Deployment and control of adaptive building facades for energy generation, thermal insulation, ventilation and daylighting: A review

A major objective in the design and operation of buildings is to maintain occupant comfort without incurring significant energy use. Particularly in narrower-plan buildings, the thermophysical properties and behaviour of their façades are often an important determinant of internal conditions. Building facades have been, and are being, developed to adapt their heat and mass transfer characteristics to changes in weather conditions, number of occupants and occupant’s requirements and preferences. Both the wall and window elements of a facade can be engineered to (i) harness solar energy for photovoltaic electricity generation, heating, inducing ventilation and daylighting (ii) provide varying levels of thermal insulation and (iii) store energy. As an adaptive façade may need to provide each attribute to differing extents at particular times, achieving their optimal performance requires effective control. This paper reviews key aspects of current and emerging adaptive façade technologies. These include (i) mechanisms and technologies used to regulate heat and mass transfer flows, daylight, electricity and heat generation (ii) effectiveness and responsiveness of adaptive façades, (iii) appropriate control algorithms for adaptive facades and (iv) sensor information required for façade adaptations to maintain desired occupants’ comfort levels while minimising the energy use

Optimal temperature-actuated control of a thermally-insulated roller blind

By altering the thermal equilibria between internal and ambient environments, dynamic insulation can minimize heating and cooling building energy requirements. The performance of a thermally-insulated roller blind was evaluated both experimentally and via simulation studies. The variation of blind position was optimized to minimize building energy consumption, maintain thermal comfort, and minimize daylight discomfort for a particular system, location and conditions. The roller blind was adjusted between four positions, from fully-open to fully-closed, optimal indoor temperature switching thresholds found for moving to these blind positions were 15 °C, 18.4 °C, 19.4 °C and 21.4 °C, respectively. Using these resulted in a 15.3% energy savings and a 7% reduction in occupancy daylight discomfort compared with no blind

Comparison of control parameters for roller blinds

Roller blinds can reduce the heating and cooling building energy consumption required to maintain thermal comfort. The effectiveness of roller blinds is influenced by the strategies and input parameters for their control. This study is the first to identify the most effective of seven alternative control parameters to control roller blinds. It further defines the benefits from using paired control parameters to maximise energy savings and optimise occupants’ comfort. For the particular case studies and conditions examined, it is concluded that operating roller blinds using indoor air temperature as a single control parameter with rule-based controller provided, 16 %, 19 % and 45 % in heating, cooling and lighting energy savings in Dublin, Berlin and Madrid respectively compared to a window without roller blinds, with an average 51 % daylight discomfort reduction. Using both internal temperature and outdoor ambient temperature to control the roller blinds had little effect on energy need, with only a further 0.6 %, 0.5 % and 0.3 % energy savings and an average of 2 % reduction in daylight discomfort achieved compared to using solely indoor temperature as the control parameter

Promoting Healthy Transitions: Occupational Therapy Interventions for Health Management of Homeless Populations Discharging from Health Care Settings

ObjectivesBy the end of this presentation, participants will be able to Identify the need for effective interventions to create better connections to health services and facilitate health management skills in individuals experiencing homelessness prior to discharge from a healthcare setting Recognize the potential for occupational therapists to increase health literacy and the development of self-directed health management skills for individuals experiencing homelessness prior to hospital discharge Apply components of an evidence-based, best practice approach to promote the development of healthy behaviors and health management skills in individuals experiencing homelessness PICO QuestionWhat interventions within the scope of occupational therapy increase participation in health management for individuals experiencing homelessness who are transitioning from healthcare facilities

The 2nd International Conference on Distributed Event-Based Systems

This paper defines and discusses the implementation of two novel extensions to the Siena Content-based Network (CBN) to extend it to become a Knowledge-based Network (KBN) thereby increasing the expressiveness and flexibility of its publications and subscription. One extension provides ontological concepts as an additional message attribute type, onto which subsumption relationships, equivalence, type queries and arbitrary ontological subscription filters can be applied. The second extension provides for a bag type to be used that allows bag equivalence, sub-bag and super-bag relationships to be used in subscription filters, possibly composed with any of the Siena subscription operators or the ontological operators previously mentioned. The performance of this KBN implementation has also been explored. However, to maintain scalability and performance it is important that these extensions do not break Siena?s subscription aggregation algorithm. We also introduce the necessary covering relationships for the new types and operators and examine the subscription matching overhead resulting from these new types and operators

Handbook of Research on Advanced Distributed Event-Based Systems, Publish-Subscribe and Message Filtering Technologies (Principles and Applications of Distributed Event-Based Systems)

Knowledge-Based Networking, which is built on-top of Content-based Networking (CBN), involves the forwarding of events across a network of brokers based on subscription filters applied to some semantics of the data and associated metadata of the events contents. Knowledge-based Networks (KBN) therefore support the efficient filtered dissemination of semantically enriched knowledge over a large, loosely coupled network of distributed heterogeneous agents. This is achieved by incorporating ontological semantics into event messages, allowing subscribers to define semantic filters, and providing a subscription brokering and routing mechanism. The KBN used for this work provides ontological concepts as an additional message attribute type, onto which subsumption relationships, equivalence, type queries and arbitrary ontological relationships can be applied. It also provides a bag type to be used that supports bags equivalence, sub-bag and super-bag relationships to be used in subscription filters, composed with traditional CBN subscription operators or the ontological operators. When combined with the benefits of Content?based Networking, this allows subscribers to easily express meaningful subscription interests and receive results in a more expressive and flexible distributed event system than heretofore. Within this chapter the detailed analysis of ontological operators and their application to a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) domain will be fully explored and evaluated

High prevalence of overweight and obesity in adults with Crohn\u27s disease: associations with disease and lifestyle factors.

Obesity and overweight are major public health issues. Although traditionally associated with weight loss, there is now evidence that increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) and overweight are emerging features of Crohn\u27s disease (CD) and may be associated with more severe disease course. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity in patients with CD compared with matched healthy controls and to identify disease-specific and generic factors associated with current BMI in this group.PUBLISHEDpeer-reviewe

Modulating tumour hypoxia in prostate cancer through exercise: The impact of redox signalling on radiosensitivity

Prostate cancer is a complex disease affecting millions of men globally. Radiotherapy (RT) is a common treatment modality although treatment efficacy is dependent upon several features within the tumour microenvironment (TME), especially hypoxia. A hypoxic TME heightens radioresistance and thus disease recurrence and treatment failure continues to pose important challenges. However, the TME evolves under the influence of factors in systemic circulation and cellular crosstalk, underscoring its potential to be acutely and therapeutically modified. Early preclinical evidence suggests exercise may affect tumour growth and some of the benefits drawn, could act to radiosensitise tumours to treatment. Intracellular perturbations in skeletal muscle reactive oxygen species (ROS) stimulate the production of numerous factors that can exert autocrine, paracrine, and endocrine effects on the prostate. However, findings supporting this notion are limited and the associated mechanisms are poorly understood. In light of this preclinical evidence, we propose systemic changes in redox signalling with exercise activate redox-sensitive factors within the TME and improve tumour hypoxia and treatment outcomes, when combined with RT. To this end, we suggest a connection between exercise, ROS and tumour growth kinetics, highlighting the potential of exercise to sensitise tumour cells to RT, and improve treatment efficacy