Zoekresultaten

Imagineering as complexity-inspired method for transformative service design

Accounting concepten in de circulaire economie

We zitten momenteel in een transitie-periode waarin we van een lineaire economie op basis van bestaande business modellen gericht op economische waarde maximalisatie toegaan naar een circulaire economie, waar business modellen streven naar waarde behoud. De volgende stap is de overgang naar een regeneratieve of restauratieve economie, waarin niet alleen economische waarde, maar ook ecologische en sociale waarde wordt gecreëerd (meervoudige waardecreatie). Vanuit accounting perspectief is een parallelle ontwikkeling zichtbaar. Ons huidige accounting systeem is met name gericht op economische waarde. Als gevolg van de transitie van een lineaire economie naar een circulaire economie, zijn er accounting modellen en frameworks in ontwikkeling gericht op meervoudige waardecreatie. De auteurs zijn echter van mening dat in de literatuur een cruciale gap bestaat tussen de ontwikkeling van accounting en meervoudige waardecreatie, en dat huidige modellen en frameworks gericht op meervoudige waarde vooral leiden tot ‘greenwashing’. In deze bijdrage gaan wij na in hoeverre de vigerende concepten van accounting bruikbaar zijn om te sturen op meervoudige waarde. Onder sturen wordt in dit kader bedoeld het bepalen, meten en waarderen. Dit doen wij aan de hand van een conceptuele analyse waarbij we de toepassing van de vigerende accounting concepten ten aanzien van profit vergelijken met mogelijke toepassing van deze concepten in relatie tot people en planet. Wij concluderen dat deze concepten over het algemeen niet toepasbaar zijn voor people en planet. Wij stellen daarom een alternatieve benadering voor, waarbij wij menen dat vigerende accounting concepten grotendeels toepasbaar zijn op people en planet. Dit is gebaseerd op een aanpak waarin het huidige ontologische uitgangspunt van accounting wordt verlaten en waarin we een aangepast ontologisch uitgangspunt verder uitwerken aan de hand van de Triple Depreciation Line (TDL) van Rambaud & Richard (2015). Tenslotte hebben we kritiekpunten geformuleerd op de TDL systematiek en stellen we een alternatieve TDL systematiek voor. Hiermee beoogt dit paper een bijdrage te leveren aan het inzichtelijk maken van de praktische en conceptuele problemen bij de toepassing van vigerende accounting concepten in een circulaire economie, om vervolgens mogelijke oplossingsrichtingen aan te reiken, gericht op bescherming, herstel en regeneratie van natuurlijk en sociaal kapitaal.

International Business Matters

Phd Thesis Higher professional education aims to prepare graduates for the complexity of professional practices. The development of conceptual understanding is important to deal adequately with this complexity, especially in an unstructured professional domain such as international business. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the concept conceptual understanding in this professional domain, how it can be measured, what it looks like, how it changes, and in what ways it differs between students. The dissertation comprises five empirical studies for which data collection took place at a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands.

Pneumatic Quasi-Passive Actuation for Soft Assistiva Lower Limbs Exoskeleton

CC-BY   Dit artikel is overgenomen van https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurorobotics There is a growing international interest in developing soft wearable robotic devices to improve mobility and daily life autonomy as well as for rehabilitation purposes. Usability, comfort and acceptance of such devices will affect their uptakes in mainstream daily life. The XoSoft EU project developed a modular soft lower-limb exoskeleton to assist people with low mobility impairments. This paper presents the bio-inspired design of a soft, modular exoskeleton for lower limb assistance based on pneumatic quasi-passive actuation. The design of a modular reconfigurable prototype and its performance are presented. This actuation centers on an active mechanical element to modulate the assistance generated by a traditional passive component, in this case an elastic belt. This study assesses the feasibility of this type of assistive device by evaluating the energetic outcomes on a healthy subject during a walking task. Human-exoskeleton interaction in relation to task-based biological power assistance and kinematics variations of the gait are evaluated. The resultant assistance, in terms of overall power ratio (Λ) between the exoskeleton and the assisted joint, was 26.6% for hip actuation, 9.3% for the knee and 12.6% for the ankle. The released maximum power supplied on each articulation, was 113.6% for the hip, 93.2% for the knee, and 150.8% for the ankle.

Managing a transition towards a sustainable agro-food system

This paper analyses the initiative AgroAgenda in the northern Netherlands. The AgroAgenda is a platform in which multiple stakeholders together stimulate a circular, and nature-inclusive agro-food system in the Dutch provinces of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe. Stakeholders come from, among others, provincial governments, farmers’ and nature organizations, educational and research institutes and processing companies. They join forces to realize a system change, a transition, in the region, while promoting knowledge circulation, knowledge co-creation and joint learning. The platform, is a front runner of five national, comparable initiatives. The AgroAgenda has the potential to lead to a more nature-inclusive and circular farming. Several of the 40 experiments have already led to good results. However, to bring about a real system change, more attention to innovations in governmental organizations (including law and regulations), policy, the value chains (division of margins, pricing and marketing) and the educational system are needed.

The Wrist Joint! Functional Analysis and Experimental Approach

The wrist allows the hand to combine dorsopalmar flexion and radioulnar deviation, a unique combination of functions that is made possible by a highly complex system of joints. The morphologic features of the carpal bones and of the radiocarpal and intercarpal contacts can be functionally interpreted by the mechanism that underlies the movements of the hand to the forearm. Displacements of the carpals take place in longitudinal articulation chains, with the proximal carpals having the position of an intercalated bone. The three articulation chains, radial, central, and ulnar, have interdependent movements at the radiocarpal and midcarpal levels. The linkage of movements in the longitudinal direction is associated to a transverse linkage by mutual joint contacts and by specific ligamentous interconnections. Kinematic analyses of the carpal joint motions have provided convincing evidence that each motion of the hand to the forearm demonstrates a specific motion pattern of the carpal bones. The stability of the carpus essentially depends on the integrity of the ligamentous system which consists of interwoven fiber bundles that differ in length, direction, and mechanical properties. Distinct separations into morphologic entities are difficult to make. From a functional point of view, the ligamentous interconnections can be regarded as a system that passively restricts movements of the carpals on one another and on the radius, but in a very differentiated way. The ligamentous system controls the linkage of the movements of the carpals, with the geometries of the bones and of the joint surfaces being, first of all, responsible for the kinematic behavior of the carpal joint.