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Design Science Research Methodology: An Artefact-Centric Creation and Evaluation Approach

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Australasian Journal of Information Systems

hussein genemo

The knowledge of design science research (DSR) can have applications for improving expert systems (ES) development research. Although significant progress of utilising DSR has been observed in particular information systems design – such as decision support systems (DSS) studies – only rare attempts can be found in the ES design literature. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the use of DSR for ES design. First, we explore the ES development literature to reveal the presence of DSR as a research methodology. For this, we select relevant literature criteria and apply a qualitative content analysis in order to generate themes inductively to match the DSR components. Second, utilising the findings of the comparison, we determine a new DSR approach for designing a specific ES that is guided by another result – the findings of a content analysis of examination scripts in Mathematics. The specific ES artefact for a case demonstration is designed for addressing the requireme...

Michael Myers

Clare Atkins

Dr Shah Miah

Knowledge gained from a Decision Support Systems (DSS) design should ideally be reusable by DSS designers and researchers. The majority of existing DSS research has mainly focused on empirical problem solving rather than on developing principles that could inform solution approaches for other user contexts. Design Science Research (DSR) has contributed to effective development of various innovative DSS artefacts and associated knowledge development, but there has been limited progress on new knowledge development from a practical problem context, going beyond product and process descriptions. For DSS applications such as Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) design and development, relevant reusable prescriptive knowledge is of significance not only to understand mutability but also to extend application of theory across domains. In this paper, we develop new design knowledge abstracted from the approach taken in a representative case of innovative CDSS development, specified as ...

Communications in Computer and Information Science

Alta Van der Merwe

Proceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

lesley gardner

J. of Design Research

Vijay Vaishnavi

Health Informatics Journal

John Gammack

Healthcare analytics has been a rapidly emerging research domain in recent years. In general, healthcare solution design studies focus on developing analytic solutions that enhance product, process and practice values for clinical and non-clinical decision support. The objective of this study is to explore the scope of healthcare analytics research and in particular its utilisation of design and development methodologies. Using six prominent electronic databases, qualifying articles between 2010 and mid-2018 were sourced and categorised. A total of 52 articles on healthcare analytics solutions were selected for relevant content on public healthcare. The research team scrutinised the articles, using established content analysis protocols. Analysis identified that various methodologies have been used for developing analytics solutions, such as prototyping, traditional software engineering, agile approaches and others, but despite its clear advantages, few show the use of design scienc...

David Wilton

Modern businesses face increased levels of competitive pressure, a turbulent business environment, and there is ongoing debate as to whether IT can continue to create competitive advantage in the modern era. The study described in this paper is work-in-progress towards a PhD. The primary aim of the research is to examine the relationship between Information Systems Strategic Planning (ISSP) and Enterprise Architectural Practice (EAP) ,in New Zealand (NZ) enterprises, from both theoretical and empirical points of view, and, if there is significant overlap, explore the feasibility of combining the two activities into a single, coherent process. These issues had not previously been investigated, and the outcomes are believed to be new knowledge. This paper describes the latest research phase: combining ISSP and EAP methods to create a DIY IS strategic planning methodology for small or medium enterprises (SMEs). As SMEs constitute an important sector of most modern economies, this is a ...

Marlen Hofmann

For recent years, disaster response management is considered as a promising field for applying methods and tools from business process management. Especially the development of adaptive workflow management systems (WfMS) brought a process-oriented management of highly dynamic disaster response processes (DRP) within tangible reach. However, time criticality, unpredictability or complex and changing disaster reality make it impossible to analyze and adapt ongoing DRP within reasonable time manually. Hence, to foster the application of disaster response WfMS in practice, it becomes mandatory to develop methods supporting an (semi-)automated analyses and adaption of ongoing DRP. Addressing this research gap, we present a novel method called DRP-ADAPT which analyzes given DRP models with respect to place-related conflicts and resolves inoperable response activities (semi-)automatically by process adaptation.

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• NATURE PODCAST
• 15 May 2024

Lizard-inspired building design could save lives

• Benjamin Thompson &
• Elizabeth Gibney

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Download the Nature Podcast 15 May 2024

In this episode:

00:45 A recyclable 3D printing resin from an unusual source

Many 3D printers create objects using liquid resins that turn into robust solids when exposed to light. But many of these are derived from petrochemicals that are difficult to recycle. To overcome this a team has developed a new type of resin, which they’ve made using a bodybuilding supplement called lipoic acid. Their resin can be printed, recycled and reused multiple times, which they hope could in future contribute to reducing waste associated with 3D printing.

Research Article: Machado et al.

10:05 Research Highlights

How housing shortages can drive a tiny parrot resort to kill, and the genes that gave cauliflower its curls.

Research Highlight: These parrots go on killing sprees over real-estate shortages

Research Highlight: How the cauliflower got its curlicues

12:27 To learn how to make safe structures researchers … destroyed a building

Many buildings are designed to prevent collapse by redistributing weight following an initial failure. However, this relies on extensive structural connectedness that can result in an entire building being pulled down. To prevent this, researchers took a new approach inspired by the ability of some lizards to shed their tails. They used this to develop a modular system, which they tested by building — and destroying — a two-storey structure. Their method stopped an initial failure from spreading, preventing a total collapse. The team hopes this finding will help prevent catastrophic collapses, reducing loss of life in aid rescue efforts.

Research Article: Makoond et al.

Nature video: Controlled failure: The building designed to limit catastrophe

23:20: Briefing Chat

An AI algorithm discovers 27,500 new asteroids, and an exquisitely accurate map of a human brain section reveals cells with previously undiscovered features.

New York Times: Killer Asteroid Hunters Spot 27,500 Overlooked Space Rocks

Nature News: Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail

Subscribe to Nature Briefing, an unmissable daily round-up of science news, opinion and analysis free in your inbox every weekday.

Subscribe to Nature Briefing: AI and robotics

Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube Music or your favourite podcast app. An RSS feed for the Nature Podcast is available too.

Benjamin Thompson

Welcome back to the Nature Podcast , this week, creating a recyclable resin for 3D printing…

Lizzie Gibney

…and how a page from a lizard’s playbook could help mitigate disaster. I’m Lizzie Gibney.

And I'm Benjamin Thompson.

<music>

3D Printers come in lots of different types, as do the materials they actually use to print. One group of materials are known as photopolymer resins, which are essentially liquids made of molecules that bind together the polymerise and crosslink when exposed to light, creating a strong, solid material. Resins can be used to accurately print all sorts of shapes and are often used when companies are prototyping products, and some have found uses in dentistry and orthodontic settings. But although versatile, there are concerns about the sustainability of resin-based printing.

This week in Nature , researchers demonstrate a new photopolymer resin that may help overcome this issue, and what’s more, they made it using a chemical from a rather unusual source. I spoke to one of the authors of the new work — Andrew Dove from the University of Birmingham here in the UK, and he laid out some of the issues with current 3D resin technology.

Andrew Dove

So, the resins are often made from petrochemical resources, so they're mined from oil. And also, because what you're doing is you're taking the resin and making a crosslinked polymer, they're very difficult to recycle. And so really, these materials continue to contribute to the plastic-waste challenges and crisis that's going on.

And so what was the specific problem that you were looking to solve?

Fundamentally, it was a challenge that had been my head for a good few years, was how can you make a photocurable resin for 3D printing that then you can do polymerize back to something that you can then directly re-photocure again? So being able to create a closed loop, that was the key challenge we were looking to address. But when we wanted to address that, we wanted to address it in a more sustainable way. So we were thinking around bio-based feedstocks to form the material from the starting point as well.

And to achieve this then, you turn to a molecule called lipoic acid, which as I've learned is sometimes used as a supplement by bodybuilding enthusiasts. Which on the face of it is perhaps somewhat of an unusual choice. Why have you looked at that in the first instance?

I mean it's interesting you say that, we actually buy our lipoic acid from a health supplement company. I tend to buy it myself, so I think they think that I'm some bodybuilder who is getting through a lot of lipoic acid, whereas actually, we're making resins from it. Lipoic acids a really interesting molecule because of how its set up. It has a cyclic disulfide, which you can polymerize to make the backbone of the polymers. And the reason why it's particularly interesting because those disulfide bonds are quite dynamic. So we figured when we understood from the work that had been done previously, that you actually can get that polymerization to go backwards relatively easily. So unlike something like polymerizing an acrylic, where you’re going from a double bond to a single bond, that's very hard to go back up that hill thermodynamically, these closer to equilibrium polymers, are much more easy to access the back reaction from the polymer to the monomer.

So you can break this bond then and form these kind of straight monomers that you can chain together. And you can also go back the other way as well. But actually, you had to adjust it and your resin is made out of two compounds based originally on lipoic acid.

If we just polymerize the lipoic acid, we'd end up with a linear polymer that wouldn't actually be robust enough to display the source of resolution that we get in the 3D printing. So we realised with the acid group that lipoic acid offers, we can do some very simple chemistry to create molecules that have two or three or even more lipoic acid units that can then act as crosslinkers between the chains to make the polymer that results from that much more robust.

And so you put your lipoic acid-based resin through his paces then using a regular 3D printer. And in one of the tests you printed this little toy tugboat called 3DBenchy and this is a benchmark test model for 3D printers which apparently is quite hard to make.

Yeah, that's correct. If you go to a 3D printing conference, you'll probably see everyone showing you their 3D printed Benchy photographs. It's a particularly challenging structure cause of the overhangs and resolution and holes that are within it. I think it’s designed to be aesthetically pleasing, but also technically challenging to print

And how did your resin perform then printing this little toy tugboat?

We get some really beautiful prints out of this resin, the resolution is really, really high. I mean, we didn't just jump straight in and pour a resin into a printer and decide to try and print Benchy. We do a lot of tests before then to optimise the level of lights in particular that we expose for each layer in the print, and a lot of testing to really improve what sort of resolution we can get.

And how did it stack up to commercially available resins based on petrochemical say?

So we're very much at the softer end. But there are commercial resins that we highlight in the paper that are comparable mechanical properties to our materials. But one of the real beauties of this is that we can use a really wide range of different linking groups and alcohol groups to go with that lipoic acid that then infer very different properties. So we can go from things that are really very soft, up to things that are still, on the scale of materials, fairly soft but much stiffer.

Obviously, you've used this resin to make 3D structures. But the key aim was to make something that can be recycled and reused. What did you see here when you use your lipoic acid-based resin?

Yeah, we saw that it worked really quite effectively to be recycled, because we can de-polymerize. So we can undo the polymerization to go back to the starting materials that formed the resin. We can also actually go one stage further back and go back to the chemicals from which you make the resin to fully recycle it properly. It's a really simple process, so we grind the material up and then we quite simply reflux it in a solvent for two hours, and then remove the solvent and you have the resin back it’s about a 91% yield of which the cyclic disulphide recovery is about 96% of that.

I mean, that's pretty high numbers, but it's not 100%, right? For complete reusability. Do you think it's possible to get there or the laws of chemistry and physics against you at that stage?

You're always in equilibrium. So you do have a slight limitation on what you can achieve. That is the major area for improvement for us.

Of course you wanted to make something that was recyclable. And you did show that it could be used again and again. You printed multiple versions or iterations, I suppose, of the little Benchy tugboat, what properties did they show? Were they comparable? Did they show any degradation or anything like that?

The properties of the reprinted polymers are almost identical to the property of the originally printed polymer, it was slightly outstanding in the way but I think it's a demonstration that we've gone really back to the resin. So you know if you're going backwards and forwards of the same chemistry, you should get the same properties out at the end. And we do.

Obviously, your work is on quite a small scale, right, this is an experimental paper, a proof-of-concept paper. Do you think this work can ultimately be scaled up?

Yeah, it's incredibly simple chemistry actually, it's one of the things that really appealed to me when we started working on this was that actually, you can pretty much do this in a bucket — it's very scalable chemistry.

It's worth noting, though, I suppose that it’s not totally benign at the minute though, some of the solvents and reagents, you know, in your paper aren't necessarily the most kind of friendly to humans, is that something you're investigating or something that can be changed?

Absolutely something we actually already spent some time looking at. So we use DMF dimethylformamide for the de-polymerization chemistry. We tried loads of greener solvents, but they're just not as efficient. So we're still looking to optimise that further. But my argument always is, okay, we're using that solvent, what we can recycle that solvent after it's been used. So once it's been removed, we can use it for the next set of de-polymerizations as well.

So, you've shown evidence then that this system works. What are some of the big questions, maybe big hurdles that need to be overcome do you think sort of moving forward?

Cost is always the question. You know, lipoic acid is a relatively inexpensive chemical. But compared to what's currently used, it's relatively expensive. So that's a major cost. I think it's a supply and demand issue. The other thing we're actively looking at is how do we make much stiffer versions of this? The majority of resin sales in this area are on much stiffer materials. And so the challenge for us is how do we achieve that with this type of technology that we can circularise.

And where do you see this resin being used then if these hurdles can be overcome?

We've got a lot of really interesting ideas because of what this unlocks in terms of that resin recyclability. I think anywhere where you have a lot of prototyping going on, if you can get the materials properties, right for that application, I think that would be something that will be very beneficial because you're making prototypes that then can be recycled back into resin and remade into new prototypes. And we're also really interested in looking at these as potential biomaterials as well for medical device-type technologies.

And are there any other bodybuilding supplements do you think that could ultimately be used as 3D resins? I don’t know.

I haven't looked through the bodybuilding catalogue, not being in that area, but perhaps it's inspiration for future research.

That was Andrew Dove, to read his paper, where you can see a picture of what 3DBenchy looks like, head over to the show notes for a link.

Coming up, how destroying a building helped researchers design safer structures. Right now, though, it’s the Research Highlights, with Nick Petrić Howe.

Nick Petrić Howe

If you've tried to find a place to live recently, you will know that competition can be fierce. But to acquire decent real estate, some parrots have even resorted to killing. The green-rumped parrotlet may look unassuming, but in a study spanning 27 years, researchers found that in 9% of the nests, adults were attacking baby birds or eggs. Most of the attacks seem to be driven by housing shortages, as childless parrot couples would kill infants to try and evict their parents. Whereas if one of the parents simply died, it was more likely that a parrot would just move in and adopt the offspring. The researchers concluded that both adoption and infanticide seem to convey a benefit to the parents, as future breeding was limited by the available homes. Relocate yourself somewhere peaceful and read that research in full in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America .

Imagine a cauliflower. Great, now ask yourself, why does that look like that? Well, according to a new study, it's the result of 2,500 years of domestication, and a smattering of genetic changes. Researchers analysed 971 genomes of cauliflowers and related plants like broccoli to understand the curly plants evolutionary history. They found three genes that seem to underlie how it got those tight curls and whirls that make up a cauliflower heads. These changes were encouraged by the humans who grew, what was them broccoli, to give us the cauliflower we know and perhaps love today. The researchers hope that by understanding these genetic changes, it could help us grow better cauliflower in the future. Enjoy that research roasted with a bit of cheese, in Nature Genetics .

Next up reporter Dan Fox has a story about how to make buildings more resilient.

Nirvan Makoond

Not a lot of sleep. So we were all quite worried. Of course, we expected a certain result and we were well prepared for it we’d performed a lot of simulations. But there are a lot of uncertainties in simulation which is why we need to test the building. Yeah, so not a lot of sleep and very anxious.

This is Nirvan Makoond from the ICITECH institute at the Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain, discussing how he was feeling the night before a key experiment. Here's what happens next.

<collapsing sounds>

That was the sound of that €120,000 experiment partially collapsing. Fortunately, that's exactly what Nirvan and his colleagues wanted to happen.

Very relieved, and the agreement between what we observed during the test and our predictive simulations was surprisingly good. And it surprised even us. That's what I wanted to say, I think it surprised even us. Very relieved and very happy.

This team of researchers are interested in why buildings collapse, and how those disasters could be mitigated. And this experiment published this week in Nature has just demonstrated the success of their new idea, a controlled collapse that prevents the whole building falling down. Curious about how you stop a building from collapsing once it started, I called Nirvan up and asked him to tell me a bit more about why buildings collapse in the first place.

Many different kinds of threats can cause a building to collapse. This can be extreme weather events such as floods, landslides, earthquakes, hurricanes, it can be explosions. It can even be ageing, or due to deterioration, construction errors, design errors. But often, a building collapse starts in a particular part of the building and then propagates to other parts of it.

So what's the scale of this problem?

I would say very big, because whenever there is a building collapse, actually the whole society around it is affected, lives are lost, the costs are great. An important aspect is that in the current global context, this is getting worse due to climate change. We are seeing more frequent and intense extreme weather events and also there is– there are rising geopolitical tensions.

So what are the existing solutions to this problem?

All measures included in codes and the current, let's say best practices in the field of structural engineering, basically all focus on preventing any form of collapse after an initial failure. So this means for example, if a structural component is lost, the current measures focus on ensuring the building is well connected as a whole. So the loads it was supporting can be redistributed to other parts of the structure. So it focuses on preventing the initiation of collapse.

So what are the limitations of these existing solutions? And how would you do things differently?

It has been shown to be effective for when an initial failure is very small, so very localised. However, in most cases of disastrous building collapses, we see that actually, this initial failure can be quite large. And it's something we cannot design against to completely prevent collapse. So our approach, we try to arrest a collapse once it has already initiated. So we look at the problem of limiting the extent of a collapse, rather than completely preventing its initiation. So in practice, it works by controlling the sequence of components that fail during the collapse process. What this means is, for instance, ensuring that connections or beams fail before columns fail, which are basically the main load bearing elements of the system. A great metaphor, I think, for– for our approach is the way that lizards shed their tails to escape predators. For certain normal functions, a lizard’s tail is perfectly attached to its body. However, when a predator has grabbed the tail of the lizard, the lizard can activate a particular movement, which basically causes the tail to break off. And similarly, when the building is operating normally, we ensure full connectivity and allow loads to be distributed so that the building can work as it is intended to. However, when a collapse has already started, what we ensure is that the failure is controlled, and that the most important parts of the building further away from the collapse remain intact.

So you started by testing this idea in computer models, what did those teach you?

The computational models really taught us that connectivity is actually causing more collapse propagation. So basically, it helped us really look at how the loads are transferred during the collapse, and how different building design choices cause more or less propagation. So this, this idea that a building being well connected together can also cause a greater extent of propagation. We have thought about the others had thought about it, demolition experts hadn't seen it. But really, it hadn't been studied, so the computational simulations allowed us to understand this phenomena better, but also to prove that hypothesis.

And then you built a physical model. But unlike most research, you build a full-size two-story building. So why was it important to have a test at that enormous scale?

First of all, because the nature of that phenomenon itself, to understand it, scaling it down introduces a lot of uncertainties in the analysis. And for example, we cannot scale the effect of gravity, but scaling down a structure really influences the accelerations and therefore the outcomes of that test are not reliable for that highly dynamic and complex phenomenon. Also, the test also serves as a form of proof of concept. So the construction sector is very conservative, and is very risk averse for good reason no, because of the consequences where the building collapse. However, this also means that introducing changes in the way things are done really requires convincing a lot of people and basically scaled down tests are not convincing enough.

Could you talk me through what happened on the day of the full-scale experiment when you collapsed your model?

Our test had two phases. The first one was to ensure that despite our design modifications, we were still able to prevent a collapse from initiating after a small initial failure. And so the in the first phase, we actually removed two columns, and no collapse opens, really ensuring that our building complies with requirements covered in codes. And then in the second phase, there was a sudden removal of the third column that triggered the collapse. And once this collapse started in the initial phases, as the collapsing parts were falling down and the building was still very well connected, everything was being pulled towards where the initial failure was starting. And then basically, our hierarchy or sequence of failures that was planned intended in the design activated. And this cause basically just part of the structure to collapse down while the other was able to remain upright.

Did you learn anything from the from the scale model that you hadn't predicted?

Yes. The real test definitely allowed us to assess reliably the level of damage in the impact part of the structure. And that is quite important for how you could use that remaining part or if it is still safe to perform evacuation and rescue operations there. So the real test also allowed us to evaluate that with more certainty.

Given the success of the test, how easy would it be for engineers to put this type of design into practice in buildings in the real world?

So, there are two aspects of this. There’s the design aspect and there’s the constructability aspect. Actually, to implement this in a real construction project. It's all low-tech solutions, all construction details that are currently used, there's no fancy devices or anything special you need, which means it has a high potential for impact, it can be implemented really easily at relatively low cost. However, the design aspect, in its current stage of development, it requires a lot of simulations, and quite high-fidelity simulations, which practitioners are not accustomed to. So there's quite a bit of work still to be done on developing simplified methods to be able to implement this in practice, from a design perspective. But implementing it in an actual construction project, once the design has been made, is actually very straightforward.

So what's next for this research? Can this be applied to different types of buildings where you're going to take it from here?

The philosophy itself is applicable in principle to all types of building. Honestly how the implementation is completely different. So we are going to implement and even test its effectiveness in other building types. That's really the next line of what we are already working on. Also, as I previously mentioned, there's a lot of work that needs to be done to transform this fundamental research into practical solutions, no developing simplified methods, convincing the board which we hope the test will do. This is more or less our future vision for this work. And we really hope to, to really transform this into practical solutions to really have an impact on society, improving the resilience of our buildings.

That was Nirvan Makoond from the ICITECH institute at the Universitat Politècnica de València. If you want to see that partial collapse in action, we also have a video on the Nature YouTube channel which we will link to in the show notes.

Finally on the show, it’s time for the Briefing Chat, where we discuss a couple of articles from the Nature Briefing . Lizzie, what have you been reading this week?

So this is about an algorithm that scientists have been using to discover asteroids. So they found using this algorithm twenty seven and a half thousand asteroids and that is as many as were discovered by all the telescopes put together last year. So that's a hell of a lot of asteroids.

Well presumably then researchers had no idea that these existed.

That's right. So these are completely newly discovered asteroids. So this is a story in The New York Times , and the research came out of the Asteroid Institute — very aptly named. Now how people usually look for asteroids is by trying to spot them in the same picture taken over the same night, you look at the same spot of the sky, and you see these little tiny blips that move when the backdrop of stars stay the same. And that's how you know that you've seen an asteroid. But of course, that means having lots of pictures, this can be a more laborious process. What they did here was essentially harness the fact that asteroids photobomb other shots of the sky already. So they looked in over 400,000 images that already existed in the archives of NOIRlab — a research laboratory in the States. So they found 1.7 billion little dots that came up in just one image. And they use this algorithm to project possible orbits that would connect those dots. And so through this kind of quite heavy computation, they were able to figure out that those dots were actually asteroids that just cropped up in these other images. And they could connect them together to figure out their orbits as well. So that's how they were able to find so many in just existing data that didn't need anything that was new.

So rather than sort of struggling to get time on a telescope to take more pictures, then you can actually go back at this and say, this catalogue that exists and figure out what these might actually be.

Exactly. And so it takes quite a lot of computational power. So this was in collaboration with Google Cloud. And it was eight and a half million equivalent of CPU hours. So that's about five weeks, even distributed across lots of different computers. So that's, you know, that's quite hefty amount of computing time. But the benefits, as you say are you don't need to go out there and get new time on a telescope. And it begs the question of what else might already be out there in all of these images that we've got, they've been taken over decades, that could be new discoveries?

And I'm sorry to bring it down this avenue, but if researchers didn't know that these were even here, like do they pose a threat to us?

So they found around 150 that are categorised as near-Earth asteroids. So they're orbits come near Earth's orbit, none of them seem to be a threat that we are aware of at the moment. So I think we can spin it actually as a positive in that, we're able to find these new asteroids that some of them come near Earth using this technique. And actually, using this technique on other efforts to find near-Earth asteroids, is probably going to be quite beneficial in the future, because this actually was trying to find asteroids that are further out in the main asteroid belt and further out in the Solar System. And but it found these serendipitously so if it actually goes out and tries to find near-Earth asteroids, we could really boost the number that we find. So there's a telescope in Chile being built by scientists in the States called the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. And one of their mandates that's come from Congress is that they need to find 90% of near-Earth asteroids that are bigger than a certain size, I think about 150 metres across. They didn't think they were gonna be able to hit that before, because they had to take two images, to track each asteroid. So they’d potentially see an asteroid and then they need to take another one to see the movement. They no longer need to do that. So this halves the amount of time it takes, this doubles the amount of space that they can look at. So the scientists, they are now quite confident that actually they are hopefully going to get near that 90% target by using this this algorithm.

That's kind of neat. I mean, do you think this is a technique that could be applied to other things floating around in space?

Yeah, I don't see why not. I mean, the very fact that this was found in archived images, and that it's essentially just apply an algorithm on top of those, that suggests that there might be a lot more that we can find, just by going through all of this old data. So I think there's a lot of potential there.

Well, it's super interesting that, you know, there's a lot we don't know about what's in our near astronomical neighbourhood. But speaking of unknowns, let's shift to my story today. But let's look inwards somewhat. So we know that space is fantastically complicated. But a lot of people would say that the human brain is perhaps the most complicated thing in the Universe. And there's a paper that came out in Science and a news article about it in Nature , that describes a way to map a very, very small part of the human brain in astonishing detail. And it's revealed patterns of communication between neurons and all sorts of other things as well.

And is there a kind of image of this?

Oh, there are multiple images of this. And this kind of system, which we'll talk about, is available for researchers to look at online. So if you head over to the show notes, you will find a link to the story and where that can be done. And what's happened here is that the researchers took a brain fragment from a 45-year-old woman who had undergone surgery to treat her epilepsy. And this came from the cortex, okay, so part of the brain involved in you know, problem solving and processing sensory signals that sort of thing, right. And it's a cubic millimetre of brain. And within it, I mean, some of these numbers are staggering, within this cubic millimetre, there's about 57,000 cells of different types, 150 million synapses— so these are, you know, connections between neurons— and hundreds of millimetres of superfine blood vessels. And all of this kind of put together is apparently 1.4 petabytes of data.

And so this image that I've just brought it up now, it is absolutely stunning. So we've got all these colours, which I assume are false colours. It's got these wavy grasslike tadpole patterns, I mean, that that's an incredible shot.

Oh, I mean, it's absolutely fantastic. But you made the point there, that's quite a small amount, one cubic millimetre is about a millionth of the human brain. And you're right false colours as well. So what's happened here is researchers, they took this tiny fragment of brain, they preserved it and stained it with heavy metals, so you can see the cells easier. And then they cut it into about 5,000 slices, right. Each about 34 nanometres thick and then they imaged these with an electron microscope. And then, as is often the way, they're turned to an AI, right, to try and stitch these together, right. I will say it's not perfect, potentially, because this stitching might not have gone, you know, 100% according to plan. They've manually checked a proportion of it, but they're hoping that other researchers can come in and correct any errors that may have been introduced while the map was being made.

And so once they've got this image, they've got this map that they've stitched together, what have they actually seen in it?

I mean, they found some things, some of which have never been seen before. Okay, Lizzie. So, some of the things are unconventional neurons that are described in the story, and they make up to 50 connections with each other, right. And so this is a far and away more than potentially the couple you'd normally find, as the researchers in the article are quoted as saying. But they also found some other stuff as well, pairs of neurons that are almost perfect mirror images of each other, cells that wrap around themselves to form knots. And the team plan to produce maps of other parts of the brain from other volunteers as well. But I think we're a little bit away away from putting it all together. One of the researchers behind the project is quoted as saying they reckon a map of the entire brain is unlikely in the next few decades. I mean, my goodness, the stuff they found already, I mean, what more is to be discovered I guess?

Well, we've got to figure out what it all does.

Well, I think that's a reasonable thing to say, because of course, if you want to know how it works, you need to know what it's made of and then you can kind of move down the chain, I suppose. And figuring how the cortex works in particular could, you know, in the long-term help in the treatment of you know, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, potentially. But say, it's the first step in the right direction, but it's all available online for people to have a look at.

Amazing, I might make that my screensaver for a little while. Well, thank you Ben. And listeners for more on those stories and for where you can sign up to the Nature Briefing to get more like them, check out the show notes for some links.

And that’s all for this week, as always keep in touch with us on X, we’re @NaturePodcast, or send an email to [email protected]. I’m Benjamin Thompson.

I'm Lizzie Gibney. Thanks for listening.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01448-z

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A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Just Created the Instruction Manual for Light-Speed Travel

In a first for warp drives, this research actually obeys the laws of physics.

If a superluminal—meaning faster than the speed of light—warp drive like Alcubierre’s worked, it would revolutionize humanity’s endeavors across the universe , allowing us, perhaps, to reach Alpha Centauri, our closest star system, in days or weeks even though it’s four light years away.

The clip above from the 2016 film Star Trek Beyond showcases the effect of a starship zipping through space inside a faster-than-light warp bubble. You can see the imagined but hypothetically accurate warping of spacetime.

However, the Alcubierre drive has a glaring problem: the force behind its operation, called “negative energy,” involves exotic particles—hypothetical matter that, as far as we know, doesn’t exist in our universe. Described only in mathematical terms, exotic particles act in unexpected ways, like having negative mass and working in opposition to gravity (in fact, it has “anti-gravity”). For the past 30 years, scientists have been publishing research that chips away at the inherent hurdles to light speed revealed in Alcubierre’s foundational 1994 article published in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Now, researchers at the New York City-based think tank Applied Physics believe they’ve found a creative new approach to solving the warp drive’s fundamental roadblock. Along with colleagues from other institutions, the team envisioned a “positive energy” system that doesn’t violate the known laws of physics . It’s a game-changer, say two of the study’s authors: Gianni Martire, CEO of Applied Physics, and Jared Fuchs, Ph.D., a senior scientist there. Their work, also published in Classical and Quantum Gravity in late April, could be the first chapter in the manual for interstellar spaceflight.

Positive energy makes all the difference. Imagine you are an astronaut in space, pushing a tennis ball away from you. Instead of moving away, the ball pushes back, to the point that it would “take your hand off” if you applied enough pushing force, Martire tells Popular Mechanics . That’s a sign of negative energy, and, though the Alcubierre drive design requires it, there’s no way to harness it.

Instead, regular old positive energy is more feasible for constructing the “ warp bubble .” As its name suggests, it’s a spherical structure that surrounds and encloses space for a passenger ship using a shell of regular—but incredibly dense—matter. The bubble propels the spaceship using the powerful gravity of the shell, but without causing the passengers to feel any acceleration. “An elevator ride would be more eventful,” Martire says.

That’s because the density of the shell, as well as the pressure it exerts on the interior, is controlled carefully, Fuchs tells Popular Mechanics . Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, according to the gravity-bound principles of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity . So the bubble is designed such that observers within their local spacetime environment—inside the bubble—experience normal movement in time. Simultaneously, the bubble itself compresses the spacetime in front of the ship and expands it behind the ship, ferrying itself and the contained craft incredibly fast. The walls of the bubble generate the necessary momentum, akin to the momentum of balls rolling, Fuchs explains. “It’s the movement of the matter in the walls that actually creates the effect for passengers on the inside.”

Building on its 2021 paper published in Classical and Quantum Gravity —which details the same researchers’ earlier work on physical warp drives—the team was able to model the complexity of the system using its own computational program, Warp Factory. This toolkit for modeling warp drive spacetimes allows researchers to evaluate Einstein’s field equations and compute the energy conditions required for various warp drive geometries. Anyone can download and use it for free . These experiments led to what Fuchs calls a mini model, the first general model of a positive-energy warp drive. Their past work also demonstrated that the amount of energy a warp bubble requires depends on the shape of the bubble; for example, the flatter the bubble in the direction of travel, the less energy it needs.

☄️ DID YOU KNOW? People have been imagining traveling as fast as light for nearly a century, if not longer. The 1931 novel Islands of Space by John W. Campbell mentions a “warp” method in the context of superluminal space travel.

This latest advancement suggests fresh possibilities for studying warp travel design, Erik Lentz, Ph.D., tells Popular Mechanics . In his current position as a staff physicist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, Lentz contributes to research on dark matter detection and quantum information science research. His independent research in warp drive theory also aims to be grounded in conventional physics while reimagining the shape of warped space. The topic needs to overcome many practical hurdles, he says.

Controlling warp bubbles requires a great deal of coordination because they involve enormous amounts of matter and energy to keep the passengers safe and with a similar passage of time as the destination. “We could just as well engineer spacetime where time passes much differently inside [the passenger compartment] than outside. We could miss our appointment at Proxima Centauri if we aren’t careful,” Lentz says. “That is still a risk if we are traveling less than the speed of light.” Communication between people inside the bubble and outside could also become distorted as it passes through the curvature of warped space, he adds.

While Applied Physics’ current solution requires a warp drive that travels below the speed of light, the model still needs to plug in a mass equivalent to about two Jupiters. Otherwise, it will never achieve the gravitational force and momentum high enough to cause a meaningful warp effect. But no one knows what the source of this mass could be—not yet, at least. Some research suggests that if we could somehow harness dark matter , we could use it for light-speed travel, but Fuchs and Martire are doubtful, since it’s currently a big mystery (and an exotic particle).

Despite the many problems scientists still need to solve to build a working warp drive, the Applied Physics team claims its model should eventually get closer to light speed. And even if a feasible model remains below the speed of light, it’s a vast improvement over today’s technology. For example, traveling at even half the speed of light to Alpha Centauri would take nine years. In stark contrast, our fastest spacecraft, Voyager 1—currently traveling at 38,000 miles per hour—would take 75,000 years to reach our closest neighboring star system.

Of course, as you approach the actual speed of light, things get truly weird, according to the principles of Einstein’s special relativity . The mass of an object moving faster and faster would increase infinitely, eventually requiring an infinite amount of energy to maintain its speed.

“That’s the chief limitation and key challenge we have to overcome—how can we have all this matter in our [bubble], but not at such a scale that we can never even put it together?” Martire says. It’s possible the answer lies in condensed matter physics, he adds. This branch of physics deals particularly with the forces between atoms and electrons in matter. It has already proven fundamental to several of our current technologies, such as transistors, solid-state lasers, and magnetic storage media.

The other big issue is that current models allow a stable warp bubble, but only for a constant velocity. Scientists still need to figure out how to design an initial acceleration. On the other end of the journey, how will the ship slow down and stop? “It’s like trying to grasp the automobile for the first time,” Martire says. “We don’t have an engine just yet, but we see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Warp drive technology is at the stage of 1882 car technology, he says: when automobile travel was possible, but it still looked like a hard, hard problem.

The Applied Physics team believes future innovations in warp travel are inevitable. The general positive energy model is a first step. Besides, you don’t need to zoom at light speed to achieve distances that today are just a dream, Martire says. “Humanity is officially, mathematically, on an interstellar track.”

Before joining Popular Mechanics , Manasee Wagh worked as a newspaper reporter, a science journalist, a tech writer, and a computer engineer. She’s always looking for ways to combine the three greatest joys in her life: science, travel, and food.

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“Designing” Design Science Research – A Taxonomy for Supporting Study Design Decisions

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• First Online: 25 May 2022
• Cite this conference paper

• Hanlie Smuts   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3142-0468 10 ,
• Robert Winter   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9383-2276 11 ,
• Aurona Gerber   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1743-8167 10 , 12 &
• Alta van der Merwe   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3652-7512 10  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13229))

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• International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology

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The Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm is highly relevant to the Information Systems (IS) discipline because DSR aims to improve the state of practice and contribute design knowledge through the systematic construction of useful artefacts. Since study designs can be understood as useful artefacts, DSR can also contribute to improving conceptualizing a research project. This study developed a taxonomy with relevant dimensions and characteristics for DSR research. Such a taxonomy is useful for analyzing existing DSR study designs and successful DSR study design patterns. In addition, the taxonomy is valuable for identifying DSR study design principles (dependencies among characteristics) and subsequently for systematically designing DSR studies. We constructed the DSR study taxonomy through a classification process following the taxonomy development approach of Nickerson et al.

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Guidelines for Conducting Design Science Research in Information Systems

A Framework for Classifying Design Research Methods

Making Sense of Design Science in Information Systems Research: Insights from a Systematic Literature Review

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Smuts, H., Winter, R., Gerber, A., van der Merwe, A. (2022). “Designing” Design Science Research – A Taxonomy for Supporting Study Design Decisions. In: Drechsler, A., Gerber, A., Hevner, A. (eds) The Transdisciplinary Reach of Design Science Research. DESRIST 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13229. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06516-3_36

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• http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9384-5456 Mohammad Javad Koohsari 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Andrew T Kaczynski 4 ,
• Akitomo Yasunaga 5 ,
• Tomoya Hanibuchi 6 ,
• Tomoki Nakaya 7 ,
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• 1 School of Advanced Science and Technology , Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology , Nomi , Japan
• 2 Faculty of Sport Sciences , Waseda University , Tokorozawa , Japan
• 3 School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences , Deakin University , Geelong , Victoria , Australia
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• Public health
• Sedentary Behavior
• Health promotion

Introduction

Insufficient physical activity and excessive sitting time among office-based workers have been linked to various health risks and economic consequences. While health promotion interventions are important, the role of workplace design in encouraging active behaviours is increasingly recognised. However, significant gaps exist in knowledge about how workplace design influences these behaviours. This paper identifies the need to investigate the interactive effects of workplace norms and culture and the role of building layouts on workers’ behaviours, as well as the need for more accurate behavioural measures. Bridging these gaps is crucial for designing workplace interventions and promoting active, healthy and productive work environments.

Workplace design: encouraging movement in workplace settings

Existing gaps and future directions, interactive effects of workplace social environments.

Workplace social environments such as norms and culture can significantly influence sedentary behaviours among office-based workers 4 and can affect how workplace design influences workers’ behaviour. Most previous studies have tested the effects of workplace design on employees’ active and sedentary behaviours within Western contexts, 5 leaving a gap in how these relationships vary in other geographical settings with unique workplace norms and cultures. For instance, in a workplace where extended sitting is a cultural norm, employees may still predominantly engage in sedentary behaviour, regardless of having activity-promoting features in their workplace. Conversely, an activity-promoting environment might help mitigate norms towards sitting or even produce multiplicative positive effects in contexts where activity in the workplace is already customary. Conducting studies across varied geographical settings is necessary to identify similarities and differences in the impact of workplace norms and design on workers’ active and sedentary behaviours. Cross-cultural studies can shed light on the generalisability of findings and help develop customised interventions that address specific norms and cultural challenges. Future research can also employ mixed methods to gain a more thorough understanding of the complex interplay between workplace design, norms and culture, and employees’ behaviour. Additionally, the rise of home and hybrid working arrangements indicates that office social norms could extend to home work environments. For example, a culture of regular stretch breaks in the office might encourage similar practices at home, influencing physical activity behaviours remotely. Understanding the detailed relationship between workplace design, norms and employee behaviour is critical for developing targeted contextually relevant interventions that promote active workplace environments.

Precision in tracking workplace behaviours

Accurately measuring employees’ active and sitting behaviours and identifying the ‘locations’ where these behaviours occur is essential to understand their relationships with workplace design attributes. Global positioning systems (GPS) have been commonly used in combination with accelerometer devices to measure and spatially track people’s active and sedentary behaviour in outdoor environments, such as neighbourhoods and cities. 6 Nevertheless, GPS signals have limited accuracy or can be disrupted within indoor environments, resulting in less precise location data.

An indoor positioning system (IPS) can address the limitations of GPS in indoor environments. 7 IPS is a wayfinding technology that uses existing low-cost WiFi and Bluetooth to provide precise locations of individuals inside buildings. The IPS can be integrated with activity-tracking wearable devices, such as accelerometers, pedometers and heart rate monitors, as well as traditional methods like behavioural mapping. This integration allows for the collection of employees’ location data, movement patterns, activity intensities and other biometric data within workplaces. Additionally, the synergy between IPS and wearable devices effectively differentiates between occupational and leisure physical activities in workplaces. This distinction is key to better understanding the health paradox of the different health effects of these two types of physical activities. 8 Furthermore, with the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), there has been a unique opportunity to employ geospatial AI (GeoAI) in workplace environments and health research. GeoAI techniques aim to integrate innovations in spatial sciences with AI, particularly deep learning. 9 The joint application of IPS and GeoAI would enable precise location data of individuals within the workplace while using the power of spatial analysis. GeoAI can analyse workers’ movement patterns derived from IPS in combination with geospatial layers such as spatial layouts, access to common places, and light conditions. For instance, a GeoAI trained by tracking data on people’s movements in various indoor environments would predict people’s movements and derive estimates of the amount of sedentary behaviour of employed people only from planned indoor layout. This analysis allows for identifying hotspots or areas within the workplace where active and sedentary behaviour is prevalent.

Beyond individual design elements: exploring the influence of building layout on workplace behaviour

Most previous studies have primarily examined individual design elements but fail to consider how the overall spatial layout influences movement and behaviour. Building layout encompasses the spatial arrangement of building elements such as walls, doors, windows, and access ways, and plays a fundamental role in defining the functionality of interior spaces. Once a building layout has been established, making substantial alterations to it becomes challenging or, in some cases, impossible. Therefore, designing (and, if feasible, retrofitting) building interiors to promote health is imperative, but it is still unclear which workplace layouts are most supportive of workers’ active behaviours.

The urban design theory of space syntax has the potential to partially address this gap in knowledge. Space syntax uses a set of graph-based estimators to quantify spatial layouts. 10 It offers a framework to investigate the impact of building layout factors, such as workstation arrangement, common area location, and space accessibility, on workers’ movement patterns and behaviours. It goes beyond isolated design elements and considers the spatial configuration as a whole ( figure 1 ). Additionally, more research on ‘how’ people use and perceive their workspaces could complement the space syntax evaluations of building design.

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Space syntax examines building layouts as a whole, using the graph theory: (A)a schematic workplace layout, (B)space syntax axial lines (i.e., longest and fewest lines traversing all spaces) of the layout, and (C)the connectivity of all spaces based on the graph theory.

Conclusions

Future research should investigate the interactive effects of workplace norms and culture on behaviour and conduct cross-cultural studies to identify similarities and differences. Innovative measurement methods can also be employed to accurately measure behaviours and locations where those behaviours occur within workplaces. Additionally, exploring the influence of spatial layout, and using the urban design theory of space syntax, can offer valuable insights into the design of work environments that facilitate workers’ engagement in active behaviours.

Ethics statements

Patient consent for publication.

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Ethics approval

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Contributors MJK conceived the idea and wrote the initial draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the writing and assisted with the analysis and interpretation. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript and agree with the order of the presentation of authors.

Funding MJK is supported by the JSPS KAKENHI (grant 23K09701). KO is supported by the JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research program (grant 20H04113).

Competing interests None declared. In particular, none of the authors has a financial interest in the Space Syntax Limited company.

Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

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