Assessing the Impact of Infrastructure Projects on Global Sustainable Development Goals

While sustainability of civil infrastructure is critical to professionals, project owners, regulators, funding agencies and the public, little is done to link individual project sustainability to the United Nation’s 17 global sustainable development goals for 2030. This paper provides some answers but also exposes many questions that need resolution by the infrastructure sector. Using empirical evidence, the authors have identified a ‘golden thread’ between best-practice sustainability-reporting frameworks at project level with those at organisational level. In doing so, they find there is sufficient linkage to embed sustainable-development-goal impact targets into the design stage of an infrastructure project. This would provide a more robust investment appraisal at the project design phase, helping to define project success more widely across the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental outcomes and associated impact

Estimation of coronary wave intensity analysis using noninvasive techniques and its application to exercise physiology

Wave intensity analysis (WIA) has found particular applicability in the coronary circulation where it can quantify traveling waves that accelerate and decelerate blood flow. The most important wave for the regulation of flow is the backward-traveling decompression wave (BDW). Coronary WIA has hitherto always been calculated from invasive measures of pressure and flow. However, recently it has become feasible to obtain estimates of these waveforms noninvasively. In this study we set out to assess the agreement between invasive and noninvasive coronary WIA at rest and measure the effect of exercise. Twenty-two patients (mean age 60) with unobstructed coronaries underwent invasive WIA in the left anterior descending artery (LAD). Immediately afterwards, noninvasive LAD flow and pressure were recorded and WIA calculated from pulsed-wave Doppler coronary flow velocity and central blood pressure waveforms measured using a cuff-based technique. Nine of these patients underwent noninvasive coronary WIA assessment during exercise. A pattern of six waves were observed in both modalities. The BDW was similar between invasive and noninvasive measures [peak: 14.9 ± 7.8 vs. -13.8 ± 7.1 × 10(4) W·m(-2)·s(-2), concordance correlation coefficient (CCC): 0.73, P < 0.01; cumulative: -64.4 ± 32.8 vs. -59.4 ± 34.2 × 10(2) W·m(-2)·s(-1), CCC: 0.66, P < 0.01], but smaller waves were underestimated noninvasively. Increased left ventricular mass correlated with a decreased noninvasive BDW fraction (r = -0.48, P = 0.02). Exercise increased the BDW: at maximum exercise peak BDW was -47.0 ± 29.5 × 10(4) W·m(-2)·s(-2) (P < 0.01 vs. rest) and cumulative BDW -19.2 ± 12.6 × 10(3) W·m(-2)·s(-1) (P < 0.01 vs. rest). The BDW can be measured noninvasively with acceptable reliably potentially simplifying assessments and increasing the applicability of coronary WIA

Therapeutic Effects of Prolonged Cannabidiol Treatment on Psychological Symptoms and Cognitive Function in Regular Cannabis Users: A Pragmatic Open-Label Clinical Trial.

Introduction: Chronic cannabis use has been associated with impaired cognition and elevated psychological symptoms, particularly psychotic-like experiences. While Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is thought to be primarily responsible for these deleterious effects, cannabidiol (CBD) is purported to have antipsychotic properties and to ameliorate cognitive, symptomatic, and brain harms in cannabis users. However, this has never been tested in a prolonged administration trial in otherwise healthy cannabis users. Here, we report the first study of prolonged CBD administration to a community sample of regular cannabis users in a pragmatic trial investigating potential restorative effects of CBD on psychological symptoms and cognition. Materials and Methods: Twenty frequent cannabis users (16 male, median age 25 years) underwent a 10-week open-label trial of 200 mg of daily oral CBD treatment, while continuing to use cannabis as usual. The majority of participants were daily cannabis users who had used cannabis for several years (median 5.5 years of regular use). Participants underwent psychological and cognitive assessments at baseline (BL) and post-treatment (PT) and were monitored weekly throughout the trial. Results: CBD was well tolerated with no reported side effects; however, participants retrospectively reported reduced euphoria when smoking cannabis. No impairments to cognition were found, nor were there deleterious effects on psychological function. Importantly, participants reported significantly fewer depressive and psychotic-like symptoms at PT relative to BL, and exhibited improvements in attentional switching, verbal learning, and memory. Increased plasma CBD concentrations were associated with improvements in attentional control and beneficial changes in psychological symptoms. Greater benefits were observed in dependent than in nondependent cannabis users. Conclusions: Prolonged CBD treatment appears to have promising therapeutic effects for improving psychological symptoms and cognition in regular cannabis users. Our findings require replication given the lack of a placebo control in this pragmatic trial, but suggest that CBD may be a useful adjunct treatment for cannabis dependence

Disorder-specific functional abnormalities during sustained attention in youth with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and with Autism

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are often comorbid and share behavioural-cognitive abnormalities in sustained attention. A key question is whether this shared cognitive phenotype is based on common or different underlying pathophysiologies. To elucidate this question, we compared 20 boys with ADHD to 20 age and IQ matched ASD and 20 healthy boys using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a parametrically modulated vigilance task with a progressively increasing load of sustained attention. ADHD and ASD boys had significantly reduced activation relative to controls in bilateral striato–thalamic regions, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and superior parietal cortex. Both groups also displayed significantly increased precuneus activation relative to controls. Precuneus was negatively correlated with the DLPFC activation, and progressively more deactivated with increasing attention load in controls, but not patients, suggesting problems with deactivation of a task-related default mode network in both disorders. However, left DLPFC underactivation was significantly more pronounced in ADHD relative to ASD boys, which furthermore was associated with sustained performance measures that were only impaired in ADHD patients. ASD boys, on the other hand, had disorder-specific enhanced cerebellar activation relative to both ADHD and control boys, presumably reflecting compensation. The findings show that ADHD and ASD boys have both shared and disorder-specific abnormalities in brain function during sustained attention. Shared deficits were in fronto–striato–parietal activation and default mode suppression. Differences were a more severe DLPFC dysfunction in ADHD and a disorder-specific fronto–striato–cerebellar dysregulation in ASD

Emergent complex neural dynamics

A large repertoire of spatiotemporal activity patterns in the brain is the basis for adaptive behaviour. Understanding the mechanism by which the brain's hundred billion neurons and hundred trillion synapses manage to produce such a range of cortical configurations in a flexible manner remains a fundamental problem in neuroscience. One plausible solution is the involvement of universal mechanisms of emergent complex phenomena evident in dynamical systems poised near a critical point of a second-order phase transition. We review recent theoretical and empirical results supporting the notion that the brain is naturally poised near criticality, as well as its implications for better understanding of the brain

Motor system hyperconnectivity in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy: a cognitive functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy is the most frequent idiopathic generalized epilepsy syndrome. It is characterized by predominant myoclonic jerks of upper limbs, often provoked by cognitive activities, and typically responsive to treatment with sodium valproate. Neurophysiological, neuropsychological and imaging studies in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy have consistently pointed towards subtle abnormalities in the medial frontal lobes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging with an executive frontal lobe paradigm, we investigated cortical activation patterns and interaction between cortical regions in 30 patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy and 26 healthy controls. With increasing cognitive demand, patients showed increasing coactivation of the primary motor cortex and supplementary motor area. This effect was stronger in patients still suffering from seizures, and was not seen in healthy controls. Patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy showed increased functional connectivity between the motor system and frontoparietal cognitive networks. Furthermore, we found impaired deactivation of the default mode network during cognitive tasks with persistent activation in medial frontal and central regions in patients. Coactivation in the motor cortex and supplementary motor area with increasing cognitive load and increased functional coupling between the motor system and cognitive networks provide an explanation how cognitive effort can cause myoclonic jerks in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. The supplementary motor area represents the anatomical link between these two functional systems, and our findings may be the functional correlate of previously described structural abnormalities in the medial frontal lobe in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy

Patterns of default mode network deactivation in obsessive compulsive disorder

The objective of the present study was to research the patterns of Default Mode Network (DMN) deactivation in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in the transition between a resting and a non-rest emotional condition. Twenty-seven participants, 15 diagnosed with OCD and 12 healthy controls (HC), underwent a functional neuroimaging paradigm in which DMN brain activation in a resting condition was contrasted with activity during a non-rest condition consisting in the presentation of emotionally pleasant and unpleasant images. Results showed that HC, when compared with OCD, had a significant deactivation in two anterior nodes of the DMN (medial frontal and superior frontal) in the non-rest pleasant stimuli condition. Additional analysis for the whole brain, contrasting the resting condition with all the non-rest conditions grouped together, showed that, compared with OCD, HC had a significantly deactivation of a widespread brain network (superior frontal, insula, middle and superior temporal, putamen, lingual, cuneus, and cerebellum). Concluding, the present study found that OCD patients had difficulties with the deactivation of DMN even when the non-rest condition includes the presentation of emotional provoking stimuli, particularly evident for images with pleasant content.The first author was funded by the Brazilian National Counsel for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) as a Special Visiting Researcher of the Science Without Borders program (grant number: 401143/20147). This study was partially conducted at the Neuropsychophysiology Lab from the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145FEDER-007653).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio