Extensive Utilization Of Dynamic Simulation For Sensitivity Analysis And Optimization Design Of Refurbishment Measures

Statistics and, in particular, sensitivity analysis represent an important tool for the building designer to find information about which parameters have the largest potential in reducing the energy consumption or which are the most crucial to focus on in the different phases of the project process. The application of dynamic simulation to a large number of configurations (i.e. the extensive simulation) to find the optimal solution either considering only the energy aspects or also the economic impacts and not only to evaluate a small set of possible alternatives, represents in that perspective a new approach to the building design, in particular for refurbishment considerations. This work aims to evaluate and generalize this kind of approach with its application to the refurbishment of residential buildings. The considered design solutions represent the most common measures of improvement of the performance of opaque and transparent envelope, such as the insulation level of walls and windows and the solar properties of the glazings. Different starting cases characterized by different envelope thermal inertia, corresponding to three massive materials (timber, clay and concrete), and different geometrical features were studied. A large number of environmental conditions, envelope characteristics and refurbishment interventions have been analyzed within a factorial simulation plan. Among those parameters, the ratios between the dispersing envelope and the volume conditioned (considering 3 different floors of a building – the top, the intermediate and the ground floor), the windows size (small or large size) and their distribution (South, East or West oriented), the level of insulation of the opaque envelope (starting cases without insulation, poor insulated and high insulated cases) and the kind of glazings (starting cases with single glasses and improved cases with double or triple glasses with high or low Solar Heat Gain Coefficient, SHGC) have been examined. Three Italian climates (Milan in the North, Rome in the center region and Messina in the South) were considered as representative of the Southern Europe. The inferential statistical analysis has been used to identify the predominant factors in each refurbishment solution and the economical savings both in heating and in cooling

Influencia del ciclo menstrual sobre la conducta sexual

Treball Final de Grau en Psicologia. Codi: PS1048. Curs: 2015/2016La conducta sexual es un tema que desde siempre ha despertado el interés de los científicos, sin embargo, convendría conocer con más profundidad qué posibles factores pueden provocar fluctuaciones en el deseo sexual, haciendo que éste se vea aumentado o disminuido. Hay pocos estudios que se han centrado, únicamente, en los cambios sexuales debidos al ciclo menstrual. En el presente estudio se recogieron los datos de una muestra de 82 personas estudiantes de Primero de Psicología en la Universidad Jaime I (Castellón), con una media de edad de 22 años durante 90 días consecutivos, donde se presentaba un cuestionario acerca de aspectos relacionados con la conducta sexual y el ciclo menstrual. El objetivo principal fue observar cómo las fases ovulatorias son capaces de provocar cambios en la actividad sexual. Los resultados mostraron que es en la fase folicular donde mayor deseo sexual experimentan las mujeres, mientras que la menstrual es la que menor deseo se presenta. Además, se ha comprobado que el día de la semana también es significativo y que los niveles de deseo sexual en un día tienen impacto en días posteriores. Se pudo concluir que las personas, concretamente las mujeres, siguen un patrón semanal, siendo habitual que la conducta sexual se realice, por lo general, una vez a la semana o cada dos semanas

Brazilian Poverty Between And Within Groups: Decomposition By Geographical, Group-Specific Poverty Lines

This study investigates Brazilian poverty by exploiting geographical differences in the cost of living and questions whether the standard approach in measuring poverty is informative enough when the population is heterogeneous. To do so, we apply the reformulation of the FGT class of poverty measures proposed by Chiappero and Civardi (2006). This decomposition aims to compute poverty within groups, using group-specific poverty lines, and poverty between groups by adopting a community-wide poverty line. The North and the Central-West reveal a dominance of the within component. The North-East shows the highest level of poverty, even higher than the North and the Central-West, but the high within group component is counterbalanced by a higher between group component, attributable to the high level of inequality of the North-East. The South and the South-East have between group components that dominate over within group ones. Our findings suggest that the analysis of poverty between and within groups is more exhaustive than the standard methodology when differentiated poverty lines are exploited.Poverty between and within groups, Geographical disparities, Brazil

Apolide e cittadino: il dilemma Della fonte dei diritti nella lezione di Hannah Arendt

En el panorama intelectual del siglo xix, Hannah Arendt aparece como una figura especialmente singular. Una personalidad extraordinaria con rasgos bien delineados desde una edad muy temprana por el vigor y la independencia intelectual; un pensamiento fascinante e irregular, articulado y complejo, difícilmente encapsulable en esquemas preconcebidos, del cual aún hoy, cien años después de su nacimiento, no se puede prescindir. Demasiado filósofa, poco académica, Hannah Arendt representa un fcaso anómalo» en el panorama cultural de la época en que vivió. Huida de la persecución nazi, vive la condición de perseguida, de refugiada y, al final, de apátrida. Es, sobre todo, este último estado, en la cual ha vivido durante una larga temporada de su vida, el que le permite comprender hasta al final lo que significa vivir en los confines del mundo, ser rechazada, un extranjero sin patria. Extranjeros, bárbaros, rechazados, en efecto, pueblan en gran número las páginas de las obras más significativas de Arendt. Una condición ésta que no incluye la posibilidad de tener derechos, tampoco aquellos estimados «naturales» y que son consustanciales al hombre. Consciente de ello, la escritora subraya que el «derecho de tener derechos» pueda ser garantizado simplemente por la mera pertenencia a una comunidad, por eso la ciudadanía, además de ser un status político-jurídico, representa propiamente este vínculo.In the intellectual spectrum of the 19th century, Hannah Arendt emerges as a particularly unique person. From an early age, her extraordinary personality demonstrated independence and qualities well suited to intellectual vigor. Her fascinat¬ing and uncommon thought was articulate, complex, and difficult to encapsulate into predetermined categories, which makes it indispensable still today, one hundred years after her birth. Too much the philosopher and too little the academic, Hannah Arendt, represented an “anomaly” in the cultural climate of the time in which she lived. Exiled due to Nazi persecution, she lived through circumstances of oppression, of being a refugee, and finally, of statelessness. It was, more than anything else, that final situation which she underwent for a long period of her life which allowed her to understand what it means to live within the confines of the world, to be rejected, to be a foreigner without a country. Unquestionably, foreigners, barbarians, and outcasts fill the pages of a great deal of Hannah Arendt’s most important writings. That being a condition which doesn’t allow the possibility of having rights, not even the supposed “natural” ones which are consubstantial with humankind. Conscious of this, she upheld that the “right to have rights” can be guaranteed simply by belonging to a community. For this reason, in addition to its legal-political status, being a citizen represents this link intrinsically. En alemán:Im intellektuellen Panorama des 19.Jht. erscheint Hannah Arendt wie eine besonders einzigartige Persönlichkeit. Ein außergewöhnlicher Charakter, der schon früh aufgrund der intellektuellen Kraft und Unabhängigkeit durch differenzierte Merkmale auffällt. Faszinierendes und ausgefallenes Denken, artikuliert und komplex, nur schwierig in vorgefertigte Schemata einzuordnen, ein Denken, auf das man noch heute, hundert Jahre nach ihrer Geburt, nicht verzichtet kann. Zu sehr Philosophin, weniger akademisch, stellt Hannah Arendt einen “anormalen Fall” im kulturellen Panorama ihrer Epoche dar. Sie flüchtet vor der Verfolgung der Nationalsozialisten, lebt als Verfolgte, Flüchtige, und schließlich als Staatenlose. Dieser letzte Status umfasst besonders viel Zeit ihres Lebens und lässt uns verstehen, was es bedeutet, an den Grenzen dieser Welt zu leben, verstoßen, in der Fremde ohne Heimat. Ausländer, Barbaren, Verstoßene, füllen die meisten Seiten der bedeutendsten Werke Arendts; ein Merkmal ist, dass die Möglichkeit, Rechte zu haben, nicht existiert, nicht einmal diejenigen Rechte, die für “natürlich” gehalten werden und die dem Menschen eigen sind. Die Autorin ist sich dessen bewusst und unterstreicht, dass das “Recht, Rechte zu haben” durch die bloße Zugehörigkeit zu einer Gemeinschaft garantiert wird, dadurch ist die Staatsbürgerschaft mehr als ein politisch-juristischer Status, er vertritt gerade diese Beziehung

La evaluación de los aprendizajes en la universidad: una propuesta de prácticas evaluativas alternativas a las tradicionales en la asignatura Química Biológica I de la carrera Medicina Veterinaria de la Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto

El presente trabajo final se encuentra enmarcado en la asignatura Química Biológica I de la carrera de Medicina Veterinaria de la Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto (UNRC en adelante). Uno de los problemas actuales de la enseñanza universitaria es la fragmentación del conocimiento, con base en la organización de planes de estudios, parcelando en asignaturas, unidades, módulos, etc. (Vain, 2021a). En las asignaturas de los ciclos básicos la fragmentación disciplinar parece estar algo más pronunciada, con bajos niveles de relación entre diversos campos temáticos, o entre los contenidos y los problemas que se intentan comprender o sobre los que se pretende intervenir. Esto se ha comenzado a revertir en los últimos años en el dictado de esta asignatura, ya que en las guías de problemas se han incorporado textos disciplinares específicos para contextualizar las actividades en el campo profesional del Médico Veterinario, desde donde se pretende significar los conceptos de las unidades del programa de la asignatura. Sin embargo, esta perspectiva no se refleja del todo en las prácticas actuales de evaluación de la asignatura que consisten en dos instancias sumativas, con actividades del tipo de verificación y control de apropiación de contenidos. En este TFI se propone abordar la evaluación como práctica compleja que integra diferentes dimensiones tales como la conceptual, la administrativa –metodológica, actitudinal, histórico– epistemológico y emocional. Desde esta perspectiva se abordará, además, la revisión y rediseño de las prácticas evaluativas de la asignatura asumiendo un enfoque formativo y participativo.Asesora: Silvina LyonsUniversidad Nacional de La Plat

Brazilian Poverty Between and Within Groups: Decomposing by Geographical Group-Specific Poverty Lines

This paper presents empirical findings by applying the reformulation of the FGT class of poverty measures provided by Bottiroli-Civardi and Chiappero-Martinetti (2004) to the Brazilian annual households survey, the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra do Domicilios (PNAD) for 2002. Starting from a set of geographically-specific poverty lines, we compute poverty between and within these differentiated homogenous groups running two different exercises. First, we consider the whole Brazil and we find the between component is dominant due to the high heterogeneity of this set of poverty lines. Then, by considering separately each region, we find a dominance of the within component in the North and in the Central-West, while the between component is dominant in the remaining regions. These findings renew the importance of having a critical eye in interpreting synthetic indexes of poverty.

Influence Of Building Management On Cost Optimality Definition In Residential Buildings Retrofitting

The enhancement of the existing buildings’ performance requires the choice among a wide selection of energy efficiency measures by means of a cost-optimal approach. Although the cost-optimal analysis represents a useful tool to guide the investment in building renovation, it does not explicitly include the occupant comfort. The retrofit strategy should not only enhance the energy performance of the building in a cost effective way, but also improve, or at least, not deteriorate the indoor thermal comfort during the all year, even when system is off. One of the well-known problems in highly insulated buildings is that, if not correctly managed, they can undergo overheating issues, hampering the indoor environment livability. On the other hand, under discomfort conditions, occupants tend to react, making adjustments (operating the windows and/or the shading devices) in order to improve their thermal comfort, possibly compromising the building energy performance. In this paper the influence of the occupancy behavior on the definition of the cost-optimal level has been investigated on a set of reference buildings, representative of different building typologies, construction periods and windows orientations, located in two typical Italian climates, Milano and Messina, representative of respectively heating and cooling dominated climatic regions. A wide selection of energy efficiency measures has been evaluated, combining a genetic algorithm for the multi-objective optimization and a dynamic simulation code. The search of the best combination of strategies has been conducted optimizing energy efficiency, global costs and the indoor thermal comfort at once. At a first stage, the optimization has been carried out evaluating only the performance of the envelope, without considering the building management operated by the occupants. At a second stage, the optimization has been repeated including the user-operated building management. This allows evaluating the importance of an appropriate management of the building by the occupants, through windows and shading operation, and its impact on the definition of the optimal retrofit strategies. The comparison of the results of the two optimizations also highlights the possible performance gap between asset and tailored rating of refurbished buildings

Enhancing the Energy and Non-Energy Performance of Existing Buildings: a Multi-Objective Approach

A wide selection of energy efficiency measures (EEMs) are technically available to improve the energy performance of existing buildings, each of which can be applied to a different extent. The definition of the best combination of retrofit strategies is generally pursued through the balance of economic and energy targets. The so-called cost-optimal approach proposed by the recent European Union legislation, takes into account those two perspectives by minimizing the net present value, a utility function that accounts for both investment and operational costs along the lifespan of the renovated building. What this approach does not consider are some different performance aspects, although related to the same EEMs, and in particular the occupant well-being. In this framework, the definition of the best retrofit strategies should consider three objectives characterized by a competing nature: the energy savings, the economic advantage and the indoor thermal comfort. The aim of this work is to evaluate a consistent number of possible EEMs in order to define the optimal combinations considering also the effect of the government subsidies. The multi-objective analysis has been implemented by means of a Genetic Algorithm coupled with a simulation code. The analysis has been conducted on a set of reference buildings obtained by introducing some variations to an uninsulated single-storey residential module of 100 m2. The windows orientation and the ratio between dispersing envelope and conditioned volume are modified in order to simulate different reference buildings and to study their relation with the optimal solutions. Moreover, two different climates have been considered as representative of the Southern Europe: Milano and Messina. The indoor air temperature is controlled during the winter season, while during summer season the air temperature is free floating. The evaluation of the long-term comfort performance is defined by means of the Discomfort Weighted Time (WDT) index as proposed by the Standard EN 15251:2007. The number of occupied hours during which the actual operative temperature lays outside the specified comfort range are weighted by a weighting factor which depends on by how many degrees the operative temperature is outside the range. The definition of the acceptable ranges depends on the presence of HVAC system: when the HVAC system works the actual operative temperature is compared with a fixed operative temperature comfort range, established according to the Standard, while when the air is not conditioned the assessment of the indoor thermal comfort is implemented considering the adaptive comfort approach. The assessment of the thermal comfort during the summer season has been used to evaluate the impact of the adopted solutions. The entity of the government subsides required to improve the economic profitability of the Pareto solutions has been evaluated and the impact of different incentives scenarios on the composition of the Pareto front have been then tested repeating the Multi-objective analysis