On Slowing Climate Change with Ecological, Thermo-Active Building Systems

In the early days of energy conservation 1980s several countries took the need for energy efficiency seriously enough to sponsor some demonstration buildings For instance a US university design concept was built in Regina Canada in1978 The Saskatchewan Energy Conservation house 1s 4 demonstrated a new passive technology It had super-insulated and airtight walls large windows on the south facade evacuated solar pipes for domestic water heating and a heat recovery ventilator Despite of all the technology demonstrated there as Bomberg et al 2 explains the passive measures were not accepted in the Canadian marketplace because the builders modified the heating system and thereby changed the air flow pattern in the hous

Dimensionality, ideology and party positions towards European integration

<p>The rise of political contestation over European integration has led many scholars to examine the role that broader ideological positions play in structuring party attitudes towards European integration. This article extends the existing approaches in two important ways. First, it shows that whether the dimensionality of politics is imagined in a one-dimensional ‘general left‒right’ form or a two-dimensional ‘economic left‒right/social liberal-conservative’ form leads to very different understandings of the way ideology has structured attitudes towards European integration, with the two-dimensional approach offering greater explanatory power. Second, existing approaches have modelled the influence of ideology on attitudes towards European integration as a static process. This article shows that the relationship between ideology and European integration has changed substantially over the history of European integration: divisions over social issues have replaced economic concerns as the main driver of party attitudes towards European integration.</p

The 4th Industrial Revolution Brings a Change in the Design Paradigm for New and Retrofitted Buildings

The Fourth Industrial Revolution forms a smart grid with diverse sources of energy through the interconnectivity of data. Buildings that were previously the biggest users of energy are now becoming energy producers. Yet, buildings are also continually changing. The ecological definition of buildings, in addition to the building itself, includes solar panels and geothermal energy storage. The need for decarbonization and energy-efficiency brought about the implementation of heat pumps in buildings. The most economic type of heat pump is a water-sourced heat pump with hot and cold tanks or a connection to the District Energy System. Monitoring using building automatics allows HVAC optimization in the occupancy stage. Until the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the EU and the US differed in their air handling methodology, but the pandemic showed the limitations of both approaches and led to the creation of a new, integrated approach. These new ventilation systems, based on filtration instead of dilution, come together with decarbonization and the demand for new and retrofitted buildings to be smart, have zero emissions and excellent indoor environments, and be affordable. To fulfill these conditions, design teams must extrapolate experience with passive houses and introduce expertise in building automatic controls (BAC). The authors analyze the heating cooling and ventilation aspects of dwellings in a technology called Ecological Thermo-Active (ETA) technology that can also be applied to the interior retrofitting of buildings, including those with historic facades. The building &ldquo;with classic form and ultramodern function&rdquo; is an example of this changing design paradigm