Affective Sustainability. Is this what timelessness really means?

Sustainability is always about regard to the environment: an intelligent use of resources and not returning to nature what it cannot degrade without long-term damage. Politics, business and thus research have been predominantly concerned with the direct impact on the environment of the diverse human activities in our society. There is of course awareness about all the indirect effects caused by these activities but as these effects are more complicated to identify and calculate, it could reasonably be suggested that these have not got the same attention and hence have not been thoroughly explored. Important resources are required for the production of objects, which subsequently turn out neither to meet humans’ needs nor to fulfil their desires. This issue involves not just the misuse of resources but also the addition to waste problems. Needs and desires are not unrelated to material and function but reach mostly beyond the physicality of the object as argued by Krippendorf (2006), among others. Timelessness is unrelated to physicality and is most likely the ultimate example of sustaining. However, this phenomenon does not easily allow interpretation as it is basically philosophical, which also would complicate its transition into other domains. The deconstruction of timelessness in an earlier work (Borjesson, 2006) resulted in the phenomenon being conceptualised as affective sustainability. Four notions were identified as mainly informing timelessness: time, tradition, aesthetics and perception. When subsequently studied in several disciplines, these notions produced indicators on how to understand better what makes objects retain their significance in a changing human context. These indicators are not to be categorised as a set of tools or even less as a model to be applied in the design process: they are directional rather than normative. Moreover, they are best understood as support and inspiration to develop design thinking and have been the subject for further analysis as part of continued research. This has increased the clarity of the directions not only in relation to design thinking but also where to continue research. Keywords: Sustainability, Human ways of living, Human ways of being, Lived and Learned experience, Emotion, Affect, Feeling, Cognition.</p

Radioimmunodetection and radioimmunotherapy of head and neck cancer

Dongen, G.A.M.S. van [Promotor]Leemans, C.R. [Promotor]Bree, R. de [Copromotor

The affective sustainability of objects; a search for causal connections. Studies of theory, processes and practice related to timelessness as a phenomenon.

The phenomenon of timelessness has important connotations beyond its popular meaning. Although philosophical, timelessness is frequently applied to objects: there are various suggestions concerning the properties of a timeless object in literature and popular publications, but there is no apparent unanimity on how to realise these characteristics. The approach to sustainable development has broadened, but the impact of immaterial properties of objects needs to be further explored. This thesis addresses these issues through cross-disciplinary research, which is located in industrial and product design and embraces the subject areas of history of design and art, philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science and sustainable development. The research question is: what makes some objects retain their significance over time and in a changing human context? Although the analyses of literature presented in this thesis have made it evident that the discourse on sustainability, including system thinking, has an apparent focus on material characteristics, there is nothing implicating opposition to an expanded view comprising immateriality. On the other hand, there are indications that the ambiguity of timelessness and related notions, including how the judgment is formed causes confusion for designers pursuing longevity in objects. The aim for this thesis is hence to address this ambiguity and introduce directions, which would allow designers to consider the immaterial qualities of objects when designing and thereby promote a more profound holistic approach to sustainability and sustainable design. The thesis embarks on a deconstruction of timelessness, resulting in the phenomenon being conceptualised: affective sustainability, and subsequently explored through three applications. These initiate new lines of inquiry and allow for the thesis to conclude the key findings of the research. The study concludes that affective sustainability is considered to be a lived experience. Re-considering sustainability and rethinking time, tradition, aesthetics and perception facilitate comprehension of affectively sustainable objects: a designer has to use intuitive judgements and to reach beyond the personal these have to be balanced by the verbal visualisation of thoughts and the study of un-reflected human behaviour outside laboratory settings

Making SPI Happen: The Roads to Process Implementation

Software Process Improvement (SPI) has been widely adopted by software organizations to enhance their capability to effectively deliver quality software. The approach has several positive merits. But many initiatives fail because the software processes are never adopted in practice. This paper offers a comparative analysis of the implementation strategies and outcomes of 18 SPI initiatives within Ericsson. The analysis draws upon concepts from the diffusion of innovations literature and leads to four different process implementation strategies – High Way, Country Road, Crossroads, and Dead End Street. These roads to software process implementation target different levels of practice and they rely on different mixtures of process push and practice pull. Our research suggests that the High Way with its combination of strong push and strong pull is the most promising road to implementation success, whereas the other roads imply serious barriers to success

Horses with equine recurrent uveitis have an activated CD4+ T-cell phenotype that can be modulated by mesenchymal stem cells in vitro.

Equine recurrent uveitis (ERU) is an immune-mediated disease causing repeated or persistent inflammatory episodes which can lead to blindness. Currently, there is no cure for horses with this disease. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are effective at reducing immune cell activation in vitro in many species, making them a potential therapeutic option for ERU. The objectives of this study were to define the lymphocyte phenotype of horses with ERU and to determine how MSCs alter T-cell phenotype in vitro. Whole blood was taken from 7 horses with ERU and 10 healthy horses and peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated. The markers CD21, CD3, CD4, and CD8 were used to identify lymphocyte subsets while CD25, CD62L, Foxp3, IFNγ, and IL10 were used to identify T-cell phenotype. Adipose-derived MSCs were expanded, irradiated (to control proliferation), and incubated with CD4+ T-cells from healthy horses, after which lymphocytes were collected and analyzed via flow cytometry. The percentages of T-cells and B-cells in horses with ERU were similar to normal horses. However, CD4+ T-cells from horses with ERU expressed higher amounts of IFNγ indicating a pro-inflammatory Th1 phenotype. When co-incubated with MSCs, activated CD4+ T-cells reduced expression of CD25, CD62L, Foxp3, and IFNγ. MSCs had a lesser ability to decrease activation when cell-cell contact or prostaglandin signaling was blocked. MSCs continue to show promise as a treatment for ERU as they decreased the CD4+ T-cell activation phenotype through a combination of cell-cell contact and prostaglandin signaling

Hematopoietic Stem and Progenitor Cells as Effectors in Innate Immunity

Recent research has shed light on novel functions of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPC). While they are critical for maintenance and replenishment of blood cells in the bone marrow, these cells are not limited to the bone marrow compartment and function beyond their role in hematopoiesis. HSPC can leave bone marrow and circulate in peripheral blood and lymph, a process often manipulated therapeutically for the purpose of transplantation. Additionally, these cells preferentially home to extramedullary sites of inflammation where they can differentiate to more mature effector cells. HSPC are susceptible to various pathogens, though they may participate in the innate immune response without being directly infected. They express pattern recognition receptors for detection of endogenous and exogenous danger-associated molecular patterns and respond not only by the formation of daughter cells but can themselves secrete powerful cytokines. This paper summarizes the functional and phenotypic characterization of HSPC, their niche within and outside of the bone marrow, and what is known regarding their role in the innate immune response

Updating of user requirements of elderly and disabled drivers and travellers

The user requirements have been reassessed in the light of the results from the collaborative evaluations with other Transport Telematics Projects, as well as data and expertise gathered from the literature and other experts in the field. The user requirements identified are also the fundamental base for the development of different parts of the TELSCAN project. User requirements cover, of course, a multitude of different aspects, and to demonstrate how they have been integrated into the project’s output, they have been grouped into the following categories: • System function requirements • Interface requirements • Information requirements • Protocol requirements

Energy relaxation pathways between light-matter states revealed by coherent two-dimensional spectroscopy

Coupling matter excitations to electromagnetic modes inside nano-scale optical resonators leads to the formation of hybrid light-matter states, so-called polaritons, allowing the controlled manipulation of material properties. Here, we investigate the photo-induced dynamics of a prototypical strongly-coupled molecular exciton-microcavity system using broadband two-dimensional Fourier transform spectroscopy and unravel the mechanistic details of its ultrafast photo-induced dynamics. We find evidence for a direct energy relaxation pathway from the upper to the lower polariton state that initially bypasses the excitonic manifold of states, which is often assumed to act as an intermediate energy reservoir, under certain experimental conditions. This observation provides new insight into polariton photophysics and could potentially aid the development of applications that rely on controlling the energy relaxation mechanism, such as in solar energy harvesting, manipulating chemical reactivity, the creation of Bose–Einstein condensates and quantum computing

Allogeneic Mesenchymal Stem Cell Treatment Induces Specific Alloantibodies in Horses

Background. It is unknown whether horses that receive allogeneic mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) injections develop specific humoral immune response. Our goal was to develop and validate a flow cytometric MSC crossmatch procedure and to determine if horses that received allogeneic MSCs in a clinical setting developed measurable antibodies following MSC administration. Methods. Serum was collected from a total of 19 horses enrolled in 3 different research projects. Horses in the 3 studies all received unmatched allogeneic MSCs. Bone marrow (BM) or adipose tissue derived MSCs (ad-MSCs) were administered via intravenous, intra-arterial, intratendon, or intraocular routes. Anti-MSCs and anti-bovine serum albumin antibodies were detected via flow cytometry and ELISA, respectively. Results. Overall, anti-MSC antibodies were detected in 37% of the horses. The majority of horses (89%) were positive for anti-bovine serum albumin (BSA) antibodies prior to and after MSC injection. Finally, there was no correlation between the amount of anti-BSA antibody and the development of anti-MSC antibodies. Conclusion. Anti allo-MSC antibody development was common; however, the significance of these antibodies is unknown. There was no correlation between either the presence or absence of antibodies and the percent antibody binding to MSCs and any adverse reaction to a MSC injection