Over half of the total electricity consumption is used in buildings. Air-conditioning and electric lighting are the two main resources of electricity consumption in high rise buildings. One way to reduce electricity consumption would be to limit heat gain into buildings, therefore reduce the demand for air-conditioning during hot summer months especially in hot regions. On the other hand natura...

The electric light is one of the most important human inventions. Sleep and other daily rhythms in physiology and behavior, however, evolved in the natural light-dark cycle [1], and electrical lighting is thought to have disrupted these rhythms. Yet how much the age of electrical lighting has altered the human circadian clock is unknown. Here we show that electrical lighting and the constructed...

The use of a design tool materializing the performative design concept is presented. The association of parametric design with lighting intentions leads to a light-based parametric design approach. This approach have been implemented through an inverse natural lighting model which is intended to aid the daylight design (windows, shading devices or others) in the early stages of architectural de...

This paper discusses the first full version of IDEA-l, a new natural-lighting design tool for the early stages of the architectural design process. This computer program, which is part of the larger IDEA+ research project, allows the user to judge the impact of natural light on his architectural design. For this purpose a number of tests are provided, covering different aspects of natural light...

Spring-hatched broiler breeders housed in non-lightproof facilities are frequently maintained on long daylengths to prevent precocity, but controlled-feeding and delayed dissipation of photorefractoriness retard sexual maturation. Trials were conducted to determine the appropriate growth for birds maintained on 14-h photoperiods, and to compare responses with naturally increasing and decreasing...

We introduce a method to jointly estimate the BRDF and geometry of an object from a single image under known, but uncontrolled, natural illumination. We show that this previously unexplored problem becomes tractable when one exploits the orientation clues embedded in the lighting environment. Intuitively, unique regions in the lighting environment act analogously to the point light sources of t...

Automatic control of HVAC and artificial lights has been one of the popular methods for achieving energy-efficient buildings. The current systems operate using fixed setpoint controls, which are usually based on a conservative approach. Moreover, the lighting systems require additional sensor deployment to cope up with continuous fluctuation of natural light intensity. In this work, we describe...

In the laboratory setting, environmental factors have a major influence on the well-being of laboratory animals. The present study shows the importance of a semi-natural light-dark cycle. In this experiment one cohort of mice was kept with a continuous lighting for one week. After the first week the artificial light-dark cycle was 12:12 with lights on at 07:00 h. The second cohort of mice was k...

Artificial night lighting is expanding globally, but its ecological consequences remain little understood. Animals often use changes in day length as a cue to time seasonal behaviour. Artificial night lighting may influence the perception of day length, and may thus affect both circadian and circannual rhythms. Over a 3.5 month period, from winter to breeding, we recorded daily singing activity...

Capturing images in low light intensity, and preserving ambient light in such conditions pose significant problems in terms of achievable image quality. Either the sensitivity of the sensor must be increased, filling the resulting image with noise, or the scene must be lit with artificial light, destroying the aesthetic quality of the image. While the issue has been previously tackled for still...