Adaption and Satisfaction Level of Housing Environments During Coronavirus Curfew in Jordan

The global epidemic, evidenced the design gap formed in architecture where COVID-19 changed the way people live, induced designers to see how the epidemic affects people's daily habits in the built environment in the long-term life within a new framework e and vision of redesigning houses with the below perspective. This paper aims to discuss the design gap in pre-epidemic house design and how COVID-19 affects the relative parameters, focusing lost and unused spaces. Hence the suggestion stems from the need for providing solutions to the various crises that occur in the world, in order to contribute to a new urban life. The impact on houses that reflects the way of live in the community focusing on the mid-size apartments redesigning and creating new single spaces that combine several services for people needs during the pandemic COVID-19 lockdowns or self-isolation. This research is based on data collected during coronavirus curfew to analyze the satisfaction and adaptation of the housing environments design at psychological and physical levels in Jordan. Mixed-methodological approach is used for gathering information as well as getting a deeper understanding regarding the quality of housing environment from two perspectives: dwellers’ and housing designers’ perspective. The used methods are questionnaire that executed by using an online survey application and focus group executed via online meeting because of the COVID-19 lockdown. The data analysis showed that the architects’ role in both academic and professional fields should collaborate to raise awareness regarding the importance of creating high quality environments beside giving value to aesthetics. As well, focusing on humanistic aspects through adopting design approach derived from adaptability and flexibility to meet the dwellers’ needs in different situations such as a COVID-19 lockdown. © 2022 WITPress. All rights reserved.

Effect of Personality Traits and Stressor Inducers on Users’ Cognitive Load During Interactions with VR Environments

In this paper, HCI-based design criteria focusing on managing the cognitive load of users during their interaction with Virtual Reality (VR) based training environments are presented. The design criteria explored in the paper help lay a foundation for the creation of Human Centric VR environments to train users in two healthcare domains. The first domain is orthopedic surgery, and the second domain is related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The HCI-based perspective presented in the paper investigates criteria such as personality traits and stress inducers and their impact on cognitive load. The paper delineates the implementation of the VR based environments and a set of attributes that guide and influence the content of the environments. Testing and assessment strategy is described and results are also included which provide insights into the impact of such HCI-based criteria on participants’ acquisition of skills and knowledge during interactions with the VR environments. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

A Reference Model and HVAC Design Criteria of Mobile Negative Pressure Isolation Room for Responding to Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Due to climate change coupled with the increase of zoonotic diseases, infectious diseases are more likely to occur and spread in the future;therefore, new alternatives and methods related to treatment environments should be considered. Under the global landscape of the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the number of patients who need to be cared for through negative isolation rooms is increasing. Consequently, it is essential to secure temporary medical facilities that can remain operational during a pandemic. These facilities must be safe and secured so that public confidence is increased, and treatment expedited. This study proposes a reference model and HVAC design criteria for mobile negative pressure isolation room modular systems to minimize cross-infection inside the health care space and ensure the safety of health care workers (HCWs) as well as securing rapid medical service supplies. The mobile negative pressure isolation room module basically reflects the one-way airflow direction from clean zone to dirty zone, and appropriate differential pressure control that separates the air environment between the HCW’s and the patient. If properly installed, the location of the exhaust air vents need to be directly above the patient’s bed, specifically on the wall near the head of the bed. The installation of the headboard on the patient’s bed as an exhaust air ventilation location was considered for infection prevention and control when performing aerosol-generating procedures (AGPs). © 2022 Architectural Institute of Korea.

Analysis of the Energy Efficiency of Le Corbusier’s Dwellings: The Cité Frugès, an Opportunity to Reuse Garden Cities Designed for Healthy and Working Life

This paper looks at the energy efficiency of the Cité Frugès in Pessac, designed in 1924 by Le Corbusier. Many of the innovations introduced by the Modern movement, such as flat roofs, large windows and solar protection elements, are still evident in the way architecture is carried out today. Most of these contributions were implemented in the Cité Frugès. The aim is to evaluate the architectural design criteria that most influenced the energy performance of Le Corbusier’s works, and to analyse the improvement that could be achieved by energy rehabilitation. The methodology used consisted of a systematised study of the five dwellings designed by Le Corbusier. For the modelling and calculation of their energy performance the “Líder–Calener unified tool” was used for evaluation, under the standards of compliance with European regulations for nearly zero energy consumption buildings. Energy parameters, such as thermal transmittance, solar gains and overall annual energy demand, were tested. The results obtained provide information on energy performance and allow for the analysis of possible energy refurbishment alternatives. The analysis of the results makes it possible to identify and qualitatively and quantitatively assess the limitations of the most relevant architectural and construction aspects in relation to energy efficiency and to draw up an energy map of the Cité Frugès in Pessac.

Swept Tip Blades for Mach-Scaled High Speed Tiltrotor Tests

The objective of this proposal was to design, fabricate, and characterize, highly twisted (-30 degrees to -45 degrees) and swept (20 degrees back) composite tilt rotor blades. The swept tip is the novel and new basic research component. Comprehensive analysis performed by the US Government and Academia in the last decade have shown the potential of swept tip blades in extending whirl flutter boundary. Swept tip blades can be also contribute positively to DoDs vision of 2X speed of Future Vertical Lift (FVL). The intent is to follow-up this seed program with wind-tunnel testing of the blades at Maryland Tiltrotor Rig (MTR) at the Glenn L Martin wind tunnel. The project tracked all its milestones and completed all deliverables. The blades were designed, fabricated, characterized, integrated on the MTR, and spun-up for loads check-out on Sep-Oct 2019 a few months before the campus and the facilities shut down due to covid-19.

Recent advances in low-cost, portable automated resuscitator systems to fight COVID-19.

World is fighting one of its greatest battle against COVID-19 (a highly infectious disease), leading to death of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, with severe patients requiring artificial breathing. To overcome the shortage of ventilators in medical infrastructure, various low-cost, easy to assemble, portable ventilators have been proposed to fight the ongoing pandemic. These mechanical ventilators are made from components that are generally readily available worldwide. Such components are already associated with day-to-day gadgets or items and which do not require specialized manufacturing processes. Various designs have been proposed, focussing on meeting basic requirements for artificial ventilation to fight the ongoing pandemic. But some people are against the usage of these mechanical ventilators in real-life situations, owing to poor reliability and inability of these designs to meet certain clinical requirements. Each design has its own merits and demerits, which need to be addressed for proper designing. Therefore, this article aims to provide readers an overview of various design parameters that needs to be considered while designing portable ventilators, by systematic analysis from available pool of proposed designs. By going through existing literature, we have recognized multiple factors influencing device performance and how these factors need to be considered for efficient device operation.