On the Controversy of Classicism

Collaborator in design: Carroll Stockard The subject of classicism has been the focus of numerous architectural debates in the last few years. While advocates proclaim its rational tectonic discourse an alternative to the eclectic practice of post-modernism, its antagonists reject its dogmatic principles as contradictory to the progress of modernity. Earlier this year, the same controversy exploded in unprecedented magnitude during the jury of an international design competition when the four noted judges/architects tried to select a first-place winner. The following is an excerpt from the heated debate

Embodied carbon and construction cost differences between Hong Kong and Melbourne buildings

Limiting the amount of embodied carbon in buildings can help minimize the damaging impacts of global warming through lower upstream emission of CO2. This study empirically investigates the embodied carbon footprint of new-build and refurbished buildings in both Hong Kong and Melbourne to determine the embodied carbon profile and its relationship to both embodied energy and construction cost. The Hong Kong findings suggest that mean embodied carbon for refurbished buildings is 33-39% lower than new-build projects, and the cost for refurbished buildings is 22-50% lower than new-build projects (per square metre of floor area). The Melbourne findings, however, suggest that mean embodied carbon for refurbished buildings is 4% lower than new-build projects, and the cost for refurbished buildings is 24% higher than new-build projects (per square metre of floor area). Embodied carbon ranges from 645-1,059 kgCO2e/m2 for new-build and 294-655 kgCO2e/m2 for refurbished projects in Hong Kong, and 1,138-1,705 kgCO2e/m2 for new-build and 900-1,681 kgCO2e/m2 for refurbished projects in Melbourne. The reasons behind these locational discrepancies are explored and critiqued. Overall, a very strong linear relationship between embodied energy and construction cost in both cities was found and can be used to predict the former, given the latter

How Restaurant Features Affect Check Averages: A Study of the Toronto Restaurant Market

[Excerpt] Full-service restaurants are under more pressure than ever, in part because the restaurant business has seen strong growth in the home-meal- replacement concept in recent years. Given the tumultuous competition in the restaurant business, we examined the underlying determinants or drivers of a successful full-service restaurant operation. In particular, we wanted to discover what restaurant attributes improve customers’ ratings of a restaurant and, more to the point, boosted check averages. This investigation focused on three specific questions: (1) What restaurant features matter the most to consumers in their dining experi­ences?, (2) What does it take to be the best in consumers’ eyes?, and (3) To what extent do high con­sumer ratings predict a high check average? To answer those questions we present a multi-stage analysis of the relationships among restaurants’ operational characteristics and amenities and the consumers’ per­ceptions of restaurant quality, and, in turn, the relationship between consumers’ perceptions of their restau­rant experience and operators’ reports regarding their check averages

QoS-aware Mobile Web Services Discovery Using Utility Functions

Existing QoS-aware Web Services discovery architectures tend to focus solely on fulfilling the requirements of either the client or the provider. However, the interests of the provider and client are not equivalent. The provider’s goal is to maximize the profit and consume the least amount of resources. On the other hand, the client’s selection is determined by their own requirements which do not always reflect the real resource overheads. This research aims to provide a novel mobile Web Services discovery and selection method based on utility functions to balance the requirements for clients and providers. In the mobile environment, it is critical to conserve resource consumption in addition to fulfilling user requirements, as resources such as wireless network bandwidth and mobile device power are precious. The proposed service selection strategy enables service providers to balance the cost/performance ratios and utilize the network bandwidth more effectively, while the clients can still attain the functional and quality levels specified in the service request

A targeted gene panel that covers coding, non-coding and short tandem repeat regions improves the diagnosis of patients with neurodegenerative diseases

Genetic testing for neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) is highly challenging because of genetic heterogeneity and overlapping manifestations. Targeted-gene panels (TGPs), coupled with next-generation sequencing (NGS), can facilitate the profiling of a large repertoire of ND-related genes. Due to the technical limitations inherent in NGS and TGPs, short tandem repeat (STR) variations are often ignored. However, STR expansions are known to cause such NDs as Huntington\u27s disease and spinocerebellar ataxias type 3 (SCA3). Here, we studied the clinical utility of a custom-made TGP that targets 199 NDs and 311 ND-associated genes on 118 undiagnosed patients. At least one known or likely pathogenic variation was found in 54 patients; 27 patients demonstrated clinical profiles that matched the variants; and 16 patients whose original diagnosis were refined. A high concordance of variant calling were observed when comparing the results from TGP and whole-exome sequencing of four patients. Our in-house STR detection algorithm has reached a specificity of 0.88 and a sensitivity of 0.82 in our SCA3 cohort. This study also uncovered a trove of novel and recurrent variants that may enrich the repertoire of ND-related genetic markers. We propose that a combined comprehensive TGPs-bioinformatics pipeline can improve the clinical diagnosis of NDs

Methotrexate in Atherogenesis and Cholesterol Metabolism

Methotrexate is a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug commonly used to treat inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis which itself is linked to increased cardiovascular risk. Treatments that target inflammation may also impact the cardiovascular system. While methotrexate improves cardiovascular risk, inhibition of the cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 enzyme promotes atherosclerosis. These opposing cardiovascular influences may arise from differing effects on the expression of proteins involved in cholesterol homeostasis. These proteins, ATP-binding cassette transporter (ABC) A1 and cholesterol 27-hydroxylase, facilitate cellular cholesterol efflux and defend against cholesterol overload. Methotrexate upregulates expression of cholesterol 27-hydroxylase and ABCA1 via adenosine release, while COX-2 inhibition downregulates these proteins. Adenosine, acting through the A2A and A3 receptors, may upregulate proteins involved in reverse cholesterol transport by cAMP-PKA-CREB activation and STAT inhibition, respectively. Elucidating underlying cardiovascular mechanisms of these drugs provides a framework for developing novel cardioprotective anti-inflammatory medications, such as selective A2A receptor agonists

Campus Sustainability Appraisal in Nigeria: Setting up Sustainable Attributes for Higher Educational Institutions

Sustainable campus development has gained the attention of several policymakers and urban planners within the past decades with different campuses across the world claiming to be sustainable or have adopted initiatives of becoming sustainable. The different tools for assessing sustainability in higher education cannot be utilised in all institutions across the globe due to factors such as regional variation. This paper established and formalised a systematic approach to comprehensively review sustainability indicators identified in 13 campus sustainability assessment tools. Thereafter, Twitter social media and an online big data analysis tool were utilised in selecting environmental-based sustainability indicators for higher educational institutions in Nigeria. The rise in the use of social media amongst tertiary institution stakeholders ensures that a better understanding of environmental challenges can be derived from the perspectives of these stakeholders. The findings from the comprehensive review of the selected 13 tools reveal that there are variations in the sets of their sustainability indicators and selection process. None of the tools have compatible indicators for campus sustainability appraisal and none of the tools utilised social media and big data technology to arrive at the adopted set of indicators for their appraisal framework, threshold, and rating. We identified energy, environment, transport, infrastructure, waste, and water as the major categories for sustainability indicators in Nigeria. The current research gap identified from literature strongly justifies the purpose of this study that setup sustainability indicators that are peculiar to tertiary institutions in Nigeria that will bring about an appraisal framework and also give room for campuses to compare their sustainability performance and interchange of standard practices

Complete small bowel obstruction caused by metastasis from primary nasopharyngeal carcinoma

We here report the first case in the literature on a surgical emergency of complete small bowel obstruction caused by metastasis from nasopharyngeal carcinoma nine months after the primary tumor was treated with concurrent chemoradiation. The patient achieved prolonged survival with prompt surgical treatment followed by systemic chemotherapy