Daylighting Performance of Solar Control Films for Hospital Buildings in a Mediterranean Climate

One of the main retrofitting strategies in warm climates is the reduction of the effects of solar radiation. Cooling loads, and in turn, cooling consumption, can be reduced through the implementation of reflective materials such as solar control films. However, these devices may also negatively affect daylight illuminance conditions and the electric consumption of artificial lighting systems. In a hospital building, it is crucial to meet daylighting requirements as well as indoor illuminance levels and visibility from the inside, as these have a significant impact on health outcomes. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the influence on natural illuminance conditions of a solar control film installed on the windows of a public hospital building in a Mediterranean climate. To this end, a hospital room, with and without solar film, was monitored for a whole year. A descriptive statistical analysis was conducted on the use of artificial lighting, illuminance levels and rolling shutter aperture levels, as well as an analysis of natural illuminance and electric consumption of the artificial lighting system. The addition of a solar control film to the external surface of the window, in combination with the user-controlled rolling shutter aperture levels, has reduced the electric consumption of the artificial lighting system by 12.2%. Likewise, the solar control film has increased the percentage of annual hours with natural illuminance levels by 100–300 lux

Analysis of clinical diagnostics in human genetics with semantic similarity searches in ontologies

This thesis is focused on the analysis of the results of the paper KÖHLER, Sebastian, et al. Clinical diagnostics in human genetics with semantic similarity searches in ontologies(1) and the improvement of them. The method studied uses symptoms from the "Human Phenotype Ontology" 2022 (HPO) (2) and tries to predict the disease using another database from the same website (3). This comparison is performed using semantic similarity methods that will be explained in the next chapters. While trying to reproduce the results, many difficulties were found to reach that goal. After many auditions of the code that run the simulation, the performance was not close to that shown in the paper. However, an implementation of this method is already available online by the own authors of the article. This is called the Phenomizer. After generating hundreds of simulated patients following the rules specified in the paper, and using this data in the Phenomizer, one conclusion can be extracted from it, the results are not consistent with the data specified in the article. When imprecision is added to the symptoms (randomly replacing a symptom by one of their ancestors), performance is much worse than stated. On the other hand, adding noise (symptoms unrelated to the disease) has little effect on the output and the performance is coherent with the paper. To try to improve the performance, some other semantic similarity methods were tested using a specialized library called Semantic Measures Library and Toolkit (3). No significant improvements were detected in this investigation, the method used in the article was the best in terms of results quality. The last important point that is clashing with the article is the fact that they use a p-value calculated from the semantic similarity score to obtain the rankings of more probable diseases for the given set of symptoms. According to the paper, the p-value method is better than using simply the similarity scores. However, in all the tests done in this thesis similarity scores performed better than p-values. This means that no big calculations, expensive in time, and a big hard drive capacity are required. In conclusion, the results of the real Phenomizer are worse than stated; no better semantic similarity method than the existent one was found, and disease rankings by similarity scores performed better than by p-value, contrary to the paper assertions

Indoor Air Quality Assessment: Comparison of Ventilation Scenarios for Retrofitting Classrooms in a Hot Climate

Current energy e ciency policies in buildings foster the promotion of energy retrofitting of the existing stock. In southern Spain, the most extensive public sector is that of educational buildings, which is especially subject to significant internal loads due to high occupancy. A large fraction of the energy retrofit strategies conducted to date have focused on energy aspects and indoor thermal comfort, repeatedly disregarding indoor air quality criteria. This research assesses indoor air quality in a school located in the Mediterranean area, with the objective of promoting di erent ventilation scenarios, based on occupancy patterns and carbon dioxide levels monitored on site. Results show that manual ventilation cannot guarantee minimum indoor quality levels following current standards. A constant ventilation based on CO2 levels allows 15% more thermal comfort hours a year to be reached, compared to CO2-based optimized demand-controlled ventilation. Nevertheless, the latter ensures 35% annual energy savings, compared to a constant CO2-based ventilation, and 37% more annual energy savings over that of a constant ventilation rate of outdoor air per person

Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean: Comfort and the Balance between Passive and Active Design

This article contains an overall analysis of the results obtained by the four highest scoring teams in the Solar Decathlon Latin America and Caribbean 2015 collegiate sustainable habitat competition. Considering that the prototypes developed were based on energy self-su ciency when operational, it was considered necessary to propose this analysis based on the degree of suitability of each of these models based on their di erent performances from the perspective of comfort conditions. It was observed that the design of the prototypes did not manage to properly adjust the relationship between passive and active conditioning elements based on the location’s conditions. Accordingly, this article concludes that a balance of the two aforementioned conditioning modes recorded better results based on the measurements taken

Joyce...Bruno..."Ulysses"

Giordano Bruno has been a philosopher traditionally connected to James Joyce. Nevertheless, Bruno’s infl uence has been associated to Joyce’s last and enigmatic work,Finnegans Wake. Apart from this general consideration, this paper tries to prove that Joyce’s youth readings on Giordano Bruno were a serious infl uence on his most famous work Ulysses. Although it might be true that Joyce did not read Bruno as a primary source –he, indeed wrote a review on a book on the Italian thinker, we can conclude that Bruno was an important source on Joyce before he even conceived writing Finnegans Wake. Giordano Bruno ha sido un fi lósofo que se suele relacionar con la obra de James Joyce. Sin embargo, la infl uencia de Bruno se suele asociar con la última y enigmática obra del irlandés, Finnegans Wake. Amén de esta consideración general, este artículo intenta demostrar que las lecturas juveniles de Joyce fueron una infl uencia seria en su obra más conocida, Ulises. Si bien puede ser cierto que no leyó a Bruno en el original, publicó una reseña sobre el pensador italiano y podemos concluir que Bruno fue una fuente importante en Joyce antes de que ni siquiera concibiera la escritura de Finnegans Wake

Assessment of Indoor Environmental Quality for Retrofitting Classrooms with An Egg-Crate Shading Device in A Hot Climate

In the Mediterranean climate, a large number of educational buildings suffer from discomfort due mostly to energy-deficient thermal envelopes and a lack of cooling systems. Impending climate change is expected to worsen overheating in classrooms, especially during heatwave periods. Therefore, the protection of window openings to reduce incident solar radiation while maintaining adequate indoor environmental quality must be considered a necessary key focus. The main objective of this research is to assess the influence of an egg-crate shading device on the indoor environmental quality of a classroom in Southern Spain. To do so, two classrooms—with and without this shading device—were simultaneously monitored over a whole year. The implementation of an egg-crate shading device allowed for a significant reduction of the incident solar radiation, both in summer and mid-season (around 45–50%), which objectively slightly conditioned indoor operative temperatures. Given the noticeable influence of the user patterns observed, indoor illuminance was also improved, as the rolling shutters tended to be opened at higher aperture levels

Thermal and Lighting Consumption Savings in Classrooms Retrofitted with Shading Devices in a Hot Climate

Most educational buildings in southern Spain do not meet current energy requirements as weak thermal envelopes and the lack of cooling systems lead to severe discomfort in classrooms, especially when temperatures are above 30 °C. Given that global warming is expected to worsen this situation in coming decades, one of the first steps to be taken is to protect window openings from high levels of solar radiation by adding shading devices to reduce indoor temperatures and improve visual comfort. The aim of this research is to evaluate the reduction in thermal and lighting consumption in a classroom where a solar protection system in the form of an egg-crate shading device was installed. Two classrooms—one with an egg-crate device and another with no shading system—were monitored and compared for a whole year. The use of an egg-crate device in these classrooms reduced indoor operative temperatures during warmer periods while also improving indoor natural illuminance levels. Moreover, annual electric air conditioning consumption decreased by approximately 20%, with a 50% reduction in electric lighting consumption. These savings in electricity were largely conditioned by the use patterns observed in these ambient systems.Spanish government BIA2014-53949-RMinistry of Economy and Competitiveness, Spanish GovernmentEuropean Regional Development Fun