and spatial coordination.

In the design of new products, it is usual for different planners to specify different processing routes for the same part, which do not always incorporate the optimal solution to the problem. Computerization of process planning has evolved as a solution to speed up planning for new products. The essence of the chapter is to explore machine capabilities, parameters, and constrains inherent in sheet metal forming processes and then illustrate CAPP software design for process sequencing for new products to support standardisation of production routes. The verification of the designed CAPP system has realised significant savings of 40% reduction in process planning effort, 5% in material, 15% in scrap and 10% in tooling. In order to design the cloud-based CAPP system, data was gathered on the machinery capabilities for the sheet metal operations in a case study company that manufactures sheet metal accessories for the construction industry. A computer-based system was developed to store the machinery tool capabilities and their functional parameters and to facilitate sharing of information across the system modules. Autodesk Inventor® was used as the source of input for the CAD models into the system. Visual Basic.NET programming language was used to design a module for feature recognition (FR) to capture characteristics from a CAD model drawing of the new sheet metal product. A module was then developed to sequence the process operations for the CAD model based on the part features. The process sequencing system helps designers and process planners to link the new model design with the production path, the tools, and equipment required in order to improve their design and planning in the early stages of the product life cycle.

Religious buildings, altars, and cult statues are often conceived of as complementary, if not indivisible, elements of Roman republican and imperial cult sites. The design and function of religious architecture have been ascribed to their interaction, with the result that it is not uncommon for one to be used to explain the presence of the others: buildings were constructed to shelter cult statues, which were aligned with external altars to provide sightlines between the gods and their worshippers. Together the three components shaped ritual space and made communication with the divine intelligible and tangible. Yet these three elements were not inherent parts of all ancient religious rituals and venues. There is no evidence of dedicated religious buildings, altars, or cult statues at the water sources that received some of the earliest votive deposits in central Italy, such as the spring at Campoverde, and the arrangement of accumulated votive offerings and statuettes in caves such as the closed deposit of the Caverna della Stipe similarly suggests that no image was accorded particular prominence or accompanied by a permanent altar. Proposals that some Iron Age residences hosted ritual meals do not theorize the complementary presence of cult statues and open-air altars, nor do suggestions that Greco- Roman temples developed from aristocratic banqueting halls. If the resulting impression of an era without cult statues and prominent altars is correct, then histories of religious architecture should consider the evidence for the introduction of such features and their influence on the form and function of relevant cult buildings. This chapter will accordingly examine the archaeological evidence for pre-republican altars and cult statues in Latium and Etruria. It will explore the problematic identification of these religious accessories, and identify the quantity and nature of those that can be connected with cult buildings. The significance of altars and cult statues as religious markers, or potential means of distinguishing cult buildings from other structures, will also be considered. Finally, it will evaluate the theory that the introduction of altars and anthropomorphic cult statues stimulated the construction of monumental temples.

Fifty years ago there were no stored-program binary electronic computers. Indeed, in the mid 1940s computer was a job description; the computer was a person. Much has happened in the ensuing half-century. whereas the motto of the 1950s was “do not bend, spindle, or mutilate,” we now have become comfortable with GUI wIMP (i.e., Graphic User Interface; windows, Icons, Mouse, and Pointers). whereas computers once were maintained in isolation and viewed through large picture windows, they now are visible office accessories and invisible utilities. whereas the single computer once was a highly prized resource, modern networks now hide even the machines’ geographic locations. Naturally, some of our perceptions have adapted to reflect these changes; however, much of our understanding remains bound to the concepts that flourished during computing’s formative years. For example, we have moved beyond thinking of computers as a giant brain (Martin 1993), but we still hold firmly to our faith in computing’s scientific foundations. The purpose of this book is to look forward and speculate about the place of computing in the next fifty years. There are many aspects of computing that make it very different from all other technologies. The development of the microchip has made digital computing ubiquitous; we are largely unaware of the computers in our wrist watches, automobiles, cameras, and household appliances. The field of artificial intelligence (AI) sees the brain as an organ with some functions that can be modeled in a computer, thereby enabling computers to exhibit “intelligent” behavior. Thus, their research seeks to extend the role of computers through applications in which they perform autonomously or act as active assistants. (For some recent overviews of AI see waldrop 1987; Crevier 1993.) In the domain of information systems, Zuboff (1988) finds that computers can both automate (routinize) and informate, that is, produce new information that serves as “a voice that symbolically renders events, objects, and processes so that they become visible, knowable, and sharable in a new way” (p. 9).

Around the late sixth century dress styles and burial practices started to change, with regionally distinctive sets of grave goods giving way initially to the greater uniformity seen in ‘final phase’ cemeteries before the regular deposition of artefacts ceased altogether in the late seventh century. It has been argued that this reflects how a common identity had started to emerge across Anglo-Saxon society, and that the change in the character of grave goods away from those expressing a strongly Germanic identity to ones with a more Romano-Byzantine character reflects how kings sought to legitimize their power through association with the Roman world (e.g. Geake 1997, 133–5; 1999b). This hypothesis, however, presents something of a paradox because, just as the archaeologically visible and regionally distinctive group identities expressed in material culture such as dress accessories disappeared, a new form of territoriality was emerging in the form of relatively stable kingdoms within which one might imagine the expression of identity was just as important. Indeed, many have argued that changes in the character of grave goods being deposited in ‘final phase’ cemeteries had less to do with secular identity and kingship and was instead associated with the spread of Augustinian Christianity, which was both a unifying cultural tradition and one with strong associations with the Roman world (e.g. Crawford 2004; Hoggett 2010, 107). It seems inherently unlikely that group identities will have disappeared just as stable kingdoms started to emerge, and it is therefore likely that identity was expressed in other ways. This is in fact exactly what we see if we look beyond the burial record: while eighth-century and later graves contain few expressions of identity, as Christianity dictated a uniform burial practice, the circulation of new forms of material culture, such as coinage and mass-produced pottery, was closely tied to particular political territories. This new material culture was associated with specialist forms of settlement that were closely involved in the circulation of coinage both in coastal emporia and in inland places that archaeologists have termed ‘productive sites’.

Insulation gasket kits are used to prevent electrochemical corrosion often observed in metal pipe system with dissimilar flanges materials or in buried pipelines. This insulation kit is typically used in refineries, pipelines, chemical plants and especially in offshore installations, such as oil platforms. The market offers a great range of materials to meet these applications, which are based in phenolic resin, epoxy, rubber, etc. However, end users, frequently, do not have a complete understanding of all the requirements to do a proper specification of the insulation kit to meet their needs. A correct selection of the insulation kit requires knowledge about its physical as well as its electrical features in order to avoid a potential failure in the field. Therefore, this paper proposes an overview of the main physical and electrical parameters for a reliable insulation kit, as well as alternative materials.

One of the challenges of transporting highly viscous crude oil is to ensure that the flow of oil will be delivered. It is also necessary to keep the operational standards and conditions along sections of pipes and fittings. Today, with low oil prices, it is important to minimize energy losses through the pipelines and accessories. However, new designs are often based on correlations that have not been developed for heavy oil water mixtures and are not frequently reported in the literature. Moreover, conventional calculations do not take into account the presence of accessory lines, or simply consider by empirically adding an extra percentage of energy loss or according to the engineer design test. Even more, the current correlations that could estimate accessory loss do not work well for viscous fluids and are even less suitable for the case of two-phase mixtures. For example, Gardel correlation [1] was made for water flow through yee type accessories. Applying this correlation to viscous fluids result in high deviations, more than 500% compared to CFD simulations. The present work attempts to predict the fluid dynamics behavior and the energy losses of these viscous fluids and mixtures (oil - water) going through a Yee type confluence. All simulations were carried out using ANSY CFX® v14.5. Mesh number of elements was optimized using Pipe-It® (optimization software). A grid independence study was also carried out automatically in Pipe-It® to ensure the quality of results. Several conditions have been simulated: angle confluence of 45°–75°, diameter ratio 2–7, oil viscosity from 10 to 105 cP, and water cut of 0–1. As the main result, a correlation that predicts the behavior of viscous mixtures in their passage through yee type confluences was developed using a genetic algorithms technique [2]. This correlation takes into account: viscosity, fluid fractions, input speeds, confluence angle and other parameters that are not normally considered by other authors. Therefore, it may be used in mixtures of water with light and heavy crude oil. Finally, correlations with 10% deviation compared to CFD simulations were obtained.

Abstract The occurrence of cavitation in a huge hydraulic supply system of a rolling mill which caused a severe defect in an axial piston pump is investigated by a mathematical model of the complex suction system. It comprises wave propagation in pipes and hoses, a detailed model of the pump including each of its nine cylinders, cavitation therein, the charge and discharge processes of these cylinders with the intake duct, and several accessories influencing the hydraulic processes. Results obtained by this model are compared with on-site experiments. Countermeasures which have been proposed are evaluated by our model and their practical examination is reported. Due to the strong nonlinearity of cavitation the dynamical system shows two attracting limit sets, one with and one without cavitation. The operating conditions of the original supply system cause startup conditions which do not lie in the basin of attraction of the non-cavitating attractor.

Abstract When the concept of aircraft derivative marine gas turbines were originally proposed, one of the selling points was the engine was going to be easy to remove and replace thereby minimizing the operational impact on the ship. Anticipated Mean Time Between Removal (MTBR) of these engines was expected to be approximately 3000 hours, due mostly to turbine corrosion damage. This drove the design and construction of elaborate removal routes into the engine intakes; the expected time to remove and replace the engine was expected to be less than five days. However, when the first USN gas turbine destroyers started operating, it was discovered that turbine corrosion damage was not the problem that drove engine maintenance. The issues that drove engine maintenance were the accessories, the compressor, combustors and engine vibration. Turbine corrosion was discovered to be a longer term affect. This was primarily due to the turbine blade and vane coatings used and intake air filtration. This paper discusses how engine design, tooling development, maintenance procedure development and engine design improvements all contributed to extending the MTBR of USN propulsion and electrical power generation gas turbines on the DD 963, CG 47, DDG 51 and FFG 7 classes to greater than 20,000 hours. The ability to remove the gas turbine rapidly or in most cases repair the engine in-place has given the USN great maintenance flexibility, been very cost effective and not impacted operational readiness.

Abstract The Niger Delta land and swamp operators have endured severe hostility, theft, and asset vandalism over time. The offshore assets seem insulated from these incessant thefts due to difficulty accessing the facility and the compactness of the operations resulting in efficient security surveillance. However, this is not the case for land and swamp assets, usually with wide asset footprints resulting from traditional, supposedly easy, and low-cost development concepts. These conventional concepts resulted in wells drilled from multiple locations with multiple flowlines/pipelines crossing many communities and making efficient surveillance a near impossible activity. The attackers usually target movable assets like wellhead accessories, Christmas tree, and flowlines in low-activity areas, and the non-active wells/flowlines are good minimal risk candidates. This act increases the cost of operations and, in most cases, results in environmental pollution because the vandals do not take the necessary precautions as needed for environmentally safe operations. Interestingly, in most cases, these stolen assets find their way into the local market, where they are refurbished and resold to unsuspecting operators. To curb this menace, an opportunity exists for industry collaboration by applying an intelligent supply chain and asset inventory management system. This paper reviews the current asset protection techniques, evaluates the value at risk, and proposes innovative ways of combating theft using digital technology and intelligent asset management techniques.

Opto-mechanical actuators do not require hard-wired connections to control light source. Accordingly, the control commands will not be influenced by undesirable electric noises. Without accessorial devices and connecting wires, photonic control which conforms to the lightweight trend of space structure has great research value. PLZT photostrictive actuator can only induce actuation strain along its polarized direction, so it has the deficiency of one-way actuation. In this paper, the novel hybrid photovoltaic/piezoelectric actuation mechanism is proposed to remedy this deficiency. The ultraviolet light-driven PLZT induced voltages are used to drive piezoelectric actuator. Based on the equivalent electrical model, constitutive model is established to define the time history of actuation strain of piezoelectric actuator driven by photovoltage. Experimental platform is established to verify this established constitutive model. A logical switch is designed to realize positive and negative connection switch between PLZT photovoltaic generator and piezoelectric actuator. It is experimentally validated that the piezoelectric actuator can induce both positive and negative control forces.

Abstract An openhole multistage completion required selective fracture stimulation, flow control, and sand control in each zone. An openhole multistage completion was designed by combining a production sleeve integrated with sand screens and inflow control devices and a fracture sleeve with high open flow port. The system was designed to use a ball drop to isolate the bottom intervals while fracturing upper intervals. After fracture stimulation, the fracture seat/ball needed to be milled. The production sleeve were designed to be shifted to the open position and the fracturing sleeve to the closed position through mechanical shifting tool to put the well on production. The fracturing sleeve and the production sleeve were located close to each other and a successful shifting operation needed an appropriate shifting tool, with a real-time downhole telemetry system that met the temperature limitations while providing accurate depth control, differential pressure readings, and axial force (tension and compression) measurements. Hydraulic-pressure-activated shifting tools were used to manipulate the sleeves. A coiled tubing (CT) rugged downhole tool with real-time telemetry was used to run the shifting tools. Yard tests were conducted to identify the optimum rates and pressures to actuate the hydraulically activated shifting tools and study their behavior. The expansion of the fracturing sleeve shifting tool keys initiated at 1.6 bbl/min (400 psi) and the keys were fully expanded at 1.8 bbl/min (600 psi), whereas the expansion of production sleeve shifting tool keys initiated at 0.3 bbl/min (700 psi), and the keys were fully expanded at 0.4 bbl/min (900 psi). During the design and planning of the shifting operation, simulations were conducted, and surface and downhole tools were selected carefully to ensure the CT could provide enough downhole upward force (5,000 to 6,000 lbf) to close the fracture ports and 2,000 to 4,000 lbf to open production sleeves. Following the fracturing operation, the first CT run aimed to mill fracture seats/balls to clear the path for the subsequent shifting operation. In the second CT run, all the fracturing sleeves were shifted to the closed position while production sleeves were shifted to the open position. The CT rugged downhole tool proved critical for depth correlation and accurate placement of the shifting tools. The real-time downhole acquisition of differential pressure across the toolstring also allowed operating the shifting tools under optimum conditions, while downhole force readings of tension and compression confirmed the shifting of completion accessories. Two fracturing sleeves were shifted to the closed position at 2.4 bbl/min and 700-psi downhole differential pressure, with the downhole weights of 700 lb and 1,000 lbf. Three production sleeves were shifted to open position at 0.6 bbl/min and 1,200-psi downhole differential pressure, and the maximum surface and downhole weights recorded were 73,000 lb and 19,200 lb, respectively. That operation led to sand-free production and confirmed the success of the first multistage completion enabling fracturing operation and controlling sand production in Saudi Arabia. This study describes the use of real-time downhole measurements and their significance when surface parameters do not give clear indication of shifting. It also features the first-time use of two hydraulically activated shifting tools operated during the shifting operation in Saudi Arabia's first multistage completion enabling fracturing operation and controlling flow/sand production.