Search results for "SDG"
showing 10 items of 655 documents
Multicriteria evaluation of carbon-neutral heat-only production technologies for district heating
2018
Climate change mitigation requires reducing dependence on fossil fuels and transition to low carbon energy production technologies. Nearly half of the global final energy consumption is thermal energy produced from technologies with high carbon dioxide emission. As such, it is imperative to employ carbon-neutral heat production to achieve a sustainable energy system. This paper presents a real-life case of applying multicriteria decision analysis for evaluating carbon-neutral heat-only production technologies in a major district heating system in Finland. A group of 10 experts from the energy company contributed in defining the alternative technologies and multiple economic, technological, …
Environmental and biological factors influencing trace elemental and microstructural properties of Arctica islandica shells
2018
Long-term and high-resolution environmental proxy data are crucial to contextualize current climate change. The extremely long-lived bivalve, Arctica islandica, , is one of the most widely used paleoclimate archives of the northern Atlantic because of its fine temporal resolution. However, the interpretation of environmental histories from microstructures and elemental impurities of A. islandica, shells is still a challenge. Vital effects (metabolic rate, ontogenetic age, and growth rate) can modify the way in which physiochemical changes of the ambient environment are recorded by the shells. To quantify the degree to which microstructural properties and element incorporation into A. island…
Evaluating the citywide Edinburgh 20mph speed limit intervention effects on traffic speed and volume: A pre-post observational evaluation.
2021
Objectives Traffic speed is important to public health as it is a major contributory factor to collision risk and casualty severity. 20mph (32km/h) speed limit interventions are an increasingly common approach to address this transport and health challenge, but a more developed evidence base is needed to understand their effects. This study describes the changes in traffic speed and traffic volume in the City of Edinburgh, pre- and 12 months post-implementation of phased city-wide 20mph speed limits from 2016–2018. Methods The City of Edinburgh Council collected speed and volume data across one full week (24 hours a day) pre- and post-20mph speed limits for 66 streets. The pre- and post-sp…
“Living in Contaminated Areas”—Consideration of Different Perspectives
2020
Following large-scale nuclear power plant accidents such as those that occurred at Chernobyl (Ukraine) in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi (Japan) in 2011, large populations are living in areas containing residual amounts of radioactivity. As a key session of the ConRad conference, experts were invited from different disciplines to provide state-of-the-art information on the topic of "living in contaminated areas." These experts provided their different perspectives on a range of topics including radiation protection principles and dose criteria, environmental measurements and dose estimation, maintaining decent living and working conditions, evidence of health risks, and social impact and risk c…
A Genome-wide Association Study of Early-onset Breast Cancer Identifies PFKM as a Novel Breast Cancer Gene and Supports a Common Genetic Spectrum for…
2014
Abstract Early-onset breast cancer (EOBC) causes substantial loss of life and productivity, creating a major burden among women worldwide. We analyzed 1,265,548 Hapmap3 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) among a discovery set of 3,523 EOBC incident cases and 2,702 population control women ages ≤ 51 years. The SNPs with smallest P values were examined in a replication set of 3,470 EOBC cases and 5,475 control women. We also tested EOBC association with 19,684 genes by annotating each gene with putative functional SNPs, and then combining their P values to obtain a gene-based P value. We examined the gene with smallest P value for replication in 1,145 breast cancer cases and 1,142 control …
Marine Anticancer Agents: An Overview with a Particular Focus on Their Chemical Classes
2020
The marine environment is a rich source of biologically active molecules for the treatment of human diseases, especially cancer. The adaptation to unique environmental conditions led marine organisms to evolve di erent pathways than their terrestrial counterparts, thus producing unique chemicals with a broad diversity and complexity. So far, more than 36,000 compounds have been isolated from marine micro- and macro-organisms including but not limited to fungi, bacteria, microalgae, macroalgae, sponges, corals, mollusks and tunicates, with hundreds of new marine natural products (MNPs) being discovered every year.Marine-based pharmaceuticals have started to impactmodern pharmacology and diff…
Innovations in medical care and mortality trends from four circulatory diseases between 1970 and 2005
2013
Background: Governments have identified innovation in pharmaceuticals and medical technology as a priority for health policy. Although the contribution of medical care to health has been studied extensively in clinical settings, much less is known about its contribution to population health. We examine how innovations in the management of four circulatory disorders have influenced trends in cause-specific mortality at the population level. Methods: Based on literature reviews, we selected six medical innovations with proven effectiveness against hypertension, ischaemic heart disease, heart failure and cerebrovascular disease. We combined data on the timing of these innovations and cause-spe…
Joint route planning under varying market conditions
2007
PurposeTo provide empirical evidence on the level of savings that can be attained by joint route planning and how these savings depend on specific market characteristics.Design/methodology/approachJoint route planning is a measure that companies can take to decrease the costs of their distribution activities. Essentially, this can either be achieved through horizontal cooperation or through outsourcing distribution to a logistics service provider. The synergy value is defined as the difference between distribution costs in the original situation where all entities perform their orders individually, and the costs of a system where all orders are collected and route schemes are set up simulta…
Astrobiology of life on Earth
2021
Astrobiology is mistakenly regarded by some as a field confined to studies of life beyond Earth. Here, we consider life on Earth through an astrobiological lens. Whereas classical studies of microbiology historically focused on various anthropocentric sub-fields (such as fermented foods or commensals and pathogens of crop plants, livestock and humans), addressing key biological questions via astrobiological approaches can further our understanding of all life on Earth. We highlight potential implications of this approach through the articles in this Environmental Microbiology special issue ‘Ecophysiology of Extremophiles’. They report on the microbiology of places/processes including low-te…
ISARIC-COVID-19 dataset: A Prospective, Standardized, Global Dataset of Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19
2022
The International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) COVID-19 dataset is one of the largest international databases of prospectively collected clinical data on people hospitalized with COVID-19. This dataset was compiled during the COVID-19 pandemic by a network of hospitals that collect data using the ISARIC-World Health Organization Clinical Characterization Protocol and data tools. The database includes data from more than 705,000 patients, collected in more than 60 countries and 1,500 centres worldwide. Patient data are available from acute hospital admissions with COVID-19 and outpatient follow-ups. The data include signs and symptoms, pre-existing como…