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In recent years, research has emerged to quantitatively and qualitatively understand occupants' interactions with buildings. However, there has been surprisingly little research on building interfaces and how their design, context (e.g., location), and underlying logic impact their usability and occupants’ perceived control, as well as the resulting comfort and energy performance. Research is needed to better understand how occupants interact with building interfaces in both commercial and residential applications; both applications are important to address as there are many differences in interface types, level of control and understanding, and even expectations of engagement. This paper provides a cursory review and discussion of select common building interfaces: windows, window shades/blinds, thermostats, and lighting controls. The goal of this paper is to review literature related to these human-building interfaces to explore interface characteristics, current design and use challenges, and relationships between building interfaces and occupants. Human-building interface interactions are complex, more research is needed to understand design, use, and characteristics. Common themes emerged throughout the literature review to explain occupant interactions (or lack of interactions) with building interfaces, which included thermal and visual comfort, ease and access of control, interface/control placement, poor interface/control design, lack of understanding, and social-behavioral dynamics.

Mixed-mode ventilation in buildings has a potential for significant energy savings. However, previous attempts in the tropics were unsuccessful due to the hot and humid weather. Indeed, there is little to no natural ventilation potential in tropical climates if conventional air conditioning systems are used. Additionally, existing studies typically do not consider the noise and air quality constraints while the performance of mixed-mode buildings is susceptible to outdoor conditions. Using elevated air movement has proven to be an effective strategy to offset the rise in the room temperature setpoint without sacrificing occupants’ thermal comfort as it helps dissipate body heat through the convective cooling effect. Hence, this study aims at investigating the total indoor environment quality (IEQ) performance of mixed-mode ventilation operations with various air speeds based on tropically acclimatized subjects. To this end, a testbed was designed and constructed in Singapore, consisting of a variable air volume (VAV) system, ceiling fans with continuous speed control, personal ventilation (PV) desks, and plenum acoustic windows. Five operating modes have been tested: fully air-conditioned (AC) mode using VAV alone, hybrid air conditioned (AC+PV) mode using VAV and PV desks, concurrent ventilation (CV) mode using PV desks with the windows partially opened, natural ventilation (NV) mode with the windows fully opened, and acoustic natural ventilation (Acoustic NV) mode with the windows partially opened. 57 subjects were invited to the experiment and asked to complete a comprehensive IEQ survey under 16 different indoor conditions, which are combinations of these operating modes and air speeds ranging from 0.10 to 1.15 m/s. Experiment results show that NV and CV in Singapore can achieve more than 90% thermal acceptability with adequate air movement. More importantly, the median standard effective temperature (SET*) for thermal neutrality is approximately 3°C higher when operating in NV as compared to AC+PV or CV modes, indicating adaptation even when the modes switches are within the same day.

In this article, we study theK1of tiled rings over local rings. Our results generalize some existing ones obtained by Keating and Xi. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

LetIbe a split radical ideal of a ringR. In this article, the exact sequence 1 → K2(R,I) → UR(I) → V(R,I) → 1 is given by using the method of extension of groups, whereUR(I) is determined by generators and relations. The results of Maazen and Stienstra on the presentation for relativeK2group of split radical pairs are extended and amplified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]