Delphine Rumo
Delphine Rumo
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The exploitative and unsustainable life of the construction material plasterboard requires more sustainable economies. In this article I examine the disposal of plasterboard as an experimental case for discussing a type of non-destructive circularity. A non-destructive circular model is one way to o...
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The exploitative and unsustainable life of the construction material plasterboard requires more sustainable economies. In this article I examine the disposal of plasterboard as an experimental case for discussing a type of non-destructive circularity. A non-destructive circular model is one way to open imaginaries for more sustainable activities of construction. My focus is on end-of-life plasterboard, including its demolition, removal from construction sites, recycling and landfilling. Three months of fieldwork in the south of Finland clarified the current state of the material. I followed plasterboard across two building sites, two recycling facilities and a landfill site, and visually exposed disposal practices and material states to show the entanglement of workers, materials and circular economy discourses. The results highlight that plasterboard reproduces a problematic circularity that merely focuses on waste management through limited recycling, doing little to decrease the need for raw gypsum extraction. I outline how plasterboard in disposal conceptually disappears from the current economic model, which fails to address a variety of opportunities for more sustainable construction. By exposing a material reality that is concerned with small amounts of plasterboard in disposal, I show gypsum crumbs and dust which are unable to play a role in the current circular economy. However, I argue that attending to end-of-life plasterboard opens possibilities to imagine more ethical engagements with the material, towards non-destructive circularities. The disposal of plasterboard makes the inadequacy of the material for current circulation visible and can contribute to a debate on more sustainable economies of construction.
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Posted 2 days ago
Erik Bjurström
Erik Bjurström
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The balance between structure and handling uncertainty through mindfulness remains a riddle in occupational health and safety. In a similar vein, the relationship between strategy, business models, management control, and its influence on actual practice is still poorly understood. Hence, the notion...
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The balance between structure and handling uncertainty through mindfulness remains a riddle in occupational health and safety. In a similar vein, the relationship between strategy, business models, management control, and its influence on actual practice is still poorly understood. Hence, the notion of doctrines is here suggested as a new way of talking about these tensions, as a middle-way between abstract models and routines on the one hand, and actual mindful practices on the other. What becomes clear in this exploration is that the tension between structural abstractions on the one side and the concrete everyday, and possibly mindful, practice on the other are not only theoretical and practical concerns, but touches on the fundamental intelligibility of human action.
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Posted 2 days ago
Enrico Sciubba
Enrico Sciubba
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A novel thermodynamic approach to the quantification of the “degree of sustainability” is proposed and discussed. The method includes a rigorous -and innovative- conversion procedure of the so-called externalities that leads to their expression in terms of the exergy of their equivalent primary ...
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A novel thermodynamic approach to the quantification of the “degree of sustainability” is proposed and discussed. The method includes a rigorous -and innovative- conversion procedure of the so-called externalities that leads to their expression in terms of the exergy of their equivalent primary resources consumption. Such a thermodynamic approach suggests a detailed re-evaluation of the concept of sustainability because it is well-known that the Second Law strictly negates the possibility for any open and evolving system to maintain itself in a “sustainable” state without availing itself of a continuous supply of low-entropy (i.e., high specific exergy) input. If a human society is modeled as an open system, its capacity to “grow sustainably” depends not only on how it uses non-renewable resources, but also on the rate at which it exploits the renewable ones. The necessary inclusion of different forms of energy- and material flows in such an analysis constitutes per se an argument in favor of a resource-based exergy metrics. While it is true that the thermodynamically oriented approach proposed here neglects all of the non-thermodynamic attributes of a “sustainable system” (in the Bruntland sense), it is also clear that it constitutes a rigorous basis on which different physically possible scenarios can be rigorously evaluated. Non-thermodynamic indicators can be still used at a “second level analysis” and maintain their usefulness to indicate which one of the “thermodynamically least unsustainable” scenarios is most convenient from an ethical or socio-economic perspective for the considered community or for the society as a whole. The proposed indicator is known as “Exergy Footprint,” and the advantages of its systematic application to the identification of “sustainable growth paths” is discussed in the Conclusions.
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Posted 2 days ago
Thomas Princen
Thomas Princen
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Sufficiency as a social organizing principle can be applied to individuals, organizations, and economies. But if the encompassing social structure, namely, the state, is still organized around expansionist principles like efficiency and growth, the outcome will be the same—excess, the exceeding of...
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Sufficiency as a social organizing principle can be applied to individuals, organizations, and economies. But if the encompassing social structure, namely, the state, is still organized around expansionist principles like efficiency and growth, the outcome will be the same—excess, the exceeding of regenerative capacities biophysical and social, local to global. A prospective project of effecting fundamental social change argues that sufficiency must be applied to the state. From a natural resources perspective defining features of the state form are concentration and surplus both of which tend to excess and require endless frontiers. Re-organizing to counter this tendency and institutionalizing sufficiency requires imaginative politics. A long multicultural human history of reorganizing to adapt to environmental conditions bodes well. Resistance, though, even as the contradictions play out, is to be expected.
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Posted 2 days ago
Stefan Wahlen,
Stefan Wahlen
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Aurianne Stroude
Aurianne Stroude
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Consumption is a key issue for more sustainable development. In our quest to understand the role of care for more sustainable consumption, we make use of the concept of resonance. Resonance assists in explaining the role of care for more sustainable consumption, emphasizing the relationships people ...
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Consumption is a key issue for more sustainable development. In our quest to understand the role of care for more sustainable consumption, we make use of the concept of resonance. Resonance assists in explaining the role of care for more sustainable consumption, emphasizing the relationships people have with the world. Through resonance, we add to debates on sustainable consumption that focus on the good life. Resonance describes a responsive mode of being-in-the-world and therefore depends on how we (passively) experience the world and how we (actively) appropriate or assimilate it. It is a reciprocal relationship between the individual and the world through which both are shaped. According to Hartmut Rosa, resonance as world relationship can be detected on three axes on which individuals relate to the world: (1) horizontal (people and politics), (2) diagonal (things), and (3) vertical (collective singulars such as nature, art, history, and religion). Using these axes as heuristic, we analyze solicited journaling method as well as in-depth interview data. Caring relationships can be detected along the three axes of resonance. Resonance thus helps to advance the characteristics of care as not limited to relationships between humans but also for things or collective singulars such as nature. Resonance also highlights how caring relationships support sustainable consumption in a positive way by focusing on its relational and reciprocal dimensions.
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Posted 2 days ago
Ünsal Özdilek
Ünsal Özdilek
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Introduction
This paper introduces the concept of Sustainable Land Rent (SLR), providing a comprehensive, multidimensional exploration anchored in the dynamics of its origin, separability, mobility, valuation, and the imperative for equitable distribution. SLR capitalizes on the economic mobility o...
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Introduction
This paper introduces the concept of Sustainable Land Rent (SLR), providing a comprehensive, multidimensional exploration anchored in the dynamics of its origin, separability, mobility, valuation, and the imperative for equitable distribution. SLR capitalizes on the economic mobility of land’s value to enhance community welfare and promote environmental sustainability. Advocating for the systematic institutionalization of SLR, the research tackles the complex challenge of distinguishing land value from improvements.
Methods
Employing traditional Price, Cost, and Income (PCI) methods as practiced in North America, the study addresses the technical challenge of inseparability by estimating and integrating the SLR value within each of these methods. The methodology clarifies the valuation process and establishes an objective framework for resource allocation and negotiation between public and private sectors.
Results and discussion
Furthermore, our findings highlight SLR’s vital role in advancing public revenue generation and underscore its function as an innovative catalyst for integrating sustainability into economic valuation models and practices in real estate development and urbanization.
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Posted 2 days ago
Nataliya Protsakh
Nataliya Protsakh
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The initial-boundary and the inverse coefficient problems for the semilinear hyperbolic equation with strong damping are considered in this study. The conditions for the existence and uniqueness of solutions in Sobolev spaces to these problems have been established. The inverse problem involves dete...
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The initial-boundary and the inverse coefficient problems for the semilinear hyperbolic equation with strong damping are considered in this study. The conditions for the existence and uniqueness of solutions in Sobolev spaces to these problems have been established. The inverse problem involves determining the unknown time-dependent parameter in the right-hand side function of the equation using an additional integral type overdetermination condition.
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Posted 2 days ago
Nathaniel E. Helwig
Nathaniel E. Helwig
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Posted 2 days ago
Haiyan Cai,
Haiyan Cai
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Qingtang Jiang
Qingtang Jiang
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Posted 2 days ago
Muzaffer Ayvaz,
Muzaffer Ayvaz
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Lieven De Lathauwer
Lieven De Lathauwer
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We introduce the Tensor-Based Multivariate Optimization (TeMPO) framework for use in nonlinear optimization problems commonly encountered in signal processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Within our framework, we model nonlinear relations by a multivariate polynomial that can be r...
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We introduce the Tensor-Based Multivariate Optimization (TeMPO) framework for use in nonlinear optimization problems commonly encountered in signal processing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Within our framework, we model nonlinear relations by a multivariate polynomial that can be represented by low-rank symmetric tensors (multi-indexed arrays), making a compromise between model generality and efficiency of computation. Put the other way around, our approach both breaks the curse of dimensionality in the system parameters and captures the nonlinear relations with a good accuracy. Moreover, by taking advantage of the symmetric CPD format, we develop an efficient second-order Gauss–Newton algorithm for multivariate polynomial optimization. The presented algorithm has a quadratic per-iteration complexity in the number of optimization variables in the worst case scenario, and a linear per-iteration complexity in practice. We demonstrate the efficiency of our algorithm with some illustrative examples, apply it to the blind deconvolution of constant modulus signals, and the classification problem in supervised learning. We show that TeMPO achieves similar or better accuracy than multilayer perceptrons (MLPs), tensor networks with tensor trains (TT) and projected entangled pair states (PEPS) architectures for the classification of the MNIST and Fashion MNIST datasets while at the same time optimizing for fewer parameters and using less memory. Last but not least, our framework can be interpreted as an advancement of higher-order factorization machines: we introduce an efficient second-order algorithm for higher-order factorization machines.
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Posted 2 days ago