Digital Commons Network^™

Asce's Response To The Pandemic: Execution Of A Remote Exceed Teaching Workshop, Kelly Salyards, Allen Estes, Camilla M. Saviz, Patricia Clayton, Julian Ly Davis, Corinna Marie Fleischmann, Tonya Lynn Nilsson, Pinar Omur-Ozbek, Fethiye Ozis, Monica Palomo, Carolyn M. Rodak, Cassandra Rutherford, Cristina Torres-Machi, Dion Karean Coward, Leslie Nolen

Architectural Engineering

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Teaching Workshop (ETW) started in 1999 and has produced 1035 graduates from 266 colleges and universities throughout the world. ASCE has conducted 44 week-long, inperson workshops without interruption for over two decades. The ExCEEd graduates returned to their home universities and applied the lessons of this workshop to the classes they teach. The details and long-term benefits of the ETW have been reported in many venues.

In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation and remained a persistent threat throughout 2021. As a result, the in-person …

2019 Statewide Child Death Report, Nevada Institute For Children’S Research And Policy, Dawn L. Davidson, Elizabeth Holka

Nevada Institute for Children's Research and Policy Reports

The purpose of this report is to provide comprehensive information regarding the circumstances by which children die in Nevada in order to prevent future child deaths and improve the health and safety of children in the state.

Site-Directed Mutagenesis Of Serine-72 Reveals The Location Of The Fructose 6-Phosphate Regulatory Site Of The Agrobacterium Tumefaciensadp-Glucose Pyrophosphorylase, Mashael Alghamdi Dr., Rania Ali Z Hussien, Yuanzhang Zheng, Hiral Patel, Matias D. Asencion Diez, Alberto A. Iglesias, Dali Liu, Miguel A. Ballicora

Chemistry: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The allosteric regulation of ADP–glucose pyrophosphorylase is critical for the biosynthesis of glycogen in bacteria and starch in plants. The enzyme from Agrobacterium tumefaciens is activated by fructose 6-phosphate (Fru6P) and pyruvate (Pyr). The Pyr site has been recently found, but the site where Fru6P binds has remained unknown. We hypothesize that a sulfate ion previously found in the crystal structure reveals a part of the regulatory site mimicking the presence of the phosphoryl moiety of the activator Fru6P. Ser72 interacts with this sulfate ion and, if the hypothesis is correct, Ser72 would affect the interaction with Fru6P and activation …

The Role Of Tumor Associated Glycoprotein Ca 72-4 In Patients With Gastric Adenocarcinoma, Raghad Abdulnoor Abbas Al-Wardii, Ali Ibrahim Rashid

Muthanna Medical Journal

Gastric cancer is a multifactorial disease with dietary and infection (especially with H. Pylori) being the most important factors; it shows a remarkable variation in distribution worldwide and the incidence have fallen dramatically in past decades, nevertheless it ranks fourth among the commonest cancer and second leading cause of cancer related death, and so global health problem. The aim of the study is measurement of the serum level of CA 72-4 to determine its effectiveness in patients with gastric cancer. The serum level of CA 72-4 was measured in 35 patients with gastric adenocarcinoma preoperative and 8 patients postoperatively, compared …

Exploring Toluene Biosynthesis In Microbial Consortia Derived From Sediments And Superfund Site Groundwater, Raymond J. Poche

LSU Master's Theses

While the aromatic hydrocarbon toluene is widely regarded as a contaminant associated with discharges of crude oil and refined petroleum products (e.g., gasoline), the enzyme phenylacetate decarboxylase catalyzes the decarboxylation of phenylacetate to yield toluene. Research described in this thesis further investigated toluene biosynthesis by a microbial consortium originating from chlorinated solvent-contaminated groundwater near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In anoxic growth media supplemented with phenylacetate as a precursor, toluene accumulation was found to be maximal at near-neutral to slightly acidic pHs (toluene accumulation greater than 1 mg/L at pH in the range of 5.6 to 7.6, but was not observed for …

Documenting New Design Ontologies, Tracy Manuel

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Ontological design — characterized by the understanding that what we design designs us — has been invoked as a necessary framing in redirecting the design discipline toward more pluralistic and sustainable ends. In this paper, I situate ongoing conversations about process documentation within emergent conversations surrounding ontological design, considering ways in which innovative documentation practices may support new ontological agendas. By considering process documentation as a hermeneutical, knowledge-making practice, I speculate ways that new, experimental modes of process documentation may afford designers — and design itself — new vantage points from which to (re)interpret design practice and the discipline writ …

Designing Hair, Saúl Baeza, Kristina Andersen, Oscar Tomico

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Hair forms an evolving boundary between the inside and the outside of the body, it is both separate from us and a part of us. At the same time it is strongly directed by culture and norms. With this project, we disturb and shift these norms by describing a set of speculative design explorations on hair. We describe these explorations and outline the practices and techniques that are emerging. As such this paper constitutes a report of a set of explorations and points towards the possibility of hair as an arena for designerly work.

Tree Box: Designing Embedded And Embodied Interaction For Contemplative Experiences In Nature-Rich Environments, Sónia Matos, Daniel Sousa

DRS Biennial Conference Series

We present Tree Box, an interactive artefact designed to connect users to nature-rich environments through contemplation. The object draws on recent debates that juxtapose the benefits of meditation and mindfulness practices with exposure to nature-rich environments. Combining both with embedded and embodied interaction, we hope to add to the growing importance of designing for human well-being and planetary health. Technically, Tree Box uses Bluetooth wireless technology to locate spots for contemplation in natural surroundings. The prototype also uses a vibrating motor and an accelerometer sensor to invite users to stop in each location. By drawing on the literature that informed …

How Smart Clothing Can Mediate The Space Between Users And Their Environment, A Case Study Using Face Masks, Stijn Ossevoort, Miguel Bruns

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Augmenting clothes with sensors and actuators and turning them into smart clothes, offers new possibilities to mediate the space between users and their environment. The current COVID pandemic provides an ideal research opportunity, given that it challenges conventional norms of personal distance. We developed hairs with LEDs showing six types of dynamic behaviour as a research vehicle and mounted them onto face masks, commonly used during the pandemic. A qualitative phenomenological study was conducted with six subjects. The interview data from their experiences was analysed using the ‘framework of context’ from environmental psychology. We uncover three modes by which smart …

Design Methods And Transdisciplinary Practices, Deger Ozkaramanli, Cristina Zaga, Nazli Cila, Klaasjan Visscher, Mascha Van Der Voort

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The chairs' editorial for the theme track 'Design Methods and Transdisciplinary Practices'.

Embodiment And Experiential Knowledge, Nithikul Nimkulrat, Camilla Groth

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The chairs' introductory editorial for the Experiential Knowledge SIG theme track, 'Embodiment and Experiential Knowledge'.

Mediating The Needs Of Human And Natural Nonhuman Stakeholders: Towards A Design Methodological Framework, Emilija Veselova, Idil Gaziulusoy, Julia Lohmann

DRS Biennial Conference Series

More-than-human approaches to design are one of the ways in which the design community is rethinking itself in the face of sustainability challenges. These approaches most often decenter humans from being the sole focus, stakeholder, or actant in design processes. However, currently, there is a shortage of more-than-human methods and tools that would be applicable in day-to-day design practice. In this paper, we, as one of the academic partners in a transdisciplinary consortium project, report results from our preliminary work and early insights towards developing a design methodological framework that would support the mediation of human and nonhuman needs in …

A Material-Centric Approach In Non-Anthropocentric Design, Ziyu Zhou, Valentin Brück, Markus Holzbach

DRS Biennial Conference Series

With the non-anthropocentric view, the materials—the non-human actors, can be seen as active contributors to the design process itself. Materials become carriers of a wide variety of information and reshape human and non-human relations as relational agencies. Many pioneer design activities that de-center humanity rethink the relationship among different material actors to reflect on the 'Anthropocene' issues. The approaches to designing for post-Anthropocene scenarios are usually provocative in various aspects. This paper proposes a speculative, material-centric design approach to engage discussions towards post-Anthropocene scenarios by rethinking the entanglement of human and non-human actors. This approach was used to conduct a …

Designing Living Artefacts: Opportunities And Challenges For Biodesign, Raphael Kim, Jiwei Zhou, Eduard Georges Groutars, Elvin Karana

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Biodesign is an emerging form of design practice integrating biological materials and processes, and there is a growing interest in the field for structured conversations to generate insights on how it can be best taught, researched, and disseminated. In our conversations, we began exploring biodesign under the framework of Living Artefacts, in which livingness is prolonged to the use time of artefacts, and understood as a biological, ecological, and experiential phenomenon. Two researchers investigating Living Artefacts, through their short show-and-tell presentations, initiated threads of moderated open discussions. Using the Living Artefacts framework as a departure point, we collectively explored opportunities …

Designing Neighbourhoods, Fernando Bajo, Ezequiel Collantes

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The chairs' editorial introduction to the theme track 'Designing Neighbourhoods'.

Meta-Design In The Complexity Of Global Challenges, Paolo Ciuccarelli, Nathan Felde, Paul Pangaro, Silvia Barbero

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The chairs' introductory editorial for the theme track 'Meta-design in the complexity of global challenges'.

Valuing The Qualitative In Design And Data, Dan Lockton, Carine Lallemand, Daphne Menheere, Chang Hee Lee, Marion Lean, Dietmar Offenhuber, Holly Robbins, Elisa Giaccardi, Samuel Huron

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The DRS 2022 track ‘Valuing the Qualitative in Design and Data’ features eleven accepted papers on topics including visualisation and physicalisation of qualitative data, the use of materials in this context, practical applications in design and education, and applications in personal informatics. In this editorial, the track chairs introduce the track, and the reasoning behind it, together with a short introduction to the papers.

Biodesign For A Culture Of Life: Of Microbes, Ethics, And Design, Rachel Armstrong

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Scientific advances at the turn of the new millennium brought radical new insights into just how microbial our world is and the extent to which microbes influence our lives: from notions of the body (human microbiome); to their distribution in our living spaces (microbiome of the built environment); playing an integral role in ecosystems services in our cities (urban microbiome) and are fundamental to biogeochemical cycles—our world is irreducibly microbial. This paper asks what it means to dwell and design in such times and proposes an ethics for biodesign: which employs the insights and tools of the biotechnological age to …

Method Of Mapping Interdisciplinary Research And Practice At The Intersection Of Biology And Design, Veronika Kapsali

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Ubiquitous, multi-meaning terms used to describe new ideas, finding etc, presents a significant barrier for cross-disciplinary discourse especially between the arts and sciences. The research presented in this paper tackles the problem of terminological disharmony specifically within the process of contextualising creative design practice informed by biological science and/or its applications. The study is implemented in three stages; lexical semantic theories and methods are applied to corpus-based investigations to assess the scope of biologically informed disciplines (BID) terminology; results are analysed using statistical and qualitative methods and mapped against known academic domains; the resulting map is evaluated via the analysis …

A Framework For Designing The Seamless Automotive Multimodal Experience In Future Connected And Autonomous Vehicles, Fangli Song, Wei Wang, Hongnan Lin, Yuanqing Tian

DRS Biennial Conference Series

As multimodal user interfaces (MUIs) significantly enrich user experience with connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs), a seamless modality combination and multimodal switch is the key to enhancing human interaction's efficiency and usability across multiple interfaces in vehicles. From the theoretical review, we discuss the concept of seamlessness. Based on the consideration of driving automation upgrade and multi-tasking dynamics, we introduce two seamless dimensions of the new design space of multimodal user interfaces in both chronological and spatial orders. We propose a framework incorporating the design space and discuss the factors influencing the performance of multimodal seamlessness with the driving tasks …

Sustainable Approaches To Textile Design: Lessons From Biology, Veronika Kapsali, Cathryn Hall

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Models such as the circular economy, offer guidance to actors from the fashion and textile industry on how to navigate the negative environmental, ethical, and social impacts of the sector’s current and historic practices. The principles underpinning these models originate from the intersection of biology and general systems theory and have provided us with valuable alternative paradigms via a top-down lens. This paper seeks to explore the potential for additional insight into sustainable textile design practice from biology by reviewing sustainable design principles emerging from top-down (ecology + systems view) within the context of a bottom-up (biology + engineering) approach. …

Health Information Design Model (Hidem): A Replicable Model Of The Design Process For Data-Intensive Applications In Health Informatics, Antonio Solano, Miso Kim

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Genetic and healthcare data have experienced an explosion in the last decade and with it, a deluge of new and cutting-edge research as well as digital tools and software. However, visualizing and working with such large amounts of information also poses organizational challenges in transdisciplinary collaboration between scientific domain experts and design professionals. We propose Health Information Design Model (HIDeM), a collaborative process model with a novel series of principles and activities that tackle the specific nature of digital, data-intensive products for scientific research while considering different organizational contexts. The model was developed in collaboration with several domain experts in …

Involving Craft Know-How And Traditions In Design Education: Cases Of Switzerland, Turkey And India, Bettina Minder, Özlem Er, Shilpa Das

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The design profession evolved during technologically transformative times of industrialization. While the requirements of mass production have been the major paradigm shaping the nature of industrial design education in industrialised countries, developing countries also embraced it despite their late and peculiar processes of industrialisation. The idea was that the industrial sectors in these countries would also need industrial designers who are able to design products for mass production. This, in turn, caused the ignorance of crafts or at best the view to keep them as a source of product ideas that would appeal to tourists or export markets looking for …

Integrating Ecodesign In Food Packaging Solutions For Epr Compliance In Chile: Knowledge Transfer From Theory To Practice, Oscar Huerta, Catalina Cortés, Carolina Melo

DRS Biennial Conference Series

An extended producer responsibility legislation will operate in Chile, to help solve the problem of product post-consumer waste. Packaging is subject to the law, and waste management systems are being created to deal with post-consumer packaging waste. To enable products’ packaging for successful waste management in such systems, great changes will need to be made in new packaging solutions as opposed to existing ones. To help in this task, the course Packaging Ecodesign for EPR Compliance was created, for an audience of professionals in packaging companies. This article reports the design, implementation, and results of this course, focusing on final …

Towards A Quieter Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: Current Approaches And Design Opportunities, Simone Spagnol, Núria Viñas Vila, Almila Akdag Salah, Tom Goos, Irwin Reiss, Elif Özcan

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Recent studies show that the well-being of patients and the performance of healthcare professionals in modern neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) are severely affected by the amount of auditory alarms and sound nuisance. This paper presents a semi-systematic review on the topic of environmental sound in the NICU, where current themes, insights, and limitations are highlighted. Furthermore, it outlines the results of an observation of the NICU environment and an interview with nurses at Erasmus Medical Center, in order to understand the users, their context, and the technology that can enable design interventions. The insights gathered from the literature and …

The Politics Of Metadesign, Christian Nold

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This is a conceptual paper that explores the notion of metadesign which is premised on redesigning design itself. It interrogates the claim that metadesign is ‘open’, ‘fluid’ and ‘democratising’ by analysing its literature and practices. The paper makes two arguments. First, that metadesign is a theoretical power grab that prioritises language at the expense of material design which separates it from other design approaches. Second, that metadesign currently does not offer conceptual tools for observing and analysing the politics of real-world metadesign. If metadesign wants to be a democratising force, then it needs to question its legacy of transcendent language …

Living With Living Artefacts: Six Concepts For Designing User Acceptance Of Living Artefacts, Simone Van Den Broek, Alwin De Rooij, Michel Van Dartel

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Bio-designers are exploring how living organisms can become vital aspects of the design and use of an artefact. These new living artefacts have qualities, needs, design opportunities and relationships with the user that differ from nonliving artefacts. To design for user acceptance of living artefacts into daily life, designers must develop an understanding for why a user wishes to live with living artefacts. This starts with an understanding of why humans have been living with other living beings throughout history. These reasons have been examined through a semi-systematic review of literature across diverse research fields. Qualitative thematic analysis suggests that …

Ontogenesis As A Model For Design Processes, Otto Paans

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The technical rationality (TR) and reflective practice (RP) paradigms have heavily influenced thinking about design and design cognition in the 20th century. This paper concisely highlights some of the features and limitations of these paradigms. In particular, it develops the suggestion that we require a new “root metaphor” or leading set of concepts to develop our thinking about designing beyond the work of Donald Schön. Building on this assumption, this paper examines some useful aspects of selected concepts developed by Gilbert Simondon, in particular the notion of ontogenesis. Furthermore, it is argued that Simondon’s thought helps us to connect epistemology …

Bio-Based Plastics In Durable Applications: The Future Of Sustainable Product Design? A Design Review, Puck Bos, Conny Bakker, Ruud Balkenende, Benjamin Sprecher

DRS Biennial Conference Series

This design review evaluates the use of bio-based plastics in durable consumer products. The main question is: how does the use of bio-based plastics influence the product’s design, functionality, marketing & communication, and sustainability? Although higher material prices would lead one to expect that higher value applications would be targeted, research shows bio-based plastics are mainly used in short-lived applications like packaging. This study investigates their use in durable consumer products through a design review. The results indicate that bio-based plastic usage is still in its early days in durable products. Bio-based plastics appear to be utilized as straightforward replacement …

Learning From Creative Biology: Promoting Transdisciplinarity Through Vocabularies Of Practice, Larissa Pschetz, Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa, Joe Revans

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Transdisciplinary ways of collaborating are considered essential to support new approaches to tackling societal and environmental “wicked” problems. But how can collaborations take place in ways that reach this envisioned state? In this work, we look for cues of transdisciplinarity in the experience of those with a successful track record of working across disciplines. We interviewed 38 practitioners and researchers working in “creative biology”, an umbrella term that we use to address work that incorporates biology-related methods and research outside purely scientific realms. The interviews provide insights into how language can be used to support strategic shifts of positionality and …