Consumerism

Summary

Consumerism is a social and economic order in which the goals of many individuals include the acquisition of goods and services beyond those that are necessary for survival or for traditional displays of status. Consumerism has historically existed in many societies, with modern consumerism originating in western Europe before the Industrial Revolution and becoming widespread around 1900. In 1899, a book on consumerism published by Thorstein Veblen, called The Theory of the Leisure Class, examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread "leisure time" at the beginning of the 20th century. In it, Veblen "views the activities and spending habits of this leisure class in terms of conspicuous and vicarious consumption and waste. Both relate to the display of status and not to functionality or usefulness." In economics, consumerism may refer to economic policies that emphasise consumption. In an ab

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Intégration énergétique d’un procédé agroalimentaire à l’aide de la plateforme internet PinchLight

Benjamin Laulan

Résumé : Les procédés agroalimentaires sont des procédés industriels consommateurs de grandes quantités d’énergie, aussi bien de refroidissement que de chauffage. Il est donc intéressant d’optimiser cette consommation. L’analyse pinch, méthode systématique d’intégration énergétique, est un outil très utile dans cette optique. PinchLight est une plateforme internet facilitant la définition du problème et le calcul des outils d’intégration énergétique. Ce travail met en place une méthode pour effectuer les études sur ce logiciel. Un procédé de fabrication de café soluble est analysé. En particulier, les améliorations prioritaires à apporter au procédé ont été mises en avant : une économie pouvant atteindre 49% sur le cout total a été montrée. Finalement, une opération unitaire, la torréfaction, est étudiée plus en détails. Ce travail s’est accompagné d’un effort de modélisation important. En effet, chaque étape de cette ligne de production a été l’objet de la mise en place de modèle adapté. En particulier, un évaporateur multi effets et un torréfacteur (ou roaster) ont été créés. Abstract : Food industry processes are great consumers of energy, both for heating and cooling. So, it is interesting to optimize this consumption. Pinch analysis, which is a systematic method of energy integration, is a good tool to do so. PinchLight, a web platform develops in the LENI, at the EPFL, makes easier to define the problem and to compute energy integration tools. This work develops a general method to use this software. An example of detailed analysis is made on an instant coffee process: a 49% economy on total cost was reached. Finally, roasting, an important unit in this process, is studied more precisely. A model was developed during this work for each steps of this process. As an example, an evaporator multi effect and a roaster were created.

2010

3D Shape Similarity

Fan Zhang

Microsoft Kinect, Google's Project Tango and Lytro's light field camera are all examples of 3D depth sensing reaching the consumer market. As this technology becomes more widestream, new signal processing techniques are needed to exploit this data. Recent techniques in 3D shape similarity assesment present exciting opportunities to develop new algorithms in this area. The aim of this project is to create a tutorial to these techniques using an iPython notebook. Particular emphasis will be placed on an excellent review paper [1] and book [2]. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said “While we teach, we learn,” and creating a tutorial on these topics is an excellent exercise to understand a complex subject that is at the heart of many modern computer vision techniques. [1] S. Biasotti et al "Recent Trends, Applications, and Perspectives in 3D Shape Similarity Assessment", 2015. [2] A. Bronstein, M. Bronstein, R. Kimmel "Numerical Geometry of Non-Rigid Shapes", 2008. LCAV1556050917

2016

This article seeks to address current debates on ongoing China’s urban development and makes a theoretical proposal that links financialization and ecological civilization through the perspective of the increasing role of consumption in today’s transition to an upgraded domestic economy. While both financialized land value capture and the role of quality are now fundamental to the construction of the built environment in Chinese cities, we argue that the “consumption city” refers to an economic and urban production process as well as to a societal transformation. First, the economic upgrading has gone along with a greater mobility of people travelling ever longer distances who spend their income or invest in the places they travel to rather than necessarily their places of residence or of work. To attract these consumers, whether they are residents, tourist or property investors, the quality of the living and consumption environments play a dominant role in the complex urban production and in governance, beyond the classic model of development based on the city as a production place. Simultaneously, the rising role of financialization by external households as investors raises the issue of how and to what extent the construction of consumption places has been a way for the state to further enhance the land value capture in (new or not) cities. Second, as the latest government strategy, ecological civilization is part of a social engineering process aiming to shape people’s lifestyles in terms of both their everyday consumption practices and their mindsets. The current transition aims to “civilize” citizens by enlarging the scope of urban consumers beyond the upper and middle classes to people from rural areas who are encouraged to become urban. Ecological civilization promotes a better quality of life for all, together with new outdoor and experiential activities, although this comes with a high ecological footprint.

2022