Abstract
Providing thermal comfort and good air quality in educational buildings is crucial in enhancing students’ academic performance and productivity. Houston’s typical higher education buildings ...are designed for 100% mechanically ventilated spaces. But how do such buildings perform when outdoor temperatures are within comfort? This study correlates occupants reported thermal comfort data and gathered empirical thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ) data at a higher education building in Houston, TX, during mid-season, a likely thermally comfortable period. It aims to understand occupants’ thermal sensation and preference and establish correlations between outdoor temperatures, operational temperatures, CO
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levels and occupancy patterns. The results demonstrate different levels of dependence of indoor conditions of the three studied floors on outdoor conditions and occupancy patterns. Such differences are attributed to the large envelope variability among floors of the same use and occupancy and the significant imbalances of the mechanical system settings. The study contributes to a better understanding of the indoor environmental quality of the building, and the author suggests a series of interventions based on the analysis.
Abstract
The deliberate introduction of vegetation in urban environments, referred to as urban greening, is known to improve outdoor thermal comfort and mitigate the effects of Urban Heat Island in ...cities. Urban greening can be applied on ground level or elevated parks, roof tops, and building facades. The main parameters that affect plant growth are space, light, water, humidity, oxygen, carbon dioxide, mineral elements, and temperature. Of these parameters, light and temperature are the ones more unlikely to be supplemented in a non-controlled urban setting. This research presents the development of an automated workflow that facilitates design decisions on vegetation growth potential and vegetation species selection within their climatic and geometrical context. This novel scripting-based prototype uses hourly radiation results to extract location specifications, such as photoperiod, hardiness zone, and hourly annual Daily Light Integral values on a user-defined grid. It then seamlessly compares the data against seasonal light and soil temperature requirements of listed cultivars to evaluate their suitability within the constraints of the analysis area. A basic plant dataset is created that is open to expansion based on plants growth data availability. This automated workflow can be employed by agriculturalists, urban planners, and landscape designers to perform vegetation selection for applications such as urban greening in dense contexts or vertical farms.
Nano- and micrometer-sized compartments composed of synthetic polymers are designed to mimic spatial and temporal divisions found in nature. Self-assembly of polymers into compartments such as ...polymersomes, giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs), layer-by-layer (LbL) capsules, capsosomes, or polyion complex vesicles (PICsomes) allows for the separation of defined environments from the exterior. These compartments can be further engineered through the incorporation of (bio)molecules within the lumen or into the membrane, while the membrane can be decorated with functional moieties to produce catalytic compartments with defined structures and functions. Nanometer-sized compartments are used for imaging, theranostic, and therapeutic applications as a more mechanically stable alternative to liposomes, and through the encapsulation of catalytic molecules, i.e., enzymes, catalytic compartments can localize and act in vivo. On the micrometer scale, such biohybrid systems are used to encapsulate model proteins and form multicompartmentalized structures through the combination of multiple compartments, reaching closer to the creation of artificial organelles and cells. Significant progress in therapeutic applications and modeling strategies has been achieved through both the creation of polymers with tailored properties and functionalizations and novel techniques for their assembly.
Extramedullary relapses of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) are rare and usually localized in the central nervous system. We describe such an uncommon case of extramedullary relapse of ALL in the ...breast of a 44 year old female. The patient, who had been diagnosed with precursor B cell, Philadelphia positive (Ph+) acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) 5 years before and had been in complete molecular remission for the last 19 months, was admitted to the hospital for investigation of a hard, non-tender lump in her right breast. Mammography detected a dense, ill-defined mass, whereas on grey-scale and power Doppler sonography, the appearance of the lesion was consistent with malignancy. Histopathologic and immunohistochemical examination of the specimen demonstrated a similar immunophenotype (CD20+, CD10+, Tdt+, CD3-) as this of the onset ALL cell population in the bone marrow.
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