Introduction: Sick Building Syndrome (SBS) is a set of undesirable physical and psychological conditions whose symptoms appear when entering the building and disappear after leaving it. The most well-known symptoms of SBS include problems of nervous and respiratory systems and skin. Since nurses spend many hours in the hospital and enclosed spaces, they are exposed to many factors related to th...

Buildings are the largest energy consumers and greenhouse gases emitters, both in the developed and developing countries. In continental Europe, the energy use in buildings alone is responsible for up to 50% of carbon dioxide emission. Urgent changes are, therefore, required relating to energy saving, emissions control, production and application of materials, use of renewable resources, and to...

Today visitors often approach the massive pyramids, temples, and obelisks of the ancient Egyptians with wonder and disbelief. The huge blocks of stone used to create these architectural masterpieces were quarried and moved without the aid of modern technologies, and it is diffi cult for us to imagine how such feats of engineering could be accomplished without the aid of cranes, bulldozers, truc...

Approximately 60 percent of the weight of all wastes in Germany originates from the building area. For construction activities usually non-renewable resources are used. Nevertheless so far only incomplete knowledge about consumption of resources and energy over the entire life cycle of a building, about effects on consumption of fossil raw materials and the overall ecological implications of th...

Rapid increase in construction activities has resulted in shortage of conventional construction materials.In the present scenario, the high cost of conventional building materials is a major factor affecting housing delivery in the world.This has necessitated research into alternative materials of construction.The effective housing techniques deal with reduction in cost of construction as well ...

Contemporary chemical and material engineering often takes inspiration from nature, targeting for example strong yet light materials and materials composed of highly ordered domains at multiple different lengthscales for fundamental science and applications in e.g. sensing, catalysis, coating technology, and delivery. The preparation of such hierarchically structured functional materials throug...

fire behavior of different types of eps was evaluated with the use of iso 5660 cone calorimeter test method. considering the complexity of behavior of eps against high temperatures, several specimens were tested, so a betterjudgment on fire behavior of this material could be acquired. the effects of foam density, thickness of specimens and the level of heat flux on fire behavior of foam were ex...

Nature's highly efficient light-harvesting antennae, such as those found in green sulfur bacteria, consist of supramolecular building blocks that self-assemble into a hierarchy of close-packed structures. In an effort to mimic the fundamental processes that govern nature's efficient systems, it is important to elucidate the role of each level of hierarchy: from molecule, to supramolecular build...