Neutral temperature in subtropical climates—A field survey in air-conditioned offices

The thermal environment for air-conditioned offices in subtropical climates is examined from the prospect of maintaining an optimum operative temperature for the occupants. In this study, the optimum neutral temperature is evaluated from 422 occupants’ responses towards the perceiving thermal environment in 61 air-conditioned offices and 186 complaints of thermal discomfort in an air-conditioned office building on an electronic questionnaire, using a semantic differential evaluation scale and a dichotomous assessment scale. In particular, physical parameters for the thermal comfort study were measured by an indoor environmental quality (IEQ) logger, and the operative temperature was correlated with the occupants’ thermal responses. The probability of accepting an operative temperature for the thermal comfort of the occupants was correlated with logistic regression curves; the optimum operative temperature was derived in order to maximize the probability of thermal comfort expressed by the occupants. The results showed that the thermal neutral temperatures for air-conditioned offices in subtropical climates were 23.6 and 21.4 °C in summer and winter, respectively. The preferred thermal environment in Hong Kong should be slightly cool, corresponding to about 1 °C below the neutral temperature, in order to satisfy most of the occupants in the office space.     

RELIABILITY ANALYSIS AND MAINTENANCE POLICY OF RADIATORS FOR A LARGE FLEET OF BUSES

Parts in an engineering system are subject to deterioration caused by friction, impact, metal fatigue, etc. which occur when the system is in operation, and also due to ageing of its plastic and rubber parts and rusting of metal parts. In order to ensure that a system functions properly, it is important to perform maintenance which rectifies the faults in its parts as time passes. In this paper the authors use Weibull analysis to investigate the failure pattern of radiators in the cooling system of different bus types in a large public transportation company, and work out from a costing point of view that regular preventive maintenance is not recommended but overhaul of the radiators should be done once in several years when the bus undergoes a major overhaul. In this analysis, the renewal function of the Weibull distribution has to be computed. A table for the renewal function has been computed as well. The manpower requirement for the maintenance of radiators for the bus fleet is also investigated. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of methods (sequential extraction procedures and high-pressure digestion method) to fly ash particles to determine the element constituents: a case study for BCR 176

Sequential extraction procedures and the high-pressure digestion method were selected to determine the element constituents of fly ash samples. Sequential extraction is one of the most useful methods used to measure the various elements from municipal solid waste incineration ash and contaminated soils. The extract from each step is analyzed using various techniques and equipment, and the results are then evaluated. In this work, a six-step extraction procedure modified from that of Tessier et al. and Wang et al. was performed and applied to the certified reference material BCR 176 (city waste incineration ash). Analyses were carried out by various techniques such as inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX), and X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD) to evaluate the characteristics of fly ash. The extraction efficiency of many elements was higher than 80%, and the relative standard deviations (RSD) for recovery of most elements were within 10%. In addition, an H(2)O(2)+HNO(3)+HF mixed acid digestion solution processed using a low-temperature evaporation procedure was selected as the optimal process for fly ash digestion. The results of this work provide information on the chemical composition, distribution, and potential mobility of the investigated elements.     

Characteristics of air pressure fluctuations in high-rise drainage stacks

Maximum air pressure in a drainage stack can deplete the appliance water trap seals that prevent the ingress of foul gases and odors into a habitable space. This study investigates the air pressure fluctuation frequency, as well as the maximum and average air pressures with their respective standard deviations, in a 38 m high drainage stack of a full-scale experimental tower under steady flow conditions of flow rates 1 Ls⁻¹ to 4 Ls⁻¹ discharging at a height between 15 m to 33 m above the stack base. Mathematical expressions are proposed to correlate the maximum air pressure with the probability density function of the data measured. The average prediction and the maximum under-prediction of the absolute peak pressure were determined with the margin of error taken within certain confidence levels. It was demonstrated that water seal failure would likely be occurred at some heights below the discharge locations. The outcome enhances the understanding of the characteristics of air pressure fluctuation within a drainage stack of a high-rise building.     

Biomimicking Fiber Platform with Tunable Stiffness to Study Mechanotransduction Reveals Stiffness Enhances Oligodendrocyte Differentiation but Impedes Myelination through YAP‐Dependent Regulation

A key hallmark of many diseases, especially those in the central nervous system (CNS), is the change in tissue stiffness due to inflammation and scarring. However, how such changes in microenvironment affect the regenerative process remains poorly understood. Here, a biomimicking fiber platform that provides independent variation of fiber structural and intrinsic stiffness is reported. To demonstrate the functionality of these constructs as a mechanotransduction study platform, these substrates are utilized as artificial axons and the effects of axon structural versus intrinsic stiffness on CNS myelination are independently analyzed. While studies have shown that substrate stiffness affects oligodendrocyte differentiation, the effects of mechanical stiffness on the final functional state of oligodendrocyte (i.e., myelination) has not been shown prior to this. Here, it is demonstrated that a stiff mechanical microenvironment impedes oligodendrocyte myelination, independently and distinctively from oligodendrocyte differentiation. Yes‐associated protein is identified to be involved in influencing oligodendrocyte myelination through mechanotransduction. The opposing effects on oligodendrocyte differentiation and myelination provide important implications for current work screening for promyelinating drugs, since these efforts have focused mainly on promoting oligodendrocyte differentiation. Thus, the platform may have considerable utility as part of a drug discovery program in identifying molecules that promote both differentiation and myelination.     

Automation of dietary fibre (TDF,IDF and SDF) analysis by ANKOMTDF analyzer for enzymatic‐gravimetric process

In this work, we evaluated the effectiveness of the automation capability offered by the ANKOM^TDF Dietary Fibre Analyzer to automate the current manual practice of fibre analysis (AOAC Method 991.43). Further, we also validated the automated fibre analysis via cross‐checking with fibre analysis by the manual operation using fruit‐, grain‐ and nut‐based samples. Automated fibre analysis showed relative standard deviations (TDF: 13.8%; IDF: 17.2%; and SDF: 24.6% at 95% CI reported by the AOAC in the method 991.43) that are consistent to the manual methods. Thus, this current work serves as a valuable assessment of a novel filtration system with disposable filter bag developed by ANKOM Technology. The new instrumentation automates the enzymatic‐gravimetric processing by eliminating several laborious, time‐consuming manual operations, saving over 50% of analyst time that converts to 60% overall cost savings and improved laboratory productivity, efficiency and safety. Industry‐wide adoption of such instrumentation not only reduces the analysis cost but also harmonises the fibre amounts reported among the global food and beverage industry.     

Polyurethane paint adhesion improvement on aluminium alloy treated by plasma jet and dielectric barrier discharge

The effect of atmospheric pressure plasma treatment on the adhesion between a protective coating and AA1100 alloy was investigated. Two plasma sources were used for surface modifications: atmospheric pressure plasma jet and dielectric barrier discharge. The surface roughness and water contact angle measurements were conducted in order to evaluate the changes on the aluminium surface after plasma processing. The paint coating was tested using the adhesion tape test (ASTM D3359). A significant improvement of surface wettability and adhesion was obtained after plasma treatments.     

Structural and biological stability of the human interleukin 10 homodimer

Human interleukin 10 (huIL-10) is a cytokine that regulates the synthesis of type 1 helper T cell derived cytokines such as gamma-interferon, interleukin 2, and tumor necrosis factor alpha. The potential immunosuppressive activities of huIL-10 suggest that this protein may be clinically useful for treating autoimmune diseases. Due to the potential clinical value of this cytokine, physicochemical studies have been performed regarding its association state and biological/structural stability. These studies include performing size-exclusion chromatography, chemical cross-linking, equilibrium ultracentrifugation, and circular dichroism spectroscopy. The results indicate huIL-10 is predominantly a noncovalent homodimer at neutral pH and 4 degreesC for concentrations greater than 0.003 mg/mL (0.08 microM dimer). An apparent pKa value of approximately 4.8 was calculated for both the pH-dependent subunit dissociation and pH-induced loss in MC/9 biological activity. A temperature analysis revealed a linear relationship between the percent dimer and relative MC/9 activity, thus, these results and the pH-dependent activity results suggest that the huIL-10 dimer is the active species. The GndHCl-induced unfolding of rhuIL-10, monitored by far-UV circular dichroism, revealed a unique biphasic unfolding process which contained both a subunit dissociation process (<1.6 M GndHCl) as well as the unfolding of a highly alpha-helical monomer intermediate ([GndHCl]1/2 = 3.5 M). The monomer intermediates generated with 1.6 M GndHCl or pH 2.5 retained approximately 80% and 89% of the alpha-helical content of the native protein, respectively. Although a soluble and highly helical monomer state can be generated, the observed correlation between unfolding studies and biological activity suggests the dimer is the active species. These results are consistent with both the recent observation that the three-dimensional structure of rhuIL-10 is a 2-fold symmetric homodimer and that a complex between the extracellular domain of the recombinant human IL-10 receptor and IL-10 is consistent with two IL-10 homodimers and four receptors.     

Fuzzy characterization of spike synchrony in parallel spike trains

We present a framework for characterizing spike (and spike-train) synchrony in parallel neuronal spike trains that is based on the identification of spikes with what we call influence maps: real-valued functions that describe an influence region around the corresponding spike times within which possibly graded (i.e., fuzzy) synchrony with other spikes is defined. We formalize two models of synchrony in this framework: the bin-based model (the almost exclusively applied model in the field) and a novel, alternative model based on a continuous, graded notion of synchrony, aimed at overcoming the drawbacks of the bin-based model. We study the task of identifying frequent (and synchronous) neuronal patterns from parallel spike trains in our framework, formalized as an instance of what we call the fuzzy frequent pattern mining problem (a generalization of standard frequent pattern mining) and briefly evaluate our synchrony models on this task.     

Optimal collaboration of thin–thick clients and resource allocation in cloud computing

Cloud computing (CC) has recently become a rising paradigm in the information and communications technology industry, drawing a lot of attentions to professionals and researchers. During the last decade, the dominance of smart phones or tablet computers (known as thin clients) over traditional desktop or laptop computers (known as thick clients) has become more and more evident, reflecting a great change in the way people access the Internet. Despite the recent technology advancements that manufacture a new generation of mobile devices with generous resources, the fact that they can offer only limited processing capacity still remains a painful experience. This problem, fortunately, has been made less severe thanks to the recent adoption of CC platform. CC enables offloading heavy processing tasks up to the “cloud”, leaving only simple jobs to the user-end capacity-limited thin clients. So far, a number of research studies have been carried out, trying to eliminate problems arising from shortcomings in the connection between thin clients and cloud networks, yet little have been found efficient. In this paper, we present a novel architecture, taking advantage of collaboration of thin and thick clients, particularly aiming at optimizing data distribution and utilizing CC resources so that expected Quality-of-Service requirements can be met. We also propose an algorithm to select an optimal resource allocation strategy to satisfy various Service Level Agreements. In order to justify our proposal, we have used both numerical analysis and programming approaches. Simulation result shows that our proposed schemes can improve resource allocation efficiency and achieve better performance than the existing ones.