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This paper seeks to describe an approach to multi‐objective optimization problems (MOOPs) based on game theory (GT) and to provide a comparison with the more standard Pareto approach on a real design problem.

The GT is first briefly presented, then a possible recasting of MOOPs in terms of GT is described, where players from GT are associated with single objectives and strategies to the choice of degrees of freedom. A comparison with the Pareto approach is performed on the optimized design of a superconducting synchronous generator.

It was shown that the GT can be applied to the optimized design of real world devices, with results that present a different viewpoint on the problem, yet with device performance comparable with those obtained by standard approaches.

Only the Nash approach to non‐cooperative games has been applied; the conditions for the solution found using GT to belong to the Pareto front have not been fully explored.

Designers and engineers interested in optimal design are presented with a new design technique able to get a balance among conflicting partial objectives, that can also be used to select among different possible designs obtained in other ways (e.g. using the Pareto front approach).

The paper demonstrates the possibility of using GT in the design of real world electromagnetic devices, with reference to the optimal shape design of a high temperature superconducting single‐phase synchronous generator.

Welfare policies for persons with disabilities have been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this introductory chapter provides the theoretical background to the book. Definition, data and main European policies about disabilities are outlined. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is the key pillar of disability policies in European countries. In line with a Disability Studies perspective, COVID-19 health surveillance regime has been a challenge in the implementation process of the UNCRPD, highlighting the role of lay knowledge and community of practices in managing everyday challenges for persons with disabilities and their families, and therefore their potential role in becoming part of epistemic communities to support the policy making and implementation process of the UNCRPD.

In this chapter, the authors present a theoretical framework to not only better understand the wicked nature of the Airbnb phenomenon but also, using case examples from around the world, to illustrate how governments have attempted to mitigate Airbnb’s negative impacts.

Analysing the sharing economy, specifically the Airbnb platform, through the lens of Karl Polanyi’s Double Movement Theory, brings growing tension between markets and society into sharp relief. In the ensuing sections of this chapter, the authors will then adopt a ‘wicked problem’ perspective to provide some analytical insights into how governments across the world have attempted to respond to this wicked policy problem and explore different policy responses and regulatory frameworks in greater depth. Through the review of exemplary cases from around the world, considerable variation in governance and policy responses could be identified.

Building on the Lau and Murnighan’s theory of fault line strength, Flache and Mäs (2008b) proposed a computational opinion dynamics model to explore the effect of demographic fault line strength on team cohesion. This study aims to extend the Flache–Mäs (FM) model to incorporate geographical location and the dyadic communication regime in opinion formation process. More specifically, we make spatially proximate agents more likely to interact with each other in the dyadic communication regime. Our results show that when agents update their opinion after each pairwise encounter, opinion polarization is lower at steady state compared to when they update their opinion after interacting with all agents. In addition, if nearby agents are more likely to interact with each other, we see greater polarization compared to the FM model with the dyadic communication regime. An immediate policy implication of this result is that organizational managers should design work space in a way that encourage wider communications between members of a team and avoid geographically local communication.

We introduce our computational models to study the effect of location and the dyadic communication regime on team performance (as measured by agents’ opinions on various work-related issues) in the presence of a strong demographic fault line. Our models are extensions of the FM model. For clarification purposes, first we describe the FM model and then elaborate our extensions.

The most important finding of this paper is that the timing of interactions plays an important role in steady state of opinion space in a given population. The reason can be traced to the path-dependent nature of social systems, in which initial adopters of a certain opinion or an ideology can significantly change the final configuration of a population. For example, if an early adopter of a given work-related issue in an organization has an extremely positive view toward that issue, and s/he interacts with nearby employees who have similar demographic attributes, we would expect to find an extreme opinion cluster with respect to that issue after a while. However, depending on factors that affect the timing of interaction between individuals, we would expect different outcome in the same organization. If, for instance, more extreme people are more likely to interact, the results would be different compared to when moderate agents are more likely to interact.

One immediate policy implication of the results of this paper is that organizational managers should design work space in a way that encourage wider communications between members of a team and avoid geographically local communication, if they are to temper the negative effect of a strong demographic fault line. However, they should be cautious and take other related findings into account to avoid undesirable outcomes. For example, according to Flache and Mäss’s results, managers can also initially encourage discussion within demographically homogenous groups and avoid controversial work-related issues. In addition, previous studies showed that more contacts between agents may increase opinion polarization. Our results provide no evidence for more complex and modern organizational designs where individuals or teams do not have a fixed location or stable geographical pattern. For instance, in a modern car manufacturing shop floor, it is possible that workers have to move with cars, or operational engineers have to move between different sections and places. Furthermore, there may be a flexible and dynamic work schedule for workers such that they share a same work station but in different time, which requires a more complex model than what we presented in this paper. In this sense, the geographical setting analyzed in this paper should not be generalized to all organizations or companies. We also have no evidence about other critical factors that might affect the communication and activation regime of individuals. For example, one could imagine a case that workers with the same level of skill in a specific work-related issue are more likely to interact with each other. Moreover, some specific organizational structures could impose additional restrictions on who can/should interact with whom.

To present a robust optimal design technique in the presence of system parameters uncertainties.

The properties of normally distributed random variables are exploited, together with surface response fitting techniques, with the aim to reduce the computational cost in assessing the effect of uncertainties.

A fast approximate method for computing statistical average is presented together with its implementation for the design of magnets for magnetic resonance imaging.

Future research will be focused to multi‐dimensional problems and to the best choose of closed form expressions to evaluate statistical moments fitting.

Robust optimal design methodologies are receiving an increasing interest in both academic and industrial research, due to their capability of coping with construction uncertainties and tolerances.

The effectiveness of the simplified method has been demonstrated for an analytical example and on a simplified superconducting magnet design. The proposed strategy is quite general and it can be applied to a wide class of optimal design problems.

An effective approach to the optimal design of electromagnetic devices should take into account the effect of mechanical tolerances on the actual devices performance. A possible approach could be to match a Pareto optimality study with a Monte Carlo analysis by randomly varying the constructive parameters. In this paper it is shown how such an analysis can be used to allow an expert designer to select among different Pareto optimal designs.

To establish a statistical formulation of robust design optimization and to develop a fast optimization algorithm for the solution of the statistical design problem.

Existing formulations and methods for statistical robust design are reviewed and compared. A consistent problem formulation in terms of statistical parameters of the involved variables is introduced. A novel algorithm for statistical optimization is developed. It is based on the unscented transformation, a fast method for the propagation of random variables through nonlinear functions. The prediction performance of the unscented transformation is demonstrated and compared with other methods by means of an analytical test function. The validity of the proposed approach is shown through the design of the superconducting magnetic energy storage device of the TEAM workshop problem 22.

Provides a consistent formulation of statistical robust design optimization and an efficient and accurate method for the solution of practical problems.

The proposed approach can be applied to all kinds of design problems and allows to account for the inevitable effects of tolerances and parameter variations occuring in practical realizations of designed devices.

The role of the parameters uncertainness in the optimal design of electromagnetic devices is discussed and an efficient strategy to look for robustness of feasible solutions is proposed. A suitable modification of the objective function (OF) is used to rank different device configurations on the basis of their ability to maintain the required performances against small parameters modifications due to construction tolerances. In the frame of a genetic algorithm approach, the modified OF has been able to address the evolutionary optimisation towards more robust solutions.

TiN and TiAlVN films have been prepared by DC magnetron sputtering technique at room temperature. TiN target has been used to deposit TiN thin film under pure argon (100 percent Ar) gas. Additionally, Ti6Al4V alloy target has been used to deposit TiAlVN under nitrogen and argon gas (50 percent Ar and 50 percent N₂). In this paper, two substrate types have been used: stainless steel 304 and Si(100). This analysis has confirmed that the nitride films, (TiN/Si) and TiAlVN in both cases, have been produced. Energy Depressive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) measurement confirmed that the TiN/Si was stoichiometry, where the N/Ti ratio was about 1 with low oxygen contamination. The results obtained have indicated that the TiAlVN has more resistance to corrosion than TiN film in 3.5 percent NaCl at 25°C (seawater). Both films, TiAlVN/SS304 and TiN/SS304, have shown improved corrosion resistance compared with virgin 304 substrate. Microhardness was carried out using Vickers method; the microhardness values for TiN/SS304 and TiAlVN/SS304 were approximately 7.5 GPa and 25.3 GPa, respectively. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The films were prepared by a DC magnetron sputtering system starting from high pure (99.99 percent) Ti6Al4V target (Al 6wt%, V 4wt% and balance Ti) in plasma discharge argon/nitrogen (50 percent Ar and 50 percent N₂) for deposition of TiAlVN film. Pure TiN target (99.99 percent) was used for preparation of TiN film in pure argon plasma. The diameter of target was 50 mm and the power applied for preparation of the two films was 100 W. A cylindrical high-vacuum chamber (Figure 2) made of stainless steel 316, with height 363 mm diameter, was fabricated locally. Scanning electron microscope images have been used to discover the films morphology. The composition of the films has been determined by EDX technique for films deposited on Si substrate. The electrochemical corrosion test was carried out using conventional three-electrode cell of 300 ml capacity by using Voltalab PGZ 301 system (France) using Tafel extrapolation method and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy techniques.

TiN and TiAlVN films have been prepared by DC magnetron sputtering technique without heating of the substrates holder. The effects of the composition of nitride films on mechanical and corrosion properties were investigated. The composition of the films has been determined by EDX technique. The effect of using titanium alloy (Ti with Al and V) on the composition and crystalline quality has been investigated. The microhardness is strongly dependent on the addition of the Al and V elements, and it consequently improves mechanical proprieties. The microhardness values for TiN/SS304 were approximately 7.5 GPa and 25.3 GPa for TiAlVN/SS304. They indicate that prepared films prevent the aggressive action of corrosion media.

TiN and TiAlVN films have been prepared by DC magnetron sputtering method at room temperature. Titanium nitride film, especially TiAlVN, is an effective method to improve the corrosion resistance of SS304. TiAlVN film has exhibited enhanced corrosion resistance and higher microhardness. Independent time-of-flight elastic recoil detection analysis has been used to determine the composition of the film.

The body of literature in the field now commonly known as the “quality of working life” (QWL) has grown steadily over a period in which the industrialised nations have increasingly come to question the role and status of human beings in the modern technological environment. In recent years concern with the nature of work, its impact upon people, and their attitudes towards it, seem to have sharpened. Investigation of, and experimentation with, the qualitative aspects of working life—its ability to confer self‐fulfilment directly, for example, as opposed to being a means of acquiring goods—has gained momentum under the influence of a unique set of economic, social, political and technological factors. The outpouring of books, reports and articles from a wide variety of sources has, not surprisingly, grown apace.