Purpose. We investigated the feasibility of assessing sexual interest in hetero-and homosexual men using two information-processing methods, namely a choice reaction time task and priming. The participants were expected to have longer reaction times for sexually explicit when compared with non-explicit pictures due to sexual contentinduced delay. In addition, the reaction times of the heterosexual (N ¼ 15) and homosexual (N ¼ 11) men for pictures corresponding with their sexual interest were compared to pictures not corresponding with their sexual interest. Heterosexual men were expected to have longer reaction times during the presentation of sexually explicit female as opposed to male pictures, whereas homosexual men were expected to have the opposite pattern.Method. The participants were presented either sexually explicit or non-explicit male and female target pictures (and primes that preceded the targets in random combinations) while simultaneously performing a choice reaction time task in three phases each containing a total of 160 prime-target pairs.Results. Both expectations were confirmed in phase 1 of the study. In phase 2, the means differed in the expected way, but the effects were not significant. In phase 3, the expected effect was moderated by a complex priming effect.Conclusions. The results suggest that the choice reaction time task is a promising way of measuring sexual interest but that questions of habituation should be given more attention in future studies.

The recent research on highly insulated structures presents controversial conclusions on risks in moisture safety. This paper addresses these controversial issues through investigating the hygrothermal performance of energy efficient envelope structures under high moisture loads. The experiments consist of built-in moisture and rain leakage tests in mineral wool insulated structures. A heat and moisture transfer simulation model is developed to examine the drying-out ability in both warm and cold seasons. The results show that the energy efficient structures have an excellent drying out ability against built-in and leakage moisture. The difference in the drying ability is limited compared to conventional structures. A critical leakage moisture amount reaching the insulation cavity for a wood frame wall is determined to be between 6.9–20.7 g in a single rain event occurring every other day. Further research is required to target highly insulated structures, particularly addressing water vapor diffusion and convection.

The article presents experimental studies of typical Finnish highly insulated (HI) envelopes with thermal resistance values ( R value) for the wall and roof inside the ventilation cavity between 7.7 and 8.1 m2K/W and 13 m2K/W, respectively. The conditions in the ventilation cavities were studied by using typical and increased R values for the exterior part of the cavity, which were 0.18 m2K/W and 1.57 m2K/W in the walls, and 0.13 m2K/W and 2.13 m2K/W for the roof. With higher exterior R values of 1.57 m2K/W and 2.13 m2K/W, the cavity temperature increased only after closing the inlet gap of the cavities. If the cavity inlet was closed, the restriction of the outlet gap from 20–25 mm to 10 mm had no significant effect on the temperatures. A closed ventilation inlet resulted in increased absolute humidity in the cavity, which indicates that the restriction of cavity ventilation should be made with care to avoid impairing the drying-out ability. The computational analysis showed that the optimal air change rates in the wall and roof cavities of HI structures were 4–40 1/h and 20 1/h, respectively. The conventional 22-mm-thick wood cladding enables safe cavity conditions in HI walls if the vapor barrier is vapor tight and other moisture sources are low. A lower heat flux and additional heat loss caused by cloudless sky at night support the observation that HI roofs have a higher moisture risk. In HI roofs, a conventional exterior R value of 0.13 m2K/W should at least be increased to the range of 0.3–0.4 m2K/W, which is achieved, for example, by a 20-mm-thick mineral wool board under the roofing. The use of mold-resistant materials in the ventilation cavity is recommended to mitigate the possible ramifications of the moisture behavior of HI roofs.

This article presents long-term experimental studies on the moisture safety in the ventilation cavities of highly insulated (HI) structures. The tested HI-walls had thermal transmittances of 0.11-0.13 W/m2K. A wall with a thermal transmittance of 0.23 W/m2K represented the baseline wall in the test. In addition to walls, an HI-roof of a newly built house with a U-value of 0.08 W/m2K was measured. The results indicate that, in the ventilation cavity, the relative humidity of an HI-wall exceeds 1-7% of the humidity measured from the baseline wall during winter, which coincides with the 0.4-1.5ºC lower temperatures observed in the HI-walls. The mold risk in the ventilation cavities of the walls is low, as the value of the mold index (MI) remains below one, which indicates small amounts of microscopic mold only on surfaces. However, at the bottom of the cavity, the MI value reaches 1.4 due to lower temperatures. In the HI-roof, the MI values are between 1.0 and 2.0 in the middle of the cavity in winter. The reasons for the higher mold risk of the roof are the humid weather, the built-in moisture of the roof and the low heat flux from inside. The study confirms that, in the future, warmer weather and increased humidity can increase moisture risks in the ventilation cavities. The results support the use of materials that are more resistant to mold in the outer parts of structures.

Providing cellular network services inside residential or office buildings has become challenging, especially for fifth-generation networks that use higher carrier frequencies. Additionally, new energy-efficient buildings contain envelopes such as low-emissivity glass and new multi-layer thermal insulations, all of which -unintendedly but effectively -also block radio signals. As a solution to those problems of indoor coverage, we suggest the use of passive antenna systems embedded into the building walls. We propose a numerical evaluation method for determining the electromagnetic transmission coefficient and the thermal insulation of a typical building wall. Next, we investigate two antenna configurations embedded to the wall, a two-patch and a four-patch design, both operating around 3.5 GHz. We show from numerical simulations that those antenna systems increase the transmission coefficient of the wall. At the same time, we show that the four-patch design does not compromise the thermal insulation of the wall.