2,861 research outputs found
Cities and Citizenship in Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean
The Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (NALACS), in cooperation with the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology, organised the joint conference, ‘Cities and Citizenship in Contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean,’ held on 16-17 June 2016 in Delft, the Netherlands. The 2-day conference embraced a wide range of topics related to urban development and citizenship in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Premises of the conference
In their pioneering collection of essays ‘Cities and Citizenship’, Holston and Appadurai (1999) as well as other prominent scholars, stressed the importance of cities in the making of modern citizens. At the end of the twentieth century, they demonstrated that urban environments are salient sites for examining the renegotiations of citizenship, democracy, and national belonging. This is arguably particularly the case in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean, where cities seem to embody the aspirations of citizens and to showcase the best and the worse of their respective societies. It is here that we can observe major opportunities and threats to development, security and human rights, as well as major struggles for rights, inclusion and democracy
This conference was organised in 4 tracks
Track 1. Cities and Violence: Cities as salient sites where violence and conflict develop and affect the lives of citizens.
Track 2. Cities and sustainable development: Cities as salient sites where (spatial) planning and (sustainable) development ideas are applied, and where grassroots and governments alternatingly clash or collaborate in order to simultaneously build cities and structures of citizenship.
Track 3. Cities and identity: Cities as salient sites where citizen’s identities and resistances are expressed and repressed.
Track 4. Open for suggestions: Cities as salient sites for other themes related to urban life and urban development
Theorizing Slum Politics in Recife, Brazil : Community leaders symbolize the inconsistency of the urban situation
Retrofit simulation report
International Energy Agency
The International Energy Agency (IEA) was established in 1974 within the framework of the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to implement an international energy programme.
A basic aim of the IEA is to foster co-operation among the twenty-eight IEA participating
countries and to increase energy security through energy conservation, development of alternative energy
sources and energy research, development and demonstration (RD&D).
Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community Systems
The IEA co-ordinates research and development in a number of areas related to energy. The mission of
one of those areas, the ECBCS - Energy Conservation for Building and Community Systems Programme,
is to develop and facilitate the integration of technologies and processes for energy efficiency and conservation
into healthy, low emission, and sustainable buildings and communities, through innovation
and research.
The research and development strategies of the ECBCS Programme are derived from research drivers,
national programmes within IEA countries, and the IEA Future Building Forum Think Tank Workshop,
held in March 2007. The R&D strategies represent a collective input of the Executive Committee members
to exploit technological opportunities to save energy in the buildings sector, and to remove technical
obstacles to market penetration of new energy conservation technologies. The R&D strategies apply
to residential, commercial, office buildings and community systems, and will impact the building industry
in three focus areas of R&D activities:
Dissemination
Decision-making
Building products and system
Intermediate Field Coupling of Single Epitaxial Quantum Dots to Plasmonic Waveguides
Key requirements for quantum plasmonic nanocircuits are reliable
single-photon sources, high coupling efficiency to the plasmonic structures and
low propagation losses. Self-assembled epitaxially grown GaAs quantum dots are
close to ideal stable, bright and narrowband single-photon emitters. Likewise,
wet-chemically grown monocrystalline silver nanowires are among the best
plasmonic waveguides. However, large propagation losses of surface plasmons on
the high-index GaAs substrate prevent their direct combination. Here, we show
by experiment and simulation that the best overall performance of the quantum
plasmonic nanocircuit based on these building blocks is achieved in the
intermediate field regime with an additional spacer layer between the quantum
dot and the plasmonic waveguide. High-resolution cathodoluminescence
measurements allow a precise determination of the coupling distance and support
a simple analytical model to explain the overall performance. The coupling
efficiency is increased up to four times by standing wave interference near the
end of the waveguide.Comment: Accepted at ACS Nano Letters; contains main text and supporting
informatio
Fluorescent in situ hybridization of pre-incubated blood culture material for the rapid diagnosis of histoplasmosis
Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) has been shown to be useful for the detection of Candida and Cryptococcus species in blood culture materials. FISH procedures for the detection of Histoplasma capsulatum var. capsulatum have not been reported so far. This study describes the development and evaluation of fluorescently labeled rRNA-targeting FISH probes to detect and identify H. capsulatum in blood cultures. All three analyzed H. capsulatum reference strains and clinical isolates showed positive signals with the newly designed specific oligonucleotide probes for H. capsulatum, whereas negative reactions were observed for all three nontarget yeast species and the two nontarget bacteria. The assay was also successfully applied for detections of H. capsulatum cells in pre-incubated blood culture samples of patients with clinical suspicion of histoplasmosis (n = 33). The described FISH-based assay was shown to be easy to apply, sensitive, and specific (compared to polymerase chain reaction) for the detection and identification of H. capsulatum in this proof-of-principle analysis. Larger multicentric assessments are recommended for a thorough diagnostic evaluation of the procedure. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The International Society for Human and Animal Mycology
Experimental Multi-state Quantum Discrimination in the Frequency Domain with Quantum Dot Light
The quest for the realization of effective quantum state discrimination
strategies is of great interest for quantum information technology, as well as
for fundamental studies. Therefore, it is crucial to develop new and more
efficient methods to implement discrimination protocols for quantum states.
Among the others, single photon implementations are more advisable, because of
their inherent security advantage in quantum communication scenarios. In this
work, we present the experimental realization of a protocol employing a
time-multiplexing strategy to optimally discriminate among eight non-orthogonal
states, encoded in the four-dimensional Hilbert space spanning both the
polarization degree of freedom and photon energy. The experiment, built on a
custom-designed bulk optics analyser setup and single photons generated by a
nearly deterministic solid-state source, represents a benchmarking example of
minimum error discrimination with actual quantum states, requiring only linear
optics and two photodetectors to be realized. Our work paves the way for more
complex applications and delivers a novel approach towards high-dimensional
quantum encoding and decoding operations
Seascape genomics and phylogeography of the sailfish (Istiophorus platypterus)
Permeable phylogeographic barriers characterize the vast open ocean, boosting gene flow and counteracting population differentiation and speciation of widely distributed and migratory species. However, many widely distributed species consists of distinct populations throughout their distribution, evidencing that our understanding of how the marine environment triggers population and species divergence are insufficient. The sailfish is a circumtropical and highly migratory billfish that inhabits warm and productive areas. Despite its ecological and socioeconomic importance as a predator and fishery resource, the species is threatened by overfishing, requiring innovative approaches to improve their management and conservation status. Thus, we presented a novel high-quality reference genome for the species and applied a seascape genomics approach to understand how marine environmental features may promote local adaptation and how it affects gene flow between populations. We delimit two populations between the Atlantic and Indo-Western Pacific oceans and detect outlier loci correlated with sea surface temperature, salinity, oxygen, and chlorophyll concentrations. However, the most significant explanatory factor that explains the differences between populations was isolation by distance. Despite recent population drops, the sailfish populations are not inbred. For billfishes in general, genome-wide heterozygosity was found to be relatively low compared to other marine fishes, evidencing the need to counteract overfishing effects. In addition, in a climate change scenario, management agencies must implement state-of-the-art sequencing methods, consider our findings in their management plans, and monitor genome-wide heterozygosity over time to improve sustainable fisheries and the long-term viability of its populations.LA/P/0101/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Signatures of the Optical Stark Effect on Entangled Photon Pairs from Resonantly-Pumped Quantum Dots
Two-photon resonant excitation of the biexciton-exciton cascade in a quantum
dot generates highly polarization-entangled photon pairs in a
near-deterministic way. However, there are still open questions on the ultimate
level of achievable entanglement. Here, we observe the impact of the
laser-induced AC-Stark effect on the spectral emission features and on
entanglement. A shorter emission time, longer laser pulse duration, and higher
pump power all result in lower values of concurrence. Nonetheless, additional
contributions are still required to fully account for the observed below-unity
concurrence.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Post-fabrication tuning of circular Bragg resonators for enhanced emitter-cavity coupling
Solid-state quantum emitters embedded in circular Bragg resonators are
attractive due to their ability to emit quantum states of light with high
brightness and low multi-photon probability. As for any emitter-microcavity
system, fabrication imperfections limit the spatial and spectral overlap of the
emitter with the cavity mode, thus limiting their coupling strength. Here, we
show that an initial spectral mismatch can be corrected after device
fabrication by repeated wet chemical etching steps. We demonstrate ~16 nm
wavelength tuning for optical modes in AlGaAs resonators on oxide, leading to a
4-fold Purcell enhancement of the emission of single embedded GaAs quantum
dots. Numerical calculations reproduce the observations and suggest that the
achievable performance of the resonator is only marginally affected in the
explored tuning range. We expect the method to be applicable also to circular
Bragg resonators based on other material platforms, thus increasing the device
yield of cavity-enhanced solid-state quantum emitters
Differences in autophagy marker levels at birth in preterm vs. term infants.
BACKGROUND
Preterm infants are susceptible to oxidative stress and prone to respiratory diseases. Autophagy is an important defense mechanism against oxidative-stress-induced cell damage and involved in lung development and respiratory morbidity. We hypothesized that autophagy marker levels differ between preterm and term infants.
METHODS
In the prospective Basel-Bern Infant Lung Development (BILD) birth cohort we compared cord blood levels of macroautophagy (Beclin-1, LC3B), selective autophagy (p62) and regulation of autophagy (SIRT1) in 64 preterm and 453 term infants.
RESULTS
Beclin-1 and LC3B did not differ between preterm and term infants. However, p62 was higher (0.37, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.05;0.69 in log2-transformed level, p = 0.025, padj = 0.050) and SIRT1 lower in preterm infants (-0.55, 95% CI -0.78;-0.31 in log2-transformed level, padj < 0.001). Furthermore, p62 decreased (padj-value for smoothing function was 0.018) and SIRT1 increased (0.10, 95% CI 0.07;0.13 in log2-transformed level, padj < 0.001) with increasing gestational age.
CONCLUSION
Our findings suggest differential levels of key autophagy markers between preterm and term infants. This adds to the knowledge of the sparsely studied field of autophagy mechanisms in preterm infants and might be linked to impaired oxidative stress response, preterm birth, impaired lung development and higher susceptibility to respiratory morbidity in preterm infants.
IMPACT
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate autophagy marker levels between human preterm and term infants in a large population-based sample in cord blood plasma This study demonstrates differential levels of key autophagy markers in preterm compared to term infants and an association with gestational age This may be linked to impaired oxidative stress response or developmental aspects and provide bases for future studies investigating the association with respiratory morbidity
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