Applying User Experience (UX) Principles to Net Zero Energy Buildings

As buildings have become more complex, interpreting building performance becomes challenging. A Building Automation System (BAS) has hundreds of data points that monitor performance but the data is frequently under-utilized. Over 20% of a building’s energy is wasted through energy inefficiencies that go undetected. Building controls are not going to get easier, but methods are being developed to simplify monitoring building performance. An Energy Dashboard is a graphic interface for a BAS that simplifies the monitoring and control of a building. An energy dashboard automatically tracks building energy use to help detect overconsumption patterns or malfunctioning equipment. Energy dashboards allow for building occupants to monitor energy usage easily in real-time, an effective way to engage occupant behavior changes. This study designed and evaluated a prototype energy dashboard that demonstrates how to monitor net zero energy commercial buildings of the future. The energy dashboard compared energy consumption and generation patterns for a variety of building systems and solar energy equipment in an HVAC laboratory. The energy dashboard was evaluated by university students with a background in HVAC to gather feedback and improve the energy dashboard’s diagnostic abilities. The result is an easy to deploy graphic interface that can help building professionals interpret and improve performance of complex buildings. The students were also asked questions to rank importance of performance indicators based off a previously done study. An analysis was done to determine where students aligned with building professionals. This study improved on current key performance indicators and how to simplify building performance metrics

Natural selection favoring more transmissible HIV detected in United States molecular transmission network.

HIV molecular epidemiology can identify clusters of individuals with elevated rates of HIV transmission. These variable transmission rates are primarily driven by host risk behavior; however, the effect of viral traits on variable transmission rates is poorly understood. Viral load, the concentration of HIV in blood, is a heritable viral trait that influences HIV infectiousness and disease progression. Here, we reconstruct HIV genetic transmission clusters using data from the United States National HIV Surveillance System and report that viruses in clusters, inferred to be frequently transmitted, have higher viral loads at diagnosis. Further, viral load is higher in people in larger clusters and with increased network connectivity, suggesting that HIV in the United States is experiencing natural selection to be more infectious and virulent. We also observe a concurrent increase in viral load at diagnosis over the last decade. This evolutionary trajectory may be slowed by prevention strategies prioritized toward rapidly growing transmission clusters

Limited SHIV env diversification in macaques failing oral antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis

BACKGROUND: Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with daily Truvada [a combination of emtricitabine (FTC) and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF)] is a novel HIV prevention strategy recently found to prevent HIV transmission among men who have sex with men and heterosexual couples. Acute infection in adherent persons who fail PrEP will inevitably occur under concurrent antiretroviral therapy, thus raising questions regarding the potential impact of PrEP on early viral dynamics. We investigated viral evolution dynamics in a macaque model of PrEP consisting of repeated rectal exposures to SHIV(162P3) in the presence of PrEP. RESULTS: Four macaques were infected during daily or intermittent PrEP with FTC or FTC/TDF, and five were untreated controls. SHIV env sequence evolution was monitored by single genome amplification with phylogenetic and sequence analysis. Mean nucleotide divergence from transmitted founder viruses calculated 17 weeks (range = 12–20) post peak viremia was significantly lower in PrEP failures than in control animals (7.2 × 10(-3) compared to 1.6 × 10(-2) nucleotide substitutions per site per year, respectively, p < 0.0001). Mean virus diversity was also lower in PrEP failures after 17 weeks (0.13% vs. 0.53% in controls, p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: Our results in a macaque model of acute HIV infection suggest that infection during PrEP limits early virus evolution likely because of a direct antiviral effect of PrEP and/or reduced target cell availability. Reduced virus diversification during early infection might enhance immune control by slowing the selection of escape mutants

Amplification of simian retroviral sequences from human recipients of baboon liver transplants

Investigations into the use of baboons as organ donors for human transplant recipients, a procedure called xenotransplantation, have raised the specter of transmitting baboon viruses to humans and possibly establishing new human infectious diseases. Retrospective analysis of tissues from two human transplant recipients with end-stage hepatic disease who died 70 and 27 days after the transplantation of baboon livers revealed the presence of two simian retroviruses of baboon origin, simian foamy virus (SFV) and baboon endogenous virus (BaEV), in multiple tissue compartments. The presence of baboon mitochondrial DNA was also detected in these same tissues, suggesting that xenogeneic 'passenger leukocytes' harboring latent or active viral infections had migrated from the xenografts to distant sites within the human recipients. The persistence of SFV and BaEV in human recipients throughout the posttransplant period underscores the potential infectious risks associated with xenotransplantation

Assessing Commitment and Reporting Fidelity to a Text Message-Based Participatory Surveillance in Rural Western Uganda.

Syndromic surveillance, the collection of symptom data from individuals prior to or in the absence of diagnosis, is used throughout the developed world to provide rapid indications of outbreaks and unusual patterns of disease. However, the low cost of syndromic surveillance also makes it highly attractive for the developing world. We present a case study of electronic participatory syndromic surveillance, using participant-mobile phones in a rural region of Western Uganda, which has a high infectious disease burden, and frequent local and regional outbreaks. Our platform uses text messages to encode a suite of symptoms, their associated durations, and household disease burden, and we explore the ability of participants to correctly encode their symptoms, with an average of 75.2% of symptom reports correctly formatted between the second and 11th reporting timeslots. Concomitantly we identify divisions between participants able to rapidly adjust to this unusually participatory style of data collection, and those few for whom the study proved more challenging. We then perform analyses of the resulting syndromic time series, examining the clustering of symptoms by time and household to identify patterns such as a tendency towards the within-household sharing of respiratory illness.National Institute of Health (Grant ID: TW009237)This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the Public Library of Science via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.015597

Conference Highlights of the 16th International Conference on Human Retrovirology: HTLV and Related Retroviruses, 26–30 June 2013, Montreal, Canada

The 16th International Conference on Human Retrovirology: HTLV and Related Retroviruses was held in Montreal, Québec from June 26 to June 30, 2013 and was therefore hosted by a Canadian city for the first time. The major topic of the meeting was human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLVs) and was covered through distinct oral and poster presentation sessions: clinical research, animal models, immunology, molecular and cellular biology, human endogenous and emerging exogenous retroviruses and virology. In this review, highlights of the meeting are provided by different experts for each of these research areas