How to Make People Make a Change – Using Social Labelling for Raising Awareness on Sustainable Manufacturing

Raising awareness on sustainable manufacturing, especially when it comes to low qualified target groups, remains a challenge. After a decade of considerable campaigning work, the majority of German population still does not understand the holistic concept of a sustainable development, let alone its manufacturing aspects. More effective communication methods are required. The main challenge lies within stirring people's willingness to gain knowledge and to actually consider it when making behavioral choices. In the reported research, the socio-psychological concept of social labelling is introduced as a method for raising the awareness on sustainable manufacturing of non-professional target groups and for triggering durable behavioral change. A social label is largely independent from actual knowledge, attitudes or behavior; it rather enforces attributed personal traits. A field experiment, in which the influence of social labelling on the awareness and behavior of young recipients of an informational event has been measured, has verified the method for the purpose of sustainability communication

Open Educational Resources as a Driver for Manufacturing-related Education for Learning of Sustainable Development

Since the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched its OpenCourseWare program in 2002, the idea of an open and democratic education has spread rapidly all over the globe. Under the name of “Open Educational Resources” (OER), innumerable working sheets, curricular and teaching units have been developed and shared digitally under free commons licenses, connecting teachers and learners worldwide. Especially with regard to the UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Program, the concept has been allocated a pole position. However, challenges arise when it comes to matters of repository design, traceability, quality control and user acceptance. In this paper studies are presented that assess German and English manufacturing-related OER for sustainability education, targeting high school students, showing challenges and potentials of open education for sustainable manufacturing. It will be shown that classic schoolbooks leave inacceptable gaps when covering sustainable development by ignoring both, core issues of sustainable development and central didactic standards of Education for Sustainable Development such as competency-orientation. Although there are a number of German and English OER initiatives that could help close these gaps, they often do not make use of the full OER potential, as will be shown via quality assessment and a comparative analysis. Finally, an OER development process of the Collaborative Research Centre 1026 “Sustainable Manufacturing” will be described as a best practice example.DFG, 199828953, SFB 1026: Sustainable Manufacturing - Globale Wertschöpfung nachhaltig gestalte

Inducing behavioural change in society through communication and education in sustainable manufacturing

The United Nations considers the mobilization of the broad public to be the essential requirement for achieving a shift towards a more sustainable development. Science can play a vital role in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) by contributing to ESD-related research and development on the one hand, and by becoming active awareness raisers themselves in education and multiplier networks. Specifically, the use of special Learnstruments, and investment inOpen Educationformats among other educational tools, may pave the way for accelerated apprehension and appreciation of sustainable manufacturing topics among the greater populace

Genomic Relationships, Novel Loci, and Pleiotropic Mechanisms across Eight Psychiatric Disorders

Genetic influences on psychiatric disorders transcend diagnostic boundaries, suggesting substantial pleiotropy of contributing loci. However, the nature and mechanisms of these pleiotropic effects remain unclear. We performed analyses of 232,964 cases and 494,162 controls from genome-wide studies of anorexia nervosa, attention-deficit/hyper-activity disorder, autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and Tourette syndrome. Genetic correlation analyses revealed a meaningful structure within the eight disorders, identifying three groups of inter-related disorders. Meta-analysis across these eight disorders detected 109 loci associated with at least two psychiatric disorders, including 23 loci with pleiotropic effects on four or more disorders and 11 loci with antagonistic effects on multiple disorders. The pleiotropic loci are located within genes that show heightened expression in the brain throughout the lifespan, beginning prenatally in the second trimester, and play prominent roles in neurodevelopmental processes. These findings have important implications for psychiatric nosology, drug development, and risk prediction.Peer reviewe

Whither systems medicine?

New technologies to generate, store and retrieve medical and research data are inducing a rapid change in clinical and translational research and health care. Systems medicine is the interdisciplinary approach wherein physicians and clinical investigators team up with experts from biology, biostatistics, informatics, mathematics and computational modeling to develop methods to use new and stored data to the benefit of the patient. We here provide a critical assessment of the opportunities and challenges arising out of systems approaches in medicine and from this provide a definition of what systems medicine entails. Based on our analysis of current developments in medicine and healthcare and associated research needs, we emphasize the role of systems medicine as a multilevel and multidisciplinary methodological framework for informed data acquisition and interdisciplinary data analysis to extract previously inaccessible knowledge for the benefit of patients.peerReviewe

Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders estimated from genome-wide SNPs

<p>Most psychiatric disorders are moderately to highly heritable. The degree to which genetic variation is unique to individual disorders or shared across disorders is unclear. To examine shared genetic etiology, we use genome-wide genotype data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) for cases and controls in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We apply univariate and bivariate methods for the estimation of genetic variation within and covariation between disorders. SNPs explained 17-29% of the variance in liability. The genetic correlation calculated using common SNPs was high between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (0.68 +/- 0.04 s.e.), moderate between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (0.43 +/- 0.06 s.e.), bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (0.47 +/- 0.06 s.e.), and ADHD and major depressive disorder (0.32 +/- 0.07 s.e.), low between schizophrenia and ASD (0.16 +/- 0.06 s.e.) and non-significant for other pairs of disorders as well as between psychiatric disorders and the negative control of Crohn's disease. This empirical evidence of shared genetic etiology for psychiatric disorders can inform nosology and encourages the investigation of common pathophysiologies for related disorders.</p>

Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders estimated from genome-wide SNPs

Most psychiatric disorders are moderately to highly heritable. The degree to which genetic variation is unique to individual disorders or shared across disorders is unclear. To examine shared genetic etiology, we use genome-wide genotype data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) for cases and controls in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We apply univariate and bivariate methods for the estimation of genetic variation within and covariation between disorders. SNPs explained 17-29% of the variance in liability. The genetic correlation calculated using common SNPs was high between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (0.68 ± 0.04 s.c.), moderate between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (0.43 ± 0.06 s.e.), bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (0.47 ± 0.06 s.e.), and ADHD and major depressive disorder (0.32 ± 0.07 s.e.), low between schizophrenia and ASD (0.16 ± 0.06 s.e.) and non-significant for other pairs of disorders as well as between psychiatric disorders and the negative control of Crohn's disease. This empirical evidence of shared genetic etiology for psychiatric disorders can inform nosology and encourages the investigation of common pathophysiologies for related disorders