The European Commission describes a Circular Economy (CE) as an economy “where the value of products,materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste minimised.”But what is value in this context and how should CE policies consider value? Extended producer responsibility(EPR) policies are an important part of an EU CE Action Plan. However, th

Gait disorders are a relevant factor for falls and possible to measure with wearable devices. If a wearable sensor can detect differences in gait parameters between fallers and non-fallers has not yet been studied. The aim of this study was to measure and compare gait parameters, vestibular function, and balance performance between fallers and non-fallers among a group of older persons. Participan

In the context of the Circular Economy, there is a lot of discussion on how policies at European Union and member state levels could provide incentives for the design of more durable products. One potential policy approach is to mandate manufacturers to provide lifetime information to consumers at the time of purchase. This could be done through a specific labeling scheme, or by including such inf

Rainfall intensity or depth estimates are vital input for hydrologic and hydraulic models used in designing drainage infrastructures. Unfortunately, these estimates are susceptible to different sources of uncertainties including climate change, which could have high implications on the cost and design of hydraulic structures. This study adopts a systematic literature review to ascertain the disreg

This ethnographic study shows that women’s knowledge and practices involving food in Japanese Buddhist contexts circulate as gendered currency. It emphasizes how what we term “food literacy” cultivates aesthetic and affective senses of belonging among Buddhist practitioners. We argue that this embodied knowledge helps women negotiate their experiences of Buddhism and show how these experiences art

Lignin represents the second most abundant biopolymer of the plant cell wall. Among microorganisms, fungi are the most efficient lignin decomposers. The discovery of ligninolysis by fungi could have altered the ancient carbon cycle at the global scale and it is still one of the processes that determine carbon sequestration and soil formation. Understanding the evolution of ligninolytic systems rep

Live blogging from legal trials has become one of the most accessible ways in which the public can gain direct insight into legal proceedings, particularly in countries where television cameras are denied entry into the courtroom. Whilst live blogging constitutes an important way of ensuring the transparency and openness of legal processes and documents – a principle known as open justice and a ke

The use of stem cell derived dopamine neurons for treating patients with Parkinson's disease has now evolved to the first in human clinical trials. In this debate, we argue that assuming these trials give positive outcomes that this therapy will supercede DBS as the neurosurgical treatment of choice for PD patients in the future given it is a one-off therapy that repairs a critical pathway in the

In two recent postmortem studies, Jeffrey Kordower and colleagues report new findings that open up for an interesting discussion on the status of GDNF/NRTN signaling in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), adding an interesting perspective on the, admittedly very limited, signs of restorative effects previously seen in GDNF/NRTN-treated patients. Their new findings show that the level of the GD

We study acoustic streaming in liquids driven by a nondissipative acoustic body force created by light-induced temperature gradients. This thermoacoustic streaming produces a velocity amplitude nearly 100 times higher than the boundary-driven Rayleigh streaming and the Rayleigh-Bénard convection at a temperature gradient of 10 K/mm in the channel. The Rayleigh streaming is altered by the acoustic

The Jk(a-b-) phenotype results from alterations in the JK gene and is characterized by absence of the RBC urea transporter in the cell membrane. The frequency of Jk(a-b-) varies among populations, but this phenotype is most commonly found in people of Polynesian and Finnish descent. Although rare, Jk(a-b-) individuals present a clinical challenge because anti-Jk3 is produced readily in response to

According to non-doxasticism, religious faith can be in an important sense belief-less. However, such faith becomes vulnerable to the despair-problem known from the literature on hope. I suggest that the problem can be overcome by adopting J. L. Schellenberg’s imagination-based account of non-doxastic faith. In developing this idea, I draw on the account of imagination offered by Amy Kind and an u

We study an optimal control problem for a simple transportation model on a path graph. We give a closed form solution for the optimal controller, which can also account for planned disturbances using feed-forward. The optimal controller is highly structured, which allows the controller to be implemented using only local communication, conducted through two sweeps through the graph.