5,202 research outputs found

    Undergraduate Catalog of Studies, 2023-2024

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    Graduate Catalog of Studies, 2023-2024

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    Displacement and the Humanities: Manifestos from the Ancient to the Present

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    This is the final version. Available on open access from MDPI via the DOI in this recordThis is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/Manifestos Ancient Present)This volume brings together the work of practitioners, communities, artists and other researchers from multiple disciplines. Seeking to provoke a discourse around displacement within and beyond the field of Humanities, it positions historical cases and debates, some reaching into the ancient past, within diverse geo-chronological contexts and current world urgencies. In adopting an innovative dialogic structure, between practitioners on the ground - from architects and urban planners to artists - and academics working across subject areas, the volume is a proposition to: remap priorities for current research agendas; open up disciplines, critically analysing their approaches; address the socio-political responsibilities that we have as scholars and practitioners; and provide an alternative site of discourse for contemporary concerns about displacement. Ultimately, this volume aims to provoke future work and collaborations - hence, manifestos - not only in the historical and literary fields, but wider research concerned with human mobility and the challenges confronting people who are out of place of rights, protection and belonging

    Graduate Catalog of Studies, 2023-2024

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    Effects of municipal smoke-free ordinances on secondhand smoke exposure in the Republic of Korea

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    ObjectiveTo reduce premature deaths due to secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure among non-smokers, the Republic of Korea (ROK) adopted changes to the National Health Promotion Act, which allowed local governments to enact municipal ordinances to strengthen their authority to designate smoke-free areas and levy penalty fines. In this study, we examined national trends in SHS exposure after the introduction of these municipal ordinances at the city level in 2010.MethodsWe used interrupted time series analysis to assess whether the trends of SHS exposure in the workplace and at home, and the primary cigarette smoking rate changed following the policy adjustment in the national legislation in ROK. Population-standardized data for selected variables were retrieved from a nationally representative survey dataset and used to study the policy action’s effectiveness.ResultsFollowing the change in the legislation, SHS exposure in the workplace reversed course from an increasing (18% per year) trend prior to the introduction of these smoke-free ordinances to a decreasing (−10% per year) trend after adoption and enforcement of these laws (β2 = 0.18, p-value = 0.07; β3 = −0.10, p-value = 0.02). SHS exposure at home (β2 = 0.10, p-value = 0.09; β3 = −0.03, p-value = 0.14) and the primary cigarette smoking rate (β2 = 0.03, p-value = 0.10; β3 = 0.008, p-value = 0.15) showed no significant changes in the sampled period. Although analyses stratified by sex showed that the allowance of municipal ordinances resulted in reduced SHS exposure in the workplace for both males and females, they did not affect the primary cigarette smoking rate as much, especially among females.ConclusionStrengthening the role of local governments by giving them the authority to enact and enforce penalties on SHS exposure violation helped ROK to reduce SHS exposure in the workplace. However, smoking behaviors and related activities seemed to shift to less restrictive areas such as on the streets and in apartment hallways, negating some of the effects due to these ordinances. Future studies should investigate how smoke-free policies beyond public places can further reduce the SHS exposure in ROK

    Undergraduate Catalog of Studies, 2022-2023

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    Design of decorative 3D models: from geodesic ornaments to tangible assemblies

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    L'obiettivo di questa tesi è sviluppare strumenti utili per creare opere d'arte decorative digitali in 3D. Uno dei processi decorativi più comunemente usati prevede la creazione di pattern decorativi, al fine di abbellire gli oggetti. Questi pattern possono essere dipinti sull'oggetto di base o realizzati con l'applicazione di piccoli elementi decorativi. Tuttavia, la loro realizzazione nei media digitali non è banale. Da un lato, gli utenti esperti possono eseguire manualmente la pittura delle texture o scolpire ogni decorazione, ma questo processo può richiedere ore per produrre un singolo pezzo e deve essere ripetuto da zero per ogni modello da decorare. D'altra parte, gli approcci automatici allo stato dell'arte si basano sull'approssimazione di questi processi con texturing basato su esempi o texturing procedurale, o con sistemi di riproiezione 3D. Tuttavia, questi approcci possono introdurre importanti limiti nei modelli utilizzabili e nella qualità dei risultati. Il nostro lavoro sfrutta invece i recenti progressi e miglioramenti delle prestazioni nel campo dell'elaborazione geometrica per creare modelli decorativi direttamente sulle superfici. Presentiamo una pipeline per i pattern 2D e una per quelli 3D, e dimostriamo come ognuna di esse possa ricreare una vasta gamma di risultati con minime modifiche dei parametri. Inoltre, studiamo la possibilità di creare modelli decorativi tangibili. I pattern 3D generati possono essere stampati in 3D e applicati a oggetti realmente esistenti precedentemente scansionati. Discutiamo anche la creazione di modelli con mattoncini da costruzione, e la possibilità di mescolare mattoncini standard e mattoncini custom stampati in 3D. Ciò consente una rappresentazione precisa indipendentemente da quanto la voxelizzazione sia approssimativa. I principali contributi di questa tesi sono l'implementazione di due diverse pipeline decorative, un approccio euristico alla costruzione con mattoncini e un dataset per testare quest'ultimo.The aim of this thesis is to develop effective tools to create digital decorative 3D artworks. Real-world art often involves the use of decorative patterns to enrich objects. These patterns can be painted on the base or might be realized with the application of small decorative elements. However, their creation in digital media is not trivial. On the one hand, users can manually perform texture paint or sculpt each decoration, in a process that can take hours to produce a single piece and needs to be repeated from the ground up for every model that needs to be decorated. On the other hand, automatic approaches in state of the art rely on approximating these processes with procedural or by-example texturing or with 3D reprojection. However, these approaches can introduce significant limitations in the models that can be used and in the quality of the results. Instead, our work exploits the recent advances and performance improvements in the geometry processing field to create decorative patterns directly on surfaces. We present a pipeline for 2D and one for 3D patterns and demonstrate how each of them can recreate a variety of results with minimal tweaking of the parameters. Furthermore, we investigate the possibility of creating decorative tangible models. The 3D patterns we generate can be 3D printed and applied to previously scanned real-world objects. We also discuss the creation of models with standard building bricks and the possibility of mixing standard and custom 3D-printed bricks. This allows for a precise representation regardless of the coarseness of the voxelization. The main contributions of this thesis are the implementation of two different decorative pipelines, a heuristic approach to brick construction, and a dataset to test the latter

    Leveraging elasticity theory to calculate cell forces: From analytical insights to machine learning

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    Living cells possess capabilities to detect and respond to mechanical features of their surroundings. In traction force microscopy, the traction of cells on an elastic substrate is made visible by observing substrate deformation as measured by the movement of embedded marker beads. Describing the substrates by means of elasticity theory, we can calculate the adhesive forces, improving our understanding of cellular function and behavior. In this dissertation, I combine analytical solutions with numerical methods and machine learning techniques to improve traction prediction in a range of experimental applications. I describe how to include the normal traction component in regularization-based Fourier approaches, which I apply to experimental data. I compare the dominant strategies for traction reconstruction, the direct method and inverse, regularization-based approaches and find, that the latter are more precise while the former is more stress resilient to noise. I find that a point-force based reconstruction can be used to study the force balance evolution in response to microneedle pulling showing a transition from a dipolar into a monopolar force arrangement. Finally, I show how a conditional invertible neural network not only reconstructs adhesive areas more localized, but also reveals spatial correlations and variations in reliability of traction reconstructions

    Advancing Time-Dependent Earthquake Risk Modelling

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    Catastrophe (CAT) risk models are commonly used in the (re)insurance industry and by public organizations to estimate potential losses due to natural hazards like earthquakes. Conventional earthquake risk modelling involves several significant modelling assumptions, which mainly neglect: (a) the interaction between adjacent faults; (b) the long-term elastic-rebound behaviour of faults; (c) the short-term hazard increase associated with aftershocks; and (d) the damage accumulation in building assets that results from the occurrence of multiple earthquakes in a short time window. Several recent earthquake events/sequences (e.g., 2010/2012 Canterbury earthquakes, New Zealand; 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes, USA; 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes) have emphasised the simplicity of these assumptions and the need for earthquake risk models to start accounting for the short-and long-term time-dependent characteristics of earthquake risk. This thesis introduces an end-to-end framework for time-dependent earthquake risk modelling that incorporates (a) advancements in long-term time-dependent fault and aftershock modelling in the hazard component of the risk modelling framework; and (b) vulnerability models that account for the damage accumulation due to multiple ground motions occurring in a short period of time. The long-term time-dependent fault model used incorporates the elastic-rebound motivated methodologies of the latest Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF3) and explicitly accounts for fault-interaction triggering between major known faults. The Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model is used to simulate aftershocks, representing the short-term hazard increase observed after large mainshocks. Damage-dependent fragility and vulnerability models are then used to account for damage accumulation. Sensitivity analyses of direct economic losses to these time dependencies are also conducted, providing valuable guidance on integrating time dependencies in earthquake risk modelling
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