Predicting the performance of an office under climate change: A study of metrics, sensitivity and zonal resolution

Climate change is expected to have significant impact on the future thermal performance of buildings. Building simulation and sensitivity analysis can be employed to predict these impacts, guiding interventions to adapt buildings to future conditions. This article explores the use of simulation to study the impact of climate change on a theoretical office building in the UK, employing a probabilistic approach. The work studies (1) appropriate performance metrics and underlying modelling assumptions, (2) sensitivity of computational results to identify key design parameters and (3) the impact of zonal resolution. The conclusions highlight the importance of assumptions in the field of electricity conversion factors, proper management of internal heat gains, and the need to use an appropriately detailed zonal resolution. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A cost-effective atomic force microscope for undergraduate control laboratories

This paper presents a simple, cost-effective and robust atomic force microscope (AFM), which has been purposely designed and built for use as a teaching aid in undergraduate controls labs. The guiding design principle is to have all components be open and visible to the students, so the inner functioning of the microscope has been made clear to see. All of the parts but one are off the shelf, and assembly time is generally less than two days, which makes the microscope a robust instrument that is readily handled by the students with little chance of damage. While the scanning resolution is nowhere near that of a commercial instrument, it is more than sufficient to take interesting scans of micrometer-scale objects. A survey of students after their having used the AFM resulted in a generally good response, with 80% agreeing that they had a positive learning experience. © 2009 IEEE.

Permeability and stiffness of sands at very low effective stresses

Loose saturated sandy soils may undergo liquefaction under cyclic loading, generating positive excess pore pressures due to their contractile nature and inability to dissipate pore pressures rapidly during earthquake loading. These liquefied soils have a near-zero effective stress state, and hence have very low strength and stiffness, causing severe damage to structures founded upon them. The duration for which this near-zero effective stress state persists is a function of the rate of reconsolidation of the liquefied soil, which in turn is a function of the permeability and stiffness of the soil at this very low effective stress. Existing literature based on observation of physical model tests suggests that the consolidation coefficient C v associated with this reconsolidation of liquefied sand is significantly lower than that of the same soil at moderate stress levels. In this paper, the results of a series of novel fluidisation tests in which permeability k and coefficient of consolidation C v were independently measured will be presented. These results allow calculation of the variation of stiffness E 0 and permeability k with effective stress. It is shown that while permeability increases markedly at very low effective stresses, the simultaneous drop in stiffness measured results in a decrease in consolidation coefficient and hence an increase in the duration for which the soil remains liquefied.

Cost-effective 10 Gb/s polymer-based chip-to-chip optical interconnect

Board-level optical links are an attractive alternative to their electrical counterparts as they provide higher bandwidth and lower power consumption at high data rates. However, on-board optical technology has to be cost-effective to be commercially deployed. This study presents a chip-to-chip optical interconnect formed on an optoelectronic printed circuit board that uses a simple optical coupling scheme, cost-effective materials and is compatible with well-established manufacturing processes common to the electronics industry. Details of the link architecture, modelling studies of the link's frequency response, characterisation of optical coupling efficiencies and dynamic performance studies of this proof-of-concept chip-to-chip optical interconnect are reported. The fully assembled link exhibits a -3 dBe bandwidth of 9 GHz and -3 dBo tolerances to transverse component misalignments of ±25 and ±37 μm at the input and output waveguide interfaces, respectively. The link has a total insertion loss of 6 dBo and achieves error-free transmission at a 10 Gb/s data rate with a power margin of 11.6 dBo for a bit-error-rate of 10 -12. The proposed architecture demonstrates an integration approach for high-speed board-level chip-to-chip optical links that emphasises component simplicity and manufacturability crucial to the migration of such technology into real-world commercial systems. © 2012 The Institution of Engineering and Technology.

A global model for effective use and evaluation of e-learning in health.

Healthcare systems worldwide face a wide range of challenges, including demographic change, rising drug and medical technology costs, and persistent and widening health inequalities both within and between countries. Simultaneously, issues such as professional silos, static medical curricula, and perceptions of "information overload" have made it difficult for medical training and continued professional development (CPD) to adapt to the changing needs of healthcare professionals in increasingly patient-centered, collaborative, and/or remote delivery contexts. In response to these challenges, increasing numbers of medical education and CPD programs have adopted e-learning approaches, which have been shown to provide flexible, low-cost, user-centered, and easily updated learning. The effectiveness of e-learning varies from context to context, however, and has also been shown to make considerable demands on users' motivation and "digital literacy" and on providing institutions. Consequently, there is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of e-learning in healthcare as part of ongoing quality improvement efforts. This article outlines the key issues for developing successful models for analyzing e-health learning.

Exploring an effective model of new product development in medical devices: A knowledge cluster approach

This study proposes a new product development (NPD) model that aims to improve the effectiveness of innovative NPD in the medical devices. By adopting open innovation theory and applying an in-depth investigation methodology, this paper proposes a knowledge cluster that improves the integration of interdisciplinary human resources and enhances the acquirement of innovative technologies. A knowledge cluster approach helps gather, organise, synthesise, and accumulate knowledge in order to become the impetus for innovation. Although enterprises are no longer the principals of research and development, they should still be capable of integrating professional physicians, external groups, and individuals through the knowledge cluster platform. However, in order to support an effective NPD model, enterprises should provide adequate incentives and trust to external individuals or groups willing to contribute their expertise and knowledge to this knowledge cluster platform. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.