Net Zero Leadership and Low Carbon Construction: Workshop Programme 2023

In 2023, the Strategic Territory Partnering Board (STPB) and Built Environment Smarter Transformation (BE-ST) established a partnership to develop a collaborative sector-wide Net Zero Programme. The programme’ ambitions have been to share and understand emerging best practice approaches to net zero leadership and the delivery of low carbon construction solutions for new build and retrofit projects across the Hub North territory. The School of Innovation and Technology (SIT) from the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) were commissioned to facilitate a co-design process that brought together Hub North, Scottish Futures Trust (SFT), Local Authorities, blue light services and NHS estates from across the region, along with delivery partners and solution experts. This collaborative process involved five large-scale creative events running two workshop streams, Net Zero Leadership and Low Carbon Construction, from May to December 2023. The workshops supported cross-sector and territory-wide participation within the development of the Net Zero Programme. The outputs from this workshop series are intended to create the basis for long term collaboration and action, maximising opportunities for successful implementation and informing the wider Territory Net Zero Partnership

Acceptability and design of video-based research on healthcare communication: evidence and recommendations

Objectives: To contribute to understandings about acceptability and risks entailed in video-based research on healthcare communication. To generate recommendations for non-covert video-based research on healthcare communication − with a focus on maximising its acceptability to participants, and managing and reducing its risks. Methods: A literature review and synthesis of (a) empirical research on participant acceptability and risks of video recording; (b) regulations of professional and governmental bodies; (c) reviews and commentaries; (d) guidance and recommendations. These were gathered across several academic and professional fields (including medical, educational, and social scientific). Results: 36 publications were included in the review and synthesis (7 regulatory documents, 7 empirical, 4 reviews/commentaries, 18 guidance/recommendations). In the context of research aiming in some way to improve healthcare communication: •Most people regard video-based research as acceptable and worthwhile, whilst also carrying risks. •Concerns that recording could be detrimental to healthcare delivery are not confirmed by existing evidence. •Numerous procedures to enhance acceptability and feasibility have been documented, and our recommendations collate these. Conclusion and practice implications: The recommendations are designed to support deliberations and decisions about individual studies and to support ethical scrutiny of proposed research studies. Whilst preliminary, it is nevertheless the most comprehensive and detailed currently available

Effects of Anacetrapib in Patients with Atherosclerotic Vascular Disease

BACKGROUND: Patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease remain at high risk for cardiovascular events despite effective statin-based treatment of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels. The inhibition of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) by anacetrapib reduces LDL cholesterol levels and increases high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels. However, trials of other CETP inhibitors have shown neutral or adverse effects on cardiovascular outcomes. METHODS: We conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 30,449 adults with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive atorvastatin therapy and who had a mean LDL cholesterol level of 61 mg per deciliter (1.58 mmol per liter), a mean non-HDL cholesterol level of 92 mg per deciliter (2.38 mmol per liter), and a mean HDL cholesterol level of 40 mg per deciliter (1.03 mmol per liter). The patients were assigned to receive either 100 mg of anacetrapib once daily (15,225 patients) or matching placebo (15,224 patients). The primary outcome was the first major coronary event, a composite of coronary death, myocardial infarction, or coronary revascularization. RESULTS: During the median follow-up period of 4.1 years, the primary outcome occurred in significantly fewer patients in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (1640 of 15,225 patients [10.8%] vs. 1803 of 15,224 patients [11.8%]; rate ratio, 0.91; 95% confidence interval, 0.85 to 0.97; P=0.004). The relative difference in risk was similar across multiple prespecified subgroups. At the trial midpoint, the mean level of HDL cholesterol was higher by 43 mg per deciliter (1.12 mmol per liter) in the anacetrapib group than in the placebo group (a relative difference of 104%), and the mean level of non-HDL cholesterol was lower by 17 mg per deciliter (0.44 mmol per liter), a relative difference of -18%. There were no significant between-group differences in the risk of death, cancer, or other serious adverse events. CONCLUSIONS: Among patients with atherosclerotic vascular disease who were receiving intensive statin therapy, the use of anacetrapib resulted in a lower incidence of major coronary events than the use of placebo. (Funded by Merck and others; Current Controlled Trials number, ISRCTN48678192 ; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01252953 ; and EudraCT number, 2010-023467-18 .)

Don\u27t Forget the Old Friends : Who Don\u27t Forget You

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp-copyright/1644/thumbnail.jp

Little daughter of the border, with the lovelight in your [first line of chorus]

Performance Medium: Piano, Voice and Chord

Sequential and parallel solution-biased search for subgraph algorithms

The current state of the art in subgraph isomorphism solving involves using degree as a value-ordering heuristic to direct backtracking search. Such a search makes a heavy commitment to the first branching choice, which is often incorrect. To mitigate this, we introduce and evaluate a new approach, which we call “solution-biased search”. By combining a slightly-random value-ordering heuristic, rapid restarts, and nogood recording, we design an algorithm which instead uses degree to direct the proportion of search effort spent in different subproblems. This increases performance by two orders of magnitude on satisfiable instances, whilst not affecting performance on unsatisfiable instances. This algorithm can also be parallelised in a very simple but effective way: across both satisfiable and unsatisfiable instances, we get a further speedup of over thirty from thirty-six cores, and over one hundred from ten distributed-memory hosts. Finally, we show that solution-biased search is also suitable for optimisation problems, by using it to improve two maximum common induced subgraph algorithms