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Visual connection to nature has been demonstrated to have a positive impact on attention restoration, stress reduction, and overall health and well-being. Inside buildings, windows are the primary means of providing a connection to the outdoors, and nature views even through a window may have similar effects on the occupants. Given that humans recognize environments through multi-sensory integration, a window view may also affect occupants' thermal perception. We assessed the influence of having a window with a view on thermal and emotional responses as well as on cognitive performance. We conducted a randomized crossover laboratory experiment with 86 participants, in spaces with and without windows. The chamber kept the air and window surface temperature at 28 °C, a slightly warm condition. The outcome measures consisted of subjective evaluations (e.g., thermal perception, emotion), skin temperature measurements and cognitive performance tests. In the space with versus without windows, the thermal sensation was significantly cooler (0.3 thermal sensation vote; equivalent to 0.74 °C lower), and 12 % more participants were thermally comfortable. Positive emotions (e.g., happy, satisfied) were higher and negative emotions (e.g., sad, drowsy) were lower for the participants in the window versus the windowless condition. Working memory and the ability to concentrate were higher for participants in the space with versus without windows, but there were no significant differences in short-term memory, planning, and creativity performance. Considering the multiple effects of window access, providing a window with a view in a workplace is important for the comfort, emotion, and working memory and concentration of occupants.factors that may differ when there are simultaneous inputs from other sensory systems (e.g., auditory, visual, tactile). Therefore, we must consider the possible interactions between visual and thermal perceptions. Ignoring the possible connections between these sensory systems could lead to ineffective design that could result in occupant discomfort or decreased performance, or even building performance issues such as energy waste.While it is not known conclusively whether occupants' thermal responses differ when there is visual connection to the outdoors, there is some prior research that suggests this could be important. Some evidence shows that a visual connection to the outdoors can have a positive impact on the occupants' overall perceptions of the built environment, leading to flexibility in their expectations [28]. For instance, if we take this general concept and hypothesize that having a view to the outdoors could help occupants increase their satisfaction with a wider indoor temperature range, then we could relax the temperature setpoints, which would then allow a reduction in building energy consumption [29][30][31][32]. A reasonable amount of variability in the acceptable range may even be preferable for occupants [3,14]. For designers, it would be important to define the relevant parameter...

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Transient forebrain or global ischemia induces neuronal death in vulnerable CA1 pyramidal cells with many features. A brief period of ischemia, i.e., ischemic preconditioning, or a modified reperfusion such as ischemic postconditioning, can afford robust protection of CA1 neurons against ischemic challenge. Therefore, we investigated the effect of ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning on neural cell apoptosis in rats. The result showed that both ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning may attenuate the neural cell death and DNA fragment in the hippocampal CA1 region. Further western blot study suggested that ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning down-regulates the protein of cleaved caspase-3, caspase-6, caspase-9 and Bax, but up-regulates the protein Bcl-2. These findings suggest that ischemic preconditioning and postconditioning have a neuroprotective role on global brain ischemia in rats through the same effect on inhibition of apoptosis.

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An n-Cu 2 O layer formed a high-quality buried junction with p-Cu 2 O to increase the photovoltage and thus to shift the turn-on voltage positively. Mott−Schottky measurements confirmed that the improvement benefited from a positive shift in flat-band potential. The obtained extremely positive onset potential, 0.8 V RHE in n-Cu 2 O/AuAg/p-Cu 2 O, is comparable with measurements from water reduction catalysts. The AuAg alloy sandwiched between the homojunction of n-Cu 2 O and p-Cu 2 O improved the photocatalytic performance. This alloy both served as an electron relay and promoted electron-hole pair generation in nearby semiconductors; the charge transfer between n-Cu 2 O and p-Cu 2 O in the sandwich structure was measured with X-ray absorption spectra. The proposed sandwich structure can be considered as a new direction for the design of efficient solar-related devices.