The Material Sample Management Tool is a label generator and database to support creative communities in documenting and sharing material experiments. It was designed around the idea of collaboratively building an archive of alternative design materials with an emphasis on materials that are easily renewable, reusable, (home) compostable within 90 days, locally abundant and make use of local waste streams. The open-source tool, which functions as a collaborative archive as well as label generator to help showcase material experiments, was developed to help any community of creatives (especially students) share them with peers online and offline, and showcase them the physical material wall in their shared workspaces, studios and tool shops.The “Material Sample Management Tool” was developed in 2020-2021 by AUAS computer engineering students Alec Wouda, Sam Overheul, Kostas Mylothridis, Mitchell de Vries and Jarno van der Velde, with wonderful guidance from Okechukwu Onwunli and the teaching team of the Enterprise Web Applications semester course.Entries into the material archive are produced by students in several courses at AUAS.This tool is part of a larger material archiving project funded by NWO by means of a Comenius Teaching Fellowship awarded to senior lecturer and researcher Loes Bogers. In close collaboration with Textile Lab Amsterdam at Waag, a dedicated project team consisting of design educators, researchers and partners at Waag will develop archiving tools for sharing research into sustainable design materials in higher education. The project is inspired by, and a continuation of the Material Archive developed at Waag by Cecilia Raspanti, Maria Viftrup and other (2017-2019). The project will run until January 2022.The project is further supported by the AUAS learning community on Critical Making and Research through Design: a partnership between the Amsterdam Fashion Institute and various research groups at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences: Fashion Research & Technology Visual Methodologies Collective Play and Civic MediaCC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0)
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To accelerate differentiation between Staphylococcus aureus and Coagulase Negative Staphylococci (CNS), this study aimed to compare six different DNA extraction methods from 2 commonly used blood culture materials, i.e. BACTEC and Bact/ALERT. Furthermore, we analyzed the effect of reduced blood culture times for detection of Staphylococci directly from blood culture material. A real-time PCR duplex assay was used to compare 6 different DNA isolation protocols on two different blood culture systems. Negative blood culture material was spiked with MRSA. Bacterial DNA was isolated with: automated extractor EasyMAG (3 protocols), automated extractor MagNA Pure LC (LC Microbiology Kit MGrade), a manual kit MolYsis Plus, and a combination between MolYsis Plus and the EasyMAG. The most optimal isolation method was used to evaluate reduced bacterial culture times. Bacterial DNA isolation with the MolYsis Plus kit in combination with the specific B protocol on the EasyMAG resulted in the most sensitive detection of S.aureus, with a detection limit of 10 CFU/ml, in Bact/ALERT material, whereas using BACTEC resulted in a detection limit of 100 CFU/ml. An initial S.aureus load of 1 CFU/ml blood can be detected after 5 hours of culture in Bact/ALERT3D by combining the sensitive isolation method and the tuf LightCycler assay.
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Culture of the Selfie is an in-depth art-historical overview of self-portraiture, using a set of theories from visual studies, narratology, media studies, psychotherapy, and political principles. Collecting information from various fields, juxtaposing them on the historical time-line of artworks, the book focuses on space in self-portraits, shared between the person self-portraying and the viewer. What is the missing information of the transparent relationship to the self and what kind of world appears behind each selfie? As the ‘world behind one’s back’ is gradually taking larger place in the visual field, the book dwells on a capacity of selfies to master reality, the inter-mediate way and, in a measure, oneself.
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Abstract Business Process Management (BPM) is an important discipline for organizations to manage their business processes. Research shows that higher BPM-maturity leads to better process performance. However, contextual factors such as culture seem to influence this relationship. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of national culture on the relationship between BPM-maturity and process performance. A multiple linear regression analysis is performed based on data from six different countries within Europe. Although the results show a significant relationship between BPM-maturity and process performance, no significant moderation effect of national culture has been found. The cultural dimension long term orientation shows a weak negative correlation with both BPM-maturity and process performance. Through a post-hoc moderation analysis on each dimension of BPM-maturity, we further find that long term orientation negatively moderates the relationship between process improvement and process performance. Three other moderation effects are also discovered. The results of this study contribute to insights into the role of culture in the field of BPM.
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Previous investigations of consumer subcultures in the CCT tradition focused primarily on consumer behaviours, feelings, experiences and meanings of consumption. This paper advocates that in order to deeply understand and interpret a particular subculture, researchers in consumer culture should consider more thoroughly the interaction between consumers and producers in consumption markets. This argument is illustrated with a research project on lifestyle sports. From the results of this study it appears that producers play a vital and interdependent role in meaning and interpretation processes. It is argued that processes in which consumers give meaning to activities can not be isolated from the processes in which producers ascribe meanings to activities, settings and markets. In this 'circuit of culture', production and consumption are not completely separate spheres of existence but rather are mutually constitutive of one another (Du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus, 1997).
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Reason’s typology of safety culture (i.e. Just, Informative, Learning, Flexible and Reporting cultures) is widely used in the industry and academia. Through literature review we developed a framework including 36 markers that reflect the operationalization of Reason’s sub-cultures and general organizational prerequisites. We used the framework to assess to what extent safety culture development guidelines of seven industry sectors (i.e. aviation, railway, oil and gas, nuclear, healthcare, defense and maritime) incorporate academic references, and are similar to each other. Gap analysis and statistics showed that the guidelines include 53–69 % of the safety culture markers, with significant differences across subcultures and industry sectors. The results suggested that there is a gap between the industry guidelines and literature, as well as variant approaches to safety culture across the industry. The framework suggested in the study might be used as reference for completing existing safety culture development plans and constructing safety culture assessment instruments.
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Bio-based and circular building materials and techniques can play an important role in the transition toward a more sustainable construction sector. This study focuses on the Northern Netherlands and explores those competencies (in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitude) required by construction workers to meet thechallenges of material transition. The perspectives on this topic of construction companies, vocational education institutions, and local networking initiatives have been collected and analyzed by using the thematic analysis method. The results indicate that the limited knowledge availability, combined with the restricted experimentation possibilities, shape the current experiences, as well as the positioning of these stakeholders, regarding the desired competencies of construction workers. It is found that mainly attitudinal aspects of the construction workers need to receive particular attention and prioritization. To achieve that, the results highlight the importance of knowledge exchange and awareness-raising initiatives, as well as the development of a flexible, regional, and comprehensive learning environment.
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This paper presents the results of a survey which aimed at exploring the perceptions of the employees of a large aviation organization regarding the punitive or preventive character of possible measures that management could take in cases of errors and violations. The analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data collected showed that the viewpoints of the staff were sufficiently aligned only for half of the measures and that all measures inflicting a short- or long-term dissociation of the end-users from their current working place and function were highly unfavourable and linked to castigation. Also, statistically significant differences were observed across groups of specialties and years of service regarding the appropriateness of specific measures especially in the case of errors. The findings of this study in combination with literature references, suggest that the establishment of a just culture structure with agreed lines between the punitive and preventive character of measures and its endorsement by the employees is achievable, but it requires a bottom-up approach and periodical revision. Similar exploratory research, complemented possibly by explanatory studies, is recommended to be carried out by organizations prior or during the development of their just culture policy andrelated measures.
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Purpose - Housing associations make too small a contribution to society, the government has to step in too frequently because of maladministration, and the associations’ executives are often unaware of the far-reaching impact of their decisions. These are the conclusions of new academic research conducted by Jan Veuger of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). In his dissertation, he asserts that in numerous cases there is no correlation between social and financial objectives. The Dutch House of Representatives debated the results of the report Ver van huis from the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry on Housing Associations in early December 2014. Design/methodology/approach -After extensive exploration of the literature and PhD studies on the period from 2005-2009, the research design inspired based on the grounded theory, which has a certain bias as a result of the extensive literature study. In the line of thinking of the grounded theory, interviews with directors more or less contracted uninhibited according to a narrative method. Afterwards these interviews, independent of the researcher, thematic and labeled by a single Delphi method be submitted to an expert group which created a storyline. The results of this Delphi method have been submitted to a peer group of directors. Then these conclusions in a survey presented to 60 selected directors and the subsequent conclusions. There has thus been more than a triangulation of research than just interviews, Delphi method and survey. Hypotheses are thereby omitted because of the difficulty of fitting in within the chosen research design inspired by grounded theory. Findings -Why thisqualitative thesis 'Control of housing associations in consistency with social values'? To understand and to discover patterns about the how and why of the functioning of corporations in society as they do now. This qualitative study is about the search for ideas, backgrounds, motives, resistors and motives and is therefore suitable for the following question: witch contradictions are there in the social values that underlie housing associations that affect the way the are governed? The overall summary conclusions to answer the central question is: Directors, at the highest level thinking about how to deal with values ensure they drive on their own, monitor, know the consequences and take responsibility. Research limitations/implications - At his request Stef Blok, Minister for Housing and Kingdom Relations, has received the thesis Material Immaterial (Veuger 2014) on December 4, 2014. On December 11, 2014, the Minister decided to change its proposed policy through the establishment of an inspection model in which the financial and social objectives of the corporations are tested and assured, with the Minister as the final responsible. The parliament has unanimously agreed. Originality/value - My contribution to science is also showing patterns of Board behavior, whether or not in conjunction with societal and financial values of housing associations. This has not been previously investigated or established. This contribution complements include studies on culture of housing associations (Dreimuller 2008 and Sinke 2014) or only driver behavior (Heemskerk 2013) or history of housing corporations (Beekers 2012) or about the behavior of housing associations (Koolma 2009)
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Prerequisites (AVAC-SCP) metric was developed to assess whether an organisation plans and implements activities that correspond to prerequisites for fostering a positive safety culture. The metric was designed based on an inclusive theoretical framework stemmed from academic and professional literature and in cooperation with knowledge experts and aviation companies. The goal of the AVAC-SCP is to evaluate three aspects, namely (1) the extent to which the prerequisites are designed/documented, (2) the degree of the prerequisites’ implementation, and (3) the perceptions of the employees regarding the organizational safety culture as a proxy for the effectiveness of the prerequisites’ implementation. The prerequisites have been grouped into six categories (common prerequisites and just, flexible, reporting, information and learning cultures) and the metric concludes with scores per aspect and category. The results from surveys at 16 aviation companies showed that these companies had adequately included most of the Safety Culture Prerequisites (SCP) in their documentation where Just culture plans scored the lowest and Reporting culture plans were found with the highest percentage of planning. The level of SCP implementation was the same high as the organisational plans and quite uniform across the companies and sub-cultures. The perceptions were at the same overall level with implementation, but employees perceived the organisational environment as less fair and more flexible than managers claimed. Although the study described in this report was exploratory and not explanatory, we believe that the results presented in combination with the ones communicated to the participating companies can trigger the latter to investigate further their weaker areas and foster their activities related to Safety Culture Prerequisites. Also, the AVAC-SCP metric is deemed useful to organisations that want to self-assess their SCP levels and proceed to comparisons amongst various functions and levels and/or over time.
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