1,720,974 research outputs found
Determination of Thermal Comfort in Indoor Sport Facilities Located in Moderate Environments: An Overview
Full text linkIn previous years, providing comfort in indoor environments has become a major question for researchers. Thus, indoor environmental quality (IEQ)—concerning the aspects of air quality, thermal comfort, visual and acoustical quality—assumed a crucial role. Considering sport facilities, the evaluation of the thermal environment is one of the main issues that should be faced, as it may interfere with athletes’ performance and health. Thus, the necessity of a review comprehending the existing knowledge regarding the evaluation of the thermal environment and its application to sport facilities becomes increasingly relevant. This paper has the purpose to consolidate the aspects related to thermal comfort and their application to sport practice, through a deep study concerning the engineering, physiological, and psychological approaches to thermal comfort, a review of the main standards on the topic and an analysis of the methodologies and the models used by researchers to determine the thermal sensation of sport facilities’ occupants. Therefore, this review provides the basis for future research on the determination of thermal comfort in indoor sport facilities located in moderate environments
Monitoring CO2 concentration to control the infection probability due to airborne transmission in naturally ventilated university classrooms
No full textDue to the increasing amount of time that people are spending indoors, the need to ensure adequate ventilation has become a priority. The confirmed airborne transmission of COVID-19 highlights the necessity to consider the effect of ventilation on the reduction of the infection risk. In naturally ventilated buildings, the ventilation rate is not easy to determine, and it is difficult to estimate the risk to implement preventive measures. This paper presents a method to estimate the infection probability from CO2 concentration monitoring, which was applied to university classrooms. The effects of people’s activity, classroom characteristics, occupancy and protective masks were also investigated. From the method, it is possible to calculate the infection probability using CO2 dataloggers that can be adopted as ‘alarm’ systems to keep the infection probability below a critical value. The method will enhance healthy conditions indoors and reduce the risk of infectious diseases in the future
A Novel Methodology for Risk Assessment of Airborne Transmission due to Covid-19 in University Classrooms
No full textThe Covid-19 pandemic revolutionized the way of designing buildings, which should be created to improve health conditions and limit the spread of contagion. Among these, schools certainly need special attention. To improve indoor conditions, the first step of this study was conducted by simulating three classrooms having different ventilation strategies, using a CFD analysis. Then the infection probability was calculated using the Gammaitoni-Nucci model to analyse the risk in the classrooms according to different ventilation and building characteristics. The study showed the need for providing adequate ventilation to ensure healthy conditions for the students. Furthermore, the infection probability was calculated considering non-uniform environments, which can result from various air distributions in the classroom due to local non-uniformities. The configuration obtained from the CFD analysis was then compared to the standard condition. which considers the classrooms as uniform environments. This allows an understanding of the effective conditions to which students are exposed and to comprehend whether the classical models do not risk
underestimating the infection probability. This study provides a new methodology for airborne transmission risk assessment in non-homogeneous environments and supports designers with a new tool to evaluate HVAC systems layout and classroom operation
Effect of Exercise on Athletes Performing in Fencing Uniforms: Methodology and Preliminary Results of the Use of Infrared Thermography to Detect the Thermal Behaviour of Fencers
Full text linkIn recent times, infrared thermography has been often applied to sport science, in order to evaluate athletes’ performance in relation to their thermal behaviour. As there is a lack of studies for the sport of fencing, this paper aims to provide preliminary results showing the thermal behaviour of fencers of different competitive level and to provide a methodology for its assessment.
In particular, thermal images were acquired before, during and after the training, as well as the metabolic rate and the rate of perceived exertion, for eight fencers with different competitive levels (international/national/veteran). Results showed that in moderate environments there was any correlation between the environmental parameters and temperature trend on athletes’ bodies, while competitive level and thermal behaviour were connected. The presence of thermal asymmetries was also detected. In general, from these preliminary results, professional athletes presented the same temperature trend. Therefore, further studies should be carried out in order to investigate these findings on a larger sample of elite athletes, as their thermal response may be important for improving their performance
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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