A life cycle based green building product labelling scheme

Buildings account for 40 per cent of the overall environmental burden in industrialised countries. Acknowledging that thousands of building materials are available and many might have adverse impact to the environment, careful selection of green building products could help enhance the environmental performance of construction facilities. To facilitate decision-makers selecting green building materials, a reliable and transparent mechanism is needed and a green building product labelling scheme would be the way forward. While there are various green or eco labelling schemes around the world, they are not specifically designed for the construction market. With a desire to promote a greater adoption of green building products in construction projects, the Hong Kong Green Building Council has commissioned The University of Hong Kong to develop a life cycle based green building product labelling scheme. This paper presents the key features of the green building product labelling scheme.postprin

Nurses Leading the Transformation of Patient Care Through Telehealth.

The essential role of nurses in leading, developing and improving Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) telehealth services and programs was a key reason the organization was selected to receive the American Nurses Credentialing Center 2013 Magnet Prize®. This manuscript details what telehealth is and the innovations within LVHN telehealth; it also discusses essential ingredients to design, implement and evaluate telehealth services

Practices and guidelines for temporary transverse HMA tapers.

During hot mix asphalt (HMA) construction and rehabilitation, partially completed pavements are often opened totraffic between construction periods. This results in transverse dropoffs at the transition between pavements ofdifferent elevations. Caltrans follows the common practice of constructing transverse tapers (or wedges) of hot mixasphalt between the different pavement levels

Improving and Expanding the Queue Warning System

This Technical Summary pertains to Report 2023-05, \u201cEvaluation and Refinement of Minnesota Queue Warning Systems,\u201d published March 2023. More information is available at mdl.mndot.gov.In previous research, investigators developed and deployed two warning systems, including MN-QWARN, which was installed on a segment of Interstate 94 (I-94) with a historically high crash rate. This system targeted shockwaves or initial stages of congestion based on the understanding that not all congestion events create high risks for crashes. Certain traffic conditions can be unsafe even if they don\u2019t result in queueing. A brief evaluation of MN-QWARN, which has been operating since 2016, suggested that the warning system reduced crashes by 22%. Seeing the opportunity to leverage the historical traffic data on that highway segment, MnDOT was interested in learning more about the performance of MN-QWARN and the transferability of the queue warning system

Remote-Controlled Vessel Provides Safe and Accurate Inspection for Bridge Scour [Summary]

2016-0430MDOT routinely inspects bridges for scour around abutments and piers. These inspections are typically conducted from a boat during high-flow events, with inspectors probing the channel bottom or using sonar techniques to determine the extent of the scour. This can be very dangerous for bridge inspectors. As an alternative, an unmanned surface vessel (USV) equipped with sonar allows inspectors to capture these measurements and images from the shore. MDOT deployed USV units in the field to measure bridge scour and inspect bridges and culverts where access is limited. Using this tool is safer, less labor-intensive and, in some cases, less costly than techniques and equipment that require hands-on operation

Contact structures on M × S2 {Mathematical expression}

We show that if a manifold {Mathematical expression} admits a contact structure, then so does {Mathematical expression}. Our proof relies on surgery theory, a theorem of Eliashberg on contact surgery and a theorem of Bourgeois showing that if {Mathematical expression} admits a contact structure then so does {Mathematical expression}. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg