The everyday urban environment of migrant labourers in Gulf Cities: the case of the old centre of Doha, Qatar

© 2017, The Author(s). Preventing the complete social restructuring and the relocation of migrant communities from traditional cores in Gulf cities to newly urbanized areas is a rising urban and social challenge. The Al Asmakh district in the old centre of Doha is an important example that manifests the current encounter between rising investment pressures and preserving the local identity including the particular urban life and spatial settings that have evolved over several decades. This paper presents key research findings with respect to the lived urban spaces of the Al Asmakh in order to exemplify the potential loss of very distinctive neighbourhoods and to introduce particular characteristics of urban spaces and the way migrant communities appropriate them. As part of a learning experiment undertaken at Qatar University in 2014, structured field surveys, systematic observations as well as behavioural mapping techniques were adopted as important approaches to investigation. The outcomes reveal stimulating dynamics between migrant communities and their environments. It also postulates that city residents have the capacity to recover swiftly from difficulties and resilience in spite of an impeding and hampering context. The paper concludes with projections of how contemporary transformation processes in Gulf cities will have to be based on diversity and social inclusion. Such a transformation should stem from the recognition that migrant communities need to have access to develop their own settings that relate to their routine spatial practices while securing the economic basis of many migrant labourers

Socio-spatial practice of migrant communities in Doha's traditional core : the case of Al Asmakh district

This paper is based on an extensive research undertaken at Qatar University in 2014 with the aim of exploring the social-spatial practice of migrant communities in Doha’s traditional core. Since new development strategies have been initiated in Gulf cities, the old historic centres have faced a rapid transformation process. Today, large scale investments in new developments in Doha’s traditional centre have led to a new challenge to prevent the complete social restructuring and the move of all residing migrant communities, particularly those who have settled in Doha for generations, from the centre to other newly urbanized areas. While large-scale projects, such as Msheireb regeneration and redevelopment, have led to the replacement of an entire district, there have been fragmented development initiatives to gradually upgrade existing urban structures in central areas. The district of the Al Asmakh is one of the most important examples that manifest the current conflict to mediate between rising investment pressures and preserving the local identity including the particular urban life and spatial economic settings, which have evolved over several decades. The paper presents new research outcomes with respect to the lived urban spaces of the Al Asmakh in order to illustrate the potential loss of very distinctive neighbourhoods and to introduce particular characteristics of urban spaces and the way migrant communities appropriate them. The socio-spatial practice of these communities is explored to identify their impact on contemporary urban spaces as well as the future challenges of providing efficient urban environments for social groups with limited purchasing power. Methodologically, as part of a learning experiment undertaken at Qatar University, structured field surveys, environmental systematic observations as well as behavioural mapping are adopted as important approaches to investigation. While the investigation reveals interesting dynamics between migrant communities and their environments, it also postulate that city residents have capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness in spite of a domineering and hampering context. The paper concludes with projections of how contemporary transformation processes in Gulf cities will have to be based on social inclusion and the recognition that migrant communities need to have access to develop their own settings that relate to their needs and routine spatial practices while securing the economic basis of many migrants and providing better living standards for all communities. The initiation of holistic and integrated development strategies is of high significance for both the preservation of historic districts in order to secure the roots of Doha as well as for migrant communities, who are facing the potential loss of their businesses and familiar surroundings

Assembling photoactive materials from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs): room temperature phosphorescence and excimer-emission in co-crystals with 1,4-diiodotetrafluorobenzene

Co-crystallization between the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons anthracene (A) and 9-methylanthracene (MA) with 1,4-diiodotetrafluorobenzene (I2F4) afforded three novel co-crystals, viz. A·(I2F4)2 and an unexpectedly complex system with two distinct compositions, namely MA·I2F4 and (MA)4·I2F4, which can be mechanochemically interconverted by a change in the stoichiometry of the reactive mixtures. Interestingly, all co-crystals are dual-emissive materials and exhibit different mechanisms of emission. A·(I2F4)2 and MA·I2F4 fluoresce from isolated molecules, whereas the luminescence of (MA)4·I2F4 is dominated by excimer emission. In all cases, phosphorescence at RT (RTP) is observed and interpreted as a direct consequence of the interactions between the iodine atoms of the I2F4 co-former and the π-electron density of the anthracene aromatic rings. Furthermore, [4 + 4] photoactivity within (MA)4·I2F4 was also investigated by means of FTIR/NMR spectroscopy and PXRD. The photophysical and photochemical behaviors of all solids are discussed and rationalized based on their structural features

An interaction between congestion-control based transport protocols and MANET routing protocols

Problem statement: Although many efforts have been done on studying the behaviour of TCP in MANET, but the behaviour of TFRC remain unclear in MANET. The purpose of this research is two folds.First, we studied the behaviour of TFRC and TCP over AODV and DSR as the underlying routing protocols in terms of throughput, delay and jitter.The second objective was to identify whether MANET routing protocols have an impact on transport protocols or not.Approach: Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) was used to conduct all of the experiments, i.e., TFRC over AODV, TFRC over DSR, TCP over AODV and TCP over DSR.We created 30 nodes on a 1000×1000 m location area and each node was assigned CBR traffic, transport protocol and routing protocol.In order to simulate the nodes mobility, we implemented a Random Waypoint mobility model with varying speeds of 5, 10, 15 and 20 m sec−1 (m/sec) with a 10 sec pause time.Results: We observed that TFRC throughput increases almost 55% when using DSR as its routing protocol, but TCP throughput has no significant difference with different underlying protocols.However, in terms of jitter and delay, both routing protocols, i.e., AODV and DSR have the impact of more than 50% on TFRC and TCP. Conclusion/Recommendations: The results obtained also show us that TFRC or TCP should choose AODV as its routing protocol because it has less jitter which is one of the critical performance metrics for multimedia applications

Investigating the Use of Geometric Semantic Operators in Vectorial Genetic Programming

Azzali, I., Vanneschi, L., & Giacobini, M. (2020). Investigating the Use of Geometric Semantic Operators in Vectorial Genetic Programming. In T. Hu, N. Lourenço, E. Medvet, & F. Divina (Eds.), Genetic Programming - 23rd European Conference, EuroGP 2020, Held as Part of EvoStar 2020, Proceedings (pp. 52-67). (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics); Vol. 12101 LNCS). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44094-7_4 ------- This work was partially supported by FCT, Portugal through funding of LASIGE Research Unit (UID/CEC/00408/2019), and projects PREDICT (PTDC/CCI-IF/29877/2017), BINDER (PTDC/CCI-INF/29168/2017), GADgET (DSAIPA/DS/0022/2018) and AICE (DSAIPA/DS/0113/2019).Vectorial Genetic Programming (VE_GP) is a new GP approach for panel data forecasting. Besides permitting the use of vectors as terminal symbols to represent time series and including aggregation functions to extract time series features, it introduces the possibility of evolving the window of aggregation. The local aggregation of data allows the identification of meaningful patterns overcoming the drawback of considering always the previous history of a series of data. In this work, we investigate the use of geometric semantic operators (GSOs) in VE_GP, comparing its performance with traditional GP with GSOs. Experiments are conducted on two real panel data forecasting problems, one allowing the aggregation on moving windows, one not. Results show that classical VE_GP is the best approach in both cases in terms of predictive accuracy, suggesting that GSOs are not able to evolve efficiently individuals when time series are involved. We discuss the possible reasons of this behaviour, to understand how we could design valuable GSOs for time series in the future.authorsversionpublishe

Chronic administration of green tea extract to TRAMP mice induces the collapse of Golgi apparatus in prostate secretory cells and results in alterations of protein post-translational processing.

Considering its long latency, prostate cancer (PCa) represents an ideal target for chemoprevention strategies. Green tea extract (GTE) has been proved to be one of the most promising natural substances capable of inhibiting PCa progression in animal models (transgenic adenocarcinoma of mouse prostate), as well as in humans. However, the cellular targets of the GTE action are mostly unknown. The main objective of this work was to investigate whether the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and the Golgi apparatus (GA), known to be actively involved in sensing stress stimuli and initiating and propagating cell death signalling, may represent the subcellular targets of GTE action. To this end, 42 TRAMP mice were divided into four experimental groups: groups II and IV, received GTE in tap water (0.3 g/100 ml solution) starting at 8 weeks of age and up to the time of sacrifice. Groups I and III were respective age-matched water-fed controls. The animals were sacrificed after 4 weeks (groups I and II) or 40 weeks of treatment (groups II and IV). We also treated TRAMP-C2 cells with GTE (20 µg/ml for 7 days) to check the expression profile of clusterin (CLU), a protein involved in prostate tumourigenesis, extensively processed through ER-GA before being secreted through the plasma membrane. In vivo we found that chronic administration of GTE in TRAMP mice results in collapse of ER and GA in prostate epithelial cells. Consistently, in vitro we found that the mature, fully processed form of CLU, sCLU, is strongly reduced by GTE treatment in TRAMP-C2 cells. Taking into account the sCLU biogenesis dependence on the ER-GA integrity and the proposed anti-apoptotic role of sCLU, the possibility for GTE to counteract PCa progression by interfering with sCLU biogenesis is suggested

Endocanalicular transendothelial crossing (ETC): A novel intravasation mode used by HEK-EBNA293-VEGF-D cells during the metastatic process in a xenograft model

In cancer metastasis, intravasation of the invasive tumor cell (TCi) represents one of the most relevant events. During the last years, models regarding cancer cell intravasation have been proposed, such as the "endocanalicular transendothelial crossing" (ETC) theory. This theory describes the interplay between two adjacent endothelial cells and the TCi or a leukocyte during intravasation. Two endothelial cells create a channel with their cell membranes, in which the cell fits in without involving endothelial cell intercellular junctions, reaching the lumen through a transendothelial passage. In the present study, ten SCID mice were subcutaneously xenotransplanted with the HEK-EBNA293-VEGF-D cell line and euthanized after 35 days. Post-mortem examinations were performed and proper specimens from tumors were collected. Routine histology and immunohistochemistry for Ki-67, pAKT, pERK, ZEB-1, TWIST-1, F-actin, E-cadherin and LYVE-1 were performed followed by ultrastructural serial sections analysis. A novel experimental approach involving Computed Tomography (CT) combined with 3D digital model reconstruction was employed. The analysis of activated transcription factors supports that tumor cells at the periphery potentially underwent an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-like process. Topographical analysis of LYVE-1 immunolabeled lymphatics revealed a peritumoral localisation. TEM investigations of the lymphatic vessels combined with 3D digital modelling enhanced the understanding of the endotheliocytes behavior during TCi intravasation, clarifying the ETC theory. Serial ultrastructural analysis performed within tumor periphery revealed numerous cells during the ETC process. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that ETC is an intravasation mode more frequently used by the TCi than by leukocytes during intravasation in the HEK-EBNA293-VEGF-D xenograft model and lays down the potential basis for promising future studies regarding intravasation blocking therapy

L^2 rho form for normal coverings of fibre bundles

We define the secondary invariants L^2- eta and -rho forms for families of generalized Dirac operators on normal coverings of fibre bundles. On the covering family we assume transversally smooth spectral projections, and Novikov--Shubin invariants bigger than 3(dim B+1) to treat the large time asymptotic for general operators. In the particular case of a bundle of spin manifolds, we study the L^2- rho class in relation to the space of positive scalar curvature vertical metrics.Comment: 21 pages, revised versio