A Heat Dynamic Model for Intelligent Heating of Buildings

This article presents a heat dynamic model for prediction of the indoor temperature in an office building. The model has been used in several flexible load applications, where the indoor temperature is allowed to vary around a given reference to provide power system services by shifting the heating of the building in time. This way the thermal mass of the building can be used to absorb energy from renewable energy source when available and postpone heating in periods with lack of renewable energy generation. The model is used in a model predictive controller to ensure the residential comfort over a given prediction horizon.     

Tardy females,impatient males: protandry and divergent selection on arrival date in the two sexes of the barn swallow

Protandry reflects the earlier arrival of males than females to the site of reproduction. Such protandry is hypothesised to arise from sex differences in costs and benefits of early arrival. I investigated temporal patterns of arrival date of male and female barn swallows Hirundo rustica and temporal patterns of selection to test the hypothesis that sex differences in selection account for sex differences in arrival date. Mean arrival date of male barn swallows but not of females advanced during the last 33 years, giving rise to an increasing sex difference in arrival date. Early arrival was favoured by increasingly better survival in males, while females showed an opposite pattern that did not reach significance, although the effect differed between sexes. Early arrival increased fecundity in both sexes equally.The sex difference in viability selection in relation to arrival date changed from positive to negative as the degree of protandry increased in recent years, although there was no similar significant relationship for fecundity selection. Furthermore, sex differences in viability selection in a given year affected the degree of protandry in the following year through differential survival of certain phenotypes over others. Finally, temporal changes in sex difference in viability selection and protandry were related to an increase in the interval between first and second clutches, as the duration of the breeding season increased because of climatic amelioration. These findings suggest that arrival date is under divergent selection in the two sexes, providing a mechanism for the evolution of protandry.     

Simulation of the Environmental Impact of an Airport on the Surrounding Air Quality

It is the purpose of this study to demonstrate the procedure involved in simulating those average and maximum pollutant concentrations at or around an airport which fall under the control of the Clean Air Act. The information is useful, when planning new or expanding existing airports, when estimating the impact of airports on the surrounding air quality, and when assessing the effectiveness of control procedures. Simulation of airport air quality requires the accurate assessment of the temporal and spatial emission patterns. This involves the tabulation of air traffic density by type and engine, make and model of aircraft, and engine mode number; the use of fuel by different aircraft; the pollutant emission rates by engine model and operational mode; the allocation of emission rates to the respective runways, turn-off points, taxi-ways, and parking areas, and the time each aircraft spent in the different operational modes. The resulting emission pattern for the Honolulu International Airport reflects scheduled and unscheduled commercial and military jet and piston aircraft and nonaircraft operations. Using this and the appropriate meteorological information average and maximum surface concentrations were calculated and compared with local ambient air quality standards. The calculation of concentrations is based on a newly developed diffusion model incorporating harmonic mean wind speeds for every degree of wind direction as determined by a Parzen maximum likelihood interpolation technique, and the assumption of log-normal concentration distributions. It is shown that for some pollutants the air quality standards are substantially exceeded, and it is concluded that airports may have a considerable adverse impact on their surrounding air quality.     

Report: waste refinery in the municipality of Bor?s.

This paper briefly describes waste treatment trends in Sweden and describes an example of state-of-the-art treatment in a local integrated waste treatment system (Bor?s). The focus is on treatment of household waste, to illustrate what can be done to establish a sustainable waste treatment system with high recovery of materials and energy. The various processes have resulted in a low amount of landfilled household waste, and high proportions of recovered energy and materials. Heat, electricity, vehicle fuel and fertilizers, metals and construction materials are recovered from the local waste in Bor?s, with less than 4% of domestic waste being sent to landfill.     

Survival of weed seeds and animal parasites as affected by anaerobic digestion at meso- and thermophilic conditions

Anaerobic digestion of residual materials from animals and crops offers an opportunity to simultaneously produce bioenergy and plant fertilizers at single farms and in farm communities where input substrate materials and resulting digested residues are shared among member farms. A surplus benefit from this practice may be the suppressing of propagules from harmful biological pests like weeds and animal pathogens (e.g. parasites). In the present work, batch experiments were performed, where survival of seeds of seven species of weeds and non-embryonated eggs of the large roundworm of pigs, Ascaris suum, was assessed under conditions similar to biogas plants managed at meso- (37 °C) and thermophilic (55 °C) conditions. Cattle manure was used as digestion substrate and experimental units were sampled destructively over time. Regarding weed seeds, the effect of thermophilic conditions (55 °C) was very clear as complete mortality, irrespective of weed species, was reached after less than 2 days. At mesophilic conditions, seeds of Avena fatua, Sinapsis arvensis, Solidago canadensis had completely lost germination ability, while Brassica napus, Fallopia convolvulus and Amzinckia micrantha still maintained low levels (～1%) of germination ability after 1 week. Chenopodium album was the only weed species which survived 1 week at substantial levels (7%) although after 11 d germination ability was totally lost. Similarly, at 55 °C, no Ascaris eggs survived more than 3 h of incubation. Incubation at 37 °C did not affect egg survival during the first 48 h and it took up to 10 days before total elimination was reached. In general, anaerobic digestion in biogas plants seems an efficient way (thermophilic more efficient than mesophilic) to treat organic farm wastes in a way that suppresses animal parasites and weeds so that the digestates can be applied without risking spread of these pests.     

环境污染对地下文物的威胁

上个世纪的环境污染造成了健康问题,土地和湖水的酸化以及对文化遗产的损害.不仅露天的文物受环境污染的影响,地下文物也因此遭受不测.然而到目前为止,我们对地下文物受损状况的研究相当有限,而对这个被忽视的领域给予重视是相当重要的.在此文中,我们将报道在瑞典国家文化遗产委员会得到的有关文物受损的研究结果;这些文物是来自史前墓穴中的青铜器、铁器和骨器考古物品,它们的材料仿佛受到污染的影响最大.对调查时采用的方法作了介绍,并对其它相关的研究做了简要的综述.近年来,历史文物(特别是无机材质的文物)遭受侵蚀的速度已明显加快,而文物侵蚀速度的上升主要归因于人类造成的污染.对于污染可能危及的区域,在文中将举例说明.     

Influence of wing and tail morphology on the duration of song flight in skylarks

Summary Song flight, which is an aerial song display especially used by many open country bird species, is expected to be energetically very costly. Any morphological adaptation reducing the magnitude of this cost thus would be favored by selection. Male skylarks Alauda arvensis perform frequent song flights during a period of nearly half the year. Skylarks are sexually size dimorphic in most body traits, but particularly in wing area and wing span, which is absolutely and relatively larger in males than in females. Wing loadings, aspect ratios, and flight costs therefore are smaller in males than in females. I investigated the effect of wing area and aspect ratio on the duration of the song flights of individual birds by timing their duration before and after an experimental manipulation of wing area. Male skylarks were caught, ringed, and released (control I), had the tips of their wing feathers cut (control II), or had the tips of their wing feathers reduced by approximately 10 mm. There were no statistically significant differences in morphology or duration of songs between treatment groups before experimental treatments. However, males having the tips of their wing feathers reduced by ca. 10 mm performed only greatly abbreviated song flights. Original wing loading and aspect ratio also affected the duration of song flights, since male skylarks with low wing loadings and high aspect ratios performed longer song flights than did males with high wing loadings and low aspect ratios. This was the case both before and after experimental treatment. Wing area is suggested to reflect the ability of individual skylarks to invest in morphological structures allowing an increased song output.     

A method of hazard assessment of a gaseous substance with respect to formation of toxic photodecomposition products. Application to CCl4, CCl3F and CCl2F2

CCl₄, CCl₃F and CCl₂F₂ decompose in ambient air forming highly toxic carbonyl halides etc. when exposed to sources of intense uv-emission, e.g. welding arcs. The resulting health hazard is assessed using a mathematical model.