The dilemma of ecology in architecture and the possible ways out

Ecology is an important and unique part of architecture. Nowadays, more and more buildings are intended to prove their superiority in sustainability, however, still very few of them are derived from the idea of sustainability and ecology.1 Instead considerations of aesthetics, urban relation, structure, and narrative characteristic are predominant. In this thesis, three main aspects of ecology in architecture are explored. The first is the role of ecology in architecture and the dilemma of ecology in architecture. It is widely acknowledged that the ecological analysis is mainly to prove that the design proposal is great, instead of influence design itself. In other words, there is little participation of ecology in architectural design. The second is what shall be done to enhance the importance and involvement of ecology in architecture. By my understanding of this research and study, ecology should be considered as a complete system in architecture instead of some independent techniques applied to architecture. The goal is to achieve a balanced relation of architecture with the surrounding environment throughout the whole life span of the building. Ecology consideration should influence the generating process of architecture. Last but not the least, promising areas to combine sustainability with the design and construction phase are also investigated

Die modulatorische Rolle von Calciumkanälen vom Subtyp Cav1.3 auf die Dopaminhomöostase und die Alpha-Synuclein-Expression in einem Mausmodell für den Morbus Parkinson

In Parkinson’s disease (PD), mitochondrial dysfunction has been suggested to be an important pathogenetic factor whereby calcium and α-synuclein (aSYN) pathology facilitate the selective death of substantia nigra neurons. The present study aimed at investigating the modulatory effects of the voltage-gated calcium channels of subtype 1.3 (Cav1.3) on dopamine (DA) homeostasis and aSYN expression in Cav1.3 channel knockout mice under mitochondrial dysfunction induced by the neurotoxin 1-methyl-4- phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP). Following chronic MPTP treatment, tissue samples from the striatum and the midbrain were used for HPLC-based analysis of striatal DA and its metabolites, for the assessment of nigral mRNA levels of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), dopamine transporter (DAT), and aSYN, as well as for Western blot detection of TH, DAT and aSYN protein in the striatum and the midbrain. Cav1.3 channel knockout mice displayed a decreased vulnerability to chronic MPTP exposure as measured by a rescue of striatal DA of ~50% and an unaffected DA turnover. This neuroprotective effect was paralleled by a preserved mRNA expression of nigral TH and DAT. However, such an effect could not be observed for the protein expression of striatal DAT nor for striatal and nigral aSYN protein when compared to MPTP-treated wild-type mice. Our data underline the pivotal role of Cav1.3 channels in the propagation of MPTP-induced breakdown of the nigro-striatal DA system. However, we could not confirm in-vivo evidence that aSYN expression is linked to calcium overload under the condition of mitochondrial dysfunction. For the first time we could demonstrate that genetic “silencing” of Cav1.3 channels in mice mitigates the toxic actions of chronic MPTP exposure, which so far has only been shown pharmacologically using non-selective calcium-channel blockers.Bei der Pathophysiologie des Idiopathischen Parkinson-Syndroms stellt die mitochondriale Dysfunktion einen wichtigen pathogenetischen Faktor dar, bei dem Calcium und Alpha-Synuclein den selektiven Untergang von Neuronen der Substantia nigra fördern. Die vorliegende Studie zielte darauf ab, die modulatorische Rolle von spannungsgesteuerten Calciumkanälen vom Subtyp Cav1.3 auf die Dopaminhomöostase und die Alpha-Synuclein Expression in Cav1.3-knockout Mäusen unter der Bedingung einer mitochondrialen Dysfunktion, die durch das Neurotoxin 1-Methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridin (MPTP) induziert wurde, zu untersuchen. Dazu wurden im Anschluss an eine chronische MPTP-Behandlung Gewebeproben von Striatum und Mittelhirn sowohl für die HPLC-basierte Analyse des striatalen Gehaltes von Dopamin und seinen Metaboliten, als auch für die Bestimmung der nigralen mRNA Level von Tyrosinhydroxylase (TH), Dopamintransporter (DAT) und Alpha-Synuclein (A-Syn) sowie für die Westernblot Detektion von TH-, DAT- und A-SYN-Protein im Striatum und im Mittelhirn untersucht. Im Ergebnis zeigte sich bei den Cav1.3-knockout Mäusen eine geringere Vulnerabilität auf die chronische MPTP-Exposition gemessen an einer Erhaltung des striatalen Dopamingehaltes von 50% und einem unveränderten Dopaminumsatz. Dieser neuroprotektive Effekt war begleitet von einer intakten mRNA-Expression von TH und DAT in der Substantia nigra. Allerdings konnte im Vergleich zu MPTP-behandelten Wildtyp-Mäusen ein derartiger Effekt weder für die Protein Expression des striatalen DAT, noch für das striatale und nigrale A-Syn-Protein beobachtet werden. Unsere Daten unterstreichen die zentrale Rolle von Cav1.3-Kanälen bei der Propagation der MPTP induzierten Schädigung des nigro-striatalen Dopamin-Systems. Dennoch fanden wir keine in-vivo Evidenz für eine an die Calcium-Überladung gekoppelte A-Syn-Expression unter mitochondrialer Dysfunktion. Zum ersten Mal konnten wir demonstrieren, dass eine genetische Suppression von Cav1.3-Kanälen in Mäusen die toxischen Effekte einer chronischen MPTP-Exposition abmildern kann, was bisher nur pharmakologisch, d.h. unter Verwendung nicht-selektiver Calciumkanalblocker gezeigt wurde

Improving the resilience of post-disaster water distribution systems using a dynamic optimization framework

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Improving the resilience of water distribution systems (WDSs) to handle natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes) is a critical step towards sustainable urban water management. This requires the water utility to be able to respond quickly to such disaster events and in an organized manner, to prioritize the use of available resources to restore service rapidly whilst minimizing the negative impacts. Many methods have been developed to evaluate the WDS resilience, but few efforts are made so far to improve resilience of a post-disaster WDS through identifying optimal sequencing of recovery actions. To address this gap, a new dynamic optimization framework is proposed here where the resilience of a post-disaster WDS is evaluated using six different metrics. A tailored Genetic Algorithm is developed to solve the complex optimization problem driven by these metrics. The proposed framework is demonstrated using a real-world WDS with 6,064 pipes. Results obtained show that the proposed framework successfully identifies near-optimal sequencing of recovery actions for this complex WDS. The gained insights, conditional on the specific attributes of the case study, include: (i) the near-optimal sequencing of recovery strategy heavily depends on the damage properties of the WDS, (ii) replacements of damaged elements tend to be scheduled at the intermediate-late stages of the recovery process due to their long operation time, and (iii) interventions to damaged pipe elements near critical facilities (e.g., hospitals) should not be necessarily the first priority to recover due to complex hydraulic interactions within the WDS

Analyse économétrique des prix d'électricité. Modélisation de la moyenne des Log-Rendements

Numéro de référence interne originel : a1.1 g 106

Testing, runtime verification, and analysis of concurrent programs

With the development of multi-core processors, concurrent programs are becoming more and more popular. Among several models, the multithreaded shared-memory model is the predominant programming paradigm for developing concurrent programs. However, because of non-deterministic scheduling, multithreaded code is hard to develop and test. Concurrency bugs, such as data races, atomicity violations, and deadlocks, are hard to detect and fix in multithreaded programs. To test and verify multithreaded programs, two sets of techniques are needed. The first one is to enforce thread schedules and runtime properties efficiently. Being able to enforce desired thread schedules and runtime properties would greatly help developers to develop reliable multithreaded code. The second one is to explore the state space of multithreaded programs efficiently. Systematic state-space exploration could guarantee correctness for mul- tithreaded code, however, it is usually time consuming and thus infeasible in most cases. This dissertation presents several techniques to address challenges arising in testing and runtime verification of multithreaded programs. The first two techniques are the IMUnit framework for enforcing testing schedules and the EnforceMOP system for enforcing runtime properties for multithreaded programs. An experimental evaluation shows that our techniques can enforce thread schedules and runtime properties effectively and efficiently, and have their own advantages over existing techniques. The other techniques are the RV-Causal framework and the CAPP technique in the ReEx framework for efficient state-space exploration of multithreaded code. RV-Causal employs the idea of the maximal causal model for state-space exploration in a novel way to reduce the exploration cost, without losing the ability to detect certain types of concurrency bugs. The results show that RV-Causal outperforms existing techniques by finding concurrency bugs and exploring the entire state space much more efficiently

Security, Privacy and Steganographic Analysis of FaceApp and TikTo

Article originally published in International Journal of Computer Science and SecuritySmartphone applications (Apps) can be addictive for users due to their uniqueness, ease-of-use, trendiness, and growing popularity. The addition of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their functionality has rapidly gained popularity with smartphone users. Over the years, very few smartphone Apps have quickly gained immense popularity like FaceApp and TikTok. FaceApp boasts of using AI to transform photos of human faces using its powerful facial recognition capabilities. FaceApp has been the target of ensuing backlash against it driving the market for a number of other similar yet lesser-known clones into the top ranks of the App stores. TikTok offers video editing and sharing of short video clips whereby making them charming, funny, cringe-inducing, and addictive to the younger generation. FaceApp and TikTok have been the targets of the media, privacy watchdogs, and governments over worries of privacy, ethnicity filters, data misuse, anti-forensics, and security. In this paper, the authors forensically review FaceApp and TikTok Apps from the Android Play Store, for their data ownership, data management, privacy concerns, steganographic use, and overall security posture

Cognitively diagnostic analysis using the G-DINA model in R

Cognitive diagnosis models (CDMs) have increasingly been applied in education and other fields. This article provides an overview of a widely used CDM, namely, the G-DINA model, and demonstrates a hands-on example of using multiple R packages for a series of CDM analyses. This overview involves a step-by-step illustration and explanation of performing Q-matrix evaluation, CDM calibration, model fit evaluation, item diagnosticity investigation, classification reliability examination, and the result presentation and visualization. Some limitations of conducting CDM analysis in R are also discusse

Hit Ratio Driven Mobile Edge Caching Scheme for Video on Demand Services

More and more scholars focus on mobile edge computing (MEC) technology, because the strong storage and computing capabilities of MEC servers can reduce the long transmission delay, bandwidth waste, energy consumption, and privacy leaks in the data transmission process. In this paper, we study the cache placement problem to determine how to cache videos and which videos to be cached in a mobile edge computing system. First, we derive the video request probability by taking into account video popularity, user preference and the characteristic of video representations. Second, based on the acquired request probability, we formulate a cache placement problem with the objective to maximize the cache hit ratio subject to the storage capacity constraints. Finally, in order to solve the formulated problem, we transform it into a grouping knapsack problem and develop a dynamic programming algorithm to obtain the optimal caching strategy. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can greatly improve the cache hit ratio

Systematic Concurrency Testing with Maximal Causality

We propose the first systematic concurrent program testing approach that is able to cover the entire scheduling space with a provably minimal number of test runs. Each run corresponds to a distinct maximal causal model extracted from a given execution trace, which captures the largest possible set of causally equivalent legal executions. The maximal causal models can be represented using first-order logic constraints, and testing all the executions comprised by a maximal causal model reduces to offline constraint solving. Based on the same constraint model, we also develop a schedule generation algorithm that iteratively generates new casually different schedules. The core idea is to systematically force previous read operations to read different values, thus enumerating all the causal models. We have implemented our approach in an explicit stateless model checker, and our eval- uation showed that our technique is able to 1) find concurrency bugs faster; 2) finish state space exploration with much fewer schedules than previous techniques.NSF CCF-1218605NSA grant H98230-10-C-0294Rockwell Collins contract 4504813093DARPA HACMS program as SRI subcontract 19-000222Ope