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Direct and inverse problems for partial differential equations in models of heat and thermoelasticity
No full textDit proefschrift behandelt zowel directe als inverse problemen en voorziet numerieke methoden voor het reconstrueren van de bijbehorende onbekende data. Directe en inverse problemen spelen een cruciale rol in diverse wetenschappelijke disciplines. De systemen die in dit werk worden bestudeerd, worden gemodelleerd door (fractionele) partiële differentiaalvergelijkingen. In het bijzonder wordt de fractionele warmtevergelijking met vertragingsparameters onderzocht, evenals klassieke en met vertraging voorziene gekoppelde thermo-elastische systemen. De goed-gesteldheid van de directe problemen wordt aangetoond door middel van de methode van Rothe, waarmee de existentie en uniciteit van een zwakke oplossing wordt bewezen. Dit biedt een oplossing voor het directe probleem met begin- en randvoorwaarden en brontermen. De inverse problemen is de bronterm onbekend en wordt deze gereconstrueerd op basis van metingen. De identificeerbaarheid ervan wordt onder bepaalde voorwaarden op het tijdsafhankelijke deel aangetoond, en tegenvoorbeelden worden gegeven wanneer deze voorwaarden falen. Dit proefschrift draagt bij aan de wiskundige fundering van directe problemen voor de fractionele warmtevergelijkingen en thermo-elasticiteitsmodellen, met en zonder vertragingsparameters, evenals aan de identificatie in de inverse problemen. Daarnaast worden verschillende regularisatietechnieken geanalyseerd, met een evaluatie van hun voor- en nadelen bij de reconstructie van plaats afhankelijke bronnen
'How dare you?' : towards a politics of eco-shaming
No full textHow Dare You? Whether you are concerned or not about our current socio-environmental condition, there are good chances this question sounds familiar to you. There are even small chances that it just made you blush. Are you reading this on a plane? Shame on you! Did you just buy something on Amazon? How dare you! This is exactly what this dissertation is about: exploring the politics of eco-shaming.
The end of the second decade of the 21st century is best memorable for those concerned with our socio-environmental condition. Under the auspices of Greta Thunberg, climate protests and school strikes ignited across Europe, including in Belgium. The protests laid ground for eco-shaming to emerge. As “Greta Thunberg weaponised shame in an era of shamelessness” (The Washington Post, 2019), it became clear that eco-shaming had become meaningful. It affects. It strikes a nerve. It moves people. It is controversial. It rattles the politics of the environment.
Triggered by this “new global sensibility” (Mkono & Hughes, 2020), this inquiry explores the politics of eco-shaming. First, it explores how the politics of eco-shaming unfold; it unravels eco-shaming’s functioning as discourse, desire, device and dissent, as well as how this curious entanglement of functionings embodies dynamics of contestation, engagement with and disengagement from sustainability transformations.
Neologisms tend to be informative of the zeitgeist. Today’s environmental movement in the affluent West can be defined by two, apparently paradoxical, tendencies. On the one hand, there is a tendency towards hyperrealism: a taste for a science-based, universal and monolithic diagnosis of the problem from which to deduce straightforward, global, and evidence-based solutions for it. On the other hand, there is a tendency towards hyperromanticism: a taste for the emotional and personal escape to spaces where the question of power relations and collective action is effaced.
Hence, secondly, the politics of eco-shaming are situated within the larger politics of the environment, within the contemporary zeitgeist. The politics of eco-shaming are found to incorporate the zeitgeist, inscribing themselves into the tendencies towards hyperromanticism and hyperrealism, yet without being entirely understandable from these tendencies. Instead, the politics of eco-shaming are found to move between, challenge, and surpass the zeitgeist in complex and ambiguous ways. As such, the politics of eco-shaming are found to be a way of both engagement with and disengagement from sustainability transformations, of both politicisation and depoliticisation of socio-environmental changes, and of both individualisation and collectivisation dynamics of responsibilities for sustainability action.
The interpretive research approach taken, which focuses on the socio-political imagination, similarly attempts to move beyond the academic skim of the zeitgeist; it challenges the academic hyperrealism portraying science as neutral and research as the execution of rigid methodological procedures, and turns away from the academic hyperromanticism predominantly interested in the individual and behavioural effects of eco-emotions.
This exploration of the politics of eco-shaming attempts to provide insights for collectively grappling with the entrenchment of our environmentally high-impact societies meanwhile opening up possibilities for more sustainable futures
The possibility of global governance : an ethics of care for our contemporary coexistence
No full textCapturing the biophysical cues of the vascularised bone extracellular matrix to stimulate its regeneration
No full textDe prevalentie van botdefecten, de daarmee gepaard gaande morbiditeit en sociaal-economische kosten in combinatie met de nadelen van huidige klinische oplossingen en de klinische bijwerkingen die gepaard gaan met suprabiologische doses van biochemische signalen, verklaren de behoefte aan het verkennen van andere strategieën voor de genezing van botdefecten. Daarom was het primaire doel van dit doctoraatsonderzoek om de biofysische signalen van de gevasculariseerde extracellulaire matrix van bot na te bootsen via het design en de verwerking van op gelatine gebaseerde hydrogelen om zo de regeneratie te bevorderen. Er werd een vernette hydrogel ontwikkeld die het voor uitgezaaide of ingekapselde cellen, verkregen op een minimaal invasieve manier, mogelijk maakte om de gepresenteerde biofysische signalen optimaal om te zetten in biochemische signalen via mechanosensitieve signaalroutes. Bioprinten werd dan benut om cellulaire niches ruimtelijk te organiseren ter opschaling van osteoregeneratieve constructen via een optimalisatie van de gepresenteerde signalen van de matrix, het gebruikte printproces, de concentratie van het gebruikte celtype en het ontwerp van het construct. Om gevasculariseerde botregeneratie verder te stimuleren, werden vertraagd oplosbare bio-inkten succesvol geïntroduceerd in indirect biogeprinte constructies, waarbij het effect van het vertraagde oplossen het effect van de gepresenteerde biochemische signalen overtrof
Investigating protein flexibility using molecular dynamics simulations of α-1 acid glycoprotein and large-scale normal mode analysis of AlphaFold models
No full textEiwitten zijn van nature dynamisch en vertonen conformationele flexibiliteit die essentieel is voor hun biologische functies. Deze flexibiliteit varieert van complete structurele wanorde tot meer gelimiteerde structurele veranderingen in eiwitfragmenten, waarbij diverse conformationele toestanden mogelijk zijn. Dit dynamisch gedrag wordt aangedreven door thermische beweging van atomen. Ondanks deze intrinsieke flexibiliteit worden eiwitten vaak weergegeven door statische modellen, die de werkelijke dynamiek niet vastleggen. Dit proefschrift onderzoekt de flexibiliteit van eiwitten met twee complementaire benaderingen: een "close-up"-perspectief en een "panoramisch" perspectief.
Het close-up-perspectief richt zich op het α-1-zuurglycoproteïne (AGP) en zijn mutanten. Door middel van moleculaire dynamicasimulaties (MD) wordt onderzocht hoe mutaties en glycosylering de conformationele dynamiek en flexibiliteit van AGP beïnvloeden en hoe dit verband houdt met zijn AGP’s bij kanker. Het panoramische perspectief bekijkt een uitgebreide set van eiwitten en combineert computationele en experimentele methoden, waaronder AlphaFold2’s pLDDT-scores, NMR-gegevens, MD-simulaties en Normal Mode Analysis (NMA), om de relatie tussen computationele voorspellingen en experimenteel waargenomen eiwitflexibiliteit te onderzoeken.
Deze benaderingen bieden een diepgaand inzicht in eiwitflexibiliteit en verbeteren ons begrip van het biofysische gedrag van eiwitten, met name in de context van glycosylering. De resultaten dragen bij aan het integreren van eiwitdynamiek in eiwitstructuurvoorspellingen
Characterisation of the heat load in Danish dwellings connected to district heating
No full textIncreasing energy efficiency in buildings is one of the key targets of the EU strategy for the decarbonisation of the building sector. Therefore, the building sector has strived for more integration of renewable energy sources in district heating networks. This higher variability in heat production processes now requires a highly accurate characterisation and prediction of heat loads in buildings connected to a district heating network, as it is crucial for the effective operation of these systems. By using the smart meter data of 2034 dwellings, it is studied whether energy signature models can be used to predict peak load for residential buildings based on daily data. Furthermore, it is studied whether the energy signature method is robust and scalable to be applied at scale for thermal energy performance estimation
Unpacking police victimization : a criminal event perspective on the dynamics underlying and consequences following assaults against police officers
No full textAdapting to a new normal : recipients perspectives on life participation through exercise rehabilitation after kidney transplantation
No full textA critical look at an IT governance framework, the COBIT case
No full textThe starting point of our research was the somewhat contradictory observation that in today’s society—highly dependent on Information and Technology (IT)—small and large IT-related problems continue to occur daily, despite the existence of numerous IT governance and management frameworks. Outages, security incidents, and failed projects remain widespread, even though many ‘good practices’ are described in these standards and frameworks. This led us to suspect that these frameworks and so-called ‘good practices’ are either not genuinely good, or they are not being properly practised. To explore this further, we selected one such framework—COBIT (Control Objectives for Information & Related Technology), developed by ISACA (Information Systems Audit and Control Association)—and subjected it to closer investigation. Our focus was primarily on the intrinsic quality of the framework: in other words, are the ‘good practices’ it promotes actually sound? This focus was partly inspired by calls from academic IT governance specialists for more research into the quality of COBIT as an artefact itself, as well as by the observation that very little such research has been conducted over the past 15 years. The first problem we faced in studying COBIT was that, in its current form, it is barely researchable—certainly not in a scientifically structured way. COBIT consists of various publications totalling over a thousand pages, without a clear and accessible model. Our first task, therefore, was to distil the key concepts from the COBIT publications and describe the relationships between those concepts in a clear and concise UML diagram. We developed this conceptual model for both COBIT 5 (the version in use when our research began) and COBIT 2019 (the version released during our study in 2018). This conceptual model made COBIT researchable, representing a first major contribution of our work. It also enabled us to construct a well-structured research agenda for COBIT, which should help facilitate and encourage further academic study. In a next step in our research into the intrinsic quality of COBIT we compared the COBIT conceptual model with a selection of other widely used Information Systems theories, in order to identify potential improvements to COBIT. This comparison with seven other theories yielded a significant number of suggestions for improving COBIT, all of which were incorporated into the research agenda and in a proposed conceptual model for a potential future COBIT version. Subsequently, we investigated a (small) selection of topics from the research agenda. This produced mixed results. A prioritization mechanism from COBIT 5 proved inadequate; a new concept—design factors—from COBIT 2019 was found to be sound. But the most significant finding was that the performance measurement system in COBIT was inconsistent with its own design principles. According to COBIT, an IT Governance System consists of a holistic set of interrelated components, including processes, structures, information, procedures, and more. However, the performance measurement system only evaluated the performance of processes, ignoring the other components of the governance system. In the most substantial part of our research, we then addressed this gap by designing a maturity model for organisational structures, a reference model for information quality, and a maturity model for information quality. These models were developed using the Design Science methodology, involving iterative refinement through expert panels. We then complemented these artefacts with a set of reflections on how, based on the method used, the remaining missing components of a holistic measurement system might be designed. Additionally, we created a prototype tool to support the practical application of the artefacts we developed. In a final chapter, we reflected on the nature of COBIT itself—specifically, whether COBIT can be considered an Information Systems theory according to Shirley Gregor’s criteria for Information Systems theories. Our conclusion is that it can indeed be regarded as such, which should elevate the status of COBIT and serve as an encouragement for further and deeper academic inquiry