What is open design for ethnography?:an open discussion

Ethnography has been adopted in other fields for years, but the integration process has been a significant learning curve for both the ethnographers and practitioners from other fields. This wide adoption has created various subfields such as Design Ethnography, Urban Ethnography, and Anticipatory Ethnography etc. These ethno-fusions represent different interpretations of ethnography under the influence of other disciplinary nuances. Ethnography has shown us its potential flexibility and fluidity and the discussion continues: how and where will ethnography make its next big leap? In this research paper, we open a discussion with the Cumulus community by exploring the following three questions: 1. What could open design mean to Ethnography? 2. What are some challenges when applying ethnography in multi-/inter- disciplinary context? 3. What is the future of the openly designed ethnography

Making as a means to re-engage disengaged young people back into education:a case study

Lickable Cities is a research project that responds to the recent and overwhelming abundance of non-calls for gustatory exploration of urban spaces. In this paper, we share experiences from nearly three years of nonrepresentational, absurdist, and impractical research. During that time, we licked hundreds of surfaces, infrastructures, and interfaces in cities around the world. We en-countered many challenges from thinking with, designing for, and interfacing through taste, including: - how can and should we grapple with contamination?, and - how might lickable interfaces influence more-than-humans? We discuss these challenges to compassionately question the existing framework for designing with taste in HCI

Where's Wally?:in search of citizen perspectives on the smart city

This paper builds upon an earlier conference publication by the authors, offering contributions based on a systematic literature review and qualitative study. The paper begins by drawing attention to the paucity of “citizen”—more appropriately, “situated”—perspectives on what a smart city should and could be. The paper then addresses that absence by detailing a research project that explored how people in London, Manchester, and Glasgow responded to the smart city concept. Participants were asked questions regarding their prior familiarity with the phrase “smart city”, their thoughts relating to what it means for a city to be smart, and what a “true” smart city might mean to them. The paper analyses and offers a synthesis of the responses collected throughout the research with the dominant rhetoric about smart cities, as identified through a recent systematic literature review, thereby providing a critical assessment of the values underlying the smart city. It aims to explore and present some of the expectations that citizens hold for their cities’ politicians, policy makers, planners, academics, and technology companies. We believe that these perspectives from citizens can be used to inform responsible development, spatially and socially inclusive technologies, and ultimately more resilient cities

Unravelling the Mechanics of Knitted Fabrics Through Hierarchical Geometric Representation

Knitting interloops one-dimensional yarns into three-dimensional fabrics that exhibit behaviours beyond their constitutive materials. How extensibility and anisotropy emerge from the hierarchical organization of yarns into knitted fabrics has long been unresolved. We sought to unravel the mechanical roles of tensile mechanics, assembly and dynamics arising from the yarn level on fabric nonlinearity by developing a yarn-based dynamical model. This physically validated model captures the fundamental mechanical response of knitted fabrics, analogous to flexible metamaterials and biological fiber networks due to geometric nonlinearity within such hierarchical systems. We identify the dictating factors of the mechanics of knitted fabrics, highlighting the previously overlooked but critical effect of pre-tension. Fabric anisotropy originates from observed yarn--yarn rearrangements during alignment dynamics and is topology-dependent. This yarn-based model also provides design flexibility of knitted fabrics to embed functionalities by allowing variation in both geometric configuration and material property. Our hierarchical approach to build up a knitted fabrics computationally modernizes an ancient craft and represents a first step towards mechanical programmability of knitted fabrics in wide engineering applications

Are Functional Groups Beneficial or Harmful on the Electrochemical Performance of Activated Carbon Electrodes?

It is a common opinion that activated carbon (AC) should be functional groups-free when employed as capacitor-type material in organic electrolytes. This work analyzes in detail the relationship between the electrochemical performance of modified activated carbon electrodes and the introduced functional groups in two organic electrolytes containing lithium salts:1M LiPF6 in EC-DMC (the commercial LP30) and 1M LiTFSI in EC-DMC. The surface functional groups (especially C=O or O–C=O) can induce higher capacitance to AC (more than 50% increase compared to commercial unmodified AC), whereas the rate capability dramatically decreases. The appropriate amount of functional groups is helpful to expand the electrochemical stability window in LP30 (2.8–2.9 V), that is responsible for the high energy and power density. Moreover, the proper functional groups inhibit the potential shift of the AC electrode. However, a large number of functionalities can result in a high amount of irreversible redox products remaining in the pores of AC, which leads to a faster capacitance fade respect to materials with less functional groups

Biochar production from late-harvest grass – Challenges and potential for farm-scale implementation

[Abstract:] Grasslands play a crucial role in European agriculture and ecology, but are often underutilized due to low-value end-products. The utilisation of late-harvest grass for biochar and heat generation on farm-level is being studied as a potential negative emissions technology. Technical (energy provision and carbon sink), economic (cost vs. benefit), political (regulatory framework) and social (SWOT) perspectives are being evaluated. Technical feasibility has been demonstrated with three different farm-scale technologies and the energetic and carbon-sink potential evaluated. When a continuously operating allothermal unit is evaluated, 35 % of the input biomass energy content can be utilized for heating a farm, in combination with the potential to provide a carbon sink. The cost-benefit analysis shows important monetary savings when including the agronomic value (based on the market price) of the produced biochar. An assessment of the regulatory framework of biochar production in Germany presents a multitude of regulations applying to such technologies some of which provide a hurdle to navigate and may incur excessive costs for farmers as small-scale biochar producers. A SWOT analysis of a case in Brandenburg, Germany highlights strengths and opportunities, but also obstacles such as lack of infrastructure and regulatory support. This study highlights the need for further development of suitable technology and research on the long-term economic and carbon sink potential of biochar.This work was performed within the GO-GRASS project and has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 862674. We thank all the partners who collaborated with the data collection. We would also like to thank Philipp Grundmann for the coordination of the GO-GRASS project

The quantitative proteomes of human-induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells

An in-depth proteomic comparison of human-induced pluripotent stem cells, and their parent fibroblast cells, with embryonic stem cells shows that the reprogramming process comprehensively remodels protein expression levels, creating cells that closely resemble natural stem cells

Human Urinary Epithelial Cells as a Source of Engraftable Hepatocyte-Like Cells Using Stem Cell Technology

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