Integrated Product Design in Chemical Industry. A Plea for Adequate Life-Cycle Screening Indicators

The ever expanding growth of energy and material fluxes and the associated environmental impact challenge the chemical industry to integrate ecological issues into the design of new chemical substances and products (integrated product design). To achieve this goal, product developers as well as marketing and application specialists need appropriate tools for incorporating ecological issues at every stage of product development. Life-Cycle Design, an approach based on the screening indicators of the streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, is an appropriate concept that can be used even at early development stages. Still today, however, many product designers regard screening indicators, e.g. energy and/or material intensity, summary emission indicators (DOC, TOC, VOC, etc.) as rather subjective judgements, even if they are based on experts' knowledge, panel discussions, etc. Thus, there is a strong need for defining an appropriate set of objective screening indicators based on a natural science approach. These enable an accurate description of environmental effects of a chemical substance in all environmental compartments (air, soil, water, and biota). In this work, we present a conceptual framework for screening indicators that take into account both process inputs and outputs at every single life-cycle stage. Finally, first results based on several case studies (solvents, dyestuffs, …) are shown

Maximum common subgraph isomorphism algorithms for the matching of chemical structures

The maximum common subgraph (MCS) problem has become increasingly important in those aspects of chemoinformatics that involve the matching of 2D or 3D chemical structures. This paper provides a classification and a review of the many MCS algorithms, both exact and approximate, that have been described in the literature, and makes recommendations regarding their applicability to typical chemoinformatics tasks

Identifying lead users in a living lab environment

This paper emphasizes the identification process of lead users within a living lab environment. Lead users are seen as important contributors to the living lab methodology since they express needs before the general market does. Additionally they generate ideas with a high level of novelty. Living Lab researchers have focused on the added value of involving these users in their research, but research on how to identify these lead users is still lacking. Therefore this paper will focus on the identification process of lead users by means of a Living Lab case study in the world of movie theaters

A Scientific Roadmap for Antibiotic Discovery: A Sustained and Robust Pipeline of New Antibacterial Drugs and Therapies is Critical to Preserve Public Health

In recent decades, the discovery and development of new antibiotics have slowed dramatically as scientific barriers to drug discovery, regulatory challenges, and diminishing returns on investment have led major drug companies to scale back or abandon their antibiotic research. Consequently, antibiotic discovery—which peaked in the 1950s—has dropped precipitously. Of greater concern is the fact that nearly all antibiotics brought to market over the past 30 years have been variations on existing drugs. Every currently available antibiotic is a derivative of a class discovered between the early 1900s and 1984.At the same time, the emergence of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has accelerated, giving rise to life-threatening infections that will not respond to available antibiotic treatment. Inevitably, the more that antibiotics are used, the more that bacteria develop resistance—rendering the drugs less effective and leading public health authorities worldwide to flag antibiotic resistance as an urgent and growing public health threat

Opportunities for Dutch Biorefineries

Deze Roadmap Bioraffinage beschrijft een aantal mogelijke routes naar de ontwikkeling en implementatie van een bioraffinage-gerelateerde Bio-based Economy in Nederland. De Roadmap combineert korte- en middellange termijn mogelijkheden (commerciële implementatie, demonstratie plants, pilot plants en gerelateerd toegepast onderzoek) met strategisch onderzoek voor de langere termijn. Tevens zijn vier z.g. Moonshots uitgewerkt, als voorziene bioraffinagestrategieën met een grote potentie voor de Nederlandse economi

A critical evaluation of the standardisation potential of business plan evaluation aids (BPEA) used in venture capital investment decision-making

The research objective was to perform a critical evaluation and comparison of four, representative Business Plan Evaluation Aids (BPEA) to facilitate constructive discussion of the proposition that greater standardisation of venture capital decision-making might be both desirable and possible.The four BPEA were systematically compared using a structured, taxonomic process employing seven key criteria. The evidence of this investigation suggests a clear superiority for BPEAs, which are based on the known attributes of successful ventures and use actuarial modelling. Discussion centred on the importance of using BPEAs in a quest for greater consistency of venture capital investment decision-making.<br /

JuxtaLearn D3.2 Performance Framework

This deliverable, D3.2, for Work Package 3 incorporating the pedagogy from WP2 and orchestration factors mapped in D3.1 reviews aspects of performance in the context of participative video making. It reviews literature on curiosity and engagement characteristics of interaction mechanisms for public displays and anticipates requirements for social network analysis of relevant public videos from WP6 task 6.3. Thus, to support JuxtaLearn performance it proposes a reflective performance framework that encompasses the material environment and objects required, the participants, and the knowledge needed

Internal efficiency of nutrient utilization: what is it and how to measure it during vegetative plant growth?

Efficient use of the resources required by plants to sustain crop production is considered an important objective in agriculture. In this context, the idea of developing crops with an enhanced ability to utilize mineral nutrients already taken up by roots has been proposed. In recent years powerful tools that allow the association of phenotypic variation with high-resolution genetic maps of crop plants have also emerged. To take advantage of these tools, accurate methods are needed to estimate the internal efficiency of nutrient utilization (ENU) at the whole-plant level, which requires using suitable conceptual and experimental approaches. Here we highlight some inconsistencies in the definitions of ENU commonly used for ENU ‘phenotyping’ at the vegetative stage and suggest that it would be convenient to adopt a dynamic definition. The idea that ENU should provide information about the relationship between carbon and mineral nutrient economies mainly during the period under which growth is actually affected by low internal nutrient concentration is here advocated as a guide for the selection of adequate operational ENU formulae for the vegetative stage. The desirability of using experimental approaches that allow removal of the influence of nutrient acquisition efficiency on ENU estimations is highlighted. It is proposed that the use of simulation models could help refine the conclusions obtained through these experimental procedures. Some potential limitations in breeding for high ENU are also considered.Fil: Santa Maria, Guillermo Esteban. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); ArgentinaFil: Moriconi, Jorge Ignacio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); ArgentinaFil: Oliferuk, Sonia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús). Universidad Nacional de San Martín. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas. Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas "Dr. Raúl Alfonsín" (sede Chascomús); Argentin

Investigating learning in construction organizations

Learning in construction has received scant attention within extant theories of generic organizational learning. One of the apparently distinct characteristics of construction organization is that its business mainly runs through projects. In contrast, the origin of the organizational learning concept mainly stems from routine-based organizations. The present study investigates how these theories are applied in the construction domain. To be more specific, it focuses on contracting organizations that engage with the UK performance enhancement initiative known as Constructing Excellence. The paper summarises the theoretical perspective on the current state of knowledge about this topic and the full methodology to be adopted. In overall terms, the methodology takes a multifaceted approach involving six major stages. The first phases of this process are now complete. It takes the form of a business audit relating to the type and size of projects currently being undertaken and how the project teams are managed. In themselves, the results contain new empirical data that has informed the direction of the rest study. Two general groups of construction companies were identified: general contractors and specialist/subcontractors. Each of these groups has a different tendency for how they manage their project teams. The former tends to reform for each new project, while the latter favours staying together. The initial premise is that each of these practices implies different learning mechanisms. Further study and analysis will depart from these initial findings