Curating light: daylight-centric design for promoting wellness

Daylighting in architecture has traditionally been a practice-based, intuitive and experiential process, based on the common notion that daylight enhances our spatial and sensory awareness. This Thesis tests the effectiveness of daylight as a mechanism for creating a psychological and emotional impact, and promoting wellness within the confines of designed spaces. The creation of the project is based on a Maggie’s Cancer Centre model of patient-centric design. Maggie’s Centers have been traditionally located in suburban settings, where they may be ideally oriented for day-light infiltration and outdoor connectivity. The Maggie’s model promotes three primary design factors: i) abundance of daylight, ii) connection to nature, and iii) a de-institutionalized environment. The design project was purposefully situated within the specific constraint of an urban environment, in downtown Toronto, Ontario; where the goal is to achieve a spatial character that embodies these three design factors where daylight and access to views of nature are limited by the urban context. The project demonstrates a method of daylight centric design that utilizes three primary techniques for daylighting that were extracted from precedent analysis: i) Direct light, ii) Bounced light, and iii) Diffused light. Through the methodical harvesting and manipulation of daylight, the project highlights its potential for positively enhancing patient experience and aptly demonstrates the curation of varied experiential narratives in light.

Curating light: daylight-centric design for promoting wellness

Daylighting in architecture has traditionally been a practice-based, intuitive and experiential process, based on the common notion that daylight enhances our spatial and sensory awareness. This Thesis tests the effectiveness of daylight as a mechanism for creating a psychological and emotional impact, and promoting wellness within the confines of designed spaces. The creation of the project is based on a Maggie’s Cancer Centre model of patient-centric design. Maggie’s Centers have been traditionally located in suburban settings, where they may be ideally oriented for day-light infiltration and outdoor connectivity. The Maggie’s model promotes three primary design factors: i) abundance of daylight, ii) connection to nature, and iii) a de-institutionalized environment. The design project was purposefully situated within the specific constraint of an urban environment, in downtown Toronto, Ontario; where the goal is to achieve a spatial character that embodies these three design factors where daylight and access to views of nature are limited by the urban context. The project demonstrates a method of daylight centric design that utilizes three primary techniques for daylighting that were extracted from precedent analysis: i) Direct light, ii) Bounced light, and iii) Diffused light. Through the methodical harvesting and manipulation of daylight, the project highlights its potential for positively enhancing patient experience and aptly demonstrates the curation of varied experiential narratives in light.

Accurate Simulation of Light Propagation in Complex Skin Tissues Using an Improved Tetrahedron-Based Monte Carlo Method

Understanding light transportation in skin tissues can help improve clinical efficacy in the laser treatment of dermatosis, such as port-wine stains (PWS). Patient-specific cross-bridge PWS vessels are structurally complicated and considerably influence laser energy deposition due to shading effects. The shading effect of PWS vessels is investigated using a tetrahedron-based Monte Carlo (MC) method with extended boundary condition (TMCE). In TMCE, body-fitted tetrahedra are generated in different tissues, and the precision of photon–surface interaction can be considerably improved via mesh refinement. Such improvement is difficult to achieve with the widely used voxel-based MC method. To fit the real physical boundary, the extended boundary condition is adapted by extending photon propagation to the semi-infinite tissue layers while restricting the statistics of photon propagation in the computational domain. Results indicate that the shading parameters, such as the cross angle, vessel distance, and geometric shadow (GS), of cross-bridge blood vessel pairs determine the peak characteristics of photon deposition in deep vessels by affecting the relative deposition of collimated and diffused light. Collimated light is shaded, attenuated, and partially transformed into diffused light due to the increase in vessel distance and GS of vessel pairs, resulting in difficulty in treating deep and shallow vessels with one laser pulse. The TMCE method can be used for the individualized and precise forecasting of laser energy deposition based on the morphology and embedding characteristics of vascular lesions.

Remote Reflectivity Sensor for Industrial Applications

A low-cost optical reflectivity sensor is proposed in this paper, able to detect the presence of objects or surface optical properties variations, at a distance of up to 20 m. A collimated laser beam is pulsed at 10 kHz, and a synchronous digital detector coherently measures the back-diffused light collected through a 1-inch biconvex lens. The sensor is a cost-effective solution for punctual measurement of the surface reflection at different distances. To enhance the interference immunity, an algorithm based on a double-side digital baseline restorer is proposed and implemented to accurately detect the amplitude of the reflected light. As results show, the sensor is robust against ambient light and shows a strong sensitivity on a wide reflection range. The capability of the proposed sensor was evaluated experimentally for object detection and recognition, in addition to dedicated measurement systems, like remote encoders or keyphasors, realized far from the object to be measured.

A PICTURE BY DOSTOEVSKY AND A PANORAMA BY TOLSTOY: ON THE HISTORY OF A PARALLEL IN THE WORKS BY VYACH. IVANOV AND ANDRÉ GIDE

The article deals with the pictorial analogy used in V. Ivanov and André Gide’s works on Dosto-evsky. According to the analogy, the artistic technique of Tolstoy can be associated with the diffused light, while the one of Dostoevsky — with the art of chiaroscuro. We are trying to understand if Gide could have been familiar with the work by Ivanov; what historical, literary and art history works could have served as a common source for this analogy, and how the analogy functions in the works by the two authors.

Exploring the Effect of the Number of Characteristic Groups in Melaminebased Polymers on the Photocatalytic Performance

: Three polymers containing different numbers of thiophene groups were constructed. Degradation experiments on the aqueous solutions of tetracycline and norfloxacin revealed that the polymer with three thiophene groups in the monomer indicated the best degradation efficiency of 73.7% for tetracycline and 56.9% for norfloxacin. Moreover, this polymer had a relatively stronger ability to separate and transport photocharging carriers under visible light. Therefore, the photocatalytic performance of conjugated polymers could be regulated by changing the number of characteristic groups. Background: Antibiotic residues in the environment are considered as one of the most serious sources of environmental pollution. Although catalyst photodegradation is regarded as the most promising strategy to solve environmental pollution-related problems, it still requires new and advanced photocatalysts. Objective: To design new organic conjugated material structures. Material and Methods: Three polymers (ThME-1, ThME-2, and ThME-3) were prepared by the condensation of melamine with 2, 5-thiophenedicarboxaldehyde, thieno[3, 2-b]thiophene-2, 5-dicarbaldehyde, and dithieno[3, 2-b:2’, 3’-d]thiophene-2, 6-dicarbaldehyde. The photocatalytic performance of these polymers was investigated by testing their diffused light absorption capacity, photocurrent response, AC impedance, specific surface area, fluorescence, and thermal stability. Results: ThME-3, containing three thiophene groups in the monomer, manifested the best degradation efficiency of 73.7% for tetracycline and 56.9% for norfloxacin. Conclusion: The photocatalytic performance of conjugated polymers could be regulated by changing the number of characteristic groups.

Studying Optical Characteristics of Diffused Light Reflecting from Naturally Senescing Leaves of Deciduous Trees

Study object included leaves of deciduous trees in the Krasnodar Territory at different stages of senescing visually manifested in their color alteration. Study subject was the optical characteristics of light diffused reflection from green, yellow-green and yellow leaves of deciduous trees in the Krasnodar Territory during the autumn season. Work objective lies in identifying the possibility to establish differences between green leaves of deciduous trees, and yellow-green and yellow leaves of deciduous trees using the terrain multispectral and hyperspectral sounding methods, as well as collecting information on spectral characteristics of the diffused light being reflected from various biological objects. Results of quantitative and qualitative analysis of data obtained through the diffused light reflectance spectroscopy from leaves of deciduous trees are presented. Narrow-band vegetation indices mNDVI705, mSR705, CRI1, SIPI and PSRI were used in quantitative analysis of data on the diffused light reflection spectra obtained from green, yellow-green and yellow leaves of deciduous trees. It was revealed that the use of narrow-band vegetation indices in the remote sensing algorithms using multi- and hyperspectral cameras makes it possible to rather accurately distinguish leaves at different stages of senescing. Optical characteristics of diffused light reflection from green, yellow-green and yellow leaves of deciduous trees, which are typical species of trees in urban and rural plantings in the Krasnodar Territory, are described for the first time