In this article, we explain how spherical Tits buildings arise naturally and play a basic role in studying many questions about symmetric spaces and arithmetic groups, why Bruhat-Tits Euclidean buildings are needed for studying S-arithmetic groups, and how analogous simplicial complexes arise in other contexts and serve purposes similar to those of buildings. We emphasize the close relationship...

This study supplemented the National Air Emissions Monitoring Study (NAEMS) by making comprehensive measurements, over a full calendar year, of odor emissions from five swine and four dairy rooms/buildings (subset of the total number of buildings monitored for the NAEMS project). The measurements made in this project included both standard human sensory measurements using dynamic forced-choice ...

The structural integrity of precast concrete buildings depends mainly on the connections between the precast structural components. Large precast concrete panels are used extensively in North America for low, medium, and highrise construction due to their ease and speed of assembly, and high quality control. This paper presents the results of twenty-two prototype specimens tested to investigate...

Airborne laser scanning has become a significant 3D data acquisition technique in the field of surveying. By measuring point clouds defined in three-dimensional coordinates, this technique provides almost automatically Digital Surface Models (DSMs). But for 3D city modelling, the discrimination between terrain and elevated objects based on this surface model is still a challenging task, since f...

The ski resort town of St Moritz, Switzerland, is partially constructed on a large creeping landslide, which has been causing damage to buildings and infrastructure. At the town centre, the landslide is constrained by a rock outcrop, creating a compression zone in the sliding mass. After decades of gradual slowing down,s in the beginning of 1990s the landslide started to accelerate, in spite of...

Several complex thermal indices (e.g. Predicted Mean Vote and Physiological Equivalent Temperature) were developed in the last decades to describe and quantify the thermal environment of humans and the energy fluxes between body and environment. Compared to open spaces/landscapes the complex surface structure of urban areas creates an environment with special microclimatic characteristics, whic...

The temperature of the surface soil layer around different orientation walls was investigated horizontally along several construction-soil micro-gradients in Beijing, China. On a diurnal scale, similar fluctuating trends in T0 and T50 (temperature of surface soil layer, 0 and 0.5 m from the building baseline) adjacent to the external walls of buildings with the same orientation usually appeared...

BACKGROUND Accessibility implies making public places accessible to every individual, irrespective of his or her disability or special need, ensuring the integration of the wheelchair user into the society and thereby granting them the capability of participating in activities of daily living and ensuring equality in daily life. OBJECTIVE This study was carried out to assess the accessibility...

In an airborne photogrammetry, a geometrical modeling and object classification can be automated using color images. Stereo matching is an essential technique to reconstruct 3D model from images. Although, object classification methods are automated using height data estimated with the stereo matching, it is difficult to recognize construction materials, such as woods and concrete. The construc...