Circular design project. Educating the design community in sustainable design

Design has a key role to play in developing innovative solutions to current challenges – approaches that must consider the needs of end users and integrate sustainability criteria in processes and strategies for creating products and services. The Circular Design Project (http://circulardesigneurope.eu/) is a European project funded by Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance within the social business and the educational innovation field. The goal of this Circular Design project is to promote sustainable production and consumption of products and services in Europe. The project have four objectives: to increase and improve the learning strategies of Design for Sustainability, identifying opportunities for sustainably designed products and services as well as business opportunities in both higher education institutions and industries in Europe; To gather and cluster open educational resources and training courses for industry staff and academics in Innovative Design for Sustainability; To train up innovative and entrepreneurial designers who are capable of dealing with a transition towards Design for Sustainability as a mainstream design approach, as well as to promote cooperation and mobility with the EU’s partner countries; and to establish a basis for a permanent and active European Network of Design for Sustainability. This was achieved through a knowledge co-creation process and the development and pilot training materials in order to teach and train students, faculty and enterprise staff of the design sector. The project formed by 12 partners is organised around four country hubs in Ireland, The Netherlands, Catalonia and Sweden. Each country Hub consists of one university with education and research in Sustainable Design, one Design company with expertise in sustainable Design and one national design association

Human compulsivity: A perspective from evolutionary medicine

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142756/1/Stein-Nesse-Compulsivity-Euroneuro-2016.pd

Dynamical properties of algebraic systems A study in closed geodesics

SIGLELD:D50049/84 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

The NMR three-dimensional structure of the peptaibol antibiotic longibrachin LGA I

Longibrachin LGA I is a 20-residue antibiotic peptide produced by the fungus Trichoderma longibrachiatum and belonging to the peptaibol class. It modifies the permeability of membrane bilayers, forming voltage-gated ion channels according to the barrel-stave model, which involves transbilayer aggregates of helical monomers. LGA I differs from the well-known alamethicin F50 (Alm F50) by a single Pro2 - Ala substitution. This naturally occurring sequence modification was used to probe the role of the residue at position 2 in the channel stability, as a significative decrease in the channel lifetimes was observed for LGA I, as compared to Alm F50. The three-dimensional structure of LGA I was thus studied based upon 2D-NMR spectroscopy and molecular modelling. The resonance assignments and conformational parameters (NOEs, 3JNHCalphaH) coupling constants and thermal coefficients of amide protons) were obtained for LGA I in methanol solution. The 3D-structure was calculated using the program X-PLOR starting from 155 NOE-derived interproton distance constraints and 11 phi dihedral angle restraints. A total of 123 converged structures, consistent with the NMR data, were generated by restrained molecular dynamics and energy minimization calculations. LGA I forms a 33 Angstroms long amphipathic helix, mainly alpha-type, apportioned into two segments (1-9 and 14-20) linked by a bend. The bend angle is about 150°. The structure is very close to that of Alm F50, the residue at position 2 occupying the same location in the hydrophilic sector of the helix for both peptides. Shortening of the LGA I channel lifetimes should thus be due to lesser anchoring of the N-terminal part of the helices at the trans-bilayer interface, when position 2 is occupied by alanine, which is considered as more hydrophobic than proline. LGA I: Ac U1-A-U-A-U-A-Q-U-V-U-G-L-U-P-V-U-U-Q-Q-Fol20 U (Aib): α-aminoisobutyric acid; Fol (Pheol): phenylalanino

Personality dimensions in obsessive-compulsive disorder: Relation to clinical variables

Research on the relationship between personality factors and obsessive-conmpulsive disorder (OCD) has proved difficult to interpret due to conceptual problems including a lack of consensus on the model of personality employed as a framework as well as a failure to consider the clinical heterogeneity of the disorder. The aim of this study was to examine the dimensional personality profile associated with OCD and to detertmine whether any relationship exists between personality factors and clinical variables in a sample of 60 OCD outpatients who were administered Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). The Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and the Y-BOCS symptom checklist were used to assess the severity of obsessive-compulsive and depressive symptoms and the presence of the main OCD symptom dimensions. OCD patients showed significantly higher scores in harm avoidance and lower scores in novelty-seeking, self-directedness and cooperativeness than healthy subjects. These results remained unchanged when only pure OCD patients without comorbid psychiatric conditions were considered. Comorbid depressive symptoms and hoarding obsessions and compulsions were significantly associated with high harm avoidance scores. These results support the existence of a dimensional personality profile associated with OCD and characterized by high harm avoidance and low novelty-seeking, self-directedness and cooperativeness scores, but also emphasize the importance of considering the influence of comorbid clinical conditions or symptom subtypes in addressing the role of personality factors in OCD. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserve

Sustainability competences in Catalan University degrees

Considering that higher education should play a vital role in promoting peace, mutual understanding and tolerance, and in creating mutual confidence among peoples and nations; (Lisbon Convention 1997) the Technological Catalonian Universities have undertaken as a framework the Competences for Sustainability, to develop the new degrees in accordance with the Bologna Declaration of 1999. This way the degree courses\u92 planning has three essential elements (Cordoba et. Al., 2007): a centered learning in students, the competence-based objective achievement and the planning, evaluation and monitoring of any all teaching activity under the ECTS criteria. The triplet activities-learning-assessment is involved in each and every subject that corresponds to the plan studies. In this way, education by competences is framed in all the subjects developed during the studies, also assumed for the competence in sustainability. During the planning and development of the new degrees offered in higher education different questions arose: which competences in sustainability should have the university graduate students to be capable of satisfying today\u92s society\u92s demands? And, what kind of engineer and architect does the actual society need in terms of Sustainable Development? Taking this into account, the definition and development of the competence in sustainability at the Catalonians\u92 universities has been developed in different ways in each of the educational programs. Since this has occurred, the interdisciplinary educational research group of EDUSOST of Barcelona has developed a research analyzing to which extent these differences impact in the ease to develop sustainability as a competence in each of the degrees without disturbing the other competences. On the other hand, it allowed analyzing to what extent different knowledge areas focused in which component of sustainability, technical degrees developed much easier the in the environmental component and administration and political science the social one for example