Plotting the Effects of Industrialization: An Interdisciplinary Project

This interdisciplinary project combined a unit on basic data analysis with the social studies curriculum. Students created parallel box plots to compare and contrast a group of industrialized countries with a group of industrializing countries. Students analyzed twelve variables such as literacy rate, infant mortality, and GDP per capita in an effort to better understand the effects of industrialization. Due to the relevance of the data, students were able to have meaningful discussions of the differences in medians and interquartile ranges of the two groups

Performance of natural, exhaust, demand controlled exhaust and heat recovery residential ventilation systems as prescribed by the standards in 5 European countries

Over the last decades, residential ventilation standards have been integrated in most of the buildings codes of European countries. Contrarily to the consolidation effort in the development of the nonresidential ventilation standard EN 13779, most of the residential ventilation standards have been drafted in a prescriptive way, with disparate sizing prescriptions in the different countries. Due to these differences in ventilation requirements, the reference levels for ventilation heat loss and associated indoor air quality is different in each country. The energy saving potential for demand controlled systems is therefore different in each country as well. In this paper, the performance of natural, exhaust and mechanical residential ventilation as prescribed by the standards of 5 European countries with moderate climate is assessed with regard to perceived air quality and odour spread as well as heating season integrated ventilation heat loss using multi zone simulations with local climate data. These results are then used to calculate the energy saving potential of a demand controlled exhaust ventilation system based taking into account the trade-off between indoor air quality and heat loss. With results showing that about 50% of ventilation heat loss reductions can be achieved at equivalent indoor air quality levels, we conclude that demand controlled exhaust ventilation has a good potential for reduction of building energy use in moderate climates

Improvements in natural air supply concerning thermal winter comfort, IAQ and energy consumption

The paper presents the effect on thermal conditions, heat consumption and the perception of thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) of different types of trickle ventilators (pressure controlled at 2 Pa pressure difference or 10 Pa with(out) back draft valve and with(out) demand controlled mechanical extract in all rooms), since these are key factors in the evaluation of the ventilators. All of these aspects are investigated by means of simulations (CFD parametric analysis and Contam) and measurements in a climatic chamber (cold box - hot box) in order to develop a trickle ventilator with improved performance

Performance of a demand controlled mechanical extract ventilation system for dwellings

The main aim of ventilation is to guarantee a good indoor air quality, related to the energy consumed for heating and fan(s). Active or passive heat recovery systems seem to focus on the reduction of heating consumption at the expense of fan electricity consumption and maintenance. In this study, demandcontrolled mechanical extract ventilation systems of Renson (DCV1 and DCV2), based on natural supply in the habitable rooms and mechanical extraction in the wet rooms (or even the bedrooms), was analysed for one year by means of multi-zone Contam simulations on a reference detached house and compared with standard MEV and mechanical extract ventilation systems with heat recovery (MVHR). To this end, IAQ, total energy consumption, CO2 emissions and total cost of the systems are determined. The results show that DCV systems with increased supply air flow rates or direct mechanical extract from bedrooms can significantly improve IAQ, while reducing total energy consumption compared to MEV. Applying DCV reduces primary heating energy consumption and yearly fan electricity consumption at most by 65% to 50% compared to MEV. Total operational energy costs and CO2 emissions of DCV are similar when compared to MVHR. Total costs of DCV systems over 15 years are smaller when compared to MVHR due to lower investment and maintenance costs

Bases biologiques du traitement cognitif de l'information. Pour repenser l'éducation

URL des Cahiers : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/CAHIERS-MSECahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques 2005.81 - ISSN : 1624-0340How to facilitate how we learn? How to improve and generalize knowledge transfers? How to increase our creativity? These questions are the economic stakes of the 21st century. In this article we present how the brain development is the result of evolutionary process of the alive, and how the brain development is itself dependent on its surrounding environment. We will further explain the plasticity of the brain that allows us to acquire new knowledge and skills through instruction or experience Ñ without brain plasticity and its capacity to change with learning any learning, nor memorization, nor memories, nor cultural experiences would be possible. Finally, we will demonstrate how the development of mathematical logic relies on perceptive memories that have been embedded as "potential memories" in our innate or acquired neuronal connectivity thanks to individual mental pictures. With this recent learning in neurobiology, the path that leads to the "cognitive neuropedagogy" is now opened.Comment faciliter les apprentissages, améliorer et généraliser les transferts de connaissance ? Comment favoriser notre créativité ? Ce sont des enjeux économiques pour le XXIe siècle. Dans cet article nous rappelons comment la mise en place du cerveau est une émergence du processus évolutif du vivant, comment le développement cérébral est lui-même dépendant de son environnement global. Nous nous attardons sur la plasticité cérébrale sans laquelle il n'y a ni apprentissage, ni mémorisation, ni souvenirs, ni création culturelle possible. Nous montrons comment la logique mathématique elle-même ne se déroule qu'en prenant appui sur des souvenirs perceptifs encodés sous forme potentielle dans notre "connectique" neuronale innée et acquise selon des imageries mentales individuelles. Ce survol des acquis récents en neurobiologie ouvre la voie à la "neuropédagogie cognitive" avec pour retombée un espoir d'amélioration des systèmes d'apprentissage

HypeRS: Building a Hypergraph-driven ensemble Recommender System

Recommender systems are designed to predict user preferences over collections of items. These systems process users' previous interactions to decide which items should be ranked higher to satisfy their desires. An ensemble recommender system can achieve great recommendation performance by effectively combining the decisions generated by individual models. In this paper, we propose a novel ensemble recommender system that combines predictions made by different models into a unified hypergraph ranking framework. This is the first time that hypergraph ranking has been employed to model an ensemble of recommender systems. Hypergraphs are generalizations of graphs where multiple vertices can be connected via hyperedges, efficiently modeling high-order relations. We differentiate real and predicted connections between users and items by assigning different hyperedge weights to individual recommender systems. We perform experiments using four datasets from the fields of movie, music and news media recommendation. The obtained results show that the ensemble hypergraph ranking method generates more accurate recommendations compared to the individual models and a weighted hybrid approach. The assignment of different hyperedge weights to the ensemble hypergraph further improves the performance compared to a setting with identical hyperedge weights