The response of lichen growth to additions of distilled water, rainwater and water from a rock surface

Three lichen species were wetted in the field with distilled water, rainwater or water which had run off a rock surafce, during July 1974 to February 1975. The radial growth rate of Parmelia glabratula ssp. fuliginosa was not influenced by the wetting treatments. The radial growth rate of P. conspersa with the distilled water was greater than the control, rainwater and runoff treatments. The radial growth rate of Physcia orbicularis was lower with rainwater and runoff treatmentss than the control and distilled water treatment. These results may be explained by the effect of wetting on the carbon balance of the lichens and by the influence of water chemistry.

An economic, environmental and functional study of buildings erected for educational purposes

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The mathematical modelling of the environmental performance of buildings as an aid in the design process

This thesis is a theoretical study of the accuracy and usability of models that attempt to represent the environmental control system of buildings in order to improve environmental design. These models have evolved from crude representations of a building and its environment through to an accurate representation of the dynamic characteristics of the environmental stimuli on buildings. Each generation of models has had its own particular influence on built form. This thesis analyses the theory, structure and data of such models in terms of their accuracy of simulation and therefore their validity in influencing built form. The models are also analysed in terms of their compatability with the design process and hence their ability to aid designers. The conclusions are that such models are unlikely to improve environmental performance since: a the models can only be applied to a limited number of building types, b they can only be applied to a restricted number of the characteristics of a design, c they can only be employed after many major environmental decisions have been made, d the data used in models is inadequate and unrepresentative, e models do not account for occupant interaction in environmental control. It is argued that further improvements in the accuracy of simulation of environmental control will not significantly improve environmental design. This is based on the premise that strategic environmental decisions are made at the conceptual stages of design whereas models influence the detailed stages of design. It is hypothesised that if models are to improve environmental design it must be through the analysis of building typologies which provides a method of feedback between models and the conceptual stages of design. Field studies are presented to describe a method by which typologies can be analysed and a theoretical framework is described which provides a basis for further research into the implications of the morphology of buildings on environmental design.

Codon-precise, synthetic, antibody fragment libraries built using automated hexamer codon additions and validated through next generation sequencing

We have previously described ProxiMAX, a technology that enables the fabrication of precise, combinatorial gene libraries via codon-by-codon saturation mutagenesis. ProxiMAX was originally performed using manual, enzymatic transfer of codons via blunt-end ligation. Here we present Colibra™: an automated, proprietary version of ProxiMAX used specifically for antibody library generation, in which double-codon hexamers are transferred during the saturation cycling process. The reduction in process complexity, resulting library quality and an unprecedented saturation of up to 24 contiguous codons are described. Utility of the method is demonstrated via fabrication of complementarity determining regions (CDR) in antibody fragment libraries and next generation sequencing (NGS) analysis of their quality and diversity.

Age effect in generating mental images of buildings but not common objects

Imagining a familiar environment is different from imagining an environmental map and clinical evidence demonstrated the existence of double dissociations in brain-damaged patients due to the contents of mental images. Here, we assessed a large sample of young and old participants by considering their ability to generate different kinds of mental images, namely, buildings or common objects. As buildings are environmental stimuli that have an important role in human navigation, we expected that elderly participants would have greater difficulty in generating images of buildings than common objects. We found that young and older participants differed in generating both buildings and common objects. For young participants there were no differences between buildings and common objects, but older participants found easier to generate common objects than buildings. Buildings are a special type of visual stimuli because in urban environments they are commonly used as landmarks for navigational purposes. Considering that topographical orientation is one of the abilities mostly affected in normal and pathological aging, the present data throw some light on the impaired processes underlying human navigation.