Physically-based thermal feedback for real-time user interaction in Virtual Environments

This work addresses the concept and implementation of haptic-thermal feedback as an innovative interaction technique towards full immersion in Virtual Environments. The original contribution presented and discussed brings together the disciplines and techniques involved in three distinct areas of research - Virtual Environments, Advanced Rendering Techniques, and Heat Transfer. These include, among others, the development of haptic interfaces. Thus, a hardware prototype was developed, and is described as a haptic-thermal display of the computed heat fluxes. Through this interaction loop the user will have the opportunity to have both the realistic rendered scene and a haptic perception

Physically-based thermal feedback for real-time user interaction in Virtual Environments

This work addresses the concept and implementation of haptic-thermal feedback as an innovative interaction technique towards full immersion in Virtual Environments. The original contribution presented and discussed brings together the disciplines and techniques involved in three distinct areas of research - Virtual Environments, Advanced Rendering Techniques, and Heat Transfer. These include, among others, the development of haptic interfaces. Thus, a hardware prototype was developed, and is described as a haptic-thermal display of the computed heat fluxes. Through this interaction loop the user will have the opportunity to have both the realistic rendered scene and a haptic perception

A CAD-Based System for Air-Conditioning in Buildings

Existing simulation tools related with energy analysis in buildings are not flexible enough and the aount of training time required to reach high proficiency is beyond the resources of most design studios. This paper describes the present on-going development of a general energy simulation tool called Graph-Base. The priority target is the automation of input data addressed to energy efficiency and associated analysis in buildings. Therefore, a more user-frindly "front-end" is now being proposed and presented using a hierarchical database structure through a commercially available CAD environment. By means of a brief description of its architecture and concepts, some aspects of an application in a real building performance evaluation context are shown

The impact of climate change on lakes in the Netherlands: a review

Climate change will alter freshwater ecosystems but specific effects will vary among regions and the type of water body. Here, we give an integrative review of the observed and predicted impacts of climate change on shallow lakes in the Netherlands and put these impacts in an international perspective. Most of these lakes are man-made and have preset water levels and poorly developed littoral zones. Relevant climatic factors for these ecosystems are temperature, ice-cover and wind. Secondary factors affected by climate include nutrient loading, residence time and water levels. We reviewed the relevant literature in order to assess the impact of climate change on these lakes. We focussed on six management objectives as bioindicators for the functioning of these ecosystems: target species, nuisance species, invading species, transparency, carrying capacity and biodiversity. We conclude that climate change will likely (i) reduce the numbers of several target species of birds; (ii) favour and stabilize cyanobacterial dominance in phytoplankton communities; (iii) cause more serious incidents of botulism among waterfowl and enhance the spreading of mosquito borne diseases; (iv) benefit invaders originating from the Ponto-Caspian region; (v) stabilize turbid, phytoplankton-dominated systems, thus counteracting restoration measures; (vi) destabilize macrophyte-dominated clear-water lakes; (vii) increase the carrying capacity of primary producers, especially phytoplankton, thus mimicking eutrophication; (viii) affect higher trophic levels as a result of enhanced primary production; (ix) have a negative impact on biodiversity which is linked to the clear water state; (x) affect biodiversity by changing the disturbance regime. Water managers can counteract these developments by reduction of nutrient loading, development of the littoral zone, compartmentalization of lakes and fisheries management

The Changing Landscape for Stroke Prevention in AF Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Thrombosis and Hemostasi