Predictive resource planning: coupling construction needs with demolition waste forecasts

Current systems of construction and demolition waste (CDW) recycling function insufficiently to meet the European ambitions of resource efficiency (Dahlbo et al., 2015). Knowledge about when, where and what will become available from CDW could stimulate the development of new recycling and production processes based on secondary materials, thereby reducing environmental and societal impact related to primary materials. Various methods exist to quantify CDW streams (see Wu et al., 2014), but the application of CDW forecasting methods is not yet common practice in waste and resource management. Lifetime Analysis (LA) seems to be a useful approach, comprising a practical bottom-up analysis of building materials and their expected replacements. Especially for countries with a high expected need for future construction activities and high material demand, LA is a potentially useful though scarcely tested method to forecast secondary material supply. Examples of these countries can be the rapidly emerging and developing countries, but can also be densely built and developed countries like The Netherlands, where current construction and demolition rates reflect a replacement of existing dwellings in cycles of 200 years, while buildings are designed and expected to function for only about 50 years (Mulder et al., 2015). Our study aimed to provide insight in the benefits and drawbacks of LA in resource planning, addressing three main questions: (1) How can future CDW streams be modelled realistically? (2) Can this model deliver useful insights into the supply of (secondary) materials? (3) Can the forecasted supply of materials be coupled with the expected demand for (secondary) construction materials? The combination of CDW forecasting and resource management was evaluated by means of a regional case study in the architecturally diverse and strategically important Metropole Region of Amsterdam (MRA). In the case study, the material flows of the main components (e.g. foundation, walls, windows) of the most common dwelling type (the terrace house) were inventoried, taking into account several architectural styles. The expected replacement times of these materials were modelled over a period of 50 years, based on economic trends and technical characteristics. This resulted in a forecast of diverse waste streams becoming available at different moments in the next decades. Results showed a distinction between bulk streams (amongst others: calcium silicate bricks) and smaller streams (amongst others: glass), and the temporal variations in expected supply of these materials. Combined with construction forecasts, several demolition scenarios were developed which explored the potential match between supply and demand. For example, the largest waste stream from CDW was stony material which is currently used as foundation materials in infrastructure, but this market is expected to be saturated in the coming decades and therefore other applications for this waste material have to be explored. The kind of modelling as applied in this study can be translated to other urban cases, but the results of this study should be considered with care with respect to the scope of materials included, the exact years of demolition and the location dependent characteristics. The list of analysed materials in this study was limited due to time constraints, though sufficient materials are inventoried to illustrate the potential of this type of modelling. The exact year of demolition as used in the scenarios is a variable parameter which can be altered to find matches between supply and demand. It is recommended to expand the study area to other regions and countries, which enable tailored policy and business development and validation of results. References: Dahlbo, H., Bachér, J., Lähtinen, K., Jouttijärvi, T., Suoheimo, P., Mattila, T., Sironen, S., Myllymaa, T., & Saramäki, K. (2015). Construction and demolition waste management - a holistic evaluation of environmental performance. Journal of Cleaner Production 107, pp333-341. Wu, S. Yu, A.T.W., Shen, L., & Liu, G. (2014). Quantifying construction and demolition waste: An analytical review. Waste Management 34 (9), pp1683–1692. Mulder, G., Koops, O., Kamphuis, V., Willems, M. Vos-Effting, S. de, Donkervoort, R., & Dijkmans, T. (2015). Vervangende Nieuwbouw. TNO Report R10515. TNO: Delft

Handelen in behandeling : een taalkundig-stilistisch onderzoek naar correlaties tussen taalgebruik en welzijn

The aim of this article is to show what a linguistic-stylistic approach can offer for the study of correlations between language use and well-being, in which quantitative and qualitative analysis go hand in hand. As a case study, we investigate whether there are differences in the language used by recovered and non-recovered adolescents who followed the online FitNet treatment for chronic fatique syndrome (CFS). More specifically, we analyzed whether there are differences between both groups in their use of five linguistic means that hide agency. Our results indicate that this is the case indeed: non-recovered patients used these linguistic means more often than recovered patients. In addition, both patient groups show a different development during the therapy: while non-recovered patients increased their use of these stylistic phenomena during the treatment, recovered patients decreased their use of these same phenomena. As such, our study shows that there is indeed a correlation between the use of certain formulations in the language used by patients with CFS and (a change in) their well-being. It is argued that the linguistic means that we investigated, could not have been analysed with a purely computational approach, and that a linguistic-stylistic approach is thus of added value for studying correlations between language use and recovery

Multispecies fish tracking across newly created shallow and deep habitats in a forward-restored lake

Background: Freshwater fish communities typically thrive in heterogenous ecosystems that offer various abiotic conditions. However, human impact increasingly leads to loss of this natural heterogeneity and its associated rich fish communities. To reverse this trend, we need guidelines on how to effectively restore or recreate habitats for multiple fish species. Lake Markermeer in the Netherlands is a human-created 70,000-ha lake with a uniform 4 m-water depth, steep shorelines, high wind-induced turbidity, and a declining fish community. In 2016, a forward-looking restoration project newly created a 1000-ha five-island archipelago in this degrading lake, which offered new sheltered shallow waters and deep sand excavations to the fish community. Methods: In 2020, we assessed how omnivorous and piscivorous fish species used these new habitats by tracking 78 adult fish of five key species across local and lake-scales. We monitored spring arrival of adult fish and assessed local macro-invertebrate and young-of-the-year fish densities. Results: Adult omnivorous Cyprinidae and piscivorous Percidae arrived at the archipelago in early spring, corresponding with expected spawning movements. During the productive summer season, 12 species of young-of-the-year fish appeared along the sheltered shorelines, with particularly high densities of common roach (Rutilus rutilus) and European perch (Perca fluviatilis). This suggests the sheltered, shallow, vegetated waters formed new suitable spawning and recruitment habitat for the fish community. Despite highest food densities for adult fish in the shallowest habitats (&lt; 2-m), adult fish preferred minimally 2-m deep water. After spawning most Cyprinidae left the archipelago and moved long distances through the lake system, while most Percidae remained resident. This may be related to (1) high densities of young-of-the-year fish as food for piscivores, (2) medium food densities for omnivores compared to elsewhere in the lake-system, or (3) the attractiveness of 30-m deep sand excavations that were newly created and frequently used by one-third of all tracked fish. Conclusions: New littoral zones and a deep sand excavation constructed in a uniform shallow lake that lacked these habitat types attracted omnivorous and piscivorous fish species within four years. Both feeding guilds used the littoral zones for reproduction and nursery, and notably piscivorous fish became residents year-round.</p

Increased 2'-fl production by goats

Disclosed is a method of producing goat milk having naturally present 2'-fucosyllactose (2'-FL). The method comprises determining whether a goat is producing 2'-FL, selecting a plurality of goats that produce 2'-FL; and milking the selected goats. Also disclosed is determining whether the goat producing 2'- FL possesses at least one copy of a favourable allele at a SNP and/or has a deletion in the region of the FUT2 gene

Short-term forecasting of off-street parking occupancy

Information and communication technologies have opened the way to guide recent developments in the field of parking. In this paper these technologies are applied to model a decision support system that gives insight into 6-months ahead parking occupancy forecasts for 57 off-street parking locations in Amsterdam. An effect analysis was conducted into the influence of weather-, event-, parking tariff-, and public transport attributes on parking occupancy. The most influential factors on the parking occupancy were the scheduling of artistic and sports events, the addition of a public transport line, and the weather variables thunderstorm, average wind speed, temperature, precipitation, and sunshine duration. Parking tariffs did not significantly contribute to model performance, which could have been because of the lack of data and time variability in the parking tariffs of the examined parking locations. The forecasting algorithms compared were the seasonal naive model as a benchmark approach, the Box–Jenkins seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with and without exogenous regressors (SARIMAX and SARIMA, respectively), exponential smoothing models, and the long short-term memory neural network. The SARIMAX model outperformed the other algorithms for the 6-months ahead forecasts according to the lowest root mean square error (RMSE). By including the event factor, the model improved by 24% based on the RMSE. Weather variables improved the predictive performance by 8%. Future studies could focus on the addition of more event variables, extension into an online model, and the impact of spatial–temporal features on parking occupancy

Short-term forecasting of off-street parking occupancy

Information and communication technologies have opened the way to guide recent developments in the field of parking. In this paper these technologies are applied to model a decision support system that gives insight into 6-months ahead parking occupancy forecasts for 57 off-street parking locations in Amsterdam. An effect analysis was conducted into the influence of weather-, event-, parking tariff-, and public transport attributes on parking occupancy. The most influential factors on the parking occupancy were the scheduling of artistic and sports events, the addition of a public transport line, and the weather variables thunderstorm, average wind speed, temperature, precipitation, and sunshine duration. Parking tariffs did not significantly contribute to model performance, which could have been because of the lack of data and time variability in the parking tariffs of the examined parking locations. The forecasting algorithms compared were the seasonal naive model as a benchmark approach, the Box–Jenkins seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with and without exogenous regressors (SARIMAX and SARIMA, respectively), exponential smoothing models, and the long short-term memory neural network. The SARIMAX model outperformed the other algorithms for the 6-months ahead forecasts according to the lowest root mean square error (RMSE). By including the event factor, the model improved by 24% based on the RMSE. Weather variables improved the predictive performance by 8%. Future studies could focus on the addition of more event variables, extension into an online model, and the impact of spatial–temporal features on parking occupancy

Seed dispersal by waterbirds: a mechanistic understanding by simulating avian digestion

Waterbirds disperse plant species via ingestion and egestion of seeds (endozoochory). However, our understanding about the regulating effects of seed traits, underlying mechanisms and possible (co)evolutionary processes is limited by our traditional reliance on data from feeding experiments with living waterbirds. Here, we overcome these limitations by developing and applying a new bioassay that realistically simulates digestive processes for Anseriformes waterbirds. We test three hypotheses: 1) seed survival and germination are most affected by mechanical digestion in the waterbird gizzard; 2) seed size, hardness, imbibition and shape regulate seed survival; and 3) plants growing in aquatic habitats benefit most from endozoochory by waterbirds. Experiments with 28 200 seeds of 48 plant species demonstrated species-specific seed survival that was entirely determined by digestion in the avian gizzard. Intestinal digestion did not affect seed survival but affected seed establishment (germinability and germination time) for 21% of the species. Large, hard seeds survived the simulations the best, in contrast to generally higher seed survival for smaller seeds during in vivo experiments. This mechanistically explains that small seeds escape digestive processes rather than being inherently more resistant (the ‘escape mechanism'), while large seeds are retained until fully digested or regurgitated (the ‘resistance and regurgitation mechanism'). Plants growing in wetter habitats had similar seed survival, but digestive processes stimulated their germinability and accelerated their germination more than for terrestrial plants. This indicates a relative advantage of endozoochory for plant species growing in wet habitats, possibly reflecting a co-evolutionary response related to dormancy breaking by gut passage. Simulating seed gut passage using a bioassay allowed establishing mechanisms and identifying relevant seed traits involved in seed dispersal by waterbirds. This information enhances our understanding of how animal species shape plant species distributions, which is extremely relevant now that current anthropogenic pressures already severely impact plant dispersal capacities

High hepatocyte growth factor expression in primary tumor predicts better overall survival in male breast cancer

Background Breast cancer is rare in men, but management is focused on tumor characteristics commonly found in female breast cancer. The tumor microenvironment of male breast cancer is less well understood, and insight may improve male breast cancer management. The hepatocyte growth factor (HGF)/c-MET axis and the stromal cell-derived factor-1 (CXCL12)/C-X-C chemokine receptor type 4 (CXCR4) axis are prognostic in women with breast cancer. We aimed to investigate these factors in male breast cancer and correlate them with patient survival. Methods From 841 Dutch males with breast cancer who were enrolled in the EORTC 10085/TBCRC/BIG/NABCG International Male Breast Cancer Program (NCT01101425) and diagnosed between 1990 and 2010, archival primary tumor samples were collected. Tissue microarrays were constructed with 3 cores per sample and used for immunohistochemical analysis of HGF, c-MET, CXCL12, and CXCR4. Overall survival (OS) of the patients without metastases (M0) was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier method. The value of the markers regarding OS was determined using univariable and multivariable Cox regression analyses, providing hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs). Results Of 720 out of 841 patients, sufficient tissue was available for analysis; 487 out of 720 patients had M0 disease. Patients with high HGF expression and high CXCL12 expression had a superior OS (low vs high expression of both markers, 7.5 vs 13.0 years, hazard ratio [HR] 0.64, 95% CI 0.49-0.84, P = 0.001 [HGF]; 9.1 vs 15.3 years, HR 0.63, 95% CI 0.45-0.87, P = 0.005 [CXCL12]). Multivariate analysis identified HGF as an independent predictor for OS (HR 0.64, 95% CI 0.47-0.88, P = 0.001). Conclusions HGF and CXCL12 tumor expression appear to identify male breast cancer patients with a relatively good prognosis. Possibly, this could support male breast cancer-specific management strategies in the future