Exploring Potentials and Barriers of Industry 4.0 Technologies to Facilitate the Transition to Circular Economy in Construction: A Systematic Literature Review

The UK construction has made a significant progress in recovering non-hazardous construction and demolition waste (CDW). Nevertheless, construction is still responsible for 60% (130MT/year) of all waste produced. There have been claims in the literature that Industry 4.0 technologies have potentials to support the transition to a circular economy (CE); however, these claims have yet to be tested in the construction context. A systematic literature review including 31 hits was conducted to explore potentials of Industry 4.0 technologies, referred to as Construction 4.0, for supporting the transition to CE in construction and identify barriers to their adoption. Findings revealed that the adoption of Construction 4.0 is still associated with technical and managerial barriers and requires the involvement of all stakeholders. The most prominent technical barriers were the lack of standards, fragmented data-sharing platforms and individual technologies’ lack of holistic capability for solving CE problems. The costs of purchase, implementation, training, maintenance and operation were prominent among the managerial barriers. Overall, Construction 4.0 solutions were limited to separate situations and did not support circularity throughout the whole construction process. Hence, a framework was developed mapping technologies to different stages in the construction process where they can support circularity. Future research will seek to develop a model to systematically employ Construction 4.0 technologies throughout the construction process to enhance its circularity

Everyday domestic water and energy consumption in Shanghai homes: The resurgence and persistence of gendered practices in China

China's ecological civilization centralises households as a unit of intervention for environmental policy. The household constructed within such policy reduces complex social arrangements and processes and results in efficiency and behaviour change interventions. Such interventions have had limited success and contribute to reproducing inequality. This paper uses ethnographic methods to develop insights into everyday practices that consume energy and water within homes in urban China. In doing so, understandings of both the responsibilities and temporalities of labour for these practices are developed, and the entanglement of these practices across diverse policy arenas is explored. Focusing upon water treatment, cooking, dishwashing, and laundering - this paper demonstrates not only how women have a much greater responsibility for such practices, but that the importance of women's labour is considered greater for practices in which hygiene is considered critical and contributing to health protection. Gendered labour is connected to the resurgence of Confucian gender ideologies within CCP policy and discourse post-1968. The exacerbation of anxieties around the health of children is further connected with parents experiencing pressure in raising their children as ‘high-quality citizens’.</p

The role of energy storage in Great Britain's future power system: focus on hydrogen and biomass

The increasing deployment of variable renewable energy (VRE) in the power sector, such as wind and solar photovoltaic, is expected to reduce emissions. However, VRE poses challenges due to their intermittency and variability. The Future Renewable Energy Performance into the Power System Model (FEPPS) is used to analyse VRE penetration in Great Britain's (GB) power system, resulting in VRE shares of around 65%, far from over 80% forecasted by 2030 and 2040 due to flexibility and stability constraints. The incorporation of new power generation and energy storage technologies is also analysed, including the role of biomass and hydrogen as low-carbon fuel options. Hydrogen is assumed to be produced from the curtailment of VRE and biomass. Between 6.57 and 283 Mt. of biomass would be required to balance bio‑hydrogen requirements by 2040; therefore, hydrogen production would depend on technology prioritisation. Power generation from hydrogen technologies (fuel cells and turbines) has a significant role in power system decarbonisation, with hydrogen turbines meeting up to ∼10% of annual electricity demand. In contrast, generation from batteries, adiabatic compressed air energy storage and natural gas turbines is not significant. Moreover, between 7.7 and 9.7 TWh of hydrogen storage would be needed, and there is substantial potential for salt cavern storage in GB, providing many 100s TWh. Finally, incorporating new generation and storage technologies relies on levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) reductions of 31% and 13% by 2030 and 2040, respectively, to keep the power sector on track towards decarbonisation

Dynamics of inertialess sedimentation of a rigid U-shaped disk

When particles sediment in a viscous fluid, the character of their trajectories depends sensitively on the particles’ shape. Here we study the sedimentation of U-shaped rigid disks in a regime where inertia can be neglected. We show that, unlike the case of planar disks which settle in a fixed orientation relative to the direction of gravity, U-shaped disks tend to perform a periodic sequence of pitching and rolling motions which cause their centre of mass to sediment along complex trajectories that range from quasi-periodic spirals to helices. Thus, we demonstrate that particles of achiral shape can sediment along chiral paths whose handedness is determined by their initial orientation rather than their geometry. Our analysis provides a framework in which to interpret the motion of sedimenting particles of arbitrary shape

How Is Telehealth Currently Being Utilized to Help in Hypertension Management within Primary Healthcare Settings? A Scoping Review

Telehealth has improved patient access to healthcare services and has been shown to have a positive impact in various healthcare settings. In any case, little is understood regarding the utilization of telehealth in hypertension management in primary healthcare (PHC) settings. This study aimed to identify and classify information about the types of interventions and types of telehealth technology in hypertension management in primary healthcare. A scoping review based on PRISMA-ScR was used in this study. We searched for articles in four databases: Pubmed, Scopus, Science Direct, and Embase in English. The selected articles were published in 2013–2023. The data were extracted, categorized, and analyzed using thematic analysis. There were 1142 articles identified and 42 articles included in this study. Regarding the proportions of studies showing varying trends in the last ten years, most studies came from the United States (US) (23.8%), were conducted in urban locations (33.3%), and had a quantitative study approach (69%). Telehealth interventions in hypertension management are dominated by telemonitoring followed by teleconsultation. Asynchronous telehealth is becoming the most widely used technology in managing hypertension in primary care settings. Telehealth in primary care hypertension management involves the use of telecommunications technology to monitor and manage blood pressure and provide medical advice and counselling remotely.</p

Multi-ancestry meta-analysis of host genetic susceptibility to tuberculosis identifies shared genetic architecture

The heritability of susceptibility to tuberculosis (TB) disease has been well recognized. Over 100 genes have been studied as candidates for TB susceptibility, and several variants were identified by genome-wide association studies (GWAS), but few replicate. We established the International Tuberculosis Host Genetics Consortium to perform a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of GWAS, including 14,153 cases and 19,536 controls of African, Asian, and European ancestry. Our analyses demonstrate a substantial degree of heritability (pooled polygenic h2 = 26.3%, 95% CI 23.7-29.0%) for susceptibility to TB that is shared across ancestries, highlighting an important host genetic influence on disease. We identified one global host genetic correlate for TB at genome-wide significance (p&lt;5 × 10-8) in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-II region (rs28383206, p-value=5.2 × 10-9) but failed to replicate variants previously associated with TB susceptibility. These data demonstrate the complex shared genetic architecture of susceptibility to TB and the importance of large-scale GWAS analysis across multiple ancestries experiencing different levels of infection pressure.</p

Publishing

This chapter covers the publishing context of seven Pirandello’s novels and we argue for the importance of analysing his publishing landscape to delineate some key turning points in the evolution of the Italian publishing world and in the process of canonization of a national author. By looking at Pirandello’s publishing context, we note that if the playwright achieved international recognition while allowing himself and his theatre to become more and more experimental, the novelist instead followed a more conventional pathway towards national canonization. We show how the history of Pirandello’s choice of publishers and of their responses to his works reflects that of the Italian publishing industry: his consolidation as a national author proceeds alongside his narrative experimentations. Moreover, we details how Pirandello’s publishing trajectory followed an ascending trajectory moving from his early works appearing in literary journals, to becoming an author for the leading Milanese Fratelli Treves and for the Florentine Bemporad. Finally, we illustrate the publishing strategies through which he was consecrated as a national author with the Mondadori Ominibus, including the blessing of the Minister for Popular Culture Dino Alfieri in 1937 in the preface to the Bibliografia di Pirandello, published by Mondadori