Choice Of Layout Research Articles

Open-plan office employees’ perceived mental and social well-being

PurposeOver the past century, office designers have adapted to changing work conditions across various industries by creating workspaces that cater to the needs of modern workers. As a result, a range of office layouts have been developed, from traditional private offices to open-plan setups. The choice of layout can significantly impact communication, social interaction and overall performance. This study aims to explore the social and mental well-being of employees working in open-plan offices in the public sector in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachThe research was conducted in the Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa, focusing on five governmental departments. Using purposive sampling, employees working in open-plan offices were identified. A structured online interview form with open-ended questions was distributed to all selected employees between May and September 2021, resulting in 54 responses. Thematic content analysis using ATLAS.ti was used to analyze the data.FindingsThe findings suggest that while open-plan offices can enhance teamwork, communication, accessibility and inclusivity, their design can negatively affect employees’ perceptions of social and mental health in the workplace. Specifically, open-plan designs are perceived to compromise privacy, shorten attention spans, lower productivity and increase stress levels. Interestingly, absenteeism was not reported by employees in this study, which contradicts previous research and requires further investigation.Practical implicationsThese findings can be valuable for human resource managers, facilities managers and office space designers.Originality/valueThis research contributes to the ongoing conversation surrounding the impact of open-plan offices on the mental and social well-being of employees in the public sector within the South African context. The contribution of this paper thus lies in the South-African context and the public sector angle plus a more in-depth insight on well-being through an extensive set of 54 interviews.

Approaching the Last Decades of Arabic Manuscript Culture (1870–1930): Materiality

Abstract In the late 18th and first half of the 19th century, print gained a permanent foothold in the Middle East and enabled the mass production of books in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. As a consequence, handwriting gradually ceased to be the primary technology for making books. This article, the second of two, examines the materiality of a selection of Arabic manuscripts mostly made between 1870 and 1930 CE. It shows how scribes not only adapted to the availability of new types of pens or stationery when making their manuscripts, but also that some of them adopted layout choices and paracontent typical of printed books. Tradition and change are both visible in the objects that were analysed, and it is especially against the backdrop of a growing print industry in the Middle East that Arabic manuscript culture’s strengths and its ability to adapt emerge.

Assessment of Onshore Wind Farm Performance to Geometric Layout Choices by Utilizing Mesoscale Modelling Techniques

Assessment of Onshore Wind Farm Performance to Geometric Layout Choices by Utilizing Mesoscale Modelling Techniques

Evaluating Climate and Community Health Care Infection Risks through Computational Predesign

This study highlights the value of computational modeling in health care infection prevention planning, especially in response to climate-induced community risk factors. It investigates the relationship between Socioecological Modeling features and Principal Component Analysis derived parameters in a Decision Tree classification model, predicting regional risk levels of Clostridioides difficile Infection (CDI) and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus health care-associated infections (MRSA) Hospital Acquired Infections (HAI). The research confirms that climate-related factors, such as housing instability and medical infrastructure strain, impact regional infectivity risks, influencing health care environment resilience. It emphasizes the link between Clostridioides difficile and MRSA HAI, highlighting the role of Built Environment Vulnerability. These findings have vital implications for hospital predesign, material selection, layout, and hand sanitization device choices, and underscore optimizing patient flow in health care environment planning.

Multiple Monitors or Single Canvas? Evaluating Window Management and Layout Strategies on Virtual Displays.

Virtual displays enabled through head-worn augmented reality have unique characteristics that can yield extensive amounts of screen space. Existing research has shown that increasing the space on a computer screen can enhance usability. Since virtual displays offer the unique ability to present content without rigid physical space constraints, they provide various new design possibilities. Therefore, we must understand the trade-offs of layout choices when structuring that space. We propose a single Canvas approach that eliminates boundaries from traditional multi-monitor approaches and instead places windows in one large, unified space. Our user study compared this approach against a multi-monitor setup, and we considered both purely virtual systems and hybrid systems that included a physical monitor. We looked into usability factors such as performance, accuracy, and overall window management. Results show that Canvas displays can cause users to compact window layouts more than multiple monitors with snapping behavior, even though such optimizations may not lead to longer window management times. We did not find conclusive evidence of either setup providing a better user experience. Multi-Monitor displays offer quick window management with snapping and a structured layout through subdivisions. However, Canvas displays allow for more control in placement and size, lowering the amount of space used and, thus, head rotation. Multi-Monitor benefits were more prominent in the hybrid configuration, while the Canvas display was more beneficial in the purely virtual configuration.

Mechanical Analysis and Constitutive Modeling of Nonlinear Behavior of Silver-based Conductive Ink

Stretchable electronic devices are progressively deployed in many applications of mechanical, electrical, and bio-medical engineering. These circuits are made of stretchable and flexible substrate, as well as conductive ink, and various electronic components. The choice of components and layouts for the substrate and conductive ink can regulate the stretchability of stretchable circuits. On top of that, the substance utilized to create the conductive ink must have high electrical conductivity and strong adherence to the substrate in order to produce a high-quality stretchable printed circuit. Thus, this study focused on the development of stretchable conductive ink using silver powder as a conductive filler and PDMS-OH as a binder. The mechanical properties of the synthesized ink were investigated via simple uniaxial tensile testing method and nanoindentation technique, respectively. Accordingly, the modulus of elasticity, tensile stress and yield stress of the ink were obtained as 5.72 MPa, 1.195 MPa, and 0.86 MPa, congruently at 137% strain before undergoing failure. The experimental stress-strain data was then employed on the elastic-plastic constitutive model to investigate the elastomeric properties of the ink as it is an alternative method of lengthy and expensive procedures of validating different polymers. Moreover, the hardness and reduced modulus of the ink were evaluated by nanoindentation method using 5 mN maximum load with 0.5 mN/s loading/unloading rate and 2 secs holding time. Consequently, the hardness and reduced modulus values were obtained as 1.45 MPa and 34.53 MPa, respectively. These values were further validated by Oliver-Pharr method, and were in a good agreement.

Warehouses without aisles: Layout design of a multi-deep rack climbing robotic system

In the last decade, different multi-deep rack climbing robotic (MRR) systems have been introduced, particularly in e-commerce warehouses. These systems have great benefits, as aisles are no longer needed, allowing a high storage density on a small footprint. They only need vertical channels through which battery-powered robots can climb the racks, retrieve totes from any desired position, and bring them to a workstation. This paper studies two novel MRR system layouts: the cross and the compact layout. In addition, we compare performance with the more traditional aisle-based layout. The system performance, particularly operational cost and energy consumption, depends on these system layouts. The paper establishes queuing network models to investigate the trade-off between storage capacity and throughput of the system with these three layouts, taking robot blocking prevention into account. We compare the throughput, storage density, horizontal travel time, and energy consumption of the system. The results show that, in most cases, the compact layout outperforms other layouts on throughput. For energy consumption, the choice of layout depends on the footprint. We formulate a model to assist warehouse managers in choosing a layout of minimum annual operational cost, with a required storage and throughput capacity. We also compare the MRR system with an alternative robotic compact storage and retrieval system on operational cost and energy consumption. The MRR system appears to always have lower energy consumption and operational cost.

SparseIMU: Computational Design of Sparse IMU Layouts for Sensing Fine-grained Finger Microgestures

Gestural interaction with freehands and while grasping an everyday object enables always-available input . To sense such gestures, minimal instrumentation of the user’s hand is desirable. However, the choice of an effective but minimal IMU layout remains challenging, due to the complexity of the multi-factorial space that comprises diverse finger gestures, objects, and grasps. We present SparseIMU , a rapid method for selecting minimal inertial sensor-based layouts for effective gesture recognition. Furthermore, we contribute a computational tool to guide designers with optimal sensor placement. Our approach builds on an extensive microgestures dataset that we collected with a dense network of 17 inertial measurement units (IMUs). We performed a series of analyses, including an evaluation of the entire combinatorial space for freehand and grasping microgestures (393 K layouts), and quantified the performance across different layout choices, revealing new gesture detection opportunities with IMUs. Finally, we demonstrate the versatility of our method with four scenarios.

3D Modelling of double elbow pipeline erosion in methane – water – sand multiphase medium

Introduction. In gas industry, predicting sand erosion damage of pipelines by sand particles is a difficult task because this process is strongly influenced by many factors. Particulate matter carried away by the multiphase product during production can seriously compromise the integrity of fluid handling structures such as pipelines and elbows.
 Materials and methods. A three-dimensional numerical modelling approach in three-phase gas – liquid – solid flows was used to analyze erosion processes in pipe elbows. A key advantage of using CFD is that it can provide a wealth of information such as the effect of various parameters on erosion, maximum erosion rate, and erosion-prone areas. A variation of the Euler method for multiphase fluids was used to simulate three-dimensional unsteady gas-water annular flows with the presence of sand particles.
 Results. The results showed that a vertical pipe with two elbows is more prone to erosion at the second elbow than atthe first elbow. However, in a horizontal pipe with two elbows, it can be concluded that the first elbow is more proneto erosion. On the other hand, erosion at L/D = 0 showed the maximum erosion rate among all the geometries studied.
 Conclusions. In a vertical pipe, the second elbow of the pipeline is more susceptible to erosion. In addition, the erosion rate at the second elbow of vertical and horizontal pipes is the same for all studied geometries. The pipeline with L/D = 10 showed the optimal layout choice for vertical and horizontal pipe with an average erosion rate of 57.9 mm/year, which representsthe lowest erosion rate among the options studied.

Sarah Wood. Piers Plowman and Its Manuscript Tradition

Sarah Wood’s new monograph takes as its focus several distinctive patterns of scribal behaviour in the early transmission of the A, B, and C versions of Piers Plowman: (1) deliberate textual alterations and continuations added to their exemplars, (2) distinctive patterns of marginal annotation and illustration, and (3) efforts to incorporate the poem into larger, miscellaneous volumes containing three specific subgenres of medieval narrative. All of these scribal choices, she maintains, ‘offer fascinating, if ambiguous, insight into the sometimes unexpected ways the poet’s earliest audience understood his work’ (p. 1). Since most modern studies of the Piers manuscripts have focused instead on a fairly small number of reliable early copies necessary for establishing authorial readings in the poem’s recognized versions, Wood hopes to rectify some of the negligence suffered by the other primary witnesses, which ‘languish virtually unknown to most readers except as sigla in editions’ (p. 2). One of Wood’s central claims is that the layout choices and marginal annotations of relatively obscure Piers manuscripts sometimes reveal early scribes and consumers of Piers Plowman bringing very different expectations to their reading experience of the poem than we typically do today. Many early readers seem to have believed that Piers Plowman would tell a ‘story’ and that it would deliver a coherent account of a ‘life’, either that of Will or that of Piers (p. 5). This often meant an expectation, on their part, of some kind of spiritual autobiography. By contrast, recent academic studies of Piers sometimes tend to look past the narrator completely, as a mere enabling device, and focus much more attention on the poem’s reflections of late-medieval theological disputes than on the narrative details about what purports to be Will’s pilgrimage to Truth.

EPortfolio Pedagogy: Stimulating a Shift in Mindset

As digital pedagogy and instructional strategy, electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) help educators organize instruction, facilitate teaching, and enhance learning. When students develop their ePortfolio projects in online spaces, they build a community where they learn to overcome challenges with the technology and to embrace the pedagogy that promotes learning. Decades-old research shows that the ePortfolio development process enhances knowledge production, makes visible knowledge application, and capacitates knowledge mobilization. ePortfolio technology promotes interaction, fosters reflection, and encourages both analytical thinking and the questioning of assumptions related to learning online. As multipurpose tools (assessment, accountability, collaboration, curriculum), ePortfolios are part of a movement that aims to reimagine the way we teach and learn in internet spaces. ePortfolio pedagogy, undergirded by interaction and reflection, integrates authentic learning episodes in digital spaces and enables practitioners to engage in democratizing and mobilizing knowledge. ePortfolio pedagogy is inclusive, embraces equity, and encourages the sharing of stories, beliefs, and ideas that result in appreciation of self and others. As students engage in idea generation in terms of choice of platform, layout, content, and artefacts, they experience a shift in mindset that capacitates a can-do attitude toward learning potential and project completion in online spaces.

The CMS Tracker for the High Luminosity LHC

The LHC machine is planning an upgrade program which will smoothly bring the instantaneous luminosity to about 5–7.5 ×1034cm−2s−1, to reach an integrated luminosity of 3000−4000fb−1 by the end of 2039. This High Luminosity LHC scenario, HL-LHC, will require an upgrade program of the LHC detectors known as Phase-2 upgrade. The current CMS Tracker, already running beyond design specifications, and CMS Pixel Detector will not be able to survive HL-LHC radiation conditions and CMS will need completely new devices, in order to fully exploit the HL-LHC data which will be recorded under highly demanding background conditions.The Phase-2 Tracker will be made of two sections, an Inner Tracker and an Outer Tracker. Both detectors will feature increased radiation hardness, higher granularity and capability to handle higher data rate and longer trigger latency in order to ensure at least the same performances of the current detector, in terms of tracking and vertex reconstruction capabilities, at the high pileup (140–200 collisions per bunch crossing) expected at HL-LHC. Moreover the Phase-2 Outer Tracker will have also trigger capabilities since tracking information will be used at L1 trigger stage.This report is focusing on the replacement of the CMS Tracker system, describing new layout and technological choices together with some highlights on research and development activities.

MODL-13. Sensitivity of Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) treatment planning to healthy tissue segmentation inaccuracies

Abstract TTFields are FDA approved for treating patients with GBM. TTFields utilize low intensity electric fields with intermediate frequency (100-500 kHz) that disrupt cellular processes critical for cancer cell viability and tumor progression. TTFields have been shown to disrupt multiple phases of the cell cycle including metaphase, anaphase, and telophase, resulting in cellular apoptosis. TTFields are administered through two pairs of capacitive arrays placed on the patient’s scalp. As TTFields are a dose dependent therapy, optimization of array layout for maximizing field intensity may improve survival rates of patients. Thus, Novocure is developing a treatment planning system, in which MR images are used to create a patient-specific model, which in turn is used for simulating electric fields distribution. However, the segmentation process of the MRIs is prone to errors that may influence the choice of array layout, and consequently provide lower TTFields dose than possible. To test the sensitivity of layout chosen to such inaccuracies, we placed different array layouts on the highly detailed MIDA head model and simulated the resulting LMiPD from each configuration. We then simplified the model in several phases and compared the resulting array layout ranking between the full model and each simplified model. Our results show that though the calculated LMiPD is very sensitive to the quality of the model, the ranking pattern between the detailed and simplified models is similar. Some alterations do occur, but this mostly happens when the LMiPD values between switched layouts are very close, rendering these alterations clinically insignificant. Based on these results, we conclude that the ranking order of array layouts by LMiPD dose does not significantly change between detailed and simplified head models even though the LMiPD dose itself is sensitive to the quality of the head model.

XAFS-DET: A new high throughout X-ray spectroscopy detector system developed for synchrotron applications

The high brilliance and coherent beams resulting from recent upgraded synchrotron radiation facilities open the way for a large range of experiments, where detectors play a key role in the techniques and methods developed to fully exploit the upgraded synchrotron. For instance, one of the major limitations of XAFS experiment is the performance of the detectors. In order to be able to measure more challenging samples and to cope with the very high photon flux of the current and future (diffraction limited) sources, technological developments of detectors are necessary. In this framework, the germanium detector developed in the European project LEAPS-INNOV aims at improving several technological aspects. This type of detector represents a very important class of instruments for X-ray spectroscopy due to the fact that they enable to detect efficiently photons of considerable higher energy with respect to silicon detectors. The objective of this project consists in pushing the detector performance beyond the state-of-the-art. Preliminary layout and main choices for the design studies of this new detector are presented in this paper.

Compiling for the IBM Matrix Engine for Enterprise Workloads

The matrix-multiply assist (MMA) facility is the latest addition to IBM’s power instruction set architecture and first shipped in the recently introduced POWER10 processor. MMA is designed to accelerate matrix–matrix operations, such as matrix multiplication and convolution, using instructions that compute the outer product of vector-register operands. Outer product computations have been used for decades in linear algebra libraries to deliver high-performance implementations of matrix operations. Such libraries use conventional single-instruction–multiple-data (SIMD) instructions to emulate outer product operations. MMA in POWER10 is the first hardware with direct support for outer product operations released in the market. MMA operates with the widest diversity of data types compared to any accelerator design currently announced. Unleashing the high-performance enabled by MMA requires careful code generation. Two key considerations for optimal MMA code performance are 1) the choice of accumulation layout when maximizing the using the accumulators and 2) the selection of matrix access order. This article shows that over 92% of peak performance in POWER10 with MMA can be achieved when the code generation makes the right choices.

Efficient shape sensing of plate structures using the inverse Finite Element Method aided by strain pre-extrapolation

The inverse problem of reconstructing structural deformations based on measured strain data, known as shape sensing, is addressed in this numerical study for a cantilevered plate undergoing complex bending and twisting deformations. The inverse Finite Element Method (iFEM) is the main computational tool used for solving the inverse problem, and the Smoothing Element Analysis (SEA) is used as a pre-processing step seeding additional strain data into a high-fidelity iFEM discretization. This novel SEA-iFEM approach demonstrates that even with a small number of strain sensors and a judicial choice of strain-sensor layouts, accurate shape-sensing reconstructions for plate structures can be obtained.

ANALYSIS OF WAYS OF INCREASE OF TRACTION AND ENERGY PROPERTIES OF WHEELED ELECTRIC TRACTORS OF TRACTION CLASS 0,6

The article searches for and analyzes the design parameters of a wheeled electric tractor, which provide maximum efficiency and economy in the entire range of traction forces of the electric tractor in order to improve the traction and energy properties. Also, modern developments of new electric tractors in Ukraine were analyzed, bright examples are given, which are currently being developed and modernized. The choice of tractor layout is analyzed. Models of tractors with different axle speeds are analyzed, the possibilities of further calculation of electric tractors with the help of generalized mathematical models are considered, such as traction motor models, battery operation models, electric tractor control system models, traction torque determination and for comparison of ICE model and traction calculation

Дискретно-событийное моделирование морского грузового фронта экспортного угольного терминала в среде Anylogic

The article is focused on computer modeling of the sea cargo front of export coal terminal seaside in Anylogic environment. The main stages of development and formalization of the model have been analyzed. Using the statistical data on Rosterminalugol, JSC and Daltransugol, JSC, the dependences of the deadweight of bulk carriers on their length, width and draft were determined. A general classification of bulk carriers has been formed according to transport and technological characteristics. On the basis of statistical data, the number of bills of lading and/or grades of coal loaded onto bulk carriers at sea coal terminals have been assessed. Requirements for the selection of ship-loading equipment are formulated. The main types of berthing ship-loading machines used today are determined. Most export coal terminals use ship-loaders of the coordinate type with a lifting fixed boom. The choice of layout and technological scheme of the simulated sea front was carried out. The sea export coal terminal of Rosterminalugol, JSC in the seaport of Ust-Luga was taken as a basis. There is given a description of constructing a discrete-event simulation model of the sea cargo front in Anylogic software. It has been stated that the developed simulation model allows calculating the performance of the sea cargo front with several different layout options: with 1 or 2 berths, as well as with different capacity of cargo-loading machines. The results of the model operation make it possible to select a front layout option with the required annual throughput of berths and without exceeding the specified average time of vessel stay under loading. There are shown the basic principles of the model operation, explained the functionality of all logic blocks of the simulation model algorithm. The configuration control elements of the cargo front model have been presented, as well as the results of the work and conclusions.

CUBES phase a design overview

We present the baseline conceptual design of the Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES) for the Very Large Telescope. CUBES will provide unprecedented sensitivity for spectroscopy on a 8 – 10 m class telescope in the ground ultraviolet (UV), spanning a bandwidth of ≥ 100 nm that starts at 300 nm, the shortest wavelength accessible from the ground. The design has been optimized for end-to-end efficiency and provides a spectral resolving power of R≥ 20000, that will unlock a broad range of new topics across solar system, Galactic and extraglactic astronomy. The design also features a second, lower-resolution (Rsim 7000) mode and has the option of a fiberlink to the UVES instrument for simultaneous observations at longer wavelengths.Here we present the optical, mechanical and software design of the various subsystems of the instrument after the Phase A study of the project. We discuss the expected performances for the layout choices and highlight some of the performance trade-offs considered to best meet the instrument top-level requirements. We also introduce the model-based system engineering approach used to organize and manage the project activities and interfaces, in the context that it is increasingly necessary to integrate such tools in the development of complex astronomical projects.

On numerical broadening of particle-size spectra: a condensational growth study using PyMPDATA 1.0

Abstract. This work discusses the numerical aspects of representing the condensational growth of particles in models of aerosol systems such as atmospheric clouds. It focuses on the Eulerian modelling approach, in which fixed-bin discretisation is used for the probability density function describing the particle-size spectrum. Numerical diffusion is inherent to the employment of the fixed-bin discretisation for solving the arising transport problem (advection equation describing size spectrum evolution). The focus of this work is on a technique for reducing the numerical diffusion in solutions based on the upwind scheme: the multidimensional positive definite advection transport algorithm (MPDATA). Several MPDATA variants are explored including infinite-gauge, non-oscillatory, third-order terms and recursive antidiffusive correction (double-pass donor cell, DPDC) options. Methodologies for handling coordinate transformations associated with both particle-size spectrum coordinate choice and with numerical grid layout choice are expounded. Analysis of the performance of the scheme for different discretisation parameters and different settings of the algorithm is performed using (i) an analytically solvable box-model test case and (ii) the single-column kinematic driver (“KiD”) test case in which the size-spectral advection due to condensation is solved simultaneously with the advection in the vertical spatial coordinate, and in which the supersaturation evolution is coupled with the droplet growth through water mass budget. The box-model problem covers size-spectral dynamics only; no spatial dimension is considered. The single-column test case involves a numerical solution of a two-dimensional advection problem (spectral and spatial dimensions). The discussion presented in the paper covers size-spectral, spatial and temporal convergence as well as computational cost, conservativeness and quantification of the numerical broadening of the particle-size spectrum. The box-model simulations demonstrate that, compared with upwind solutions, even a 10-fold decrease in the spurious numerical spectral broadening can be obtained by an apt choice of the MPDATA variant (maintaining the same spatial and temporal resolution), yet at an increased computational cost. Analyses using the single-column test case reveal that the width of the droplet size spectrum is affected by numerical diffusion pertinent to both spatial and spectral advection. Application of even a single corrective iteration of MPDATA robustly decreases the relative dispersion of the droplet spectrum, roughly by a factor of 2 at the levels of maximal liquid water content. Presented simulations are carried out using PyMPDATA – a new open-source Python implementation of MPDATA based on the Numba just-in-time compilation infrastructure.