What do they really mean by “design”? A textual analysis of the reports from design-led labs that strive for better service provision and policymaking

This master’s thesis investigates the notion of design depicted by the design-led labs (DLLs) in the emergent field of design for public sector through the viewpoints of two eminent design scholars, namely Bryan Lawson and Nigel Cross. The DLLs in this thesis refer to various agencies with design as their core competence that are involved in the attempts to improve public service provision and policymaking in collabo-ration with their respective governments. These DLLs have largely owed their origins to the governments’ demands for creating better services and policies with decreased financial re-sources. As a result of budgetary constraints and a variety of complex societal problems, the public sectors has been obligated to seek ways to innovate their solutions. In the effort to miti-gate the difficulties, design seems to have arisen as one of the alternative approaches to ad-dress these challenges on account of its prevalent emergence and achievements around the world. However, the usage of the term “design”, constantly mentioned by the DLLs appears confusing and remains undefined. Due to this lack of clarity with the most essential concept, this thesis attempts to disclose the actual meaning of “design” as seen by the DLLs. This thesis analyses the notion of design adopted by DLLs and explicated in their reports. The notion of design is operationalised on the basis of four landmark design research publications. These serve as investigate lenses in examining the reports from DLLs in four different coun-tries, namely the Design Council (UK), Public Policy Lab (US), Strategic Design Unit at SITRA (Finland), also known as Helsinki Design Lab, and MindLab (Denmark), in order to identify the various notions of design. Through the analysis of the four books, the notions of design are identified and categorised under three themes: design tendencies; design capabilities; design skills. The analysis based on the aforementioned themes shows that the notions of design expressed in the DLL’s reports extend or contradict those established by Lawson and Cross. As a conclusion, this study presents the four extended design capability and design skills, as well as a new set of design capabilities that may contribute to the process of expanding the notions of design adapted for the public sector in order to improve service provision and poli-cymaking. Additionally, the thesis summarises the arguments presented by the DLLs in sup-port of fostering design as a viable tool for the public sector and governments to achieve more effective service provision and policymaking

THE ADJUSTMENT OF LEG STIFFNESS DURING DYNAMIC EXERCISE AND DOWNWARD STEPPING FOR ELDERLY

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the ability of leg stiffness regulation during downward stepping and maximal Counter-Movement-Jump (CMJ) for the elderly. Ten healthy aged people (age: 68.6±5 years; height: 165.3±4.4cm; mass: 61.7±9.3kg) and 10 students (age: 24.3±2years; height: 171.5±4.6cm; mass: 65.9±8kg) volunteered as subjects. Kistler force platform (1200Hz) and Peak high-speed camera (120Hz) were used synchronously to record the ground reaction force and the kinematic parameters of the subjects performing CMJ and stepping down from different heights. The results revealed that the elderly group has a smaller joint range of motion and greater leg stiffness than the young group during stepping down. The force and the leg stiffness during CMJ were significantly smaller for the elderly. The leg stiffness during downward stepping is independent of dynamic leg stiffness during CMJ. With aging, the adjustment ability of leg stiffness for maximal dynamic voluntary contraction was decreased

Poly[[[μ3-5-(pyridine-4-carboxamido)­isophthalato]{μ3-5-[(pyridin-1-ium-4-yl)carbonyl­amino]­isophthalato}­neodymium(III)] dihydrate]

In the title compound, {[Nd(C14H9N2O5)(C14H8N2O5)]·2H2O}n, the NdIII atom is eight-coordinated as it is surrounded by eight carboxyl­ate O atoms from six ligands in a distorted square-anti­prismatic arrangement. The NdIII atoms are linked by HL − and L 2− ligands [H2 L is 5-(pyridine-4-carboxamido)­isophthalic acid], forming a bilayer network. The layers are linked into a three-demensional network through N—H⋯O and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

On Investigating the Conservative Property of Score-Based Generative Models

Existing Score-based Generative Models (SGMs) can be categorized into constrained SGMs (CSGMs) or unconstrained SGMs (USGMs) according to their parameterization approaches. CSGMs model probability density functions as Boltzmann distributions, and assign their predictions as the negative gradients of some scalar-valued energy functions. On the other hand, USGMs employ flexible architectures capable of directly estimating scores without the need to explicitly model energy functions. In this paper, we demonstrate that the architectural constraints of CSGMs may limit their modeling ability. In addition, we show that USGMs' inability to preserve the property of conservativeness may lead to degraded sampling performance in practice. To address the above issues, we propose Quasi-Conservative Score-based Generative Models (QCSGMs) for keeping the advantages of both CSGMs and USGMs. Our theoretical derivations demonstrate that the training objective of QCSGMs can be efficiently integrated into the training processes by leveraging the Hutchinson trace estimator. In addition, our experimental results on the CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, ImageNet, and SVHN datasets validate the effectiveness of QCSGMs. Finally, we justify the advantage of QCSGMs using an example of a one-layered autoencoder

A positive feedback loop of IL-17B-IL-17RB activates ERK/β-catenin to promote lung cancer metastasis

Inflammation contributes to the development and progression of cancer. Interleukin-17 (IL-17) is an inflammatory cytokine that functions in inflammation and cancer, as well as several other cellular processes. In this study, we investigated the roles and the prognostic value of IL-17 and the IL-17 receptor (IL-17R) in lung cancer. Gene expression microarray analysis followed by Kaplan-Meier survival curve showed that IL-17B was associated with poor patient survival, and IL-17B receptor (IL-17RB) was up-regulated in lung cancer tissue compared with normal tissue. Expression of IL-17RB was associated with lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis, as well as poor patient survival. IL-17RB overexpression significantly increased cancer cell invasion/migration and metastasis in vitro and in vivo. IL-17RB induced ERK phosphorylation, resulting in GSK3β inactivation and leading to β-catenin up-regulation. IL-17RB also participated in IL-17B synthesis via the ERK pathway. IL-17RB activation is required for IL-17B-mediated ERK phosphorylation. Taken together, IL-17B-IL-17RB signaling and ERK participate in a positive feedback loop that enhances invasion/migration ability in lung cancer cell lines. IL-17RB may therefore serve as an independent prognostic factor and a therapeutic target for lung cancer