A life cycle carbon assessment and multi-criteria decision-making framework for building renovation within the circular economy context: a case study.

Applying circular economy principles to the renovation of existing buildings is increasingly recognized as essential to achieving Europe's climate and energy goals. However, current decision-making frameworks rarely integrate life cycle carbon assessment with multi-criteria evaluation to support circular renovation strategies. This paper introduces an innovative framework that combines life cycle carbon assessment with multi-criteria decision analysis to identify and sequence circular renovation measures. The framework was applied to a residential case study in the Netherlands, using IES VE for operational carbon assessment and One Click LCA for embodied carbon assessment, with results evaluated using PROMETHEE multi-criteria analysis. Renovation measures were assessed based on operational and embodied carbon (including Module D), energy use intensity, cost, pay-back period, and disruption. The evaluation also introduced the embodied-to-operational carbon ratio (EOCR), a novel metric representing the proportion of embodied carbon, including Module D, relative to operational carbon savings over the building's lifecycle. The homeowner's preferences regarding these criteria were considered in determining the final ranking. The findings show that circular insulation options involving reused materials and designed for disassembly achieved the lowest embodied carbon emissions and lowest EOCR scores, with reused PIR achieving a 94% reduction compared to new PIR boards. The impact of including Module D on the ranking of renovation options varies based on the end-of-life scenario. The framework demonstrates how circular renovation benefits can be made more visible to decision-makers, promoting broader adoption

Nothing so practical as a good prevention principle: lessons from the prevention principle in construction law.

The so called "prevention principle" in contract law operates differently in construction contracts compared with the wider law. This paper examines the prevention principle in construction law and within the wider developments of English contract law and its theoretical context. The Australian approach is also used as a helpful comparator

Multi-scale infinite element analysis of GFRP pipe stiffness: effect of fibre volume fraction.

This study employs a multi-scale finite element analysis (FEA) to investigate the mechanical behaviour of a Glass Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) pipe under diametral compression. A Representative Volume Element (RVE) was used to generate homogenised material properties for three fibre volume fractions (FVF) of 30%, 55% and 70%. These properties were implemented in a macro-scale model of FRP ring tested as per ASTM D2412. Results demonstrate a significant positive correlation between fibre content, structural stiffness, and ultimate strength, validating the multi-scale approach and providing key insights for composite pipe design

Embedding study skills in higher education.

Academics and practitioners in sport and exercise science higher education face challenges in producing graduates proficient in real-world employment skills and ensuring students have the necessary academic and scientific rigor. With a broader range of qualifications entering university courses, universities must ensure continuity and address students lacking study skills, which negatively impact their learning potential

Developments in public health paramedicine: exploring the professional practice of ambulance clinicians in palliative and end-of-life care in a remote and rural setting.

Professional practice in paramedicine is evolving rapidly, and with this evolution comes a growing ability - and responsibility - for paramedics to contribute to public health. Palliative and end-of-life care (PEOLC) public health is one such area where paramedicine has begun to contribute substantially and might still have significant untapped potential.This article explores developments in PEOLC paramedicine in the Scottish Highlands, an area classified as remote and rural, characterised by low population density, widely spaced communities and susceptibility to health inequalities created by access to healthcare, especially to specialist services. The role of paramedicine in PEOLC is examined in the context of public health priorities and policy, while considering the ability of paramedics to reduce health inequalities by widening access. An informal literature search was conducted to identify interventions through which paramedicine can make improvements to the experience of death and dying on a population level, and lead to substantial healthcare cost savings. These interventions range from reducing PEOLC hospital admissions through effective use of advance care planning, just-in-case medications and independent prescribing and local referral pathways, to effectively managing palliative emergencies amenable to treatment in hospital. Paramedicine could thus play a significant role in making policy ambitions in PEOLC a reality, and conversely, achieving PEOLC policy ambitions might be difficult without support from paramedicine. Paramedics play a growing role in community healthcare provision, especially in remote and rural settings, by providing a link between care provided in the community and specialist services. Better integration of paramedicine into primary and secondary healthcare systems could facilitate turning more PEOLC public health theory into practice. The information collated in this discussion reinforces the need to reflect this potential in research funding allocation, in social and government policy development and in clinical practice decisions made by each individual paramedic. [Abstract copyright: © 2025 The Author(s).

Ground floor right (end of part II). [Oil and encaustic on steel]

In this work I attempt to explore a dialogue between drawing and painting, through the consideration of the home as a compression chamber for inhabitants' individual and shared dynamic. The work builds on ideas of psychological transitioning, through the flattening of form and figurative representation. "End of Part II" is the second version of a painting that I made in 2018. It was a first attempt to push beyond the rectangular frame by inviting the wall to hold a more active and visual role within the composition, as opposed to the wall having the sole function of hanging and displaying the work. This work was produced for the exhibition "Flat Volume", held 23 October - 9 November 2025 at the APT Gallery, London, curated by Sarah Longworth-West

Parasitic projects and the politics of research-creation.

This chapter considers the possibility of a 'symmetrical' anthropology by examining three 'parasitic' projects – collaborative, public projects at the borders of art and anthropology, which address the politics of authorship, intimacy and knowledge – I have recently undertaken. I consider these and their processes of making through the lens of the parasite, drawing attention to tensions between language and image, in the work of collaboration and translation across cultures, form and time, and to disruptive parasitic qualities including repetition, interruption, and translations, asking how these might serve to create 'new logics ... new orders of exchange'. By bringing such disruptive parasitic qualities into play, this chapter questions whether such work (whether understood as artistic practice, research-creation, or art-anthropology) carries the speculative potential to event concepts, by which I mean, concepts 'express' events, 'creating propositional paths to follow'. I then reflect on the rise of research-creation as way of thinking about research and art in parasitic relation

Gen AI and the HE classroom: the good, the bad, the ugly.

This talk focuses on the implications of using Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) in the higher education classroom setting – the opportunities, challenges, and areas for caution in terms of its environmental costs. It seeks to raise awareness of the significant energy consumption, water utilisation and ethical dilemma with raw material extraction for graphic processing units

Evidence synthesis methodology for questions relating to barriers and enablers in health care: a scoping review.

The objective of this scoping review was to map the range of methodologies and methods used to undertake evidence synthesis aimed at determining barriers and/or enablers in health care and to inform further research relevant to synthesis methodology in this area. Questions related to identifying and exploring barriers and/or enablers within healthcare are becoming increasingly popular. Currently, there are multiple approaches to synthesizing this evidence and it is unclear if a more consistent approach is warranted. Evidence synthesis on barriers and/or enablers (facilitators) that included interest holders at different levels of the health system were considered. Evidence synthesis projects had to include primary research studies and were published from 2010 to 2021. Literature reviews, narrative reviews and umbrella reviews were excluded as were reviews published in languages other than English. This scoping review followed JBI methodology and was based on a published a priori protocol and reported in line with PRISMA-ScR. A three-step search strategy using a combination of key terms and index headings was undertaken in October 2021 via the following databases/resources: PubMed (NLM), Embase (Elsevier), CINAHL (EBSCOhost), PsycINFO (Ovid), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, JBI Evidence Synthesis, and EPPI-Centre Systematic Reviews. An extensive piloting process for screening and selection, and data extraction was undertaken due to the large number of reviewers involved. All records were screened independently by two reviewers and any disagreements were resolved through either a third reviewer or discussion with a panel of reviewers. Extraction was undertaken using a customized form and data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Data is presented via tables, figures, word clouds and infographics and supplemented with a narrative synthesis. Following completion of the search, 22308 records were screened and 782 review were included in the scoping review. Systematic reviews were the most frequently used methodology [68%] to synthesize barrier and/or enabler question/s. Reviews commonly included diverse types of evidence and involved an assessment of methodological quality [70%]. Findings related to barriers and/or enablers were usually grouped and organized into categories, often by thematic methods [33%] or a narrative approach [21%]. Incongruencies related to nomenclature, missing information and methods used were evident across the large data set. A variety of methodological approaches are being followed to undertake reviews focused on barriers and/or enablers in health care. The current state of the literature indicates most authors answer these questions via the conduct of a systematic review and include diverse types of evidence. Further work is needed to determine whether authors are unclear when deciding on methodology and whether guidance is required

Interpretable decision trees to predict solution fitness.

Metaheuristic algorithms are powerful tools for tackling complex optimization problems, but their black-box nature often hinders user trust and understanding. This paper presents a novel methodology for enhancing the explainability of metaheuristics by employing decision trees with splitting criteria based on Partial Solutions. These represent beneficial sub-structures of solutions and provide insights into the problem landscape and solution characteristics. By constructing decision trees that consider the presence or absence of specific patterns in solutions, we produce a transparent model capable of predicting solution fitness. The proposed methodology is evaluated on a diverse set of benchmark problems and metaheuristic algorithms, demonstrating its effectiveness and flexibility as a post-hoc explainability tool. Our results show that our decision trees can match and usually surpass traditional methods in predicting the fitness of candidate solutions for the tested benchmark problems, with one of our methods demonstrating an improvement between 4.4% and 16.7% in R2 predictive performance for shallower trees trained on a Genetic Algorithm's data. These trees are able to maintain competitive predictive performance while using more interpretable splitting criteria