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Energy efficiency measures in buildings, along with maintaining indoor thermal comfort, are increasingly drawing attention. The most widely accepted indices, Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Percentage People Dissatisfied (PPD), have been used in this study for evaluating thermal comfort of a small office room in Delhi. Various parameters influencing thermal comfort have been measured for two months and the observations have been used for assessing the PMV and PPD, which have then been compared with the simulation results from IDA ICE 4.7 Beta software, and found to be in agreement. Moreover, a comparison of the PMV values has been done with other indices such as Tropical Summer Index (TSI) and Corrected Effective Temperature (CET). Parametric study for the office room has also been performed to predict the shifts in the comfort levels by changing types and thicknesses of wall as well as roof insulations, provision of blinds, and types of window glazing, using which, the best possible solution to enhance the thermal environment of the office room has been proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Performance evaluation of structurally modified light-pipe. • The study has been done for a composite climate with clear sky condition. • The study focusses on the mode of saving energy by utilizing day-lighting techniques. • Ray-tracing simulations provided an enhanced analysis of the opto-mechanical properties of different light-pipes. • Improvement in day-lighting utilisation through modified light-pipe has been supported by simulation and experiments. Abstract Nowadays, an escalation in the development of day-lighting systems is observed as people are fascinated towards day-lighting incorporation so as to get benefitted of the lighting energy savings, along with other intangible benefits like health, well-being, and productivity of the occupants. Light-pipe is one such day-lighting system that enables the natural light to enter the spaces which are located far away from the periphery area of a building and thus, cannot be illuminated by windows or other daylighting devices. Light-pipe, while illuminating the interior spaces, also blocks UV rays, which contributes to the heat gain of a room. The study focuses on the design, optimization, simulation and experimental evaluation of the modification in the conventional light-pipe design towards achieving more light through the pipe. This includes modeling of several structural design modifications in light-pipe and their corresponding ray-tracing simulations in TracePro. Out of these modifications over the conventional straight pipe, the design with the best results has been selected and developed so as to experimentally validate the simulation results. The simulation as well as experimental evaluation of the modified light-pipe in comparison to the conventional light-pipe in terms of the average internal illuminance of the room and the light transmission efficiency of the light-pipe indicates an improvement with the modified design of light-pipe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential and commercial buildings together account for one-third of world’s final energy consumption, thus making energy management in buildings of considerable significance. Passive design concept that depends on climate and location can be used as an effective and economical method to reduce the energy consumption in buildings. Seven cities in India, each representative of different geographic and climatic conditions, were selected for analysis. This article studies how the peak cooling and heating load are affected by varying some of the passive design parameters for each of the seven cities. The parameters varied are wall insulation thickness, roof insulation thickness, overhang depth, window orientation, and window-to-wall ratio. Results show that optimized passive design could reduce the peak cooling and heating loads by about 50%. Shading reduces cooling loads but is found to increase heating loads. In some of the locations, both heating in winter and cooling in summer are needed and designers should adopt appropriate passive measures depending on the location. Also for the same building, evaluation of shading is done in the context of lighting energy savings. An algorithm has been developed to iteratively alter and analyze set of roller blind positions to maintain visual comfort; as a result, the corresponding potential annual energy savings due to lighting were estimated. It was also observed that even after providing visual comfort to the occupants, energy savings only reduced by approximately 1% as compared to the case when visual comfort was overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent guidance suggested modified DNA variant pathogenicity assignments based on genome-wide allele rarity. Different a priori probabilities of pathogenicity operate where patients already have clinical diagnoses, and are found to have a very rare variant in a gene known to cause their disease, compared to predictive testing of a clinically unaffected individual. We tested new recommendations from the ClinGen Sequence Variant Interpretation Working Group for ClinVar-listed, loss-of-function variants meeting the very strong evidence of pathogenicity criterion [PVS1] in genes for 3 specific diseases where causal gene identification can modify clinical care of an individual- Von Willebrand disease, cystic fibrosis and hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia. Across these diseases, current rules leave 20/1,278 (1.6%) of loss-of-function variants as variants of uncertain significance (VUS that may not be reported to clinicians), and 207/1,278 (17.2%) as likely pathogenic. Applying the new ClinGen rule enabling PVS1 and the allele rarity criterion PM2 to delineate likely pathogenicity still left 8/1,278 (0.9%) as VUS (reflecting non-PVS1 calls by the submitters), and the majority of null alleles meeting PVS1 as merely likely pathogenic. We favour an approach whereby, for PVS1 variants in patients who personally meet the phenotypic PP4 criterion for a disease where casual variants are commonly family-specific, that PM2 is upgraded to permit a pathogenic call. Of 1,278 ClinVar-listed frameshift, nonsense and canonical splice site variants that met PVS1 in the 3 conditions, 16.0% (204/1,278) would be newly designated as pathogenic, avoiding misinterpretation outside of clinical genetics communities. We suggest further discussion around variant assessment across different clinical applications, potentially guided by PP4 alerts to distinguish personal versus family phenotypic history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]