Eagle-eye Custodians Lift Facilities Services to the Next Level

Values at Work Series: Facilities Services developed our core values of Service, Integrity, Teamwork, Excellence, and Stewardship (collectively referred to as SITES) based on the way we approach our work. Our values can be found throughout our areas of services in many ways.Through a series of articles, the Values at Work Series is devoted to providing a closer look at how our values are hard at work. Each article focuses on an area of service and how that group incorporates our values in a significant way. We are proud of our employees who continue to serve as an example of “walking the talk” every day.What makes the custodians of The University of Texas at Austin extraordinary? Is it the specialized, in-depth training they’ve received? Is it their award-winning cleaning methods used to carry out their duties? Or is it the teamwork they put in action each day to efficiently and effectively provide quality custodial services in support of the university’s mission? All of these aspects make for an outstanding team of professionals. What further sets them apart is their stewardship of the buildings. They not only carry out their assigned tasks well, but they also know they are that extra set of eyes in identifying a facilities issue - many times before the building occupants even notice the issue and have to report it. It is this sense of “ownership” that helps to makes them extraordinary stewards.Facilities Service

Facilities Techs Test-Drive Building Automation Simulators

Values at Work Series: Facilities Services developed our core values of Service, Integrity, Teamwork, Excellence, and Stewardship (collectively referred to as SITES) based on the way we approach our work. Our values can be found throughout our areas of services in many ways.Through a series of articles, the Values at Work Series is devoted to providing a closer look at how our values are hard at work. Each article focuses on an area of service and how that group incorporates our values in a significant way. We are proud of our employees who continue to serve as an example of “walking the talk” every day.The advent of direct digital controls (DDC) has propelled the technology, capability, and complexity of building operations forward over the last 15 years. The combination of DDC and intelligent operating systems combine to create a Building Automation System (BAS). A BAS centralizes the control of a building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, and other systems. “Intelligent” buildings improve occupant comfort, provide efficient operation of the building systems, and reduce energy consumption and operating costs. However, they are much more complicated and technical than earlier control systems and require a new generation of employees who are computer literate and technically savvy to maintain and operate them.Facilities Service

From the Class Room to the Mechanical Room: How Architectural Engineering Students Benefit from a Partnership Between the University’s Faculty and Facilities Engineers

Values at Work Series: Facilities Services developed our core values of Service, Integrity, Teamwork, Excellence, and Stewardship (collectively referred to as SITES) based on the way we approach our work. Our values can be found throughout our areas of services in many ways.Through a series of articles, the Values at Work Series is devoted to providing a closer look at how our values are hard at work. Each article focuses on an area of service and how that group incorporates our values in a significant way. We are proud of our employees who continue to serve as an example of “walking the talk” every day.When it comes to teaching architectural engineering students how to design and understand the large and highly technical building systems in institutions, professors often look for opportunities for their students to see the systems where they come “alive” in order to better comprehend how they work. A facility must function well to serve its purpose to its occupants. Like a breathing organism, the electrical, mechanical and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems pulsing throughout the facility must remain operational. If the systems go down, the facility cannot support its purpose. One of the best ways to help teach this is the definitive “show and tell” where the class room is replaced with the mechanical room. This is the story of how a professor at The University of Texas at Austin helped make abstract concepts concrete in a partnership with the facilities professionals responsible for the university’s building operations. Twice a semester, she takes her students to a tour of two buildings: one that is newer and one that is older in order to compare and contrast the facilities in operation. How does our story begin? How do the tours impact the students?Facilities Service

The Battle Oaks: Preserving a Living Legend

Values at Work Series: Facilities Services developed our core values of Service, Integrity, Teamwork, Excellence, and Stewardship (collectively referred to as SITES) based on the way we approach our work. Our values can be found throughout our areas of services in many ways.Through a series of articles, the Values at Work Series is devoted to providing a closer look at how our values are hard at work. Each article focuses on an area of service and how that group incorporates our values in a significant way. We are proud of our employees who continue to serve as an example of “walking the talk” every day.The Battle Oaks are among The University of Texas at Austin’s oldest living trees on campus at upwards of 250-300 years old. These three Texas live oaks graced the grounds of the original Forty Acres when the university opened in September 1883.Facilities Service

Developing selection indexes & estimation of genetic parameters for traits of economic importance in dairy cattle under once-a-day milking : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Animal Science, Institute of Veterinary, Animal Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

In New Zealand, about 5% of dairy herds are milked once-a-day (OAD). The cows are inseminated using sires from the twice-a-day milking system (TAD) evaluated on breeding worth (BW) or an OAD selection index. Testing for sire-by-milking frequency (MF) interaction (S×MF) could reveal if developing an OAD-specific selection scheme is justified. In this thesis production records were analysed from herds milked OAD and an equivalent TAD population provided by Livestock Improvement Corporation. Across MF, heritabilities (h2) and genetic correlations were similar for milk yields (h2: 0.21-0.36), although they tended to be greater in TAD. Genetic correlations were 0.35-0.40 between milk and fat yields, 0.85 between milk and protein yields and 0.54-0.60 between fat and protein yields. Observed rank correlation between OAD and TAD EBVs of the sires were moderate to high for milk yields, being greater in Jersey (J) (0.74-0.84) sires compared to Holstein-Friesian (F) and F×J crossbred (0.55-0.77) sires. Those values were greater than their critical values of the expected correlations (5th percentile), indicating that S×MF was not significant. Data from a university herd indicated that J cows were more efficient at production of milk solids (MS; fat + protein) per 100 kg of live weight than F or F×J cows milked OAD. In comparison, data from commercial herds milked either OAD or TAD indicated that F cows milked OAD had 19%-25% lower milk yields, whilst the reduction in yields from F×J and J cows was around 15%-19%. Breed effects (F-J) were lower on OAD compared to TAD systems, but heterosis effects were similar across MF (4.1%-7.6%). Under a progeny testing selection scheme for herds milked OAD, estimated genetic gains ranged from 3.3 to 3.7 kg/year for MS. Nevertheless, genetic gain resulting from the selection of bulls generated in TAD systems and dedicated to OAD herds would results in a similar increase compared with a separate scheme (only 11%-13% less of MS), indicating that there is little advantage in the implementation of a separate selection scheme. The main conclusion was that the S×MF interaction was not significant and farmers operating under OAD milking achieve similar genetic gain using sires from the TAD milking selection scheme but ranked on an OAD-selection index

UT’s Tech Team Moves the Needle Toward Building Optimization

Values at Work Series: Facilities Services developed our core values of Service, Integrity, Teamwork, Excellence, and Stewardship (collectively referred to as SITES) based on the way we approach our work. Our values can be found throughout our areas of services in many ways.Through a series of articles, the Values at Work Series is devoted to providing a closer look at how our values are hard at work. Each article focuses on an area of service and how that group incorporates our values in a significant way. We are proud of our employees who continue to serve as an example of “walking the talk” every day.After facilities managers address their client’s unplanned maintenance issues, provide the necessary preventive maintenance on building systems and manage energy conservation efforts, how do they also find a way to optimize the performance of the buildings on campus so the systems run as well as they ought to...and do it all with limited resources? Building Operations Manager Mark White provides insights into how The University of Texas at Austin, with the help of its Building Optimization Team (BOT), is moving the needle toward impactful facilities optimization on a university campus.Facilities Service

The hyperspaces Cn(X) for finite ray-graphs

[EN] In this paper we consider the hyperspace Cn(X) of non-empty and closed subsets of a base space X with up to n connected components. The class of base spaces we consider we call finite ray-graphs, and are a noncompact variation on finite graphs. We prove two results about the structure of these hyperspaces under different topologies (Hausdorff metric topology and Vietoris topology).Esty, N. (2013). The hyperspaces Cn(X) for finite ray-graphs. Applied General Topology. 14(1):73-84. doi:10.4995/agt.2013.1619.SWORD7384141R. Duda, On the hyperspace of subcontinua of a finite graph I, Fund. Math. 62 (1968), 265–286.R. Duda, On the hyperspace of subcontinua of a finite graph II, Fund. Math. 63 (1968), 225–255.N. Esty, On the contractibility of certain hyperspaces, Top. Proc. 32 (2008), 291–300.A. Illanes, The hyperspace C2(X) for a finte graph is unique, Glasnik Mat. 37 (2002), 347–363.A. Illanes, Finite graphs X have unique hyperspaces Cn(X), Top. Proc. 27 (2003), 179–188.A. Illanes and S. Nadler, Hyperspaces: Fundamentals and Recent Advances, Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, 1999

On local fixed or periodic point properties

A space X has the local fixed point property LFPP, (local periodic point property LPPP) if it has an open basis $\mathcal{B}$ such that, for each $B\in \mathcal{B}$, the closure $\overline{B}$ has the fixed (periodic) point property. Weaker versions wLFPP, wLPPP are also considered and examples of metric continua that distinguish all these properties are constructed. We show that for planar or one-dimensional locally connected metric continua the properties are equivalent

Separating subsets and stable values

AbstractLet X be a metric continuum. In this paper we prove that if there exist pariwise disjoint terminal subcontinua A1,…,An of X such that X−(A1∪⋯∪An) is disconnected, then each onto map f:Y→X has a stable value