Developing Scenarios for Product Longevity and Sufficiency

This paper explores the narrative of peoples’ relationships with products as a window on understanding the types of innovation that may inform a culture of sufficiency. The work forms part of the 'Business as Unusual: Designing Products with Consumers in the Loop' [BaU] project, funded as part of the UK EPSRC-ESRC RECODE network (RECODE, 2016) that aims to explore the potential of re-distributed manufacturing (RdM) in a context of sustainability. This element of the project employed interviews, mapping and workshops as methods to investigate the relationship between people and products across the product lifecycle. A focus on product longevity and specifically the people-product interactions is captured in conversations around product maintenance and repair. In exploring ideas of ‘broken’ we found different characteristics of, and motivations for, repair. Mapping these and other product-people interactions across the product lifecycle indicated where current activity is, who owns such activity (i.e. organisation or individual) and where gaps in interactions occur. These issues were explored further in a workshop which grouped participants to look at products from the perspective of one of four scenarios; each scenario represented either short or long product lifespans and different types of people engagement in the design process. The findings help give shape to new scenarios for designing sufficiency-based social models of material flows

A landscape of repair

This paper reports on EPSRC-funded research that explores the role of repair in creating new models of sustainable business. In the lifecycle stage of repair we explore what 'broken' means and uncover the nature of local and dispersed repair activities. This in turn allows us to better understand how the relationship between products and people can help shape new modes of consumption. Therefore, narratives of repair are collected to identify diverse people-product interactions and illustrate the different characteristics of, and motivations for, repair. The paper proposes that mapping the different product-people interactions across the product lifecycle, particularly at the stage of fragile-functionality (performance or function failure, emotional disengagement, superseded technology) is important in understanding the potential for enduring products and their repair. Building a landscape of repair creates new opportunities for manufacture and for slowing resource loops across product lifetimes, which together provide a framework for a sufficiency-based model of production and consumption

MASP-1 Induces a Unique Cytokine Pattern in Endothelial Cells: A Novel Link between Complement System and Neutrophil Granulocytes

Microbial infection urges prompt intervention by the immune system. The complement cascade and neutrophil granulocytes are the predominant contributors to this immediate anti-microbial action. We have previously shown that mannan-binding lectin-associated serine protease-1 (MASP-1), the most abundant enzyme of the complement lectin pathway, can induce p38-MAPK activation, NFkappaB signaling, and Ca(2+)-mobilization in endothelial cells. Since neutrophil chemotaxis and transmigration depends on endothelial cell activation, we aimed to explore whether recombinant MASP-1 (rMASP-1) is able to induce cytokine production and subsequent neutrophil chemotaxis in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC). We found that HUVECs activated by rMASP-1 secreted IL-6 and IL-8, but not IL-1alpha, IL-1ra, TNFalpha and MCP-1. rMASP-1 induced dose-dependent IL-6 and IL-8 production with different kinetics. rMASP-1 triggered IL-6 and IL-8 production was regulated predominantly by the p38-MAPK pathway. Moreover, the supernatant of rMASP-1-stimulated HUVECs activated the chemotaxis of neutrophil granulocytes as an integrated effect of cytokine production. Our results implicate that besides initializing the complement lectin pathway, MASP-1 may activate neutrophils indirectly, via the endothelial cells, which link these effective antimicrobial host defense mechanisms

Genetic polymorphisms of the RAS-cytokine pathway and chronic kidney disease

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) in children is irreversible. It is associated with renal failure progression and atherosclerotic cardiovascular (CV) abnormalities. Nearly 60% of children with CKD are affected since birth with congenital or inherited kidney disorders. Preliminary evidence primarily from adult CKD studies indicates common genetic risk factors for CKD and atherosclerotic CV disease. Although multiple physiologic pathways share common genes for CKD and CV disease, substantial evidence supports our attention to the renin angiotensin system (RAS) and the interlinked inflammatory cascade because they modulate the progressions of renal and CV disease. Gene polymorphisms in the RAS-cytokine pathway, through altered gene expression of inflammatory cytokines, are potential factors that modulate the rate of CKD progression and CV abnormalities in patients with CKD. For studying such hypotheses, the cooperative efforts among scientific groups and the availability of robust and affordable technologies to genotype thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome make genome-wide association studies an attractive paradigm for studying polygenic diseases such as CKD. Although attractive, such studies should be interpreted carefully, with a fundamental understanding of their potential weaknesses. Nevertheless, whole-genome association studies for diabetic nephropathy and future studies pertaining to other types of CKD will offer further insight for the development of targeted interventions to treat CKD and associated atherosclerotic CV abnormalities in the pediatric CKD population

Genetic variation and exercise-induced muscle damage: implications for athletic performance, injury and ageing.

Prolonged unaccustomed exercise involving muscle lengthening (eccentric) actions can result in ultrastructural muscle disruption, impaired excitation-contraction coupling, inflammation and muscle protein degradation. This process is associated with delayed onset muscle soreness and is referred to as exercise-induced muscle damage. Although a certain amount of muscle damage may be necessary for adaptation to occur, excessive damage or inadequate recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage can increase injury risk, particularly in older individuals, who experience more damage and require longer to recover from muscle damaging exercise than younger adults. Furthermore, it is apparent that inter-individual variation exists in the response to exercise-induced muscle damage, and there is evidence that genetic variability may play a key role. Although this area of research is in its infancy, certain gene variations, or polymorphisms have been associated with exercise-induced muscle damage (i.e. individuals with certain genotypes experience greater muscle damage, and require longer recovery, following strenuous exercise). These polymorphisms include ACTN3 (R577X, rs1815739), TNF (-308 G>A, rs1800629), IL6 (-174 G>C, rs1800795), and IGF2 (ApaI, 17200 G>A, rs680). Knowing how someone is likely to respond to a particular type of exercise could help coaches/practitioners individualise the exercise training of their athletes/patients, thus maximising recovery and adaptation, while reducing overload-associated injury risk. The purpose of this review is to provide a critical analysis of the literature concerning gene polymorphisms associated with exercise-induced muscle damage, both in young and older individuals, and to highlight the potential mechanisms underpinning these associations, thus providing a better understanding of exercise-induced muscle damage

Business as Unusual: Designing products with consumers in the loop

This feasibility study was one of five feasibility studies on re-distributed manufacture, consumer goods and big data. The study looked mainly into: How could we engage users in NPD in future re-distributed models of sustainable production and consumption? To answer this question, the study mapped the different product-people interactions to identify the challenges and opportunities for user engagement in design and manufacture, to further investigate their application in order to bridge the gap between users, companies and the products that they produce. To further analyse these opportunities, two different product-people interactions were delved into, to understand how new forms of engaging people across the life cycle can achieve a more localised and responsive structures of manufacturing and product adoption. The results of these investigations helped to envision four contrasting scenarios of BaU, and generate conceptual business models and touchpoints to support these novel systems of consumption and production

Looking Through the Lens of Shock: Exploring Opportunities for Learning and Innovation for Adaptable Infrastructure

The integration of infrastructure offers opportunities to develop more sustainable systems of service provision such as electricity, water, waste and transport using fewer resources. However, these utilities are currently run, managed and regulated in silos. Achieving integrated infrastructure requires thinking about systems of provision as something more than the mere addition of independent systems. Integrated infrastructure needs to be thought of as a “system of systems”. This relational perspective challenges existing organizational and operational arrangements and requires different thinking to enable the development of new operational practices capable of delivering adaptable infrastructure. Adaptability, in this context, is the need to respond to issues of supply such as increasing resource scarcity, and to the challenges of demand such as our expectations of levels of service provision. Thus creating new systems of adaptable infrastructure will present opportunities to learn and innovate for a sustainable future.The briefing statement for this conference suggests that times of crisis offer opportunities for doing things differently. An EPSRC funded project, Shock (not) Horror, uses this concept to explore shocks as key moments to learn about infrastructure and to create the potential for long-term innovation, particularly in response to complex issues such as sustainability. In this context shocks are heavy and potentially fatal disturbances whose consequences transcend the infrastructure system in which they occur. They may be caused by external events such as natural catastrophes and climatic events, radical institutional changes or economic crises.This paper describes the outputs of two workshops held with a range of representatives from different infrastructures. Participants were tasked with mapping elements of different infrastructure systems (water, energy and transport) across a framework representing a multi-level socio-technological system. The framework comprised different levels of a system: the niche level where new interventions and interfaces reside (technological fix, product innovations); the regime level structures that guide the processes and responses in the system (market drivers, economic policy, regulation); and the elements of the system landscape that constitute the operating context and appear remote and difficult to change (climate change, economic collapse, trends in material consumption). These maps, representing the socio-technical frame for each infrastructure, provided useful insights into current thinking and practice in infrastructure provision. Subsequent activities centred on the relationships between shocks and levels of learning. An allegory of medical trauma was used to understand the potential of different types of learning from accident and emergency staff experiencing different shocks in a different system. A number of attributes of dealing with shocks emerged from the medical case and other narratives from past infrastructure shocks. These included: flows of resources and expertise; mechanisms that are both formal and informal; professionalism; effective teamwork; cross-sector/discipline relationships; understanding relationships between physical ‘stuff’ and people; the limits and opportunities of rules and regulation; and education and knowledge. Shocks provide a transitory window to see integrated infrastructure in action. These different responses to, and learning from shock, begin to illustrate the nature of the processes required to create the integrated infrastructure necessary for the adaptability of systems in the future