Product Sound Design: An Inter-Disciplinary Approach?

The practice of product sound design is relatively new within the field of product development. Consequently, the responsibilities and the role of a (sound) designer are not very clear. However, practice shows that various disciplines such as design engineering, acoustics, psychoacoustics, psychology, and musicology contribute to the improvement of product sounds. We propose that sound design should be conducted by experts who have knowledge in the afore-mentioned fields. In other words, we suggest that product sound design should be an independent field that encompasses an inter-disciplinary approach. Keywords: sound design; sound designer; product sounds; design processes; multi-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary</p

Tropane alkaloids in food

A large number of wild and cultured plants produce secondary metabolites that are toxic to humans and animals. Through accidental or intentional mixing of these plants with normal food and feed the consumers of these products will be exposed to the toxins. In this report tropane alkaloids will be discussed

Electoral participation in the Netherlands: Individual and contextual influences

AbstractResearch into electoral participation has produced two traditions, one focusing mainly on individual level explanations while the second concentrates primarily on aggregate level explanations. By bringing these two research approaches together, we are not only able to explain individual electoral participation more thoroughly, but we also gain additional insight into the influence of aggregate level characteristics on individual behavior. We combine eight National Election Studies held in the Netherlands between 1971 and 1994 enabling us to study variation on the individual and the contextual (aggregate) level, including interactions between these two levels. Findings show that the addition of contextual characteristics form a significant improvement to an individual level model predicting electoral participation. Findings also confirm our expectation that the influence of individual characteristics such as education or political interest is dependent upon contextual characteristics describing for instance the salience of the election

European Elections as Counterfactual National Elections

European Parliament elections affect a supra-national, European body. Nevertheless their outcomes are often interpreted as if they were national elections, with repercussion in the national political arena. Such a counterfactual representation, in which European parliamentary elections are presented as national parliamentary elections, forms the central perspective of this chapter. We model the influences of variations in turnout and variations in determinants of party choice for European Parliament and National Parliament elections, to determine what party characteristics influence the relative success or failure of political parties at European elections. The outcomes show that European electoral success is not only determined by party characteristics alone, but is also dependent upon the cycle of elections in the different countries

Return to work in cancer survivors with job loss

Anema, J.R. [Promotor]Beek, A.J. van der [Promotor]Duijts, S.F.A. [Copromotor

FUTURE PROOF CONSTRUCTION WITH INNOVATIVE SUSTAINABLE BUILDING MATERIALS

It is unquestionable that the construction performance needs to improve, despite itsimportance to the national economies. This industry is commonly characterized as one that is labour intensive, rather polluting, non-sustainable, with a low level of innovation compared to other sectors. Lessons from the past in other sectors indicate that a sequence of innovations pushed forward productivity and performance, reflecting the existence of a technology and knowledge base amongst the players in those sectors. Notwithstanding some innovative developments in the course of time, a wide spread change of performance on large scale in construction is limited. The objective of this paper is to discuss strategies to enhance the development and use of innovative sustainable building materials in construction. It draws on empirical evidence and contemporary theoretic views regarding the factors impeding or stimulating innovation. These learn that innovationsrequire strong collaboration amongst the construction players in the industry network to achieve sustainability in construction.

Mycotoxins: Risks, regulations and European co-operation

Mycotoxins and mycotoxicises have been problems of the past and the present, but scientific attention for mycotoxins did not start until the early 1960’s. Nowa­days, many mycotoxins are known, and their occurrence in food and animal feed may cause various adverse effects on human and animal health, including carcinogenic, hepatotoxic, immunotoxic, nephrotoxic, neurotoxic, oestrogenic and teratogenic effects. Some important mycotoxins include the aflatoxins, ochratoxin A, the fumonisins and the trichothecenes, and their significance is briefly described. To protect human and animal health, many countries have enacted specific regulations for mycotoxins in food and animal feed. Risk assessment is a major factor for scientific underpinning of regulations, but other factors such as availability of adequate sampling and analysis procedures also play an important a role in the establishment of mycotoxin regulations. In addition, socio-economic factors such as cost-benefit considerations, trade issues and sufficiency of food supply are equally important in the decision-taking process to come to meaningful regulations. Nowadays, more than 100 countries have formal mycotoxin regulations for food and feed. The mycotoxin regulations are the most stringent in the EU, where various organizations and pan-European networks contribute to combat the mycotoxin problem. It is to be expected that mycotoxins will stay with us in the future and climate change might have a negative influence in this respect. Several possibilities exist to mitigate the problems caused by mycotoxins. In particular prevention of mould growth and mycotoxin formation is key to the control of mycotoxins