Monumentality in change and exploration: Modern Monumental Architecture in China after the 1920s

This research focuses on the development of Chinese modern monumental architecture from 1920 to the early 20th century by examining first-hand and second-hand information on the development of Chinese architectural theory after 1920, as well as cases of Chinese modern monumental architecture. It is hoped that this study will show in a small way the influences from the West on Chinese architecture during the many periods of great socio-economic and political changes after 1920, the difficulties faced by Chinese architects in the face of two very different architectural theories, Western and traditional, and the attitudes and creative responses of Chinese architects to them.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science

New M HKA museum_construction of a Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art

This year's theme of the studio is based on ‘An Architecture For Art’. From churches and palaces, through the development of the Palace of Culture in the 19th century: public museums and galleries, to modern studios and galleries, art centres and the White Cube of the second half of the last century, and the gradual similarity between commercial and gallery spaces, art spaces have gradually evolved and their attitude towards the public, society and art has changed. The studio focuses on the controversial area of the space of the contemporary art gallery and also considers its societal role and how its responsibilities to the heterogenous contemporary city and its diverse population might be physically manifested in the image and presence of a new public building. The project takes an actual project as its starting point, allowing the conditions and concerns of a real brief for a real client to be one key reference point in the development of both individual and collective concerns. This year we work on a competition brief for the redevelopment of M HKA, the contemporary art museum of Antwerp, on a new site close to its existing one in the South of the Belgian city. At the same time, the site is in the old court building in Belgium, which is an important architectural heritage, so there is value in considering the retention or partial retention of the old building. So it became the theme of my project to consider the function of the new museum while preserving the existing building, using the New and the Old to provide variation to the public and exhibition spaces of the museum.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Interiors Buildings Citie

Experimental investigation of wave attenuation by mangrove forests with submerged canopies

Mangroves can function as a ‘bio-shield’ to protect coastal communities from harsh environments because of their strong ability to attenuate wave energy. However, as mangroves are usually oversimplified as rigid cylinders in antecedent studies, the effects of complex mangrove morphology on wave attenuation have not been well researched. Although increasing attention has been paid to the wave dissipation induced by varying mangrove morphologies, most of them focus on the bottom trunk and root components of mature mangrove trees. There are few investigations about the contributions of the canopies of young saplings and/or short species to wave attenuation. To bridge this knowledge gap, a series of laboratory experiments under regular waves were conducted to examine the hydrodynamic variations affected by varying mangrove morphology configurations. Three water depths were considered to explore the influences of the vertical-varying submerged volume of mangroves when the artificial mangrove models are submerged, nearly emergent, and fully emergent. The mangrove forest model is 2 m long at a 1:10 scale. Three mangrove configurations, i.e. with no canopy, sparse canopy, and dense canopy were applied and compared to isolate the wave attenuation contributed by mangrove canopies. The results highlight the wave energy attenuation attributed to the canopy density. A linear correlation is found between the wave damping factor and a new variable named hydraulic submerged volume index (HSVI). The bulk drag coefficient, including canopy effects, was calculated to characterize mangrove-induced wave attenuation when the mangrove canopy is submerged. The relationships between the bulk drag coefficient CD and the characteristic hydraulic numbers (i.e., Reynolds number, Keulegan–Carpenter number, Ursell number) are discussed in detail. Consequently, new generic formulas of CD were deduced considering the effects of the submerged canopy. The employment of new CD formulas improves the reliability of the prediction of the wave attenuation ability by mangroves since the canopy effects are incorporated.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Coastal Engineerin

Benchmarking Robustness and Generalization in Multi-Agent Systems: A Case Study on Neural MMO

We present the results of the second Neural MMO challenge, hosted at IJCAI 2022, which received 1600+ submissions. This competition targets robustness and generalization in multi-agent systems: participants train teams of agents to complete a multi-task objective against opponents not seen during training. We summarize the competition design and results and suggest that, considering our work as a case study, competitions are an effective approach to solving hard problems and establishing a solid benchmark for algorithms. We will open-source our benchmark including the environment wrapper, baselines, a visualization tool, and selected policies for further research.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Interactive Intelligenc

Description-based reappraisal regulate the emotion induced by erotic and neutral images in a Chinese population

Previous emotion-regulation research has shown that the late positive potential (LPP) is sensitive to the down-regulation of emotion; however, whether LPP is also sensitive to the up-regulation of emotion remains unclear. The present study examined the description-based reappraisal effects on the up-regulation of positive emotions induced by erotic and neutral images in a Chinese population. Self-reported ratings and event-related potential (ERP) were recorded when subjects viewed pleasant and neutral images, which were shown after either a neutral or positive description. Self-reported results showed that images following positive descriptions were rated as more pleasant compared to images following neutral descriptions. ERP results revealed that the P2, P3, and slow wave (SW) components were larger for erotic pictures than for neutral pictures, while the positive description condition yielded attenuated erotic image-induced P2, P3 and SW and increased SW induced by neutral images. The results demonstrated that description-based reappraisal, as a method of reappraisal, significantly modulates the emotional experience and ERP responses to erotic and neutral images