Open Access

Given the importance of reducing energy bills in the building sector, especially for schools located in rural areas, where detachment from the grid electricity is recommended, achieving energy self-sufficiency is crucial to provide a conducive indoor environment for students while minimizing energy costs. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive methodology aimed at enhancing building energy efficiency, indoor thermal comfort, and achieving net zero energy self-sufficiency for a rural school building, by developing a climate-responsive architectural paradigm for rural schools, ensuring adaptability to diverse environmental conditions while striving for energy independence through passive design strategies. Employing multi-objective optimization with the NSGA-II genetic algorithm, passive design parameters such as construction type, glazing type, insulation specifications, roof vegetation, window overhang, and outdoor shading structures were evaluated across six distinct climatic zones in Morocco. Integration of EnergyPlus, jEPlus, and jEPlus+EA software facilitated the optimization process. Pareto fronts of optimal solutions were generated, prioritizing the minimization of heating and cooling energy consumption alongside discomfort hours. Results demonstrate that the optimized solutions effectively enhance building energy efficiency and indoor thermal comfort while achieving net zero energy status across all studied climatic zones. Optimal solutions enhanced building energy efficiency by 18.6 % - 35.6 %, tailored to climate and school design.

Although there do exist a few aeroacoustic studies on harmful artificial phenomena related to the usage of non-uniform Cartesian grids in lattice Boltzmann methods (LBM), a thorough quantitative comparison between different categories of grid arrangement is still missing in the literature. In this paper, several established schemes for hierarchical grid refinement in lattice Boltzmann simulations are analyzed with respect to spurious aeroacoustic emissions using a weakly compressible model based on a D3Q19 athermal velocity set. In order to distinguish between various sources of spurious phenomena, we deploy both the classical Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook and other more recent collision models like the hybrid recursive-regularization operator, the latter of which is able to filter out detrimental non-hydrodynamic mode contributions, inherently present in the LBM dynamics. We show by means of various benchmark simulations that a cell-centered approach, either with a linear or uniform explosion procedure, as well as a vertex-centered direct-coupling method, proves to be the most suitable with regards to aeroacoustics, as they produce the least amount of spurious noise. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how simple modifications in the selection of distribution functions to be reconstructed during the communication step between fine and coarse grids affect spurious aeroacoustic artifacts in vertex-centered schemes and can thus be leveraged to positively influence stability and accuracy.

In this Letter, we calculate the optical and magneto-optical reflectivity in a dielectric/gap/ferromagnet excited by a p-polarized monochromatic optical beam through the prism (Otto configuration) as a function of the angle of incidence θ and the gap thickness d. Besides the well-known surface plasmon polariton (SPP resonance at d ∼ λ), we find a new, to the best of our knowledge, resonance with a nanometric gap d ∼ 10 nm at a large θ ∼ 80°. Both resonances display pronounced resonant behavior in the transverse magneto-optical Kerr effect (T-MOKE).

We report on measurements of the anisotropy of velocities and attenuation of GHz-frequency acoustic phonons in a cubic MgO crystal at room temperature. They are used to quantify the strong anisotropy of the Grüneisen parameter and calculate the attenuation anisotropy for Rayleigh surface acoustic waves. These observations constitute important building blocks for better understanding of ultrafast laser-based magneto-acoustic and nonlinear acoustic experiments at ultrahigh frequencies.

Quantifying movement coordination in cross-country (XC) skiing, specifically the technique with its elemental forms, is challenging. Particularly, this applies when trying to establish a bidirectional transfer between scientific theory and practical experts' knowledge as expressed, for example, in ski instruction curricula. The objective of this study was to translate 14 curricula-informed distinct elements of the V2 ski-skating technique (horizontal and vertical posture, lateral tilt, head position, upper body rotation, arm swing, shoulder abduction, elbow flexion, hand and leg distance, plantar flexion, ski set-down, leg push-off, and gliding phase) into plausible, valid and applicable measures to make the technique training process more quantifiable and scientifically grounded. Inertial measurement unit (IMU) data of 10 highly experienced XC skiers who demonstrated the technique elements by two extreme forms each (e.g., anterior versus posterior positioning for the horizontal posture) were recorded. Element-specific principal component analyses (PCAs)—driven by the variance produced by the technique extremes—resulted in movement components that express quantifiable measures of the underlying technique elements. Ten measures were found to be sensitive in distinguishing between the inputted extreme variations using statistical parametric mapping (SPM), whereas for four elements the SPM did not detect differences (lateral tilt, plantar flexion, ski set-down, and leg push-off). Applicability of the established technique measures was determined based on quantifying individual techniques through them. The study introduces a novel approach to quantitatively assess V2 ski-skating technique, which might help to enhance technique feedback and bridge the communication gap that often exists between practitioners and scientists.