Architecture of Video Games: Potential Reference

The Architecture perspective / scale in video games has evolved throughout time to an extent that it is no longer a mere spatial visualization to host the game, but it has become an interaction medium between the player and the game. Architecture in recent video games played a fundamental role in bridging the gap between the real and the digital world. The analogy between these two is increasingly established through the representational immersion and the participation of the player in a highly realistic environment transforming the gaming experience into an entertaining and educational journey. The aim of this thesis is not only to explore insights on the depth of video games referencing through an urban and a sustainable way but also to investigate the potential application of video games architectural environment into real-life settings as guidelines to promote sustainability in both Architecture and Urbanism

Power, Arab media Moguldum & gender rights as entertainment in the Middle East

Discourse is a giant field of research and gender related rights are still a disputed area of thinking. Thus, when Arab transnational satellite televisions produce dialogues, images, stories and narratives about the disputed “universal” gender rights in the Middle East, the big questions remain how and why. According to De Beauvoir (1949), one becomes woman and to Butler (1990) one is not born a gender at all but is “done” and “undone” to become one via discourse. Islamic feminism speaks of a cultural/religious specificity in defending women rights and even gender diversity based on new Quranic interpretations. The gender, “Al-Naw’u”, remains synonym to sex “Al Jins” as gender and queer theories never developed in Arabic in tandem with the European institutions or the theories of the19th century– especially those ideas emerging from studies of the mental asylum. This research tries to understand gender related “rights” and “wrongs” as manifest in the discursive institutions owned by media mogul Prince Al Waleed Ben Talal Al Saud. The trouble of such a study is lexical, ideological and institutional at the same time. Since we lack a critique of the discourses and narratives addressed in the pan-Arab satellite channels, in general it is difficult to understand their significance and influence in everyday life practices. What language is used to speak of gender rights or wrongs? Which ideology is favoured in this practice of legitimisation and/or policing? Using case studies, CDA of social and religious talk shows, narrative analysis of Arabic cinemas, this research adapted triangulation to show the complexity of conversing and narrating gender related content at the micro and macro levels within an institution of power. Using semi-structured interviews from fieldwork in Egypt (2009) and Lebanon (2011), archive research and online ethnography, the research exposes the power structure under which gender discourses evolve. It emerges that gender content is abundant on the Pan Arab satellite space, “manufactured” on talk shows and plotted tactfully in the cinematic “creative-act”. The result is a complex discourse of gender content that scratches the surface calling for interpretation. So how and why do gender rights and wrongs find place on Prince Al Waleed’s Media Empire

An ocarina extension for AADL formal semantics generation

International audienceThe formal veri cation has become a recommended practice in safety-critical software engineering. The hand-written of the for- mal speci cation requires a formal expertise and may become com- plex especially with large systems. In such context, the automatic generation of the formal speci cation seems helpful and reward- ing, particularly for reused and generic mapping such as hardware representations and real-time features. In this paper, we aim to formally verify real-time systems designed by AADL language. We propose an extension AADL2LNT of the Ocarina tool suite allowing the automatic generation of an LNT speci cation to draw a gateway for the CADP formal analysis toolbox. This work is illustrated with the Pacemaker case study

48XXYY Syndrome in an Adult with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus, Unilateral Renal Aplasia, and Pigmentary Retinitis

A 45-year-old male was referred for diabetes mellitus. Clinical examination found a family history of multiple precocious deaths, strong consanguinity, personal history of seizures during childhood, small testicles, small penis, sparse body hair, long arms and legs, dysmorphic features, mental retardation, dysarthria, tremor, and mild gait ataxia. Investigations found pigmentary retinitis, metabolic syndrome, unilateral renal aplasia, and hypergonadotropic hypogonadism, and ruled out mitochondrial cytopathy and leucodystrophy. Karyotype study showed a 48XXYY chromosomal type. Renal aplasia and pigmentary retinitis have not been described in 48XXYY patients. They may be related to the chromosomal sex aneuploidy, or caused by other genetic aberrations in light of the high consanguinity rate in the patient's family

A formal approach to AADL model-based software engineering

Formal methods have become a recommended practice in safety-critical software engineering. To be formally verified, a system should be specified with a specific formalism such as Petri nets, automata and process algebras, which requires a formal expertise and may become complex especially with large systems. In this paper, we report our experience in the formal verification of safety-critical real-time systems. We propose a formal mapping for a real-time task model using the LNT language, and we describe how it is used for the integration of a formal verification phase in an AADL model-based development process. We focus on real-time systems with event-driven tasks, asynchronous communication and preemptive fixed-priority scheduling. We provide a complete tool-chain for the automatic model transformation and formal verification of AADL models. Experimentation illustrates our results with the Flight control system and Line follower robot case studies

A survey of scale insects (Hemiptera: Coccoidea) occurring on olives in Tunisia.

A survey performed in 2009 within 52 Tunisian olive groves, located in 17 different olive-growing sites, revealed the occurrence of six scale insects on olives. The identified species were: the armoured scales Aspidiotus nerii Bouché, Lepidosaphes ulmi (L.), and Parlatoria oleae (Colvée), the soft scales Saissetia oleae (Olivier) and Filippia follicularis (Targioni Tozzetti) and the mealybug species Peliococcus cycliger (Leonardi). The soft scale F. follicularis is a new record for the Tunisian insect fauna. A mong these species, S. oleae was the predominant scale insect occurring throughout olive groves of northeastern Tunisia, whereas the mealybug P. cycliger was by far the most abundant species within olives groves of the Northwest region of Tunisia. However, P. oleae was the least abundant species, being present in only one olive-growing site in northeastern Tunisia. L arvae of the noctuid moth Eublemma scitula (Rambur) were reported feeding on S. oleae and the coccinellid Chilocorus bipustulatus L . was found feeding on both S. oleae and A. nerii. The two hymenopteran species Scutellista cyanea Motschulsky and Metaphycus spp. were recorded as the main parasitoids of S. oleae