MASS TIMBER CONSTRUCTION IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND—STATUS, AND ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON ADOPTION

Mass timber construction in Australia and New Zealand uses three main materials—laminated veneer lumber, glue laminated timber and cross-laminated timber (CLT). This article focuses on the use of mass timber in nonresidential construction—the use in single-family homes and apartments is not considered. In Australia and New Zealand, mass timber building technology has moved from being technologically possible to being a feasible alternative to reinforced concrete and steel construction. It has not taken over a large market share in either market and, as such, has not been a disruptive technology. The major changes in this market in the past 5-10 yr in Australia and New Zealand have been the development of new industrial capacity in CLT and the acquisition of computer controlled machining equipment to facilitate prefabrication of wooden building components. The development of new codes and standards and design guides is underway. The drivers of future growth in market share are expected to include more clients putting a higher weight on the various environmental benefits of building in wood, reduction in the real and perceived professional risk for builders and architects specifying mass timber construction, and fuller participation in the supply chain for timber buildings (from design to construction) by timber building specialists. Government policies to encourage the use of timber may also be helpful. Engineers and architects will continue to learn—through experience—how to optimize building construction methods to take advantage of the specific features and qualities of timber as a construction method. 

Risk factors for transport-related problem behaviors in horses: A New Zealand survey

Transport-related problem behaviors (TRPBs) are common in horses and can cause injury to both the horses and their handlers. This study aimed to identify possible risk factors for TRPBs to inform approaches to mitigate TRPBs incidence and enhance horse welfare. An online cross-sectional survey was conducted to explore the prevalence of TRPBs and their association with human-, training-and transport management-related factors in New Zealand. The survey generated 1124 valid responses that were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and logistic regression analyses. Having at least one horse with TRPB was reported by 249/1124 (22.2%) respondents during the two previous years. Of these, 21/249 (8.4%) occurred during pre-loading, 78/249 (31.3%) during loading, 132/249 (53.0%) while travelling, and 18/249 (7.3%) during unloading. Our findings indicate that the use of negative reinforcement and positive punishment as training methods, using a whip or food for loading, and travelling in a straight load trailer/float while offering food were associated with a higher likelihood of TRPBs. Cross-sectional studies cannot determine causality and findings should be interpreted with caution, and evaluated in further experimental studies. The authors suggest that education on appropriate training methods for transport, and vehicle selection may mitigate the risk for TRPBs in horses

Constrained optimal control of monotone systems with applications to battery fast-charging

Enabling fast charging for lithium ion batteries is critical to accelerating the green energy transition. As such, there has been significant interest in tailored fast-charging protocols computed from the solutions of constrained optimal control problems. Here, we derive necessity conditions for a fast charging protocol based upon monotone control systems theory

Discourse(s) of growth and sustainability in national tourism policy documents

Using a corpus of seven European national tourism policy documents, this research examined the language used to resolve the apparently conflicting goals of economic growth and social and environmental sustainability. The detailed discourse analysis, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, found wide scale appropriation of the term ‘sustainable’, but no definitions or operationalisation. In fact, there was no acknowledgement that growth and sustainability were conflicting priorities, but ‘sustainable’ was used to give a hint of ecological sustainability, while actually meaning ‘sustained’ in phrases such as ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘sustainable development’. Thus ‘sustainable’ is appropriated to suggest continued growth, rather than reflecting the finite limits of ecological and societal sustainability. Economic goals were portrayed as instrumental to communities’ wellbeing, without evaluation, while environmental sustainability was depicted as instrumental to maintaining tourist demand. A variety of linguistic devices were used to normalise and promote economic growth including up/down metaphors and associating growth with good health and thriving and a lack of growth with poor health and looking for recovery. Countries’ competitive aspirations militate against cooperative action to reduce the environmental damage caused by international tourism. The findings illustrate how language supports neoliberal hegemony, while paying lip-service to sustainability

Boundedness, persistence and stability for classes of forced difference equations arising in population ecology

Boundedness, persistence and stability properties are considered for a class of nonlinear, possibly infinite-dimensional, forced difference equations which arise in a number of ecological and biological contexts. The inclusion of forcing incorporates the effects of control actions (such as harvesting or breeding programmes), disturbances induced by seasonal or environmental variation, or migration. We provide sufficient conditions under which the states of these models are bounded and persistent uniformly with respect to the forcing terms. Under mild assumptions, the models under consideration naturally admit two equilibria when unforced: the origin and a unique non-zero equilibrium. We present sufficient conditions for the non-zero equilibrium to be stable in a sense which is strongly inspired by the input-to-state stability concept well-known in mathematical control theory. In particular, our stability concept incorporates the impact of potentially persistent forcing. Since the underlying state-space may be infinite dimensional, our framework enables treatment of so-called integral projection models (IPMs). The theory is applied to a number of examples from population dynamics

Low-swelling proton-conducting copoly(aryl ether nitrile)s containing naphthalene structure with sulfonic acid groups meta to the ether linkage

NRC publication: Ye

A role for human leucocyte antigens in the susceptibility to SARS‐Cov‐2 infection observed in transplant patients

We analysed data from 80 patients who tested positive for SARS‐CoV‐2 RNA who had previously been HLA typed to support transplantation. Data were combined from two adjacent centres in Manchester and Leeds to achieve a sufficient number for early analysis. HLA frequencies observed were compared against two control populations: first, against published frequencies in a UK deceased donor population (n = 10,000) representing the target population of the virus, and second, using a cohort of individuals from the combined transplant waiting lists of both centres (n = 308), representing a comparator group of unaffected individuals of the same demographic. We report a significant HLA association with HLA‐ DQB1*06 (53% vs. 36%; p < .012; OR 1.96; 95% CI 1.94–3.22) and infection. A bias towards an increased representation of HLA‐A*26, HLA‐DRB1*15, HLA‐DRB1*10 and DRB1*11 was also noted but these were either only significant using the UK donor controls, or did not remain significant after correction for multiple tests. Likewise, HLA‐A*02, HLA‐B*44 and HLA‐C*05 may exert a protective effect, but these associations did not remain significant after correction for multiple tests. This is relevant information for the clinical management of patients in the setting of the current SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic and potentially in risk‐assessing staff interactions with infected patients

Radiation-grafted membranes based on polyethylene for direct methanol fuel cells

Styrenewas grafted onto ultrahigh molecularweight polyethylene powder (UHMWPE) by gammairradiation using a 60Co source. Compression moulded films of selected pre-irradiated styrene-grafted ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE-g-PS) were post-sulfonated to the sulfonic acid derivative (UHMWPE-g-PSSA) for use as proton exchange membranes (PEMs). The sulfonation was confirmed by Xray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The melting and flow properties of UHMWPE and UHMWPE-g-PS are conducive to forming homogeneous pore-free membranes. Both the ion conductivity and methanol permeability coefficient increased with degree of grafting, but the grafted membranes showed comparable or higher ion conductivity and lower methanol permeability than Nafion\uae 117 membrane. One UHMWPE-g-PS membrane was fabricated into a membrane\u2013electrode assembly (MEA) and tested as a single cell direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). Low membrane cost and acceptable fuel cell performance indicate that UHMWPE-g-PSSA membranes could offer an alternative approach to perfluorosulfonic acidtype membranes for DMFC.Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye

Surface-modified polysulfone membranes: aqueous phase oxidation via persulfate radical

Peer reviewed: YesNRC publication: Ye