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The literature on classroom environment from 1980 onwards is reviewed. Special reference is made to elementary settings and to students with behavioral deficits. Structure and organization, cognitive processes, student characteristics and teacher characteristics are all seen as being capable of modification. It is concluded that the achievement of a match between students' preferences and instructional settings is a necessary condition for maximizing their cognitive, social and affective outcomes.

Learning from the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report to design future strategies for climate change research and observations was the key objective of a workshop organized jointly by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), and the International Geosphere‐ Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in Sydney, Australia. Some 66 key IPCC authors and other experts associated with the three international...

Learning from the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report to design future strategies for climate change research and observations was the key objective of a workshop organized jointly by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), and the International Geosphere‐ Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in Sydney, Australia. Some 66 key IPCC authors and other experts associated with the three international...

In order to examine the associations between different indoor environmental quality (IEQ) indicators and students' performance, absenteeism and health data were collected, and sampling and monitoring were conducted in a 70 school district in the Southwestern United States during two academic years. These included measurements of temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), carbon dioxide (CO2), and settled dust. A standardized cleaning protocol was employed for surface sampling and cleaning...

Using a multilevel approach, we estimated the effects of classroom ventilation rate and temperature on academic achievement. The analysis is based on measurement data from a 70 elementary school district (140 fifth grade classrooms) from Southwestern United States, and student level data (N = 3109) on socioeconomic variables and standardized test scores. There was a statistically significant association between ventilation rates and mathematics scores, and it was stronger when the six...

Global efforts to prepare young developing minds for solving current and future challenges of climate change have advocated interdisciplinary, issues-based instructional approaches in order to transform traditional models of science education as delivering conceptual facts (UNESCO, 2014). This study is an exploration of the online interactions in an international social network of high school students residing in Norway, China, New Zealand and the United States (N=141). Students participated...

There is much documented material concerning human thermal comfort from the physiological, adaptive and social convention paradigms. Most of these studies have been conducted on limited-occupancy buildings, such as offices and institutions of higher learning in the northern hemisphere and parts of the ASEAN region; the subjects generally being adults and assumed to be in good health. In contrast, limited work appears to have been carried out in regularly occupied buildings like homes and in...

To apply real-time predictive control using automated devices for minimizing the risk of surface condensation in a residential space, the authors first developed a nodal network model that simulates the flow of moist air and the thermal behavior of a target area with the given boundary conditions of a space. The lumped model was enhanced using a parameter estimation technique based on the measured temperature, humidity, and schedule data. However, the humidity model prediction performance...

Low cost temperature sensors are increasingly used by ecologists to assess climatic variation and change on ecologically relevant scales. Although cost-effective, if not deployed with proper solar radiation shielding, the observations recorded from these sensors will be biased and inaccurate. Manufactured radiation shields are effective at minimizing this bias, but are expensive compared to the cost of these sensors. Here, we provide a detailed methodology for constructing a compact version...

The study reported here focuses on integrating climate change issues in School curriculum in The Gambia. The objectives are to determine the extent to which climate-related themes presently feature in the Upper Basic (lower secondary) schools of The Gambia; propose an integration plan for enhanced climate themes in the school curriculum; and identify suitable teaching methods for conveying climate change information to students. A curriculum audit of two subject areas in the Upper Basic...

The study reported here focuses on integrating climate change issues in School curriculum in The Gambia. The objectives are to determine the extent to which climate-related themes presently feature in the Upper Basic (lower secondary) schools of The Gambia; propose an integration plan for enhanced climate themes in the school curriculum; and identify suitable teaching methods for conveying climate change information to students. A curriculum audit of two subject areas in the Upper Basic...

Model Predictive Control has gained much attention due to its potential to improve building operations by reducing costs, integrating renewable energy sources, and increasing thermal comfort. This paper aims to compare the accuracy of grey-box models based on resistance–capacitance (RC) networks and Long-Short-Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks in the prediction of the buildings’ thermal response, which is a key feature for the successful implementation of predictive controllers. Indoor air...

The objective of this research is to investigate air flow distribution inside a light weight test room which is naturally ventilated using artificial neural networks. The test room is situated in a relatively sheltered location and is ventilated through adjustable louvres. Indoor air temperature and velocity are measured at four locations and six different levels. The outside local temperature, relative humidity, wind velocity and direction are also monitored. The collected data are used to...

Personal thermal comfort models are crucial for the future of human-in-the-loop HVAC control in energy-efficient buildings. Individual comfort models, compared to average population responses, can provide the personalization required for successful control. In this work, we frame the thermal preference prediction task as a multivariate, multi-class classification problem and use deep learning and time-series-based approach for thermal preference prediction. We combine l1 regularization with...

Climate-sensitive school buildings can enhance students’ learning performance and reduce the building’s overall energy consumption. This paper reports on a post-occupancy study of contemporary school buildings in Malaysia, assessing problems of solar heat gain. The research aims to propose retrofitting measures based on passive design principles adapted specifically for the Malaysian tropical climate to strengthen the resilience of local school buildings in a global climate emergency....

Background: Every century has its own public health challenge. Climate change is the present century's challenge. There are various health risks arising from climate change which without mitigation actions, will tend to worsen with each passing day.
 Study Aim and Objective: To study the knowledge of health impact of climate change and practice of appropriate preventive measures among students of a Nigerian Tertiary Institution
 Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional survey was...