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This paper explores the role of material design as a form of institutional power within contemporary school settings. Drawing on concepts of 'coercive design' and 'hostile architecture' from design studies, the paper examines three 'innovative' designs for classroom chairs – relatively mundane but integral elements of the regulation and disciplining of school space. It is argued that the design intentions of these material objects reveal a number of constrained, conservative intentions to maintain the traditional ordered notion of the classroom as a place where students stay in their seats and engage in work. Tellingly, however, this corporeal manipulation and moderation is now couched in claims around desirable physiological and cognitive conditions for learning – with students' bodies seen as objects to arrange and constrain in ways deemed conducive for learning. The paper problematises this de-socialised view of classrooms, alongside the underpinning sense of design solutionism and (mis)appropriation of 'learning science' by product designers to justify their products' capacities to somehow cause learning to take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within this scientific paper, a brief analysis of furniture design is made, with a concrete analysis of the ancient Greek Klismos chair. About the famous Klismos chair, there are papers and analyses that claim the comfort and daily use of the chair at that time by all people without division. A brief description of the beginnings of the modern era is also made, including how it influenced today's architecture and design. By presenting the first modern chairs as unique and free from the former styles, in symbiosis with the Klismos chair, a new concept design for today's everyday chair is obtained. The Triga chair is minimal and functional, which follows today's trend through shape, material, and color. It is designed to be used for everyday activities and as a dining chair. The research methods used in this paper are the qualitative method, the real and productive analysis, the generalization method, the simulation method, and finally the application method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a lifecycle perspective, this paper analyzes the use of reserved seats and the evolution of cooptation norms and practices in Burundi between the signature of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in 2000 and the 2020 legislative elections. Value-driven objectives, such as minority protection, only partly explain their use and design. The adoption, functionality and recent transformation of electoral cooptation were also determined by realpolitik, most notably by the elites' struggle for positions and the balance of power. Cooptation had important effects on ethnic cohabitation within parliamentary factions. The paper contributes to the literature on the micro-institutions of power-sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the publishing of a report `An Ergonomic Case for Correct Casters: Creating a Foundation Safe for Seating Comfort' by Master Manufacturing Co., a producer of replacement caster for office chairs.

In this paper it is intended to determine whether or not the satisfaction of the university students of internal design of cafeterias which students use in between the classes and during their free time varies depending on some characteristics of the students. For this purpose a survey comprising 22 questions and intended for determining students' satisfaction of the internal design of a university cafeteria has been prepared and administered to 149 students. Statistically significant differences have been determined (p < 0.05) between satisfaction of the students of size of the cafeteria's architecture, layout of the tables and chairs, of service and catering points, design, material, comfort and color of the tables and chairs, illumination level, floor material and color, ceiling material with respect to their genders. Moreover statistically significant differences have also been determined between the satisfactions for some characteristics of the cafeteria depending on the grade, academic program type and differences in the revenues (p < 0.05). In conclusion it has been determined that the gender varies the satisfaction for many design feature and hence is the most significant factor in determining the satisfaction. It is considered that the fact that during design of cafeterias common denominators which cater to the satisfaction of the users and satisfy them the most must be determined and design must be done in conformity with the same shall increase satisfaction of the students of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern democratic political systems are hardly conceivable without political representation. This also applies to the European Union, a unique political system with a directly elected and fully-fledged assembly representing the EU citizens, with the European Parliament being the first international parliamentary assembly to strive for democratic political representation. The case study addresses the composition of the European Parliament, or more specifically, it focuses on methods of apportioning the European Parliamentary seats among the EU Member States according to the degressive proportionality principle as codified by the Lisbon Treaty. First, the paper discusses the principle of degressive proportionality, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective, in the latter case taking into account the composition of the European Parliament since the first popular elections in 1979. Subsequently, the study discusses the most relevant proposed European Parliamentary seat apportionment methods, i.e. the Cambridge Compromise, the Power Compromise and the 0,5-DPL method, and seeks to analyse their consequences on the representation of the EU Member States in the European Parliament. The paper concludes that the Cambridge compromise is the most appropriate of the methods discussed as it best meets the requirements of the Lisbon Treaty and related documents for the composition of the European Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Analytical Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Common-rail fuel injection systems are still a good option for equipping new car models. The technology is well known, systems of this type are reliable and can be used on a wide variety of diesel and petrol engines. However, there is still room for improvement. The ball check valve, which is part of the common-rail pump, is designed to open and allow the compressed fluid to be sent to the high-pressure accumulator and close to not allow fuel to return to the compression chamber. The valves' design directly influences the volumetric efficiency of the outlet flow and the robustness against high pressures that lead to low performance and short service life of the fuel injection systems. This paper aims to compare two ball check valves with conical and spherical seat designs. The analysis is based on theoretical calculations and CFD simulations, which will give more confidence in the results. Considering the comparative analysis results, the ball check valve with a spherical seat shows better flow dynamics than the ball check valve with a conical seat. In addition to the improved flow dynamics, the ball check valve with spherical seat seems to have a uniformly distributed fluid pressure inside the valve. In contrast, the conical seat ball check valve has high local fluid pressures, leading to fatigue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the US shape the composition of the UN Security Council during the early Cold War period? By focusing on the election of non‐permanent members to Council seats, this paper investigates what role the US played in the nomination and election of candidate countries. In doing so, the study relies heavily on US diplomatic archives since those archival materials are rich in terms of voting preferences of UN members, negotiations between the US and its allies, and Washington's intensive lobbying for candidates. Investigating contested elections from 1946 to 1964, we find that although the US had an extensive influence on determining Council's non‐permanent members, its power to influence election outcomes dramatically weakened from the late 1950s onwards. This finding has important implications for the recent literature on the UN Security Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government instability, or the duration of a government cabinet, is considered an important feature of democracy, and various authors have studied various alleged causes that affect government instability. This paper examines the impact that the electoral system - the way in which votes casted in national elections are translated into seats in the parliament - has on the instability of government in a democracy. Particularly, it examines the impact of the proportional electoral system on the instability of governments since governments formed in countries with this electoral system, in vast majority of cases, are coalition governments, with different parties, governance and legislative inefficiency due to internal conflicts and the continuing need for consensus. To examine the relationship between the proportional electoral system and government instability, the research for this paper employs different research methods. Following a literature review on the topic, it then focuses on comparative method where the cases of the impact of the electoral system on government stability in Kosovo and in North Macedonia, two neighbors in Southeast Europe with similar electoral system, size of population and number of registered voters, are examined and compared. The electoral system in both Kosovo and North Macedonia is a proportional system (List-PR). Kosovo had 7 different governments in 15 years, and North Macedonia had 10 different governments (including here 2 interim governments) in 20 years. These two cases confirm a correlation between the proportional electoral system that has always produced coalition governments in both countries, and the short duration of the two countries' governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do parties and candidates react to electoral system reform? While the literature on causes and consequences of electoral reforms is receiving increasing attention, we lack a systematic micro-level account on how parties and candidates adopt to changes in electoral rules and district boundaries. This paper examines the case of the Japanese Liberal Democrats to explore how the party has managed to accommodate a surplus of incumbents to a reduced number of nominal tier seats following the 1994 electoral reform. By using micro-level data, I examine how the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has matched candidates based on their expected electoral strength and ideological positioning to new districts. Moreover, I investigate how the newly instituted party-list allowed the LDP to avoid its disintegration at the local level by systematically defusing local stand-offs through the handing out of promising list positions. My findings help to understand how the LDP could avoid its disintegration and could continue to dominate Japanese politics until today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emmanuel Macron’s electoral victory and the rise of his political subject La République en Marche, led to significant changes at the level of French party politics in recent decades. This new political entity has taken the dominant position of the presidential majority, implying the disintegration of the bipolar “cartel” of the Socialist Party and the Republicans in the National Assembly. In addition to the fundamental recalculation of power relations through the election outcomes, it has resulted in a major reversal at the level of the classical party forces – left and right block, so that the structure criteria of the former party system were significantly violated. In this paper, we provide a more analytical view of which poles formed the party system of the 5th French Republic. We argue that the typical bipolar configuration in the form of the dominant left and right polarity has not existed from the first moment. We carry out a reconstruction of the main poles of the French party system through seat distribution by the individual political groups in the legislature. The key argument of our article is that the structural impact of the Macronist party’s electoral success has led to one of the most significant transformations of the party system’s polarity: the return of the political centre as the dominant pole and the shift from bipolarity to tripolarity. Regarding the sustainability of the new party reconfiguration, we conclude with several scenarios of further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the German university landscape, by contrast, private funding is virtually unknown and universities are dependent on funding by the state. The University could take this drastic step because European languages were marginal to the Oxford curriculum.[2] In the 1840s, undergraduate studies for the BA and MA degrees focused heavily on Latin. The history of the Taylor Chair and of German studies at Oxford, which I will survey in this paper, thus illustrates the importance of private philanthropy for university funding. Keywords: Modern Languages; Curriculum; Colleges; Literature; Fiedler; Boyd; Stahl; Prawer EN Modern Languages Curriculum Colleges Literature Fiedler Boyd Stahl Prawer 398 405 8 04/11/22 20211201 NES 211201 When I gave a version of this paper as an online talk, I added to the title "by the last Taylor Professor". [Extracted from the article]

This paper deals with a novel approach to the control system synthesis of semi-active and active seat suspensions. An original control strategy is discussed in order to increase the effectiveness of vibration isolators used for protection of working machines operators. As an example of the proposed control system design, the suspension systems with a magneto-rheological damper and a pneumatic spring are investigated using a laboratory experimental set-up with seated humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on specializing the furnishings where Jefferson created in order for efficiently managing the communications. Topics include operating from farms and houses where Jefferson's remote location on a mountaintop in rural Virginia presenting communication challenges; and supporting cast of family members and enslaved people orchestrated scenes of domestic tranquility.

Copyright of FME Transactions is the property of University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Proton heavy ion radiotherapy is widely used and currently represents the most advanced radiotherapy technology. However, at present, proton heavy ion radiotherapy chairs in fixed beam radiotherapy rooms do not have a head and neck positioning function. This paper presents a novel design for a proton heavy ion radiotherapy chair with a head and neck positioning device. The design of the posture adjustment mechanism and the head and neck positioning device of the treatment chair is based on U-TRIZ theory and ergonomics, respectively. A positive kinematic analysis of the posture adjusting mechanism was carried out, as well as a workspace analysis of the head and neck positioning device. Finally, positioning error experiment and ergonomic evaluation were performed on a prototype of the head and neck positioning device. The proposed design of the treatment chair satisfies the requirements for posture adjustment and achieves the head and neck positioning function. The experimental results also provide a basis for further optimization of the design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]