The wind’s effectiveness was compared in different points of a watershed using a quantity called The Wind Shelter Index.The wind’s effectiveness was compared in different points of a watershed using a quantity called The Wind Shelter Index. It is necessary to choose a distance called the effective distance in the process of this index determination. The criterion already used for this purpose w...

This paper describes a working method of assessing the shelter quality of a wind-break, hedge or shelterbelt by a single field measurement, using portable equipment, deployed by an operative with minimal training on any day when the wind is suitable. The automated measurement yields a single characterisation parameter used to access an “expert system” database of information quantifying the ben...

Current guidelines for the location and design of bus stops do not take into account air quality or exposure considerations for waiting passengers. This paper compares the exposure of transit riders waiting at three-sided bus stop shelters that either: 1) face roadway traffic, or 2) face away from roadway traffic. Shelters were instrumented with devices to monitor particulate matter concentrati...

Nearly two decades of political, economic and social upheavals in Bulgaria directly conditiones the profound changes in the TV system and the trends of its development. Currently the number of the registered TV broadcasters in the country exceeds 100 (among them four with national terrestrial coverage). Bulgarian children spend on the average three hours a day watching television. However, the ...

The energetic costs of reproduction in birds strongly depend on the climate experienced during incubation. Climate change and increasing frequency of extreme weather events may severely affect these costs, especially for species incubating in extreme environments. In this 3-year study, we used an experimental approach to investigate the effects of microclimate and nest shelter on the incubation...

Urban outbreaks of Q fever have occurred after exposure to slaughterhouses or parturient cats. We detected an outbreak of Q fever in a homeless shelter in Marseilles. Investigations showed that the main factors exposing persons to Coxiella burnetii were an abandoned slaughterhouse, used for an annual Muslim sheep feast, and wind.

A data-driven approach for development of a virtual wind-speed sensor for wind turbines is presented. The virtual wind-speed sensor is built from historical wind-farm data by data-mining algorithms. Four different data-mining algorithms are used to develop models using wind-speed data collected by anemometers of various wind turbines on a wind farm. The computational results produced by differe...

Wind-flow pattern over embankments involves an overexposure of the rolling stock travelling on them to wind loads. Windbreaks are a common solution for changing the flow characteristic in order to decrease unwanted effects induced by the presence of cross-wind. The shelter effectiveness of a set of windbreaks placed over a railway twin-track embankment is experimentally analysed. A set of two-d...