Search Results

Products that transform to reveal new functionality have been a source of fascination and utility for ages. Such products–transformers, such as the toys with this namesake–have been previously designed employing ad hoc creativity rather than by pursuing any formal design methodology. By incorporating a design methodology and a concept generation tool for transformers, this research not only unearths further utility for these innovative and revolutionary products but also aids engineers in the design of these devices with dexterity. The success and advantages of transformers result from added functionality while simultaneously using fewer resources and occupying less space. This chapter elucidates the foundation of a methodology for the design of such transforming devices. the basic research conducted on transforming systems involves a combined inductive and deductive approach, uncovering transformation design principles and a novel method for designing transforming products. In the early stages of design, this method employs a unique process to extract customer needs by examining the requirement hierarchy of product usage scenarios. Such an approach broadens the scope of design and aids in identifying opportunities for transforming products while developing process level insights and solutions catering to these needs. During the concept generation phase of design, the method exploits the transformation design principles as a novel tool to complement and expand contemporary concept generation techniques. A unique bicycle accessory that transforms from a lock to a pump and vice versa is provided as an example of the transformational design process. This application displays, in form, the potential of the method to bring about a significant change in the engineering design culture and, in particular, how we innovate.

This chapter examines the representation of archaeology in the action/adventure cinematics of Michael Bay's Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2007), a film predicated on hidden relics transforming explosively into action. The film's diegetic environment—which features a hunt for a lost relic that happens to be the key to an ancient doomsday device secreted away inside the Great Pyramid at Giza—is analogous to the its specific geographical and historical setting. The film is "Babylonian" in that it invokes Orientalist imagery as an almost inevitable generic necessity within SF action/adventure cinema. The chapter argues specifically that the military, archaeological and geopolitical motifs of the film are most clearly and coherently aligned in the framing and shot-making techniques of the action sequences themselves. By figuratively compressing time into literally compressed spaces (here principal photography at Petra, Giza and Luxor is collapsed into a single location), the set/setting is a chronotopic threshold that transforms antiquity into a battle ground for military technocratic modernity.

Have the techniques and technologies of the digital era so transformed cinema that they have changed the nature of viewers’ experiences? This chapter considers brief segments from a variety of films to address this question, including Summer of Sam, SLC Punk!, Run Lola Run, Se7en, Transformers, Death Proof, Kill Bill, (500) Days of Summer, Day Watch, and several by Johnnie To. In almost all cases, heightened audiovisual relations enable these new styles and forms, though other influences contribute too, including previsualization, CGI, Avid editing and Pro Tools; recent innovations in acting and lighting; changing forms of industry organization and production culture; varied modes of distribution and reception; and intensified global sharing across genres and styles. Attending to these segments may help us envision new forms of post-classical cinema.

This chapter discusses the impact of an ice storm on the United States and Canada. In the United States alone, the storm damaged about 18 million acres of rural and urban forests in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. In New York, the power outage lasted twenty-three days; more than 1,000 transmission towers were damaged; and power companies replaced over 8,000 poles, 1,800 transformers, and 500 miles of wire. In Canada, the outage lasted thirty-three days; more than 1,300 steel towers were damaged; power companies replaced over 35,000 poles and 5,000 transformers. The Canadian response involved the largest peacetime mobilization of military troops in the nation's history. The impact on the region's dairy herds was massive. In New York, 1,400 out of 1,800 dairy farms in the storm region suffered losses.

The discoveries and inventions that preceded and accompanied the early commercialization of electricity are discussed, including the development of batteries and generators and both arc and incandescent lighting. Arc lighting was commercialized before incandescent. The requirements of a system providing electricity for incandescent lighting are very different than that required for arc lighting, requiring parallel rather than series circuits and the application of Ohm’s law. Thomas Edison understood the implications of the difference and the consequent requirement for new generators, meters, fuses, wiring technique and the resistance of an incandescent bulb, all of which he did. His competitors and successors in the industry all embraced his system, which remains in use today. Edison’s claim to have invented the incandescent light is debatable; his role as the inventor of the modern electric utility industry is not.

This chapter addresses the perceived ingenuity of contemporary branding strategy in order to expose other trajectories, particularly the global forces that networked production over time, along which franchising like Transformers has developed. Instead of conceptualizing franchising in terms of its most successful moments, one can assess it in terms of a constant production cycle that constitutes reorganization, management and experimentation, as well as decline across multiple global contexts. The chapter uses the Transformers property in exploring the cultural tensions that emerge when national frames persist in making sense of franchised production. It draws upon samples of press articles and reviews in which critics sought to make sense of this vast system of toys, television, film, comics, and video games in relation to the national cultures of the United States, Japan, United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia, China, and Australia.

This chapter considers various simple dc and ac circuits which contain at least one active element (always a voltage source) and passive elements (resistors, capacitors and inductors) arranged in different combinations to form a bilateral network. The notions of complex voltage, complex current and complex impedance are introduced and then used in the ensuing analysis. Some standard ‘network theorems’ including Kirchhoff’s rules, the delta-star transformation, Thevenin’s theorem and the superposition theorem are employed. Included in the questions are circuits involving bridges, filters, audio amplifiers and transformers. Important topics such as series and parallel resonance in LRC circuits are also considered along the way. Much of the laborious algebra involved in manipulating the complex quantities above is avoided by relegating this task to Mathematica.

The Cape Floristic Region (CFR) is the most invaded terrestrial area in South Africa in terms of the conspicuous prominence of (mainly woody) invasive plants, the area invaded as surveyed, and the numbers of animal invaders. This chapter provides a background to the history, current distribution patterns, and possible futures of introduced and invasive alien species in the CFR, and details how the impacts and management of biological invasions have changed through time. Invasions in the region are dominated by plants — an estimated 21% of the untransformed area of the CFR has been invaded by introduced plants, with strandveld, alluvial vegetation, and wetlands particularly affected. There has been significant government investment into invasive species management in the CFR (through the Working for Water Programme), focussing largely on known transformer species, but in only a few instances (specifically where classical biological control has been used successfully) have there been real reductions in the size of the problem. Future progress will require greater engagement with the public, better implementation, occasionally a more pragmatic approach, e.g. to deal with novel ecosystems, and an understanding of the risks of all types of species translocations. But for many groups little is known about which species are invading, what impacts they cause, and what the major future risks are likely to be, i.e., the invasion debt. A consolidated list of alien animals and plants in the region, categorized wherever possible according to Blackburn’s unified framework, is provided.