Academic/industry innovations for sustainable building design and refurbishment

Development and efficient dissemination of innovations for sustainable building design and refurbishment are crucial for the competitiveness of companies operating in the construction sector which faces pressure to reduce levels of carbon emissions from existing and new buildings to zero. An overwhelming majority of companies operating in the construction sector in Scotland are small to medium size enterprises (SMEs) who do not have sufficient resources in the current economic downturn to undertake research in building design, products and processes that will make buildings more sustainable. A joint project of seven Scottish universities has been initiated to support collaboration with small to medium sized enterprises in developing and disseminating innovation for sustainable building design and refurbishment. The project concept and methods used for efficient dissemination of the project outputs to SMEs across Scotland are explained. An analysis of the outputs of completed feasibility studies and the provision of academic consultancy through the project indicates the range of problems tackled as well as trends in the development and use of innovations for a more sustainable built environment in Scotland

Local Uses of International Criminal Justice in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Transcending Divisions or Building Parallel Worlds?

Social interactions at the local level are crucial to the analysis of the transitional justice and peace-building process. The reason that various international organizations in Bosnia have not been as successful in achieving the admittedly lofty goals of reconciliation is precisely because most of international representatives underestimated the agency of the local population, focusing exclusively on the actions of various local ethnic and civic elites. However, the parallel existence of competing state and nation building projects in Bosnia and their dominance over externally-supported projects of reconciliation cannot be simply explained by relying on one overarching variable – Bosnian nationalist elites’ work towards their own selfish interests and against the interests of the people. The stories that people tell themselves are many and they compete with each other: some are inclusionary, some less so, and some are downright exclusionist. Nevertheless, in each and every case, they provide the meaningful frame of actions that allow members of various local communities to cope with the exigencies of everyday life in Bosnia. A more suitable approach to transitional justice requires an analysis of what makes these stories so powerful and what are the objective political, social and economic factors that continue to provide a fertile ground for their wide-spread support

Payment for Environmental Services: First Global Inventory of Schemes Provisioning Water for Cities

In the perspective of the World Water Day 2011 - "Water for Cities" (March 22, 2011), the Natural Resources Land and Water Division (NRL) of FAO has launched an inventory of environmental schemes provisioning water to cities. Up to date there have been several studies addressing the payment for watershed services around the world, conducted by various UN agencies, NGOs, etc. None of these studies so far has focused on the PES schemes providing the water supply for cities and industries, i.e. urban areas. In that sense this inventory is unique. The report offers a very useful inventory of identified PES - "water for cities" schemes around the world. The report can be used as basis for further pursuit of information and analysis of the most relevant cases at least, and possible replication of these cases, primarily in East Africa that has become an area of interest lately for the potential development of this market based scheme in order to address the water issues of the region

Police Reform, Civil Society and Everyday Legitimacy: A Lesson from Northern Ireland

In post-conflict zones, there is a need to better understand the role of civil society in building the legitimacy of reformed police institutions. Northern Ireland provides an instructive case in this regard, as community involvement and civilian oversight of policing structures were prominent in the reform process. While much has been achieved since the 1999 Independent Commission on Policing, the question of police legitimation is still largely unresolved. In order for police reform to be fully realized, and to ensure that everyday legitimacy is established, more attention must be paid to building relationships between the police and local communities

METEOROLOGICAL FEATURES OF EXTREME PRECIPITATION IN THE NORTHERN ADRIATIC

An investigation of extreme precipitation cases in the northern Adriatic area is discussed in this paper. The criterion chosen for an extreme event recognition is a measured daily precipitation amount exceeding 100 mm day-1. In the 19912000 period, 18 extreme precipitation events were observed at six meteorological stations in the northern Adriatic and its hinterland. The analysis shows that heavy precipitation occurs most frequently during the autumn season, although it can develop during the other seasons as well. The large-scale examination performed indicates that heavy precipitation events in the northern Adriatic typically occur under the influence of a deep upper-level trough over western Europe, associated with a low south of the Alps, as shown by the calculated mean charts. This kind of synoptic structure generates a southerly warm and moist low-level flow over the Adriatic Sea, favouring precipitation formation which, in case of larger-scale conditional and potential instability, can lead to intense precipitation events. Two cases of particular interest were chosen for the mesoscale analysis. In the first case, on 25 December 2000, intense precipitation was both stratiform and convective, while in the second case, on 16/17 September 2000, it was mainly convective. The case studies show that the specific northern Adriatic orography with steep coastal mountain ridges played a major role both in generating prefrontal orogenic precipitation and in intensifying frontal precipitation. In such an unstably stratified environment, the lifting of moist air over the barrier was accompanied by deep convection development in some places

Different therapeutic modalities in a patient with multiple spontaneously developed keloids: a case report

Keloids are benign tumors that usually develop as an excessive healing response to injury. They remain a challenging therapeutic problem to this day. Numerous treatment approaches are available, yet therapeutic results are often not satisfactory. A female patient with multiple spontaneously developed keloids on her trunk is presented. In this patient, four different therapeutic options were employed at different sites, with variable responses. The first option included cryotherapy, with poor effect. Slight flattening was observed after intralesional corticosteroid therapy. Treatment with excision followed by radiotherapy resulted in recurrence after 3 months. The best effect was noticed when excision and injection of corticosteroids into surgical margins were followed by radiotherapy. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first report of three-modal therapy in the management of keloids, which resulted in no recurrences over a 3-year follow-up

Network based scoring models to improve credit risk management in peer to peer lending platforms

Financial intermediation has changed extensively over the course of the last two decades. One of the most significant change has been the emergence of FinTech. In the context of credit services, fintech peer to peer lenders have introduced many opportunities, among which improved speed, better customer experience, and reduced costs. However, peer-to-peer lending platforms lead to higher risks, among which higher credit risk: not owned by the lenders, and systemic risks: due to the high interconnectedness among borrowers generated by the platform. This calls for new and more accurate credit risk models to protect consumers and preserve financial stability. In this paper we propose to enhance credit risk accuracy of peer-to-peer platforms by leveraging topological information embedded into similarity networks, derived from borrowers' financial information. Topological coefficients describing borrowers' importance and community structures are employed as additional explanatory variables, leading to an improved predictive performance of credit scoring models