Investigating Thermal Comfort and User Behaviors in Outdoor Spaces: A Seasonal and Spatial Perspective

Numerous studies have examined the correlation between the number of attendants in a given outdoor environment and thermal indices to understand how the environmental planning has an impact on the users. However, extensive observations should be conducted to examine the detailed static and dynamic behavior patterns of users. We conducted dynamic observations at a stepped plaza to perform on-site measurements of the physical environment and observations of users behaviors, including their resting positions, movements, and stay durations. The results indicated that more people rested on the steps during the cool season than hot season. Compared to neutral temperatures, people demonstrated higher heat tolerance to the hot season. The results indicated that more than 75% of users preferred to remain in shaded areas and stayed longer than in the sunlight. The people tended to engage in static activities in environments that exhibit sufficient shading. The shaded areas were conducive to static activities as the summer grew hotter. The results verified that the people of Taiwan would avoid sunlight and desire shaded spaces based on their previous climate experiences and expectations, which can serve as a reference for outdoor space design to improve the usability and quality of open urban spaces

Study on IoT and Big Data Analysis of 12” 7 nm Advanced Furnace Process Exhaust Gas Leakage

Modern FAB uses a large number of high-energy processes, including plasma, CVD, and ion implantation. Furnaces are one of the important tools for semiconductor manufacturing. According to the requirements of conversion production management, FAB installed a set of IoT-based research based on 12″ 7 nm-level furnaces chip process. Two furnace processing tool measurement points were set up in a 12-inch 7 nm-level factory in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan, this is a 24-hour continuous monitoring system, the data obtained every second is sequentially send and stored in the cloud system. This study will be set in the cloud database for big data analysis and decision-making. The lower limit of TEOS, C2H4, CO is 0.4, 1.5, 1 ppm. Semiconductor process, so that IoT integration and big data operations can be performed in all processes, this is an important step to promote FAB intelligent production, and also an important contribution to this research

Application of Advanced Framework Technology in Smart Cities to Improve Resource Utilization

Nowadays, the application technology and demand are growth; there have been millions of solutions for user communication in smart cities. However, the quality of the autonomy of handheld devices and the information exchange of applications are functions of requesting services or participating in communications. Therefore, it is very difficult and tedious to implement resource management and control in such an environment. This study here proposes distributed cyber-physical systems (CPS) for agent-based middleware framework (AMF) using to achieve technology, thereby improving the reliability of environmental communication in smart cities. The technical solution has the characteristics of avoiding the problem of data source interruption because of the proxy technology of the linear calculation model. The aforementioned agents are independent and autonomous of each other in terms of providing seamless resource sharing and response scheduling, and have nothing to do with communication time and request queries. In this study, the architecture mainly uses the best linear calculation model to classify overlapping agents, and then allocates non-overlapping resources, and finally analyzes the overall architecture operation performance by responding to processed queries, storage utilization and resource usage, pause time and response

Rapid intensification of Typhoon Hato (2017) over shallow water

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Pun, I., Chan, J. C. L., Lin, I., Chan, K. T. E., Price, J. F., Ko, D. S., Lien, C., Wu, Y., & Huang, H. Rapid intensification of Typhoon Hato (2017) over shallow water. Sustainability, 11(13), (2019): 3709, doi:10.3390/su11133709.On 23 August, 2017, Typhoon Hato rapidly intensified by 10 kt within 3 h just prior to landfall in the city of Macau along the South China coast. Hato’s surface winds in excess of 50 m s−1 devastated the city, causing unprecedented damage and social impact. This study reveals that anomalously warm ocean conditions in the nearshore shallow water (depth < 30 m) likely played a key role in Hato’s fast intensification. In particular, cooling of the sea surface temperature (SST) generated by Hato at the critical landfall point was estimated to be only 0.1–0.5 °C. The results from both a simple ocean mixing scheme and full dynamical ocean model indicate that SST cooling was minimized in the shallow coastal waters due to a lack of cool water at depth. Given the nearly invariant SST in the coastal waters, we estimate a large amount of heat flux, i.e., 1.9k W m−2, during the landfall period. Experiments indicate that in the absence of shallow bathymetry, and thus, if nominal cool water had been available for vertical mixing, the SST cooling would have been enhanced from 0.1 °C to 1.4 °C, and sea to air heat flux reduced by about a quarter. Numerical simulations with an atmospheric model suggest that the intensity of Hato was very sensitive to air-sea heat flux in the coastal region, indicating the critical importance of coastal ocean hydrography.The work of I.-F.P. is supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology Grant MOST 107-2111-M-008-001-MY3. The work of J.C.L.C. is supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong Grant E-CityU101/16. The work of I.-I.L. is supported by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST 106-2111-M-002-011-MY3, MOST 108-2111-M-002-014-MY2). The work of K.T.F.C. is jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41775097), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Macau Science and Technology Development Joint Fund (NSFC-FDCT), China and Macau (41861164027)

Marking Embryonic Stem Cells with a 2A Self-Cleaving Peptide: A NKX2-5 Emerald GFP BAC Reporter

Fluorescent reporters are useful for assaying gene expression in living cells and for identifying and isolating pure cell populations from heterogeneous cultures, including embryonic stem (ES) cells. Multiple fluorophores and genetic selection markers exist; however, a system for creating reporter constructs that preserve the regulatory sequences near a gene's native ATG start site has not been widely available.Here, we describe a series of modular marker plasmids containing independent reporter, bacterial selection, and eukaryotic selection components, compatible with both Gateway recombination and lambda prophage bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) recombineering techniques. A 2A self-cleaving peptide links the reporter to the native open reading frame. We use an emerald GFP marker cassette to create a human BAC reporter and ES cell reporter line for the early cardiac marker NKX2-5. NKX2-5 expression was detected in differentiating mouse ES cells and ES cell-derived mice.Our results describe a NKX2-5 ES cell reporter line for studying early events in cardiomyocyte formation. The results also demonstrate that our modular marker plasmids could be used for generating reporters from unmodified BACs, potentially as part of an ES cell reporter library

Women with endometriosis have higher comorbidities: Analysis of domestic data in Taiwan

AbstractEndometriosis, defined by the presence of viable extrauterine endometrial glands and stroma, can grow or bleed cyclically, and possesses characteristics including a destructive, invasive, and metastatic nature. Since endometriosis may result in pelvic inflammation, adhesion, chronic pain, and infertility, and can progress to biologically malignant tumors, it is a long-term major health issue in women of reproductive age. In this review, we analyze the Taiwan domestic research addressing associations between endometriosis and other diseases. Concerning malignant tumors, we identified four studies on the links between endometriosis and ovarian cancer, one on breast cancer, two on endometrial cancer, one on colorectal cancer, and one on other malignancies, as well as one on associations between endometriosis and irritable bowel syndrome, one on links with migraine headache, three on links with pelvic inflammatory diseases, four on links with infertility, four on links with obesity, four on links with chronic liver disease, four on links with rheumatoid arthritis, four on links with chronic renal disease, five on links with diabetes mellitus, and five on links with cardiovascular diseases (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, etc.). The data available to date support that women with endometriosis might be at risk of some chronic illnesses and certain malignancies, although we consider the evidence for some comorbidities to be of low quality, for example, the association between colon cancer and adenomyosis/endometriosis. We still believe that the risk of comorbidity might be higher in women with endometriosis than that we supposed before. More research is needed to determine whether women with endometriosis are really at risk of these comorbidities

AI is a viable alternative to high throughput screening: a 318-target study

: High throughput screening (HTS) is routinely used to identify bioactive small molecules. This requires physical compounds, which limits coverage of accessible chemical space. Computational approaches combined with vast on-demand chemical libraries can access far greater chemical space, provided that the predictive accuracy is sufficient to identify useful molecules. Through the largest and most diverse virtual HTS campaign reported to date, comprising 318 individual projects, we demonstrate that our AtomNet® convolutional neural network successfully finds novel hits across every major therapeutic area and protein class. We address historical limitations of computational screening by demonstrating success for target proteins without known binders, high-quality X-ray crystal structures, or manual cherry-picking of compounds. We show that the molecules selected by the AtomNet® model are novel drug-like scaffolds rather than minor modifications to known bioactive compounds. Our empirical results suggest that computational methods can substantially replace HTS as the first step of small-molecule drug discovery

Observation and discussion of thermal comfort and the user behavior in urban open spaces

Recently, people spend their leisure time in urban open spaces because of the increasing requirements of recreational activities. Thermal environments are closely related to people’s perceptions and preferences and influence the use of outdoor spaces. Many previous studies have confirmed that the temperature directly affect the number of users to public spaces such as plaza and park. Consequently, comfortable thermal environments have become extremely important in urban open spaces. This study aims to investigate the microscopic behavior pattern concept method, in order to understand the micro-climate on people''s recreation space, thermal comfort and adaptation behavior, for in Taichung, Taiwan''s National Museum of Natural Science model of DNA ladder outdoor garden sitting area microclimate physical environment measurements, records and photographic observation of the dynamic behavior of the user. Purpose is to discuss the open space in the city, if the sunshine and shadow areas exist, the different seasons, age, sex, and other recreational purposes, people open area for both the choice of location, residence time, and in the dynamic whether the activities to be associated with static or differences. The results showed that people will prefer shade or shelter in the shadow of rest, are displayed in the hot and humid climate zones in Taiwan, people because of past experience and anticipated psychological climate, sunshine produce different degree of preference for people in temperate countries, illustrates the different climatic zones because of the thermal environment people experience, expectations and cognitive factors produce differences in thermal comfort and adaptability. Furthermore, the study of people and outdoor recreational behavior of the thermal environment relations in the sunshine at people more likely to have short-term dynamic behavior, on the contrary, in the shade and is able to have a long stay static behavior. The results are displayed in different seasons and sitting area, one might as physical comfort and psychological adaptation and produce different patterns of behavior, people with open space cool shade of preference, at high temperatures is more significant. Expected results of this study will be used as outdoor space planning and design future reference, in order to improve the utilization of urban open space.　　近年來由於對休閒遊憩需求的提升，民眾會在都市開放空間活動，戶外熱環境對人的感受與偏好有密切的關係，進而影響戶外空間的使用。過去許多有關熱舒適的研究證實了在戶外廣場或公園中，溫度直接影響公共空間的使用者參與人數，由此可知，舒適的熱環境對於都市開放空間就顯得極為重要。 　　本研究透過動態微觀的行為模式觀查法，為了瞭解微氣候對人們遊憩空間、熱舒適與調適行為的影響，針對位於臺灣台中市之國立自然科學博物館戶外庭園的DNA模型階梯休憩區進行微氣候物理環境量測、攝影紀錄與使用者動態行為觀察。目的是為討論在都市開放空間中，若同時存在日照及陰影區域時，不同季節、年齡、性別、遊憩目的等，人們對於這兩種區域之休憩位置的選擇、停留的時間、以及從事的動態與靜態活動是否有所關聯或是差異性。 　　研究結果發現民眾會優先選擇在樹蔭下或是有遮蔽的陰影處休憩，顯示在溼熱氣候區的台灣，民眾由於過去的氣候經驗和預期心理，產生對日照的偏好程度不同於溫帶國家的人們，說明了不同氣候區的人們會因為對於熱環境的經驗、期待與認知等因素，產生對熱舒適與適應性的差異。再者，探討民眾的休憩行為模式與戶外熱環境之關係，在日照處民眾較容易有短時間動態的行為，反之，在陰影處則能有靜態且長時間停留的行為。結果顯示在不同的季節與休憩區域，人們可能因為生理上的舒適度與心理的適應性而產生不同的行為模式，人們對開放空間的涼爽與遮蔭之偏好，在高溫情況下愈為顯著。本研究預期成果將可做為未來戶外空間規劃與設計之參考，以提高都市開放空間的使用率。誌　謝 i 摘　要 ii Abstract iii 目　錄 iv 表目錄 vi 圖目錄 vii 第一章　緒論 1 第一節　研究背景 1 第二節　研究動機 2 第三節　研究目的 3 第四節　研究流程 4 第二章　文獻回顧 6 第一節　熱舒適性之理論與指標 6 1.1　熱舒適性 6 1.2　熱適應性 8 第二節　都市開放空間 10 2.1　開放空間之定義 10 2.2　都市開放空間之類型與活動模式 11 第三節　氣候與遊憩之關聯 12 3.1　遊憩行為理論 12 3.2　氣候對遊憩行為的影響 12 第四節　環境行為理論 14 4.1　環境行為學 14 4.2　環境行為的研究方法 14 第三章　研究方法 16 第一節　實測地點與對象 16 第二節　熱環境物理量測 19 第三節　使用者環境行為觀察 20 第四節　資料紀錄與分析 22 第四章　結果與討論 27 第一節　實測總量統計 27 第二節　人數統計 30 2.1　性別與年齡 30 2.2　PET與平均人數之關係 31 2.3　PET與男女人數之關係 33 第三節　停留位置 35 3.1　停留位置的人數與移動狀況 35 3.2　PET與男女性選擇停留位置之關係 38 第四節　平均停留時間 40 4.1　在不同季節與停留位置之平均停留時間 40 4.2　男性與女性在陰影與日照處的平均停留時間 41 4.3　熱季PET與停留時間之關係 42 第五節　衣著量 44 第六節　行為類型 47 6.1　不同季節停留位置與行為類型之關係 47 6.2　動、靜態行為次數比例之變化 48 6.2　PET與行為類型之關係 50 第七節　不同年齡層的使用者人數 52 7.1　PET與年齡層的關係 52 7.2　中老年、青壯年人數與溫度之關係 55 7.3　兒童人數與溫度之關係 56 第五章　結論與建議 57 第一節　結論 57 第二節　建議 59 參考文獻 6

Copper-mediated Trimethylsilyl Azide In Amination Of Bromoflavonoids To Synthesize Unique Aminoflavonoids

Aminoflavonoids are unique antioxidants comparing to other abundant flavonoids in nature. Their syntheses and biological activities were scarcely reported. An effectively copper-mediated amination of the corresponding bromoflavonoids to synthesize a series of new aminoflavonoids is described. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved