Life Cycle Assessment of bamboo (guadua angustifolia stems) as building material for structural applications

Bamboo products have been proven to be a good altemative to hardwoods in the production of building materials, thus reducing the risk of deforestation primarily in tropical areas. Furthermore, bamboo also benefits from a very fast growing capacity when cultivated under adequate conditions, the ability to grow in non-productive land (e.g. eroded slopes) and the capacity to resprout from its stump due to its resilient root structure. Furthennore, its extensive root network promotes carbon sequestration, facilitates protection against soil erosion and reduces water depletion. Besides, from a social and economic point of view, cultivation and comercial utilization of bamboo materials support local economies in rural areas of developing countries. Bamboo stems have excellent mechanical properties that allow its use as supporting structures replacing conventional construction materials such as hardwood, steel or precast concrete. The environmental benefits of usi ng this material need to be quantified. This paper investigates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy performance of bamboo stems (guadua angustifolia) produced in Colombia under semi industrial conditions and utilized in Spain. These sustainability indicators are obtained using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology considering the following stages: stem harvesting in sustainably managed plantations, transport to processing plant, preservation/drying, transport to harbor, transport from harbor to harbor (from Colombia to Spain), transport to warehouse and storage. The functional unit considered in this assessment is a 6 meter-long stem, and the scenarios anal yzed include steam diameters 6, lO and 12 cm (weighing 1O, 14 and 17 kg respectively, dry matter basis). The calculations have been performed using Simapro 8 software and applying LCI databases from Ecoinvent v3 and ELCD v3. The environmental impacts associated with the consumption of electricity throughout the production, harvesting, processing and transportation of the bamboo materials have been adapted to the electricity mix in Colombia

Developtment of a software tool for the analysis and verification of emergency operating procedures through the integrated simulation of plant and operators actions

Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) includes operator actions as elements in the set of the considered protection performances during accident sequences. Nevertheless, its impact throughout a sequence is not usually analyzed dynamically. In this sense, it is convenient to make a more detailed analysis about its importance in the dynamics of the sequences, allowing for sensitivity studies with respect to human reliability and response times. For this reason, new developments in simulation software must be able to incorporate operator actions in conventional thermalhydraulic simulations. In this paper, we present one of these new tools, the TRETA/TIZONA–COPMA III coupled codes, which can be used for evaluating the impact in the final plant state of the execution by operators of procedures and the evaluation of the available times for the manual actions of the operators. This software tool consists of a closed-loop plant/operator simulator: a thermalhydraulic code for simulating the plant transient (TRETA for PWR NPPs and TIZONA for BWR NPPs) and the procedures processor (COPMA III) to simulate the operator actions requested by the procedures, both coupled by a data communication system which allows the information exchange (SWBus). The first pilot cases have been performed in order to analyze sequences initiated by secondary side breaks leading to loss of heat sink sequences in a PWR plant. These tests have been carried out using the real plant EOPs for COPMA-III and a PWR plant model for TRETA code. The results of these simulations are presented in this paper

Effect of remote ischaemic conditioning on clinical outcomes in patients with acute myocardial infarction (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI): a single-blind randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Remote ischaemic conditioning with transient ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm has been shown to reduce myocardial infarct size in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) undergoing primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI). We investigated whether remote ischaemic conditioning could reduce the incidence of cardiac death and hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months. METHODS: We did an international investigator-initiated, prospective, single-blind, randomised controlled trial (CONDI-2/ERIC-PPCI) at 33 centres across the UK, Denmark, Spain, and Serbia. Patients (age >18 years) with suspected STEMI and who were eligible for PPCI were randomly allocated (1:1, stratified by centre with a permuted block method) to receive standard treatment (including a sham simulated remote ischaemic conditioning intervention at UK sites only) or remote ischaemic conditioning treatment (intermittent ischaemia and reperfusion applied to the arm through four cycles of 5-min inflation and 5-min deflation of an automated cuff device) before PPCI. Investigators responsible for data collection and outcome assessment were masked to treatment allocation. The primary combined endpoint was cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure at 12 months in the intention-to-treat population. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02342522) and is completed. FINDINGS: Between Nov 6, 2013, and March 31, 2018, 5401 patients were randomly allocated to either the control group (n=2701) or the remote ischaemic conditioning group (n=2700). After exclusion of patients upon hospital arrival or loss to follow-up, 2569 patients in the control group and 2546 in the intervention group were included in the intention-to-treat analysis. At 12 months post-PPCI, the Kaplan-Meier-estimated frequencies of cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure (the primary endpoint) were 220 (8·6%) patients in the control group and 239 (9·4%) in the remote ischaemic conditioning group (hazard ratio 1·10 [95% CI 0·91-1·32], p=0·32 for intervention versus control). No important unexpected adverse events or side effects of remote ischaemic conditioning were observed. INTERPRETATION: Remote ischaemic conditioning does not improve clinical outcomes (cardiac death or hospitalisation for heart failure) at 12 months in patients with STEMI undergoing PPCI. FUNDING: British Heart Foundation, University College London Hospitals/University College London Biomedical Research Centre, Danish Innovation Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, TrygFonden