Case studies of high-rise buildings

Tall buildings are being designed and built across a wide range of cities. A poorly designed tall building can tremendously increase the building’s appetite for energy. Therefore, this paper aims to determine the design strategies that help a high-rise office building to be more energy efficient. For this purpose, a comparative study on twelve case buildings in three climate groups (temperate, sub-tropical & tropical) was performed. The exterior envelope, building form and orientation, service core placement, plan layout, and special design elements like atria and sky gardens were the subject of investigation. The effectiveness of different design strategies for reducing the cooling, heating, ventilation and electric lighting energy were analysed. Finally, lessons from these buildings were defined for the three climates. Furthermore, a comparison of building energy performance data with international benchmarks confirmed that in temperate and sub-tropical climates sustainable design strategies for high-rise buildings were performing well, as a result leading to lower energy consumption. However, for the tropics the design of high-rise buildings needs higher concern

Bacterial diversity of biofilm samples from deep mines in South Africa

The Au, Pt and diamond mines of South Africa provide access to microorganism bearing fluids emanating from fractures at depths ranging from 0.7 to 3.2 km. Due to the unique characteristic of mine environment as demonstrated by extreme pH, pressure, temperatureand/or salinity, it is anticipated that it could hold the promise for novel gene sequences and hence gene products of industrial and pharmaceutical importance. To provide insight into themicrobial diversity of mines in South Africa, biofilm samples were collected from Goldfield and diamond mines and their bacterial diversity determined using molecular approaches. 16S rRNA genes were amplified from DNA extracted from these samples using polymerase chain reaction with universal bacterial primers 27F (5’- AGA GTT TGA TCM TGG CTC AG-3’) and 1492R (5’- GGT TAC CTT GTT ACG ACT T-3’). Metagenomic clone libraries were constructed and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of >100 derivedclones resulted in four major restriction patterns from which 40 clones were chosen for sequencing. More than half (53%) of the sequences were affiliated with the bacterial phylum Proteobacteria, forty-one percent (41%) of the sequences with yet uncultured bacteria andthe phyla Firmicutes and Planctomycetes were accounted for by 4% and 2% of the sequences respectively. DGGE analysis of PCR-amplified 16S rRNA genes showed characteristic fingerprints for each sample. The differences in community structure observed account for the uniqueness of each of the mines with respect to its microbial diversity

Cardio-metabolic risk factors and cortical thickness in a neurologically healthy male population: results from the psychological, social and biological determinants of ill health (pSoBid) study

<p>Introduction: Cardio-metabolic risk factors have been associated with poor physical and mental health. Epidemiological studies have shown peripheral risk markers to be associated with poor cognitive functioning in normal healthy population and in disease. The aim of the study was to explore the relationship between cardio-metabolic risk factors and cortical thickness in a neurologically healthy middle aged population-based sample.</p> <p>Methods: T1-weighted MRI was used to create models of the cortex for calculation of regional cortical thickness in 40 adult males (average age = 50.96 years), selected from the PSOBID study. The relationship between cardio-vascular risk markers and cortical thickness across the whole brain, were examined using the general linear models. The relationship with various covariates of interest was explored.</p> <p>Results: Lipid fractions with greater triglyceride content (TAG, VLDL and LDL) were associated with greater cortical thickness pertaining to a number of regions in the brain. Greater C reactive protein (CRP) and Intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM-1) levels were associated with cortical thinning pertaining to perisylvian regions in the left hemisphere. Smoking status and education status were significant covariates in the model.</p> <p>Conclusions: This exploratory study adds to a small body of existing literature increasingly showing a relationship between cardio-metabolic risk markers and regional cortical thickness involving a number of regions in the brain in a neurologically normal middle aged sample. A focused investigation of factors determining the inter-individual variations in regional cortical thickness in the adult brain could provide further clarity in our understanding of the relationship between cardio-metabolic factors and cortical structures.</p&gt

Identifying Metabolomic Profiles of Insulinemic Dietary Patterns

The food-based empirical dietary index for hyperinsulinemia (EDIH) score assesses the insulinemic potential of diet. This cross-sectional study evaluated associations between EDIH scores from food frequency questionnaires with c-peptide concentrations and with 448 metabolites, from fasting plasma samples, in multivariable linear regression analyses. Metabolites were measured with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectroscopy. Using a robust two-stage study design, discovery of metabolite associations was conducted among 1109 Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) Hormone Therapy (HT) trial participants and results replicated in an independent dataset of 810 WHI Observational Study (OS) participants. In both discovery and replication datasets, statistical significance was based on the false-discovery rate adjusted P \u3c 0.05. In the multivariable-adjusted analyses, EDIH was significantly associated with c-peptide concentrations among 919 women (HT & OS) with c-peptide data. On average, c-peptide concentrations were 18% higher (95% CI, 6%, 32%; P-trend \u3c 0.0001) in EDIH quintile 5 compared to quintile 1. Twenty-six metabolites were significantly associated with EDIH in the discovery dataset, and 19 of these were replicated in the validation dataset. Nine metabolites were found to decrease in abundance with increasing EDIH scores and included: C14:0 CE, C16:1 CE, C18:1 CE, C18:3 CE, C20:3 CE, C20:5 CE, C36:1 PS plasmalogen, trigonelline, and eicosapentanoate, whereas the 10 metabolites observed to increase with increasing EDIH scores were: C18:2 SM, C36:3 DAG, C36:4 DAG-A, C51:3 TAG, C52:3 TAG, C52:4, TAG, C54:3 TAG, C54:4 TAG, C54:6 TAG, and C10:2 carnitine. Cholesteryl esters, phospholipids, acylglycerols, and acylcarnitines may constitute circulating metabolites that are associated with insulinemic dietary patterns

Characterising the grey matter correlates of leukoaraiosis in cerebral small vessel disease.

Cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is a heterogeneous group of pathological disorders that affect the small vessels of the brain and are an important cause of cognitive impairment. The ischaemic consequences of this disease can be detected using MRI, and include white matter hyperintensities (WMH), lacunar infarcts and microhaemorrhages. The relationship between SVD disease severity, as defined by WMH volume, in sporadic age-related SVD and cortical thickness has not been well defined. However, regional cortical thickness change would be expected due to associated phenomena such as underlying ischaemic white matter damage, and the observation that widespread cortical thinning is observed in the related genetic condition CADASIL (Righart et al., 2013). Using MRI data, we have developed a semi-automated processing pipeline for the anatomical analysis of individuals with cerebral small vessel disease and applied it cross-sectionally to 121 subjects diagnosed with this condition. Using a novel combined automated white matter lesion segmentation algorithm and lesion repair step, highly accurate warping to a group average template was achieved. The volume of white matter affected by WMH was calculated, and used as a covariate of interest in a voxel-based morphometry and voxel-based cortical thickness analysis. Additionally, Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) was used to assess if the severity of SVD, measured by WMH volume, could be predicted from the morphometry and cortical thickness measures. We found significant (Family Wise Error corrected p < 0.05) volumetric decline with increasing lesion load predominately in the parietal lobes, anterior insula and caudate nuclei bilaterally. Widespread significant cortical thinning was found bilaterally in the dorsolateral prefrontal, parietal and posterio-superior temporal cortices. These represent distinctive patterns of cortical thinning and volumetric reduction compared to ageing effects in the same cohort, which exhibited greater changes in the occipital and sensorimotor cortices. Using GPR, the absolute WMH volume could be significantly estimated from the grey matter density and cortical thickness maps (Pearson's coefficients 0.80 and 0.75 respectively). We demonstrate that SVD severity is associated with regional cortical thinning. Furthermore a quantitative measure of SVD severity (WMH volume) can be predicted from grey matter measures, supporting an association between white and grey matter damage. The pattern of cortical thinning and volumetric decline is distinctive for SVD severity compared to ageing. These results, taken together, suggest that there is a phenotypic pattern of atrophy associated with SVD severity

Isolation and characterization of bacteriophages for avian pathogenic E. coli strains

Aims: To isolate and characterize bacteriophages, and to evaluate its lytic performance against avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) strains with high patterns of antibiotic resistance, in order to select phages for a therapeutic product to treat colibacillosis in chickens. Methods and Results: Bacteriophages were isolated from poultry sewage and tested against 148 O-serotyped APEC strains. The morphological characterization of the bacteriophages was made by transmission electronic microscopy (TEM) observations and the genetic comparison between bacteriophages DNA was performed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) patterns. Results showed that 70·5% of the tested E. coli strains were sensitive to a combination of three of the five isolated phages, that seemed to be virulent and taxonomically belong to the Caudovirales order. Two of them look like 16–19, T4-like phages (Myoviridae) and the third is a T1-like phage and belongs to Syphoviridae family. All of them are genetically different. Conclusions: It was possible to obtain a combination of three different lytic bacteriophages with broad lytic spectra against the most prevalent O-serotypes of APEC. Significance and Impact of the Study: Data reported in this study, presents an in vitro well studied phage product to be used as antimicrobial agent to treat colibacillosis in poultry industry.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT