Grouping behaviour and decision making in road tunnels evacuation in smoke conditions Experimental approach

We have performed a set of evacuation experiments in a road tunnel. In each experiment pedestrians were gathered in a bus, the bus was stopped in the tunnel, next the tunnel was filled with artificial smoke and pedestrians had to evacuate. We compared evacuation times and behaviours for different levels of visibility, defined by extinction coefficient Cs range

Exposure to particles from laser printers operating within office workplaces

While recent research has provided valuable information as to the composition of laser printer particles, their formation mechanisms, and explained why some printers are emitters whilst others are low emitters, fundamental questions relating to the potential exposure of office workers remained unanswered. In particular, (i) what impact does the operation of laser printers have on the background particle number concentration (PNC) of an office environment over the duration of a typical working day?; (ii) what is the airborne particle exposure to office workers in the vicinity of laser printers; (iii) what influence does the office ventilation have upon the transport and concentration of particles?; (iv) is there a need to control the generation of, and/or transport of particles arising from the operation of laser printers within an office environment?; (v) what instrumentation and methodology is relevant for characterising such particles within an office location? We present experimental evidence on printer temporal and spatial PNC during the operation of 107 laser printers within open plan offices of five buildings. We show for the first time that the eight-hour time-weighted average printer particle exposure is significantly less than the eight-hour time-weighted local background particle exposure, but that peak printer particle exposure can be greater than two orders of magnitude higher than local background particle exposure. The particle size range is predominantly ultrafine (< 100nm diameter). In addition we have established that office workers are constantly exposed to non-printer derived particle concentrations, with up to an order of magnitude difference in such exposure amongst offices, and propose that such exposure be controlled along with exposure to printer derived particles. We also propose, for the first time, that peak particle reference values be calculated for each office area analogous to the criteria used in Australia and elsewhere for evaluating exposure excursion above occupational hazardous chemical exposure standards. A universal peak particle reference value of 2.0 x 104 particles cm-3 has been proposed

Environmental test chamber for the support of learning and teaching in intelligent control

The paper describes the utility of a low cost, 1 m2 by 2 m forced ventilation, micro-climate test chamber, for the support of research and teaching in mechatronics. Initially developed for the evaluation of a new ventilation rate controller, the fully instrumented chamber now provides numerous learning opportunities and individual projects for both undergraduate and postgraduate research students

Project RISE: Recognizing Industrial Smoke Emissions

Industrial smoke emissions pose a significant concern to human health. Prior works have shown that using Computer Vision (CV) techniques to identify smoke as visual evidence can influence the attitude of regulators and empower citizens to pursue environmental justice. However, existing datasets are not of sufficient quality nor quantity to train the robust CV models needed to support air quality advocacy. We introduce RISE, the first large-scale video dataset for Recognizing Industrial Smoke Emissions. We adopted a citizen science approach to collaborate with local community members to annotate whether a video clip has smoke emissions. Our dataset contains 12,567 clips from 19 distinct views from cameras that monitored three industrial facilities. These daytime clips span 30 days over two years, including all four seasons. We ran experiments using deep neural networks to establish a strong performance baseline and reveal smoke recognition challenges. Our survey study discussed community feedback, and our data analysis displayed opportunities for integrating citizen scientists and crowd workers into the application of Artificial Intelligence for social good.Comment: Technical repor

The ballad of Isosceles : artist's pages

The triangle is no Gestalt. The real structures are intersubjective. They cannot be localized anywhere; the triangle has no reality anywhere; it is a systematic metaphor, systematically pursued.– René Girard The Ballad of Isosceles is a performance installation for two people at a time, which is then witnessed by a larger ‘shadow’ audience who sit and watch from the sidelines. The piece is concerned with the voyeurism and the weird wonders of vicarious pleasure. It was created as part of a residency at Contact Theatre (Manchester) for its 2015 Sensored Festival of Performance. It has gone on to be developed through performances at the University of Salford's Digital Performance Lab and Catalyst Arts's FIX15 Biennale of Live Performance (Belfast)

Automated Complexity-Sensitive Image Fusion

To construct a complete representation of a scene with environmental obstacles such as fog, smoke, darkness, or textural homogeneity, multisensor video streams captured in diferent modalities are considered. A computational method for automatically fusing multimodal image streams into a highly informative and unified stream is proposed. The method consists of the following steps: 1. Image registration is performed to align video frames in the visible band over time, adapting to the nonplanarity of the scene by automatically subdividing the image domain into regions approximating planar patches 2. Wavelet coefficients are computed for each of the input frames in each modality 3. Corresponding regions and points are compared using spatial and temporal information across various scales 4. Decision rules based on the results of multimodal image analysis are used to combine thewavelet coefficients from different modalities 5. The combined wavelet coefficients are inverted to produce an output frame containing useful information gathered from the available modalities Experiments show that the proposed system is capable of producing fused output containing the characteristics of color visible-spectrum imagery while adding information exclusive to infrared imagery, with attractive visual and informational properties

Potential harmful health effects of inhaling nicotine-free shisha-pen vapor: a chemical risk assessment of the main components propylene glycol and glycerol

Background A shisha-pen is an electronic cigarette variant that is advertised to mimic the taste of a water pipe, or shisha. The aim of this study was to assess the potential harmful health effects caused by inhaling the vapor of a nicotine-free shisha-pen. Methods Gas chromatography analysis was performed to determine the major components in shisha-pen vapor. Risk assessment was performed using puff volumes of e-cigarettes and “normal” cigarettes and a 1-puff scenario (one-time exposure). The concentrations that reached the airways and lungs after using a shisha-pen were calculated and compared to data from published toxicity studies. Results The main components in shisha-pen vapor are propylene glycol and glycerol (54%/46%). One puff (50 to 70 mL) results in exposure of propylene glycol and glycerol of 430 to 603 mg/m3 and 348 to 495 mg/m3, respectively. These exposure concentrations were higher than the points of departure for airway irritation based on a human study (propylene glycol, mean concentration of 309 mg/m3) and a rat study (glycerol, no-observed adverse effect level of 165 mg/m3). Conclusions Already after one puff of the shisha-pen, the concentrations of propylene glycol and glycerol are sufficiently high to potentially cause irritation of the airways. New products such as the shisha-pen should be detected and risks should be assessed to inform regulatory actions aimed at limiting potential harm that may be caused to consumers and protecting young people to take up smoking

The Return of the Curse of the Mummy’s Revenge, December 11, 1987 – February 6, 1988

A musical by Pembroke, Ontario’s, James Saar, that includes sarcophagi, mummies, creepy special effects and a strange love story set in ancient Egypt. The play starts with an introduction to the ancient tragic love story of Ankara and Kharum, who have been sealed in a tomb together 4,002 years ago. The show is a spoof on the adventure films of the 1980’s. There are the 3 stereotypical male roles; rugged American guide, German archeologist, and British secret agent. This bungling trio of unlikely heroes is joined by the American’s ditzy girlfriend and the German’s reserved daughter. Together they move through the humourous script which keeps the audience chuckling.https://source.sheridancollege.ca/faad_visu_uniq_theatre/1160/thumbnail.jp

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PROTECTION OF VINEYARDS AND ORCHARDS AGAINST HOAR AND FROST

No matter how favourable the light and humidity conditions may be, plant growth stops when the air and leaf temperature drops below a certain minimum or exceeds a certain maximum value. When air temperatures drop below 0 °C, susceptible crops can be injured, with significant effects on production. Hoar and late frosts occur differently, there are areas where the number of days in the spring months with critical temperature drops are quite numerous, with a frequency in April and exceptionally during May. The negative effect is all the greater as it is recorded after a warm period which can cause an advance of the period of formation of flower buds and the appearance of flowers. The paper presents a series of considerations on the protection of orchards and vineyards against hoar and late frosts