Case Studies of Environmental Visualization

The performance gap between simulation and reality has been identified as a major challenge to achieving sustainability in the Built Environment. While Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) surveys are an integral part of better understanding building performance, and thus addressing this issue, the importance of POE remains relatively unacknowledged within the wider Built Environment community. A possible reason that has been highlighted is that POE survey data is not easily understood and utilizable by non-expert stakeholders, including designers. A potential method by which to address this is the visualization method, which has well established benefits for communication of big datasets. This paper presents two case studies where EnViz (short for “Environmental Visualization”), a prototype software application developed for research purposes, was utilized and its effectiveness tested via a range of analysis tasks. The results are discussed and compared with those of previous work that utilized variations of the methods presented here. The paper concludes by presenting the lessons drawn from the five-year period of EnViz, emphasizing the potential of environmental visualization for decision support in environmental design and engineering for the built environment, and suggests directions for future development

Rhodium-Catalyzed Direct C–H Amidation of Azobenzenes with Sulfonyl Azides: A Synthetic Route to Sterically Hindered <i>ortho</i>-Substituted Aromatic Azo Compounds

A rhodium­(III)-catalyzed direct <i>ortho</i>-amidation of azobenzenes with sulfonyl azides as the amino source is disclosed. This reaction exhibits a broad substrate scope, high functional group tolerance, and regioselectivity, providing a variety of sterically hindered <i>ortho</i>-substituted azobenzene derivatives in good to excellent yield

One-Pot Surfactantless Route to Polyaniline Hollow Nanospheres with Incontinuous Multicavities and Application for the Removal of Lead Ions from Water

Polyaniline (PANI) hollow nanospheres with controllable incontinuous nanocavities ranging in size from 10 to 50 nm as a novel hollow nanostructure have been successfully fabricated by chemical polymerization of aniline with chloroaurate acid as the oxidant and citric acid as the doping acid. Experimental factors, such as concentration and kind of oxidant and doping acid, were investigated to illustrate their effect on morphology of PANI. According to experimental results and time-dependent investigations, a possible formation mechanism involved was then proposed. The adaptability of this route to hollow nanostructures with multicavities of other conducting polymer was also revealed. Furthermore, the adsorption properties of PANI hollow nanospheres toward lead ions in water were investigated

Synthesis and liquid crystalline property of H-shaped 1,3,4-thiadiazole dimers

<div><p>Two H-shaped liquid crystalline 1,3,4-thiadiazole dimers <b>D₁ and D₂</b> and the corresponding monomers <b>M₁ and M₂</b> were synthesised and characterised by ¹H/¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and high-resolution mass spectrometry. The thermal properties of the dimers and monomers were investigated by polarised optical microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis. All of these compounds exhibited liquid crystalline behaviours with excellent thermal stabilities. The dimers displayed an enantiotropic or a monotropic nematic phase, while the monomers showed nematic and/or smectic A phases enantiotropically. The nature of the mesophases was determined by the molecular shapes and the terminal groups. Notably, the H-shaped dimers exhibited much lower clearing temperatures than the corresponding rod-like monomers.</p></div

Impact of Alkyl Chain Length on the Transition of Hexagonal Liquid Crystal–Wormlike Micelle–Gel in Ionic Liquid-Type Surfactant Aqueous Solutions without Any Additive

The search for functional supramolecular aggregations with different structure has attracted interest of chemists because they have the potential in industrial and technological application. Hydrophobic interaction has great influence on the formation of these aggregations, such as hexagonal liquid crystals, wormlike micelles, hydrogels, etc. So a systematical investigation was done to investigate the influence of alkyl chain length of surfactants on the aggregation behavior in water. The aggregation behavior of 1-hexadecyl-3-alkyl imidazolium bromide and water has been systematically investigated. These ionic liquid surfactants are denoted as C₁₆–C_<i>n</i> (<i>n</i> = 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16). The rheological behavior and microstructure were characterized via a combination of rheology, cryo-etch scanning electron microscopy, polarization optical microscopy, and X-ray crystallography. The alkyl chain has great influence on the formation of surfactant aggregates in water at the molecular level. With increasing alkyl chain length, different aggregates, such as hexagonal liquid crystals, wormlike micelles, and hydrogels can be fabricated: C₁₆–C₂ aqueous solution only forms hexagonal liquid crystal; C₁₆–C₃ aqueous solution forms wormlike micelle and hexagonal liquid crystal; C₁₆–C₄, C₁₆–C₆ and C₁₆–C₈ aqueous solutions only form wormlike micelle; C₁₆–C₉ aqueous solution experiences a transition between wormlike micelle and hydrogel; C₁₆–C₁₀, C₁₆–C₁₂, C₁₆–C₁₄ and C₁₆–C₁₆ only form hydrogel. The mechanism of the transition of different aggregation with increasing alkyl chain length was also proposed

Yolk@Shell Nanoarchitecture of Au@r-GO/TiO₂ Hybrids as Powerful Visible Light Photocatalysts

Yolk@shell nanostructures of Au@r-GO/TiO₂ with mesoporous shells were prepared by a sol–gel coating process sequentially with GO and TiO₂ on Au/SiO₂ core/shell spheres, followed by calcination and template removal, where the silica interlayer acts as a template not only to produce the void space but also to promote the coating of the r-GO and TiO₂ layer. The evaluation of visible light photocatalytic activities in dye decomposition and water-splitting H₂ production demonstrated their superior photocatalytic performance, which indicates their potential as powerful photocatalysts

Numerical modelling of ion transport in flames

<p>This paper presents a modelling framework to compute the diffusivity and mobility of ions in flames. The (<i>n</i>, 6, 4) interaction potential is adopted to model collisions between neutral and charged species. All required parameters in the potential are related to the polarizability of the species pair via semi-empirical formulas, which are derived using the most recently published data or best estimates. The resulting framework permits computation of the transport coefficients of any ion found in a hydrocarbon flame. The accuracy of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing its predictions with experimental data on the mobility of selected ions in single-component neutral gases. Based on this analysis, the value of a model constant available in the literature is modified in order to improve the model's predictions. The newly determined ion transport coefficients are used as part of a previously developed numerical approach to compute the distribution of charged species in a freely propagating premixed lean CH₄/O₂ flame. Since a significant scatter of polarizability data exists in the literature, the effects of changes in polarizability on ion transport properties and the spatial distribution of ions in flames are explored. Our analysis shows that changes in polarizability propagate with decreasing effect from binary transport coefficients to species number densities. We conclude that the chosen polarizability value has a limited effect on the ion distribution in freely propagating flames. We expect that the modelling framework proposed here will benefit future efforts in modelling the effect of external voltages on flames. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13647830.2015.1090018" target="_blank">http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13647830.2015.1090018</a>.</p

Carbon-Incorporated NiO/TiO₂ Mesoporous Shells with p–n Heterojunctions for Efficient Visible Light Photocatalysis

Carbon-incorporated mesoporous NiO/TiO₂ (NiO/TiO₂/C) hybrid shells as low-cost and highly efficient visible light photocatalysts have been developed. The NiO/TiO₂/C hybrid shells were synthesized by choosing polystyrene nanospheres as templates, followed by TiO₂ and NiO coating, and finally the calcination post-treatment to carbonize PS with the aid of metal oxides. Polystyrene nanospheres serve dual purposes as both a template to ensure the hollow structure and the electrically conductive graphite carbon source. Evaluation of their photocatalytic activity by organic pollutes (rhodamine B, methylene blue, and phenol) degradation and H₂ production under visible light demonstrated the superior photocatalytic performance, thanks to the enhanced visible-light absorption and exciton separation associated with the incorporation of electrically conductive graphite carbon

Additional file 1 of Dissecting the shared genetic landscape of anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia

Additional file 1: Additional Figure S1–S30