No abstract

Abnormally hard breast fillet consistency began to emerge in commercial broiler chickens around 2010. Due to the remarkable muscle hardness, the condition acquired the vernacular name ‘wooden breast myopathy’. This myopathy starts to develop after two weeks of age at the earliest and typically proceeds into chronic myodegeneration in three to four weeks of age. The lesion begins focally and typically develops into a diffuse lesion that involves the entire major pectoral muscle. The restricted location of wooden breast lesion in the m. pectoralis major distinguishes it from several other myodegenerative diseases that widely affect the skeletal muscle system and often the cardiac and smooth muscle systems too. Although industry-wide incidence rates are difficult to assess, it has been estimated that approximately 5-10% of commercially produced breast fillets exhibit severe WB. Even at low incidence rates, the costs to industry are substantial, as breast fillets with the wooden breast condition are often downgraded and sold at a discount, used for further processing, or in extreme cases, discarded. Because the etiology of wooden breast is still unclear, in the future, study of the early lesions, pathogenesis and the possible reduction of animal welfare are likely to gain more attention.

Traditional rural houses are one of the most endangered forms of cultural and built heritage in Serbia today. In the past, the building of rural houses was in interaction with nature and the conditions of the immediate environment, especially in terms of its climatic and geographic properties. Today, they are often abandoned to decay, or replaced with new buildings, removing any connection with tradition. Problems related to their protection and regeneration to a great extent could be connected either with the properties of the original materials used for their construction, since they are usually not very durable, or with the level of how comfortable they are, which falls below modern living standards. Through a review of types and methods of building of the so-called half-timbered (bondruk) style houses, as well as an analysis of their achieved thermal performances and potentials, this paper strives to point out the real need for their modernisation and optimal possibilities for their energy improvement, with respect to the need for the protection of their integrity and authenticity during the renovation process.

This paper presents the methodology for the implementation of building typology principles as a tool for the strategic planning of residential building stock energy retrofits on a municipal level in Serbia. Research was conducted under the IEE EPISCOPE (Intelligent Energy Europe EPISCOPE/TABULA project) project with the aim of developing an adequate tool for creating building stock energy retrofit management strategies on a local level. An approach that envisions the diversity and uneven spatial distribution of building stock in smaller scale municipalities and includes statistically relevant sampling of all relevant building types was developed and tested in the pilot project that focused on the city of Vršac. Two options for local typology development were formulated: a top-down approach, which relies on the data from the national typology or other available databases by reducing them to the local level, and a bottom-up approach, which represents a new data gathering and processing method. Both approaches were tested in the pilot project and the results are compared in this paper. From the conclusions of these analyses, a common methodology for the development of local building typologies has been defined. It can be used in the strategic planning of building stock, whether for the purpose of developing local energy action plans (LEAPs) or other purposes internationally.

As one of the aspects of sustainable architecture, the energy efficiency of buildings has largely come to life and has found its practical application in modern construction practice. Active action towards the achievement of the adequate energy performance of buildings implies the creation of appropriate regulations, providing basic guidelines for securing energy efficiency in the design and construction of buildings. In that sense, with a dozen years of delay in relation to the introduction of the EPBD, Serbia has adopted its legal regulations regarding energy efficiency in buildings, being in force since 2012. Respecting the basic guidelines of the original directive, the regulations in Serbia were the subject of major changes in relation to the previous ones, making a major shift in the boundaries of the relevant parameters and the basic methodology of calculating the energy performance of buildings. However, in practice, it has been shown that some of the factors that are important for the design and energy behaviour of the buildings have been treated inadequately. This particularly refers to the problem of thermal bridges, whose impact on the overall energy performance of the buildings is too simplified. Consequently, depending on the complexity of the building, the prescribed calculation methodology often yields significantly fewer energy needs than they actually are. By taking the view that the influence of thermal bridges, regardless of their type and character, is treated as an arbitrary magnification of surface transmission loss in the function of magnifying the surface of the thermal envelope, the real impact of both linear and point heat losses is neglected. While the issue of an adequate calculation of linear losses is directly related to the way of designing the building, that is, to the conception of details, the question of the impact of point losses is a consequence of the structure of thermal envelope elements. The paper presents two types of critical cases of thermal bridges: the treatment of linear thermal bridges for which research has shown that their influence can significantly exceed those envisaged by the current rulebook, and the influence of point heat bridges, as seen in the specific case of ventilated façades in which this problem is present.