Systems engineering

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how to design and manage complex engineering systems over their life cycles. Issues such as requirements engineering, reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams, testing and evaluation, maintainability and many other disciplines necessary for successful system development, design, implementation, and ultimate decommission become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work-processes, optimization methods, and risk management tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as control engineering, industrial engineering, software engineering, organizational studies, and project management. Systems engineering ensures that all likely aspects of a project or system are considered, and integrated into a whole.

The systems engineering process is a discovery process that is quite unlike a manufacturing process. A manufacturing process is focused on repetitive activities that achieve high quality outputs with minimum cost and time. The systems engineering process must begin by discovering the real problems that need to be resolved, and identify the most probable or highest impact failures that can occur - systems engineering involves finding elegant solutions to these problems.

Thermodynamic process

Classical thermodynamics considers three main kinds of thermodynamic process: change in a system, cycles in a system, and flow processes.

Defined by change in a system, a thermodynamic process is a passage of a thermodynamic system from an initial to a final state of thermodynamic equilibrium. The initial and final states are the defining elements of the process. The actual course of the process is not the primary concern, and often is ignored. This is the customary default meaning of the term 'thermodynamic process'. In general, during the actual course of a thermodynamic process, the system passes through physical states which are not describable as thermodynamic states, because they are far from internal thermodynamic equilibrium. Such processes are useful for thermodynamic theory.

Defined by a cycle of transfers into and out of a system, a cyclic process is described by the quantities transferred in the several stages of the cycle, which recur unchangingly. The descriptions of the staged states of the system are not the primary concern. Cyclic processes were important conceptual devices in the early days of thermodynamical investigation, while the concept of the thermodynamic state variable was being developed.

Process philosophy

Process philosophy (or ontology of becoming) identifies metaphysical reality with change and development. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have posited true reality as "timeless", based on permanent substances, while processes are denied or subordinated to timeless substances. If Socrates changes, becoming sick, Socrates is still the same (the substance of Socrates being the same), and change (his sickness) only glides over his substance: change is accidental, whereas the substance is essential. Therefore, classic ontology denies any full reality to change, which is conceived as only accidental and not essential. This classical ontology is what made knowledge and a theory of knowledge possible, as it was thought that a science of something in becoming was an impossible feat to achieve.

In opposition to the classical model of change as accidental (as argued by Aristotle) or illusory, process philosophy regards change as the cornerstone of reality — the cornerstone of Being thought of as Becoming. Modern philosophers who appeal to process rather than substance include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Charles Peirce, Alfred North Whitehead, Alan Watts, Robert M. Pirsig, Charles Hartshorne, Arran Gare, Nicholas Rescher, Colin Wilson, and Gilles Deleuze. In physics Ilya Prigogine distinguishes between the "physics of being" and the "physics of becoming". Process philosophy covers not just scientific intuitions and experiences, but can be used as a conceptual bridge to facilitate discussions among religion, philosophy, and science.

Legal case

A legal case is a dispute between opposing parties resolved by a court, or by some equivalent legal process. A legal case may be either civil or criminal. There is a defendant and an accuser.

A civil case

A civil case, more commonly known as a lawsuit or controversy, begins when a plaintiff files a document called a complaint with a court, informing the court of the wrong that the plaintiff has allegedly suffered because of the defendant, and requesting a remedy. A civil case can also be arbitrated through arbitration. The remedy sought may be money, an injunction, which requires the defendant to perform or refrain from performing some action, or a declaratory judgment, which determines that the plaintiff has certain legal rights. Whoever wins gets either released from custody or gets nothing (Accuser).

The plaintiff must also make a genuine effort to inform the defendant of the case through service of process, by which the plaintiff delivers to the defendant the same documents that the plaintiff filed with the court.

Letter case

In orthography and typography, letter case (or just case) is the distinction between the letters that are in larger upper case (also capital letters, capitals, caps, large letters, or more formally majuscule (see Terminology) and smaller lower case (also small letters, or more formally minuscule, see Terminology) in the written representation of certain languages. Here is a comparison of the upper and lower case versions of each letter included in the English alphabet (the exact representation will vary according to the font used):

Typographically, the basic difference between the majuscules and minuscules is not that the majuscules are big and minuscules small, but that the majuscules generally have the same height. The height of the minuscules varies, as some of them have parts higher or lower than the average, i.e. ascenders and descenders. In Times New Roman, for instance, b, d, f, h, k, l, t are the letters with ascenders, and g, j, p, q, y are the ones with descenders. Further to this, with old-style numerals still used by some traditional or classical fonts—although most do have a set of alternative Lining Figures— 6 and 8 make up the ascender set, and 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 the descender set.

Yunnan hide-and-seek incident

The Yunnan hide-and-seek incident (云南躲猫猫事件) also called the 208 case (208案件) was a case where a man was taken into police custody in Jinning, Yunnan, People's Republic of China in 2009 and mysteriously died a few days later. He was reported to have died from playing hide and seek, though netizens claim he was beaten to death by the police. The case was later closed with three suspects receiving different sentences.

Incident

Li Qiaoming (李荞明), aged 24, of Yuxi city, was taken into custody in Jinning county on January 30, 2009 for cutting trees without authorization. He was hospitalized on February 8, and died four days later from severe brain injuries. According to Jinning police bureau, Li died while playing Peekaboo (躲猫猫), a game similar to hide and seek. They claimed an inmate reacted angrily when Li found his hiding spot during the game. Li was then pushed and struck a wall as he fell. The incident then appeared in local newspapers in Kunming on February 13.