Learning Space Service Design

Much progress has been made in creating informal learning spaces that incorporate technology and flexibly support a variety of activities. This progress has been principally in designing the right combination of furniture, technology, and space. However, colleges and universities do not design services within learning spaces with nearly the same level of sophistication or integration. This paper calls for a focus on designing services to facilitate better learning experiences. It describes the fundamentals of service design practice, exemplary spaces, and implications for design, budgeting, and staffing

Principles- versus rules-based output statistical disclosure control in remote access environments

In recent years, the level of detail in confidential data made available to social scientists has increased dramatically. Much of this has been due to the growth in secure data access facilities, which allow access to the most detailed data under strictly controlled conditions.One element of that control is checking to ensure that statistical outputs do not present any residual disclosure risk. Traditionally this has been managed by specifying rules for researchers to follow, but it is increasingly recognised that a ‘principles-based’ approach can be both more secure and more cost-effective.The principles-based approach requires a higher level of expertise from the facility managers, and places the subjective assessment of risk at the forefront of decision-making; these two factors often make facility managers uncomfortable. In addition, knowledge of this approach is concentrated amongst a relatively small community, whereas the rules-based model has been the dominant approach for half a century; facility managers may not be aware that there is an alternative perspective.This paper reviews the arguments for the two different approaches. The two are not mutually exclusive: both take simple rules as a starting point, but the rules-based approach also finishes there. This has advantages in some circumstances, but this paper demonstrates that the value of the principles-based approach increases with the sensitivity of the data and gives more freedom to the researchers to innovate.The paper considers how the two approaches can be implemented. It notes that, although the principles-based model requires greater initial investment by both the facility managers and researchers, the necessary training can bring substantial auxiliary benefits to the facility manager. The paper therefore concludes that a principles-based approach has advantages in many circumstances, and it is essential for the remote research data centres which dominate access solutions for the most sensitive data

The Case for a Learning Space Performance Rating System

Learning spaces are mission-critical for colleges and universities. Yet institutions lack a commonly accepted set of standards for learning spaces, lack a way to measure space performance through a third-party certification, and lack a  substantive way to compare their spaces to peer and aspirant institutions. Inspired by the success of environmental building rating systems like LEED, this paper makes the case for a Learning Space Performance Rating System and describes the development of such as system – currently in its early stages – so as to enlist broader interest and support in the initiative

Comparison between the density of Langerhans’ cells in the prepuce of neonates and adult males

Langerhans cells (LCs) in epidermis function as sentinel antigen-presenting cells that can capture invading viruses like Herpes Simplex Virus, Varicella-zoster virus and Human  Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). This interaction between  Langerhans cells and viruses is highly variable depending on the virus. Herpes Simplex induces apoptosis in LCs but HIV does not, instead it presents the HIV to T-cells in lymph nodes which in turn get infected. Langerhans cells in the prepuce are therefore, a portal of entry for HIV. Hence, world health organisation  recommends male circumcision to reduce the densities of  Langerhans cells. Fifteen fresh foreskins were obtained from adult males aged 18 years and above after circumcision, five had past history of ulcerative STI and five fresh foreskins were obtained from neonates. The specimens were fixed using 10% buffered formalin and transported to the histopathology laboratory where the tissues were grossed examined and embedded using paraffin wax. The formalin fixed paraffin blocks were then sectioned into 3-5um sections and then followed by immunohistochemistry staining. The primary monoclonal antibodies (anti-CD1a) targeting Langerhans cells were used and LCs counting was done. The mean Langerhans cells density in neonates was  36.6±5.273/mm2,while adults without past history of ulcerative STIs was 69.4±8.847/mm2 and those with history of ulcerative STIs was 88.4±7.273/mm2.Both age and past history of ulcerative STIs have an influence on the density of Langerhans cell on the prepuce. The neonates showed lower densities than adults. Adults with history of ulcerative STIs had higher densities than those without. Uncircumcised individuals with history of ulcerative STIs maybe more susceptible to acquisition and transmission of HIV through the prepuce than those without such history due to greater LCs densities.Key words: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Langerhans Cells (LC),Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI)

The subway libraries

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2006.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-177).As New York' subway has adapted to changes in population, routing, and technology, numerous platforms have been abandoned - left as vestigial spaces within functioning stations. Despite their disuse, these spaces have enormous latent potential. This project couples two circulatory infrastructures in the city, public libraries and public transit, to reclaim three such platforms as sites for a new institution -- the Open Library. This institution seeks to extend the historical development of the library with a greater focus on access, knowledge production, and user-agency while also acknowledging the mobility inherent in the modern city and providing opportunities for interaction and circulation among people and artifacts. Located on abandoned platforms at Columbus Circle, Canal Street, and Brooklyn Bridge Stations, these libraries are designed such that the space of the library functions as a diagram of the institution. Each is an open, linear space formed between walls which function as reinvented stacks. Rather than a container designed solely according to the program of the book, here, each stack pairs a glass wall toward the subway with a wood wall facing the library while varying the character and separation of the pair according to the library's numerous programs -- sometimes only wide enough for books and acoustic baffling while at other times bulging to accommodate an entire room or a sky-lit planter. The result is a series of interventions within the subway that questions the relationship between knowledge production and consumption, provides places of interaction among people and artifacts, and instigates a physical and intellectual renovation of both subway and library.by Elliot Douglas Felix.M.Arch

Natural Adversarial Objects

Although state-of-the-art object detection methods have shown compelling performance, models often are not robust to adversarial attacks and out-of-distribution data. We introduce a new dataset, Natural Adversarial Objects (NAO), to evaluate the robustness of object detection models. NAO contains 7,934 images and 9,943 objects that are unmodified and representative of real-world scenarios, but cause state-of-the-art detection models to misclassify with high confidence. The mean average precision (mAP) of EfficientDet-D7 drops 74.5% when evaluated on NAO compared to the standard MSCOCO validation set. Moreover, by comparing a variety of object detection architectures, we find that better performance on MSCOCO validation set does not necessarily translate to better performance on NAO, suggesting that robustness cannot be simply achieved by training a more accurate model. We further investigate why examples in NAO are difficult to detect and classify. Experiments of shuffling image patches reveal that models are overly sensitive to local texture. Additionally, using integrated gradients and background replacement, we find that the detection model is reliant on pixel information within the bounding box, and insensitive to the background context when predicting class labels. NAO can be downloaded at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15P8sOWoJku6SSEiHLEts86ORfytGezi8

Reduced risk-seeking in chimpanzees in a zero-outcome game

A key component of economic decisions is the integration of information about reward outcomes and probabilities in selecting between competing options. In many species, risky choice is influenced by the magnitude of available outcomes, probability of success, and the possibility of extreme outcomes. Chimpanzees are generally regarded to be risk seeking. In this study we examined two aspects of chimpanzees’ risk preferences: First, whether setting the value of the non-preferred outcome of a risky option to zero changes chimpanzees’ risk preferences, and second, whether individual risk preferences are stable across two different measures. Across two experiments, we found chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, n = 23) as a group to be risk-neutral to risk-avoidant with highly stable individual risk preferences. We discuss how the possibility of going empty-handed might reduce chimpanzees’ risk seeking relative to previous studies. This malleability in risk preferences as a function of experimental parameters and individual differences raises interesting questions about whether it is appropriate or helpful to categorize a species as a whole as risk-seeking or risk-avoidant

Ensuring the confidentiality of statistical outputs from the ADRN

The ADRN has a proven safe mechanism to manage research use and outputs of confidential data. However, because the data that the researchers use are sensitive, it is possible that the publication of statistical analyses could inadvertently lead to the disclosure of sensitive information. Many years of experience in managing research outputs, with very few problems, shows that there is a negligible risk of such a disclosure – but that risk does exist. Outputs are checked by researchers and trained output checkers before they are published. This is called ‘output statistical disclosure control’, or OSDC. As a result of this, statistical disclosure risk is reduced. This guide is intended for: researchers who need to learn what OSDC is and how that relates to their work; data owners who are concerned about inadvertent disclosure of results; the wider public who are interested in how the ADRN’s security model (the ‘Five Safes’) works to encourage research while protecting confidentiality