5 research outputs found
Climate Change and Buildings: The Impact on Human Health
The health risks posed by hot weather are growing as increasingly frequent extreme weather is brought about by climate change. People spend upwards of 80% of time indoors and so human health is largely dependent on the internal environment of buildings. In the building industry engineers currently design buildings for high-energy performance by maximising heat retention, and whilst this may be effective in cold winters, it can lead to unbearable indoor conditions in hot summers. Thermal comfort inside buildings is a well-discussed topic both in industry and academia, but absolute peak thresholds, especially for heat stress still require development. In this thesis the outcomes of research into the effects of current and future hot weather on the heat stress of occupants inside buildings are presented. Hot weather data from the current climate and mortality rates are compared and several temperature metrics are analysed with respect to health risk forecasting performance, so that peak threshold limits for human health indoors are established for the building design industry. Reference weather data used in building simulations for health assessment is currently chosen based on air temperature alone. In this thesis new reference weather data is created for near-extreme and extreme weather and for current and future climates, based on the peak threshold metric research and future weather analysis. By 2050 hot weather reference years currently occurring once every seven years could become an annual occurrence, and by 2080 extreme hot weather reference years currently occurring once in twenty-one years could become an annual occurrence. Computational fluid dynamics is then used to simulate the internal heat stress inside a building model, and a surrogate model is created to emulate heat stress levels for full calendar years of future climates for several UK locations. It is envisaged that the results presented in this thesis will help inform the industry development of new reference data and aid better building design.EPSR
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Selection of oncogenic mutant clones in normal human skin varies with body site.
Skin cancer risk varies substantially across the body, yet how this relates to the mutations found in normal skin is unknown. Here we mapped mutant clones in skin from high and low risk sites. The density of mutations varied by location. The prevalence of NOTCH1 and FAT1 mutations in forearm, trunk and leg skin was similar to that in keratinocyte cancers. Most mutations were caused by ultraviolet (UV) light, but mutational signature analysis suggested differences in DNA repair processes between sites. 11 mutant genes were under positive selection, with TP53 preferentially selected in the head and FAT1 in the leg. Fine scale mapping revealed 10% of clones had copy number alterations. Analysis of hair follicles showed mutations in the upper follicle resembled adjacent skin, but the lower follicle was sparsely mutated. Normal skin is dense patchwork of mutant clones arising from competitive selection that varies by location