A design framework for enabling sustainability in the clothing sector

This article discusses general strategies to enable environmental sustainability within the clothing sector, providing a framework for decision makers involved in the development of programs and policies for this sector. It initially revises the environmental impact of the clothing system and determines its key environmental sustainability priorities. The framework involves five evolutionary strategies for enabling sustainable consumption and production: 1) environmental improvement of flows throughout the supply chain; 2) environmental redesign of existing clothes; 3) design of new clothes intrinsically more sustainable; 4) design of cloth-service systems and 5) promoting life styles towards sufficient consumption. The practical implications of each strategy is analysed based on correspondent ex-post-facto case studies identified in Brazil, using data collected through literature review and desktop research

A Multivariate Surface-Based Analysis of the Putamen in Premature Newborns: Regional Differences within the Ventral Striatum

Many children born preterm exhibit frontal executive dysfunction, behavioral problems including attentional deficit/hyperactivity disorder and attention related learning disabilities. Anomalies in regional specificity of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits may underlie deficits in these disorders. Nonspecific volumetric deficits of striatal structures have been documented in these subjects, but little is known about surface deformation in these structures. For the first time, here we found regional surface morphological differences in the preterm neonatal ventral striatum. We performed regional group comparisons of the surface anatomy of the striatum (putamen and globus pallidus) between 17 preterm and 19 term-born neonates at term-equivalent age. We reconstructed striatal surfaces from manually segmented brain magnetic resonance images and analyzed them using our in-house conformal mapping program. All surfaces were registered to a template with a new surface fluid registration method. Vertex-based statistical comparisons between the two groups were performed via four methods: univariate and multivariate tensor-based morphometry, the commonly used medial axis distance, and a combination of the last two statistics. We found statistically significant differences in regional morphology between the two groups that are consistent across statistics, but more extensive for multivariate measures. Differences were localized to the ventral aspect of the striatum. In particular, we found abnormalities in the preterm anterior/inferior putamen, which is interconnected with the medial orbital/prefrontal cortex and the midline thalamic nuclei including the medial dorsal nucleus and pulvinar. These findings support the hypothesis that the ventral striatum is vulnerable, within the cortico-stiato-thalamo-cortical neural circuitry, which may underlie the risk for long-term development of frontal executive dysfunction, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and attention-related learning disabilities in preterm neonates. © 2013 Shi et al

Development and reproduction of Cataclysta lemnata, a potential natural enemy of the invasive alien duckweed Lemna minuta in Italy

Life cycle of the aquatic moth Cataclysta lemnata (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) was studied in laboratory conditions to obtain a basic biological knowledge useful for predicting the possible success of the herbivorous larvae of this insect as potential control agents in limiting the spread of the invasive American duckweed Lemna minuta (Alismatales: Araceae) in Italy. The multivoltinism of C. lemnata, as well as the high overall emergence from the pupal stage (85%), the high success in mating among the formed couples (>90%), and the high number of larvae born from each egg laying (on average 310 individuals), suggest that the insect can be successfully bred in the laboratory for the purposes of an augmentative biological control. Under experimental conditions, larvae developed in 23 days (through six larval instars, distinguishable by cephalic capsule dimensions) and pupae in 10, with no difference in duration between females and males. The larval phase resulted longer than the adult one (23 vs 10 days), therefore it can be considered the most suitable stage for releasing the insect in field for biocontrol purposes. Indeed, the larvae having a herbivorous diet might consume large amount of the invasive plant, contrarily to the adult phase which is focused exclusively on reproduction. The results emerged not only allow to contribute to the knowledge on aquatic lepidoptera that are scarcely known, but also support the effectiveness of a possible protocol for an augmentative biological control of the invasive alien duckweed L. minuta

Mainstreaming gender in energy design practice: Insights from companies operating in sub-Saharan Africa's energy sector

Copyright © 2023 The Authors. There are several readily available and freely accessible toolkits, handbooks, and manuals aiming to support gender mainstreaming in energy projects. However, with most of them targeting rural areas, their applicability by energy companies operating in urban environments is limited. This paper aims to shed light on the how energy companies operating in informal urban settlements in sub-Saharan Africa integrate gender mainstreaming into their practices, with a focus on their design processes, methods and tools. To address this knowledge gap we adopted an explorative, inductive and qualitative research based on reviewing existing gender-energy nexus supports (toolkits, handbooks, and manuals) and conducting semi-structured interviews with 15 private companies offering energy solutions in informal urban settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa. These companies focus on solutions to domestic energy needs (cooking, lighting, water heating, refrigeration, space cooling, space heating, washing, tool powering) and productive use of energy to support small entrepreneurship. The interview questions were defined to collect: 1) gender considerations in the design of energy solutions for informal urban settlements; 2) methods and expertise involved in the design of energy solutions; and 3) specifics of designing for informal urban areas. The results show that: 1] The interviewed companies are not familiar with and do not use any of the readily available supports on gender mainstreaming in energy projects; 2] They do not follow any step-by-step gender inclusion strategy but try to be impartial about considering gender through familiar and established methods used along the design process; 3] They seek for better understanding of how to integrate gender in their business practices and require specific support to do so.National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa and the Newton Fund through the British Council, grant number SARCHI18076349612

A Design Toolkit to Integrate Distributed Manufacturing into Product-Service Systems Development

Implementation of Product-Service Systems (PSS) has a great sustainability potential. However, PSS are not widely put into practice because of a number of barriers. The authors of this paper propose that Distributed Manufacturing (DM) can be applied to improve PSS development. Existing, yet very fragmented attempts made by other scholars illustrate potential applications of DM features to PSS. However, the absence of practical support of DM and PSS combination encouraged authors to develop a DM applied to PSS design toolkit. This paper describes the research process which has been carried out to develop the design toolkit and define the proposed design process. Empirical toolkit’s applications with companies, design practitioners and students show the potential of the toolkit to support sustainability-oriented idea generation for each PSS life cycle stage

Distributed manufacturing applied to product-service systems: A set of near-future scenarios

Product-Service Systems (PSS), if properly designed and implemented, represent a promising approach to sustainability. However, there is a number of organisational, cultural and regulatory barriers that hinder the widespread PSS implementation. In this paper, we address this problem by applying Distributed Manufacturing (DM) to tackle some of PSS implementation barriers. We systematically analyse favourable DM features and their potential application for PSS and put forward a set of near-future scenarios. 40 scenarios created to initiate strategic discussion about DM and PSS combination are presented along PSS life cycle stages illustrating the potential of DM features to address PSS implementation. These scenarios can be used by educators, designers and businesses to identify future opportunities to design sustainable PSS solution

A Design Tool to Apply Distributed Manufacturing Principles to Sustainable Product-Service System Development

The Product-Service System (PSS) concept is considered a promising type of business models that has the potential to couple social, economic and environmental sustainability. However, there are a number of organisational, cultural and regulatory barriers that hinder a wide PSS implementation. The research hypothesis of this paper is that Distributed Manufacturing (DM), described as a network of localised and customer-oriented production units, can be applied to PSS to address some of the previously mentioned barriers. In order to understand to what extent DM can improve PSS implementation, existing PSS barriers were gathered and coupled with collected potential DM opportunities. Most promising pairings were described in a set of nearfuture scenarios which were later integrated into the first version of the PSS+DM design tool. The first testing of the tool was carried out with 45 design students and initial findings suggest that, with further improvements, the PSS+DM design tool has the potential to support PSS solutions development process

Altered structural and functional connectivity in late preterm preadolescence: An anatomic seed-based study of resting state networks related to the posteromedial and lateral parietal cortex

Objective: Late preterm birth confers increased risk of developmental delay, academic difficulties and social deficits. The late third trimester may represent a critical period of development of neural networks including the default mode network (DMN), which is essential to normal cognition. Our objective is to identify functional and structural connectivity differences in the posteromedial cortex related to late preterm birth. Methods: Thirty-eight preadolescents (ages 9-13; 19 born in the late preterm period (≥32 weeks gestational age) and 19 at term) without access to advanced neonatal care were recruited from a low socioeconomic status community in Brazil. Participants underwent neurocognitive testing, 3-dimensional T1-weighted imaging, diffusion-weighted imaging and resting state functional MRI (RS-fMRI). Seed-based probabilistic diffusion tractography and RS-fMRI analyses were performed using unilateral seeds within the posterior DMN (posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus) and lateral parietal DMN (superior marginal and angular gyri). Results: Late preterm children demonstrated increased functional connectivity within the posterior default mode networks and increased anti-correlation with the central-executive network when seeded from the posteromedial cortex (PMC). Key differences were demonstrated between PMC components with increased anti-correlation with the salience network seen only with posterior cingulate cortex seeding but not with precuneus seeding. Probabilistic tractography showed increased streamlines within the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus within late preterm children while decreased intrahemispheric streamlines were also observed. No significant differences in neurocognitive testing were demonstrated between groups. Conclusion: Late preterm preadolescence is associated with altered functional connectivity from the PMC and lateral parietal cortex to known distributed functional cortical networks despite no significant executive neurocognitive differences. Selective increased structural connectivity was observed in the setting of decreased posterior interhemispheric connections. Future work is needed to determine if these findings represent a compensatory adaptation employing alternate neural circuitry or could reflect subtle pathology resulting in emotional processing deficits not seen with neurocognitive testing. Copyright

Defining alternative recovery strategies for reuse: An analysis of multiple case studies under the reuse umbrella

This study focuses on the role of the reuse recovery approach and its strategies in the circular economy through a product design lens. While the circular economy has been widely discussed, not all recovery strategies have been thoroughly investigated and understood alike. This research differentiates between reuse and other recovery strategies and defines three distinct opportunities under the ‘reuse umbrella’ – reuse, cascade and relink. For each opportunity, possible sub-opportunities are identified and elaborated. Through a multiple case study analysis, the sub-opportunities are elaborated with a "Design for X" approach into eight different strategies of reuse, including design for direct reuse, reconfiguration, material cascading, repurposing, component reuse, creative reuse, material reclamation and adaptive reuse. The research emphasises that the appropriateness of a reuse strategy depends on various aspects such as the context, users, industries, and material flows. Also, this study stresses the importance of reuse in promoting circular product development and consumption, providing valuable implications for businesses and designers.The research project received financial backing from the UKRI National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research programme (NICER

Eulerian Multi-Fluid Model for Polydisperse Flows

This work restricts the term multiphase only to disperse flows, where one of the phases is present in the form of particles, droplets or bubbles, which are suspended within the continuous phase. The dispersed elements can vary in size. The proposed method uses the classes method in the Euler-Euler framework to handle the flow's polydisperse nature. With this approach, every droplet/bubble/particle class is treated like a different phase in the calculation, i.e. every size class has its continuity and momentum equation. However, the pressure is shared among all phases. The derived model is tested for various polydisperse flows, which display the developed model's capability to predict such complex dynamic behaviour. These test cases include complex bubbly flows and dense spray (where droplet sizes vary significantly)