Arrival or Transient Spaces? Differentiated Politics of Mobilities, Socio-Technological Orderings and Migrants' Socio-Spatial Embeddedness

For the last decade there has been a lively debate on urban arrival spaces. Saunders’ (2011) widely received book Arrival Cities can be seen as catalyst of this debate. Taking a hitherto largely unexplored comparative approach, based on two empirical research studies on migrant workers and highly-skilled migrants in Singapore, this study debates the notion of arrival cities and spaces and argues for a differentiated perspective on the complex and interdependent processes of spatially and socially arriving. By comparing how the politics of mobilities, migration management and differential inclusion influence the migration trajectories of workers and professionals we argue that the concept of transient spaces might be a more fruitful approach for understanding the differentiated processes of arriving and (not) becoming socio-spatially embedded. In order to educe the relevance of a processual perspective, and for a systematic comparison, we apply four analytical dimensions that shed light on the process of migrating, arriving, and passing through. These four dimensions comprise (1) arriving, (2) settling, (3) mingling locally and translocally, and (4) planning ahead for future mobilities. We argue that the scholarship on politics of mobilities needs to take note of the combined effects of states’ and companies’ neoliberal politics of mobility throughout the migration process, and of the increasing relevance of socio-technological orderings, which imprint migrants’ socio-spatial embedding

Färbung des Glases durch Kohle und Sulfide.

[no abstract available

Two-step thermochemical solar-to-fuel efficiency computation of strontium and chromium doped lanthanum manganite perovskite oxides using CALPHAD

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and profiting on novel synthetic fuels to store and buffer energy from renewable sources (such as solar or wind) is a prime strategy to encounter the global energy challenge. Here, two-step thermochemical fuel production is an energy technology utilizing intermittent solar power to convert water and carbon dioxide into syngas, a renewable fuel that can be stored easily and mitigate CO2 emissions. Success of the technology relies on the discovery of materials with a high thermochemical solar-to-fuel efficiency. Perovskites have attracted much attention recently due to impressive fuel productivity[1, 2]. Although a high fuel productivity shows the feasibility of a material, it does not imply that it is the optimum and most efficient material as it depends largely on the operation of the solar-to-fuel reactor [3, 4]. Literature on thermochemical solar-to-fuel efficiency of perovskites is limited and none of the existing studies measures the thermodynamic properties in the entire temperature range relevant for solar-to-fuel production, namely 1000-1800K. In this work, we use oxygen nonstoichiometry from CALPHAD data libraries on A-site doped La1-xSrxMnO3-δ and B-site doped perovskite La0.6Sr0.4Mn1-yCryO3-δ in a relevant temperature range of 1073-1873K to determine the solar thermochemical efficiency. The oxygen nonstoichiometry and thermodynamic properties extracted from CALPHAD libraries are compared to earlier studies of La1-xSrxMnO3-δ for thermochemical fuel production. We discuss diffferences between the earlier extrapolated models and the CALPHAD descriptions on the presented material examples. Specifically, we show thermochemical equilibrium models of fuel productivity supplemented by validations with experimental results on La1-xSrxMnO3-δ in literature. We make predictions on the most efficient material in the composition space La1-xSrxMn1-yCryO3-δ for different conditions. It is shown that the amount of experimental work can be reduced substantially by using the CALPHAD approach and further making predictions for multi-component systems that would be practically unattainable without this method. The solar-to-fuel field will benefit directly from additional thermodynamic data on perovskites in the relevant temperature range. Further, we provide guidelines in terms of key CALPHAD experiments that enables a mapping of the thermodynamic properties of a wide compositional space of perovskites to find materials with a high thermochemical efficiency. 1. McDaniel, A.H., et al., Sr-and Mn-doped LaAlO3−δ for solar thermochemical H2 and CO production. Energy & Environmental Science, 2013. 6(8): p. 2424-2428. 2. Bork, A.H., et al., Perovskite La0.6Sr 0.4Cr1− xCoxO3−δ solid solutions for solar-thermochemical fuel production: strategies to lower the operation temperature. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2015. 3(30): p. 15546-15557. 3. Scheffe, J.R., D. Weibel, and A. Steinfeld, Lanthanum–Strontium–Manganese Perovskites as Redox Materials for Solar Thermochemical Splitting of H2O and CO2. Energy & Fuels, 2013. 27(8): p. 4250-4257. 4. Yang, C.-K., et al., Thermodynamic and kinetic assessments of strontium-doped lanthanum manganite perovskites for two-step thermochemical water splitting. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2014. 2(33): p. 13612-13623

Search and Explore: Symbiotic Policy Synthesis in POMDPs

This paper marries two state-of-the-art controller synthesis methods for partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), a prominent model in sequential decision making under uncertainty. A central issue is to find a POMDP controller - that solely decides based on the observations seen so far - to achieve a total expected reward objective. As finding optimal controllers is undecidable, we concentrate on synthesising good finite-state controllers (FSCs). We do so by tightly integrating two modern, orthogonal methods for POMDP controller synthesis: a belief-based and an inductive approach. The former method obtains an FSC from a finite fragment of the so-called belief MDP, an MDP that keeps track of the probabilities of equally observable POMDP states. The latter is an inductive search technique over a set of FSCs, e.g., controllers with a fixed memory size. The key result of this paper is a symbiotic anytime algorithm that tightly integrates both approaches such that each profits from the controllers constructed by the other. Experimental results indicate a substantial improvement in the value of the controllers while significantly reducing the synthesis time and memory footprint.Comment: Accepted to CAV 202

A fossil species of the enigmatic early polypod fern genus Cystodium (Cystodiaceae) in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar

The monospecific fern genus Cystodium (Cystodiaceae;Polypodiales) occurs exclusively in the tropical forests of the Malay Archipelago, the Admiralty Islands, the Louisiade Archipelago, and the Solomon Islands. Divergence time estimates suggest that the genus originated in the Mesozoic;however, fossil evidence to validate this suggestion has been lacking. Amber from Myanmar (Burmese amber) is an important source of new information on the diversity of vascular cryptogams in the Cretaceous. This paper describes the fossil taxon Cystodium sorbifolioides nov. sp. based on a fragment of a fertile leaf preserved in Burmese amber that represents the first fossil evidence of the family Cystodiaceae. Cystodium sorbifolioides is used to obtain a minimum age estimate for the Cystodiaceae and the closely related, monogeneric Lonchitidaceae and Lindsaeaceae. The fossil strengthens the hypothesis that the forest ecosystems of Malesia and Melanesia represent refugia for many tropical plant lineages that originated in the Cretaceous

WAO guideline for the management of hereditary angioedema

Hereditary Angioedema (HAE) is a rare disease and for this reason proper diagnosis and appropriate therapy are often unknown or not available for physicians and other health care providers. For this reason we convened a group of specialists that focus upon HAE from around the world to develop not only a consensus on diagnosis and management of HAE, but to also provide evidence based grades, strength of evidence and classification for the consensus. Since both consensus and evidence grading were adhered to the document meets criteria as a guideline. The outcome of the guideline is to improve diagnosis and management of patients with HAE throughout the world and to help initiate uniform care and availability of therapies to all with the diagnosis no matter where the residence of the individual with HAE exists

Measurement of optical response of a detuned resonant sideband extraction gravitational wave detector

We report on the optical response of a suspended-mass detuned resonant sideband extraction (RSE) interferometer with power recycling. The purpose of the detuned RSE configuration is to manipulate and optimize the optical response of the interferometer to differential displacements (induced by gravitational waves) as a function of frequency, independently of other parameters of the interferometer. The design of our interferometer results in an optical gain with two peaks: an RSE optical resonance at around 4 kHz and a radiation pressure induced optical spring at around 41 Hz. We have developed a reliable procedure for acquiring lock and establishing the desired optical configuration. In this configuration, we have measured the optical response to differential displacement and found good agreement with predictions at both resonances and all other relevant frequencies. These results build confidence in both the theory and practical implementation of the more complex optical configuration being planned for Advanced LIGO

Measurement of Optical Response of a Detuned Resonant Sideband Extraction Interferometer

We report on the optical response of a suspended-mass detuned resonant sideband extraction (RSE) interferometer with power recycling. The purpose of the detuned RSE configuration is to manipulate and optimize the optical response of the interferometer to differential displacements (induced by gravitational waves) as a function of frequency, independently of other parameters of the interferometer. The design of our interferometer results in an optical gain with two peaks: an RSE optical resonance at around 4 kHz and a radiation pressure induced optical spring at around 41 Hz. We have developed a reliable procedure for acquiring lock and establishing the desired optical configuration. In this configuration, we have measured the optical response to differential displacement and found good agreement with predictions at both resonances and all other relevant frequencies. These results build confidence in both the theory and practical implementation of the more complex optical configuration being planned for Advanced LIGO.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, for submission to Phys Rev Letter

STRING v9.1: protein-protein interaction networks, with increased coverage and integration

Complete knowledge of all direct and indirect interactions between proteins in a given cell would represent an important milestone towards a comprehensive description of cellular mechanisms and functions. Although this goal is still elusive, considerable progress has been made—particularly for certain model organisms and functional systems. Currently, protein interactions and associations are annotated at various levels of detail in online resources, ranging from raw data repositories to highly formalized pathway databases. For many applications, a global view of all the available interaction data is desirable, including lower-quality data and/or computational predictions. The STRING database (http://string-db.org/) aims to provide such a global perspective for as many organisms as feasible. Known and predicted associations are scored and integrated, resulting in comprehensive protein networks covering >1100 organisms. Here, we describe the update to version 9.1 of STRING, introducing several improvements: (i) we extend the automated mining of scientific texts for interaction information, to now also include full-text articles; (ii) we entirely re-designed the algorithm for transferring interactions from one model organism to the other; and (iii) we provide users with statistical information on any functional enrichment observed in their network