Empowering citizens in the development of smart cities: the Cork case

Cities around the world are piloting combinations of technologies to develop smart cities. As an urban management and governance trend, the smart city idea has moved from concept to mainstream within the past decade. As end-users of public services, interactive subjects of physical systems, and generators of data and information, citizens/residents should also be key contributors of ideas for policy-making processes and co-creators of city solutions. However, citizens/residents are not always empowered to engage in the development of smart city initiatives. Greater engagement, with timely input from citizens, can be achieved with the development of more efficient and effective mechanisms for the collection and analysis of stakeholders’ feedback. Gaps around the involvement of citizens in all the steps of smart city initiatives have been identified as key challenges in successful scaling up of the smart city initiatives in pioneering cities Using Cork City, the second largest city in the south-east of Ireland, this thesis establishes the key components and factors in how to effectively engage and empower local citizens in the development of smart city through the Cork Smart Gateway (CSG) initiative. Within the CSG, the researcher generated primary data sets to set up a baseline of Cork citizens/residents’ participation practices and perceptions, digital skills and usage and awareness of the smart city projects and local infrastructure. From city-wide surveys of inclusive citizen/resident groups, the baseline showed that (1) local citizens/residents (N=3600) value a shared and collaborative vision of their participation in public issues; they believe that they have positive impact on their city, but they don’t have many opportunities to participate in the local decision-making. Other findings include (2) two-thirds of the citizens/residents volunteer in community and public activities and those who volunteered in the activities have high willingness to participate in smart city projects; (3) citizens/residents use and want to be contacted via email and mobile text message; and (4) hardware access (i.e. tablet or computer) is still a problem for both urban and rural areas, and the problem can be solved by better investment in public libraries and offices. The research also shows that (5) self-reported digital skills of urban residents are not as proficient as their peers in rural areas and the need for computer/tablet access is high in both areas. A qualitative analysis of the research shows a strong awareness about challenges and solutions to address them among the movers and shakers of the city, including members of the CSG steering group. An experiment carried out during the data collection process shows that crowdsourcing could work as an instrument to activate people’s participation in public good activities. This is replicable, cheaper than using professional services, and effective to engage and raise awareness among local people. Overall, the findings provide Cork City leaders with empirical evidence to develop strategies and tools to stimulate, engage, and maintain citizen engagement in their smart city initiative. Besides the key factors, the research also uncovers some challenging issues around the engagement and empowerment of citizens/residents, some contradicting with the existing literature. The research contributes new learnings for empowering citizens/residents in the development of smart city – new ICT and technologies enabled contexts – while identifying areas for future research such as institutional requirements, data management, and citizens’ data privacy and security for further research

Towards a characteristics-aware document search engine

The increasing volume, heterogeneity, and redundancy of the Web create a novel challenge for search engines in which, target documents must satisfy some characteristics. It is increasingly important because there are more and more types of web pages on the Internet nowadays. Current web search engines are fundamentally incapable of addressing the user need because keywords can not express characteristics of target pages. Another alternative is to use vertical search engines, but they can only cover a few popular niches. Thus, we propose Forward Search to empower users with an engine to express not only topics but also characteristics of pages in their queries. Expected results are documents ranked by both topical and characteristic relevance. Creating Forward Search to have the focus of a vertical engine and the flexibility of web search presents many novel challenges. First, we must represent a document with novel information to support querying for characteristics. Second, we must index both keywords and named entities to quickly locate relevant pages of the target characteristics during query time. Third, we have to design a realistic method to acquire user input about the characteristics of target pages and retrieve documents ranked by both topical and characteristic relevance. Finally, since our system redefines relevance in traditional web search, we must rethink the user interface. This thesis comes with a web-based demonstration of our Forward Search at http://crow.cs.illinois.edu:8080 and five open-source code repositories at https://github.com/forward-uiuc

Differential Role of “Signal 3” Inflammatory Cytokines in Regulating CD8 T Cell Expansion and Differentiation in vivo

Following an infection, naïve CD8 T cells are stimulated by dendritic cells (DC) displaying pathogen-derived peptides on MHC class I molecules (signal 1) and costimulatory molecules (signal 2). Additionally, pathogen-induced inflammatory cytokines also act directly on the responding CD8 T cells to regulate their expansion and differentiation. In particular, both type I interferons (IFNs) and IL-12 have been described as critical survival signals (signal 3) for optimal CD8 T cell accumulation during the expansion phase. Furthermore, expansion in numbers of antigen-specific CD8 T cells is coupled with their acquisition of effector functions to combat the infection. However, it still remains unclear whether these same cytokines also regulate the effector/memory differentiation program of the CD8 T cell response in vivo. Here, we demonstrate that defective signaling by either type I IFNs or IL-12 to the responding CD8 T cells impairs maximal expansion in response to DC immunization + CpG ODN, but neither of these cytokines is essential to regulate the effector/memory differentiation program. In addition, lack of direct IL-12 signaling to CD8 T cells accelerates the development of central memory phenotype in both primary and secondary antigen-specific memory CD8 T cells

Effect of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction on Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chain in a longitudinal magnetic field

Using functional integral method for the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin chain with the added Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction in the presence of the longitudinal magnetic field, we find out expression for free energy of the spin chain via spin fluctuations, from which quantities characterize the antiferromagnetic order and phase transition such as staggered and total magnetizations derived. From that, we deduce the significant effect of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction on the reduction of the antiferromagnetic order and show that the total magnetization can be deviated from the initial one under the influence of canting of the spins due to a combination of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and the magnetic field. Besides, the remarkable role of the transverse spin fluctuations due to the above factors on the antiferromagnetic behaviours of the spin chain is also indicated. &nbsp

BIOLOGICAL AMMONIA REMOVAL BY SUBMERGED AERATED FILTER FROM HANOI GROUND WATER

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart

Rad51 Interacts with Non-structural 3 Protein of Hepatitis C Virus and Regulates Viral Production

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading cause of chronic liver disease affecting over 170 million people worldwide. Chronic infection with HCV progresses to liver fibrosis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. HCV exploits host cellular factors for viral propagation. To investigate the cellular factors required for HCV propagation, we screened a siRNA library targeting human cell cycle genes using cell culture grown HCV-infected cells. In the present study, we selected and characterized a gene encoding Rad51. Rad51, a member of a conserved recombinase family, is an essential factor for homologous recombination and repair of double-strand DNA breaks. We demonstrated that siRNA-mediated knockdown of Rad51 significantly inhibited HCV propagation without affecting HCV RNA replication. Silencing of Rad51 impaired secretion of infectious HCV particles and thus intracellular viruses were accumulated. We showed that HCV NS3 specifically interacted with Rad51 and accumulated Rad51 in the cytosol. Furthermore, Rad51 was coprecipitated with NS3 and HCV RNA. By employing membrane flotation and protease protection assays, we also demonstrated that Rad51 was co-fractionated with HCV NS3 on the lipid raft. These data indicate that Rad51 may be a component of the HCV RNA replication complex. Collectively, these data suggest that HCV may exploit cellular Rad51 to promote viral propagation and thus Rad51 may be a potential therapeutic target for HCV

Cesium, iodine and tritium in NW Pacific waters - a comparison of the Fukushima impact with global fallout

Radionuclide impact of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant accident on the distribution of radionuclides in seawater of the NW Pacific Ocean is compared with global fallout from atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. Surface and water column samples collected during the <i>Ka'imikai-o-Kanaloa</i> (<i>KOK</i>) international expedition carried out in June 2011 were analyzed for ¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs, ¹²⁹I and ³H. The ¹³⁷Cs, ¹²⁹I and ³H levels in surface seawater offshore Fukushima varied between 0.002–3.5 Bq L⁻¹, 0.01–0.8 μBq L⁻¹, and 0.05–0.15 Bq L⁻¹, respectively. At the sampling site about 40 km from the coast, where all three radionuclides were analyzed, the Fukushima impact on the levels of these three radionuclides represents an increase above the global fallout background by factors of about 1000, 50 and 3, respectively. The water column data indicate that the transport of Fukushima-derived radionuclides downward to the depth of 300 m has already occurred. The observed ¹³⁷Cs levels in surface waters and in the water column are compared with predictions obtained from the ocean general circulation model, which indicates that the Kuroshio Current acts as a southern boundary for the transport of the radionuclides, which have been transported from the Fukushima coast eastward in the NW Pacific Ocean. The ¹³⁷Cs inventory in the water column is estimated to be about 2.2 PBq, what can be regarded as a lower limit of the direct liquid discharges into the sea as the seawater sampling was carried out only in the area from 34 to 37° N, and from 142 to 147° E. About 4.6 GBq of ¹²⁹I was deposited in the NW Pacific Ocean, and 2.4–7 GBq of ¹²⁹I was directly discharged as liquid wastes into the sea offshore Fukushima. The total amount of ³H released and deposited over the NW Pacific Ocean was estimated to be 0.1–0.5 PBq. These estimations depend, however, on the evaluation of the total ¹³⁷Cs activities released as liquid wastes directly into the sea, which should improve when more data are available. Due to a suitable residence time in the ocean, Fukushima-derived radionuclides will provide useful tracers for isotope oceanography studies on the transport of water masses during the next decades in the NW Pacific Ocean

Electron irradiation induced nanocrystal formation in Cu-borosilicate glass

Nanoscale writing of Cu nanoparticles in glasses is introduced using focused electron irradiation by transmission electron microscopy. Two types of copper borosilicate glasses, one with high and another with low Cu loading, have been tested at energies of 200–300 keV, and formation of Cu nanoparticles in a variety of shapes and sizes using different irradiation conditions is achieved. Electron energy loss spectroscopy analysis, combined with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy imaging, confirmed the irradiation-induced precipitated nanoparticles as metallic, while furnace annealing of the glass triggered dendrite-shaped particles of copper oxide. Unusual patterns of nanoparticle rings and chains under focused electron beam irradiation are also presented. Conclusively, electron beam patterning of Cu-loaded glasses is a promising alternative route to well-established femtosecond laser photoreduction of Cu ions in glass