This study investigates the daylighting and thermal performance of open-plan office buildings with two scenarios of daylight louvers – fixed and motorized ones. Both types are for facade window applications. They redirect transmitted daylight to eliminate glare on occupants and increase daylight levels deeper in the interior space, but have significantly different daylight transmitting characte...

BACKGROUND Daylight saving time affects millions of people annually but its impacts are still widely unknown. Sleep deprivation and the change of circadian rhythm can trigger mental illness and cause higher accident rates. Transitions into and out of daylight saving time changes the circadian rhythm and may cause sleep deprivation. Thus it seems plausible that the prevalence of accidents and/or...

This paper presents a fast algorithm for daylight simulation and analysis of complex architectural environments that considers both direct sunlight and diffuse daylight. Shadow determination is performed using a combination of parallel projection and ray tracing techniques. Parallel projection provides execution times that are linear with respect to the number of polygonal objects in the enviro...

The sensitivity of the circadian pacemaker of the field mouse Mus booduga to diffuse daylight pulses of 15 min duration and 1000 lux intensity was measured in a series of experiments and a phase response curve (PRC) constructed. The PRC evoked was of type-I with significant quantitative differences compared to the PRCs constructed for other light stimuli (fluorescent and incandescent light sour...

Figures for the United States indicate approximately 40,000 road fatalities per year. Per 100,000 miles driven, the nighttime accident rate on unlighted highways is roughly three times that during daylight hours. While this is partly alcohol and fatigue related, the major factor is believed to be the reduced visual performance of the driver under night conditions. Statistics for other countries...

Most designers would agree that natural light is essential to the experience of any great work of architecture, but as a professional discipline, we lack consensus on which characteristics of daylight quantify or qualify the visual performance of a space. Perceptual qualities such as brightness, contrast, and temporal variability influence our experience of physical space and while illumination...

One of the important functions of window is to admit natural lightto interior spaces of buildings. This natural lighting in buildings helps to displace the requirement for artificial lighting, and thus, helps to save energy. Though daylight has positive effects on visual comfort, but high window luminance or direct sunlight from a window may cause discomfort. Visual discomfort in a day-lit inte...

Life in 24-h society relies on the use of artificial light at night that might disrupt synchronization of the endogenous circadian timing system to the solar day. This could have a negative impact on sleep-wake patterns and psychiatric symptoms. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of evening light emitted by domestic and work place lamps in a naturalistic setting on melatonin ...