Life Cycle Costing Applications in Sustainable Building

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) which is defined ISO 15686-5:2005 is used to assess the sustainable and renewable technology used in building. The results indicate that the premium cost of sustainable/renewable technology in building is surprisingly lower than many have expected. The life time saving benefits are mainly coming from energy savings. However benefits might also come from improved indoor environmental quality, greater employee comfort/productivity, reduced employee health costs and lower operations and maintenance costs. These benefits will normally greatly exceed any additional upfront premium costs. The information derived from this study will assist people to be aware of the life cycle cost and benefit of sustainable and renewable technology in building. It will also provide the architect/engineer the information about energy conservation potential acquired via energy saving and conservation

CONSTRUCTION EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS FOR ACHIEVING LEVEL 2 AND 3 BIM

The Architecture Engineering Construction (AEC) Industry is well noted for its fragmented nature, leading to several flaws in communication and information processing, which have led to a proliferation of adversarial relationships amongst project participants, thereby affecting the integrity of design information throughout the project life cycle. Likewise, Construction Education is bedevilled by multitudinous issues due to its practice-based, interdisciplinary nature of the industry, its professional and institutional history, and its evolving context and composition. These challenges have influenced the purpose of construction as well as the requirements or strategies needed to achieve it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of Construction Education and learning requirements for successful training and implementation of Level 2 (with the aid of a process map) and also of Level 3, to meeting the ever-changing nature of the AEC industry. This process map seeks to identify the educational requirements for existing industry practitioners and for fresh graduates entering into the industry. In order to achieve this aim, a case study methodology was adopted using semi-structured interviews with BIM experts in purposively selected organisations in the UK, which were further analysed using single case narrative and cross-case synthesis techniques. The BIM sub-processes at each project phase of the construction process were extracted from the interviews conducted. Then the process map linking all the BIM activities in the project was developed. In conclusion, the process map formalises the knowledge and skills set required to successfully implement Level 2 and 3 BIM, facilitating project collaboration, communication flow and agreement amongst project participants on construction processes throughout the project lifecycle. The finding of this research are highly aligned with the seminal literature which argued that new skills required for the creation and management of a BIM model fall into the three categories of technological tools, organisational processes, and project team roles and responsibilities, and that these three skill sets contribute to the success of the entire BIM project and adoption in any organisation

Balancing act: exploring the tone of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

This paper provides an analysis of The Life Aquatic in the context of debates around tone, irony, the Smart Film, the New Sincerity and the Quirky. It argues that Anderson is one of a small but significant number of filmmakers to escape from the indiscriminate irony of fin de sie`cle cinema, and finds The Life Aquatic Aquatic a particularly interesting film in which to explore such matters because of its ready artifice, strong elements of pastiche and measuredly preposterous excesses. Offering a critical analysis, the paper balances an engagement with some of the systemic elements of the film’s tone with the detailed organisation of tonal elements in particular sequences

Executive control in older Welsh monolinguals and bilinguals

Evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive control has led to the suggestion that being bilingual might protect against late-life cognitive decline. We assessed the performance of socially homogeneous groups of older (≥ 60 years) bilingual Welsh/English (n = 50) and monolingual English (n = 49) speakers on a range of executive control tasks yielding 17 indices for comparison. Effect sizes (> .2) favoured monolinguals on 10 indices, with negligible differences observed on the remaining 7 indices. Univariate analyses indicated that monolinguals performed significantly better on two of 17 indices. Multivariate analysis indicated no significant overall differences between the two groups in performance on executive tasks. Older Welsh bilinguals do not show a bilingual advantage in executive control, and where differences are observed, these tend to favour monolinguals. A possible explanation may lie in the nature of the sociolinguistic context and its influence on cognitive processing in the bilingual group

The acidity of atmospheric particles and clouds

Acidity, defined as pH, is a central component of aqueous chemistry. In the atmosphere, the acidity of condensed phases (aerosol particles, cloud water, and fog droplets) governs the phase partitioning of semivolatile gases such as HNO3, NH3, HCl, and organic acids and bases as well as chemical reaction rates. It has implications for the atmospheric lifetime of pollutants, deposition, and human health. Despite its fundamental role in atmospheric processes, only recently has this field seen a growth in the number of studies on particle acidity. Even with this growth, many fine-particle pH estimates must be based on thermodynamic model calculations since no operational techniques exist for direct measurements. Current information indicates acidic fine particles are ubiquitous, but observationally constrained pH estimates are limited in spatial and temporal coverage. Clouds and fogs are also generally acidic, but to a lesser degree than particles, and have a range of pH that is quite sensitive to anthropogenic emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, as well as ambient ammonia. Historical measurements indicate that cloud and fog droplet pH has changed in recent decades in response to controls on anthropogenic emissions, while the limited trend data for aerosol particles indicate acidity may be relatively constant due to the semivolatile nature of the key acids and bases and buffering in particles. This paper reviews and synthesizes the current state of knowledge on the acidity of atmospheric condensed phases, specifically particles and cloud droplets. It includes recommendations for estimating acidity and pH, standard nomenclature, a synthesis of current pH estimates based on observations, and new model calculations on the local and global scale. © 2020 Author(s)

Simplicity in Visual Representation: A Semiotic Approach

Simplicity, as an ideal in the design of visual representations, has not received systematic attention. High-level guidelines are too general, and low-level guidelines too ad hoc, too numerous, and too often incompatible, to serve in a particular design situation. This paper reviews notions of visual simplicity in the literature within the analytical framework provided by Charles Morris' communication model, specifically, his trichotomy of communication levels—the syntactic, the semantic, and the pragmatic. Simplicity is ultimate ly shown to entail the adjudication of incompatibilities both within, and between, levels.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68281/2/10.1177_105065198700100103.pd

Upregulation of GALNT7 in prostate cancer modifies O-glycosylation and promotes tumour growth.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men and it is estimated that over 350,000 men worldwide die of prostate cancer every year. There remains an unmet clinical need to improve how clinically significant prostate cancer is diagnosed and develop new treatments for advanced disease. Aberrant glycosylation is a hallmark of cancer implicated in tumour growth, metastasis, and immune evasion. One of the key drivers of aberrant glycosylation is the dysregulated expression of glycosylation enzymes within the cancer cell. Here, we demonstrate using multiple independent clinical cohorts that the glycosyltransferase enzyme GALNT7 is upregulated in prostate cancer tissue. We show GALNT7 can identify men with prostate cancer, using urine and blood samples, with improved diagnostic accuracy than serum PSA alone. We also show that GALNT7 levels remain high in progression to castrate-resistant disease, and using in vitro and in vivo models, reveal that GALNT7 promotes prostate tumour growth. Mechanistically, GALNT7 can modify O-glycosylation in prostate cancer cells and correlates with cell cycle and immune signalling pathways. Our study provides a new biomarker to aid the diagnosis of clinically significant disease and cements GALNT7-mediated O-glycosylation as an important driver of prostate cancer progression