Product-service Systems and Sustainability: Opportunities for Sustainable Solutions

Given that the concept of PSS is beginning to 'catch on' and gain attention, it is time for UNEP to contribute to, and influence the progress of PSS, to ensure that in concept and application it incorporates the idea of sustainability. In this context its potential is not generally understood by the public and private sectors or civil society. This booklet is intended to contribute to the dissemination and the discussion of the PSS concept as a promising approach to sustainability. The ultimate goal must be to achieve Sustainable Product-Service Systems. This UNEP publication is targeted at industry and government, academia and civil society to explain PSS – their potential benefits and limitations – in the sustainability context – using real company examples. To prepare this booklet, UNEP has drawn on the knowledge and experience of PSS experts to flesh out the concept of a sustainable PSS, to collect case studies of PSS in practice, to begin to document both its benefits and the hurdles which need to be overcome in its application, and to suggest ways forward in its development

Scheduling Jobs in Flowshops with the Introduction of Additional Machines in the Future

This is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Elsevier and can be found at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/expert-systems-with-applications/.The problem of scheduling jobs to minimize total weighted tardiness in flowshops,\ud with the possibility of evolving into hybrid flowshops in the future, is investigated in\ud this paper. As this research is guided by a real problem in industry, the flowshop\ud considered has considerable flexibility, which stimulated the development of an\ud innovative methodology for this research. Each stage of the flowshop currently has\ud one or several identical machines. However, the manufacturing company is planning\ud to introduce additional machines with different capabilities in different stages in the\ud near future. Thus, the algorithm proposed and developed for the problem is not only\ud capable of solving the current flow line configuration but also the potential new\ud configurations that may result in the future. A meta-heuristic search algorithm based\ud on Tabu search is developed to solve this NP-hard, industry-guided problem. Six\ud different initial solution finding mechanisms are proposed. A carefully planned\ud nested split-plot design is performed to test the significance of different factors and\ud their impact on the performance of the different algorithms. To the best of our\ud knowledge, this research is the first of its kind that attempts to solve an industry-guided\ud problem with the concern for future developments

Policy constellations as ecosystems of design actions: Exploring three cases of social innovation policies in Italy

The article considers social innovation in an eco-systemic perspective, focusing on policies able to foster it and discussing design’s role within them in terms of professional skills and a widespread capability among all social actors involved. To be expressions of an innovative governance, social innovation policies must themselves be innovative and form policy constellations: clusters of initiatives able to interact positively with the socio-technical system on which they seek to impact. The article is specifically devoted to illustrating the notion of policy constellation, discussing three social innovation policies in Italy: ‘Bologna Regulation’, ‘Milan Smart City’ and ‘Bollenti Spiriti’ in Apulia. All three case studies refer to project strategies that lead to the creation of ecosystems of independent (but mutually synergic) initiatives. Until now, expert design has had a sometimes significant, but generally marginal, presence in this field (mostly as strategic design and, to a lesser extent, as service and communication design). This article suggests that this could and should increase in the future. The authors conclude by posing a new question: what holds together the constituent projects in a social innovation policy? A possible hypothesis is that this something is a cultural frame: a vision of the world shared by all the actors involved

High-Order IMEX-RK Finite Volume Methods for Multidimensional Hyperbolic Systems.

In this paper we present a high-order accurate cell-centered finite volume method for the semi-implicit discretization of multidimensional hyperbolic systems in conservative form on unstructured grids. This method is based on a special splitting of the physical flux function into a convective and a non-convective part. The convective contribution to the global flux is treated implicitly by mimicking the upwinding of a scalar linear flux function while the rest of the flux is discretized in an explicit way. The spatial accuracy is ensured by allowing non-oscillatory polynomial reconstruction procedures, while the time accuracy is attained by adopting a Runge-Kutta stepping scheme. The method can be naturally considered in the framework of the textbf{IM}plicit-textbf{EX}plicit (IMEX) schemes and the properties of the resulting operators are analysed using the properties of M-matrices

Chemistry-climate model SOCOL: a validation of the present-day climatology

International audienceIn this paper we document ''SOCOL'', a new chemistry-climate model, which has been ported for regular PCs and shows good wall-clock performance. An extensive validation of the model results against present-day climate obtained from observations and assimilation data sets shows that the model describes the climatological state of the atmosphere for the late 1990s with reasonable accuracy. The model has a significant temperature bias only in the upper stratosphere and near the tropopause in the tropics and high latitudes. The latter is the result of the rather low vertical resolution of the model near the tropopause. The former can be attributed to a crude representation of the radiation heating in the middle atmosphere. A comparison of the simulated and observed link between the tropical stratospheric structure and the strength of the polar vortex shows that in general, both observations and simulations reveal a higher temperature and ozone mixing ratio in the lower tropical stratosphere for the case with stronger Polar night jet (PNJ) as predicted by theoretical studies

Chemistry-climate model SOCOL: a validation of the present-day climatology

In this paper we document 'SOCOL', a new chemistry-climate model, which has been ported for regular PCs and shows good wall-clock performance. An extensive validation of the model results against present-day climate data obtained from observations and assimilation data sets shows that the model describes the climatological state of the atmosphere for the late 1990s with reasonable accuracy. The model has a significant temperature bias only in the upper stratosphere and near the tropopause at high latitudes. The latter is the result of the rather low vertical resolution of the model near the tropopause. The former can be attributed to a crude representation of radiation heating in the middle atmosphere. A comparison of the simulated and observed link between the tropical stratospheric structure and the strength of the polar vortex shows that in general, both observations and simulations reveal a higher temperature and ozone mixing ratio in the lower tropical stratosphere for the case with stronger Polar night jet (PNJ) and slower Brewer-Dobson circulation as predicted by theoretical studies

Dual processing of sulfated steroids in the olfactory system of an anuran amphibian

Chemical communication is widespread in amphibians, but if compared to later diverging tetrapods the available functional data is limited. The existing information on the vomeronasal system of anurans is particularly sparse. Amphibians represent a transitional stage in the evolution of the olfactory system. Most species have anatomically separated main and vomeronasal systems, but recent studies have shown that in anurans their molecular separation is still underway. Sulfated steroids function as migratory pheromones in lamprey and have recently been identified as natural vomeronasal stimuli in rodents. Here we identified sulfated steroids as the first known class of vomeronasal stimuli in the amphibian Xenopus laevis. We show that sulfated steroids are detected and concurrently processed by the two distinct olfactory subsystems of larval Xenopus laevis, the main olfactory system and the vomeronasal system. Our data revealed a similar but partially different processing of steroid-induced responses in the two systems. Differences of detection thresholds suggest that the two information channels are not just redundant, but rather signal different information. Furthermore, we found that larval and adult animals excrete multiple sulfated compounds with physical properties consistent with sulfated steroids. Breeding tadpole and frog water including these compounds activated a large subset of sensory neurons that also responded to synthetic steroids, showing that sulfated steroids are likely to convey intraspecific information. Our findings indicate that sulfated steroids are conserved vomeronasal stimuli functioning in phylogenetically distant classes of tetrapods living in aquatic and terrestrial habitats

Behavioral implications of shortlisting procedures

We consider two-stage “shortlisting procedures” in which the menu of alternatives is first pruned by some process or criterion and then a binary relation is maximized. Given a particular first-stage process, our main result supplies a necessary and sufficient condition for choice data to be consistent with a procedure in the designated class. This result applies to any class of procedures with a certain lattice structure, including the cases of “consideration filters,” “satisficing with salience effects,” and “rational shortlist methods.” The theory avoids background assumptions made for mathematical convenience; in this and other respects following Richter’s classical analysis of preference-maximizing choice in the absence of shortlisting

Textiles as Material Gestalt: Cloth as a Catalyst in the Co-designing Process

Textiles is the common language within Emotional Fit, a collaborative research project investigating a person-centred, sustainable approach to fashion for an ageing female demographic (55+). Through the co-designing of a collection of research tools, textiles have acted as a material gestalt for exploring our research participants' identities by tracing their embodied knowledge of fashionable dress. The methodology merges Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, co-design and a simultaneous approach to textile and garment design. Based on an enhanced understanding of our participants textile preferences, particular fabric qualities have catalysed silhouettes, through live draping and geometric pattern cutting to accommodate multiple body shapes and customisation. Printedtextiles have also been digitally crafted in response to the contours of the garment and body and personal narratives of wear. Sensorial and tactile interactions have informed the engineering and scaling of patterns within zero-waste volumes. The article considers the functional and aesthetic role of textiles

State-of-the-art in product service-systems

A Product Service-System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarises available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges