1,977 research outputs found

    Mapping Critical Practice In A Transdisciplinary Urban Studio

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    Architecture and Planning exist to make positive changes to our environment. Future practitioners in these disciplines will be responsible for how our cities develop and are managed - they will be required to exercise their professional judgement in complex and unpredictable contexts. There is increasing interest in transdisciplinary urbanism, but implementation in academic contexts has to date been relatively limited. This thesis aims to build on these examples, through a detailed account of one academic design studio which operates across architecture and urban planning; in doing so it aims to make the case for transdisciplinary, problem and place-based studio teaching. The study considers how a transdisciplinary studio environment supported students to develop a critical approach to practice through collaborative discourse. It looked at studio methods/practices; what it means to practice ‘critically’ in the context of design; and the role ‘going public’ by sharing ideas in public fora might play in developing critical positions. The study was undertaken in collaboration with nine students, a single cohort undertaking the final year of a hybrid master’s qualification in Architecture with Urban Planning. It adopts socio-material and spatial approaches to follow how the studio environment and the students’ emerging interdisciplinary identities shaped both their individual and their shared work. It mapped how their approach to their practice evolved through observations, interviews, and informal conversations, and through their drawings, models and journals. In carrying out these observations, and their analysis, I have returned to drawing methods common in architecture. This allowed me to explore and record aspects of studio practice which might otherwise be missed and revealed the importance of visual and spatial thinking to my own practice. Observations revealed how material spaces, tools and artefacts acted to structure social relations in the studio, and how these relations shaped individual approaches to critical practice

    Multivariate Modeling of Quasar Variability with an Attention-based Variational Autoencoder

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    This thesis applied HeTVAE, an attention-based VAE neural network capable of multivariate modeling of time series, to a dataset of several thousand multi-band AGN light curves from ZTF and was one of the first attempts to use a neural network to harness the stochastic light curves in their multivariate form. Whereas standard models of AGN variability make prior assumptions, HeTVAE uses no prior knowledge and is able to learn the data distribution in a regularized latent space, reading semantic information via its up-to-date self-supervised training regimen. We have successfully created a dataset class for preprocessing the irregular multivariate time series and in order to interface with the quasi-off-the-shelf network more conveniently. Also, we have trained several different model iterations using one, two or all three of the filter dimensions from ZTF on Durham’s NCC compute cluster, while configuring useful hyper parameter choices to work robustly for the astronomical dataset. In the network's training, we employed the Adam optimizer with a reduce-on-plateau learning rate schedule and a KL-annealing schedule optimize the VAE’s performance. In experimenting, we show how the VAE has learned the data distribution of the light curves by generating simulated light curves and its interpretability by visualizing attention scores and by visualizing the way the light curves are distributed along the continuous latent space using PCA. We show it orders the light curves across a smooth gradient from those those that have both low amplitude short-term variation and high amplitude long-term variation, to those with little variability, to those with both short-term and long-term high-amplitude variation in the condensed space. We also use PCA to display a potential filtering algorithm that enables parsing through large datasets in an intuitive way and present some of the pitfalls of algorithmic bias in anomaly detection. Finally, we fine-tuned the structurally correct but imprecise multivariate interpolations output by HeTVAE to three objects to show how they could improve constraints on time-delay estimates in the context of reverberation mapping for the relatively poor-cadenced ZTF data. In short, HeTVAE's use cases are ranged and it is a step in the right direction as far as being able to help organize and process the millions of AGN light curves incoming from Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time in their full 6 optical broadband filter multivariate form

    Data Becomings: Bridge/Bridging Data-Trails in Qualitative Inquiry

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    This article plays with research-creation possibilities to interrogate data, data trails, and their becomings in qualitative inquiry. It arises through the inspiration of the authors’ experiences in experimenting with data-trails: a specific mode of thinking-doing for speculative research-creation possibilities. By placing these experiences alongside conventional discourses and protocols of research practice, the article ponders on a series of ethico-onto-epistemological questions about data becomings. We wonder about how qualitative researchers find and trace interconnected data? We approach this timeless question and adopt the concept of bridge/bridging to help us in considering the ontological sites that such data-trail research-creation possibilities afford

    Face time:Effects of shyness and attention to faces on early word learning

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    Previous research has shown that shyness affects children’s attention during the fast-mapping of novel words via disambiguation. The current study examined whether shyness also affects children’s attention when eye-gaze cues to novel word meanings are present. 20- to 26-month-old children’s (N = 31) gaze was recorded as they viewed videos in which an onscreen actor sat at a table on which one novel and two familiar objects appeared. The actor looked at and labeled one of the objects, using a novel word if the target object was novel. Overall, shyness was associated with a stronger preference for looking at the actor’s face, and less time looking at the object being labeled. These effects did not differ when the target object was novel or familiar, suggesting that shyness is related to attentional differences during object labeling generally, rather than specific processes involved in the disambiguation of novel words. No evidence was found of a relation between retention and shyness or attention during labeling

    The Quasar Feedback Survey: characterizing CO excitation in quasar host galaxies

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    We present a comprehensive study of the molecular gas properties of 17Type 2 quasars at z 1042.1 ergs−1), selected by their high [O III] luminosities and displaying a large diversity of radio jet properties, butdominated by LIRG-like galaxies. With these data, we are able to investigate the impact of AGN and AGN feedback mechanismson the global molecular interstellar medium. Using Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment and ALMA ACA observations, we measurethe total molecular gas content using the CO(1-0) emission and homogeneously sample the carbon monoxide (CO) spectral lineenergy distributions, observing CO transitions (Jup = 1, 2, 3, 6, 7). We observe high r21 ratios (r21 = L’CO(2-1)/L’CO(1-0)) witha median r21 = 1.06, similar to local (U)LIRGs (with r21 ∼ 1) and higher than normal star-forming galaxies (with r21 ∼ 0.65).Despite the high r21 values, for the seven targets with the required data, we find low excitation in CO(6-5) & CO(7-6) (r61 andr62 < 0.6 in all but one target), unlike high-redshift quasars in the literature, which are far more luminous and show higherline ratios. The ionized gas traced by [O III] exhibits systematically higher velocities than the molecular gas traced by CO. Weconclude that any effects of quasar feedback (e.g. via outflows and radio jets) do not have a significant instantaneous impact onthe global molecular gas content and excitation and we suggest that it only occurs on more localized scales

    The individual abundance distributions of disc stars across birth radii in GALAH

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    Individual abundances in the Milky Way disc record stellar birth properties [e.g. age, birth radius (Rbirth)], and capture thediversity of the star-forming environments over time. Assuming an analytical relationship between ([Fe/H], [α/Fe]), and Rbirth,we examine the distributions of individual abundances [X/Fe] of elements C, O, Mg, Si, Ca (α), Al (odd-z), Mn (iron-peak), Y,and Ba (neutron-capture) for stars in the Milky Way. We want to understand how these elements might differentiate environmentsacross the disc. We assign tracks of Rbirth in the [α/Fe] versus [Fe/H] plane as informed by expectations from simulations for∼59 000 GALAH stars in the solar neighborhood (R ∼ 7−9 kpc) which also have inferred ages. Our formalism for Rbirth shows that older stars (∼10 Gyrs) have an Rbirth distribution with smaller mean values (i.e. R¯birth ∼ 5 ± 0.8 kpc) compared to younger stars (∼6 Gyrs; R¯birth ∼ 10 ± 1.5 kpc), for a given [Fe/H], consistent with inside–out growth. The α-, odd-z, and iron-peak element abundances decrease as a function of Rbirth, whereas the neutron-capture abundances increase. The Rbirth–[Fe/H] gradient we measure is steeper compared to the present-day gradient (−0.066 dex kpc−1 versus −0.058 dex kpc−1), which we also find true for Rbirth–[X/Fe] gradients. These results (i) showcase the feasibility of relating the birth radius of stars to their element abundances, (ii) demonstrate that the Milky Way abundance gradients across Rbirth have evolved to be shallower over time, and (iii) offer an observational comparison to element abundance distributions in hydrodynamical simulations

    Examining the Effectiveness of Probiotic Therapy for Improving Growth Performance of Triploid Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus Tshawytscha) in Aquaculture Using a Behavioural Genomics Approach

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    With an increasing human population, there has been increased production of fish to meet nutritional needs. Commercial aquaculture accounts for a significant portion of seafood production with salmonids being the major farmed finfish in Canada. To obtain greater biomass from aquaculture with minimal drawbacks (e.g., compromised flesh quality), triploidization has been implemented, altering ploidy from 2N to 3N, to induce sterility and promote energy investment towards somatic growth. Triploid individuals experience transcriptional and behavioural changes resulting in disease, mortalities, and reduced growth. Probiotic therapies (live microorganisms) have been recommended to potentially overcome drawbacks of triploidy and improve mass due to the purported benefits to the host. Through a behavioural genomics approach, I examined neural transcriptional profiles (i.e., relating to neural functions, stress response, appetite/metabolism, and growth) and combined these with behavioural profiles via behavioural assays (i.e., open field, novel object, predator, and mirror tests) in hatchery-reared juvenile Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). Siblings from 15 families were placed in four treatment groups: 2N-regular feed, 2N-probiotic feed, 3N-regular feed, and 3N-probiotic feed to determine mechanisms driving differential growth. I found no universal effects of treatments on growth. While triploid individuals had reduced mass, growth was influenced by transcription, including interactions between a bold/aggressive behavioural profile and Shh gene transcription. Probiotic therapy (i.e., Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Lactococcus) had no direct impact on mass, but increased mass when coupled with high gene transcription of p53. Through behavioural genomics, I uncovered important relationships and interactions that remain to be further described
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