Improving Load Calculations for Fenestration with Shading Devices

© 2009, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (www.ashrae.org). Published in ASHRAE Transactions 2009, vol. 115, part 2. For personal use only. Additional reproduction, distribution, or transmission in either print or digital form is not permitted without ASHRAE’s prior written permission.Activities and findings arising from ASHRAE Research Project 1311-RP are summarized. This project included three main goals, (a) development of models for pleated drapes, venetian blinds, roller blinds and insect screens, (b) implementation of these models in the ASHRAE Loads Toolkit, and (c) compilation of results suitable for direct application in building cooling load methods such as Radiant Time Series (RTS). The solar and heat transfer interactions present in multilayer systems are complicated and the corresponding models entail significant complexity. This work produced the ASHRAE Window Attachment (ASHWAT) model that uses a simplified approach to the way in which radiation interacts with each glazing or shading layer. Each layer is assigned spatially-averaged “effective” optical properties so that glazing and shading layers can be arranged in any combination. ASHWAT offers wide scope in the design process, the possibility of active control (e.g., slat angle adjustment), fast computation, and facilitates the implementation of additional shading layer types. Very few input data are needed to model any layer. Measurement-based validation was undertaken at both the subcomponent level and at the complete system level with documentation in the technical literature. The ASHWAT model has been added to the ASHRAE Loads Toolkit and coupled to the heat-balance room model, supporting accurate calculation of cooling load impact of fenestration shading. Simplified correlation models were developed to allow shaded fenestration performance estimates via spreadsheet-tractable formulas. The model was also used to generate greatly expanded simplified data for inclusion in Fundamentals and suitable for direct use in widely-used engineering proceduresNatural Resources Canada (NRCan) || Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC

Efficient Simulation Of Complex Fenestration Systems In Heat Balance Room Models

The solar, longwave, and convective interactions between a window, its shading attachments and its surroundings constitute a complicated coupled heat balance problem that can entail significant computational intensity to simulate in detail. A novel approach represents the fenestration system using several indices of merit – most notably the U-factor and a cross-coupling coefficient. CPU time is reduced without forfeiting features such as the ability to distinguish between air and mean radiant temperatures. The required indices of merit are obtained using thermal network theory and can safely be re-evaluated much less frequently than each time-step, or they can be revised as needed in response to changes in sun angle or shade geometry (e.g., blind slat adjustment). This method has been used to integrate the ASHWAT fenestration model with the California Simulation Engine, a detailed residential model. ASHWAT supports many combinations of glazing and shading layers separated by arbitrary fill gases or by gaps open to outdoor or indoor air. This implementation demonstrates a method that offers generality and detail while providing the input simplicity and computational speed required for practicality.American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE) || Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) || California Energy Commission (CEC) || Pacific Gas & Electric Company || Southern California Edison || Sempra Utilitie

High-performance 3D waveguide architecture for astronomical pupil-remapping interferometry

The detection and characterisation of extra-solar planets is a major theme driving modern astronomy, with the vast majority of such measurements being achieved by Doppler radial-velocity and transit observations. Another technique -- direct imaging -- can access a parameter space that complements these methods, and paves the way for future technologies capable of detailed characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres and surfaces. However achieving the required levels of performance with direct imaging, particularly from ground-based telescopes which must contend with the Earth's turbulent atmosphere, requires considerable sophistication in the instrument and detection strategy. Here we demonstrate a new generation of photonic pupil-remapping devices which build upon the interferometric framework developed for the {\it Dragonfly} instrument: a high contrast waveguide-based device which recovers robust complex visibility observables. New generation Dragonfly devices overcome problems caused by interference from unguided light and low throughput, promising unprecedented on-sky performance. Closure phase measurement scatter of only $\sim 0.2^\circ$ has been achieved, with waveguide throughputs of $> 70\%$. This translates to a maximum contrast-ratio sensitivity (between the host star and its orbiting planet) at $1 \lambda/D$ (1$\sigma$ detection) of $5.3 \times 10^{-4}$ (when a conventional adaptive-optics (AO) system is used) or $1.8 \times 10^{-4}$ (for typical `extreme-AO' performance), improving even further when random error is minimised by averaging over multiple exposures. This is an order of magnitude beyond conventional pupil-segmenting interferometry techniques (such as aperture masking), allowing a previously inaccessible part of the star to planet contrast-separation parameter space to be explored

Solar Gain through Windows with Shading Devices: Simulation Versus Measurement

© 2009, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (www.ashrae.org). Published in ASHRAE Transactions 2009, vol. 115, part 2. For personal use only. Additional reproduction, distribution, or transmission in either print or digital form is not permitted without ASHRAE’s prior written permission.Shading devices offer a cost saving strategy in dynamically controlling solar gain through windows. As such, there is an ongoing effort to accurately quantify the thermal performance of shading devices. In the present study, solar gain through various shading devices attached to a conventional double glazed window was measured using the National Solar Test Facility (NSTF) solar simulator and solar calorimeter. The shading devices include two venetian blinds, a roller blind, a pleated drape and an insect screen. More specifically, the solar heat gain coefficient (SHGC) and the solar transmittance, tsys, of each system were measured; and the interior attenuation coefficient (IAC) was calculated from the SHGC measurements. Furthermore, SHGC, tsys and IAC were calculated for the same experimental conditions using models developed for building energy simulation and performance rating. The calculations agreed very well with the measurements.NRCan (Natural Resources Canada) || NSERC (Natural Scienes and Engineering Research Council Canada) || ASHRA

The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Source at https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607.Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.]

In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-No Concomitant Benefits: Experimental Evidence from 84 Countries

The COVID-19 pandemic (and its aftermath) highlights a critical need to communicate health information effectively to the global public. Given that subtle differences in information framing can have meaningful effects on behavior, behavioral science research highlights a pressing question: Is it more effective to frame COVID-19 health messages in terms of potential losses (e.g., "If you do not practice these steps, you can endanger yourself and others") or potential gains (e.g., "If you practice these steps, you can protect yourself and others")? Collecting data in 48 languages from 15,929 participants in 84 countries, we experimentally tested the effects of message framing on COVID-19-related judgments, intentions, and feelings. Loss- (vs. gain-) framed messages increased self-reported anxiety among participants cross-nationally with little-to-no impact on policy attitudes, behavioral intentions, or information seeking relevant to pandemic risks. These results were consistent across 84 countries, three variations of the message framing wording, and 560 data processing and analytic choices. Thus, results provide an empirical answer to a global communication question and highlight the emotional toll of loss-framed messages. Critically, this work demonstrates the importance of considering unintended affective consequences when evaluating nudge-style interventions

The psychological science accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data