The Socio-Economics and Energy Demand - United Kingdom Model (SEED-UK) Understanding the Dynamics, Diversity and Socio-Economics of the UK Domestic Stock

Domestic energy demand is driven by the patterns of energy services required in the home as people go about their daily lives. Understanding these patterns, both how they combine with the physical determinants of energy demand, such as the building stock, and how they vary amongst our society is important when designing time of use tariffs and demand response programs. This paper presents the Socio-Economics and Energy Demand – United Kingdom (SEED-UK) model, a dynamic model of the UK domestic stock. The model is built using a bottom-up framework combining both statistical and physics based techniques to create daily and seasonal electricity and heat demand profiles at a 10 minute time step as well as estimates of total consumption for a series of household types and sizes. The model synthesis a number of previously developed models and approaches and capitalises on a number of large datasets describing the UK population and energy demand in the UK which have been summarised and linked in order to create probabilistic relationships for example between socio-economic groups, appliance sets and dwelling type, the ‘technical environment’. The dynamics of energy services demand within this ‘technical environment’ are driven by a simulation of household activity which allows electricity, hot water and heating demand patterns to be simulated. Model performance is evaluated using a dataset which contains the gas and electricity demand profiles of 15,000 UK domestic customers. This paper presents the resulting electricity and heat demand profiles which highlight subtle differences between the consumption patterns of socio-economic groups. Understanding and quantifying these differences and the diversity of demand between and within groups provides important data for the design of time of use tariffs and demand response programs

Domestic demand-side response on district heating networks

This paper presents results from a field study that deployed demand shifting technology on a sample of 28 homes connected to a district heating (DH) network in England over the winter of 2015/2016. The aim was to improve the load factor of the participating households. Improving load factors has the potential to improve the attractiveness of DH and accelerate the roll out of DH networks in the UK. Capital costs are lowered by reducing required boiler capacity and pipework sizes. Operational costs are reduced by increasing the coverage of the primary plant and reducing heat losses and pumping energy. In addition to specific insights for the deployment of demand shifting on DH networks the results provide general lessons for the utilization of building thermal inertia for demand shifting. The interventions tested have increased the load factor of the participating homes from 0.29 to 0.44. Achieving this has led to an increase in energy demand of approximately 3% however estimated network cost savings exceed this increased energy cost. While some participants noted the altered operation of their heating systems and expressed concern, the majority indicated they would be willing to participate in a commercial scheme for a small financial reward

Enhancing Digital Heritage Archives Using Gamified Annotations

Digital archives have been focused on the collection of information and not really on the collaborative capabilities that digital heritage archives could have. In this study, we look at how we can add a collaborative element to an already existing digital heritage archive and incentivise users to engage with it more. Using gamified annotations, we show that gamification could play an important role in giving the participants an incentive as to why they should be engaging with the digital archive as well as guiding them to contribute relevant content. We found that gamified annotations do affect the number and quality of annotations submitted. We believe a successful implementation of a gamified annotation framework should go a long way to improve viewership, sharing, learning and debate around the content of the said heritage archives

Systematically missing confounders in individual participant data meta-analysis of observational cohort studies.

One difficulty in performing meta-analyses of observational cohort studies is that the availability of confounders may vary between cohorts, so that some cohorts provide fully adjusted analyses while others only provide partially adjusted analyses. Commonly, analyses of the association between an exposure and disease either are restricted to cohorts with full confounder information, or use all cohorts but do not fully adjust for confounding. We propose using a bivariate random-effects meta-analysis model to use information from all available cohorts while still adjusting for all the potential confounders. Our method uses both the fully adjusted and the partially adjusted estimated effects in the cohorts with full confounder information, together with an estimate of their within-cohort correlation. The method is applied to estimate the association between fibrinogen level and coronary heart disease incidence using data from 154,012 participants in 31 cohort

Effect of weight loss on HDL-apoA-II kinetics in the metabolic syndrome

Reduced HDL (high-density lipoprotein) concentration in the MetS (metabolic syndrome) is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease and is related to defects in HDL-apoA-II (apolipoprotein A-II) kinetics. Dietary restriction is the most commonly used weight loss strategy. In the present study, we examined the effect of weight loss on HDL-apoA-II kinetics in men with the MetS at the start and end of a 16-week intervention trial of a hypocaloric low-fat diet (n=20) compared with a weight maintenance diet (n=15), using a stable isotope technique and compartmental modelling. The low-fat diet achieved a significant reduction (P<0.01) in BMI (body mass index), abdominal fat compartments and HOMA (homoeostasis model assessment) score compared with weight maintenance. Weight loss also significantly (P<0.05) decreased both the production rate (−23%) and FCR (fractional catabolic rate) (−12%) of HDL-apoA-II, accounting for a net decrease in apoA-II concentration (−9%). Reductions in the HDL-apoA-II production rate were significantly associated with changes in body weight (r=0.683, P<0.01), plasma triacylglycerols (triglycerides) (r=0.607, P<0.01) and, to a lesser extent, plasma insulin (r=0.440, P=0.059) and HOMA-IR (HOMA of insulin resistance) (r=0.425, P=0.069). Changes in the apoA-II FCR were also significantly associated with reductions in visceral adipose tissue mass (r=0.561, P=0.010). In conclusion, in obese men with the MetS, short-term weight loss with a low-fat low-caloric diet lowers plasma apoA-II concentrations by decreasing both the production and catabolism of HDL-apoA-II. The cardiometabolic significance of this effect on HDL metabolism remains to be investigated further

Impact of the iWHELD digital person-centered care program on quality of life, agitation and psychotropic medications in people with dementia living in nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic: A randomized controlled trial

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordINTRODUCTION: iWHELD is a digital person-centered care program for people with dementia in nursing homes adapted for remote delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A 16-week two-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial in 149 UK nursing homes compared iWHELD with treatment as usual (TAU). Primary outcome was the overall quality of life with secondary outcomes of agitation and psychotropic use. RESULTS: iWHELD conferred benefit to quality of life on the primary (F = 4.3, p = 0.04) and secondary measures of quality of life (F = 6.45, p = 0.01) and reduced psychotropic medication use (χ2  = 4.08, p = 0.04) with no worsening of agitation. Benefit was seen in participants who contracted COVID-19, those with agitation at baseline, and those taking psychotropic medications. DISCUSSION: iWHELD confers benefits to quality of life and key measures of well-being, can be delivered during the challenging conditions of a pandemic, and should be considered for use alongside any emerging pharmacological treatment for neuropsychiatric symptoms. HIGHLIGHTS: iWHELD is the only remote, digital delivery nursing home training programme for dementia care iWHELD improved quality of life in people with dementia and reduced antipsychotic use without worsening of agitation Residents who contracted Covid-19 during the study also experienced benefits from iWHELD iWHELD offers a valuable, pandemic-safe tool for improving dementia care.Medical Research Council (MRC)National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR

Contributions of green infrastructure to enhancing urban resilience

© 2018, The Author(s). After briefly reviewing key resilience engineering perspectives and summarising some green infrastructure (GI) tools, we present the contributions that GI can make to enhancing urban resilience and maintaining critical system functionality across complex integrated social–ecological and technical systems. We then examine five key challenges for the effective implementation of GI that include (1) standards; (2) regulation; (3) socio-economic factors; (4) financeability; and (5) innovation. We highlight ways in which these challenges are being dealt with around the world, particularly through the use of approaches that are both context appropriate and socially inclusive. Although progress surmounting these challenges has been made, more needs to be done to ensure that GI approaches are inclusive and appropriate and feature equally alongside more traditional ‘grey’ infrastructure in the future of urban resilience planning. This research was undertaken for the Resilience Shift initiative to shift the approach to resilience in practice for critical infrastructure sectors. The programme aims to help practitioners involved in critical infrastructure to make decisions differently, contributing to a safer and better world

Augmented Atherogenesis in LDL Receptor Deficient Mice Lacking Both Macrophage ABCA1 and ApoE

ABCA1 protects against atherosclerosis by facilitating cholesterol efflux from macrophage foam cells in the arterial wall to extracellular apolipoprotein (apo) A-I. In contrast to apoA-I, apoE is secreted by macrophages and can, like apoA-I, induce ABCA1-mediated cholesterol efflux. Yet, the combined effect of macrophage ABCA1 and apoE on lesion development is unexplored.LDL receptor knockout (KO) mice were transplanted with bone marrow from ABCA1/apoE double KO (dKO) mice, their respective single KO's, and wild-type (WT) controls and were challenged with a high-fat/high-cholesterol diet for 9 weeks. In vitro cholesterol efflux experiments showed no differences between ABCA1 KO and dKO macrophages. The serum non-HDL/HDL ratio in dKO transplanted mice was 1.7-fold and 2.4-fold (p<0.01) increased compared to WT and ABCA1 KO transplanted mice, respectively. The atherosclerotic lesion area in dKO transplanted animals (650±94×10(3) µm(2)), however, was 1.9-fold (p<0.01) and 1.6-fold (p<0.01) increased compared to single knockouts (ABCA1 KO: 341±20×10(3) µm(2); apoE KO: 402±78×10(3) µm(2), respectively) and 3.1-fold increased (p<0.001) compared to WT (211±20×10(3) µm(2)). When normalized for serum cholesterol exposure, macrophage ABCA1 and apoE independently protected against atherosclerotic lesion development (p<0.001). Moreover, hepatic expression levels of TNFα and IL-6 were highly induced in dKO transplanted animals (3.0-fold; p<0.05, and 4.3-fold; p<0.001, respectively). In agreement, serum IL-6 levels were also enhanced in ABCA1 KO transplanted mice (p<0.05) and even further enhanced in dKO transplanted animals (3.1-fold as compared to ABCA1 KO transplanted animals; p<0.05).Combined deletion of macrophage ABCA1 and apoE results in a defect in cholesterol efflux and, compared to ABCA1 KO transplanted mice, elevated serum total cholesterol levels. Importantly, these mice also suffer from enhanced systemic and hepatic inflammation, together resulting in the observed augmented atherosclerotic lesion development