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Background: The interactions between people and places can have a significant impact on the wellbeing of individuals, particularly in warm, arid countries such as South Africa. Coupled to this are the various risks that climate change poses to the development of communities, particularly in informal settlements. Several of these risks include the increasing prevalence of contaminants in water and land, as well as the challenges of managing the effects of climate change.Objectives: This conceptual analysis aims to highlight the need for a transdisciplinary approach to investigating the interaction between informal urban living spaces, environmental and social determinants of health and further propose a framework that incorporates tools and strategies to improve health and wellbeing.Discussion: Despite the various advantages of living in an urban environment, many people in informal settlements still lack access to adequate sanitation and water services. This is why it is important that we develop a comprehensive understanding of how these changes can be accommodated in the future. This can be done through the collection of data from the people who live in these communities. A comprehensive understanding of the environmental and social determinants of health, coupled with innovative monitoring systems, would provide a more holistic approach to suggesting a practical strategy for promoting health and wellbeing in communities while working towards developing safe and sustainable health-promoting living spaces.Conclusion: Currently there is a paucity of information regarding access to water, sanitation and health services, coupled with environmental pollution and poor living conditions causing diseases affecting informal communities, furthermore practical and viable changes to address these concerns are similarly lacking. To ensure that healthier built environments are provided for children and adults, transdisciplinary approaches between researchers and collaboration with, communities within informal settlements and with policymakers to promote health advocacy is essential.

Abstract Background Real-world data on the long-term use of guselkumab for treatment of psoriasis are still limited. Objective We aimed to evaluate long-term efficacy, safety, and drug survival of guselkumab in a real-world setting. Methods This is a retrospective study analyzing Czech Republic registry (BIOREP) data of patients treated with guselkumab. Results In total, 333 patients were included. Improvement in Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score was significant. Mean PASI score decreased from 16 at baseline to 0.7, 0.9, and 0.8 after 12, 24, and 36 months, respectively. Absolute PASI scores of ≤ 3 and ≤ 1 were achieved in 93.9% and 77.9%, 94.2% and 71.0%, and 94.8% and 70.7% of patients after 12, 24, and 36 months, respectively. Response PASI 90 and PASI 100 were attained in 81.8% and 57.1%, 75.4% and 50.7%, and 75.9% and 55.2% of patients after 12, 24, and 36 months, respectively. The percentage of patients achieving PASI 90 and PASI 100 responses was higher throughout the study in bio-naive and in normal-weight patients, while presence of psoriatic arthritis had no influence. Improvement in Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) score was also significant; mean DLQI score decreased from 14.2 at baseline to 0.9, 1.0, and 0.7 after 12, 24, and 36 months, respectively. Patients with PASI 100 had lower mean DLQI throughout the study compared with patients with PASI 90. Major reason for discontinuation was loss of effectiveness in 7.1% of patients, while only 0.6% were due to adverse events. Overall cumulative drug survival was high, with only a minimal decline over time, reaching 91.6%, 87.0%, and 85.5% after 12, 24, and 36 months, respectively. Drug survival was not affected by previous biological treatment, patient weight, or presence of psoriatic arthritis. Conclusions This real-world study demonstrated the long-term effectiveness, good safety profile, and high drug survival of guselkumab treatment over a period of 36 months.

Since low-income and social housing are among the most vulnerable built environments to climate change, this article evaluates the energy performance of social housing in the context of enabling net-zero carbon social housing in South Africa (SA). It seeks to investigate how improved and conscious energy-efficient design in the context of social housing contributes toward a climate change mitigation response in SA. The article analyses energy use and indoor comfort, based on ASHRAE 55-2004 Standard, of two social housing case studies to review the potential of the social housing sector to contribute to the national climate mitigating agenda. The findings highlight that the housing provision itself is not an adequate response, but that bio-climatic design solutions with appropriate spatial and material choices, along with efficient envelope articulation, play a critical role in lowering energy use and improving user comfort. There is, however, a need to challenge the growing advent of (energy-) inefficient and carbon-intensive social housing in SA and simultaneously address the parallel crisis of homelessness, to enable a sustainable future for the built environment.

This article describes strategic design decisions that architects can make during the initial stages of a project to minimise the use of construction materials, reduce carbon emissions and increase energy efficiency. A proposed prototypical Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station Switch is used as a case study. The investigation focuses on minimising the use of construction materials through an iterative design and assessment process. This article extends an earlier study which analysed existing BRT stations in South Africa by conducting comparative life-cycle analyses (LCA). The earlier study by Hugo, Stoffberg & Barker (2012) identified a series of guidelines to inform the design of low-carbon and embodied energy BRT stations and determined a specific station, the MyCiti station, as the most efficient in terms of its carbon footprint and embodied energy intensity. As a result, the MyCiti station was identified as benchmark for future LCAs of station designs. The Switch prototypical BRT station is purpose designed for the Tshwane1 context and uses the identified guidelines (Hugo, Stoffberg & Barker, 2012) as well as carbon footprint (CF) and embodied energy (EE) of construction systems and materials as design informants generated from a study conducted by Jones (2011b). These informed material choices, use of low-carbon structural systems and integration of multifunctional station components. A cradle-to-gate2 life-cycle assessment compares the CF and EE of the Switch station and an existing South African precedent, the MyCiti station in Cape Town. The Switch station is 35% and 34% (4.08 GJ/m2 & 378.6kgCO2/m2 vs 6.28 GJ/m2 & 574.7kgCO2/m2) more efficient than the existing MyCiti station, in terms of respective embodied energy intensity and carbon-footprint intensity. This prototype is proposed as a benchmark for prospective life-cycle analyses to inform the material choice and design of future BRT stations in South Africa.

This article investigates the role that architecture can play in mitigating climate change by comparing the environmental impact of construction material use in two existing South African Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stations in Johannesburg and Cape Town and a proposed BRT station for Tshwane. The article will generate guidelines to improve the resource efficiency of future BRT trunk-route stations. The climate change mitigation potential of BRT stations has been determined by analysing their carbon footprint and embodied energy over the cradle to gate1 period. The quantity of construction material used in each station was calculated, while the carbon footprint intensity and embodied energy intensity were determined by means of the Inventory of Carbon & Energy (ICE) carbon and embodied energy calculator. Calculations of embodied energy of structural systems and material use reveal that the Cape Town station is 36.5% more efficient in terms of carbon footprint intensity and embodied energy intensity than the Johannesburg station and 23.2% more efficient than the Tshwane station. The station base is the most energy-intensive component, contributing an average of 38% to the total embodied energy. It was concluded that steel contributes more than 50% to the total carbon footprint and embodied energy of each station. The analysis determines that lower scaled, spatially economical structures using low embodied energy materials will positively contribute to reduced carbon footprints and thus climate change mitigation strategies. The outcomes of the article also set a benchmark for prospective life-cycle assessments (LCA) and establish design guidelines for the design of future BRT stations.

Zero-Acreage Farming (ZAF) recently developed as a novel land-use form and is aimed at addressing food security and sustainable urban development. While it is often lauded as a sustainable land-use form with potential to improve resource consumption and urban sustainability, little research into the spatial and technological requirements of this land-use form is available. This study undertakes a comparative analysis of ZAF and ground-based urban agriculture (UA) farms in diverse countries to differentiate their technical and spatial implementation parameters and uncover ZAF-specific characteristics and their implementation feasibility in rapidly developing cities. This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews, triangulated with observational studies, to document ZAF and UA farms in South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands and Singapore. The findings reveal UA as highly flexible, modular landuse forms while, contrastingly, the technological focus of ZAF farms often results in monofunctional and inflexible once implemented, isolated, and non-contextual solutions. While ZAF farms are appropriate to improve livelihoods and food security in dense urban contexts, the study highlights trends that must be addressed to promote the implementation of ZAF in poorer rapidly developing cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of Sn on Si(557) has been studied by M. Jäger et al. (article no. 1900152) in order to elucidate the possibility to form defined nanowires. For low Sn-coverage, the surface structure consists of ca. 3 nm wide (111) terraces covered with the Sn structure separated by triple steps, similar to Ag/Si(557). The cover image shows a 3D rendered scanning tunneling microscope image of such Sn-nanowires grown on vicinal Si(111). [Extracted from the article]

In this paper we describe a new spin detector designed and manufactured at SPbPU. This device makes it possible to analyze the polarization of the secondary electron flux conserving the information about the electrons' spatial distribution. The main stages of development, construction and testing the detector are discussed in details. As a result, the possibility of implementing such devices has been proved in principle. At the same time, both high spatial resolution of this device and its efficiency were demonstrated. Combining such detectors with hemispherical energy analyzers will make it possible to obtain spin-resolved dispersion images of the structure under study.

Sixteen volunteers each drank 700 ml sugar-containing soft drink during two successive periods and the blood sugar was measured at 10 min intervals together with electrical impedance spectroscopy and near infrared spectroscopy (NIR). A maximum correlation of 0.46 was found for the electrical measurements but no clear separation between low and high blood glucose levels were found in the NIR measurements. The latter was attributed to the experimental design where the NIR probe was removed from the skin between each measurement.