Assessing Self-shading Benefits of Twisting Towers

Over the last number of decades, tall building geometries have been shifting from rectangular boxes towards shapes that are defined through geometrical transformations such as twisting. While, from an aesthetical point of view, these twisting geometries make tall buildings appear contemporary and iconic, from an environmental point of view, however, the benefits are not as straightforward. They may vary significantly based on climatic loads and urban conditions, among others. This study aims to assess the self-shading benefits of twisting geometries by finding a correlation between floor-to-floor rotation and façade solar irradiation across climates, primarily focusing on hot ones, where self-shading is used as a passive solar design strategy. The study analysed three types of irradiation studies: Cumulative Annual Irradiation, Cumulative Harmful Irradiation during Cooling Design Day, and lastly, Solar Irradiation Self-Shading Balance. The latter compares beneficial and harmful solar irradiation during Hot and Cold Degree Days to quantify the impact of floor-to-floor rotation on optical and thermal performance. The study explored hundreds of possible scenarios across different climates and various floor-to-floor rotation angles, revealing a variety of positive, negative, and neutral situations. The study recommends careful examination of environmental conditions via a combination of multiple irradiation studies, particularly in the case of a smooth façade scenario

Joint demodulation of low-entropy narrowband cochannel signals

Introducation to cochannel signals: many receivers today operate in an interference-limited environment. In a dense signal environment, the performance of a receiver is limited by interference from multiple signals at the receiver rather than signal-to-noise ratio. In the interference-limited environment, there is a diminishing return from investing additional resources into improving traditional receiver parameters such as noise figure. Advanced processing techniques exist that can help recover information that would otherwise be lost using a single-channel receiver. This work investigates some of these techniques. Interference may originate from many sources, such as users on the same or adjacent frequency band, unintended emissions, and intermodulation. This work investigates interference from cochannel information bearing signals. Cochannel interference is commonly defined as the reception of two or more signals at the receiver overlapping in frequency and in time.USA

Large Steel Tank Fails and Rockets to Height of 30 meters - Rupture Disc Installed Incorrectly

AbstractAt a brewery, the base plate-to-shell weld seam of a 90-m3 vertical cylindrical steel tank failed catastrophically. The 4 ton tank “took off” like a rocket leaving its contents behind, and landed on a van, crushing it. The top of the tank reached a height of 30 m. The internal overpressure responsible for the failure was an estimated 60 kPa. A rupture disc rated at < 50 kPa provided overpressure protection and thus prevented the tank from being covered by the European Pressure Equipment Directive. This safeguard failed and it was later discovered that the rupture disc had been installed upside down. The organizational root cause of this incident may be a fundamental lack of appreciation of the hazards of large volumes of low-pressure compressed air or gas. A contributing factor may be that the standard piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID) symbol for a rupture disc may confuse and lead to incorrect installation. Compressed air systems are ubiquitous. The medium is not toxic or flammable. Such systems however, when operated at “slight overpressure” can store a great deal of energy and thus constitute a hazard that ought to be addressed by safety managers

Ability to perform activities of daily living is the main factor affecting quality of life in patients with dementia

BACKGROUND: Dementia is a chronic illness associated with a progressive loss of cognitive and intellectual abilities, such as memory, judgment and abstract thinking. The objective of this study was to assess the health utilities of patients with dementia in Europe and identify the key factors influencing their Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQol). METHODS: This study used cross-sectional data from the Odense study; a Danish cohort of patients aged 65–84 living in Odense, Denmark. A total of 244 patients with mild to severe dementia were interviewed together with a caregiver about their health status and activities of daily living (ADL). Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed according to the NINCDS-ADRDA criteria for probable dementia. Vascular dementia and other types of dementia were diagnosed according to the DSM-IIIR criteria. Severity of dementia was defined by score intervals on the Mini Mental State Examination score: mild (MMSE 20–30), moderate (MMSE 10–19), and severe (MMSE 0–9). Based on the ADL information, the patients' dependency level was defined as either dependent or independent. Questions from the Odense Study were mapped into each of the five dimensions of the EQ-5D in order to assess patients' HRQol. Danish EQ-5D social tariffs were used to value patients' HRQol. A regression analysis of EQ-5D values was conducted with backward selection on gender, age, severity, ADL level and setting in order to determine the main factor influencing HRQoL. RESULTS: The EQ-5D weight in patients independent upon others in ADL was 0.641 (95% CI: [0.612–0.669]), and in those dependent upon others was 0.343 (95% CI: [0.251–0.436]). CONCLUSION: Dependency upon others to perform ADL was the main factor affecting HRQoL

FAS-dependent cell death in α-synuclein transgenic oligodendrocyte models of multiple system atrophy

Multiple system atrophy is a parkinsonian neurodegenerative disorder. It is cytopathologically characterized by accumulation of the protein p25α in cell bodies of oligodendrocytes followed by accumulation of aggregated α-synuclein in so-called glial cytoplasmic inclusions. p25α is a stimulator of α-synuclein aggregation, and coexpression of α-synuclein and p25α in the oligodendroglial OLN-t40-AS cell line causes α-synuclein aggregate-dependent toxicity. In this study, we investigated whether the FAS system is involved in α-synuclein aggregate dependent degeneration in oligodendrocytes and may play a role in multiple system atrophy. Using rat oligodendroglial OLN-t40-AS cells we demonstrate that the cytotoxicity caused by coexpressing α-synuclein and p25α relies on stimulation of the death domain receptor FAS and caspase-8 activation. Using primary oligodendrocytes derived from PLP-α-synuclein transgenic mice we demonstrate that they exist in a sensitized state expressing pro-apoptotic FAS receptor, which makes them sensitive to FAS ligand-mediated apoptosis. Immunoblot analysis shows an increase in FAS in brain extracts from multiple system atrophy cases. Immunohistochemical analysis demonstrated enhanced FAS expression in multiple system atrophy brains notably in oligodendrocytes harboring the earliest stages of glial cytoplasmic inclusion formation. Oligodendroglial FAS expression is an early hallmark of oligodendroglial pathology in multiple system atrophy that mechanistically may be coupled to α-synuclein dependent degeneration and thus represent a potential target for protective intervention

A beginner's introduction to Fukaya categories

The goal of these notes is to give a short introduction to Fukaya categories and some of their applications. The first half of the text is devoted to a brief review of Lagrangian Floer (co)homology and product structures. Then we introduce the Fukaya category (informally and without a lot of the necessary technical detail), and briefly discuss algebraic concepts such as exact triangles and generators. Finally, we mention wrapped Fukaya categories and outline a few applications to symplectic topology, mirror symmetry and low-dimensional topology. This text is based on a series of lectures given at a Summer School on Contact and Symplectic Topology at Universit\'e de Nantes in June 2011.Comment: 42 pages, 13 figure

A perspective on the landscape problem

I discuss the historical roots of the landscape problem and propose criteria for its successful resolution. This provides a perspective to evaluate the possibility to solve it in several of the speculative cosmological scenarios under study including eternal inflation, cosmological natural selection and cyclic cosmologies.Comment: Invited contribution for a special issue of Foundations of Physics titled: Forty Years Of String Theory: Reflecting On the Foundations. 31 pages, no figure