182,948 research outputs found
High quality indoor environments for sustainable office buildings
The quality of office indoor environments is considered to consist of those factors that impact
occupants according to their health and well-being and (by consequence) their productivity.
Indoor Environment Quality (IEQ) can be characterized by four indicators:
⢠Indoor air quality indicators
⢠Thermal comfort indicators
⢠Lighting indicators
⢠Noise indicators.
Within each indicator, there are specific metrics that can be utilized in determining an
acceptable quality of an indoor environment based on existing knowledge and best practice.
Examples of these metrics are: indoor air levels of pollutants or odorants; operative
temperature and its control; radiant asymmetry; task lighting; glare; ambient noise. The way
in which these metrics impact occupants is not fully understood, especially when multiple
metrics may interact in their impacts. While the potential cost of lost productivity from poor
IEQ has been estimated to exceed building operation costs, the level of impact and the
relative significance of the above four indicators are largely unknown. However, they are key
factors in the sustainable operation or refurbishment of office buildings.
This paper presents a methodology for assessing indoor environment quality (IEQ) in office
buildings, and indicators with related metrics for high performance and occupant comfort.
These are intended for integration into the specification of sustainable office buildings as
key factors to ensure a high degree of occupant habitability, without this being impaired by
other sustainability factors.
The assessment methodology was applied in a case study on IEQ in Australiaâs first âsix starâ
sustainable office building, Council House 2 (CH2), located in the centre of Melbourne. The
CH2 building was designed and built with specific focus on sustainability and the provision of
a high quality indoor environment for occupants. Actual IEQ performance was assessed in
this study by field assessment after construction and occupancy. For comparison, the
methodology was applied to a 30 year old conventional building adjacent to CH2 which
housed the same or similar occupants and activities. The impact of IEQ on occupant
productivity will be reported in a separate future pape
Expectations, reservation wages and employment: Evidence from British panel data
In this paper, we explore the relationship between expectations and reservation wages for a sample of unemployed individuals using panel data drawn from the British Household Panel Survey, 1996 to 2005. To be specific, we initially investigate the determinants of expectations relating to the individual´s financial situation and employment prospects over the next 12 months. Our findings suggest that job search and education are positively associated with financial optimism and confidence regarding future employment prospects. Conversely, the length of time out of employment and age are associated with pessimistic expectations. Propensity score matching techniques enable us to adopt a quasi experimental approach to ascertain how an individual´s expectations regarding their future financial situation as well as expectations regarding securing future employment influence the setting of reservation wages at the individual level. Optimism over future finances and future job prospects are associated with a higher reservation wage in both the matched and unmatched estimates. Furthermore, confidence over securing future employment is associated with a higher probability of actually gaining employment in the next period
Aerodynamic Response of a Hovering Rotor to Ramp Changes in Pitch Input
Under transient conditions, a helicopter rotor generates a complex, time-dependent pattern of shed and
trailed vorticity in its wake that has profound eects on its loading. To examine these eects, the response
of a two-bladed hovering rotor to a ramp change in collective pitch is investigated using three dierent
computational approaches. Solutions obtained using a Compressible Reynolds Averaged Navier{Stokes ap-
proach are compared to results obtained from lifting-line theory coupled to an Eulerian Vorticity Transport
Model, and from a simple single-state dynamic in
ow model. The dierent numerical approaches yield
very similar predictions of the thrust response of the rotor to ramp changes in collective pitch, as long as
the ramp rates are small. This suggests that the basic underlying
ow physics is properly represented by all
the approaches. For more rapid ramp rates, an additional delay in the aerodynamic response of the rotor,
that is related to the nite extent of the wake during its early history, is predicted by the Navier{Stokes
and Vorticity Transport approaches. Even though the evolution of the wake of the rotor is strongly three
dimensional and highly unsteady, the predictions of the Navier{Stokes and lifting-line models agree very
closely as long as the blades of the rotor do not stall. In the pre-stall regime, a quasi two-dimensional
representation of the blade aerodynamics thus appears adequate for predicting the performance of such
systems even under highly transient conditions. When
ow separation occurs, the resulting three dimen-
sionality of the blade aerodynamics forces the predictions of the Navier{Stokes and lifting-line approaches
to diverge, however. The characterization of the wake interactions and stall propagation mechanisms that
are presented in this study oers some insight into the fundamental
uid dynamic mechanisms that govern
the transient aerodynamic response of a rotor to control inputs, and provides some quantication of the
limits of applicability of some popular current approaches to rotor aerodynamic analysis
Bullying, Education and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from the National Child Development Study
We explore the effect of bullying at school on the educational attainment of a sample of individuals drawn from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS). Our empirical findings suggest that school bullying has an adverse effect on human capital accumulation both at and beyond school. Moreover, the impact of bullying on educational attainment at age sixteen is found to be similar in magnitude to class size effects, which have attracted recent attention in the economics literature. Furthermore, in contrast to class size effects, the adverse influence of bullying on human capital attainment remains during adulthood. In addition, being bullied at school directly influences wages received during adulthood as well as indirectly influencing wages via educational attainment
Social Interaction and Stock Market Participation: Evidence from British Panel Data
This paper uses data from the British National Child Development Study to
investigate the relationship between social interaction and participation in
the stock market through holding stocks and/or shares at the individual
level. In accordance with the existing literature, the results reveal that a
positive relationship exists between social interaction and stock market
participation, when both are measured concurrently. Furthermore, this
relationship prevails across a range of measures of social interaction and
social capital. In addition, we make a potentially important contribution to
the existing literature by exploiting the panel nature of the data in order
to explore the robustness of the cross-sectional findings. We find that the
positive relationship between stock market participation and social
interaction prevails within a fixed effects logit framework, which controls
for time invariant unobserved effects
Financial Expectations, Consumption and Saving: A Microeconomic Analysis
We explore the determinants of individuals´ financial expectations using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) 1991-2001. Our findings suggest that individuals´ financial predictions are influenced by both the life cycle and the business cycle. We also investigate the extent to which the accuracy of past financial expectations affects current financial expectations. Interestingly, only past financial optimism matters, regardless of the accuracy of the prediction. We also explore the relationship between financial realisations and expectations and we find that expectations tend to fall short of financial realisations. Finally, we investigate the relationship between financial expectations, savings and consumption. Our findings suggest that financial optimism is inversely associated with savings and that current financial expectations serve to predict future consumption
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