Approaches To 30% Energy Savings At The Community Scale In The Hot-Humid Climate

The Building America Partnership for Improved Residential Construction, formerly the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership, has worked with several community-scale builders within the hot-humid climate zone to improve performance of production-, or community-scale, housing. Tommy Williams Homes (Gainesville, Florida), LifeStyle Homes (Melbourne, Florida), and Habitat for Humanity (various locations, Florida) have all been continuous partners of the Building America Program. The activities of these partners, described in this report, achieved the Building America goal of 30% whole-house source energy savings using packages adopted at the community scale. For new homes, the reference case is the B10 Benchmark, aligned with 2009 building codes. This report describes how these goals were achieved in production-scale homes that were built cost effectively at the community scale and modeled to reduce whole-house energy use by 30% or more in the hot-humid climate region. Key aspects of this research include determining how to evolve existing energy efficiency packages to produce replicable target savings, identifying builders\u27 technical assistance needs for implementation and working with them to create sustainable quality assurance mechanisms, and documenting commercial viability through neutral cost analysis and market acceptance. This report documents barriers that builders overcame and the approaches they implemented to accomplish Building America Program goals that have not already been described in previous reports. Although the general approach to achieving 30% savings is similar among the builders, subtle variations in the comparable specifications show that trade-offs exist, allowing optimization of the efficiency package to fit regional fuel preferences, product availability/cost, subcontractor experience, house size, and each community\u27s intended market. All packages use standard, off-the-shelf components with proven durability and reliability. Successful, community-scale energy efficiency improvements were not only the result of specified components and packages based on energy modeling software analysis, but were coupled with elements of design, quality control, and creative marketing. The evaluation demonstrates that the overall benefits of the integrated energy efficient measures used in each of the 30% whole-house source energy savings packages are marketable and result in neutral or net positive cash flow for homeowners. The findings are primarily applicable to builders and subcontractors in the hot-humid climate looking to replicate the same success in building cost-effective, energy efficient, comfortable, and durable homes. The high performance home business model calls for sweeping yet systematic change to code minimum construction that, over time, pays dividends to both builder and homeowner.

Green And High Performance Factory Crafted Housing

In the U.S., factory-built housing greater than 400 square feet is built either to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) code for mobile homes or site-built codes for modular housing. During the last few years, as the production of HUD code housing has dwindled, many leading edge factory builders have started building modular homes to compete with site-built housing and stay in business. As part of the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership (BAIHP) we have assisted in the design and construction of several \u27green\u27 and high performance modular homes that Palm Harbor Homes, Florida Division (PHH) has built for the International Builders\u27 Show (IBS) in 2006, 2007, and 2008. This paper will summarize the design features and the \u27green\u27 and energy-efficient certification processes conducted for the 2008 show homes, one of which received the very first E-Scale produced by BAIHP for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Builders Challenge program

Using Show Homes (And Sponsorships) To Persuade Commissioning Relevancy And Factory Crafted High Performance Modular Homes

The International Builders\u27 Show (IBS) sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders is a venue attracting over 100,000 builders and building related professionals every year. The increased attendances each year improves the educational sessions, vendor participation and live home construction demonstrations. The live home demonstrations are a great opportunity to integrate high performance construction and commissioning strategies into the marketplace to validate and distinguish products and the show home builders. At this past year\u27s IBS show in February, Palm Harbor Homes built the GenX home that included an installed and operational 4.08kWp photovoltaic system with inverter and back up battery management system, a solar hot water heater, completed and passed the thermal bypass inspection checklist required for EnergyStar certification and obtained Florida Green Building Certification. The home also qualified for a local utility rebate for meeting EnergyStar, further demonstrating that incentive programs encourage high performance building practices and are vital to integrating commissioning procedures into the marketplace. Blower door and duct leakage tests were conducted to quantify as built conditions validating modular manufacturing quality assurance. This paper aims to provide a case study of commissioned performance measures that justify costs for these demonstration projects and live show homes

Identification of Metastasis Associated Antigen 1 (MTA1) by Serological Screening of Prostate Cancer cDNA Libraries

Over the past 10 years the serological analysis of recombinant cDNA expression libraries (SEREX) has proved to be an effective method for the identification of tumour antigens. In the present study, two prostate cancer libraries were constructed and screened using autologous sera. Fifty five genes were isolated, including 46 known genes and 9 previously uncharacterised genes. Among the known genes, a metastasis-associated gene, MTA1, previously identified by differential cDNA hybridisation, was preferentially expressed in a panel of malignant tissues compared with normal tissues, as analysed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). MTA1 transcripts were observed to be over-expressed in normal human testes as well as various cancer tissues when compared to the panel of normal tissues. MTA1 antigen reacted with 2 of 13 allogeneic prostate cancer patient sera tested, but no sera reactivity was observed to any of the normal adult sera tested. Furthermore, a similar distribution and expression level of MTA-1 was observed in murine tissues and cancer cell lines. Based on these findings and previous reports on the literature on this gene, MTA-1 can be considered not only as a “biomarker” of aggressive disease but also as a potential therapeutic target

Anti-tumour therapeutic efficacy of OX40L in murine tumour model

OX40 ligand (OX40L), a member of TNF superfamily, is a co-stimulatory molecule involved in T cell activation. Systemic administration of mOX40L fusion protein significantly inhibited the growth of experimental lung metastasis and subcutaneous (s.c.) established colon (CT26) and breast (4T1) carcinomas. Vaccination with OX40L was significantly enhanced by combination treatment with intra-tumour injection of a disabled infectious single cycle-herpes simplex virus (DISC-HSV) vector encoding murine granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (mGM-CSF). Tumour rejection in response to OX40L therapy required functional CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and correlated with splenocyte cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) activity against the AH-1 gp70 peptide of the tumour associated antigen expressed by CT26 cells. These results demonstrate the potential role of the OX40L in cancer immunotherapy

Oxytocin administration versus emotion training in healthy males: Considerations for future research

Identifying emotions correctly is essential for successful social interaction. There is therefore a keen interest in designing therapeutic interventions to improve emotion recognition in individuals who struggle with social interaction. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been proposed as a potential physiological intervention due to its important role in emotion recognition and other aspects of social cognition. However, there are a number of caveats to consider with the current form of intranasal oxytocin commonly used in the literature. Psychological interventions, on the other hand, do not carry the same caveats, and there is therefore a need to understand how intranasal oxytocin administration compares to psychological interventions designed to target the same psychological phenomena; and whether a combined intervention approach may provide additive benefits. Here we present a pilot, proof of concept study in healthy volunteers comparing the effect of intranasal oxytocin against a validated emotion training program, finding that the psychological intervention, and not intranasal oxytocin, improved emotion recognition specifically for angry expressions. We discuss the theoretical implications of the research for future clinical trials

Salivary Oxytocin Concentrations in Males following Intranasal Administration of Oxytocin: A Double-Blind, Cross-Over Study.

The use of intranasal oxytocin (OT) in research has become increasingly important over the past decade. Although researchers have acknowledged a need for further investigation of the physiological effects of intranasal administration, few studies have actually done so. In the present double-blind cross-over study we investigated the longevity of a single 24 IU dose of intranasal OT measured in saliva in 40 healthy adult males. Salivary OT concentrations were significantly higher in the OT condition, compared to placebo. This significant difference lasted until the end of testing, approximately 108 minutes after administration, and peaked at 30 minutes. Results showed significant individual differences in response to intranasal OT administration. To our knowledge this is the largest and first all-male within-subjects design study to demonstrate the impact of intranasal OT on salivary OT concentrations. The results are consistent with previous research in suggesting that salivary OT is a valid matrix for OT measurement. The results also suggest that the post-administration 'wait-time' prior to starting experimental tasks could be reduced to 30 minutes, from the 45 minutes typically used, thereby enabling testing during peak OT concentrations. Further research is needed to ascertain whether OT concentrations after intranasal administration follow similar patterns in females, and different age groups

Oxytocin increases attention to the eyes and selectively enhances self-reported affective empathy for fear.

Oxytocin (OXT) has previously been implicated in a range of prosocial behaviors such as trust and emotion recognition. Nevertheless, recent studies have questioned the evidence for this link. In addition, there has been relatively little conclusive research on the effect of OXT on empathic ability and such studies as there are have not examined the mechanisms through which OXT might affect empathy, or whether OXT selectively facilitates empathy for specific emotions. In the current study, we used eye-tracking to assess attention to socially relevant information while participants viewed dynamic, empathy-inducing video clips, in which protagonists expressed sadness, happiness, pain or fear. In a double-blind, within-subjects, randomized control trial, 40 healthy male participants received 24 IU intranasal OXT or placebo in two identical experimental sessions, separated by a 2-week interval. OXT led to an increase in time spent fixating upon the eye-region of the protagonist's face across emotions. OXT also selectively enhanced self-reported affective empathy for fear, but did not affect cognitive or affective empathy for other emotions. Nevertheless, there was no positive relationship between eye-gaze patterns and affective empathy, suggesting that although OXT influences eye-gaze and may enhance affective empathy for fear, these two systems are independent. Future studies need to further examine the effect of OXT on eye-gaze to fully ascertain whether this can explain the improvements in emotional behavior

Estimation of peptide concentration by a modified bicinchoninic acid assay

Although biuret based protein assays are theoretically applicable to peptide measurement, there is a high level of inter-peptide variation, determined largely by peptide hydrophobicity. This variation in peptide reactivity can be significantly reduced by heat-denaturation of peptides at 95 °C for 5 minutes in the presence of 0.1 M NaOH containing 1% (w/v) SDS, prior to incubation for 30 min at 37 °C in BCA standard working reagent. This modification to the standard bicinchoninic acid (BCA) assay protocol allows for an accurate, rapid and economical estimation of the peptide concentration within an unknown sample