HIV-1 infection:A complex interplay between virus and host

The human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infects CD4+ T cells, macrophages and dendritic cells. The ability of HIV-1 to replicate in these cells is dependent on host factors that act on different steps in the replication cycle. These host factors can either restrict or support viral replication. In addition, host factors can also play an important role in the course of infection. It is therefore crucial to comprehend the complex interplay between the virus and host factors to understand HIV-1 pathogenesis. Moreover, this knowledge can also be used for the development of new antiviral therapies aiming to control or eradicate HIV-1 infected cells in people with HIV-1. In this thesis we studied the effect of several novel and known host factors on HIV-1 replication and pathogenesis. The results presented in this thesis provide new insights in the complicated interplay between the virus and host in HIV-1 infection

Satisfaction and annoyance of residents in neighbourhoods situated near industrial activity. Analysis of telephone survey data on the residential environment

In many of the Dutch national policy plans, environmental quality is a strong guiding principle. From an environmental science and policy perspective, environmental quality at the local level is affected by sound, odour and air pollution, as well as external safety risks. This study examines the relationship between people's perception of sound and odour (noise and odour annoyance) and the perceived environmental quality, represented as residential satisfaction (RS). Data from 19 telephone surveys (TLO) were compiled in a large TLO database. In the present study data from 17 TLOs performed in 86 locations, covering 18,000 respondents were analysed. Typically, TLOs are used for policy or maintenance purposes to assess the RS of people living in the vicinity of industrial plants or factories. Data on (individual) exposure levels were not available for these analyses. A remarkeble finding is the observed dispersion of correlations between annoyance and satisfaction per location (n=84, correlations for sound and satisfaction: -0,57 en 0,07; for odour and satisfaction between: -0,57 en 0,37). For this reason a multi-level analysis (MLA) was performed. This finding indicates location specific differences, probably due to differences in exposure levels. Furthermore, tenure and type of dwelling appeared to be relatively strong predictors of residential satisfaction. Homeowners appeared to be more satisfied than tenants. People in flats were more dissatisfied than people living in (semi-)detached houses. Annoyance from noise and (offensive) odours was another, relatively strong, predictor of RS. In general, residents reporting more annoyance were less satisfied with their residential situation. Other predictors of RS were age, gender, and the number of facilities in the dwelling. Older people and women were more satisfied with their residential situation than younger people and men, respectively. The more facilities present in the dwelling, the more satisfied residents appeared to be. Residential satisfaction is determined by a combination of subjective (e.g. annoyance), objective (e.g. number of facilities) and personal factors (e.g. age, gender). Annoyance appears to be a relatively important factor of residential satisfaction but tenure and dwelling type appear to be, relatively, more important. It is strongly recommended to add sound and odour exposure data to the TLO-database.Het begrip 'kwaliteit' speelt in steeds meer beleidsvoornemens van de (rijks)overheid een krachtig sturende rol. Voor de lokale omgeving, de leefomgeving, is de algemene beleidsdoelstelling van VROM het verbeteren en in stand houden van de woonkwaliteit. Belangrijke determinanten van de ervaren kwaliteit van de leefomgeving zijn (hinder van) geluid, geur, luchtverontreiniging en externe veiligheid. In dit onderzoek wordt de invloed van hinder van geluid en geur op de ervaren kwaliteit (tevredenheid) van de leefomgeving onderzocht. De belangrijkste vragen waren a) wat is de invloed van hinder op de woontevredenheid en b) welke persoons- en/of woonkenmerken zijn van invloed op de woontevredenheid? De gegevens zijn verzameld met behulp van Telefonische Leefsituatie Onderzoeken (TLO's) bij mensen die in de buurt van (industriele) bedrijvigheid wonen. Verschillende TLO's (n=19) zijn in een groot TLO-bestand samengevoegd. In deze analyse is gebruik gemaakt van 17 TLO's met daarin in totaal 86 onderzoekslocaties en ongeveer 18.000 respondenten. Vanwege de gelaagde structuur van de gegevens is uitgevoerd. Gegevens over (individuele) blootstellingniveaus waren voor deze analyses niet beschikbaar. Een opmerkelijk bevinding is de grote spreiding in de (cor)relatie tussen woontevredenheid en hinder per locatie (n=84, correlaties voor geluid tussen: -0,57 en 0,07; voor geur tussen -0,57 en 0,37). Dit is de reden waarom in afwijking van eerder onderzoek een multi-level analyse (MLA) is uitgevoerd. Deze bevinding duidt op locatie-specifieke verschillen die van invloed kunnen zijn op de relatie woontevredenheid en hinder. Verschillen in blootstellingsnivo's zouden hieraan ten grondslag kunnen liggen. De andere bevindingen zijn in overeenstemming met resultaten van soortgelijk onderzoek. De bezitsvorm van de woning (eigenaar-huurder) en het type woning blijken relatief belangrijke voorspellers van tevredenheid met de leefomgeving. In het algemeen zijn huurders minder tevreden dan eigenaren. Flatbewoners zijn minder tevreden dan mensen in (half)vrijstaande huizen. Daarnaast blijkt hinder (van lawaai en stank) een relatief belangrijke voorspeller van woontevredenheid te zijn. Naarmate respondenten meer hinder ondervinden zijn ze minder tevreden met hun leefomgeving. De leeftijd, het geslacht, en het aantal voorzieningen in de woning van de respondent zijn eveneens voorspellers van woontevredenheid, zij het in mindere mate. Vrouwen en oudere mensen zijn meer tevreden met hun leefomgeving dan mannen respectievelijk jongere mensen. Naarmate in een woning meer voorzieningen aanwezig zijn tonen de bewoners zich meer tevreden. De tevredenheid met de leefomgeving in woongebieden nabij industriele activiteit wordt bepaald door een mix van persoons-, belevings- en omgevingsgebonden kenmerken. De mate van hinder is een relatief belangrijke determinant van woontevredenheid maar is niet de belangrijkste. Bezitsvorm van de woning en type woning zijn, relatief gezien, belangrijker. Het is aan te bevelen de, mede op basis van de variatie in de relatie tussen hinder en woontevredenheid de TLO-data uit te breiden met (vergelijkbare) blootstellingsgegevens

Een referentiemodel voor de akkerbouw

Voor een organisatie is het belangrijk om inzicht te hebben in de eigen bedrijfsvoering. Referentiemodellen voor een domein, sector of type organisatie kunnen hierbij ondersteuning bieden. Tot voor kort was er geen actueel referentiemodel voorhanden dat de bedrijfsvoering van akkerbouwbedrijven beschrijft. Om dit gat te dichten is er eind 2011 door Wageningen Universiteit een eerste versie opgeleverd van een referentiemodel voor de akkerbouw. Dit referentiemodel, “the Reference Architecture for the Ag Enterprise” (RAAgE), geeft een overzicht van de bedrijfsfuncties en processen van akkerbouwbedrijven. Dit artikel zoomt hier verder op in. Het start met een korte beschrijving waarom referentiemodellen worden opgesteld. Vervolgens wordt beschreven waarom RAAgE is ontwikkeld, biedt inzicht hoe het model is opgesteld en geeft aan waarvoor het model is gebruikt

Advancement of farming by facilitating collaboration : reference architectures and models for farm software ecosystems

Since time began, mankind has been threatened by the combination of growing populations and diminishing resources. Present-day, this threat is very pertinent as mankind is challenged by a growing world population that is expected to exceed 10 billion in 2050, while resources diminish. Simultaneously, increase of food production should be accomplished in a sustainable manner as consumers require food to be produced environmentally-friendly. Moreover, consumers require safe food produced in transparent agri-food supply chain networks. Farm enterprises can contribute by advancing their management to increase food production in a sustainable, safe and transparent manner. A well-known advanced farm management style, which is knowledge and information intensive, is precision agriculture. Precision agriculture increases the profitability of crop production, while simultaneously reducing the negative environmental impact by tight monitoring and control, in which applications rates of agricultural inputs are adjusted to local needs. Such advanced farm management requires integrated farm information systems as it is knowledge and information intensive. However, advancement is hindered because of interoperability issues between software systems of multiple vendors. An integrated farm information system, containing components of multiple vendors, is required as single organisations cannot develop all technical solutions and ICT Components (e.g. tractors, implements, FMIS, decision support tools) that farmers require. A global overarching system, developed by a single vendor, that can support all business functions of farmers is therefore neither a feasible nor, from a competitive point of view, a desirable solution in agriculture. To realize farm enterprise integration we combine the approaches ICT Mass Customisation with Best-of-Breed. ICT mass customisation combines advantages of standard and customised software by enabling on-demand configuration of information systems from standard components with standardised interfaces. These ICT components can be supplied by different software vendors, which allow Best-of-Breed solutions. By realization of these approaches farm enterprise integration can improve. A farm enterprise can be an arable farm, livestock farm or horticultural farm. In this thesis we focus on arable farm enterprises. To enable farm enterprise integration we have developed six artefacts that are presented in this thesis which are: The Reference Architecture of Agricultural Enterprises (RAAgE) 1.0 that can describe farm enterprise architectures in a uniform and efficient manner; A problem description, which is a case specific instantiation of RAAgE 1.0 generalized to a generic problem description; An ontology that supports communication between collaborating actors and components; Reference Architecture for Farm Software Ecosystems that defines generic relationships between actors and components; RAAgE 2.0 that is a technical reference model to support configuration of business processes and ICT components, which is based on RAAgE 1.0; Prototype software that serves as a proof of concept substantiating that all previous components will provide a solution for integration problems at farm enterprises. RAAgE 1.0 supports designing enterprise architectures in a uniform and efficient manner. The reference model is described in a standard modelling language, named ArchiMate, and shows the interrelations between the business, application and technology layers of farm enterprises. The reference model includes an ontology to provide a concise and precise, formal specification of the object system. This is required to have a shared understanding and effective communication between researchers, farmers, software developers and other stakeholders involved. This ontology is used and extended in other parts of our research. The architectural descriptions can depict the relations between farm business processes and the ICT Components used. The model is validated by two experts that have experience in developing reference architectures and models. A detailed problem description is created using RAAgE 1.0 to gain insight in the cause and nature of integration problems at farm enterprises. To find these problems a method was developed and applied in a case study research including three arable farm enterprises producing potatoes. These farm enterprises focused on improving their management and invested in new technologies for innovation. Within multiple steps of the method the architectural descriptions developed with RAAgE 1.0 facilitated communication and provided insight into problems of farm enterprises to achieve more advanced farm management. The case specific problems, described by instantiating RAAgE 1.0, have been analysed and formulated as more generic problems for farm enterprise integration. These generic problem descriptions have been validated with national and international experts. Based on this research we found that the cause and nature of current integration problems in farming are that ICT components used within the same farm enterprise: have partly overlapping and partly unique application services, functions and interfaces (that are non-standard); are missing required application services, functions and interfaces, have disjoint data repositories; have inadequate and incomplete data exchange as semantics are not unambiguously defined; are hard to configure while this configuration is not supported by an actors and tools. A design, addressing these problems is expected to solve current integration bottlenecks. First, this design must enable smooth data handling and seamless data exchange between ICT Components to solve inadequate and incomplete data exchange and enable integration of data repositories of multiple vendors. Second, it must include a configuration approach to link ICT Components to each other in a meaningful and coherent way. This should be supported by actors that are willing to configure ICT Component of multiple vendors into an integrated solution. Third, the design must enable the formation of a software enterprise to address the previous points and to organize collaboration between actors involved. This software enterprise should focus both on improving interoperability to contribute in solving problems with partly overlapping and partly unique application services, functions and interfaces as well as on organizing the development of missing application services, functions and interfaces. To address these integration challenges a Reference Architecture for Farm Software Ecosystems and RAAgE 2.0 were developed, focusing on both technical and organizational aspects. From literature we found that collaboration can take place within Software Ecosystems. Software Ecosystems are defined as the interaction of a set of actors on top of a common technological platform that results in a coherent set of ICT components or Services. They can provide an effective way to construct large software systems on top of a software platform by combining components, developed by actors that are part of different organisations. To support instantiation of Software Ecosystems for farming, a Reference Architecture was developed. This Reference Architecture describes how software developers, farmers and other stakeholders can collaborate to enable development, configuration and instantiation of integrated software solutions. More specifically, it can be used to map, assess, design and implement Farm Software Ecosystems to help to decrease current integration problems. The reference architecture comprises five main components: Actors, which are basically app developers, business architects/software developers and end-users, i.e. farmers that finally use the configured ICT components and services; Platform that enables configuration of Atomic Application Components into integrated information systems for farmers; Open software enterprise that manages the relation between the actors and the platform; Business services that support software configuration, development and hosting; ICT Components that are configured application components from multiple vendors allowing seamless data exchange based on standards After the design the reference architecture was first verified based on the requirements. Second, semi-structured interviews were held with experts to validate the model. Moreover, the assessment and mapping functionally was validated by using the reference architecture in a case study, in which two existing farm software ecosystems were assessed and mapped. The Reference Architecture for Farm Software Ecosystems mainly addresses the organizational part of this research question. The technical part on the configuration of different ICT components into integrated solutions was not yet sufficiently covered in the Reference Architecture for Farm Software Ecosystems. Therefore we designed RAAgE 2.0 to improve the integrating capabilities of ICT Components, focussing on configuration and ICT Mass Customisation. In this research RAAgE 1.0 was extended into RAAgE 2.0 supporting technical aspects related to configuration of ICT Components by providing a hierarchical configuration methodology. This methodology divides configuration in two steps (i) business process configuration and (ii) software configuration. To enable business process configuration the model comprises three reference models, i.e. on products, processes and resources. The dependencies between these models are defined in rules that define possible combinations of products, processes and resources and that constrain the configuration of farm-specific models i.e. instances. The reference model also includes a configuration tree and templates. Templates describe a set of pre-configured product, process and resource models for typical cases. Variety in farm business processes can be modelled with business process variants. Such a variant realizes a similar kind of business services (e.g. basic fertilization, precision fertilization). Each variant has partly overlapping business processes and resources and unique ones. RAAgE 2.0 provides insight into these specific and generic parts. The other part of the methodology, software configuration, is divided in two additional sub-steps. The first sub-step is to create configuration templates that describe the required (generic) application services (capability types) to support specific business process variants. These configuration templates describe the interactions between the capability types. This sub step is typically performed by a business architect in close collaboration with software developers. The second sub-step is the selection and configuration of the specific capability of a capability type. Capabilities can be offered by atomic application components of multiple vendors that need to be selected. This second sub-step is performed by a business architect, in close collaboration with a farmer. With this extension RAAgE 2.0 supports (i) development of ICT components that fit within an ICT Mass Customisation and Best-of-Breed approach, (ii) selection of ICT components based on business processes that they should support and (iii) getting insight into configuration of different ICT components into an integrated farm information system. To substantiate that our artefacts contribute to realizing ICT Mass Customisation in combination with Best-of-Breed in arable agriculture a proof of concept was developed. A proof of concept is defined as a phase in development, in which experimental hardware or software is constructed and tested to explore and demonstrate the feasibility of a new concept. Realizing ICT Mass Customisation requires: (i) software modularity, (ii) an information integration platform, (iii) component availability, (iv) configuration support and (v) reference information models. To fulfil these requirements a design was developed and instantiated for a specific use case on late blight protection in potato growing for a specific farmer in The Netherlands. For that purpose we: configured the business processes that are involved in late blight protection using RAAgE 2.0 to identify which advanced ICT components are needed to support this process for this farmer; developed the required advanced ICT components that were identified in the previous step using the FIspace platform. These components were provided by different app developers from 5 different European countries; configured a composite application component within the FIspace platform using the configuration framework of RAAgE 2.0. This included involvement of 5 different European organizations; instantiated and executed the application component within the FIspace platform for this specific farmer. This resulted in prototype software that showed how we can configure business processes and multi-vendor atomic application components into a composite component to support late blight protection in potatoes for a specific farmer. It was made plausible that this approach is also applicable to other cases to create software able to support other business processes in agriculture. Within this research we developed artefacts and substantiated that they facilitate collaboration between the actors involved and can help to develop ICT Components that improve farm enterprise integration. Still, to make ICT Mass Customisation and Best-of-Breed a more common practice, future research is required. In this research we recommend to focus on: Development of business models to gain insight into the motives of software developers to become part of Farm Software Ecosystems. Insight into these motives can enhance the adoption of Software Ecosystems for agriculture, which makes the concept of ICT Mass Customisation more feasible. Improving configuration of atomic application components and supporting tools as this is currently still cumbersome. We recommend focussing on one specific case to dig into all details of the case. Such a detailed description will be re-usable for many other farm business processes such as fertilization, other types of crop protection, seeding and harvesting. Although, there are still hurdles to take we recommend continuing this research line as it can result in improved farm enterprise integration and adoption of advanced farm management styles by famers. This can enable farm enterprises to increase food production, while producing in a sustainable, safe and transparent manner.</p

Onderzoek naar gebruikte standaarden voor data uitwisseling van FMIS (44) : een onderzoek in het kader van het Programma voor Precisielandbouw

Het informatiesysteem van de akkerbouwer is in dit onderzoek centraal gesteld. Om een overzicht te krijgen van de huidige farm management informatiesystemen (FMIS) is er een lijst opgesteld. Deze lijst bestaat uit 262 verschillende FMIS van 143 softwareleveranciers gericht op teelt in de akkerbouw. Uit deze lijst is in samenwerking met AGCO, de initiatiefnemer van het project, een shortlist opgesteld door softwareleveranciers te selecteren die zich richten op de wereldwijde markt. Daarnaast is uit de werelddelen Noord-Amerika, Oceanië, en Europa een applicatie gekozen als vergelijking. Om een beeld te krijgen van de regionale markt zijn de software leveranciers gekozen die de Nederlandse akkerbouwers ondersteunen. Voor ieder geselecteerd softwarebedrijf is een overzicht gemaakt van de FMIS die worden aangeboden en ondersteuning bieden aan teelt in de akkerbouw

Kriminologisk læring af udviklingen i indbrud under pandemien

AbstractOur (work)lives have changed radically due to the Covid19-pandemic. This unique situation can be perceived as a natural experiment. What happens to the number of burglaries in private residences, businesses/companies, institutions, and holiday homes when many employees work from home and children receive online education? What are we to expect based on criminological theories and what happened in practice? Theory would predict a decrease in the number of burglaries in private homes and an increase in the number of burglaries in companies and institutions. In reality – at least in Denmark – there was a decline in all forms of burglary. The authors point to disruption of the market for stolen goods as a possible decisive factor in the explanation of this unexpected result