Potential and implications of sustainability action plans: lessons from the Greater Middlehaven Regeneration Project

Purpose – Sustainability action plans are emerging as a management tool to facilitate the delivery of sustainability objectives which are planned, measured and achievable in practice. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential to support an integrated approach to delivering sustainability across the phases of a construction project. A holistic approach to sustainability is promoted which aims to be understandable, managed and aligned with available sustainability assessment methods. Design/methodology/approach – The application of a sustainability action plan is explored in the Greater Middlehaven Regeneration Project (UK). Six key stakeholders were interviewed to consider the rational of its application, structure, role of sustainability assessment and contribution to project development and delivery. Two workshops involving practitioners and experts in sustainable construction explored the implications for the wider context. Findings – A framework around which sustainability can be managed through a series of integrated tailored action plans applied across each project phase was highlighted. Clear benefits were presented in facilitating the sharing of knowledge, communicating aspirations and in providing leadership to project members. Research limitations/implications – The case study enjoys a supportive environment to embed best practice and thus full appreciation of potential barriers to implementation in other contexts was not possible. Practical implications – The research illustrates the need to promote a common sustainability legacy across the project phases and highlights the role of a sustainability action plan in facilitating this consistency. Originality/value – A holistic approach founded on an understandable philosophy remains innovative in practice and explored are its value and implications. </jats:sec

Detection of Campylobacter concisus and other Campylobacter species in colonic biopsies from adults with ulcerative colitis

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Low Dimensionality in Gene Expression Data Enables the Accurate Extraction of Transcriptional Programs from Shallow Sequencing

A tradeoff between precision and throughput constrains all biological measurements, including sequencing-based technologies. Here, we develop a mathematical framework that defines this tradeoff between mRNA-sequencing depth and error in the extraction of biological information. We find that transcriptional programs can be reproducibly identified at 1% of conventional read depths. We demonstrate that this resilience to noise of “shallow” sequencing derives from a natural property, low dimensionality, which is a fundamental feature of gene expression data. Accordingly, our conclusions hold for ∼350 single-cell and bulk gene expression datasets across yeast, mouse, and human. In total, our approach provides quantitative guidelines for the choice of sequencing depth necessary to achieve a desired level of analytical resolution. We codify these guidelines in an open-source read depth calculator. This work demonstrates that the structure inherent in biological networks can be productively exploited to increase measurement throughput, an idea that is now common in many branches of science, such as image processing

Film and digital periapical radiographs for the measurement of apical root shortening

Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy and agreement of scanned film and digital periapical radiographs for the measurement of apical root shortening. Study design: Twenty-four film and digital [phosphor plate sensor (PPS)] periapical radiographs were taken using the long-cone paralleling technique for six extracted teeth before and after 1mm of apical root trimming. All teeth were mounted using a typodont and the radiographs were recorded using a film holder and polysiloxane occlusal index for each tooth to ensure standardization during the different radiographic exposures. The film radiographs were scanned and the tooth length measurements for the scanned film and digital (PPS) images were calculated using Image-J-Link 1.4 software (http://rebweb.nih.gov/ij/index.html) for the two groups. The accuracy and agreement among the tooth length measurements from each group and the true tooth length measurements were calculated using intra-class correlation (ICC) tests and Bland and Altman plots. Results: A high level of agreement was found between the true tooth length measurements and the scanned film measurements (ICC=0.979, limit of agreement 0.579 to -0.565) and the digital (PPS) radiograph measurements (ICC= 0.979, limit of agreement 0.596 to -0.763). Moreover, a high level of agreement was found between the scanned film and digital (PPS) radiographs for the measurement of tooth length ICC=0.991, limit of agreement 0.411-0.231. Conclusion: Film and digital (PPS) periapical radiographs are accurate methods for measuring apical root shortening with a high level of agreement

Gut mucosal microbiome signatures of colorectal cancer differ according to BMI status

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the NHS Grampian Biorepository for providing access to CRC patient samples and data. We thank members of the GI Research Team for discussions and advice. The authors thank Brennan Martin and the Centre for Genome Enabled Biology and Medicine for useful discussions.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Shallow subsurface structures and geotechnical characteristics of Tal El-Amarna area, middle Egypt

Abstract The shallow seismic refraction profiling was carried out at 18 sites in Tal El-Amarna, which is a flat area on the eastern bank of the Nile River, 50 km south of El Minia Governorate, middle Egypt. The collected data are used to estimate the P-wave velocity and to delineate the near-surface ground model beneath the study area. This study is supported by the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics due to the historical interest of the Tal El-Amarna area as a famous tourist place where there exist many Pharaoh temples and tombs. This area is low seismically active, but it is probably of high vulnerability due to the influence of the local geological conditions on earthquake ground motion, as well as the presence of poor constructions in the absence of various issues such as building designs, quality of building materials, etc. Another dataset at the study area is obtained by multi-channel passive source (microtremor) measurements, which have been recorded at four arrays. The frequency–wavenumber (f–k) method was used to derive the dispersion curves from the raw signals at each array. The resulted dispersion curves were inverted using the neighborhood algorithm to obtain the shear and P-wave velocity models. The concluded Vs and Vp values provide a preliminary estimation of the geotechnical parameters and site classification for the shallow soil as they are of great interest in civil engineering applications