Low-temperature radiant heating systems can be considered as suitable candidates for the refurbishment of old heating systems. These systems are proven to save energy, however, their drawback is their impact on the creation of radiant temperature asymmetry and local thermal discomfort, especially in old buildings where the temperatures of surfaces (for example external walls with a low level of insulation and large windows) are low. This study aims to evaluate the potential application of low-temperature radiant ceiling heating systems (28–38 °C) in old and energy-renovated buildings, based on subjective experiments and thermal comfort criteria such as thermal sensation, comfort, satisfaction, and sensation asymmetry votes. Later, in the Discussion section, the guideline for the radiant temperature asymmetry for the warm ceiling presented in ASHRAE Standard-55 is corrected for relatively low air temperatures and different surface temperatures corresponding to “about neutral” conditions for winter clothing. Findings of this research show that the radiant ceiling heating system operating at low temperatures (33–38 °C) can provide fairly neutral thermal sensation and satisfactory comfort at the majority of body-parts, if the building envelope satisfies advanced building energy-efficiency regulations. Additionally, the experimental analyses imply that limitation of 5% suggested by ASHRAE-55 for the percentage of dissatisfied occupants feeling uncomfortable due to overhead radiation can be elevated to 10%.

In this paper, we present the design of a social robot, Nancy, which is developed as a platform for engaging social interaction. Targeting for a social, safe, interactive and user-friendly robot mate, the design philosophy of Nancy is presented with mechanical, electrical, artificial skin and software specifications. In particular, there are 32 degrees of freedom (DOFs) through the whole body of Nancy, and the social intelligence is implemented based on vision, audio and control subsystems.

In tropical climates, a rising demand for active air-conditioning leads to a strong increase of electricity consumption. Compared to the energy demand for the sensible cooling of air the high humidity (in the order of 20 g water per kg dry air) in the tropics results in a significantly high air-dehumidification load. Handling the dehumidification load and sensible cooling load separately can reduce the electricity demand for air-conditioning considerably if the dehumidification is driven by heat energy (e.g. solar thermal or waste heat) instead of electricity. At the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore (SERIS), an experimental two-stage air-dehumidification system consisting of a membrane unit and an adsorption based desiccant unit, has been installed and analysed. The membrane unit pre-dehumidifies the ambient air, which is then further dehumidified and simultaneous evaporatively cooled by an Evaporatively COoled Sorptive (ECOS) dehumidification and heat exchange unit. The aim of this study is to evaluate the dehumidification performance of the two-stage air-dehumidification system under tropical climate conditions and different operating parameters such as air flow rate and regeneration air temperature. A numerical model was developed for the ECOS and the membrane unit in MATLAB which was then coupled with TRNSYS software in order to create a model for the two-stage dehumidification system. The results of our investigations show that the two-stage system is able to dehumidify ambient air by 8 to 10 g water per kg of dry air under the warm and humid climate conditions of Singapore. Thermal COP of up to 0.6 was obtained