Additive sustainability footprint: Rationale and pilot evaluation of a tool for assessing the sustainable use of PVC additives

© 2019 The Authors. Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Plastics Engineers. PVC compounds contain additives necessary for processing and stability, and to modify the plastic's properties. The Europe-wide VinylPlus® voluntary commitment includes a challenge to make progress toward sustainable use of additives. Additive Sustainability Footprint (ASF) was developed to assess sustainable use of additives across the whole societal life cycles of finished PVC articles, taking a risk-based approach rather than simplistic hazard assessment. ASF addresses impacts across six life cycle assessment (LCA) stages established by ISO Standard 14040, using the four System Conditions (sustainability principles) developed by The Natural Step (TNS) covering social as well as environmental factors. For each LCA stage/System Condition combination, seven generically similar questions cover negative impacts (many covered by existing tools and regulations) but also the additive's positive contributions to the sustainability of finished articles. Positive contributions include ethical sourcing, longevity of service life, low maintenance inputs, and recyclability. Answers to questions determine a score, which can be combined across the life cycle and with other additives. Testing on a generic EU PVC window profile supported ASF development and demonstrated applicability and potential benefits including use for sensitivity analysis of alternative additives from different geopolitical regions or from recycled as opposed to virgin sources. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 2019. © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Plastics Engineers

Avitourism opportunities as a contribution to conservation and rural livelihoods in the Hindu Kush Himalaya - a field perspective

The Hindu Kush Himalaya is a biodiversity hotspot subject to multiple anthropogenic stressors, including hydropower plants, pollution, deforestation and wildlife poaching, in addition to changing climate. Bird photography tourism, as a locally important element of avitourism, has the potential to integrate sustainable development and wildlife conservation. We conducted field surveys around the reaches of four Indian Himalayan rivers—the Kosi, western Ramganga, Khoh, and Song—outside of protected national parks (the Corbett and Rajaji tiger reserves) to ascertain the distribution of bird species along river corridors that could be sites of avitourism. Species richness along the surveyed reaches were: Kosi (79), western Ramganga (91), Khoh (52), and Song (79). This study contributes critical data to the existing baseline information on the avifaunal species of Uttarakhand. It further discusses the possibility of developing avitourism for knowledge generation on species distribution and innovative livelihood options for local communities in Uttarakhand, reinforcing local vested interest in bird conservation. The findings have generic applicability worldwide

Report of the three-day workshop on 'Regeneration of the Banas-Bisalpur Socio-ecological Complex'

Executive summaryThe ‘Regeneration of the Banas-Bisalpur Socio-ecological Complex’ workshop (JK Lakshmipat University, Jaipur, December 2017) brought together approximately 70 participants from government, NGOs, academia, village governance institutions and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programmes sharing an interest in reversal of the currently degrading cycle of linked ecological and socioeconomic degradation across the Banas River catchment in Rajasthan. The workshop was run in association with the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol, UK), JK Lakshmipat University (Jaipur, India), and WaterHarvest – India Liaison Office (Udaipur, India), and was kindly sponsored by Wetlands International – South Asia Office (Delhi, India).Like many catchments globally, the Banas has not been treated in modern times as a living resource. Rather, it has been subject to high levels of abstraction without proportional rebalancing resource renewal, putting the socio-ecological system into degrading cycle. Yet, for four-and-a-half thousand years of pre-industrial history, the people of Rajasthan had subsisted and thrived on scarce water by innovation and operation of a diversity of ‘water wise’ recharge, storage and efficient use solutions attuned to local geography and culture. A key challenge for reversal of the currently rapidly degrading cycle in the Banas catchment, with its associated vulnerabilities for all inherently interconnected urban and rural people co-dependent on its water, is to recognise the central role played by the primary resource of ecosystem processes.Workshop participants welcomed the opportunity to work together to explore problems, emerging needs and potential solutions, and to do so as part of an ongoing strategy of ‘action learning’ towards a vision of a regenerative socio-ecological system. Future progress entails working together to co-develop solutions that work with natural processes, hybridising traditional knowledge and modern techniques to achieve a regenerative socio-ecological cycle better connected across the catchment in a modern world of significant population growth, urbanisation and climate change. Cross-catchment connections include closer integration and equitable balance between needs and appropriate solutions that work for all people, with the current fracture of perspectives between urban and rural regions highlighted as a particular priority for action. Economic and regulatory reforms attuned to supporting environmental processes are essential, backed up by research in environmental and social systems, engineering, economics and governance mechanisms. Shared awareness and responsibility by all people across the catchment is necessary to achieve a more integrated approach to catchment sustainability, including reducing current fragmentation of institutions and knowledge. NGOs, village governance institutions and faith leaders have significant roles to play in integrating effort and knowledge, along with government, CSR and academic programmes.All technologies, both ecosystem-based and ‘hard’ engineering techniques, have roles to play, but the ramifications of their deployment need to be understood. An agreed foundational goal within the Banas vision is sustainable hybridisation of water management technologies –natural infrastructure, traditional management, ‘green’ technologies and ‘hard’ engineering – in ways that are beneficial to local people and catchment processes. This is vital to reverse current and cumulative cumulate pressures arising from proliferation of unlicenced tube wells and large dam-and-transfer schemes that are not today balanced with recharge, constituting primary drivers of catchment decline. Water efficiency in urban area, responsible for a high density of demand, is substantially underinvested today. Novel urban self-sufficiency, benefit sharing and investment mechanisms to regenerate the resource are required, overcoming former narrow exploitation-based approaches founded on limited knowledge and power asymmetries. Novel ideas include limiting water diversions from the Bisalpur to the city of Jaipur, quantitatively or on a time-limited basis, as a means to force greater awareness and self-reliance on local urban sources (such as investment in infiltration pits and local storage) and ‘green infrastructure’ solutions (rooftop water harvesting, greywater reuse, etc.) to redress power asymmetries and assumptions, and to promote urban self-sufficiency.Some knowledge gaps and incorrect assumptions need to be addressed. This includes in particular divergent opinions about the impact of small anicuts in upper sub-catchments, seen by some a stopping water reaching the Bisapur Dam but by others as sustaining local livelihoods whilst also regenerating groundwater systems that store and buffer flows downstream. There is also a need to better understand underground and surface flows of water in the catchment as a robust basis for more sustainable management, and to improve the protection of this vital natural capital to combat poverty and better support human needs.Novel livelihood practices could be innovated to make better beneficial use of water within the catchment, rather than depending on abstraction from the ecosystem to drive short-term consumptive economic uses. The economics of water include thinking in a cyclic way consistent with the water cycle, for example directing investment in upstream practices that recharge the catchment system rather than simply using it to increase the technical efficiency of extractive technologies that the current declines in water quantity and quality will render unsustainable. Reformed economic instruments are part of a wider transition to cyclic thinking and behaviour, also addressing equity issues, creating a regulatory environment across the catchment that works in synergy with its natural supportive and regenerative processes.Reaching for a regenerative vision necessarily includes innovating effective, nested governance systems. A ‘top down’ catchment-scale vision and enabling policy environment is necessary to inform and facilitate progress towards the catchment-wide vision, also helping enforce practices such as driving roof water harvesting, water efficiency and reuse, and other necessary efficiency measures in urban areas. However, practical delivery requires a high level of delegation to identify and deploy solutions closely tuned to specific geographical and cultural situations, that are best innovated and governed on a highly localised basis. Enabling, nested and co-creative governance arrangement are required. This includes far closer integration of the disparate CSR, NGO, local, faith leader and government programmes (MGNREGA, Smart Cities, Rajasthan’s MJSA programme, and many more departmental initiatives and associated budgets that are currently narrowly deployed). This can be implemented with far greater synergy and cross-departmental co-benefits leading towards the ultimate vision of a regenerative socio-ecological system.'Business as usual’ – today’s overemphasis on technically efficient extraction, overlooking ecosystem processes underpinning resource recharge and availability – is not a sustainable option, and can only perpetuate ecological depletion and associated human vulnerabilities. There is now no viable, equitable or sustainable alternative than acting upon what we now know about the systemic nature of catchments, and refocusing energies, investment and innovation on an ecosystem- and community-based regeneration programme for the Banas socio-ecological system. There is a pressing need to change paradigm from narrowly short-term exploitation, leading to the depletion of water and associated ecological and human wellbeing, towards more informed and strategic stewardship with efficient uses balanced with resource protection and regeneration.Workshop participants saw substantial value in bringing people together from a diversity of societal sectors associated with the catchment, welcoming future opportunities to share perspectives and make strides towards co-created sustainable solutions. Ecosystems and their processes were acknowledged as the fundamental resource underpinning continuing human security and opportunity, and need to be valued on that basis in all management and use decisions within a bold vision of a regenerative socio-ecological Banas system. Though the challenges of attaining it are daunting, confronting many assumed norms and vested interests, this vision can be focal for progressive innovation, evolution and integration of initiatives, to get as close as possible to a baseline of natural catchment functioning and sustainable human interactions with it.Above all, the tight interlinkage between all people co-dependent on the catchment system needs to be recognised within a collaborative approach to balance water use with recharge, regenerating the entire socio-ecological system. This is “a journey, not a destination” that all participants are happy to progress

Low-loss Materials for high Q-factor Bragg Reflector Resonators

A Bragg resonator uses dielectric plates within a metallic cavity to confine the energy within a central free space region. The importance of the permittivity is shown with a better Q-factor possible using higher permittivity materials of larger intrinsic dielectric losses. This is because the electric energy in the reflectors decreases proportionally to the square root of permittivity and the coupling to the metallic losses decrease linearly. In a sapphire resonator with a single reflector pair a Q-factor of 2.34x10^5 is obtained, which may be improved on by up to a factor of 2 using higher permittivity materials

Effective School Management

The main purpose of this book is to help teachers with senior management responsibilities, and the schools and colleges that they work in, to become more effective. It is not a book by academics for other academics, but by practitioners for practitioners. Practitioners of what? Ian Wilson is a practising head and the two original authors, Bertie Everard and Geoffrey Morris, have both been senior managers in industry, and we have spent much of our careers helping others, both in industry and education, to learn to become more effective managers, as well as improving the effectiveness of organizations – commercial, industrial, educational and church. So it is not only in the practice of management and the workings of organizations that we claim some expertise but also in the methods by which both can be improved

Key paediatric messages from Amsterdam

The Paediatric Assembly of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) maintained its high profile at the 2015 ERS International Congress in Amsterdam. There were symposia on preschool wheeze, respiratory sounds and cystic fibrosis; an educational skills workshop on paediatric respiratory resuscitation; a hot topic session on risk factors and early origins of respiratory diseases; a meet the expert session on paediatric lung function test reference values; and the annual paediatric grand round. In this report the Chairs of the Paediatric Assembly’s Groups highlight the key mess

Evaluation of the ecosystem services provided by the Kailadevi wildlife sanctuary, Rajasthan, India

Kailadevi Wildlife Sanctuary (KWLS), in Rajasthan (India), lost its Tiger (Panthera tigris) population in 2000, though since 2019 Tigers have over-spilled from the adjacent Ranthambhore National Park (RNP). Though protected, the forests of KWLS are depleted through exploitation by resident and migratory human communities. This study aims to reveal the many societal values generated within KWLS by assessing ecosystem service flows and values on a systemic basis, supported by substantial primary fieldwork. A VALUE+ approach used local interviews, primary fieldwork and literature to determine ecosystem service provision by KWLS, where possible with monetary representation. Conservative values estimated for 21 ecosystem services included: (1) benefit flows of INR 84.47 billion year-1; (2) natural capital stock of INR 367.3 billion; and (3) unquantified ecosystem services. Monetary values are purely illustrative representations largely based on surrogate markets, but nonetheless indicate the range and scale of mainly unappreciated societal benefits. Comparison of KWLS with RNP illustrates differences in service provision between lesser and highly protected ecosystems, including the potential to enhance services such as ecotourism and space for re-established Tiger and other wildlife populations, but also potential disbenefits for those currently extracting resources from KWLS who may become displaced or require compensation

Macrophages Are Required for Dendritic Cell Uptake of Respiratory Syncytial Virus from an Infected Epithelium

We have previously shown that the respiratory syncytial virus [RSV] can productively infect monocyte derived dendritic cells [MoDC] and remain dormant within the same cells for prolonged periods. It is therefore possible that infected dendritic cells act as a reservoir within the airways of individuals between annual epidemics. In the present study we explored the possibility that sub-epithelial DCs can be infected with RSV from differentiated bronchial epithelium and that in turn RSV from DCs can infect the epithelium. A dual co-culture model was established in which a differentiated primary airway epithelium on an Air Liquid Interface (ALI) was cultured on a transwell insert and MoDCs were subsequently added to the basolateral membrane of the insert. Further experiments were undertaken using a triple co-culture model in which in which macrophages were added to the apical surface of the differentiated epithelium. A modified RSV [rr-RSV] expressing a red fluorescent protein marker of replication was used to infect either the MoDCs or the differentiated epithelium and infection of the reciprocal cell type was assessed using confocal microscopy. Our data shows that primary epithelium became infected when rr-RSV infected MoDCs were introduced onto the basal surface of the transwell insert. MoDCs located beneath the epithelium did not become infected with virus from infected epithelial cells in the dual co-culture model. However when macrophages were present on the apical surface of the primary epithelium infection of the basal MoDCs occurred. Our data suggests that RSV infected dendritic cells readily transmit infection to epithelial cells even when they are located beneath the basal layer. However macrophages appear to be necessary for the transmission of infection from epithelial cells to basal dendritic cells

Older adults experiences of rehabilitation in acute health care

Rehabilitation is a key component of nursing and allied healthcare professionals’ roles in most health and social care settings. This paper reports on stage 2 of an action research project to ascertain older adult's experience of rehabilitation. Twenty postdischarge interviews were conducted and the interview transcripts were analysed using thematic content analysis. All older adults discharged from an acute older acute rehabilitation ward to their own homes in the community were eligible to participate. The only exclusion criterion was older adults who were thought to be unable to give consent to participate by the nurse in charge and the researcher. Whilst 92 older adults were eligible to participate in this research study, only 20 were interviewed. The findings from this study suggest that older adults valued communication with health professionals but were aware of their time constraints that hindered communication. This study suggests that both nurses and allied health professionals are not actively providing rehabilitative services to promote health and well-being, which contradicts the focus of active ageing. Furthermore, there was evidence of unmet needs on discharge, and older adults unable to recall the professions that were involved in their interventions and the rationale for therapy input. It is suggested that further research is needed to explore the effectiveness of allied health rehabilitation in the acute setting. This study highlights the need for further research into older adults’ perceptions of the rehabilitation process in the acute setting