Design and optimization of a zero energy building

Thesis (Master)--Izmir Institute of Technology, Mechanical Engineering, Izmir, 2004Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 96)Text in English; Abstract: Turkish and Englishxiv, 148 leavesIzmir Institute of Technology (IZTECH), founded in 1992, is the third state university of Izmir. The campus area has the renewable energy sources of several kinds. The aim of this thesis is to design and optimize a building, which produce its own energy by using these sources.Gülbahçe Zero Energy Building (GUZEB) is designed as a library and a gallery, and to be used for symposiums and special day meetings. 32oC geothermal water that is from the ancient cave, which is located in campus area and close to the location of the building, will be used for heating and to meet the hot water requirement of the building. Floor heating system considered being the best heating option with 32oC water source. Necessary pipe length for floor heating system is found by using the software FLUENT.Necessary cooling load is calculated in two different ways by with and without hourly load distribution. With hourly load distribution cooling load calculation is made by using Alarko-Carrier .s HVAC Design Hourly Analysis Program.Additionally, energy storage method is recommended for the cooling plant, which will meet the cooling load. With this method, smaller cooling plant can be chosen instead of choosing cooling plant, which meets the load of symposium days or special day meetings that both are rare. Because of this, electrical load of the cooling plant considered to be lower.Silica-aerogel and many different isolation materials are used in the design of building.s isolation. Fiber lighting is recommended to decrease the lighting load of the building and with automatic controlled curtains and panels; daylight can be controlled during the summer days. So, electric consumption of the building can be tried to be decrease. The wind speed of the location is 5-7 m/s. Electric demand can be met with the photovoltaic panels and wind turbine that will be located in suitable position

Using fMRI to investigate speech-stream segregation and auditory attention in healthy adults and patients with memory complaints

Poor memory for recent conversations is the commonest presenting symptom in patients attending a cognitive neurology clinic. They also frequently have greater difficulty following and remembering conversations in the presence of background noise and/or unattended speech. While the ability to participate in and recall conversations depends on several cognitive functions (language-processing, attention, episodic and working memory), without the ability to perform auditory scene analysis, and more specifically speech-stream segregation, recall of verbal information will be impaired as a consequence of poor initial registration, over and above impaired encoding and subsequent retrieval. This thesis investigated auditory attention and speech-stream segregation in healthy participants (‘controls’) and patients presenting with ‘poor memory’, particularly a complaint of difficulty remembering recent verbal information. Although this resulted in the recruitment of many patients with possible or probable Alzheimer’s disease, it also included patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) of uncertain aetiology and a few with depression. Functional MRI data revealed brain activity involved in attention, working memory and speech-stream segregation as participants attended to a speaker in the absence and presence of background speech. The study on controls demonstrated that the right anterior insula, adjacent frontal operculum, left planum temporale and precuneus were more active when the attended speaker was partially masked by unattended speech. Analyses also revealed a central role for a right hemisphere system for successful attentive listening, a system that was not modulated by administration of a central cholinesterase inhibitor. Therefore, this study identified non-auditory higher-order regions in speech-stream segregation, and the demands on a right hemisphere system during attentive listening. Administration of a central cholinesterase inhibitor did not identify any benefit in the present patient group. However, my research has identified systems that might be therapeutic targets when attempting to modulate auditory attention and speech-stream segregation in patients with neurodegenerative disease.Open Acces

The Attentional Control of Reading: Insights from Behavior, Imaging and Development

The process by which the initially attention-requiring task of transforming scribbles into meaningful concepts eventually becomes facile remains a central riddle of cognitive neuroscience. This body of work represents an effort to provide forward movement in answering the question of how attentional control mediates the process of reading, both by considering different stages of reading competence (development) and by seeking convergence between types of evidence (behavior and imaging). Inspired by a study published by Balota and colleagues in 2000, the paradigm used throughout this work involves comparing a simple speeded reading task vs. a regularize ( sound out ) task (Balota et al. 2000). In the first data chapter, I replicate the essential findings of the Balota et al. study in 2 young adult cohorts, confirming that stimulus characteristics, including lexicality and frequency, influence reading task performance in a manner that is modulated by top-down attentional control. I furthermore argue that the reaction time (RT) patterns are consistent with 2 distinct mechanisms by which top-down attentional control interacts with reading processes, pathway control and response checking. I then present evidence, motivated by the 2-mechanism hypothesis, that 2 sets of brain regions, including members of previously defined attentional control networks, show separable activity patterns that map nicely onto roles reflecting pathway control and response checking. In the second data chapter, I show that 8-10 year old children, like young adults, can perform the regularize task. Unexpectedly, the early readers are faster than the experienced readers to regularize, and this speed advantage for children holds for both words and pseudowords. Because children are slower than adults across a range of cognitive tasks (e.g., Kail 1991) - with children showing particular immaturity with regard to inhibiting prepotent responses (e.g., Davidson et al. 2006) - the developmental observation is remarkable in and of itself. Complemented by a cadre of post hoc analyses, the age groups differences can also be interpreted as additional support for the 2-mechanism interaction of attention and reading. Together, these results suggest that dissociable subcomponents of attentional control interact with subcomponents of reading processing, and that these interactions are dynamic across skill development and across task demands

The Granite Monthly, a New Hampshire magazine, devoted to literature, history, and state progress. vol. 46

Covers January - December, 1914. Vol. XLVI, Nos. 1-1

Assessment of Utricular Nerve, Hair Cell and Mechanical Function, in vivo.

Vestibular research currently relies on single response measures such as ex vivo hair cell and in vivo single unit recordings. Although these methods allow detailed insight into the response properties of individual vestibular hair cells and neurons, they do not provide a holistic understanding of peripheral vestibular functioning and its relationship to vestibular pathology in a living system. For this to take place, in vivo recordings of peripheral vestibular nerve, hair cell and mechanical function are needed. The previous inability to record vestibular hair cell responses stemmed from a difficulty in accessing the vestibular end-organs and stimulating them in isolation of the cochlea. To circumvent this, we developed a ventral surgical approach, removing the cochlea, to provide full access to the basal surface of the utricular macula. This allowed functional and mechanical utricular hair cell recordings, alongside gross utricular nerve responses. Recordings were performed in anaesthetized guinea pigs using Bone Conducted Vibration (BCV) and Air Conducted Sound (ACS) stimuli, providing a clinical link to vestibular reflex testing. We have thus far performed experiments involving: 1) Selective manipulation of vestibular nerve function, using electrical stimulation of the central vestibular system. 2) Glass micropipette recordings from the basal surface of the macular epithelium, which provided a robust and localized measure of extracellular utricular hair cell function. 3) With the macular exposed, we have measured the dynamic motion of the macula using Laser Doppler Vibrometry, which was recorded alongside the hair cell and nerve response recordings. 4) We have used physiological and pharmacological experimental manipulations to selectively modulate utricular nerve, hair cell or mechanical function, demonstrating the ability to differentially diagnose the basis of peripheral vestibular disorders in the mammalian utricle. These tools allow for a more complete understanding of peripheral vestibular function and a first order perspective into clinical disorders effecting the otoliths

Fertile Links? Connections between tourism activities, socioeconomic contexts and local development in European rural areas

In many European regions, rural areas are facing major challenges in economic and social terms, consequence of transformations in the role and meaning of agriculture. The loss of the productive character strongly contributed to the emergence of new roles and functions, particularly related to leisure and tourism. The book aims to discuss questions directly related to the connections between rural tourism and local socioeconomic contexts, presenting diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives and diff erent case studies from various European regions. The book addresses the relationships among rural tourism and the complex interactions, confl icts and innovative processes developing in rural territories as consequence of the implementation of tourism activities. The book responds to some relevant and not yet comprehensively researched aspects within this topic, especially in what extent tourism, in its various forms and processes, might give an important contribution to rural development

Translocator Protein 18 kDa: from Biomarker to Function

Translocator Protein 18 kDa (TSPO) is a protein that is expressed at low levels in the brain, but upon brain injury or inflammation, increases its expression in the areas of the brain specific to injury. In this way, TSPO can be used as a biomarker of brain inflammation and injury. TSPO is primarily expressed in two cell types, microglia and astrocytes, and is used as a marker of reactive gliosis in various brain pathologies. Currently, there is a paucity of knowledge on the function(s) of TSPO in glial cells. Recent studies using conditional and global TSPO knockout mice have questioned the role of TSPO in translocating cholesterol across the outer mitochondrial membrane as the first step in steroidogenesis. In the brain, microglia and astrocytes exhibit distinct spatial and temporal patterns of TSPO upregulation. These differential patterns are not well characterized across disease models and in particular, are poorly characterized in the early stages of disease, prior to behavioral and clinical disease manifestations. Importantly, these distinct patterns of TSPO upregulation may indicate different functions of TSPO in microglia and astrocytes. We examined TSPO levels in a neurodegenerative transgenic mouse model of Sandhoff disease (SD) and longitudinally compared TSPO levels to behavioral manifestations of disease and other neuropathological endpoints (neurodegeneration, reactive gliosis, ganglioside accumulation). This study confirmed TSPO upregulation prior to neurodegeneration in a brain region-dependent and disease course-dependent way. In brain regions with increased TSPO levels, there was a differential pattern of glial cell activation with astrocytes being activated earlier than microglia during the progression of disease. Immunofluorescent confocal imaging confirmed that TSPO colocalizes with both microglia and astrocyte markers, but the glial source of the TSPO response differs by brain region and age in SD mice. We next wanted to gain insight into the function of TSPO in microglia. We previously demonstrated that TSPO ligands (TSPO-L) (1-100 nM) induced intracellular ROS production which was abrogated by NADPH oxidase (NOX2) inhibitors, thereby indicating an association between TSPO and NOX2. To further elucidate the relationship between TSPO and NOX, we determined the source of ROS production resulting from microglia exposure to TSPO-L. Intracellular and extracellular ROS production was inhibited by NOX inhibitors, but not by a mitochondria permeability transition pore inhibitor, indicating that the source of ROS production is from NOX and not from mitochondria. These findings were confirmed using the mitochondria specific ROS probe MitoSOX. To further explore the TSPO-NOX2 association, we used 3 molecular approaches to examine protein-protein interactions under unstimulated or stimulated conditions (100 ng/mL lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for 18 hours) in primary microglia. 1) Co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP) revealed that the NOX2 subunits, gp91phox (gp91) and p22phox (p22), co-IP with TSPO supporting a protein-protein interaction. TSPO’s association with gp91 and p22 decreased with activation, but TSPO’s association with VDAC, a mitochondrial protein, remained constant. These findings suggest that microglia activation changes the dynamics of the TSPO-NOX2 interaction. 2) Confocal imaging and colocalization analysis of TSPO/gp91 or TSPO/p22 immunofluorescence confirmed that TSPO colocalizes with both NOX subunits. Under stimulated conditions, TSPO associated with gp91 and TSPO associated with p22, exhibit significantly decreased colocalization with VDAC suggesting a movement from the mitochondria to other cellular compartments. 3) Duolink Proximity Ligation Assay confirmed that TSPO interacts with p22, gp91 and VDAC. Our results suggest a novel TSPO-gp91-p22 interaction with VDAC in primary microglia that is disrupted by microglia activation and may be involved with redox homeostasis with significant implications for a new understanding of TSPO glial cell biology. In summary, the present studies have strengthened the use of TSPO as a preclinical biomarker, confirmed its specific spatiotemporal upregulation in two cell types and have provided a new potential function of TSPO in microglia that has the possibility to revolutionize the TSPO field and to inform neurotoxicity assessments and neurological disease treatments