A Prototype Toolkit For Evaluating Indoor Environmental Quality In Commercial Buildings

Measurement of building environmental parameters is often complex, expensive, and not easily proceduralized in a manner that covers all commercial buildings. Evaluating building indoor environmental quality performance is therefore not standard practice. This project developed a prototype toolkit that addressed existing barriers to widespread indoor environmental quality performance evaluation. A toolkit with both hardware and software elements was designed for practitioners around the indoor environmental quality requirements of the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers / Chartered Institution of Building Services / United States Green Building Council Performance Measurement Protocols. This unique toolkit was built on a wireless mesh network with a web-based data collection, analysis, and reporting application. The toolkit provided a fast, robust deployment of sensors, real-time data analysis, Performance Measurement Protocol-based analysis methods and a scorecard and report generation tools. A web-enabled Geographic Information System-based metadata collection system also reduced field-study deployment time. The toolkit was evaluated through three case studies, which were discussed in this report

Advances to ASHRAE Standard 55 to encourage more effective building practice

ASHRAE Standard 55 has been evolving in recent years to encourage more sustainable building designs and operational practices. A series of changes address issues for which past design practice has been deficient or overly constrained. Some of the changes were enabled by findings from field studies of comfort and energy-efficiency, and others by new developments in the design- and building-management professions.  The changes have been influencing practice and spurring follow-on research.The Standard now addresses effects of elevated air movement, solar gain on the occupant, and draft at the ankles, each with several impacts on energy-efficient design and operation. It also addresses the most important source of discomfort in modern buildings, the large inter- and intra-personal variability in thermal comfort requirements, by classifying the occupants’ personal control and adaptive options in a form that can be used in building rating systems. In order to facilitate design, new computer tools extend the use of the standard toward direct use in designers’ workflow. The standard also includes provisions for monitoring and evaluating buildings in operation. This paper summarizes these developments and their underlying research, and attempts to look ahead

Optimizing Radiant Systems for Energy Efficiency and Comfort

Radiant cooling and heating systems provide an opportunity to achieve significant energy savings, peak demand reduction, load shifting, and thermal comfort improvements compared to conventional all-air systems. As a result, application of these systems has increased in recent years, particularly in zero-net-energy (ZNE) and other advanced low-energy buildings. Despite this growth, completed installations to date have demonstrated that controls and operation of radiant systems can be challenging due to a lack of familiarity within the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) design and operations professions, often involving new concepts (particularly related to the slow response in high thermal mass radiant systems). To achieve the significant reductions in building energy use proposed by California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC’s) Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan that all new non-residential buildings be ZNE by 2030, it is critical that new technologies that will play a major role in reaching this goal be applied in an effective manner. This final report describes the results of a comprehensive multi-faceted research project that was undertaken to address these needed enhancements to radiant technology by developing the following: (1) sizing and operation tools (currently unavailable on the market) to provide reliable methods to take full advantage of the radiant systems to provide improved energy performance while maintaining comfortable conditions, (2) energy, cost, and occupant comfort data to provide real world examples of energy efficient, affordable, and comfortable buildings using radiant systems, and (3) Title-24 and ASHRAE Standards advancements to enhance the building industry’s ability to achieve significant energy efficiency goals in California with radiant systems. The research team used a combination of full-scale fundamental laboratory experiments, whole-building energy simulations and simplified tool development, and detailed field studies and control demonstrations to assemble the new information, guidance and tools necessary to help the building industry achieve significant energy efficiency goals for radiant systems in California

Immune signatures predict development of autoimmune toxicity in patients with cancer treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors

Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are among the most promising treatment options for melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). While ICIs can induce effective anti-tumor responses, they may also drive serious immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Identifying biomarkers to predict which patients will suffer from irAEs would enable more accurate clinical risk-benefit analysis for ICI treatment and may also shed light on common or distinct mechanisms underpinning treatment success and irAEs. Methods: In this prospective multi-center study, we combined a multi-omics approach including unbiased single-cell profiling of over 300 peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples and high-throughput proteomics analysis of over 500 serum samples to characterize the systemic immune compartment of patients with melanoma or NSCLC before and during treatment with ICIs. Findings: When we combined the parameters obtained from the multi-omics profiling of patient blood and serum, we identified potential predictive biomarkers for ICI-induced irAEs. Specifically, an early increase in CXCL9/CXCL10/CXCL11 and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) 1 to 2 weeks after the start of therapy are likely indicators of heightened risk of developing irAEs. In addition, an early expansion of Ki-67+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) and Ki-67+ CD8+ T cells is also likely to be associated with increased risk of irAEs. Conclusions: We suggest that the combination of these cellular and proteomic biomarkers may help to predict which patients are likely to benefit most from ICI therapy and those requiring intensive monitoring for irAEs. Funding: This work was primarily funded by the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Cancer League, and the Forschungsförderung of the Kantonsspital St. Gallen

Immune signatures predict development of autoimmune toxicity in patients with cancer treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors.

BACKGROUND Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are among the most promising treatment options for melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). While ICIs can induce effective anti-tumor responses, they may also drive serious immune-related adverse events (irAEs). Identifying biomarkers to predict which patients will suffer from irAEs would enable more accurate clinical risk-benefit analysis for ICI treatment and may also shed light on common or distinct mechanisms underpinning treatment success and irAEs. METHODS In this prospective multi-center study, we combined a multi-omics approach including unbiased single-cell profiling of over 300 peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) samples and high-throughput proteomics analysis of over 500 serum samples to characterize the systemic immune compartment of patients with melanoma or NSCLC before and during treatment with ICIs. FINDINGS When we combined the parameters obtained from the multi-omics profiling of patient blood and serum, we identified potential predictive biomarkers for ICI-induced irAEs. Specifically, an early increase in CXCL9/CXCL10/CXCL11 and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) 1 to 2 weeks after the start of therapy are likely indicators of heightened risk of developing irAEs. In addition, an early expansion of Ki-67+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) and Ki-67+ CD8+ T cells is also likely to be associated with increased risk of irAEs. CONCLUSIONS We suggest that the combination of these cellular and proteomic biomarkers may help to predict which patients are likely to benefit most from ICI therapy and those requiring intensive monitoring for irAEs. FUNDING This work was primarily funded by the European Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Cancer League, and the Forschungsförderung of the Kantonsspital St. Gallen

Origin and pathways of the mineral dust transport to two Spanish EARLINET sites: Effect on the observed columnar and range-resolved dust optical properties

In this paper, is presented a method for estimation of the effect of the transport process to aerosol optical properties. Aerosol optical data retrieved by lidars and sun-photometer measurements, are applied to Saharan dust events observed simultaneously at the two EARLINET/AERONET sites of Barcelona and Granada during the periods of June–September of 2012 and 2013. For this purpose, elastic lidar profiles and sun-photometer columnar retrievals are analyzed together with satellite observations and dust forecast models. Granada presents more than twice Saharan dust outbreaks compared to Barcelona. The scenarios favoring the Saharan dust outbreaks are identified in both places. The mineral dust originating in the Sahara region and arriving at both stations is usually transport wither over the Atlas Mountains or through an Atlantic pathway. Analyses of dust events affecting both stations reveal how differences in the transport process lead to differences in the aerosol optical properties measured at each station. Mean dust related Ångström exponent is 1.8 times higher in Barcelona than in Granada. This difference is a result of the additional contribution of anthropogenic aerosol, mainly in the aerosol fine mode, during the transport of the mineral dust plume over the Iberian Peninsula.Andalusia Regional Government through the project P12-RNM-2409Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the project CGL2013-45410-

BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model

Large language models (LLMs) have been shown to be able to perform new tasks based on a few demonstrations or natural language instructions. While these capabilities have led to widespread adoption, most LLMs are developed by resource-rich organizations and are frequently kept from the public. As a step towards democratizing this powerful technology, we present BLOOM, a 176B-parameter open-access language model designed and built thanks to a collaboration of hundreds of researchers. BLOOM is a decoder-only Transformer language model that was trained on the ROOTS corpus, a dataset comprising hundreds of sources in 46 natural and 13 programming languages (59 in total). We find that BLOOM achieves competitive performance on a wide variety of benchmarks, with stronger results after undergoing multitask prompted finetuning. To facilitate future research and applications using LLMs, we publicly release our models and code under the Responsible AI License

Commercial Building Indoor Environmental Quality Evaluation: Methods and Tools

In order to address the previously identified need for better methods and tools for evaluating building performance, this project seeks to:1. Develop a hardware and software toolkit for facilitating the evaluation of IEQ performance in commercial buildings based on the ASHRAE/CIBSE/USGBC Performance Measurement Protocols.2. Evaluate the success of the toolkit through a case study3. Explore IEQ models as a method for rating IEQ performance4. Provide an example implementation of the PMP and suggestions for improvementThe toolkit aims to simplify the process of building performance evaluation, tying together the multiple pieces needed to appropriately evaluate performance. In doing so, the toolkit hopes to be a prototype for future cost-effective, commercially available toolkits.The toolkit’s success will be evaluated through a case study that provides feedback on toolkit procedures and features from practitioners. In addition to feedback on the toolkit, the case study will provide a source of data to explore three of the IEQ rating systems discussed in section 1.5. Specifically, issues of spatial and temporal resolution are explored as they relate both to IEQ ratings and procedural feasibility.Finally, this project aims to provide critical feedback on the PMP in an effort to widen the appeal of IEQ evaluation to current practitioners and other potential interested parties such as LEED

Commercial Building Indoor Environmental Quality Evaluation: Methods and Tools

In order to address the previously identified need for better methods and tools for evaluating building performance, this project seeks to:1. Develop a hardware and software toolkit for facilitating the evaluation of IEQ performance in commercial buildings based on the ASHRAE/CIBSE/USGBC Performance Measurement Protocols.2. Evaluate the success of the toolkit through a case study3. Explore IEQ models as a method for rating IEQ performance4. Provide an example implementation of the PMP and suggestions for improvementThe toolkit aims to simplify the process of building performance evaluation, tying together the multiple pieces needed to appropriately evaluate performance. In doing so, the toolkit hopes to be a prototype for future cost-effective, commercially available toolkits.The toolkit’s success will be evaluated through a case study that provides feedback on toolkit procedures and features from practitioners. In addition to feedback on the toolkit, the case study will provide a source of data to explore three of the IEQ rating systems discussed in section 1.5. Specifically, issues of spatial and temporal resolution are explored as they relate both to IEQ ratings and procedural feasibility.Finally, this project aims to provide critical feedback on the PMP in an effort to widen the appeal of IEQ evaluation to current practitioners and other potential interested parties such as LEED