A holistic analysis method to assess the controllability of commercial buildings and their systems

This paper describes a novel design process for advanced MIMO (multiple inputs and multiple outputs) control system design and simulation for buildings. The paper describes the knowledge transfer from high technology disciplines such as aerospace flight control systems and the space industry to establish a three-step modelling and design process. In step 1, simplified, but holistic nonlinear and linearised dynamic models of the building and its systems is derived. This model is used to analyse the controllability of the building. In step 2, further synthesis of this model leads to the correct topology of the control system design. This is proved through the use of simulation using the simple building model. In step 3, the controller design is proved using a fully detailed building simulation such as ESP-r that acts as a type of virtual prototype of the building. The conclusions show that this design approach can help in the design of superior and more complex control systems especially for buildings designed with a Climate Adaptive Building (CAB) philosophy where many control inputs and outputs are used to control the building's temperature, concentration of CO2, humidity and lighting levels

Object-oriented cohesion as a surrogate of software comprehension: An empirical study

The concept of software cohesion in both the procedural and object-oriented paradigm is well known and documented. What is not so well known or documented is the perception of what empirically constitutes a cohesive 'unit' by software engineers. In this paper, we describe an empirical investigation using object-oriented (OO) classes as a basis. Twenty-four subjects (drawn from IT experienced and IT inexperienced groups) were asked to rate ten classes sampled from two industrial systems in terms of their overall cohesiveness; a class environment was used to carry out the study. Four key results were observed. Firstly, class size (when expressed in terms of number of methods) did not tend to influence the perception of cohesion by any subjects. Secondly, well-commented classes were rated most highly amongst both IT experienced and inexperienced subjects. Thirdly, the empirical study suggests that cohesion comprises a combination of various class factors including low coupling, small numbers of attributes and well-commented methods, rather than any single, individual class feature per se. Finally, the research supports the view that cohesion is a subjective concept reflecting a cognitive combination of class features; as such it is a surrogate for class comprehension

Medium-term prognosis of an incident cohort of parkinsonian patients compared to controls

Funding This work was supported by Parkinson's UK (grant numbers G0502, G0914), BMA Doris Hillier Award, the BUPA Foundation, NHS Grampian Endowments, RS MacDonald Trust.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Anticoagulants for acute ischaemic stroke

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Software fault characteristics: A synthesis of the literature

Faults continue to be a significant problem in software. Understanding the nature of these faults is important for practitioners and researchers. There are many published fault characteristics schemes but no one scheme dominates. Consequently it is difficult for practitioners to effectively evaluate the nature of faults in their software systems, and it is difficult for researchers to compare the types of faults found by different fault detection techniques. In this paper we synthesise previous fault characteristics schemes into one comprehensive scheme. Our scheme provides a richer view of faults than the previous schemes published and presents a comprehensive, unified approach which accommodates the many previous schemes. A characteristics-based view of faults should be considered by future researchers in the analysis of software faults and in the design and evaluation of new fault detection tools. We recommend that our fault characteristics scheme be used as a benchmark scheme

Enhancing Practice and Achievement in Introductory Programming With a Robot Olympics

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Energy generation by crystalline silicon photovoltaic network per meter square in Iraq

Iraqi people have been without energy for nearly two decades, even though their geographic position provides a high intensity of radiation appropriate for the construction of solar plants capable of producing significant quantities of electricity. Also, the annual sunny hours in Iraq are between 3,600 to 4,300 hours which makes it perfect to use the photovoltaics arrays to generate electricity with very high efficiency compared to many countries, especially in Europe. This paper shows the amount of electric energy generated by the meter square of crystalline silicon in the photovoltaic (PV) array that already installed in 18 states in Iraq for each month of the year. The results of the meter-square of PV array in three tracking positions are presented in this paper. This paper shows that the average electricity generated in North cities (Dohuk, Al-Sulaymaniyah, and Erbil) are less than the southern cities in the winter season (three positions) by about 40-50%. Iraq has a stable PV electrical generation during all the year in all regions except the North cities while the highest cities in electricity generation are (Najaf and Al-Anbar)

The AGIS metric and time of test: A replication study

Visual Field (VF) tests and corresponding data are commonly used in clinical practices to manage glaucoma. The standard metric used to measure glaucoma severity is the Advanced Glaucoma Intervention Studies (AGIS) metric. We know that time of day when VF tests are applied can influence a patient’s AGIS metric value; a previous study showed that this was the case for a data set of 160 patients. In this paper, we replicate that study using data from 2468 patients obtained from Moorfields Eye Hospital. This may provide further evidence and support of this phenomenon in a replication sense. Results did indeed show a tendency for the metric to be lower for early onset patients in the morning; equally, for advanced patients, the effect was less pronounced. We thus found support for the earlier work of Montolio et al. [4] and add to the body of evidence on the AGIS metric.This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK, under grant number: EP/H019685/1