Comfortable, efficient, and affordable heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in buildings are highly desirable due to the demands of energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. Traditional vapor-compression air conditioners exhibit a lower coefficient of performance (COP) (typically 2.8-3.8) owing to the cooling-based dehumidification methods that handle both sensible and lat...

Throat swabs are regarded as the "gold standard" for diagnosing streptococcal pharyngitis and for surveillance research. Culturing throats in remote tropical settings is logistically difficult, and these settings are commonly burdened by high rates of streptococcal disease. The survival of streptococci on swabs may depend on whether they are of "throat" or "skin" type, as determined by emm patt...

The Combined Heat and Power (CHP) concept is aptly suited to improve or eliminate some of the global and local issues concerning electric commercial buildings. CHP involves on-site or near-site generation of electricity by using gas-fired equipment along with utilization of thermal energy available from the power generation process. CHP has the potential of providing a 30% improvement over conv...

A trace amount of carbon was determined by atmospheric-pressure helium microwave induced plasma atomic emission spectrometry (He-MIP-AES) with gas-phase sample introduction technique. This method was applied for the generation of a continuous flow of carbon dioxide by the acidification of carbonate ion and hydrogen carbonate ion for the determination of carbon. The generated carbon dioxide was ...