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This review presents a sequence of exemplary experience-based encounters with self-organizing systems on different levels of difficulty. Based on hands-on experiments and creative modeling it provides a viable educational road to build up a deeper understanding of self-organization principles and their comprehensive nature. Theories of self-organization describe how patterns, structures and new types of behavior emerge in energetically open systems, resulting from the local interaction of many components. As an external control instance is missing, the underlying philosophy is counterintuitive to our habits of causal thinking. This thematic and conceptual framework impacts on many STEM domains and presents a blueprint for modeling emergent structures and complex functions in natural and technological systems. It reveals unifying principles that can help in reducing, in structuring and, finally, in understanding and controlling the emerging complexity. An overview across diverse STEM domains highlights the role of this overarching concept. This cross-disciplinary approach can help in improving the dialogue and the knowledge exchange between the individual fields. Moreover, in a self-referential fashion, the modeling of self-organization provides us with fresh perspectives to reflect our own creative processes.

The objective of this paper is to present modeling and simulation of the effect of head restraint position on head/neck dynamics in rear-end motor vehicle collisions. Although individual injury tolerance levels vary, it is believed that properly positioned head restraints can be beneficial in reducing injury. The paper discusses the effects of restraint positioning by simulating a series of rear-end collisions using a finite-segment (lumped-mass) model of the human frame. It is found that proximity of the restraint to the head is the principal factor in preventing harmful whiplash motion. The findings suggest that "smart" head restraints could therefore significantly reduce whiplash induced injuries.

The key purpose of a TES unit is simply to perform as a time-shifting buffer between peak supply and demand periods over varying timescales. However, the integration of TES units into a thermal operating system is non-trivial and involves several issues, including (1) How should they be sized? (2) How should they be optimized to suit the needs of the end user? and (3) How should they be incorporated into a system in order to promote the overall system performance? This chapter describes system-level TES integration and the various approaches taken by the industrial and academic fields to incorporate TES as an integral part of system-level operation. Fundamental principles such as the system operating design and control will be first covered, followed by recent and more niche applications in the various industrial sectors.