Evaluating the in-situ effectiveness of indoor environment guidelines on occupant satisfaction

Post occupancy evaluation (POE) studies typically use a combination of occupant questionnaires and physical measurements of various aspects of the indoor environment to assess building performance. These physical measurements are often compared against published reference limits to evaluate compliance and satisfactory performance. This study investigates whether indoor environment conditions compatible with published indoor environment quality (IEQ) standards and guidelines are predictive of occupant satisfaction. Data used in this study were collected as part of two large building evaluation field studies conducted in the past eight years. Occupant questionnaire and physical measurement data from 11 office buildings across North America were used (N=194). Inputs for the analyses were demographic factors and workstation characteristics, as well as aspects of the measured physical indoor environment. Outcome variables were various measures of environmental satisfaction (i.e. lighting, acoustics/privacy, and ventilation/temperature). The results of this study suggest that occupants had higher satisfaction with lighting when measured desktop illuminance levels were within IESNA RP-1-12 (2012) recommendations. Measured sound levels and thermal conditions within reference limits did not correlate to higher occupant satisfaction in their respective categories

A test-retest fMRI dataset for motor, language and spatial attention functions

Background Since its inception over twenty years ago, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used in numerous studies probing neural underpinnings of human cognition. However, the between session variance of many tasks used in fMRI remains understudied. Such information is especially important in context of clinical applications. A test-retest dataset was acquired to validate fMRI tasks used in pre-surgical planning. In particular, five task-related fMRI time series (finger, foot and lip movement, overt verb generation, covert verb generation, overt word repetition, and landmark tasks) were used to investigate which protocols gave reliable single-subject results. Ten healthy participants in their fifties were scanned twice using an identical protocol 2–3 days apart. In addition to the fMRI sessions, high-angular resolution diffusion tensor MRI (DTI), and high-resolution 3D T1-weighted volume scans were acquired. Findings Reliability analyses of fMRI data showed that the motor and language tasks were reliable at the subject level while the landmark task was not, despite all paradigms showing expected activations at the group level. In addition, differences in reliability were found to be mostly related to the tasks themselves while task-by-motion interaction was the major confounding factor. Conclusions Together, this dataset provides a unique opportunity to investigate the reliability of different fMRI tasks, as well as methods and algorithms used to analyze, de-noise and combine fMRI, DTI and structural T1-weighted volume data

NeuroVault.org : a web-based repository for collecting and sharing unthresholded statistical maps of the human brain

Here we present NeuroVault-a web based repository that allows researchers to store, share, visualize, and decode statistical maps of the human brain. NeuroVault is easy to use and employs modern web technologies to provide informative visualization of data without the need to install additional software. In addition, it leverages the power of the Neurosynth database to provide cognitive decoding of deposited maps. The data are exposed through a public REST API enabling other services and tools to take advantage of it. NeuroVault is a new resource for researchers interested in conducting meta- and coactivation analyses

Sharing brain mapping statistical results with the neuroimaging data model

Only a tiny fraction of the data and metadata produced by an fMRI study is finally conveyed to the community. This lack of transparency not only hinders the reproducibility of neuroimaging results but also impairs future meta-analyses. In this work we introduce NIDM-Results, a format specification providing a machine-readable description of neuroimaging statistical results along with key image data summarising the experiment. NIDM-Results provides a unified representation of mass univariate analyses including a level of detail consistent with available best practices. This standardized representation allows authors to relay methods and results in a platform-independent regularized format that is not tied to a particular neuroimaging software package. Tools are available to export NIDM-Result graphs and associated files from the widely used SPM and FSL software packages, and the NeuroVault repository can import NIDM-Results archives. The specification is publically available at: http://nidm.nidash.org/specs/nidm-results.html

soilless urban temporary agriculture as a strategy for brownfield site renewal

The last few years have witnessed the development of a large number of projects, in the fields of planning and architecture, that aim to integrate food production in urban spaces. This practice goes under the name of Urban Agriculture and it is spreading ito many cities because it carries benefits and implications toward urban sustainability (environmental, economic, social and institutional). The paper aims to describe an ongoing research project, Ur.C.A. is an in progress research project, financed by Regione Toscana, and develop by the Interuniversity Centre and the DISPAA Department of the University of Florence, in partnership with two local enterprises: Azienda Agricola Cammelli and Azienda Agricola Artemisia

Sharing voxelwise neuroimaging results from rhesus monkeys and other species with Neurovault

© 2020 The Authors Animal neuroimaging studies can provide unique insights into brain structure and function, and can be leveraged to bridge the gap between animal and human neuroscience. In part, this power comes from the ability to combine mechanistic interventions with brain-wide neuroimaging. Due to their phylogenetic proximity to humans, nonhuman primate neuroimaging holds particular promise. Because nonhuman primate neuroimaging studies are often underpowered, there is a great need to share data amongst translational researchers. Data sharing efforts have been limited, however, by the lack of standardized tools and repositories through which nonhuman neuroimaging data can easily be archived and accessed. Here, we provide an extension of the Neurovault framework to enable sharing of statistical maps and related voxelwise neuroimaging data from other species and template-spaces. Neurovault, which was previously limited to human neuroimaging data, now allows researchers to easily upload and share nonhuman primate neuroimaging results. This promises to facilitate open, integrative, cross-species science while affording researchers the increased statistical power provided by data aggregation. In addition, the Neurovault code-base now enables the addition of other species and template-spaces. Together, these advances promise to bring neuroimaging data sharing to research in other species, for supplemental data, location-based atlases, and data that would otherwise be relegated to a file-drawer . As increasing numbers of researchers share their nonhuman neuroimaging data on Neurovault, this resource will enable novel, large-scale, cross-species comparisons that were previously impossible

Long-term neural and physiological phenotyping of a single human

Psychiatric disorders are characterized by major fluctuations in psychological function over the course of weeks and months, but the dynamic characteristics of brain function over this timescale in healthy individuals are unknown. Here, as a proof of concept to address this question, we present the MyConnectome project. An intensive phenome-wide assessment of a single human was performed over a period of 18 months, including functional and structural brain connectivity using magnetic resonance imaging, psychological function and physical health, gene expression and metabolomics. A reproducible analysis workflow is provided, along with open access to the data and an online browser for results. We demonstrate dynamic changes in brain connectivity over the timescales of days to months, and relations between brain connectivity, gene expression and metabolites. This resource can serve as a testbed to study the joint dynamics of human brain and metabolic function over time, an approach that is critical for the development of precision medicine strategies for brain disorders