A study of acoustic-light-thermal effects on pedestrians' overall comfort in a Cfa-climate campus during the summer.

The environmental quality, in terms of acoustic, visual, and thermal environments, significantly affects people's comfort levels. Along these lines, in this work, their comprehensive impact on people's overall comfort was systematically explored. Pedestrians' outdoor neutral points on various environmental parameters were found by performing linear regressions. Similarly, people's thermal perceptions (indicated by neutral temperatures, NT) were found to vary for both acoustic and light environments. They would be increasingly heat sensitive (R2 increases) in a noisier environment while the NTs varied for either sound or light intensity levels. From our analysis, it was demonstrated that people's overall comforts were negatively correlated with these parameters in different degrees. This work provides valuable insights for future urban design and planning studies to create better outdoor environments.

A study of the thermal comfort in urban mountain parks and its physical influencing factors.

Urban thermal comforts are increasingly holding people's attention due to global warming and urban heat islands. Urban parks can absorb sunlight radiation, which reduces air temperature, improving urban microclimates. Various factors in the park are confirmed to be effective in heat mitigation. However, there are few studies on thermal comfort in urban mountain parks, and mountain areas might cause peculiar climatic conditions owing to their particular landforms. To fill this gap in the research, this study explored thermal comfort in mountain parks and the environmental factors that would affect thermal comfort. A field measurement in the summertime (July & August) of 2018, it was found that trees, the river, and the area of parks could adjust the thermal comforts of mountain parks. Their effects varied throughout the day, and the impacts of trees were most pronounced at noon and late afternoon, while the influence of rivers and park areas was most pronounced at noon. Increasing the leaf area index by 1 point could result in decreases in physiological equivalent temperature, land surface temperature, and solar radiation level by 3.90 °C, 2.69 °C, and 270.10 W/m2, respectively. The findings have practical implications for future urban mountain park design works.

Nanofiltration Membranes with Crumpled Polyamide Films: A Critical Review on Mechanisms, Performances, and Environmental Applications.

Nanofiltration (NF) membranes have been widely applied in many important environmental applications, including water softening, surface/groundwater purification, wastewater treatment, and water reuse. In recent years, a new class of piperazine (PIP)-based NF membranes featuring a crumpled polyamide layer has received considerable attention because of their great potential for achieving dramatic improvements in membrane separation performance. Since the report of novel crumpled Turing structures that exhibited an order of magnitude enhancement in water permeance ( Science 2018, 360 (6388), 518-521), the number of published research papers on this emerging topic has grown exponentially to approximately 200. In this critical review, we provide a systematic framework to classify the crumpled NF morphologies. The fundamental mechanisms and fabrication methods involved in the formation of these crumpled morphologies are summarized. We then discuss the transport of water and solutes in crumpled NF membranes and how these transport phenomena could simultaneously improve membrane water permeance, selectivity, and antifouling performance. The environmental applications of these emerging NF membranes are highlighted, and future research opportunities/needs are identified. The fundamental insights in this review provide critical guidance on the further development of high-performance NF membranes tailored for a wide range of environmental applications.