A holistic approach to the evaluation of sustainable housing

Residential housing is often evaluated against single or at best a limited number of similar criteria. These include quantifiable indicators such as energy use and its associated greenhouse gas emissions. It might also include material consumption from an embodied energy or resource use perspective. Social factors or qualitative indicators may be evaluated but are rarely placed or juxtaposed alongside these quantifiable indicators. A one-dimensional approach will be limiting because sustainable development includes both environmental and social factors. This paper describes the methodologies that have been developed to assess housing developments against five quite different criteria. These are: energy use, resource use, neighbourhood character, neighbourhood connectedness and diversity. In each case, high and low sustainability practice has been identified so that ranking is possible. These methodologies have then been tested by evaluating a typical precinct (approximately 400 m by 400 m) of a 1970-80s housing development in a suburb of Geelong. The rankings of the particular precinct have then been combined in a visual way to assist in the evaluation of the housing in a more holistic way. The results of this evaluation method are presented, along with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the methodologies. The research is the outcome of collaboration by a cross-disciplinary group of academics within Deakin’s School of Architecture and Building

Transport Theoretical Approach to the Nucleon Spectral Function in Nuclear Matter

The nucleon spectral function in infinite nuclear matter is calculated in a quantum transport theoretical approach. Exploiting the known relation between collision rates and correlation functions the spectral function is derived self-consistently. By re-inserting the spectral functions into the collision integrals the description of hard processes from the high-momentum components of wave functions and interactions is improved iteratively until convergence is achieved. The momentum and energy distributions and the nuclear matter occupation probabilities are in very good agreement with the results obtained from many-body theory.Comment: minor changes in the text, additional curves in fig.

From fibro shacks to McMansions: considering the impact of housing change on the sense of place in the historic Victorian coastal towns of Sorrento and Queenscliff

Eighty per cent of Australians now live within 50 kilometres of the coast.1 While most of the population remains concentrated in the large capital cities, some people have chosen small coastal towns as their permanent and or second-home destination. Greater mobility and income has increased the feasibility and attractiveness of living in these once overlooked and forgotten towns. The arrival of these new residents has changed the towns in both positive and negative ways. Declining traditional industries have been replaced by tourism and service sectors, providing a much-needed economic revival. The expectations of new residents, both permanent and non-permanent, however, have also brought challenges to the towns. Metropolitan value systems sometimes impact negatively on the unique sense of place and neighbourhood character of these towns. This paper presents both quantitative and qualitative evidence of the impact on character and sense of place in two historic coastal towns, Queenscliff and Sorrento, in southern Victoria. Census data shows how employment and the number of permanent residents have changed radically over the last 50-60 years, altering the social fabric of the towns. An analysis of the building footprint over a similar timeframe shows a growth in building size as larger houses become more common, and a growth in planning appeals for the towns is indicative of a clash of expectations between the council, long-time and new residents. While these indicators demonstrate the impact on the character of the towns as defined by their built environment, some oral accounts of local residents are used to show the emotional impact of these changes on the traditional sense of place associated with these towns. Some specific examples of changes to the built environment are provided to demonstrate that local planning schemes are not always successful in protecting neighbourhood character and that further measures are required in order to safeguard the uniqueness of coastal towns from the negative aspects of development

The Atmospheric Muon Charge Ratio at the MINOS Near Detector

The magnetized MINOS near detector can accurately determine the charge sign of atmospheric muons, this facilitates a measurement of the atmospheric muon charge ratio. To reduce the systematic error associated with geometric bias and acceptance we have combined equal periods of data obtained with opposite magnetic field polarities. We report a charge ratio of $1.2666\pm0.0015(stat.)^{+0.0096}_{-0.0088}(syst.)$ at a mean E$_{\mu,0}cos(\theta)$=\unit[63]{GeV}. This measurement is consistent with the world average\cite{Hebbeker}\cite{Haino}\cite{Achard} but significantly lower than the earlier observation at the MINOS far detector\cite{Adamson}. This increase is shown to be consistent with the hypothesis that a greater fraction of the observed muons arise from kaon decay within the cosmic ray shower.Comment: Proceedings for the 2009, 31st International Cosmic Ray Conference in Lodz Polan

News recommendations using CF-IDF

Most of the traditional recommendation algorithms are based on TF-IDF, a term-based weighting method. This paper proposes a new method for recommending news items based on the weighting of the occurrences of references to concepts, which we call Concept Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (CFIDF). In an experimental setup we apply CF-IDF to a set of newswires in which we detect 1; 167 instances of a set of 65 concepts from a domain ontology. The proposed method yields significantly better results with respect to accuracy, recall, and F1 than the TF-IDF method we use as a basis for comparison

Evaluation of housing developments for sustainability using a multi-criteria approach

New housing developments in Australia, particularly on Greenfield sites on the edge of existing urban centres, need to be sustainable in environmental and social terms if long term problems are to be avoided. Sustainability is multi-dimensional and existing analyses have been found to be inadequate in assessing housing developments holistically. This paper describes research which has used five criteria (energy use, resource use, neighbourhood character, neighbourhood connectivity and diversity), representing 31 indicators, to assess three housing precincts of a regional city in southern Australia. The method has been found to produce useful assessments of sustainability. The method has the potential to inform future housing developments and to be used to improve existing suburbs

An issues paper: the roots/routes of Australian architecture: elements of an alternative architectural history

The dynamism and mobility of architects in their approach to architecturaldesign practice provides a context that emphasises that architecture, likeculture, is not static or rooted in place, but is intricately configured throughthe dual processes of locality and mobility – both physical and theoretical. Theproduction of architecture in Australia, as in other immigrant-rich societies,provides a case for reinforcing the theory that architectural mobility and travelare integral to the architecture of place.This issues paper sets out to re-examine the contribution of geo-culturalinfluences upon Australia’s architectural lineage and considers a diverse rangeof themes across an equally broad timeframe; British colonial transpositions; thedissemination of Modernism in Australia; the latent contribution of mid-twentiethcentury European émigré architects; and the secreted history of Australia’sAsian architecture. Common to all, however, is the notion of architecturaltranslation as a process of influences transmitted, transposed or adapted toother contexts. It uses Australia as the focus from which to consider how globalcriticism, ideas and theories have travelled and continue to travel transverselyacross time and place, from the late-eighteenth century well into the twenty-first.This paper investigates translations through narratives, processes, networks andtraces of architectural manifestations and begins to draw lines of influence

Численная гидродинамическая модель атмосферной дисперсии загрязнений вокруг зданий

The computational fluid mechanics model of is atmospheric dispersion in the vicinity of buildings is developed. The validation of model against field experiment was performed. The application of model to problem of estimation of concentration near contaminated buildings located at the territory of Pridneprovsky Chemical Plant is presented

X-Ray and Infrared Enhancement of Anomalous X-ray Pulsar 1E 2259+58

The long term (~1.5 years) X-ray enhancement and the accompanying infrared enhancement light curves of the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 2259+58 following the major bursting epoch can be accounted for by the relaxation of a fall back disk that has been pushed back by a gamma-ray flare. The required burst energy estimated from the results of our model fits is low enough for such a burst to have remained below the detection limits. We find that an irradiated disk model with a low irradiation efficiency is in good agreement with both X-ray and infrared data. Non-irradiated disk models also give a good fit to the X-ray light curve, but are not consistent with the infrared data for the first week of the enhancement.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Ap