Incentives to contribute to flood adaptation in cities : Stakeholder analyses in Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands

Increasingly, urban stakeholders are becoming more engaged in contributing to reducing the intensified flooding risks due to climate change in Belgium, the UK and the Netherlands. The aim of this study is to motivate stakeholder engagement for urban flood management. A template is provided including a total of four steps defining stakeholder positions, task roles and barriers, and showing how to deal with the barriers by suggesting communication levels, strategies and approaches. Overall, green solutions to drainage are thought to be favourable to quality of life, recreation, playground, air quality, health, heat stress, and depending on levels of inclusiveness, green can also contribute to social cohesion

Triple helix networks matching knowledge demand and supply in seven Dutch horticulture Greenport regions

This paper investigates the triple helix (industry, knowledge workers and governments) cooperation on knowledge co-production and valorisation for innovation, which took place in seven horticultural regions in the Netherlands. It thus provides more empirical insight into the functioning of this form of cooperation. Based on a secondary multiple case study analysis, this paper sets out to ascertain what enabled triple helix cooperation in the seven regions with respect to the organisation, the formulation and support for goals and action on knowledge co-production and valorisation. The results indicate that in order to stimulate innovation through triple helix cooperation, the different partners fi rst need to build a proper working relationship and a common language. In order to accomplish this, primary aims for innovation should not be formulated too ambitiously (i.e. too far beyond the entrepreneurs’ daily practice, in particular SMEs). Knowledge workers and policy makers often want to stimulate knowledge co-production and valorisation more radically and quickly. Hence, they have to temper their ambitions. Procedures regarding the cooperation should be rather simple and fl exible. Once a steady working relationship and a common language are developed, then the triple helix collaboration can focus on taking the innovation ambition to a higher level in order to realise more valuable change. At first, entrepreneurs have to experience how they can profit from the cooperation and learn to incorporate knowledge co-production and valorisation step-by-step in their business strategy, including fi nancial investments

Inflammation and premature aging in advanced chronic kidney disease

Systemic inflammation in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) is an established risk factor for mortality and a catalyst for other complications which are related to a premature aging phenotype, including muscle wasting, vascular calcification and other forms of premature vascular disease, depression, osteoporosis and frailty. Uremic inflammation is also mechanistically related to mechanisms involved in the aging process, such as telomere shortening, mitochondrial dysfunction, and altered nutrient sensing, which can have direct effect on cellular and tissue function. In addition to uremia-specific causes such as abnormalities in the phosphate- Klotho axis, there are remarkable similarities between the pathophysiology of uremic inflammation and so-called "inflammaging" in the general population. Potentially relevant, but still somewhat unexplored in this respect are abnormal or misplaced protein structures as well as abnormalities in tissue homeostasis, which evoke danger signals through damage associated molecular patters (DAMPS) as well as the senescence associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Systemic inflammation, in combination with the loss of kidney function, can impair the resilience of the body to external and internal stressors by reduced functional and structural tissue reserve, and by impairing normal organ crosstalk, thus providing an explanation for the greatly increased risk of homeostatic breakdown in this population. In this review, the relation between uremic inflammation and a premature aging phenotype, as well as potential causes and consequences are discussed

Transition support system approach for urban food security in the future : The case of Ghana

The population of the world is becoming increasingly urbanised due to a combination of natural population growth and rural–urban migration. This will pose major challenges to feed the future population and meet the Sustainable Development Goals. Meeting these complex challenges requires an integrated approach. The transition support system (TSS) approach integrates decision support tools and stakeholder analyses for these complex issues. This study has focused attention on the application of decision support tools of the TSS approach that visualises the urgency of future food security as a proof of concept. To this end, the future food security of the city of Accra, the capital of Ghana, has been taken as a case study. The use of Global-Detector and its maps illustrated a quick way to downscale data and projections from MAGNET (Modular Applied GeNeral Equilibrium Tool) and perform spatial analyses without the burden of acquiring additional data. Downscaling of macroeconomic results of future projections provides insights into future urban food security. Giventhese insights, stakeholders might urge policy or interventions. The results of the exercise are largely determined by the availability of data and maps; in particular, the more detailed information is available, the more accurate the results of our exercise will be

The effect of MySleeve on fluid restriction adherence in hemodialysis patients

In hemodialysis patients, non-adherence to fluid restriction is associated with high interdialytic weight gain (IDWG) and adverse outcomes. Monitoring drinkingbehaviour and direct feedback to the patient can lead to better adherence. We developed the MySleeve, a device that can be wrapped around a drinking glass to monitor fluid intake throughout the day. The MySleeve will also provide a subtle vibration on the glass when the amount drunk exceeds target. The information about drinking behaviour can be found in the accompanying application on a mobile phone. In this study, we investigate the effect of direct feedback and information to the patient on fluid restriction adherence, measured by the IDW

Temporal Recurrent Networks for Online Action Detection

Most work on temporal action detection is formulated as an offline problem, in which the start and end times of actions are determined after the entire video is fully observed. However, important real-time applications including surveillance and driver assistance systems require identifying actions as soon as each video frame arrives, based only on current and historical observations. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, Temporal Recurrent Network (TRN), to model greater temporal context of a video frame by simultaneously performing online action detection and anticipation of the immediate future. At each moment in time, our approach makes use of both accumulated historical evidence and predicted future information to better recognize the action that is currently occurring, and integrates both of these into a unified end-to-end architecture. We evaluate our approach on two popular online action detection datasets, HDD and TVSeries, as well as another widely used dataset, THUMOS'14. The results show that TRN significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art

One year effectiveness of an app-based treatment for urinary incontinence in comparison to care as usual in Dutch general practice:A pragmatic randomised controlled trial over 12 months

OBJECTIVE: To assess the long-term effectiveness of app-based treatment for female stress, urgency, or mixed urinary incontinence (UI) compared to care-as-usual in primary care. DESIGN: A pragmatic, randomised controlled, superiority trial. SETTING: Primary care in the Netherlands from 2015 to 2018, follow-up at 12 months. POPULATION: Women with ≥2 UI-episodes per week, access to mobile apps, wanting treatment. 262 women randomised equally to app or care-as-usual; 89 (68%) and 83 (63%) attended one year follow-up. INTERVENTIONS: The standalone app included conservative management for UI with motivation aids (e.g., reminders). Care-as-usual delivered according to the Dutch GP guideline for UI. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Effectiveness assessed by the change in symptom severity score (ICIQ-UI-SF) and the change in quality of life (ICIQ-LUTS-QoL) with linear regression on an intention-to-treat basis. RESULTS: Clinically relevant improvement of UI severity for both app (-2.17 ± 2.81) and care-as-usual (-3.43 ± 3.6), with a non-significant mean difference of 0.903 (-0.66 to 1.871). CONCLUSION: App-based treatment is a viable alternative to care-as-usual for UI in primary care in terms of effectiveness after one year