Recent studies have argued the increasing complexity of engineering practice brings challenges to engineers. Creativity has been thought as one necessary element in engineering education. And to let students work with project work has been regarded as a good strategy of developing creativity. However, the literature shows studies on engineering education, most previous efforts take a departure ...

Office workers typically care little about saving energy because they are not responsible for paying energy-related bills. The goal of this study is to find ways to reduce the unconscious negative impact by applying persuasive technologies to create awareness and encourage office workers towards more environmentally-sustainable behavior. This paper presents a summary of the intervention techniq...

The production of fictions within the design field are not disinterested speculations about distant futures, but intentional political actions in the present time. Fictions can entertain as much as cause social friction. This article discusses three sources of design fictions: a global information technology company; an art school in the UK; and a design institute in Brazil. By contrasting the ...

This study uncovers trading styles in the transaction records of US Treasury bond futures. We use statistical clustering techniques to group together trades that are similar. Trade profit was held back in the clustering process. Results show that clusters differ significantly in their profit and risk characteristics. Some clusters uncover "technical" trading rules. Using the information about t...

This paper argues there is value in considering participatory design as a form of anthropology at a time when we recognise that we need not only to understand cultures but to change them towards sustainable living. Holding up the democratically-oriented practices of some participatory design research to definitions of anthropology allows the essay to explore the role of intervention in social p...

Understanding the underlying dynamics of population change is critical for national planning. This analysis explores South Africa’s fertility, mortality and migration outlooks, with a particular emphasis on the uncertainty surrounding migration. Using the International Futures (IFs) model and data from the South African 2011 National Census data, we simulated three potential population futures ...

We construct asset markets of the type studied in Smith et al. (1988), in which price bubbles and crashes are widely observed. In addition to a spot market, there are futures markets in operation, one maturing in each period of the life of the asset. We find that when futures markets are present, bubbles do not occur in the spot markets. The futures markets seem to reduce the speculation and th...

This paper examines the impact of management preferences on optimal futures hedging strategy and associated performance. Applying an expected utility hedging objective, the optimal futures hedge ratio is determined for a range of preferences on risk aversion, hedging horizon and expected returns. Empirical results reveal substantial hedge ratio variation across distinct management preferences a...

In this paper we discuss how our insight into the grounds of existence of futures markets has changed. We discuss futures market research within agricultural marketing, on the one hand, and within finance, on the other hand. The research within these two disciplines may be considered complementary. Subsequently, a new research model is presented which integrates both strains of research. This m...