A Priority Crime that is not a Priority? The Illegal Cigarette Trade: A Case Study of Mowbray

Objective: To determine how prevalent the illegal trade in cigarettes is in Mowbray, whether buyers thereof are aware of the illegal nature of their purchases, and whether they would transition to buying legal products if they became aware of the illegal nature of their purchases. Methods: Observations of stores throughout Mowbray were used to determine which stores sold illegal cigarettes, using price of packs of cigarettes as a determinant for illegality. Surveys were conducted using smokers in Mowbray as subjects in order to understand preferences of these subjects in terms of which products they bought and at which type of store they bought from. An interview was conducted with a Brigadier of the Directorate for Priority Crimes in order to understand how illegal cigarettes are policed in the country. Results: The research shows that cigarettes in Mowbray are very accessible and popular amongst consumers. It further demonstrates that most consumers of illegal products are aware of the illegal nature of their purchases and would not transition to legal products if it meant paying higher prices. Conclusions: The prevalence of illegal cigarettes is a result of the failure of state institutions to adequately address the issue. The popularity amongst consumers stems from the high availability of illegal cigarettes and the low prices thereof. Responses of state institutions tasked with addressing the illegal trade are essential in order to combat the trade

A Screenable In Vivo Assay for Mitochondrial Modulators Using Transgenic Bioluminescent Caenorhabditis elegans

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank David Gray from the Dundee Drug discovery unit for kindly donating firefly luciferase inhibitory compounds DDD00001434, DDD0001477, DDD00000635 and DDD00023047; Tibor Harkani (Medical University of Vienna) for the suggestion of oxaloacetate as a test compound; and Charlie Dear (University of Aberdeen) for illustrations. This work was funded by a BBSRC Pathfinder award (BB/FOF/PF/4/11) and the University of Aberdeen.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Upward Flame Spread for Fire Risk Classification of High-Rise Buildings

External fire spread has the potential to breach vertical compartmentation and violate the fire safety strategy of a building. The traditional design solution to this has been the use of non-combustible materials and spandrel panels but recent audits show that combustible materials are widespread and included in highly complex systems. Furthermore, most jurisdictions no longer require detailing of spandrel panels under many different circumstances. These buildings require rapid investigation using rational scientific methods to be able to adequately classify the fire risk. In this work, we use an extensive experimental campaign of material-scale data to explore the critical parameters driving upward flame spread. Two criteria are outlined using two different approaches. The first evaluates the time to ignition and the time to burnout to assess the ability for a fire to spread, and can be easily determined using traditional means. The second evaluates the preheated flame length as the critical parameter driving flame spread. A wide range of cladding materials are ranked according to these criteria to show their potential propensity to flame spread. From this, designers can use conservative approaches to perform fire risk assessments for buildings with combustible materials or can be used to aid decision-making. Precise estimates of flame spread rates within complex façade systems are not achievable with the current level of knowledge and will require a substantial amount of work to make progress

Novel fire testing frameworks for Phase Change Materials and hemp-lime insulation

Modern buildings increasingly include the usage of innovative materials aimed at improving sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint of the built environment. Phase Change Materials (PCMs) are one such group of novel materials which reduce building energy consumption. These materials are typically flammable and contained within wall linings yet there has been no detailed assessment of their fire performance. Current standard fire test methods provide means to compare similar materials but do not deliver knowledge on how they would behave in the event of a real fire. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to develop a novel testing framework to assess the behaviour of these materials in realistic fire scenarios. For PCMs, a flammability study is conducted in the bench-scale cone calorimeter to evaluate the fire risk associated with these materials. Then, micro-scale Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) is used to identify the fundamental chemical reactions to be able to confidently interpret the flammability results. Finally, intermediate-scale standard fire tests are conducted to evaluate the applicability of the bench-scale results to realistic fire scenarios. These take the form of modified Lateral Ignition and Flame spread Test (LIFT) and Single Burning Item (SBI) tests to understand flame spread and compartment fires respectively. Finally, a simplified method to combine this knowledge for use in building design is proposed. This method allows the balancing of potential energy benefits with quantified fire performance to achieve the specified goals of the designer. Hemp-lime insulation is a material which has also becoming increasingly popular in the drive towards sustainability. The porous nature of the material means that smouldering combustions are the dominant reaction mode but there is currently no standardised test method for this type of behaviour. Thus, hemp-lime materials also represent an unquantified risk. The work in this thesis defines a simple, accessible and economically viable bench-scale method for quantifying the fire risk associated with rigid porous materials. This is applicable for both downward opposed flow and upward forward flow smoulder propagation conditions. The behaviour is then interpreted using micro-scale thermogravimetric analysis to understand the underlying pyrolysis and oxidation reactions. Designers can utilise this framework to quantify the smouldering risk associated with hemp-lime materials to enable their usage in the built environment. The holistic fire risk assessment performed in this thesis has quantified the behaviour of PCMs and hemp-lime insulation applicable to realistic fire scenarios. The simplified design method empowers designers to be able to realise innovative buildings through fundamental understanding of the fire behaviour of these materials. The outcomes of this thesis allow designers to mitigate the fire risk associated with these materials and achieve optimised engineering solutions. Furthermore, the novel fire testing frameworks provide the economically viable means to assess the fire performance of future PCMs and hemp-lime products which ensures lasting relevance of this research in the future

Survival of Phytophthora cryptogea and Phytophthora cactorum in Commercial Potting Substrates for Eucalyptus globulus Plants

Funding Information: This work was financially supported by the European Union Horizon 2020 (H2020) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network PROTECTA H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 call, under grant agreement number 766048. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Impact of sublethal levels of environmental pollutants found in sewage sludge on a novel Caenorhabditis elegans model biosensor

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Pathogenicity and Host Range of Pythium kashmirense : a soil-borne oomycete recently discovered in the UK

Funding: This work was financially supported by the European Union Horizon 2020 (H2020) Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network PROTECTA H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 call, under grant agreement number 766048. Acknowledgments: The authors would like to acknowledge the technical support of Hedda Weitz and Jaime BuckinghamPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Heat release and flame spread assessment of insulation in External Thermal Insulation Composite System (ETICS) façades

External Thermal Insulation Composite Systems (ETICS) represent a popular modern façade for reducing energy consumption, particularly in retrofit applications. Insulation – typically in the form of either EPS (expanded polystyrene) or mineral wool – is applied to the exterior of buildings using mortar adhesive, and then coated with a final layer of sand-cement render and glass fibre reinforcement. The materials are relatively cheap, and the labour can be easy and inexpensive compared to other solutions. The system does however mean that highly flammable EPS insulation is protected by only a thin layer of render, normally 3–8mm. The addition of this combustible material to the façade of the building represents a change in the fire risk, as the typical fire safety strategy involving compartmentation does not anticipate vertical fire spread on the exterior of a building. It is therefore necessary to characterise the fire risk, and ensure that an optimal fire barrier – namely, the render layer – is defined adequately. In this work, the insulation component of an EPS ETICS façade is tested using micro- to small-scale methodologies. The objective of this is to characterise some of the fundamental thermal material properties, ignitability, heat release, and flame spread of the specific components. The aim is to then extend this to a larger-scale methodology for testing of complete systems, which will be complemented by numerical modelling to enable scaling. Previous attempts at testing ETICS in a small-scale have been largely unsuccessful, and efforts have pointed to large-scale apparatuses – generally 4–8m high – as the only viable solution at present. These are however expensive and time consuming, and deliver little information on how the façade performs. Testing is especially problematic for EPS, which melts and shrinks at low temperatures, leading to difficulties in attempting to extract global flammability properties. MCC (Microscale Combustion Calorimeter) testing has been performed to benchmark the different EPS insulation that can be used in buildings. It is found that black EPS containing expanded graphite used in façades has substantially improved performance compared to ordinary white EPS used as building insulation. The peak heat release was reduced from 1160 W g−1 down to 490–740 W g−1, occurring at a temperature of 430–440 °C. An extra additive to improve the moisture performance of the system also enhances the fire performance slightly by reducing the heat release further. Previous attempts of testing ETICS and EPS using LIFT (Lateral Ignition and Flame spread Test) have in many cases been unproductive. For this experimental series, a sheet of paper has been applied to the surface of the first 100 mm of EPS in order to force ignition. Results for the flame spread velocity near to ignition have then been discarded to minimise the influence of this method. Flame spread results for the white EPS were not satisfactory due to the fact that the flame spread velocity had a weak dependence on the incident heat flux, and that that minimum critical heat flux for flame spread was 0.0 kW m−2, that is, no external energy was required to sustain burning. For black EPS specimens, the addition of the expanded graphite was effective in improving the flame spread performance. The minimum heat flux for flame spread was increased to 0.75–1.09 kW m−2, and the velocity was sufficiently moderate that a reasonable value for the flame spread modulus could be obtained. In future, attempts will be made to correlate the flame spread results of these individual EPS products to the flame spread as part of a complete ETICS façade. This would then provide a more meaningful method to compare different ETICS solutions as a first step without the need for expensive large-scale testing during the main development phase of systems

Can Ulcerative Dermal Necrosis (UDN) in Atlantic salmon be attributed to ultraviolet radiation and secondary Saprolegnia parasitica infections?

Funding Information: This work was partially funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska–Curie grant agreement No 766048 (PROTECTA).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Towards a better understanding of fire performance assessment of façade systems: Current situation and a proposed new assessment framework

This manuscript presents tools and data that serve to enable an evaluation of the risk associated with vertical fire spread on buildings. A highly detailed context to cladding fires is described to unveil the complexity and magnitude of the problem and to identify gaps of information. An engineering framework is then developed which delivers required information that fills some of those gaps and that needs to be used towards achieving quantified fire performance. The data itself has been published as a publicly available database, entitled the Cladding Materials Library (www.claddingmaterialslibrary.com.au). This data can be used to support building fire risk assessments or as the basis for more in-depth research into façade fires. This paper presents the context of the data together with the competency framework necessary for upskilling building professionals to have the capacity to implement the engineering framework