Building Information Modeling (BIM) Based Solutions for Rapid Energy Modeling (REM) and High Performance Buildings [video]

NPS Defense Energy SeminarFederal, state and local governments are setting ambitious targets to reduce energy use of existing buildings through retrofits. It has been challenging for owners of large building portfolios (i.e. Cities, campuses and DoD installations) to identify and prioritize buildings and retrofit measures with the highest potential, due to the time, cost and expertise required for detailed energy audits. This presentation introduces new Rapid Energy Modeling (REM) capabilities for energy analysis of entire building portfolios with minimal data input. The energy modeling approach allows prioritization of buildings, evaluation of retrofit measures, and agile exploration of scenarios to achieve energy goals at a city-scale. Results are presented dynamically in the context of a digital 3D City Model and customizable dashboards. Additionally, the individual building information models (BIM) can be used for more detailed analysis of prioritized buildings. This approach can contribute to portfolio benchmarking/audit initiatives and can help guide data-driven planning and decisions for large building portfolios. This presentation will highlight a case study based on a project recently completed at the Tinker Air Force Base (Okla.) and workflow for high performance building design

Study of urinary uric acid and creatinine ratio as a marker of neonatal asphyxia for babies born in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Perinatal asphyxia is a common neonatal problem and there is significant contribution to neonatal morbidity and mortality. It is regarded as an important and common cause of preventable cerebral injury. The prediction of perinatal asphyxial outcome is important but formidable. There is only a limited role for the Apgar score for predicting the immediate outcome, such as HIE and the long-term neurological sequelae observational error can happen in APGAR. But biochemical parameters can be truly relied upon. This study was to evaluate the utility of urinary uric acid to creatinine ratio (UA/CR ratio) as non-invasive, easy, cheap and at the same time early biochemical means of asphyxia diagnosis.Methods: In this prospective case control study conducted in KAPV Government medical college between Feb 2017 to Sept 2017, 100 asphyxiated and 100 non-asphyxiated newborns were included. Detailed history and assessment were for all the enrolled newborns. Spot urine samples were sent for uric acid and creatinine estimation. Results were recorded, and statistical analysis was done.Results: The mean Uric acid/Creatinine ratio in the cases and controls groups were 2.58±1.09 and 0.86±0.17 respectively. The ratio also correlated well with the stage of HIE.Conclusions: The ratio of UA/Cr enables early and rapid recognition of asphyxial injury and also the assessment of its severity and the potential for short term morbidity or death

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Not AvailableNorth-East (NE) India produced about 3.38 lakh tonnes of fish from the total inland water bodies of 5.63 lakh ha during the year 2012-13 with productivity of about 600 kg/ha and it also sources about 90,000 tonnes of fish per year from other states of India. This study has estimated the efficiency levels of fish farms and has identified the fish production potential by improving the efficiency level of underperforming units. The variables, viz. fish farm area and occupation and fish farming with agriculture have been found to significantly influence the efficiency level of fish farms in this area. The study has found that larger farms were more efficient. The average efficiency levels of fish farms in the study area being low, the scope for improvement in fish farming is immense in North-East India and Manipur through adoption of better production practices.Not Availabl

Design and Fabrication of Automated Hacksaw Machine

ABSTRACT: The objective of this work is to automate the conventional power hacksaw machine in order to achieve high productivity of work-pieces than the power hacksaw machine using Microcontroller. The automated machine acquires two inputs from the user namely the number of pieces to be cut and the length of each piece that is required to be cut. The inputs are given by the user with the help of a keypad and an LCD display, which will help the user to verify the data given by him. The operator need not measure the length of the work-piece that is to be cut and to load and unload the work-piece from the chuck each time after a piece has been cut. After acquiring the two inputs from the user, the machine automatically feeds the given length of work-piece in to a chuck and starts to cut till the given number of work-pieces has been cut. The machine feeds the work-piece with the help of a conveyor, which is driven by a DC motor and an IR sensor ensures that the feeding stops when the specified length has been reached. A pneumatic cylinder is used for holding the work-piece when cutting operation is done. An AC motor is used to bring about the reciprocating motion required for cutting the work-pieces. There is a self-weight attached with the reciprocating mechanism to provide the necessary downward force required for penetration of hacksaw blade in to the work-piece. When a single piece has been cut, a limit switch will get triggered by the self-weight mechanism, which is sensed by the microcontroller to start the cyclic operation again provided if the specified number of work-pieces has not been cut

Numerical bifurcation and stability analysis of solitary pulses in an excitable reaction—diffusion medium

We present a systematic, computer-assisted study of the bifurcations and instabilities of solitary pulses in an excitable medium capable of displaying both stable pulse propagation and spatiotemporally chaotic dynamics over intervals of parameter space. The reaction—diffusion model used is of the activator-inhibitor type; only the activator diffuses in this medium. The control parameters are the ratio of time scales of the activator and inhibitor dynamics and the excitation threshold. This study focuses on travelling pulses, their domain of existence and the bifurcations that render them unstable. These pulses are approximated as: (a) homoclinic orbits in a travelling wave ODE frame; and (b) as solutions of the full partial differential equation (PDE) with periodic boundary conditions in large domains. A variety of bifurcations in the travelling wave ODE frame are observed (including heteroclinic loops, so-called T-points [A.R. Champneys and Y.A. Kuznetsov, Numerical detection and continuation of codimension-2 homoclinic bifurcations, Int. J. Bif. Chaos 4 (1994) 785; H. Kokobu, Homoclinic and heteroclinic bifurcations of vectorfields, Japan J. Appl. Math. 5 (1988) 455]). Instabilities in the full PDE frame include both Hopf bifurcations to modulated travelling waves (involving the discrete pulse spectrum) as well as transitions involving the continuous spectrum (such as the so-called ‘backfiring’ transition [M. Bär, M. Hildebrand, M. Eiswirth, M. Falcke, H. Engel and M. Neufeld, Chemical turbulence and standing waves in a surface reaction model: The influence of global coupling and wave instabilities, Chaos 4 (1994) 499]). The stability of modulated pulses is computed through numerical Floquet analysis and a cascade of period doubling bifurcations is observed, as well as certain global bifurcations. These results, corroborated by observations from direct numerical integration, provide a ‘skeleton’ around which many features of the overall complex spatiotemporal dynamics of the PDE are organized.]'he work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation.Peer reviewe

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Not AvailableThe primary objective of the study was to compare the impact of heat stress on meat production characteristics of Osmanabadi and Salem Black breed goats based on changes in carcass characteristics, meat quality attributes, plasma leptin concentration, skeletal muscle myostatin and heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) gene expression patterns. The goats were randomly distributed into four groups: OSC (n = 6; Osmanabadi Control), OSHS (n = 6; Osmanabadi Heat Stress), SBC (n = 6; Salem Black Control) and SBHS (n = 6; Salem Black Heat Stress). The animals were slaughtered at the end of the study and their meat characteristics were assessed. This study established the impact of heat stress on a wide variety of carcass and meat quality characteristics in OS and SB goat breeds. The results from the study also provided some crucial evidence for a better resilience capacity of Salem Black breed as compared to Osmanabadi goats in maintaining the meat production during heat stress. The study also established plasma leptin and HSP70 genes to be the ideal biomarkers to reflect the impact of heat stress on meat characteristics in indigenous goats.Not Availabl