Prevalence and patterns of hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption assessed using the AUDIT among Bhutanese refugees in Nepal.

AIMS: This study sought to ascertain the prevalence of hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption among Bhutanese refugees in Nepal and to identify predictors of elevated risk in order to better understand intervention need. METHODS: Hazardous and harmful alcohol consumption was assessed using the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test (AUDIT) administered in a face-to-face interview in a census of two camps comprising ∼8000 refugees. RESULTS: Approximately 1/5 men and 1/14 women drank alcohol and prevalence of hazardous drinking among current drinkers was high and comparable to that seen in Western countries with longstanding alcohol cultures. Harmful drinking was particularly associated with the use of other substances including tobacco. CONCLUSIONS: Assessment of the alcohol-related needs of Bhutanese refugees has permitted the design of interventions. This study adds to the small international literature on substance use in forced migration populations, about which there is growing concern

Numerical Analysis on the Optimisation of Thermal Comfort Levels in an Office Located inside a Historical Building

The present study examines the possibility of thermal comfort optimisation inside an office room where, due to historical heritage, it is possible to modify neither the energetic characteristic of the envelope nor the position of the inlet air vents. The distribution of global and local thermal comfort indices is evaluated in both heating and cooling conditions by establishing a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model validated against experimental data. The obtained results demonstrate a striking asymmetry of the air velocity and temperature distribution due to the low energy efficiency of the building. In heating mode, the predicted mean vote (PMV) values were improved if the discharged air from the fan coil was at its maximal velocity. However, at the same time, the vertical air temperature gradient increased by around 0.5 C in each working station. In the cooling condition, in the absence of the solar radiation, the minimal air-flow rate satisfied the acceptable range of the draught rate (DR), whereas in the presence of a solar load, it could not meet the required cooling load in all positions, leading to higher floor temperature. The findings of this study allow for identifying and rearranging the optimal position of working stations in terms of thermal comfort

Influence of different heating systems on thermal comfort perception: a dynamic and CFD analysis

In this paper, we investigate the influence of different heating systems on the thermal comfort indexes, Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percentage of Dissatisfied (PPD), for a residential apartment located in Bologna (Italy). The apartment has an area of 40 m2 and is located on the ground floor of 4 floors building. The envelop consists in horizontal perforated bricks with internal thermal insulation material and two windows. The analyses are performed employing Trnsys, a commercial dynamic simulation software and Simcenter STAR-CCM+, a multiphysics computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. The CFD analysis regards a steady condition of a typical winter day in Bologna. Thermal comfort indexes and thermal energy demand are studied comparing two different heating generation systems existing in the considered apartment: a condensing gas boiler coupled with radiators as terminal emitters and an air-to-air heat pump. By crossing the results obtained by the dynamical approach and by the CFD simulations, a two-objective methodology where energy consumption is minimised while thermal comfort is obtained, is presented

Lithium-ion battery thermal management systems : a survey and new CFD results

The environment has gained significant importance in recent years, and companies involved in several technology fields are moving in the direction of eco-friendly solutions. One of the most discussed topics in the automotive field is lithium-ion battery packs for electric vehicles and their battery thermal management systems (BTMSs). This work aims to show the most used lithium-ion battery pack cooling methods and technologies with best working temperature ranges together with the best performances. Different cooling methods are presented and discussed, with a focus on the comparison between air-cooling systems and liquid-cooling systems. In this context, a BTMS for cylindrical cells is presented, where the cells are arranged in staggered lines embedded in a solid structure and cooled through forced convection within channels. The thermal behavior of this BTMS is simulated by employing a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. The effect of the geometry of the BTMS on the cell temperature distribution is obtained. It is shown that the use of materials with additives for the solid structure enhances the performance of the system, giving lower temperatures to the cells. The system is tested with air-cooling and water-cooling, showing that the best performances are obtained with water-cooling in terms of cell packing density and lowest cell temperatures

Towards the architecture of an instructional multimedia database

The applicability of multimedia databases in education may be extended if they can serve multiple target groups, leading to affordable costs per unit for the user. In this contribution, an approach is described to build generic multimedia databases to serve that purpose. This approach is elaborated within the ODB Project ('Instructional Design of an Optical DataBase'); the term optical refers to the use of optical storage media to hold the audiovisual components. The project aims at developing a database in which a hypermedia encyclopedia is combined with instructional multimedia applications for different target groups at different educational levels. The architecture of the Optical Database will allow for switching between application types while working (for instance from tutorial instruction via the encyclopedia to a simulation and back). For instruction, the content of the database is thereby organized around so-called standard instruction routes: one route per target group. In the project, the teacher is regarded as the manager of instruction.\ud \ud From that perspective, the database is primarily organized as a teaching facility. Central to the research is the condition that the architecture of the Optical Database has to enable teachers to select and tailor instruction routes to their needs in a way that is perceived as logical and easy to use

Firms' Main Market, Human Capital and Wages

Recent international trade literature emphasizes two features in characterizing the current patterns of trade: efficiency heterogeneity at the firm level and quality differentiation. This paper explores human capital and wage differences across firms in that context. We build a partial equilibrium model predicting that firms selling in more-remote markets employ higher human capital and pay higher wages to employees within each education group. The channel linking these variables is firms’ endogenous choice of quality. Predictions are tested using Spanish employer-employee matched data that classify firms according to four main destination markets: local, national, European Union, and rest of the World. Employees’ average education is increasing in the remoteness of firm’s main output market. Market–destination wage premia are large, increasing in the remoteness of the market, and increasing in individual education. These results suggest that increasing globalization may play a significant role in raising wage inequality within and across education groups

Pennsylvania Folklife Vol. 10, No. 2

• Cutting-Up for Fancy • English-Language Folk Culture in Pennsylvania • The Bench Versus the Catechism: Revivalism and Pennsylvania\u27s Lutheran and Reformed Churches • Collecting and Indexing Dialect Poetry • Folk Amusements in Western Pennsylvania • Of Plows and Ploughing • The New Year Wish of the Pennsylvania Dutch Broadsidehttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/pafolklifemag/1005/thumbnail.jp