scholarly journals Interaction between Sound and Thermal Influences on Patient Comfort in the Hospitals of China’s Northern Heating Region

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (24) ◽  
pp. 5551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yue Wu ◽  
Qi Meng ◽  
Lei Li ◽  
Jingyi Mu

Previous studies have found that hospitals are often inadequately ventilated in the heating region of China, which causes an increased risk of negative impacts on patients. The complex interaction between thermal comfort and acoustics presents considerable challenges for designers. There is a wide range of literature covering the area of the interaction between the sound–thermal, sound–odor, and acoustic–visual influences, but a focused research on the sound –thermal influence on comfort in hospitals has not been published yet. This paper describes a series of field measurements and subjective evaluations that investigate the thermal comfort and acoustic performance of eighteen hospitals in China. The results showed that the thermal comfort in the monitored wards was mostly acceptable, but the temperatures tended to be much higher and the humidity much lower, in practice than they were designed to be in the heating season. The most significant conclusion is that a positive thermal stimulus can create a comfortable thermal environment, which can improve patients’ evaluation of the acoustics, while a negative stimulus has the opposite effect. A comfortable acoustic environment also caused patients to positively evaluate thermal comfort. Moreover, the relationship between thermal and sound effects in the overall evaluation showed that they are almost equal.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1420326X2091397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Yang ◽  
Zhe Li ◽  
Bin Zhou ◽  
Thomas Olofsson ◽  
Angui Li

Human-centred thermal environment conditioning can guarantee thermal comfort needs of human occupants in their micro-environments by using localized heating/cooling devices. Meanwhile, less intensified thermal conditioning of unoccupied surrounding environments can achieve heating/cooling energy efficiency. The concept was originated from task/ambient conditioning, which was developed for personal comfort systems. Most of the localized heating/cooling devices are workstation based or chair based. Task conditioning would become more closely to targets (human bodies) by using special clothing materials or thermoelectric elements. From thermal physiological viewpoints, thermal stimulus to thermally sensitive body parts may generate better results for not only local thermal comfort but also for whole body thermal comfort. Thermal stimulus to the extremities (feet) has demonstrated good thermal comfort effects. Scandinavians are accustomed to outdoor harsh environments and prefer wearing heavy shoes' outdoors in winter. They have the habit of changing heavy shoes to sandals when entering offices, which give the opportunity to enhance localized heating effects of footwarmers by reducing shoes’ thermal resistance. Climatic chamber tests with 32 Nordic subjects were performed under different indoor ambient heating temperatures with/without the aid of footwarmers. With footwarmers and sandals, indoor heating temperature at 16°C was acceptable, which achieved energy efficient thermal comfort.


Author(s):  
Helen Bennetts ◽  
Larissa Arakawa Martins ◽  
Joost van Hoof ◽  
Veronica Soebarto

An important consideration for future age-friendly cities is that older people are able to live in housing appropriate for their needs. While thermal comfort in the home is vital for the health and well-being of older people, there are currently few guidelines about how to achieve this. This study is part of a research project that aims to improve the thermal environment of housing for older Australians by investigating the thermal comfort of older people living independently in South Australia and developing thermal comfort guidelines for people ageing-in-place. This paper describes the approach fundamental for developing the guidelines, using data from the study participants’ and the concept of personas to develop a number of discrete “thermal personalities”. Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) was implemented to analyse the features of research participants, resulting in six distinct clusters. Quantitative and qualitative data from earlier stages of the project were then used to develop the thermal personalities of each cluster. The thermal personalities represent different approaches to achieving thermal comfort, taking into account a wide range of factors including personal characteristics, ideas, beliefs and knowledge, house type, and location. Basing the guidelines on thermal personalities highlights the heterogeneity of older people and the context-dependent nature of thermal comfort in the home and will make the guidelines more user-friendly and useful.


Author(s):  
Jennifer K. Gillen ◽  
Joanne M. Hojsak

Cerebral palsy is a nonprogressive disorder resulting from an injury to the brain before, during, or slightly after birth that affects motor function. Patients with cerebral palsy have a wide range of symptomatology that can affect their risk for complications during anesthesia and procedural sedation. The inherent issues of spasticity and hypotonia affecting skeletal muscle, oropharyngeal muscle function, and gut motility create an increased risk for airway-related adverse events in particular. Contractures may affect the positioning requirements of any procedure or test, thereby affecting the level of sedation needed for patient comfort and procedure completion. Careful preprocedure planning is crucial.


Author(s):  
Lavanya S

The primary need of people to dress has changed as time passed, because different high-tech fibers, yarns, fabrics, finishing applications, trends and society influences have completely changed. Welfare and comfort properties have become decisive components to make a product appreciated and successful. This paper presents the detailed explanation of clothing comfort, its subgroups and also the Physiological status and psychological status of the people. Clothing also known as clothes, apparel and attire is items worn on the body. Clothing is typically made of fabrics or textiles but over time has included garments made from animal skin or other thin layers of materials put together. The wearing of comfort clothing is mostly restricted to human beings and is a feature of all human societies. Comfort or being comfortable is a sense of physical or psychological ease, often characterized as a lack of hardship. Persons who are lacking in comfort are uncomfortable, or experiencing discomfort. A degree of psychological comfort can be achieved by recreating experiences that are associated with pleasant. Persons who are surrounded with things that provide psychological comfort may be described as being "in their comfort zone". Because of the personal nature of positive associations, psychological comfort is highly subjective. As the year goes the word comfort is been used in all areas such as food, work, people and clothing. Thermal comfort is the condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment and is assessed by subjective evaluation. The human body will release excess heat into the environment, so the body can continue to operate. The heat transfer is proportional to temperature difference. Maintaining this standard of thermal comfort for occupants is one of the important goals of HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) design engineers. And in designing of clothes is the most important goal of a fashion designer. There are six primary factors that directly affect thermal comfort that can be grouped in two categories: personal factors - because they are characteristics of the occupants - and environmental factors - which are conditions of the thermal environment. The former are metabolic rate and clothing level, the latter are air temperature, mean radiant temperature, air speed and humidity. Even if all these factors may vary with time, standards usually refer to a steady state to study thermal comfort, just allowing limited temperature variations. The study was conducted to know the responses about comfort clothing in Physiological status and psychological status acceptance. Since there are large variations from person to person in terms of physiological and psychological satisfaction, it is hard to find an optimal temperature for everyone in a ABSTRACT 62 International Journal for Modern Trends in Science and Technology given space. Survey is been collected to define conditions that will be found comfortable for a specified percentage of occupants, being comfortable is a sense of physical or psychological factors. Understanding clothing comfort, Need and consumer trends basic and universal need of consumers in clothing is comfort and they look for good feel and comfort when they buy clothing and other textile materials. Clothing is very important in our life that we use every day to obtain physiological and psychological comfort and also to ensure physical conditions around our body suitable for survival. Therefore, it is extremely important for the survival of human beings and improvement of the quality of our life to have good understanding of the fundamentals of clothing comfort. From the viewpoint of the manufacturers of clothing and textile materials, understanding of clothing comfort has substantial financial implications in the effort to satisfy the needs and wants of consumers in order to obtain sustainable competitive advantages in modern consumer markets. Consumer always expects some additional functional qualities from the clothes they purchase. Clothing is manufactured in a wide range of thermal, tactile and physical properties to meet consumer needs. Depending on the nee. and expectations of the consumer's, the clothing and textile manufacturers provide wide range of options to enhance human comfort. For example, clothing made from blends and natural fibres are preferred to man-made fibres for all comfort attributes except smoothness or woven fabric are preferred to knits for smoothness, thickness and openness. To understand the basics of clothing comfort, sensory tools as well as the equipment’s to evaluate the comfort related characteristics of textile materials have been developed. Large number of studies has been carried out and many equipment are developed in the textile and clothing area such as mechanical, thermal and surface testing, so as to evaluate the related physical properties, but the body between measurement and the consumer feeling of comfort are still difficult to establish. Consumers want everything from the clothing, i.e. it should look good, feel good, perform well, said like their clothing to match with their chosen attitudes, roles and images. Consumers are now allowing touch, smell, intuition, and emotion to influence their decision on clothing selection more than their aesthetic sense. Asa result, great importance is being attributed to the wearing experience and thus comfort is being reinforced as a key parameter in clothing. It is also true that requirements of consumers on comfort changes with products and situations. Clearly, understanding and satisfying the needs of consumer towards clothing products are crucial for the long-term survival and growth of clothing and textile demand. Understanding and enhancement of clothing comfort is definitely one of the important issues.


Author(s):  
Elahe Mirabi ◽  
Nasrollahi Nazanin

<p>Designing urban facades is considered as a major factor influencing issues<br />such as natural ventilation of buildings and urban areas, radiations in the<br />urban canyon for designing low-energy buildings, cooling demand for<br />buildings in urban area, and thermal comfort in urban streets. However, so<br />far, most studies on urban topics have been focused on flat facades<br />without details of urban layouts. Hence, the effect of urban facades with<br />details such as the balcony and corbelling on thermal comfort conditions<br />and air flow behavior are discussed in this literature review. <strong>Aim</strong>: This<br />study was carried out to investigate the effective factors of urban facades,<br />including the effects of building configuration, geometry and urban<br />canyon’s orientation. <strong>Methodology and Results</strong>: According to the results,<br />the air flow behavior is affected by a wide range of factors such as wind<br />conditions, urban geometry and wind direction. Urban façade geometry<br />can change outdoor air flow pattern, thermal comfort and solar access.<br /><strong>Conclusion, significance and impact study</strong>: In particular, the geometry of<br />the facade, such as indentation and protrusion, has a significant effect on<br />the air flow and thermal behavior in urban facades and can enhance<br />outdoor comfort conditions. Also, Alternation in façade geometry can<br />affect pedestrians' comfort and buildings energy demands.</p>


Author(s):  
L.M. Kryvosheieva ◽  
V.I. Chuchvaha ◽  
N.M. Kandyba

Aim. Based on the results of multi-year research into the flax gene pool, to form a flax training collection to provide breeding scientific organizations and educational institutions with collection samples as well as with information about the bast crop gene pool. Results and Discussion. The studies were conducted in the crop rotation fields for breeding and seed production of the Institute of Bast Crops of the NAAS (Hlukhiv, Sumska Oblast) in 1992-2018. The field measurements and laboratory analyses were carried out in accordance with conventional methods of field and laboratory studies of collection flax samples.The article presents the results on the formation of a training collection of flax at the Institute of Bast Crops of the NAAS, which has 117 accessions (11 botanical species and three varieties) from 22 countries. In addition to species diversity, the collection includes accessions with different levels of expression of valuable economic and biological characteristics. It also includes accessions selected by phenotypic variability of individual characters or their combinations. The multi-year research into the flax collection accessions resulted in identification of sources of highly-expressed valuable economic traits, which are of interest for the plant breeding course. The history of flax breeding in Ukraine is shown, where breeding varieties that are most widespread or were significant breeding achievements in solving certain problems, are presented. The collection can be used as a visual aid for the plant breeding course in educational programs; in addition, it can provide starting material for scientific and educational institutions. The collection is registered with the National Center for Plant Genetic Resources of Ukraine (certificate No. 00273 dated 04/11/2019). Conclusions. The studies of accessions from the national flax collection allowed us to build up a training collection and register it with the NCPGRU. The collection represents a wide range of biological and economic features of the gene pool of this crop. The collection can be used in the educational process of educational agricultural and biological institutions. The multi-year research into the national flax collection resulted in identification of sources of highly-expressed valuable economic traits, which are of interest to the plant breeding course. The history of flax breeding in Ukraine got covered, and breeding varieties that are most widespread or were significant breeding achievements in solving certain problems are presented.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Regina Sá ◽  
Tiago Pinho-Bandeira ◽  
Guilherme Queiroz ◽  
Joana Matos ◽  
João Duarte Ferreira ◽  
...  

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Ovar was the first Portuguese municipality to declare active community transmission of SARS-CoV-2, with total lockdown decreed on March 17, 2020. This context provided conditions for a large-scale testing strategy, allowing a referral system considering other symptoms besides the ones that were part of the case definition (fever, cough, and dyspnea). This study aims to identify other symptoms associated with COVID-19 since it may clarify the pre-test probability of the occurrence of the disease. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> This case-control study uses primary care registers between March 29 and May 10, 2020 in Ovar municipality. Pre-test clinical and exposure-risk characteristics, reported by physicians, were collected through a form, and linked with their laboratory result. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The study population included a total of 919 patients, of whom 226 (24.6%) were COVID-19 cases and 693 were negative for SARS-CoV-2. Only 27.1% of the patients reporting contact with a confirmed or suspected case tested positive. In the multivariate analysis, statistical significance was obtained for headaches (OR 0.558), odynophagia (OR 0.273), anosmia (OR 2.360), and other symptoms (OR 2.157). The interaction of anosmia and odynophagia appeared as possibly relevant with a borderline statistically significant OR of 3.375. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> COVID-19 has a wide range of symptoms. Of the myriad described, the present study highlights anosmia itself and calls for additional studies on the interaction between anosmia and odynophagia. Headaches and odynophagia by themselves are not associated with an increased risk for the disease. These findings may help clinicians in deciding when to test, especially when other diseases with similar symptoms are more prevalent, namely in winter.


Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 244
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Bueno ◽  
Antonio Augusto de Paula Xavier ◽  
Evandro Eduardo Broday

The thermal environment is one of the main factors that influence thermal comfort and, consequently, the productivity of occupants inside buildings. Throughout the years, research has described the connection between thermal comfort and productivity. Mathematical models have been established in the attempt to predict changes in productivity according to thermal variations in the environment. Some of these models have failed for a number of reasons, including the understanding of the effect that several environment variables have had on performance. From this context, a systematic literature review was carried out with the aim of verifying the connection between thermal comfort and productivity and the combinations of different thermal and personal factors that can have an effect on productivity. A hundred and twenty-eight articles were found which show a connection between productivity and some thermal comfort variables. By means of specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, 60 articles were selected for a final analysis. The main conclusions found in this study were: (i) the vast majority of research uses subjective measures and/or a combination of methods to evaluate productivity; (ii) performance/productivity can be attained within an ampler temperature range; (iii) few studies present ways of calculating productivity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. s258-s259
Author(s):  
James Harrigan ◽  
Ebbing Lautenbach ◽  
Emily Reesey ◽  
Magda Wernovsky ◽  
Pam Tolomeo ◽  
...  

Background: Clinically diagnosed ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is common in the long-term acute-care hospital (LTACH) setting and may contribute to adverse ventilator-associated events (VAEs). Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a common causative organism of VAP. We evaluated the impact of respiratory P. aeruginosa colonization and bacterial community dominance, both diagnosed and undiagnosed, on subsequent P. aeruginosa VAP and VAE events during long-term acute care. Methods: We enrolled 83 patients on LTACH admission for ventilator weaning, performed longitudinal sampling of endotracheal aspirates followed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing (Illumina HiSeq), and bacterial community profiling (QIIME2). Statistical analysis was performed with R and Stan; mixed-effects models were fit to relate the abundance of respiratory Psa on admission to clinically diagnosed VAP and VAE events. Results: Of the 83 patients included, 12 were diagnosed with P. aeruginosa pneumonia during the 14 days prior to LTACH admission (known P. aeruginosa), and 22 additional patients received anti–P. aeruginosa antibiotics within 48 hours of admission (suspected P. aeruginosa); 49 patients had no known or suspected P. aeruginosa (unknown P. aeruginosa). Among the known P. aeruginosa group, all 12 patients had P. aeruginosa detectable by 16S sequencing, with elevated admission P. aeruginosa proportional abundance (median, 0.97; IQR, 0.33–1). Among the suspected P. aeruginosa group, all 22 patients had P. aeruginosa detectable by 16S sequencing, with a wide range of admission P. aeruginosa proportional abundance (median, 0.0088; IQR, 0.00012–0.31). Of the 49 patients in the unknown group, 47 also had detectable respiratory Psa, and many had high P. aeruginosa proportional abundance at admission (median, 0.014; IQR, 0.00025–0.52). Incident P. aeruginosa VAP was observed within 30 days in 4 of the known P. aeruginosa patients (33.3%), 5 of the suspected P. aeruginosa patients (22.7%), and 8 of the unknown P. aeruginosa patients (16.3%). VAE was observed within 30 days in 1 of the known P. aeruginosa patients (8.3%), 2 of the suspected P. aeruginosa patients (9.1%), and 1 of the unknown P. aeruginosa patients (2%). Admission P. aeruginosa abundance was positively associated with VAP and VAE risk in all groups, but the association only achieved statistical significance in the unknown group (type S error <0.002 for 30-day VAP and <0.011 for 30-day VAE). Conclusions: We identified a high prevalence of unrecognized respiratory P. aeruginosa colonization among patients admitted to LTACH for weaning from mechanical ventilation. The admission P. aeruginosa proportional abundance was strongly associated with increased risk of incident P. aeruginosa VAP among these patients.Funding: NoneDisclosures: None


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document