A scoping study on the costs of indoor air quality illnesses:an insurance loss reduction perspective

The incidence of commercial buildings with poor indoor air quality (IAQ), and the frequency of litigation over the effects of poor IAQ is increasing. If so, these increases have ramifications for insurance carriers, which pay for many of the costs of health care and general commercial liability. However, little is known about the actual costs to insurance companies from poor IAQ in buildings. This paper reports on the results of a literature search of buildings-related, business and legal databases, and interviews with insurance and risk management representatives aimed at finding information on the direct costs to the insurance industry of poor building IAQ, as well as the costs of litigation. The literature search and discussions with insurance and risk management professionals reported in this paper turned up little specific information about the costs of IAQ-related problems to insurance companies. However, those discussions and certain articles in the insurance industry press indicate that there is a strong awareness and growing concern over the "silent crisis" of IAQ and its potential to cause large industry losses, and that a few companies are taking steps to address this issue. The source of these losses include both direct costs to insurers from paying health insurance and professional liability claims, as weIl as the cost of litigation. In spite of the lack of data on how IAQ-related health problems affect their business, the insurance industry has taken the anecdotal evidence about their reality seriously enough to alter their policies in ways that have lessened their exposure. We conclude by briefly discussing four activities that need to be addressed in the near future: (1) quantifying IAQ-related insurance costs by sector, (2) educating the insurance industry about the importance of IAQ issues, (3) examining IAQ impacts on the insurance industry in the residential sector, and (4) evaluating the relationship between IAQ improvements and their impact on energy use

L Band Brightness Temperature Observations over a Corn Canopy during the Entire Growth Cycle

During a field campaign covering the 2002 corn growing season, a dual polarized tower mounted L-band (1.4 GHz) radiometer (LRAD) provided brightness temperature (TB) measurements at preset intervals, incidence and azimuth angles. These radiometer measurements were supported by an extensive characterization of land surface variables including soil moisture, soil temperature, vegetation biomass, and surface roughness. In the period May 22 to August 30, ten days of radiometer and ground measurements are available for a corn canopy with a vegetation water content (W) range of 0.0 to 4.3 kg m−2. Using this data set, the effects of corn vegetation on surface emissions are investigated by means of a semi-empirical radiative transfer model. Additionally, the impact of roughness on the surface emission is quantified using TB measurements over bare soil conditions. Subsequently, the estimated roughness parameters, ground measurements and horizontally (H)-polarized TB are employed to invert the H-polarized transmissivity (γh) for the monitored corn growing season

The UK solar energy resource and the impact of climate change

AbstractSolar energy use in the UK is increasing dramatically, providing both heat energy and generation of electricity. This trend is expected to continue due to solar technologies becoming cheaper and more readily available along with low carbon government legislation such as the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) and Feed in Tariffs (FiTs) supporting solar energy deployment. However, the effects of climate change on the solar resource remain largely unstudied. Climate change affects cloud cover characteristics and consequently directly affects the performance of solar energy technologies.This paper investigates the UK solar irradiation resource for both the present and future climates.The present solar irradiation level was assessed through the conversion of 30 years of observed historical monthly average sunshine duration data. The method and results are validated by comparing the converted solar irradiation levels to actual solar irradiance measurements at weather stations with significant historical records of solar irradiance data.The impact of climate change is investigated across different regions of the UK by using the UKCP09 probabilistic climate change projections.We find that the current average UK annual solar resource is 101.2 Wm−2, ranging from 128.4 Wm−2 in the south of England to 71.8 Wm−2 in the northwest of Scotland. It seems likely that climate change will increase the average resource in the south of the UK, while marginally decreasing it in the Northwest. The overall effect is a mean increase of the UK solar resource, however it will have greater seasonal variability and discrepancies between geographical regions will be reinforced

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead