Resilient cooling strategies – A critical review and qualitative assessment

The global effects of climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves and power outages, which have consequences for buildings and their cooling systems. Buildings and their cooling systems should be designed and operated to be resilient under such events to protect occupants from potentially dangerous indoor thermal conditions. This study performed a critical review on the state-of-the-art of cooling strategies, with special attention to their performance under heatwaves and power outages. We proposed a definition of resilient cooling and described four criteria for resilience—absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity, restorative capacity, and recovery speed —and used them to qualitatively evaluate the resilience of each strategy. The literature review and qualitative analyses show that to attain resilient cooling, the four resilience criteria should be considered in the design phase of a building or during the planning of retrofits. The building and relevant cooling system characteristics should be considered simultaneously to withstand extreme events. A combination of strategies with different resilience capacities, such as a passive envelope strategy coupled with a low-energy space-cooling solution, may be needed to obtain resilient cooling. Finally, a further direction for a quantitative assessment approach has been pointed out

On the number of spanning trees on various lattices

We consider the number of spanning trees in lattices; for a lattice L, one defines the bulk limit zL = lim|VG|→∞(log Nst(G))/|VG|, where Nst(G) is the number of spanning trees in a finite section G of L. Explicit values for zL are known in various special cases. In this note we describe a simple yet effective method to deduce relations between the values of zL for different lattices L by means of electrical network theory. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.Articl

The Number of Spanning Trees in Self-Similar Graphs

The number of spanning trees of a graph, also known as the complexity, is computed for graphs constructed by a replacement procedure yielding a self-similar structure. It is shown that under certain symmetry conditions exact formulas for the complexity can be given. These formulas indicate interesting connections to the theory of electrical networks. Examples include the well-known Sierpiński graphs and their higher-dimensional analogues. Several auxiliary results are provided on the way-for instance, a property of the number of rooted spanning forests is proven for graphs with a high degree of symmetry. © 2011 Springer Basel AG.Articl

On and Off: Epigenetic Regulation of C. albicans Morphological Switches

The human fungal pathogen Candida albicans is a dimorphic opportunistic pathogen that colonises most of the human population without creating any harm. However, this fungus can also cause life-threatening infections in immunocompromised individuals. The ability to successfully colonise different host niches is critical for establishing infections and pathogenesis. C. albicans can live and divide in various morphological forms critical for its survival in the host. Indeed, C. albicans can grow as both yeast and hyphae and can form biofilms containing hyphae. The transcriptional regulatory network governing the switching between these different forms is complex but well understood. In contrast, non-DNA based epigenetic modulation is emerging as a crucial but still poorly studied regulatory mechanism of morphological transition. This review explores our current understanding of chromatin-mediated epigenetic regulation of the yeast to hyphae switch and biofilm formation. We highlight how modification of chromatin structure and non-coding RNAs contribute to these morphological transitions