Building Efficiency Models and the Optimization of the District Heating Network for Low-Carbon Transition Cities

Nowadays, greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase with the consequent climate changes. Energy consumption of buildings strongly affects atmospheric pollution, therefore for a sustainable development it is necessary to adopt energy efficiency policies combined with low-carbon technologies. In particular, the use of district heating (DH) has environmental and economic advantages in energy production and distribution for space heating consumption. In this paper, the combined effect of DH expansion with different buildings retrofit scenarios using a GIS-based model is proposed for a more sustainable city. This methodology is applied to the DH network of the city of Torino and, energy savings hypotheses were analyzed, evaluating different energy saving trends starting from the current one with existing policies. A GIS-based methodology has been developed with bottom-up and top-down approaches; then two future energy savings scenarios have been hypothesized. Energy retrofit measures have been applied to the most critical areas with low potential of heat distribution; in a second phase, to the whole area connected to the DH network. The results showed that intervening in the critical areas only +5% of potential buildings can be connected to the existing DH network (standard retrofit) while this percentage could grow up to +25% with advanced buildings retrofit. On the other hand, intervening on the whole city, there is a considerable reduction of consumptions and the connectable quota of buildings to the DH network reaches +42% with standard retrofit and +82% with advanced retrofit scenario with an optimization of energy distribution as well

Changements de medications agissant sur le systeme cardiovasculaire en cours d'hospitalisation. [Changes in medications acting on the cardiovascular system during hospitalization]

The present study was conducted to assess the extent to which the treatment of patients who take one or more cardiovascular drugs regularly is changed during hospitalisation and over the course of the subsequent two months after release from hospital. In order to elucidate the question more exactly, data was collected on 107 patient after a hospital stay on the internal medicine ward of a university hospital and on 107 patients who had been hospitalised in two non-university hospitals. The average number of changes in medication in patients in the university setting was 2.7 and in patients in the non-university setting it was 2.2. The treatment of patients who were hospitalised for cardiovascular complications was switched more often than that of patients whose circulation was stable at admission. Over the course of the subsequent two months after release, the attending general practitioners (GP) switched the medication at a much lower frequency than the hospitals had done. Within one specific drug class there was no more frequent changes in medication during the hospital stay as afterwards. A drug was discontinued in 107 patients in the university setting and in 124 cases in the two non-university hospitals. The same drug was prescribed again by the treating GP in 30 and 40 patients, respectively, after release. The results of the study show that treatment with drugs that have an effect on the patient's understanding of his illness with regard to its severity may be likely to cause doubts about the effectiveness of the drug and whether the therapeutic decisions that were made by the doctors for medical or other reasons were correct. Therefore, it makes more sense to avoid unnecessary changes in medication whenever possible and only then in unavoidable cases with a clear medical indication

Galectin-1 is a stromal cell ligand of the pre-B cell receptor (BCR) implicated in synapse formation between pre-B and stromal cells and in pre-BCR triggering

Although preB cell-receptor (pre-BCR) formation and cell-surface expression is essential for B cell development, pre-BCR generation of signal transduction remains elusive. Here, we report that recombinant pre-BCRs and the surrogate light chain bind specifically to the bone marrow stromal cell galectin-1 (GAL1), an S-type lectin. The surrogate light chain/GAL1 association is a direct protein–protein interaction (K(a) = 2 × 10(6) M(−1)), and the NH(2) extra loop of λ-like is the major binding element. Pre-BCR binding to stromal cells depends upon GAL1 anchoring to glycosylated counter-receptors, and these complexes completely relocalize to form a synapse at the contact zone between preB and stromal cells. This immune developmental synapse is accompanied by the initiation of intracellular tyrosine kinase activity and signal transduction from the pre-BCR