Full scale model investigation on the acoustical protection of a balcony-like façade device (L).
The acoustical insertion losses produced by a balcony-like structure in front of a window are examined experimentally. The results suggest that the balcony ceiling is the most appropriate location for the installation of artificial sound absorption for the purpose of improving the broadband insertion loss, while the side walls are found to be the second best. Results also indicate that the acoustic modes of the balcony opening and the balcony cavity resonance in a direction normal to the window could have a great impact on the one-third octave band insertion losses. The maximum broadband road traffic noise insertion loss achieved is about 7 dB.
Adopting Specially Designed Balconies to Achieve Substantial Noise Reduction for Residential Buildings
Noise from road traffic is a major environmental problem encountered in metropolitan cities including Hong Kong where housing developments would need to be located next to heavily trafficked roads due to scarcity of land supply. Conventional mitigation measures such as building setback, building design, podium and architectural fins would usually be considered but are inadequate for some really difficult sites. Hence, it is necessary to explore innovative mitigation designs for inclusion into housing development designs. Balconies with special designs would be promising in view of the high-rise residential buildings in Hong Kong. This paper outlines a literature review on how balconies can be used for noise mitigation. It also provides some practicable examples in Hong Kong on the use of specially designed balconies with different noise insulation strategies. Noise benefits of these specially designed balconies were estimated or measured. Though the noise benefits may only be applicable to the particular sites and under the particular situations, the examples illustrate that adopting suitable noise insulation strategy or a combination of them in a balcony design could be an effective noise mitigation solution for difficult residential sites.
New Approaches for Positron Emission Tomography ( PET ) in Breast Carcinoma
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which allows the quantitative evaluation of the distribution of several pharmaceuticals in a target area. PET therefore provides valuable information on the biochemical and biological activity inside a living subject in a noninvasive way, combining techniques applied in nuclear medicine with the precise localization achieved by computerized image reconstruction.