When the Butter Got Done： The Resilience of Indigenous Design Processes During Dictatorial Regime in Uganda Between 1971-1978 and Their Continued Use in Kiruhura District in S.W. Uganda

Although African continent and Uganda in particular experienced the influence of the western economies which came with exploration, missionary work, and colonialism, and which put the indigenous design creativity to sleep, communities have continued to show resilience in utilizing indigenous design processes whenever there is a shift in the cosmetic African-West relationship. This paper describes and assesses how indigenous processes become fundamental and sustained a fragile economy of Uganda after the military takeover of government by Idi Amin in 1971. It looks at how Ugandan artisans employed their long forgotten skills in designing processes that allowed communities to function. For example artisans made spare parts for the abandoned factories, made soap, and processed salt for consumption. The paper takes a pro-vocal approach and traces how this worked, how it is still working even when the country is presumably peaceful with the majority of the population engaged in agriculture production. The author carried out an ethnographic study on 90 participants in Kiruhura district in S.W. Uganda to establish how families integrate indigenous design processes in their daily activities. The author investigated why families continue to use indigenous material cultural items such as carvings, pottery, baskets, and iron work yet government policy emphases commercial agriculture. Results indicate that most families still use indigenous design processes in agriculture, housing, and treatment because of the superficial and unstructured ability by most families to use western made technologies, and that many of them do not have the necessary resources to acquire the modern technology. Results further indicate that families have a special attachment to indigenous materials which gives them an identity and ownership and that some items work better than the Western designed products. The paper concludes that those indigenous design processes are fundamentally good opportunities for entrepreneur actions that could be viable household enterprises. In addition to improving household incomes, the author theorize that re-engaging indigenous design processes, may facilitate ownership, resilience, and creativity of indigenous African creativity and design processes that could lead to sustainable development.

Near-Threshold Wide-Voltage Design Review

This paper presents a comprehensive review of near-threshold wide-voltage designs on memory,resilient logic designs,low voltage Radio Frequency(RF)circuits,and timing analysis.With the prosperous development of wearable applications,low power consumption has become one of the primary challenges for IC designs.To improve the power efficiency,the prefer scheme is to operate at an ultra low voltage of Near Threshold Voltage(NTV).For the performance variation and degradation,a self-adaptive margin assignment technique is proposed in the low voltage.The proposed technique tracks the circuit states in real time and dynamically allocates voltage margins,reducing the minimum supply voltage and achieving higher energy efficiency.The self-adaptive margin assignment technique can be used in Static Random Access Memory(SRAM),digital circuits,and analog/RF circuits.Based on the self-adaptive margin assignment technique,the minimum voltage in the 40 nm CMOS process is reduced to 0.6 V or even lower,and the energy efficiency is increased by 3–4 times.

Offshore system safety and operational challenges in harsh Arctic operations

Offshore oil and gas drilling operations are going to remote and harsh arctic environments with demands forheightened safety and resilience of operational facilities. The remote and harsh environment is characterized byextreme waves, wind, storms, currents, ice, and fog that hinder drilling operations and cause structural failuresof critical offshore infrastructures. The risk, safety, reliability, and integrity challenges in harsh environment operations are critically high, and a comprehensive understanding of these factors will aid operations and protectthe investment. The dynamics, environmental constraints, and the associated risk of the critical offshore infrastructures for safe design, installation, and operations are reviewed to identify the current state of knowledge.This paper introduces a systematic review of harsh environment characterization by exploring the metoceanphenomena prevalent in harsh environments and their effects on the floating offshore structures performanceand supporting systems. The dynamics of the floating systems are described by their six degrees of freedom andtheir associated risk scenarios. The systematic methodology further explores the qualitative, quantitative, andconsequences modeling techniques for risk analysis of floating offshore systems in a harsh environment. Whilepresenting the current state of knowledge, the study also emphasizes a way forward for sustainable offshore operations. The study shows that the current state of knowledge is inexhaustive and will require further researchto develop a design that minimizes interruption during remote harsh offshore operations. Resilient innovation,IoT and digitalization provide opportunities to fill some of the challenges of remote Arctic offshore operations.

Prediction of performance and evaluation of flexible pavement rehabilitation strategies

Five test sections with different additives and strategies were established to rehabilitate a State-maintained highway more effectively in Rhode Island （RI）： control, calcium chloride, asphalt emulsion, Portland cement and geogrid. Resilient moduli of subgrade soils and subbase materials before and after full depth rehabilitation were employed as input pa- rameters to predict the performance of pavement structures using AASHTOWare Pave- ment ME Design （Pavement ME） software in terms of rutting, cracking and roughness. It was attempted to use Level i input （which includes traffic full spectrum data, climate data and structural layer properties） for Pavement ME. Traffic data was obtained from a Weigh- in-Motion （WIM} instrument and Providence station was used for collecting climatic data. Volumetric properties, dynamic modulus and creep compliance were used as input pa- rameters for 19 mm （0.75 in.} warm mix asphalt （WMA） base and 12.S mm （0.5 in.） WMA surface layer. The results indicated that all test sections observed AC top-down （longitu- dinal） cracking except Portland cement section which passed for all criteria. The order in terms of performance （best to worst） for all test sections by Pavement ME was Portland cement, calcium chloride, control, geogrid, and asphalt emulsion. It was also observed that all test sections passed for both bottom up and top down fatigue cracking by increasing thickness of either of the two top asphalt layers. Test sections with five different base/ subbase materials were evaluated in last two years through visual condition survey and measurements of deflection and roughness to confirm the prediction, but there was no serious distress and roughness. Thus these experiments allowed selecting the best reha- bilitation/reconstruction techniques for the particular and/or similar highway, and a framework was formulated to select an optimal technique and/or strategy for future rehabilitation/reconstruction projects. Finally, guidelines for long-term evaluation were developed to verify short-term prediction and performance.