To meet EU energy and climate targets, energy efficiency of the existing building stock must be drasticallyimproved. Within IEA ECB Annex 56 one of the best practice energy renovations is a group of multi-familybuildings in Sweden, recently thoroughly renovated. Residents' perception of renovations and appraisal ofimplemented measures were captured by interviews with tenants and a literature revie

This paper examines the influence of land fragmentation on the value ofvegetables produced in the Skopje and Southeastern regions of the Republic ofMacedonia. The analysis uses models such as a Cobb-Douglas production function as well as a General Linear Model. The findings support a negative and statistically significant impact of land fragmentation on the productivity and profitability of vegeta

This paper reconsiders the reliability of the results obtained by Hristov et al. (2012) from the input-output analysis of water consumption, by taking into account the effect of uncertainty inherent in the data. The imprecision and uncertainty is studied within a workable fuzzy environment as introduced byBeynon et al. (2005), where rank reversal is plausible. In addition, the water-intensive stru

This study analyzed direct and indirect relationships in water consumption by Macedonian economic sectors using virtual water in an input–output framework. Macedonia was found to be characterized by intensive water consumption, with some sectors having a significant virtual water content in their products. Virtual water multipliers were used to analyze the trade balance and determine whethernation

Sustainable management of water resources is imperative in the Western Balkan (WB) region, due to the seasonal, spatial and quality distribution of these resources. This paper analyzed water consumption and associated relationships between the economic sectors in Macedonia in 2005, based on input–output (IO) analysis. Using an environmentally extended IO framework, water consumption was investigat

Using a mixed input-output framework, this study examined potential changes in sector output and water requirements at national level in Macedonia arising from climate change. By defining three climate change scenarios and exogenously specifying the warming shocks for five key agricultural sub-sectors, the direct and indirect effects on the economy in terms of output and water demand were quantifi

Considering the scale of global warming, we make an attempt to assess theimpact of climate change on Macedonian agriculture. Farmers’ adaptation is taken into account by using an alternative specification of the Ricardian model based on the use of aridity indices to capture the non-linear response of farmland values to temperature and precipitation. Econometric results indicate that winter and spr

This work presents the result of a questionnaire study which investigates the design of dissuasive emergency signage, i.e. signage conveying a message of not utilizing a specific exit door. The work analyses and tests a set of key features of dissuasive emergency signage using the Theory of Affordances. The variables having the largest impact on observer preference, interpretation and noticeabilit

The double sign anomaly in hydrogenated amorphous silicon, observed by LeComber et.al. [1] in 1977, has remained puzzling ever since. Recently we attacked this problem from two different directions using the equation-of-motion method. Calculations reproduce the double sign anomaly and were rationalised in terms of the behaviour of the spectral function. In a new type of calculation the motion of a

The equation-of-motion method offers advantages in the calculation of properties of large structural models, of the kind recently developed for a-Si (104 or more atoms). Originally developed for calculating densities of states, it has been shown to be adaptable to a wide variety of other purposes, including the study of localization, conductivity and the Hall effect. Recently we have shown how it

We review the problem posed by the calculation of the optical constants of solids and the adaptation of the equation-of-motion method for this purpose. In the past crystalline materials were studied by employing Bloch's theorem, but for amorphous materials and surfaces symmetry cannot generally be used to reduce the computation to manageable proportions. The equation-of-motion method avoids the ne

A new method is presented for calculating optical properties within the framework of the self-consistent linear muffin-tin orbital (LMTO) band-structure theory. We show how Green's second identity along with the commutation relation between the position and Hamiltonian operators may be used to calculate, independently of the gauge, the velocity matrix elements required for optical properties. The

Recent density-functional studies of the structural and electronic properties of a wide range of transition-metal sulphides (Raybaud P, Kresse G, Hafner J and Toulhoat H 1997 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 9 11085, 11 107) are extended to consider the effect of magnetic ordering in sulphides formed by 3d transition metals. We find that CrS is well described as an itinerant antiferromagnet and that the

A recently developed fully unconstrained approach to non-collinear magnetism has been applied to the investigation of the magnetic ground state of triangular free-standing Cr and Mn monolayers and overlayers on Cu(111) substrates. Such systems represent a physical realization of a frustrated two-dimensional antiferromagnet. We find that the ground state of the Cr monolayers is non-collinear; it sh

The crystalline and magnetic structures of all known polymorphs of Mn have been investigated using generalized spin-density functional theory based on an unconstrained vector-field description of the magnetization density. We find that at atomic volumes smaller than 12 Å3, the magnetic ground state of α-Mn is collinear with magnetic moments ranging between 0 and 3 µB depending on the local symmetr

A maximum likelihood methodology for a general class of models is presented, using an approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) approach. The typical target of ABC methods are models with intractable likelihoods, and we combine an ABC-MCMC sampler with so-called "data cloning" for maximum likelihood estimation. Accuracy of ABC methods relies on the use of a small threshold value for comparing simulat