• Energy Research
• AT close
• PL close
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology close

Abstract Occupants’ comfort perception affects building energy consumptions. To improve the understanding of human comfort, which is crucial to reduce energy demand, laboratory experiments with humans in controlled environments (test rooms) are fundamental, but their potential also depends on the characteristic of each research facility. Nowadays, there is no common understanding for definitions, concepts, and procedures related to human comfort studies performed in test rooms. Identifying common features would allow standardising test procedures, reproducing the same experiments in different contexts, and sharing knowledge and test possibilities. This review identifies 187 existing test rooms worldwide: 396 papers were systematically selected, thoroughly reviewed, and analysed in terms of performed experiments and related test room details. The review highlights a rising interest in the topic during the last years, since 46% of related papers has been published between 2016 and 2020. A growing interest in non-thermal sensory domains (such as visual and air quality) and multi-domain studies about occupant's whole comfort emerged from the results. These research trends have entailed a change in the way test rooms are designed, equipped and controlled, progressively becoming more realistic inhabitable environments. Nevertheless, some lacks in comfort investigation are highlighted: some continents (like Africa and South America) and climate zones are found to be underrepresented, while involved subjects are mainly students performing office tasks. This review aspires to guide scientists and professionals toward the improved design or the audit of test room experimental facilities, especially in countries and climate zones where human comfort indoors is under-studied.

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector is described. The detector operates at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. It was conceived to study proton-proton (and lead-lead) collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV (5.5 TeV nucleon-nucleon) and at luminosities up to 1034 cm−2 s−1 (1027 cm−2 s−1). At the core of the CMS detector sits a high-magnetic-field and large-bore superconducting solenoid surrounding an all-silicon pixel and strip tracker, a lead-tungstate scintillating-crystals electromagnetic calorimeter, and a brass-scintillator sampling hadron calorimeter. The iron yoke of the flux-return is instrumented with four stations of muon detectors covering most of the 4π solid angle. Forward sampling calorimeters extend the pseudorapidity coverage to high values (|η| ≤ 5) assuring very good hermeticity. The overall dimensions of the CMS detector are a length of 21.6 m, a diameter of 14.6 m and a total weight of 12500 t.

Abstract In this paper we address the issue of modeling spot electricity prices. After summarizing the stylized facts about spot electricity prices, we review a number of models proposed in the literature. Afterwards we fit a jump diffusion and a regime switching model to spot prices from the Nordic power exchange and discuss the pros and cons of each one.

Climate change can significantly impact agriculture, leading to food security challenges. Most previous studies have investigated the direct climate impact on crops while neglecting the impact of heat stress on agricultural labor. Here, we assess the economic consequences of climate impacts on four major crops—maize, soybean, wheat, and rice—for scenarios involving low and high greenhouse gas emissions. Our analysis is based on the output from a new generation of global climate and crop models to drive a multiregional economic model. We find that, even under a high-emission scenario, the effect of CO$_2$ fertilization could lead to higher yields, resulting in lower prices for major crops, except for maize. However, heat-induced losses in agricultural labor could offset the potential economic benefits of CO$_2$ fertilization in crop production in Asia and Africa. Our findings emphasize the importance of addressing heat-stress impacts on agricultural labor through proactive adaptation measures.