Material selection is a fundamental step in mechanical design that has to meet all the functional requirements of the component. Multiple-attributed decision-making (MADM) processes are already well established to choose the preeminent alternative from the finite set of alternatives, but there is some lack of geometrical evidence if the alternatives are considered as multi-dimensional points. In this paper, a fresh spatial approach is proposed based on nearest neighbor search (NNS) in which the nearness parameter is considered as a Manhattan norm (Taxicab geometry) in turn which is a function of the Euclidean norm and cosine similarity to raise a preeminent alternative under the MADM framework. Cryogenic storage tank and flywheel are considered as two case studies to check the validity of the proposed spatial approach based on NNS in material selection. The result shows the right choice for the cryogenic storage tank is the austenitic steel (SS 301 FH), and for the flywheel, it is a composite material (Kevler 49-epoxy FRP) those are consistent with the real-world practice and the results are compared with other MADM methods of previous works.

The personalization of politics has become a central concern in political science. This is also true for parliamentary governments, where the Prime Minister has allegedly acquired an increasing relevance. Nonetheless, a key question remains unanswered: How can we estimate the Prime Minister Policy Autonomy (PMPA) in parliamentary governments? Moreover, what are the determinants of this autonomy? This article aims to answer these questions by proposing a novel and easily replicable index of PMPA, based on data from an analysis of Prime Ministers’ and members of Parliament’s parliamentary speeches, and specifically from cosine similarity analysis. In this article, we explore PMPA by focussing on two most different cases of coalition governments, Italy and Germany between 1994 and 2014. A multilevel regression analysis shows that coalition-related factors strongly influence PMPA, party-related factors are somewhat relevant, and the Prime Minister-related factor (its selectorate) does not have a significant impact on such autonomy.