Mucociliary clearance is humidity dependent–contrary to common belief

Efficient mucociliary clearance (MCC) is a precondition for the moistening capacity of human noses. A review of the literature reveals that only young and healthy individuals can maintain efficient nasal MCC in low ambient humidity. Aging, concomitant diseases and stress factors, all diminish MCC and therefore the ability of maintaining homeostasis of the airways. In an aging population this finding calls for action. We cannot change the outdoor climate nor the physical laws that cause indoor dryness. But we must take responsibility for the anthropogenic indoor climate and its undesired consequences.publishedVersio

The Instagram Interview: Talking to People About Travel Experiences Across Online and Offline Spaces

Studying visitors’ experiences with cultural sites has been complicated by the availability of internet-connected mobile devices. Simply observing visitors on site is no longer sufficient since they can interact with a site offline and online: before, during, and after their visit. Furthermore, cultural sites are as much sites of cultural heritage as they are sites of tourism. To study such complex experiences, new approaches to the study of human interactions with cultural sites must be developed; these methods must account for the fact that the offline and online realms can no longer be considered separate. In this article, I introduce the method of the Instagram interview as applied in an Instagram ethnography, contextualized by my project on visitor experiences of a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, DC, where I interviewed visitors after their visit. The Instagram interview helps study a dispersed population that engages, through Instagram posts, with one physical location and its narratives, allowing conclusions about visitor experiences of the site and the role of Instagram in this context. When constructing the Instagram interview in a manner that corresponds to platform conventions, it produces personal, in-depth narratives about the interviewee’s experiences. Conceptualizing the experience of a memorial as expanding beyond the space and time of the site visit, the Instagram interview is suitable for holistically studying visitors’ complex experiences: before, during, and after their visits, as it recognizes that offline and online interactions with the site are part of the same experience

Human airways in context with indoor and outdoor climate Technical Specification of human nose

The bulk of literature on humans as occupants of buildings, is focused on comfort issues, especially thermal comfort. This review focuses on climate impacts on human airways and related health aspects. The paper describes design specifications, capacities, and limitations of conducting airways. The focus will be on the crucial role of the nose for the conditioning of breathing air to the physiological requirements of gas exchange in the alveoli. Throughout several million years of humankind’s evolution, the nose adapted to extreme climate situations in terms of moisture and temperature conditions. Low absolute humidity (AH) was the climate factor with the greatest impact on the shape of human noses. Up to the present day, low AH is the crucial challenge for the vital air conditioning. Nose and bronchi of a growing aging population are over stressed with indoor winter conditions in temperate climate. The paper explains the potential consequences for infection defense and seasonal infections.publishedVersio

Vitamin Tech Center: Scale-up als Herausforderung

The task of process development is mainly the generation of data required for the construction of a production facility. This consists in both the development of new production processes and the improvement of existing ones. Profitability and product quality, along with safety and ecological compatibility, play an essential role in the design of the process. In the new Vitamin Tech Center the development begins in the development lab by selecting the optimal procedure for the scale-up, followed by mini-plant and pilot-plant activities. In the mini-plant, modular test facilities capable of being scaled up are installed on a miniature scale. Unit operations of various technical processes are usually run continuously and the equipment is mainly constructed of glass. The pilot-plant equipment consists of a state-of-the-art facilities made of steel, alloys and glass-lined steel and corresponds to a small production facility. The amount of material processed in the pilot-plant is about five hundred times that of the development lab. To support all these activities, laboratories for chemical analysis, unit operations, physical property data and materials testing are available

Design science in health care: Co-designing an optimized patient pathway at a gynecological clinic of a large hospital in Switzerland.

Jones mentions that “Healthcare is a complex system that deals with at least two irreducible sources of complexity: The institutional (distributed provider systems and hospitals) and the personal (the biological and social setting of the human body). Furthermore these realms cannot be isolated, because the purpose of the institution is to serve individuals.” (Jones, 2013a, xviii) Hospitals operate as institutional actors under pressure to navigate changing health care contexts where patients become more knowledgeable and more demanding. The challenge for design thinking is to “transforming organizational practices by continually repositioning real human beings in the center of design and service management decisions.” (Jones, 2013a, xvii) Dubberly et. al. (2010) go even further, describing a shift where patients eventually become self-managing designers of their own well-being based on designed enabling infrastructures. This design research project aims at demonstrating the value of the design approach vis-à-vis a care team at a gynecological clinic with regard to improving pregnant women´s experiences along the patient pathway. The scientific goal is to demonstrate how design research can yield evidence and derived design propositions to drive improvement and innovation efforts through a co-creation approach informed by an “understanding of an understanding” (Krippendorff, 2005) of women that told their stories of giving birth, generated by means of a grounded theory approach. The research team facilitated a workshop with 8 clinic professionals (midwifes, nurses, breastfeeding counselor, department managers, clinic director), 3 patients and 1 external midwife. They crafted a model and issues-related design propositions – later to be tested in situ – of an optimized version of a patient process. The results are evaluated against the “design capability for health practice and care organizations” framework of Jones (2013b, 5) with a specific focus on design as caregiving and co-creating care (Rethinking Care), design for patient agency, patient-centered care service (Rethinking Patients), as well as innovating points of care and systemic design in healthcare innovation (Rethinking Care Systems). The results are triangulated with 2 Scandinavian, design-related projects that focus on patient pathways. The project contributes overall to an evidence creation capability of design research at the intersection of organizational and design science

Contribution de l'art théâtral à l'amélioration de l'expérience de service

Toujours plus de sociétés de service, une concurrence grandissante, telles sont les circonstances dans lesquelles évoluent les entreprises d'aujourd'hui. Comment se différencier et se faire sa place dans cette jungle toujours plus dense ? Outre l'originalité du service et les gros moyens, la différence peut se faire par la qualité de la prestation de service. C'est en effet la perception de la qualité du service par le client, au travers de son design et ses prestations, qui permettra aux entreprises de percer et de croître dans un marché toujours plus saturé. Pour améliorer la qualité du service, j'ai utilisé un angle d'approche original : celui de la parallèle entre la représentation théâtral et la prestation de service. Ainsi chacun des éléments de mise en scène est isolé. J'ai tissé des liens entre chacun d'entre eux et les diverses parties du service. Mon objectif est donc d'appliquer les diverses méthodes propres au théâtre à la prestation de service afin de pouvoir améliorer partie par partie l'ensemble de la prestation et, à travers elle, l'expérience vécue par le client

Influence of Associations on the Reception of Poetry

Reading and understanding poetic texts is often described as an interactive process influenced by the words and phrases building the poems and all associations and images induced by them in the readers mind. Iser, for example, described the understanding process as the closing of a Good Gestalt promoted by mental images. Here we investigate the effect that semantic cohesion, that is the internal connection of a list words, has on understanding and appreciation of poetic texts. To do this word lists are presented as modern micropoems to the participants and the (ease of) extraction of underlying concepts as well as the affective and aesthetic responses are implicitly and explicitly measured. We found that a unifying concept is found more easily and unifying concepts vary significantly less between participants when the words composing a micropoem are semantically related. Moreover these items are liked better and are understood more easily. Our study shows evidence for the assumed relationship between building spontaneous associations, forming mental imagery, and understanding and appreciation of poetic texts. In addition, we introduced a new method well suited to manipulate backgrounding features independently of foregrounding features which allows to disentangle the effects of both on poetry reception

Pseudo-Stochastic Orbit Modeling Techniques for Low-Earth Orbiters

The Earth's non-spherical mass distribution and atmospheric drag cause the strongest perturbations on very low-Earth orbiting satellites (LEOs). Models of gravitational and non-gravitational accelerations are utilized in dynamic precise orbit determination (POD) with GPS data, but it is also possible to derive LEO positions based on GPS precise point positioning without dynamical information. We use the reduced-dynamic technique for LEO POD, which combines the geometric strength of the GPS observations with the force models, and investigate the performance of different pseudo-stochastic orbit parametrizations, such as instantaneous velocity changes (pulses), piecewise constant accelerations, and continuous piecewise linear accelerations. The estimation of such empirical orbit parameters in a standard least-squares adjustment process of GPS observations, together with other relevant parameters, strives for the highest precision in the computation of LEO trajectories. We used the procedures for the CHAMP satellite and found that the orbits may be validated by means of independent SLR measurements at the level of 3.2cm RMS. Validations with independent accelerometer data revealed correlations at the level of 95% in the along-track direction. As expected, the empirical parameters compensate to a certain extent for deficiencies in the dynamic models. We analyzed the capability of pseudo-stochastic parameters for deriving information about the mismodeled part of the force field and found evidence that the resulting orbits may be used to recover force field parameters, if the number of pseudo-stochastic parameters is large enough. Results based on simulations showed a significantly better performance of acceleration-based orbits for gravity field recovery than for pulse-based orbits, with a quality comparable to a direct estimation if unconstrained accelerations are set up every 30