Reproducibility in the absence of selective reporting : An illustration from large-scale brain asymmetry research

Altres ajuts: Max Planck Society (Germany).The problem of poor reproducibility of scientific findings has received much attention over recent years, in a variety of fields including psychology and neuroscience. The problem has been partly attributed to publication bias and unwanted practices such as p-hacking. Low statistical power in individual studies is also understood to be an important factor. In a recent multisite collaborative study, we mapped brain anatomical left-right asymmetries for regional measures of surface area and cortical thickness, in 99 MRI datasets from around the world, for a total of over 17,000 participants. In the present study, we revisited these hemispheric effects from the perspective of reproducibility. Within each dataset, we considered that an effect had been reproduced when it matched the meta-analytic effect from the 98 other datasets, in terms of effect direction and significance threshold. In this sense, the results within each dataset were viewed as coming from separate studies in an "ideal publishing environment," that is, free from selective reporting and p hacking. We found an average reproducibility rate of 63.2% (SD = 22.9%, min = 22.2%, max = 97.0%). As expected, reproducibility was higher for larger effects and in larger datasets. Reproducibility was not obviously related to the age of participants, scanner field strength, FreeSurfer software version, cortical regional measurement reliability, or regional size. These findings constitute an empirical illustration of reproducibility in the absence of publication bias or p hacking, when assessing realistic biological effects in heterogeneous neuroscience data, and given typically-used sample sizes

Streamlining the use of legislated reporting to move to 'life of project' sustainability reporting

The minerals industry has made extensive efforts in sustainable development, and reporting of sustainability performance has been increasing. This paper examines the current role of legislated reporting, and the ways in which it can help streamline sustainability reporting, saving time and money. Two sets of sustainability metrics ? the global reporting initiative (GRI) and the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) ? are examined to demonstrate the coverage of sustainability reporting by legislated reporting. The paper also proposes the shifting of perspective from ‘life of mine’ to ‘life of project’ sustainability reporting. Greater use of legislated activities such as environmental impact assessments (EIAs) is described as a way of creating more useful, relevant and realistic sustainability reports. Through the use of these early phase activities to develop contextualised sustainability metrics, the sustainability contribution of a project can be more effectively measured across the life cycle and currently under-utilised information can be used more fully

Product carbon footprint and energy analysis of alternative coffee products in Japan

Coffee is an important global beverage, and has received significant attention especially in terms of the social and environmental sustainability of its production. This paper calculates the product carbon footprint (PCF) and conducts an analysis of energy usage for six alternative coffee products. The analysis shows that espresso coffee had the lowest impact (0.13 kWh and 49 g CO2 per serve), while canned coffee provided the highest impact (0.76 kWh and 223 g CO2 per serve). The latte had the second highest embodied energy impact, with 0.54 kWh and the highest PCF of 224 g CO2 per serve. On a per millilitre basis however, espresso coffee provided the highest impact (0.0048 kWh/mL and 0.8 g CO2-eq/mL), followed by canned coffee and the latte. This indicates that care must be used in the selection of an appropriate functional unit, as the ranking of PCF can be overturned according to the basis of comparison. The highest contributing factors were the emissions from milk, packaging (for the can) and the production stages of the green coffee beans. Despite only holding around 17% of the market share of consumed coffee, the canned coffee product contributes around half of the national carbon footprint from coffee consumption. Current commercial incentives for consumers to use their own cups were compared to carbon taxation and found to value carbon approximately three orders of magnitude higher than carbon market rates

Engineering-in sustainability through the application of SUSOP®

There are considerable challenges in developing new resource projects that meet the ideals of sustainability. The high-level principles of corporate sustainability policies cannot be easily integrated into project management systems or the everyday activities at operations. In addition, existing project management systems do not readily deliver the innovative solutions needed to address key sustainability issues, such as significantly reduced carbon emissions, minimal environmental impacts, and maintaining the societal licence to operate. SUSOP® (SUStainable OPerations) is an approach for the integration of sustainable development principles into the design and operation of industrial processes, which is being developed through the Co-operative Research Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing (CSRP). Somewhat analogous to HAZOP (Hazard and Operability Studies), the key aim of SUSOP® is to produce a holistic, systematic and rigorous set of processes for identifying, evaluating, and implementing Sustainable Development opportunities within the organising architecture of a sustainability framework. This approach is currently being tested and enhanced through application to ‘live’ case studies in the minerals industry. The results of applying selected elements of SUSOP® to these case studies, both at the conceptual and pre-feasibility phases, have led to significant insights into the process of identifying and evaluating options for enhancing an operations contribution to sustainability and its long-term business case. This paper discusses the need for an approach such as SUSOP®, presents the key outcomes from the development of SUSOP® to date with particular reference to the case study learnings, and highlights the practical ways for incorporating sustainability into project management systems

Effect of nano-clay on mechanical and thermal properties of geopolymer

The effect of nano-clay platelets (Cloisite 30B) on the mechanical and thermal properties of fly ash geopolymer has been investigated in this paper. The nano-clay platelets are added to reinforce the geopolymer at loadings of 1.0%, 2.0%, and 3.0% by weight. The phase composition and microstructure of geopolymer nano-composites are also investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) techniques. Results show that the mechanical properties of geopolymer nano-composites are improved due to addition of nano-clay. It is found that the addition of 2.0 wt% nano-clay decreases the porosity and increases the nano-composite's resistance to water absorption significantly. The optimum 2.0 wt% nano-clay addition exhibited the highest flexural and compressive strengths, flexural modulus and hardness. The microstructural analysis results indicate that the nano-clay behaves not only as a filler to improve the microstructure, but also as an activator to facilitate the geopolymeric reaction. The geopolymer nano-composite also exhibited better thermal stability than its counterpart pure geopolymer

Incorporating sustainable development in the design of mineral processing operations-review and analysis of current approaches

This paper reviews the tools and methodologies used for incorporating sustainability considerations into the design of mineral processing operations. It was found that while there is a range of tools and methodologies that contribute to Design for Sustainability, there is no consistent, integrated approach to support the mineral industry in incorporating a greater level of sustainability into the design process. This paper identifies the required elements in such an approach and discusses the ways in which its development would progress the industry towards sustainability