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This study aims to investigate how a very particular learning environment, namely, partition rooms, affect students’ teaching experience and further explore if students’ learning styles is a pertinent determinant. Partition rooms are very common in Saudi Arabia when lectures are held by male instructors for female students. The male instructor delivers his lesson behind a glass wall, creating an environment of limited visual and auditory interaction. Various digital tools are present, meant to overcome the gap caused by the lack of direct student–teacher contact.

The researchers collected data from a sample of 109 female students who are studying at Level 4 Computer Science Department, College of Computer Sciences and Information Technology, at a public university in Saudi Arabia. All of them experienced a minimum of two courses undertaken in a partition room. The survey consists of two parts with a total of 53 questions. The first 20 questions were adopted from the perceptual learning style preference questionnaire (PLSP).

Research findings reveal that students are affected differently by the various dimensions of the partition room depending on their learning style.

There are fewer results in the literature that study learners of our particular group, namely, Saudi females. The study focuses on students studying IT and related fields. This study is almost unique, as most studies of the kind are related to the experience of females learning English as a foreign language. Therefore, the authors’ research gives much-needed insight into the conditions and perceptions of female students studying toward their degree in a technical field.

Investigation of housing adaptability is related to understanding factors that influence project transformation. Factors may be associated with the design and project stage as also alternative uses to existing buildings. To structure methodology for criteria analysis of adaptability, the research aims to verify the importance level of factors related to adaptability and flexibility context in architecture.

Employing a multicriteria analysis and a diagnosis performed with architecture professionals, criteria importance identified in a bibliographic survey is contacted.

With harmonious results, key elements highlighted in the diagnosis are discussed. Adaptability and flexibility are mainly related to balance in the design of spaces and their connections, so the user can have control administrating the organization of their habitat.

As a complex subject, involving legal, social and cultural issues, the multicriteria method supports the scientific analysis of data. The results can be used in a practical case study as assessment of housing adaptability and flexibility, as a useful tool to decision support in architectural project.

We wish to die peacefully in a manner suited to our values and taste. We also wish to be attended at our deathbed by people whom we love and try to find meaning in death. Here, I evaluate nursing of dying patients with regard to alienation of life and death from our daily living, problems concerning the judgment of death, how to die in a manner that fits the person's values and taste, and nursing for spiritual healing with traditional views of life and death, and cultural background of attending dying persons of the Japanese.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to determine hotel customers’ preference among hotel amenities pricing strategies, specifically a bundled, all-inclusive charge in the form of a resort fee, a limited choice resort fee at a lower price or a la carte pricing, and to determine whether hotel customer prefer bundled or partitioned pricing when faced with a mandatory resort fee.

An online survey of participants aged 18 years and older who had taken an overnight leisure trip in the past six months is conducted. A fixed-choice set conjoint analysis is performed to analyze the 353 usable surveys.

Results of this conjoint analysis show that 67 per cent of respondents prefer bundled pricing over partitioned pricing. Respondents also show higher utility for no resort fee and paying for amenities based on usage instead of being forced to pay a mandatory resort fee.

Guest preferences for pricing strategies can provide hotel operators with valuable information on how to establish pricing structures. Results suggest that hotel operators could benefit from presenting a bundled price inclusive of room rates and mandatory fees.

This is the only known study that examines mandatory fees in which customers receive additional amenities or services in exchange for an additional surcharge. This study also adds to the literature on pricing research in the hospitality industry.

Adequate protection from external noise and vibration, adequate control of noise emission to keep the neighbours happy, control of office services plant and equipment to avoid poor working conditions, optimum layout, finishes and fittings for good acoustics and appropriate sound insulation, special acoustic applications — this article, by Jeffrey Charles of Bickerdike Allen Partners, is concerned with the technical know‐how necessary for good acoustic conditions in and around the office, and the actions the facilities manager can and should take to achieve them.

Recognized for their high density and resources conservation, townhouses are attracting homebuyers and builders once again. With housing affordability being an issue in many nations, the interior and the exterior must be cost effective. Their proportions, however, pose a particular design challenge. The typically narrow width limit design options and the long footprint restrict the amount of light that reaches the dwelling's center.

This article presents strategies used by designers of notable townhouses with a width smaller than 6 meters to best solve those challenges. The authors studied interior design of 28 narrow units and drew conclusions about key principles that facilitated their planning. The research demonstrates that space efficiency can be achieved by employing open plans, minimizing circulation, using light colors, varying ceiling heights, suitable window placement and creative storage fixtures.

Under the concept that housing was an act instead of a product, John Habraken launched a campaign against mass housing in the 1960s. His counterattack was architecturally and institutionally developed afterwards, and fully expressed by the so-called Open Building, in which users could make decision regarding their dwellings and easily re-arrange them. A number of experimental projects were subsequently constructed worldwide.

After years, the actual situation of use of these projects is, to a certain extent, unknown. Their facades may have faded, their pipelines may be ageing, and the design may be out of fashion. Correspondingly, various changes are expected. Could these changes be controlled in the original design? Were these projects enhanced after the changes? Did the users have a positive response? These questions are far from being answered.

This article is based on the post-occupancy investigation of two Open Building projects, the “Molenvliet Project” in the Netherlands and the “Wuxi Experimental Project” in China, which played an exemplary role, especially in the early years. In this study, the users’ assessment of their living environment was highly emphasised, and the changes to the both exterior and interior were specifically recorded. The purpose of the investigation is to determine how the architects’ intention was practised, and to learn from them.

Looks at the meaning of “acoustic privacy”, and how the requirement varies with the task and the factors which control it; the open plan and cellular office environment – the essential factors which should be considered; how the “acoustic data” provided by developers and manufacturers, particularly those of partition suppliers, should be interpreted; what can be done to optimize the varied uses of conference and management areas to maintain confidentiality and audibility: some dos and don′ts of audio‐visual systems; and the common problems and the remedial action which can be taken.

This paper aims to study and assess a new approach for prediction of changes of pressure during gas discharge inside the room protected by fixed gaseous extinguishing system by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

The research program consisted of two stages. The first stage was dedicated to the experimental measurements of pressure changes during extinguishing gas discharge into the test chamber in a real scale (70 m³), for two relief openings that differ in their area. The next step was about performing CFD simulations forecasting pressure changes during gas discharge into the numerically represented test chamber. Estimation of the correctness and usefulness of the CFD model was based on a comparison of the CFD results with standard calculations and experimental measurements.

Numerical modelling of pressure changes during the carbon dioxide discharge was very close to the experiment. The obtained results had sufficient accuracy (in most cases relative error <15%), while the standard approach predicted pressure changes with an average relative error over 36% and did not estimate the decrease of pressure at all.

Conducted research confirms the viability of the new approach in modelling the pressure changes and indicates additional benefits of the numerical analyses in the determination of the fire safety of protected premises.

This exploratory study, a Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Western Ontario in 2013, examines the materially embedded relations of power between library users and staff in public libraries and how building design regulates spatial behavior according to organizational objectives. It considers three public library buildings as organization spaces (Dale & Burrell, 2008) and determines the extent to which their spatial organizations reproduce the relations of power between the library and its public that originated with the modern public library building type ca. 1900. Adopting a multicase study design, I conducted site visits to three, purposefully selected public library buildings of similar size but various ages. Site visits included: blueprint analysis; organizational document analysis; in-depth, semi-structured interviews with library users and library staff; cognitive mapping exercises; observations; and photography.

Despite newer approaches to designing public library buildings, the use of newer information technologies, and the emergence of newer paradigms of library service delivery (e.g., the user-centered model), findings strongly suggest that the library as an organization still relies on many of the same socio-spatial models of control as it did one century ago when public library design first became standardized. The three public libraries examined show spatial organizations that were designed primarily with the librarian, library materials, and library operations in mind far more than the library user or the user’s many needs. This not only calls into question the public library’s progressiveness over the last century but also hints at its ability to survive in the new century.