Making the user more efficient: Design for sustainable behaviour

User behaviour is a significant determinant of a product’s environmental impact; while engineering advances permit increased efficiency of product operation, the user’s decisions and habits ultimately have a major effect on the energy or other resources used by the product. There is thus a need to change users’ behaviour. A range of design techniques developed in diverse contexts suggest opportunities for engineers, designers and other stakeholders working in the field of sustainable innovation to affect users’ behaviour at the point of interaction with the product or system, in effect ‘making the user more efficient’. Approaches to changing users’ behaviour from a number of fields are reviewed and discussed, including: strategic design of affordances and behaviour-shaping constraints to control or affect energyor other resource-using interactions; the use of different kinds of feedback and persuasive technology techniques to encourage or guide users to reduce their environmental impact; and context-based systems which use feedback to adjust their behaviour to run at optimum efficiency and reduce the opportunity for user-affected inefficiency. Example implementations in the sustainable engineering and ecodesign field are suggested and discussed

Epidermal growth factor receptor mRNA expression: A potential molecular escape mechanism from regorafenib.

Regorafenib has improved the survival of patients with refractory metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC), yet the mechanisms of inherited or acquired resistance are not well understood. A total of 50 patients with refractory mCRC were enrolled. Circulating tumor cell (CTC) enumeration was carried out at baseline, day 21 after initiation of regorafenib, and at the time of progression of disease (PD) using the CellSearch System (Veridex LLC, NJ, USA). Poly(A) mRNA was extracted from CTCs, and gene expression of epithelial and epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers was analyzed by a multiplex-PCR based DNA Chip. Patients with fewer than 3 CTCs at baseline and day 21 had a longer progression-free survival than those with 3 or more CTCs (3.3 vs 2.0 months, P = .008 and 3.3 vs 2.0 months, P = .004, respectively). Patients with fewer than 3 CTCs at baseline and day 21 had a longer overall survival (OS) than those with 3 or more CTCs (10.0 vs 4.6 months, P < .001 and 8.7 vs 3.8 months, P = .003, respectively). In multivariable analysis, CTC counts remained significantly associated with OS at baseline and day 21 (P = .019 and P = .028). Circulating tumor cell EGFR gene expression was upregulated at day 21 and/or PD in 64% of patients. Patients had significantly increased EGFR expression at PD compared to baseline (P = .041) and at day 21 and/or PD compared to baseline (P = .004). Our findings suggest that CTC count and EGFR expression could be useful markers of regorafenib efficacy and outcomes. Upregulation of CTC EGFR expression might be a molecular escape mechanism under regorafenib therapy

The design with intent method: A design tool for influencing user behaviour

The official published version can be found at the link below.Using product and system design to influence user behaviour offers potential for improving performance and reducing user error, yet little guidance is available at the concept generation stage for design teams briefed with influencing user behaviour. This article presents the Design with Intent Method, an innovation tool for designers working in this area, illustrated via application to an everyday human–technology interaction problem: reducing the likelihood of a customer leaving his or her card in an automatic teller machine. The example application results in a range of feasible design concepts which are comparable to existing developments in ATM design, demonstrating that the method has potential for development and application as part of a user-centred design process

TUFT1 interacts with RABGAP1 and regulates mTORC1 signaling

The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is commonly activated in human cancers. The activity of mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) signaling is supported by the intracellular positioning of cellular compartments and vesicle trafficking, regulated by Rab GTPases. Here we showed that tuftelin 1 (TUFT1) was involved in the activation of mTORC1 through modulating the Rab GTPase-regulated process. TUFT1 promoted tumor growth and metastasis. Consistently, the expression of TUFT1 correlated with poor prognosis in lung, breast and gastric cancers. Mechanistically, TUFT1 physically interacted with RABGAP1, thereby modulating intracellular lysosomal positioning and vesicular trafficking, and promoted mTORC1 signaling. In addition, expression of TUFT1 predicted sensitivity to perifosine, an alkylphospholipid that alters the composition of lipid rafts. Perifosine treatment altered the positioning and trafficking of cellular compartments to inhibit mTORC1. Our observations indicate that TUFT1 is a key regulator of the mTORC1 pathway and suggest that it is a promising therapeutic target or a biomarker for tumor progression.UTokyo FOCUS Articles掲載「がんの増殖・転移を促進する新規因子の同定 小胞輸送を標的とする新しいがん治療戦略への可能性」 https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/ja/articles/z0508_00119.htmlUTokyo FOCUS Articles "Possible target for future cancer treatment : Deregulation of system to move molecules in the cell may promote tumor growth, metastasis" https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/articles/z0508_00120.htm

Affordances, constraints and information flows as ‘leverage points’ in design for sustainable behaviour

Copyright @ 2012 Social Science Electronic PublishingTwo of Donella Meadows' 'leverage points' for intervening in systems (1999) seem particularly pertinent to design for sustainable behaviour, in the sense that designers may have the scope to implement them in (re-)designing everyday products and services. The 'rules of the system' -- interpreted here to refer to affordances and constraints -- and the structure of information flows both offer a range of opportunities for design interventions to in fluence behaviour change, and in this paper, some of the implications and possibilities are discussed with reference to parallel concepts from within design, HCI and relevant areas of psychology

Architectures of control in consumer product design

Copyright @ 2005 Social Services Research GroupThe idea of architectures of control is introduced through examples ranging from urban planning to digital rights management, and the intentions behind their use in consumer products are examined, with reference to case studies of printer cartridges and proposed 'optimum lifetime products.' The reactions of the technical community and consumers themselves are also explored, along with some wider implications for society

The Comet Interceptor Mission

Here we describe the novel, multi-point Comet Interceptor mission. It is dedicated to the exploration of a little-processed long-period comet, possibly entering the inner Solar System for the first time, or to encounter an interstellar object originating at another star. The objectives of the mission are to address the following questions: What are the surface composition, shape, morphology, and structure of the target object? What is the composition of the gas and dust in the coma, its connection to the nucleus, and the nature of its interaction with the solar wind? The mission was proposed to the European Space Agency in 2018, and formally adopted by the agency in June 2022, for launch in 2029 together with the Ariel mission. Comet Interceptor will take advantage of the opportunity presented by ESA’s F-Class call for fast, flexible, low-cost missions to which it was proposed. The call required a launch to a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 point. The mission can take advantage of this placement to wait for the discovery of a suitable comet reachable with its minimum ΔV capability of 600 ms−1. Comet Interceptor will be unique in encountering and studying, at a nominal closest approach distance of 1000 km, a comet that represents a near-pristine sample of material from the formation of the Solar System. It will also add a capability that no previous cometary mission has had, which is to deploy two sub-probes – B1, provided by the Japanese space agency, JAXA, and B2 – that will follow different trajectories through the coma. While the main probe passes at a nominal 1000 km distance, probes B1 and B2 will follow different chords through the coma at distances of 850 km and 400 km, respectively. The result will be unique, simultaneous, spatially resolved information of the 3-dimensional properties of the target comet and its interaction with the space environment. We present the mission’s science background leading to these objectives, as well as an overview of the scientific instruments, mission design, and schedule