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Exploring the dichotomy between brand addiction and brand love: a comprehensive analysis
No full textPurposeBrand love and addiction reflect two levels of commitment to the relationship between the consumer and the brand. The usual assumption is that brand love is positive and brand addiction is negative. Yet, is this always the case? This study investigates an alternative, more nuanced view where brand love and addiction can be both positive and negative. Different conditions are studied to assess this alternative view, considering harmonious passion, obsessive possession, love for material possessions and the relationship after scandal. Design/methodology/approachThe study involved a survey of 417 respondents in Vietnam. We employed a two-stage approach to test the validity and reliability of the measurement model and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. We further analyzed the mediation effects using the bootstrapping method.FindingsThe findings support our proposed nuanced view where both types of passion positively influence both brand love and addiction. Further, we find that brand love has both positive and negative outcomes. Similarly, brand addiction has both positive and negative outcomes. These relationships are demonstrated considering, in particular, two outcomes: brand support after a scandal and love for material possessions. The findings further show that brand love and addiction have similar mediating roles.Originality/valueThe current study challenges the usual assumptions that brand love is positive and brand addiction is negative. Interestingly, the study shows that, under many circumstances, brand love operates similarly to brand addiction and vice versa. Therefore, we suggest a more nuanced, comprehensive viewpoint on brand love and addiction and their relationships with passion, emotional attachment and consumer behavior.</p
Ice Drops Pendants
No full textBackground: This research is situated in the field of material experimentation, vitreous enamelling, contemporary jewellery and the environment. This enquiry has been inspired by observing nature and science and has led to the development of a new and innovative enamel application that connects contemporary photo transfer processes with historical techniques used in symbolic precious objects including granulation and plique á jour. Museums and art galleries include jewellery objects that illustrate technical mastery in advanced manufacturing techniques from antiquity till today. Jewellery that explores plique á jour as a technique that is known as time consuming and scarcely made in this rapid world of AI and 3d Printing. Scientists, theorists and anthropologists including Anna Ploszajski, Glen Adamson and Tim Ingold have written about the understandings of material and process that artists and makers gain through time and experience. Contribution: Ice drops connects the symbolic form of jewellery and the preciousness of plique á jour and granulation with the methodical scientific process of studying ice cores for important data to understand our climate history and future. Plique á jour translates to “letting in daylight” and it is referred to as early as 600 AD, with existing examples dating from as 1400 AD. The delicate technique uses an open metal framework of cells for inlaying and firing grains of transparent enamel at approx. 800°C. Granulation dates back even earlier at 5000 years and involves tiny metal granules fused to a base of sheet metal creating detailed patterns and arrangements. Ice drops is informed by Antarctic environments and ice core processing that analyses precious singular droplets melted from ice cores. This research uses glass distillation spheres to symbolise the individual droplets of water collected from the continuous melting process. The transparent spheres are positioned on an enamelled image of a glacier in a regular grid pattern and this highlights the preciousness of this scientific testing. The spheres are then fused into the image and this method makes reference to historically treasured artefacts of metal granulation and enamel plique á jour. Significance: The work has been exhibited in Brussels, Belgium and later at Craft Victoria in Melbourne Australia. The research was first presented in Particles during the Brussels Jewellery Week in the curated exhibition PARTICLE[S] at MAD Brussels, An incubator and meeting point for the Brussels fashion & design industry with scenography by Marie Douel. The exhibition project and publication was curated by Les Brucelles with a panel of expert jurors for the exhibition included Eveline Bracke, Curator at Design Museum Gent, David Huycke, Teacher at PXL-MAD school of Arts Hasselt, Chequita Nahar, Head of Fine Art and Design program at the Maastricht Institute of Arts, Dilphine Perrache, Jewellery artist, Patrick Sigal Expert of the contemporary jewellery department at Pierre Bergé Auction. From the 96 works on show Ice Drops received an award ‘The Budapest Jewelry Award - which aims to reward the innovation concerning the concept and the implementation, as well as the technical excellence of artworks. The winner artist’s works perfectly meet these criteria. Her works communicate human experiences and connections with the environment using the special technique of phototransfer and involving site and archival studies.’</p
Perspectives for opening Ukranian airspace in terms of state of war
No full textIn the article there is a research of the current problem related to long-term forecasting on air traffic in European countries and, in particular, to the future of opening the airspace in Ukraine after the end of the war. It provides the analysis of the forecast given by the European Organization for Air Navigation Safety, which showed an increase of the total number of flights in the airspace of Eurocontrol member countries since 2024. The study determined that the question of opening the Ukrainian airspace meets financial and military challenges which are closely connected with safety threats. The desire to recover the air traffic requires taking into account both the situation on the battlefront and the capabilities of airspace protection as well as the involvement of significant resources. It is shown that the recovery of international air traffic in Ukraine, which was extremely important for the economics and mobility of citizens before the start of the Russian full-scale military invasion, today appears to be a complex and at the same time strategic task. The main factors impacting the intensity of air traffic for 2024 and 2025 are identified. In addition, the example of the Ukrainian Airline "Nova Poshta" called Supernova Airlines, which received permission for operating regular flights to Prague from Lviv and Kyiv, demonstrates the readiness of Ukraine to recover operations of civil flights. The possibility of a phased and limited opening of airspace for civil aviation has been considered, subject to assessing risks and reducing them to an acceptable level as well as implementing additional safety measures. It has been identified that the first and main challenge for the resumption of flights from Ukrainian airports is ensuring safety in airspace over Ukraine. It is shown that the resumption of civil flights in Ukraine depends on several factors: the first one is the securing airports from enemy missile strikes, the second one is the preparation and certification of airport infrastructure, the third one deals with the mechanism for insuring passengers and aircraft, and the fourth one is related to the defining the airlines that would agree to operate their flights in such harsh conditions. The possibility of a phased and partial opening of airspace for civil aviation has been explored, and Lviv might become the first city with a functioning airport.</p
Nitrogen-Rich Carbon Nanodot-Sensitized TiO2 with MWCNT Composites for Efficient Visible Light Photocatalysis
No full textTiO2-based composite photocatalysts are currently being explored to address concerns intrinsic to TiO2, specifically high charge carrier recombination and UV light activation. Among various materials utilized for composite formation, carbon nanomaterials stand out due to their high electron conductivity, charge storage, photosensitization, and surface properties. However, high carbon content in composites has been shown to reduce performance with potential toxicity concerns. To harness the diverse properties of carbon nanomaterials in a single composite while optimizing the carbon content below 1% by weight, multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT)/TiO2 sensitized by carbon nanodots (CND) are synthesized. The heterojunction formed between MWCNTs and TiO2 in the binary composite reduced the charge carrier recombination rate compared to TiO2. The addition of CNDs to MWCNT/TiO2 induced visible light absorbance of the resulting ternary composite, due to the forbidden electron transitions undergone in CND aggregates. CND/MWCNT/TiO2 exhibited a fivefold and 1.6-fold increase in photocatalytic degradation of acid orange 7 and tetracycline under visible light compared to TiO2. This enhancement is attributed to the photosensitizing property of CNDs working in synergy with the charge storage ability of MWCNTs. A plausible charge transfer pathway for the activity of CND/MWCNT/TiO2 is proposed.</p
Defragmenting the Self Decoding Models of Care
No full textThe onset of a chronic condition such as diabetes leads to a significant shift in the identity and experience of a person, marked by the illness in their body and their interactions with the healthcare system. This transformation necessitates the adoption of new routines, restrictions, monitoring, and medication, which can often lead to feelings of burden and a loss of autonomy in everyday life. Confronted with the condition, some people demonstrate remarkable resilience and self-efficacy in managing their condition, while others struggle to cope with their changing situation. While several support systems and digital tools exist within the healthcare ecosystem, significant disparities remain in their adoption across patient groups. “Care of the Self” is a continuous bodily requirement for the patient beyond the clinical setting, but is only examined within the clinic during consults, as a brief and periodic episode. In the life of the patient between these consults, their health is a complex interplay of factors that go beyond their clinical parameters, including diet, physical activity, lifestyle habits and socio-economic conditions. While managing these factors may be challenging for many patients, they can be valuable decision-making tools for clinicians in the consulting room, enabling them to connect to the patient’s past practices and suggest appropriate interventions for future care. With the recent emergence of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Industry 5.0 within the connected healthcare ecosystem, there exist opportunities to tap into the complexities of data and information towards creating design models that empower people to be active participants in their healthcare network. This practice-based research, conducted as a part of the “Second Pancreas Project”, aims to improve health outcomes by providing product and service affordances to strengthen the model of care towards improving patient agency. The research explores new languages, traditions, and ways of doing things to imagine care beyond the medicalisation of diabetes and in a way that is culturally constructed. Situated at the intersection of design and healthcare, the doctoral research takes the approach of an expert-centred design process, illustrating a single use-case and an iterative, feedback-based method of MedTech development. As an alternative to setting a definitive design brief, a series of prototypes is used as provocations and mediators to elicit the tacit knowledge of experts working with “extreme patients” and to facilitate dialogue that informs design outcomes. Using a series of successive design sprints, the approach proposes an alternative manner of designing for a user in the healthcare domain and, in effect, making the patient central to the process. The projects have investigated various anchors to facilitate this process. Beginning with interpreting food choices as a tool to facilitate engagement with one’s own health, to connecting the home and the clinic by curation and visualisation of data, and finally to bridging the information gap between the patient and doctor, the practice examines aspects of using distributed data from the present towards a future course of action. The culmination of this research is Project Stark, the final design sprint, now deployed as a dashboard interface. The Dashboard is capable of visualising a variety of data sets in a flexible and adaptive way for multiple stakeholders, connected to the patient’s healthcare ecosystem. It embodies the Model of Care, empowering the clinician with data insights towards an informed interaction and diagnosis while engaging the patient and the broader healthcare network. The positioning of design in the healthcare space has emerged as a critical element in this doctoral research. As reflection-on-action, using the “Model of Shifting Contours”, I have decoded the various shifts that emerged through this practice. Design-as-care can transcend standard practices, often prioritising market readiness or placing the burden on users to define the criteria for design, opening possibilities for reimagining the role of the user. The Dashboard demonstrates the shift in the clinician’s practice, towards a data-informed, patient-focused approach to interaction and diagnosis in the consulting room. For the patient, this shift would mean a transition from “Care of the Self” to “Care of the Future Self”. Central to this model is the shift in the relationship to one of care between the clinician and the patient, and in a similar manner, between the designer and the clinician. Designing for chronic care necessitates a focus on directing the practice towards long-term and sustainable impact, diverging from notions of disruptive or radical innovation. This practice proposes a new meaning for innovation in healthcare design, which I term “the shift”. The shift signifies a transition in the approach to designing for healthcare, the form of clinical practice, and the activation of patient agency, by enriching and adding value to existing practices while incrementally building new ones. These practice-based explorations have involved reflecting on how care can be purposefully integrated into healthcare design practices, and how it can reshape interactions among patients, healthcare providers, technologists, and designed artefacts. Through examining these dimensions, this research seeks to advance knowledge on the meaningful embedding of care within the context of healthcare design and its potential to shape both practice and outcomes.</p
Towards automatic anomaly detection in fisheries using electronic monitoring and automatic identification system
No full textTo ensure sustainable fisheries, many complex on-vessel activities are periodically monitored to provide data to assist the assessment of stock status and ensure fishery regulations are being met. Such monitoring is often performed manually which is an exhaustive and expensive process. Consequently, several forms of Electronic Monitoring (EM) have emerged recently and include the use of electronic monitoring using on-board video cameras and Automatic Identification System (AIS). Unfortunately, insufficient cameras, ineffective camera position or obstructions, may lead to objects or behaviours of interest not being observed. In addition, more subtle, anomalous behaviours characteristic of behaviours of interest may still be captured. With the increasing success of deep learning methods, this article identifies the scope and challenges of using state-of-the-art deep learning approaches to anomaly detection in fisheries, and in particular to automatically detect abnormal behaviours from on-board video cameras and AIS data in line with current fishing practices and regulations. This study will take us one step closer towards automatic anomaly detection frameworks that can potentially replace existing manual monitoring methods.</p
Enhancing Construction Workforce Safety through Formulating an Augmented Reality Digital Twin System
No full textThe construction industry grapples with persistent safety challenges, underscored by high fatality rates spanning decades. The intricacies inherent in construction projects pose formidable obstacles, impeding the sector’s capacity to effectively combat occupational injuries and fatalities. A particular concern lies in the inadequate Situational Awareness (SA) among onsite workers, posing a risk of failure to promptly identify and prevent imminent hazards. In response, heightened attention is now directed towards cutting-edge technologies, notably Deep Learning (DL) and Augmented Reality (AR). These technologies hold transformative potential and can actualise the concept of Digital Twin (DT) in the construction safety field. By harnessing real-time data analysis from construction sites, they can proactively unveil potential hazards, while visualising the hazard information aids onsite construction workers in forming immediate SA. This technological focus seeks to empower workers, facilitating swift hazard recognition and response, ultimately enhancing their ability to avert injuries and fatalities. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the development of a real-time visual warning system that seamlessly integrates DL and AR technologies and to explore the practical implications of such systems for construction workers. To achieve these goals, Chapter 2 presents a comprehensive review of existing literature, focusing on DT-based sensing and visualisation technologies in construction safety. This involves emphasising their current applications and identifying critical gaps in the knowledge body. Through an in-depth analysis of 89 relevant papers, the review revealed an important finding: the construction industry has yet to fully harness and integrate innovative technologies into practical applications. The primary challenges stem from the dynamic and complex nature of construction activities, coupled with the immaturity of information synchronisation and processing. Key research focuses have been identified, including tracking and visualising dynamic hazards in complex Three-Dimensional (3D) construction environment, modelling relationships among onsite workers, the construction environment, and safety rules, and understanding how warnings influence onsite worker behaviour. This literature review serves as the foundation for the following chapters, which propose a development framework to address these challenges and advance the integration of DL and AR technologies in construction safety. To track dynamic hazards and visualise hazard information, an innovative development framework for real-time visual warning systems was proposed in Chapter 3. The framework integrates key technologies, including Building Information Modelling (BIM), object tracking algorithms, Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms, and game development technology, to create an innovative real-time context-aware visual warning system. Subsequently, a tailored prototype was developed based on this framework, specifically designed for an AR Head-Mounted Display (HMD), showcasing advanced features for effective hazard communication. It was rigorously tested under three quasi-onsite hazard avoidance scenarios, namely, explosions, falls from heights, and struck-by accidents, providing valuable insights into its practical effectiveness. The results demonstrated the system’s capability to achieve high-precision 3D alignment between the virtual and real worlds. Moreover, it efficiently visualised hazard information over a large spatial range with minimal latency, empowering workers to promptly identify, comprehend, and avoid potential hazards. Apart from the development of a real-time visual warning system and its feasibility for application in the construction environment, the usability of the system is a crucial aspect. In Chapter 4, the relationships among onsite workers, the construction environment, and construction regulations were modelled, followed by an assessment of the usability of a refined real-time AR system. Drawing from cognitive ergonomics theories, the model serves to reveal the cognitive characteristics of onsite workers in three main working modes, namely, operating, moving, and information retrieval. Accordingly, appropriate interaction design schemes are proposed to match these modes, facilitating intuitive access to AR information. An AR system with integrated work guidance, information retrieval, and real-time warning functions was developed to experimentally validate the model and the proposed interaction design schemes, providing insights into the system’s usability and its impact on the performance of onsite workers in simulated rebar-tying tasks. The results indicated a high usability rating for the designed system User Interface (UI), showcasing its effectiveness in improving the performance of onsite workers. This chapter not only establishes the success of the proposed model and interaction design but also illuminates how field workers leverage AR holograms and environmental information in their decision-making processes. Moreover, the investigation of the impact of real-time holographic visual warnings on onsite construction worker behaviour is presented in Chapter 5. An innovative eye-tracking-based SA quantification method was proposed with the aim of automatically recording and analysing the practical implications of AR HMD-based warnings on construction workers’ actions and decision-making processes. Three metrics, i.e. Time to First Fixation (TFF), Dwell Time, and Minimum Distance, are employed to quantify the duration of different behaviours in response to worker performance in forming SA of their surrounding dynamic environments. Simulation experiments on construction object handling and assembly tasks confirm the viability of the proposed quantification method. The findings not only offer insights into how the developed real-time AR warning systems from previous chapters influence worker behaviour and their SA but also provide practical considerations for optimising the implementation of the warnings in construction contexts. The knowledge derived from this investigation establishes a foundation for further advancements in AR technology integration, contributing significantly to ongoing efforts to enhance safety in the construction industry. Overall, this investigation into the development and usability of a real-time visual warning system integrating DL and AR technologies for construction safety has yielded valuable insights. By addressing dynamic hazard tracking, hazard information visualisation, workforce cognitive mechanism modelling, and visual warning impact quantifying, this thesis contributes significantly to enhance construction workforce safety in the construction industry. The proposed development framework, interaction design schema, and SA quantification methods provide practical solutions for addressing challenges in construction safety. As the construction sector continues to evolve, the knowledge derived from this thesis serves as a stepping stone for future advancements in AR technology integration, fostering a safer working environment for construction workers.</p
3-30-300 Files
No full textData associated with the 2024 publication by Croeser et al., examining achievement of the 3-30-300 rule in 8 global cities. This archive includes zipped csv results and the generic fme workflow which was tailored to each input dataset to produce the results. Full geojson results are very large - please get in touch to request these if necessary. </p
It is a match! The effect of regulatory fit on new products recommendations
No full textOnline retailers often recommend new products to consumers. The present study examined the influence of regulatory fit on consumers' click‐through intentions of new products recommended by online retailers. We proposed that regulatory fit resulting from aligning the product's regulatory focus and recommendation message's regulatory orientation positively influences click‐through intention of new product recommendations. In a laboratory study (Study 1), we found that regulatory fit increase consumers' click‐through behaviors of new product recommendations. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 in a controlled online experiment and found support for regulatory fit—click‐through intentions relationship. Study 3 found that regulatory fit increases click‐through intentions for new products but not for existing products. Study 4 supported the mediating role of perceived efficacy and boundary condition of consumer innovativeness in the relationship between regulatory fit and click‐through intentions. This study contributes to the literature on new product adoption, regulatory focus, and product recommendation strategies. Furthermore, it helps online retailors develop effective recommendation strategies for new product recommendations.</p
Localized nature-based solutions for enhanced climate resilience and community wellbeing in urban informal settlements
No full textNature-based Solutions (NbS) are considered to hold promise for addressing the pressing and multi-faceted challenges of climate resilience. Addressing this contemporary agenda, this research paper explores the potential value of NbS in urban contexts based on the experience of implementing four NbS pilots to address climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction in an informal settlement in Honiara, Solomon Islands. The project, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), employed an inclusive co-production approach, with the project team engaging closely with community members and local stakeholders throughout the planning, design and implementation stages. Findings reinforce the importance of long-term engagement and trust-building with members of the community and also underscore the value of empowering local partners in project design and implementation in Pacific Island Nations. The paper details the local processes that were involved and highlights the key insights and lessons learned from the proof-of-concept project which can usefully inform the scaling up of NbS initiatives to achieve multiple benefits in other similar urban contexts in the Global South.</p