Adolescent beliefs about antisocial behavior : mediators and moderators of links with parental monitoring and attachment

The current study examined whether parental monitoring and attachment were related to adolescent beliefs about antisocial acts, with temperament, gender, and age considered as potential moderators. A total of 7135 adolescents, aged 14-18 years, completed selfreport measures of antisocial beliefs, parental monitoring, attachment security, and temperament. Results indicate that both attachment security and parental monitoring are associated with adolescent beliefs about antisocial behaviour. It also appears that the two aspects of parenting are complementary, in that a secure attachment relationship is associated with greater parental monitoring knowledge, which in turn is linked with a lower tolerance for antisocial behaviour. However, the relations between these aspects of parenting and beliefs about antisocial acts depended on the young people’s characteristics, with some results varying by age, gender and temperament. Implications for future research and parent-focused interventions to prevent antisocial beliefs and behaviour are discussed.peer-reviewe

Estimating waste heat from domestic hot water systems in UK dwellings

Domestic Hot Water (DHW) production can account for a quarter of the energy consumed in UK dwellings and this proportion is likely to increase as the energy required for space heating reduces in order to achieve demand reduction targets. As the margins for improving the performance of heating system technologies diminish, the need for improving modelling accuracy and precision increases. Although studies have considered DHW use, there is a lack of reflection on the consumption and performance of systems in contemporary UK dwellings. This paper is based on two family homes and investigates heat losses from DHW networks using high resolution demand data combined with an analytical model. The model estimates are compared to widely used building performance models and it is found that the models may over estimate the heat losses by a significant amount and that short draw-offs are particularity influential in determining the amount of heat wasted

Estimation of changes in instantaneous aortic blood flow by the analysis of arterial blood pressure

The purpose of this study was to introduce and validate a new algorithm to estimate instantaneous aortic blood flow (ABF) by mathematical analysis of arterial blood pressure (ABP) waveforms. The algorithm is based on an autoregressive with exogenous input (ARX) model. We applied this algorithm to diastolic ABP waveforms to estimate the autoregressive model coefficients by requiring the estimated diastolic flow to be zero. The algorithm incorporating the coefficients was then applied to the entire ABP signal to estimate ABF. The algorithm was applied to six Yorkshire swine data sets over a wide range of physiological conditions for validation. Quantitative measures of waveform shape (standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis), as well as stroke volume and cardiac output from the estimated ABF, were computed. Values of these measures were compared with those obtained from ABF waveforms recorded using a Transonic aortic flow probe placed around the aortic root. The estimation errors were compared with those obtained using a windkessel model. The ARX model algorithm achieved significantly lower errors in the waveform measures, stroke volume, and cardiac output than those obtained using the windkessel model (P < 0.05)

Sizing domestic air-source heat pump systems with thermal storage under varying electrical load shifting strategies

The demand for local heat storage to help manage energy demand in dwellings is likely to increase as the electrification of heat through heat pumps becomes more widespread. Sizing thermal energy storage systems has been an important topic in contemporary literature, but the effect of the electrical load shifting tariff and the service the householder receives in terms of space-heating and hot water delivered, however, has not and this is particularly important when households transition from conventional gas fired to low carbon technologies. This paper takes a whole system modelling approach to understand the impact of user demand patterns and load shifting scenarios on the volume of energy storage required for a heat-pump installation. The work uses monitoring data from several family homes to drive the simulation and finds that the level of service the householder receives is sensitive to their patterns of consumption, thermal energy storage volume and the electricity tariff, with some households being far more sensitive to tariff choice than others. The paper introduces a novel, quantifiable measure of service for space-heating and hot water systems that can be incorporated into thermal energy storage sizing procedures

A critical software review - how is hot water modelled in current building simulation ?

In a changing climate and with ever increasing energy standards that lead to low and zero energy buildings, the provision of hot water in buildings will become more significant in relation to the overall energy consumption. Higher demand on the provision of hot water consumption has been documented and will occur around activities such as laundry, dishwashing, food preparation, bathing and cleaning activities. The accurate prediction and simulation of hot water in building design is therefore crucial and we need to rethink how we estimate the amount of hot water in our buildings. This paper will investigate how hot water demand and provision in homes is simulated via a number of different tools. The input and output differences with respect to hot water are compared to measured data of a building in the UK

The impact of electrical load shifting strategies on storage capacity and service provision of domestic hot water systems in residential buildings

Domestic hot water can accounts for up to 25% of the total domestic energy consumption in the UK and is demand driven. In the UK there has been a trend to replace traditional tank systems with instantaneous supply of hot water through gas fired combination boilers, leaving the space occupied by the tank to be repurposed by the household. This space is likely to become more critical as the need for storage increases in order to participate in peak load shifting when spaceheating and hot water is supplied by electricity rather than gas. The size of tank and hence the delivery of water at an appropriate temperature delivered when demand dictate is likely to become a point of tension in future systems. This paper introduces a notion of hot water ‘service’ that can be evaluated and used to compare the performance of different systems, along side more traditional metrics such as cost, power and tank size. The analysis compares several load shifting strategies through a TRNSYS model driven by high resolution hot water data (1sec) measured in a UK home. It is demonstrated that optimal tank size and the service the system can provide are very sensitive to the load shifting strategy applied

Adolescent beliefs about antisocial behavior : mediators and moderators of links with parental monitoring and attachment

The current study examined whether parental monitoring and attachment were related to adolescent beliefs about antisocial acts, with temperament, gender, and age considered as potential moderators. A total of 7135 adolescents, ages 14-18 years, completed self- report measures of antisocial beliefs, parental monitoring, attachment security, and temperament. Results indicate that both attachment security and parental monitoring are associated with adolescent beliefs about antisocial behaviour. It also appears that the two aspects of parenting are complementary, in that a secure attachment relationship is associated with greater parental monitoring knowledge, which in turn is linked with a lower tolerance for antisocial behaviour. However, the relations between these aspects of parenting and beliefs about antisocial acts depended on the young people's characteristics, with some results varying by age, gender and temperament. Implications for future research and parent-focused interventions to prevent antisocial beliefs and behaviour are discussed.peer-reviewe

Determining heat use in residential buildings using high resolution gas and domestic hot water monitoring

Residential buildings consume about a third of the UKs total energy and the need to reduce this as part of achieving the 2050 CO2 emissions targets driving the interest the modelling and performance simulation of homes. While simulation and modelling tools are in wide spread use, the detailed empirical data with which to understand the effect of systems and operational complexities of households on the consumption of energy is less developed than it is for commercial buildings. This paper reports some early results from a whole house monitoring trial in the UK where high resolution measurements of gas, hot water and power are being used to disaggregate heat use. The study has shown that: equipment used for domestic heat generation varies considerably between households; gas demand is highly variable at the sub-hourly level, far greater than some of the available hourly monitored data would suggest; and that the current information on hot water consumption characteristics is poor and so some new, more comprehensive data is presented