Embodied energy assessment of building materials in India using process and input-output analysis

Growing demand for urban built spaces has resulted in unprecedented exponential rise in production and consumption of building materials in construction. Production of materials requires significant energy and contributes to pollution and green house gas (GHG) emissions. Efforts aimed at reducing energy consumption and pollution involved with the production of materials fundamentally requires their quantification. Embodied energy (EE) of building materials comprises the total energy expenditure involved in the material production including all upstream processes such as raw material extraction and transportation. The current paper deals with EE of a few common building materials consumed in bulk in Indian construction industry. These values have been assessed based on actual industrial survey data. Current studies on EE of building materials lack agreement primarily with regard to method of assessment and energy supply assumptions (whether expressed in terms of end use energy or primary energy). The current paper examines the suitability of two basic methods; process analysis and input-output method and identifies process analysis as appropriate for EE assessment in the Indian context. A comparison of EE values of building materials in terms of the two energy supply assumptions has also been carried out to investigate the associated discrepancy. The results revealed significant difference in EE of materials whose production involves significant electrical energy expenditure relative to thermal energy use. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Achievable rate region of gaussian broadcast channel with finite input alphabet and quantized output

In this paper, we study the achievable rate region of two-user Gaussian broadcast channel (GBC) when the messages to be transmitted to both the users take values from finite signal sets and the received signal is quantized at both the users. We refer to this channel as quantized broadcast channel (QBC). We first observe that the capacity region defined for a GBC does not carry over as such to QBC. Also, we show that the optimal decoding scheme for GBC (i.e., high SNR user doing successive decoding and low SNR user decoding its message alone) is not optimal for QBC. We then propose an achievable rate region for QBC based on two different schemes. We present achievable rate region results for the case of uniform quantization at the receivers. We find that rotation of one of the user's input alphabet with respect to the other user's alphabet marginally enlarges the achievable rate region of QBC when almost equal powers are allotted to both the users.

A non-linear analogue-to-digital converter for linearization of transducer input-output relationships

Analogue and digital techniques for linearization of non-linear input-output relationship of transducers are briefly reviewed. The condition required for linearizing a non-linear function y = f(x) using a non-linear analogue-to-digital converter, is explained. A simple technique to construct a non-linear digital-to-analogue converter, based on ' segments of equal digital interval ' is described. The technique was used to build an N-DAC which can be employed in a successive approximation or counter-ramp type ADC to linearize the non-linear transfer function of a thermistor-resistor combination. The possibility of achieving an order of magnitude higher accuracy in the measurement of temperature is shown.

GYROSONICS: SIGNATURE ANALYSIS AND REDUCED-ORDER MODELS

In this paper, the authors study the structure of a novel binaural sound with a certain phase and amplitude modulation and the response to this excitation when it is applied to natural rewarding circuit of human brain through auditory neural pathways. This novel excitation, also referred to as gyrosonic excitation in this work, has been found to have interesting effects such as stabilization effects on the left and right hemispheric brain signaling as captured by Galvanic Skin Resistance (GSR) measurements, control of cardiac rhythms (observed from ECG signals), mitigation of psychosomatic syndrome, and mitigation of migraine pain. Experimental data collected from human subjects are presented, and these data are examined to categorize the extent of systems disorder and reinforcement reward due to the gyrosonic stimulus. A multi-path reduced-order model has been developed to analyze the GSR signals. The filtered results are indicative of complicated reinforcing reward patterns due to the gyrosonic stimulation when it is used as a control input for patients with psychosomatic and cardiac disorders.

Deformation and stability regression models for soil nail walls

Lateral displacement and global stability are the two main stability criteria for soil nail walls. Conventional design methods do not adequately address the deformation behaviour of soil nail walls, owing to the complexity involved in handling a large number of influencing factors. Consequently, limited methods of deformation estimates based on empirical relationships and in situ performance monitoring are available in the literature. It is therefore desirable that numerical techniques and statistical methods are used in order to gain a better insight into the deformation behaviour of soil nail walls. In the present study numerical experiments are conducted using a 2 4 factorial design method. Based on analysis of the maximum lateral deformation and factor-of-safety observations from the numerical experiments, regression models for maximum lateral deformation and factor-of-safety prediction are developed and checked for adequacy. Selection of suitable design factors for the 2 4 factorial design of numerical experiments enabled the use of the proposed regression models over a practical range of soil nail wall heights and in situ soil variability. It is evident from the model adequacy analyses and illustrative example that the proposed regression models provided a reasonably good estimate of the lateral deformation and global factor of safety of the soil nail walls.

Quench dynamics and defect production in the Kitaev and extended Kitaev models

We study quench dynamics and defect production in the Kitaev and the extended Kitaev models. For the Kitaev model in one dimension, we show that in the limit of slow quench rate, the defect density n∼1/√τ, where 1/τ is the quench rate. We also compute the defect correlation function by providing an exact calculation of all independent nonzero spin correlation functions of the model. In two dimensions, where the quench dynamics takes the system across a critical line, we elaborate on the results of earlier work [K. Sengupta, D. Sen, and S. Mondal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 077204 (2008)] to discuss the unconventional scaling of the defect density with the quench rate. In this context, we outline a general proof that for a d-dimensional quantum model, where the quench takes the system through a d−m dimensional gapless (critical) surface characterized by correlation length exponent ν and dynamical critical exponent z, the defect density n∼1/τmν/(zν+1). We also discuss the variation of the shape and spatial extent of the defect correlation function with both the rate of quench and the model parameters and compute the entropy generated during such a quenching process. Finally, we study the defect scaling law, entropy generation and defect correlation function of the two-dimensional extended Kitaev model.

The Formation, Numbers And Radio Output Of Giant Radio Galaxies

The numbers and mean radio luminosities of giant radio galaxies (GRGs) have been calculated for redshifts up to z = 0.6, assuming a sensitivity limit of 1 Jy at 1 GHz for the observations. The estimates are obtained with a model for the beam propagation, first through the hot gaseaous halo around the parent galaxy, and thereafter, through the even hotter but less dense intergalactic medium. The model is able to accurately reproduce the observed numbers and mean radio luminosities of GRGs at redshifts of less than 0.1, and it predicts that a somewhat larger number of GRGs should be found at redshifts of greater than 0.1.

Mean-field theories of Hubbard and t-J models

We report novel results obtained for the Hubbard and t-J models by various mean-field approximations.

Spectral-envelope and group-delay models for transient signals—applications to castanets and stop consonants

We present a novel approach to represent transients using spectral-domain amplitude-modulated/frequency -modulated (AM-FM) functions. The model is applied to the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier transform (FT) of the transient. The suitability of the model lies in the observation that since transients are well-localized in time, the real and imaginary parts of the Fourier spectrum have a modulation structure. The spectral AM is the envelope and the spectral FM is the group delay function. The group delay is estimated using spectral zero-crossings and the spectral envelope is estimated using a coherent demodulator. We show that the proposed technique is robust to additive noise. We present applications of the proposed technique to castanets and stop-consonants in speech.

Network properties of decoys and CASP predicted models: a comparison with native protein structures

Protein structure space is believed to consist of a finite set of discrete folds, unlike the protein sequence space which is astronomically large, indicating that proteins from the available sequence space are likely to adopt one of the many folds already observed. In spite of extensive sequence-structure correlation data, protein structure prediction still remains an open question with researchers having tried different approaches (experimental as well as computational). One of the challenges of protein structure prediction is to identify the native protein structures from a milieu of decoys/models. In this work, a rigorous investigation of Protein Structure Networks (PSNs) has been performed to detect native structures from decoys/ models. Ninety four parameters obtained from network studies have been optimally combined with Support Vector Machines (SVM) to derive a general metric to distinguish decoys/models from the native protein structures with an accuracy of 94.11%. Recently, for the first time in the literature we had shown that PSN has the capability to distinguish native proteins from decoys. A major difference between the present work and the previous study is to explore the transition profiles at different strengths of non-covalent interactions and SVM has indeed identified this as an important parameter. Additionally, the SVM trained algorithm is also applied to the recent CASP10 predicted models. The novelty of the network approach is that it is based on general network properties of native protein structures and that a given model can be assessed independent of any reference structure. Thus, the approach presented in this paper can be valuable in validating the predicted structures. A web-server has been developed for this purpose and is freely available at http://vishgraph.mbu.iisc.ernet.in/GraProStr/PSN-QA.html.

Assessing resilience and state-transition models with historical records of cheatgrass Bromus tectorum invasion in North American sagebrush-steppe

1. Resilience-based approaches are increasingly being called upon to inform ecosystem management, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. This requires management frameworks that can assess ecosystem dynamics, both within and between alternative states, at relevant time scales. 2. We analysed long-term vegetation records from two representative sites in the North American sagebrush-steppe ecosystem, spanning nine decades, to determine if empirical patterns were consistent with resilience theory, and to determine if cheatgrass Bromus tectorum invasion led to thresholds as currently envisioned by expert-based state-and-transition models (STM). These data span the entire history of cheatgrass invasion at these sites and provide a unique opportunity to assess the impacts of biotic invasion on ecosystem resilience. 3. We used univariate and multivariate statistical tools to identify unique plant communities and document the magnitude, frequency and directionality of community transitions through time. Community transitions were characterized by 37-47% dissimilarity in species composition, they were not evenly distributed through time, their frequency was not correlated with precipitation, and they could not be readily attributed to fire or grazing. Instead, at both sites, the majority of community transitions occurred within an 8-10year period of increasing cheatgrass density, became infrequent after cheatgrass density peaked, and thereafter transition frequency declined. 4. Greater cheatgrass density, replacement of native species and indication of asymmetry in community transitions suggest that thresholds may have been exceeded in response to cheatgrass invasion at one site (more arid), but not at the other site (less arid). Asymmetry in the direction of community transitions also identified communities that were at-risk' of cheatgrass invasion, as well as potential restoration pathways for recovery of pre-invasion states. 5. Synthesis and applications. These results illustrate the complexities associated with threshold identification, and indicate that criteria describing the frequency, magnitude, directionality and temporal scale of community transitions may provide greater insight into resilience theory and its application for ecosystem management. These criteria are likely to vary across biogeographic regions that are susceptible to cheatgrass invasion, and necessitate more in-depth assessments of thresholds and alternative states, than currently available.

Assessing impact of material transition and thermal comfort models on embodied and operational energy in vernacular dwellings (India)

Vernacular dwellings are well-suited climate-responsive designs that adopt local materials and skills to support comfortable indoor environments in response to local climatic conditions. These naturally-ventilated passive dwellings have enabled civilizations to sustain even in extreme climatic conditions. The design and physiological resilience of the inhabitants have coevolved to be attuned to local climatic and environmental conditions. Such adaptations have perplexed modern theories in human thermal-comfort that have evolved in the era of electricity and air-conditioned buildings. Vernacular local building elements like rubble walls and mud roofs are given way to burnt brick walls and reinforced cement concrete tin roofs. Over 60% of Indian population is rural, and implications of such transitions on thermal comfort and energy in buildings are crucial to understand. Types of energy use associated with a buildings life cycle include its embodied energy, operational and maintenance energy, demolition and disposal energy. Embodied Energy (EE) represents total energy consumption for construction of building, i.e., embodied energy of building materials, material transportation energy and building construction energy. Embodied energy of building materials forms major contribution to embodied energy in buildings. Operational energy (OE) in buildings mainly contributed by space conditioning and lighting requirements, depends on the climatic conditions of the region and comfort requirements of the building occupants. Less energy intensive natural materials are used for traditional buildings and the EE of traditional buildings is low. Transition in use of materials causes significant impact on embodied energy of vernacular dwellings. Use of manufactured, energy intensive materials like brick, cement, steel, glass etc. contributes to high embodied energy in these dwellings. This paper studies the increase in EE of the dwelling attributed to change in wall materials. Climatic location significantly influences operational energy in dwellings. Buildings located in regions experiencing extreme climatic conditions would require more operational energy to satisfy the heating and cooling energy demands throughout the year. Traditional buildings adopt passive techniques or non-mechanical methods for space conditioning to overcome the vagaries of extreme climatic variations and hence less operational energy. This study assesses operational energy in traditional dwelling with regard to change in wall material and climatic location. OE in the dwellings has been assessed for hot-dry, warm humid and moderate climatic zones. Choice of thermal comfort models is yet another factor which greatly influences operational energy assessment in buildings. The paper adopts two popular thermal-comfort models, viz., ASHRAE comfort standards and TSI by Sharma and Ali to investigate thermal comfort aspects and impact of these comfort models on OE assessment in traditional dwellings. A naturally ventilated vernacular dwelling in Sugganahalli, a village close to Bangalore (India), set in warm - humid climate is considered for present investigations on impact of transition in building materials, change in climatic location and choice of thermal comfort models on energy in buildings. The study includes a rigorous real time monitoring of the thermal performance of the dwelling. Dynamic simulation models validated by measured data have also been adopted to determine the impact of the transition from vernacular to modern material-configurations. Results of the study and appraisal for appropriate thermal comfort standards for computing operational energy has been presented and discussed in this paper. (c) 2014 K.I. Praseeda. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

A Note on the Genericity of Simultaneous Stabilizability and Pole Assignability

n this paper we study the genericity of simultaneous stabilizability, simultaneous strong stabilizability, and simultaneous pole assignability, in linear multivariable systems. The main results of the paper had been previously established by Ghosh and Byrnes using state-space methods. In contrast, the proofs in the present paper are based on input-output arguments, and are much simpler to follow, especially in the case of simultaneous and simultaneous strong stabilizability. Moreover, the input-output methods used here suggest computationally reliable algorithms for solving these two types of problems. In addition to the main results, we also prove some lemmas on generic greatest common divisors which are of independent interest.