Kenaf Fibre-RHA Biocomposite: A ‘Green’ Substitute to Asbestos in Sustainable Eco-Construction

With the damaging impact of asbestos to health and the environment, search for substitutes with equal or better properties have led to trials involving select bio materials. This work presents the result of combinatory use of bast and core fibers from local cultivar of Kenaf plant as reinforcement and Rice Husk Ash (RHA) as asbestos substitute in the production of insulation material. The fibers were used at varied blend ratios with rice husk ash as partial substitute Portland cement binder material. The strength of material test results showed the products to have the same (tensile strength greater than 262.31 MPa, Young’s modulus of not less than 22.94 and failure strain (%) of 2.62 and above) for samples of same dimensions as conventional sheets. Friedman statistical analysis showed that an increase or addition of the Kenaf core enhances the compact nature and consequent strength of the material. This substitution with Kenaf fiber and RHA embraces four out of the five key areas of sustainable human and environmental health target: sustainable site, energy efficiency, material selection and indoor environmental quality. Kenaf plant serves as a good carbon sink source with consequent environmental detoxification

Global unmet needs in cardiac surgery

More than 6 billion people live outside industrialized countries and have insufficient access to cardiac surgery. Given the recently confirmed high prevailing mortality for rheumatic heart disease in many of these countries together with increasing numbers of patients needing interventions for lifestyle diseases due to an accelerating epidemiological transition, a significant need for cardiac surgery could be assumed. Yet, need estimates were largely based on extrapolated screening studies while true service levels remained unknown. A multi-author effort representing 16 high-, middle-, and low-income countries was undertaken to narrow the need assessment for cardiac surgery including rheumatic and lifestyle cardiac diseases as well as congenital heart disease on the basis of existing data deduction. Actual levels of cardiac surgery were determined in each of these countries on the basis of questionnaires, national databases, or annual reports of national societies. Need estimates range from 200 operations per million in low-income countries that are nonendemic for rheumatic heart disease to >1,000 operations per million in high-income countries representing the end of the epidemiological transition. Actually provided levels of cardiac surgery range from 0.5 per million in the assessed low- and lower-middle income countries (average 107 ± 113 per million; representing a population of 1.6 billion) to 500 in the upper-middle-income countries (average 270 ± 163 per million representing a population of 1.9 billion). By combining need estimates with the assessment of de facto provided levels of cardiac surgery, it emerged that a significant degree of underdelivery of often lifesaving open heart surgery does not only prevail in low-income countries but is also disturbingly high in middle-income countries

Motorcycle injuries in a developing country and the vulnerability of riders, passengers, and pedestrians

At a Nigerian university hospital, none of the motorcyclists who presented over a 12 month period had been wearing a helmet, and of the eight patients who died, seven had head injuries. Of the five collision types described, the rate of motorcycle‐other vehicle collisions was highest at 40.6%, while the motorcycle‐pedestrian rate was 23.4%. Measures to prevent these collisions might reduce overall crashes by 64%; in addition, helmet law should be enforced

Modelling the Mont Terri HE-D experiment for the Thermal–Hydraulic–Mechanical response of a bedded argillaceous formation to heating

Coupled thermal–hydrological–mechanical (THM) processes in the near field of deep geological repositories can influence several safety features of the engineered and geological barriers. Among those features are: the possibility of damage in the host rock, the time for re-saturation of the bentonite, and the perturbations in the hydraulic regime in both the rock and engineered seals. Within the international cooperative code-validation project DECOVALEX-2015, eight research teams developed models to simulate an in situ heater experiment, called HE-D, in Opalinus Clay at the Mont Terri Underground Research Laboratory in Switzerland. The models were developed from the theory of poroelasticity in order to simulate the coupled THM processes that prevailed during the experiment and thereby to characterize the in situ THM properties of Opalinus Clay. The modelling results for the evolution of temperature, pore water pressure, and deformation at different points are consistent among the research teams and compare favourably with the experimental data in terms of trends and absolute values. The models were able to reproduce the main physical processes of the experiment. In particular, most teams simulated temperature and thermally induced pore water pressure well, including spatial variations caused by inherent anisotropy due to bedding