The effect of thermal cycling on the thermal and chemical stability of paraffin phase change materials (PCMs) composites.

This paper is the first study to present the long-term performance of a gypsum and cement plasters which can be used to retrofit existing buildings and reduce their energy consumption. It is comprised of high energy storage loaded granules, known as composite PCMs or form-stable PCMs (FSPCMs), containing three types of organic phase change materials (PCM), with phase change transitions between 18 °C and 25 °C. PCMs are effective thermal energy storage systems as they improve thermal comfort of occupants in buildings by reducing temperature fluctuations.

Optimising peak energy reduction in networks of buildings.

Buildings are amongst the world's largest energy consumers and simultaneous peaks in demand from networks of buildings can decrease electricity system stability. Current mitigation measures either entail wasteful supply-side over-specification or complex centralised demand-side control. Hence, a simple schema is developed for decentralised, self-organising building-to-building load coordination that requires very little information exchange and no top-down management-analogous to other complex systems with short range interactions, such as coordination between flocks of birds or synchronisation in fireflies.

Mining Social Media to Identify Heat Waves.

Heat waves are one of the deadliest of natural hazards and their frequency and intensity will likely increase as the climate continues to warm. A challenge in studying these phenomena is the lack of a universally accepted quantitative definition that captures both temperature anomalies and associated mortality. We test the hypothesis that social media mining can be used to identify heat wave mortality.

Pattern Formation on Networks: from Localised Activity to Turing Patterns.

Networks of interactions between competing species are used to model many complex systems, such as in genetics, evolutionary biology or sociology and knowledge of the patterns of activity they can exhibit is important for understanding their behaviour. The emergence of patterns on complex networks with reaction-diffusion dynamics is studied here, where node dynamics interact via diffusion via the network edges. Through the application of a generalisation of dynamical systems analysis this work reveals a fundamental connection between small-scale modes of activity on networks and localised pattern formation seen throughout science, such as solitons, breathers and localised buckling.

Route to hyperchaos in a system of coupled oscillators with multistability.

This work presents the results of a detailed experimental study into the transition between synchronized, low-dimensional, and unsynchronized, high-dimensional dynamics using a system of coupled electronic chaotic oscillators. Novel data analysis techniques have been employed to reveal that a hyperchaotic attractor can arise from the amalgamation of two nonattracting sets. These originate from initially multistable low-dimensional attractors which experience a smooth transition from low- to high-dimensional chaotic behavior, losing stability through a bubbling bifurcation.