Parametric embodied carbon prediction model for early stage estimating.

The focus of carbon management is shifting from operational carbon to embodied carbon as a result of the improved operational energy efficiency of buildings. Measuring and managing embodied carbon right from the early stages of projects will unlock a range of opportunities to achieve maximum reduction of emissions which could not be achieved otherwise during the latter stages. However, measuring embodied carbon during the early stages of design is challenging and highly uncertain due to the availability of limited design information. Therefore, the research presented in this paper addresses this problem in a structured and an objective way. A parametric embodied carbon prediction model was developed using regression analysis to estimate embodied carbon when only minimal design information is available and with less uncertainty. The model was developed by collecting historical data of office buildings in the UK from four different data sources and estimating embodied carbon by combining several estimating techniques. Wall to floor ratio and the number of basements were identified as the model predictors with a model fit of 48.1% (R2). A five-fold cross-validation ensured that the model predicts within the acceptable accuracy range for new data. The developed model had and accuracy of {plusmn}89.35% which is within the acceptable for an early stage prediction model. In addition, the need for standardising embodied carbon measurements and to develop embodied carbon benchmarks to facilitate embodied carbon estimating throughout the project lifecycle was identified

Building a supportive culure for sustained organisational learning in public sectors.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an approach to build a supportive organisational culture for sustained organisational learning in public sectors. Changing culture is not an easy task. It involves an in-depth understanding about culture and its relationship with organisational learning. First, this chapter provides a brief introduction to organisational learning, organisational culture, and their relationship. Then, characteristics and attributes of a learning culture are identified. Finally, using case study research findings of a public sector construction organisation operating in Sri Lanka, an approach is presented in this chapter on how to identify present culture of the organisation and change it to a learning culture

Life cycle assessment of Integra House: a case study of modern methods of construction using truss technology.

Increasing demand for housing is one of the biggest challenges facing the world. Affordable housing is a key priority of the UK government in addressing this challenge, which calls for innovative constructions to address the issue of fuel poverty at an affordable cost. Timber based modern methods of constructions are believed to be a key way forward for the construction industry to resolve the existing housing crisis while managing the climate change. Therefore, this paper presents a case study of "Integra House", which is a proof of concept of a novel truss technology. The case study is an affordable housing prototype that performs well in both life cycle carbon and cost. The proposed construction uses a novel timber truss technology which makes up the floor, walls and roof of the house, thereby reducing on-site operations and waste, while providing a low carbon low cost design. The prototype underwent a simulation-based optimisation to maximize its performance in cost and carbon by replacing milled timber trusses with whole timber trusses and rockwool insulation with wood wool insulation. Life cycle cost and carbon comparison of the two design prototypes concluded that the whole timber design outperformed the milled timber design in both cost and carbon aspects, by 23% and 30% respectively due to being extremely inexpensive and requiring minimal processing compared to the milled timber option

Building a supportive culture for sustained organizational learning in public sectors including project learning.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an approach to build a supportive organizational culture for sustained organizational learning in public sectors and means of extending such learning culture to project level. Changing culture is not an easy task. It involves an in-depth understanding of culture and its relationship with organizational learning. First, this chapter provides a brief introduction to organizational learning, organizational culture and their relationship. Then, characteristics and attributes of a learning culture are identified. Such discussion is then extended to the project culture and the learning culture at project level. Next, using case study research findings of a public sector construction organisation operating in Sri Lanka, an approach is presented in this chapter on how to identify the present culture of the organisation and change it to a learning culture. Finally, possibility of extending such learning culture to project level is discussed at Sri Lankan context

Embodied carbon emissions of buildings: a case study of an apartment building in the UK.

The UK government has set a target to significantly reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 47% of all UK CO2 emissions are linked to the construction and operation of the built environment. Buildings emit two types of carbon namely operational carbon (OC) and embodied carbon(EC). Operational carbon is regulated in the UK as it contributes up to 70-80% of total emissions. Further, EC reduction is top priority with the rise of demand for zero carbon buildings and EC is unregulated at present. EC can be controlled by vigilant building designs, selection of low carbon materials and technologies. Estimating EC of building will provide better understanding of the carbon significant elements and enable designers to make informed decisions. Accordingly, a case study of an apartment building located in Sunderland in the UK is selected for the study. EC estimates were prepared using priced Bill of Quantities of the building and carbon blackbook. Then, the building elements were classified as per BCIS (Building Cost Information Services) element classification and the carbon significant elements were identified in the case study building. Frame was identified as the most carbon significant element. External walls including windows and doors, upper floors, substructure, internal finishes, roof and internal walls & partitions were identified in descending order of carbon significant elements. Further, comparative analysis of EC between an apartment building and an office building was conducted. The office building carbon significant elements were found to be different from that of an apartment building. Findings of the case study building can inform designers about the elements that has an immense reduction potential and worth investing in low carbon technologies and materials. However, the findings are based on a single case study and, hence, cannot be generalised but can be seen as an exemplar for further research

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV

Search for anomalous production of events with three or more leptons in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy s=8TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying τ leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t→cH), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, λtcH and λctH, respectively, of |λtcH|2+|λctH|2<0.21