Analysis of the coupled effect of steel studs and surface emissivity on internal insulation systems performance

Many kinds of insulation systems have been developed and applied over the years to all the constructive elements of the building, but the two most used strategies remain the external and internal insulation of vertical walls. However, about the latter often a significant issue is neglected: the overestimation of the thermal performance by disregarding the contribution of construction elements. Usually a uniform stratigraphy of the wall is considered and the evaluation of the performance of a non-uniform one leads to erroneous results about the overall behavior of the system. In this paper, we developed a different approach considering the presence of the steel studs used to attach this package to the existing wall and their influence on the thermal behavior of the structure. Through both experimental and numerical analysis, the possible application of low-e sheets inside the air cavity in various configurations and with different thicknesses of insulation is also taken into account. Results showed that neglecting the presence of the steel studs leads to an erroneous evaluation of the conductance of the refurbished wall with errors reaching up to 28.0% in low-e high-insulated cases. This work highlights how careful the designers have to be when using standard formulas to compute the thermal resistance of internal insulation wall systems

genetic optimization for economic feasibility of refurbishment in buildings

Abstract This paper investigates the possibility to enhance the thermal characteristics of a building fabric taking into account the economic feasibility in order to avoid useless expensive interventions. The problem consists in realizing an internal insulation system for a single apartment located in Trieste. A genetic optimization has been implemented in order to search a large number of solutions with multiple objects and constraints. EnergyPlus has been used for dynamic building and plant simulation and modeFRONTIER for optimization loop setup. The objectives are the used heating energy consumption and the life cycle refurbishment cost, using a net present value approach. An additional objective has been added in order to guarantee the maximization of the interior useful floor area, which is directly influenced by the internal insulation thickness. Different approaches have been compared, considering actions dealing with opaque surfaces only or considering the replacement of existing windows. The paper demonstrates that an automatic optimization approach can help designers to identify the best suited intervention for building refurbishment

Mixossarcoma em cavidade abdominal em Boxer. Relato de caso

O artigo não apresenta resumo

Sistematização do solo para irrigação: aspectos gerais e métodos.

Sistematização consiste em se preparar terreno para o método de irrigação que se pretende implantar visando uma maior uniformização e eficiência na aplicação da água. O trabalho apresenta o seguinte: conceito - graus e tipos de sistematização; benefícios e limitações; fatores a serem considerados num Projeto de Sistematização do solo para irrigação; fases do planejamento de Projetos de Sistematização; demarcação do projeto em campo; execução do projeto; organização do orçamento e métodos de nivelamento de solos para irrigação.bitstream/item/211826/1/SISTEMATIZACAO-DO-SOLO-PARA-A-IRRIGACAO-ASPECTOS-GERAIS-E-METODOS.pdfNão publicado

A chemically etched corrugated feedhorn array for D-band CMB observations

We present the design, manufacturing, and testing of a 37-element array of corrugated feedhorns for Cosmic Microwave Background CMB) measurements between 140 and 170 GHz. The array was designed to be coupled to Kinetic Inductance Detector arrays, either directly (for total power measurements) or through an orthomode transducer (for polarization measurements). We manufactured the array in platelets by chemically etching aluminum plates of 0.3 mm and 0.4 mm thickness. The process is fast, low-cost, scalable, and yields high-performance antennas compared to other techniques in the same frequency range. Room temperature electromagnetic measurements show excellent repeatability with an average cross polarization level about − 20 dB, return loss about − 25 dB, first sidelobes below − 25 dB and far sidelobes below − 35 dB. Our results qualify this process as a valid candidate for state-of-the-art CMB experiments, where large detector arrays with high sensitivity and polarization purity are of paramount importance in the quest for the discovery of CMB polarization B-modes

Identifying frequency decorrelated dust residuals in B-mode maps by exploiting the spectral capability of bolometric interferometry

Astrophysical polarized foregrounds represent the most critical challenge in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) B-mode experiments. Multi-frequency observations can be used to constrain astrophysical foregrounds to isolate the CMB contribution. However, recent observations indicate that foreground emission may be more complex than anticipated. We investigate how the increased spectral resolution provided by band splitting in Bolometric Interferometry (BI) through a technique called spectral imaging can help control the foreground contamination in the case of unaccounted Galactic dust frequency decorrelation along the line-of-sight. We focus on the next generation ground-based CMB experiment CMB-S4, and compare its anticipated sensitivities, frequency and sky coverage with a hypothetical version of the same experiment based on BI. We perform a Monte-Carlo analysis based on parametric component separation methods (FGBuster and Commander) and compute the likelihood on the recovered tensor-to-scalar ratio. The main result of this analysis is that spectral imaging allows us to detect systematic uncertainties on r from frequency decorrelation when this effect is not accounted for in component separation. Conversely, an imager would detect a biased value of r and would be unable to spot the presence of a systematic effect. We find a similar result in the reconstruction of the dust spectral index, where we show that with BI we can measure more precisely the dust spectral index also when frequency decorrelation is present. The in-band frequency resolution provided by BI allows us to identify dust LOS frequency decorrelation residuals where an imager of similar performance would fail. This opens the prospect to exploit this potential in the context of future CMB polarization experiments that will be challenged by complex foregrounds in their quest for B-modes detection.Comment: 13 Pages, 15 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to A&

An early European experience with transapical off-pump mitral valve repair with NeoChord implantation

OBJECTIVES: Transapical off-pump NeoChord repair is a novel minimally invasive surgical procedure to treat degenerative mitral valve regurgitation. The aim was to evaluate 1-year clinical results of the NeoChord procedure in a consecutive cohort of patients. METHODS: Between February 2013 and July 2016, 213 patients were enrolled in the NeoChord Independent International Registry. All patients presented severe mitral regurgitation due to flail/prolapse of 1 or both leaflets, and they all completed postoperative echocardiographic assessment up to 1 year. We identified the primary end point as composed of procedural success, freedom from mortality, stroke, reintervention, recurrence of severe mitral regurgitation, rehospitalization and decrease of at least 1 New York Heart Association functional class at 1-year follow-up. We also compared outcomes according to the anatomical classification (Type A: isolated central posterior leaflet disease; Type B: posterior multisegment disease; Type C: anterior, bileaflet, paracommissural disease with/without leaflet/annular calcifications). RESULTS: The median age was 68 years (interquartile range 56-77), and the median EuroSCORE II was 1.05% (interquartile range 0.67-1.76). The number of Type A, B and C patients was 82 (38.5%), 98 (46%) and 33 (15.5%), respectively. Procedural success was achieved in 206 (96.7%) patients. At 1-year follow-up, overall survival was 98 ± 1%. Composite end point was achieved in 84 ± 2.5% for the overall population and 94 ± 2.6%, 82.6 ± 3.8% and 63.6 ± 8.4% in Type A, Type B and Type C patients, respectively (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that the NeoChord procedure is safe, effective and reproducible. Clinical and echocardiographic efficacy is maintained up to 1 year with significant differences among the anatomical groups. Specific anatomical selection criteria are necessary to achieve stable results

Measuring CMB spectral distortions from Antarctica with COSMO: blackbody calibrator design and performance forecast

COSMO is a ground-based instrument to measure the spectral distortions (SD) of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In this paper, we present preliminary results of electromagnetic simulations of its reference blackbody calibrator. HFSS simulations provide a calibrator reflection coefficient of R∼ 10 - 6, corresponding to an emissivity ϵ= 1 - R= 0.999999. We also provide a forecast for the instrument performance by using an ILC-based simulation. We show that COSMO can extract the isotropic Comptonization parameter (modeled as | y| = 1.77 · 10 - 6) as | y| = (1.79 ± 0.19) · 10 - 6, in the presence of the main Galactic foreground (thermal dust) and of CMB anisotropies, and assuming perfect atmospheric emission removal

CAS: centre for advanced studies

The JRC‘s Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) was created in 2016 to help improve and bridge the interface between science and policy in order to enhance the JRC‘s capacity to better inform and influence the regulatory frameworks needed to address the new and emerging societal challenges confronting the EU and our societies as a whole. By creating the conditions necessary for innovative and interdisciplinary research, as well as offering a creative and generative space in which ideas and knowledge in emerging thematic fields across different scientific and technological disciplines can thrive and flourish, CAS has become an incubator for formal inquiry, stimulating ideas and activities and providing the JRC with new insights, data projections and solutions for the increasingly complex medium and longterm challenges facing the EU, especially in the fields of demography, big data and digital transformation. Through the performance of advanced, cutting edge research, ranging from applied research to topics of a more academic character, all within a stimulating trans- and interdisciplinary environment, CAS allows external researchers and scientists to work together with the JRC to explore and exchange new ideas and knowledge on scientific research in emerging fields of strategic societal importance, which might otherwise fall outside the policy support activities undertaken by the JRC on behalf of the European Commission

Status of QUBIC, the Q&U Bolometer for Cosmology

The Q&U Bolometric Interferometer for Cosmology (QUBIC) is a novel kind of polarimeter optimized for the measurement of the B-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Back-ground (CMB), which is one of the major challenges of observational cosmology. The signal is expected to be of the order of a few tens of nK, prone to instrumental systematic effects and polluted by various astrophysical foregrounds which can only be controlled through multichroic observations. QUBIC is designed to address these observational issues with a novel approach that combines the advantages of interferometry in terms of control of instrumental systematics with those of bolometric detectors in terms of wide-band, background-limited sensitivity.Comment: Contribution to the 2022 Cosmology session of the 33rd Rencontres de Blois. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2203.0894