Qualitative Choices Research Articles

Closing the gap between traditional wind-driven rain studies and the performance-based design of building façades: Case study of the Netherlands

Over the last few decades, analyses of wind-driven rain exposure on building façades have been conducted in multiple regions. Sometimes, these studies also included the driving rain wind pressure, thereby characterising both critical factors contributing to rainwater penetration into façade materials. However, practitioners typically rely on performance results obtained from standardised watertightness tests to make façade design decisions, even though these tests do not recreate the specific exposure combinations that can occur on each façade. Consequently, there is no quantitative correlation between the traditionally identified exposures and actual façade designs, resulting in pure qualitative choices and poorly optimised designs. This study addresses this issue by correcting the existing methodological deficiencies in a prior calculation procedure, which aims to relate the exposure parameters that the façade configuration withstood during any watertightness test to the expected climate exposures at its design operating conditions. New contributions are presented to enhance the method reliability as well as to reduce calculation effort and reliance on exhaustive weather data. The various climate parameters required to establish this relationship were analysed and tabulated for the Netherlands, enabling a truly performance-based design of façades to resist rainwater penetration throughout the country. Different methods of implementing this procedure, according to the availability of weather data, were also compared for façade case studies located in Amsterdam and Maastricht.

Turn It Up and Open the Window: On the Rebound Effects in Residential Heating

This paper investigates how households respond to efficiency improvements of their heating system. The analysis is based on the stated preference approach with an innovative choice experiment. The design includes questions to quantify both the direct and indirect rebounds. A series of easy discrete possible changes have been suggested to prime the respondents for deciding on potential actions impacting their heating service demand. Responses to these qualitative choices are moreover used to cross-validate the quantitative results. Overall, we find relatively low direct rebound effects. However, after accounting for the indirect rebound calculated using energy embodied in goods and services purchased by re-spending initial savings, we estimate an average total rebound of about one third. The econometric analysis points to substantial variations across individuals that are partly explained by observed characteristics. The results are consistent with the conjunction that heating is a basic need which calls for little rebound in high-income groups.

Health-Economics Analyses Applied to ELF Electric and Magnetic Fields.

Extremely low frequency electric and magnetic fields (ELF EMFs) are a common exposure for modern populations. The prevailing public-health protection paradigm is that quantitative exposure limits are based on the established acute effects, whereas the possible chronic effects are considered too uncertain for quantitative limits, but might justify precautionary measures. The choice of precautionary measures can be informed by a health-economics analysis (HEA). We consider four such analyses of precautionary measures that have been conducted at a national or state level in California, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Israel. We describe the context of each analysis, examine how they deal with some of the more significant issues that arise, and present a comparison of the input parameters and assumptions used. The four HEAs are methodologically similar. The most significant qualitative choices that have to be made are what dose-response relationship to assume, what allowance if any to make for uncertainty, and, for a CBA only, what diseases to consider, and all four analyses made similar choices. These analyses suggest that, on the assumptions made, there are some low-cost measures, such as rephasing, that can be applied to transmission in some circumstances and that can be justifiable in cost-benefit terms, but that higher cost measures, such as undergrounding, become unjustifiable. Of the four HEAs, those in the United Kingdom and Israel were influential in determining the country's EMF policy. In California and Netherlands, the HEA may well have informed the debate, but the policy chosen did not stem directly from the HEA.

Flexible LDPC Decoder Architectures

Flexible channel decoding is getting significance with the increase in number of wireless standards and modes within a standard. A flexible channel decoder is a solution providing interstandard and intrastandard support without change in hardware. However, the design of efficient implementation of flexible low‐density parity‐check (LDPC) code decoders satisfying area, speed, and power constraints is a challenging task and still requires considerable research effort. This paper provides an overview of state‐of‐the‐art in the design of flexible LDPC decoders. The published solutions are evaluated at two levels of architectural design: the processing element (PE) and the interconnection structure. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of different design choices is carried out, and comparison is provided in terms of achieved flexibility, throughput, decoding efficiency, and area (power) consumption.

Managed Death in a PACE: Pathways in Present and Advance Directives

To test the effect of an innovative method of documenting present and advance health care wishes on the rates of completion and the qualitative choices of health care wishes. Interventional prospective cohort (pre- and post-). Program for All-inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE) site in St. Louis, MO. Enrolled PACE participants. A documentation tool that captures both present and advance directives in a framework of "pathways," blending goals of care with typical procedure-oriented directives. Data from medical records to calculate rates of health care wishes (HCW) completion, proportions of qualitative choices, and compliance with wishes at death. Baseline prevalences of present directives (PD) and advance directives (AD) were 77% and 36%, respectively, while Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) wishes were documented in 48% of PD and 26% of AD. After implementation of the Pathways Tool, completion rates increased to 99% for both PD and AD. Documented DNR wishes decreased to 38% of PD and increased to 66% of AD. Qualitative choices for care (Longevity vs Function vs Palliation) changed toward a palliation pathway for AD (from 9% to 53%). The rate of dying at home increased from 24% to 65%. Compliance with end-of-life wishes increased from 72% to 96%. These are statistically significant. Introduction of a novel pathways method of documenting HCW in a PACE site was associated with increased completion, preferences toward less invasive levels of care at life's end, and increased compliance with participants' wishes and deaths at home. Future research to validate the methodology employed in this intervention should be conducted in other long-term care settings.

Evaluation of particle migration models based on laser Doppler velocimetry measurements in concentrated suspensions

This study compares the predictions of several “suspension temperature” models of particle migration to laser Doppler velocimetry measurements in a concentrated suspension of noncolloidal spheres. We compare the shear rate, concentration, and suspension temperature profiles in narrow-gap Couette flow. The models predict the observed macroscopic shear rate and concentration profiles well at moderate bulk particle concentration but diverge from one another and from the data at high concentrations. In addition, the predictions of the models compare poorly with suspension temperature measurements. Most of the models greatly underpredict the magnitude of the scalar temperature, capturing instead only the magnitude of the smaller two diagonal components of the temperature tensor. Also, the models do not predict the observed variation of the suspension temperature with particle concentration. Our investigation shows that both neglect of suspension temperature anisotropy and qualitative choices of model coefficients contribute to discrepancies between the model predictions and data, of which the neglect of anisotropy is more important.

7] Automated method development in high-performance liquid chromatography

It is useful to distinguish between two types of “method automation,” both of which involve the use of a computer. Heuristic knowledge that leads to qualitative choices, regarding separation conditions, is best presented in an expert system format. A good example of an expert system for the separation of biomacromolecules is the SMART assistant software of pharmacia (Piscataway, N J). A second kind of method automation is referred to as system optimization. This implies a logical, quantitative procedure, for efficiently selecting preferred conditions, with respect to sample resolution. Several approaches to system optimization have been described in this chapter for samples of lower molecular weight, especially those of nonbiological origin. In case of large biomolecules, published work on system optimization is confined mainly to the technique of computer simulation that has been used for both reversed-phase and ion-exchange separations. Computer simulation employs software for the prediction of separation, as a function of conditions, based on some theoretical model and a small number of initial experimental runs. Once data for the initial experiments have been entered into the computer, further (very fast) experiments can be carried out, using the computer in place of a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. The remainder of this chapter describes this new technique, provides several examples of its application, and discusses certain potential problems in its use.