3,601 research outputs found
Pesticide inputs from the sewage treatment plant of Agrinio to River Acheloos, western Greece: occurrence and removal
No full textPublisher‘s note. We regret that the published version of this article erroneously denoted the first author as corresponding author; in fact the formal corresponding author of this paper is Professor Ioannis Konstantinou, whose address is repeated below.</jats:p
Sustainable refurbishment for an adaptable built environment
No full textThe reconsideration of the existing building stock is motivated by society’s efforts towards sustainability and resilience. The building sector has a considerable role to play in doing so. The process of refurbishment is complex, since aspects such as design decisions, existing construction, energy efficiency, and user behaviour need to be considered. The motivation for refurbishing existing buildings is related to environmental, social, and economic aspects of their use or reuse, which are the three core aspects of sustainability. The key environmental motivation is to reduce energy consumption from fossil fuels and related greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, and to include energy generation from renewables; the key economic motivation is to lessen the cost of energy used for heating, and the key social motivation is to reduce fuel poverty and improve the quality of life and well-being of the occupants.This chapter aims to explain the role of refurbishment of the building stock for sustainability and resilience. Firstly, definitions of the levels of building upgrades are given, and the motivations for refurbishment are discussed. Furthermore, the ecological, economic, and social aspects of refurbishment are deliberated on, together with the importance of the building stock for resilience. Finally, case studies of refurbishment projects are presented, providing insights into different aspects of refurbishment for sustainability and resilience
Environmental Design Principles for the Building Envelope and More _: Passive and Active Measures
No full textGiven the need to reduce building sector related energy consumption and greenhouse gases (GHG), passive and sustainable buildings are a focal point. Simple methods and techniques, which use appropriate building design, material and systems selection, and reflect consideration of the local environmental elements, such as air and sun, provide thermal and visual comfort with less non-renewable energy sources. These techniques are referred to as environmental or bioclimatic design. There are two types of measures to be taken: passive and active. Passive principles exploit the design and properties of the building envelope to minimise or maximise the heat losses and heat gains respectively, to reduce the energy demand. In addition to passive, active measures such as heating systems and solar power technologies are used to produce and distribute the energy needed to achieve comfort of the occupants.The present chapter aims at giving an overview of design principles that result in more comfortable and energy efficient buildings. Passive and active design principles are in line with the environmental design concepts. The environmental design principles can be beneficial to the building performance, whether the design ambition is to have a comfortable and functional building with reasonable energy demand or goes as far as achieving sustainable standards such as zero-energy or passive house.Building Product InnovationDesign of Construtio
The Internet of Things for the circular transition in the façade sector
No full textNel settore delle facciate, la transizione ecologica e circolare impone l’adozione di nuovi modelli di business che sfruttino al massimo il valore della materia. In questo contesto, l’Internet of Things (IoT) è identificato quale poten-ziale driver tecnologico per la diffusione di approcci circolari. Scopo dell’articolo è chiarire il ruolo dell’IoT nell’abilitare cinque modelli di business circolari nel settore delle facciate. Attraverso una matrice che evidenzia la relazione tra po-tenziali informazioni prodotte dall’IoT e azioni chiave per il raggiungimento dei modelli di business, si evidenziano i benefici di un sistema di facciata IoT-based. La discussione dei risultati apre il dibattito sulle prospettive di componenti edilizi digitalmente integrati
Internet of things for building façade traceability: A theoretical framework to enable circular economy through life-cycle information flows
No full textTraceability is considered a crucial requirement to enable Circular Economy (CE). Product and process life-cycledata can facilitate circular asset management preserving the asset’s value over time and reducing resource consumption. Many scholars point out how the loss of traceability data, lacking information reliability, and
unstructured data are still barriers to the widespread application of CE. In the building façade sector, an increased interest on traceability is dictated by a growing demand for environmental product certifications.
However, these aspects are often limited to collect data at supply chain stage, thus neglecting a huge amount of information produced during the asset service life. To foster an accessible and life-cycle oriented asset traceability, this research investigates the Internet of Things (IoT) as a potentially disruptive technology for sup-
porting information management. The objective of this work is twofold: (i) to identify what façade life-cycle information is needed to promote CE and (ii) to clarify the enabling role of IoT in tracking, storing, and sharing such information. Through a scoping review combined with interviews to professionals, a theoretical framework
structured on four key elements (stakeholders, information list, information management tools, and IoT) is proposed to fill the literature gap and support façade industry in the circular transition. Further research will have to be conducted to face the digital-physical integration issues and develop business models able to fully
exploit traceability information value
Optimal designs for full and partial likelihood information - with application to survival models
No full textTime-to-event data are often modelled through Cox's proportional hazards model for which inference is based on the partial likelihood function. We derive a general expression for the asymptotic covariance matrix of Cox's partial likelihood estimator for the covariate coefficients. Our approach is illustrated through an application to the special case of only one covariate, for which we construct minimum variance designs for different censoring mechanisms and both binary and interval design spaces. We compare these designs with the corresponding ones found using the full likelihood approach and demonstrate that the latter designs are highly efficient also for partial likelihood estimation
BIOGRAPHY Reference Station Network Based RTK Systems- Concepts and Progress
No full textChris Rizos is a Professor at the School of Surveying & SIS, UNSW, and leader of the Satellite Navigation and Positioning (SNAP) Group, which specialises in addressing precise static and kinematic applications of GPS. He is secretary of Section 1 'Positioning ' of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG). Shaowei Han is Principal Scientist and managing a technical research group in Thales Navigation based in Sant
A framework to support the design of a regenerative indoor environment
No full textIn recent decades, a new generation of “green indoor” spaces has fulfilled the latest regulations and guidelines for a carbon-neutral society. Their targets are reachable through certifications embracing sets of measures and the adverse effects on occupants. Notwithstanding this, it has constituted a significant step forward in building design. However, the challenges given by climate change and the ecological crises lead to the need for new disruptive approaches to indoor design and function, enhancing human health and adopting regenerative design” at the forefront of buildings’ conception. Besides the positive energyperformance attributes, the creation of a Regenerative Indoor Environment utilizes appropriate construction technologies and systems, to reinforce human
health, and enhance users’ experience. This regenerative paradigm shift foresees putting ecosystems at the centre and the users’ psycho-physiological wellbeing, thus magnifying their collaboration. Despite regenerative design gaining some attention, a framework towards its implementation promoting the actual performances of the indoor environment is still missing, and designers do navigate among guidelines with no apparent performance indicators to be achieved, technologies to be implemented, or methodologies for postoccupancy evaluations. These three levels, constituting a stepwise methodology, are addressed by the authors within the sections of this paper, and validated as an example of the office buildings’ typology. i) What characterizes a Regenerative Indoor Environment? ii) What technical solutions underpin the realization of a Regenerative Indoor Environment? iii) What methods or standards are crucial for its evaluation? With these premises, the paper contributes to supporting the creation of a regenerative indoor’ design, by sampling and outlining regenerative indoor performances to be obtained, describing the adequate tools to implement them, as well as by displaying approaches and solutions for their final verification
HELLENIC JOURNAL OF SURGERY
No full textAbstract Spontaneous perforation of the oesophagus, also called Boerhaave's syndrome, is a barogenic rupture caused by a sudden rise in intraluminal pressure, usually in the distal oesophagus. Early diagnosis of spontaneous oesophageal perforation is critical to the survival of the patient. Sudden and very intense chest or epigastric pain after an abrupt increase of oesophageal intraluminal pressure is the most characteristic clinical symptom and should raise suspicion for Boerhaave's syndrome. Plain radiographs demonstrate the presence of free air in the mediastinum, subcutaneous emphysema or air subdiaphragmatically, as well as pleural effusions. Upper gastrointestinal series reveal leakage of the contrast and confirms the location of the perforation. Similarly, chest computed tomography demonstrates the presence of an air-fluid level, pneumomediastinum and pleural effusions and, more importantly, the complications related to oesophageal perforation. Oesophageal perforation is associated with a high mortality rate, suggested to be approximately 2% for every hour after initial presentation. More specifically, diagnosis and intervention within the first 12 hours results in 80-90% survival, which falls to 70-75% between 12-24 hours; after 24 hours, survival decreases to less than 50%, and after 48 hours to less than 10%. Operative treatment of Boerhaave's syndrome mainly includes a complete debridement and lavage of infected and necrotic tissues with wide drainage of the mediastinum and pleural cavities and either primary oesophageal repair and reinforcement (if diagnosed early) or T-tube diversion or resection (if diagnosis is delayed). Early confirmation of the diagnosis is very important because it allows earlier support of the critically ill patient and prompt operative intervention when necessary. Eventful outcome of patients is related to these A. Marinis (Corresponding author), S. Rizos -First Department of Surgery, Tzaneion General Hospital Piraeus Greece e-mail: [email protected] early events in conjunction with the good general condition of the patient. Otherwise, the patient is virtually condemned to die.
Scoring functions and enrichment : a case study on Hsp90
No full textThis work was funded by the EPSRC, InsightFaraday (now part of the Chemistry Innovation Knowledge Transfer Network), Arrow Therapeutics Ltd and Unilever plc.Background: The need for fast and accurate scoring functions has been driven by the increased use of in silico virtual screening twinned with high-throughput screening as a method to rapidly identify potential candidates in the early stages of drug development. We examine the ability of some the most common scoring functions (GOLD, ChemScore, DOCK, PMF, BLEEP and Consensus) to discriminate correctly and efficiently between active and non-active compounds among a library of similar to 3,600 diverse decoy compounds in a virtual screening experiment against heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90). Results: Firstly, we investigated two ranking methodologies, GOLD(rank) and BestScore(rank). GOLD(rank) is based on ranks generated using GOLD. The various scoring functions, GOLD, ChemScore, DOCK, PMF, BLEEP and Consensus, are applied to the pose ranked number one by GOLD for that ligand. BestScore(rank) uses multiple poses for each ligand and independently chooses the best ranked pose of the ligand according to each different scoring function. Secondly, we considered the effect of introducing the Thr184 hydrogen bond tether to guide the docking process towards a particular solution, and its effect on enrichment. Thirdly, we considered normalisation to account for the known bias of scoring functions to select larger molecules. All the scoring functions gave fairly similar enrichments, with the exception of PMF which was consistently the poorest performer. In most cases, GOLD was marginally the best performing individual function; the Consensus score usually performed similarly to the best single scoring function. Our best results were obtained using the Thr184 tether in combination with the BestScore(rank) protocol and normalisation for molecular weight. For that particular combination, DOCK was the best individual function; DOCK recovered 90% of the actives in the top 10% of the ranked list; Consensus similarly recovered 89% of the actives in its top 10%. Conclusion: Overall, we demonstrate the validity of virtual screening as a method for identifying new leads from a pool of ligands with similar physicochemical properties and we believe that the outcome of this study provides useful insight into the setting up of a suitable docking and scoring protocol, resulting in enrichment of 'target active' compounds.Peer reviewe
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