CultureLabs: Cultural heritage and digital technology at the service of social innovation

Studies and practice in the cultural field have long acknowledged the importance of participatory approaches for engaging visitors of cultural institutions, however, it is only recently that we are talking about steps to connecting institutional heritage with civic initiatives that can aid social cohesion and community empowerment. In dialogue with ongoing practices in this context, CultureLabs aims to develop novel methodologies and digital tools that can facilitate the organisation and wider deployment of participatory projects around cultural her - itage, focusing on the social inclusion of disadvantaged groups, and particularly of migrant communities. As a first step in this process, the CultureLabs team has conducted a series of interviews and surveys with the aim to identify and analyse the organisational needs and lessons learnt by different actors from the cultural, social, educational and public administration fields as well as the needs and viewpoints of different migrant communities. These needs have guided the design of an innovative online platform which seeks to offer a number of services for supporting more efficient and participatory governance of cultural heritage on one hand and for enabling inclusive and creative interactions with digital cultural heritage on the other. The CultureLabs platform will allow multiple and diverse stakeholders to discover and combine differ - ent resources and elements of best practices, the "ingredients", in order to form new "recipes" for social innovation according to their own needs and objectives

Direct measurements of the effects of salt and surfactant on interaction forces between colloidal particles at water-oil interfaces

The forces between colloidal particles at a decane-water interface, in the presence of low concentrations of a monovalent salt (NaCl) and of the surfactant sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) in the aqueous subphase, have been studied using laser tweezers. In the absence of electrolyte and surfactant, particle interactions exhibit a long-range repulsion, yet the variation of the interaction for different particle pairs is found to be considerable. Averaging over several particle pairs was hence found to be necessary to obtain reliable assessment of the effects of salt and surfactant. It has previously been suggested that the repulsion is consistent with electrostatic interactions between a small number of dissociated charges in the oil phase, leading to a decay with distance to the power -4 and an absence of any effect of electrolyte concentration. However, the present work demonstrates that increasing the electrolyte concentration does yield, on average, a reduction of the magnitude of the interaction force with electrolyte concentration. This implies that charges on the water side also contribute significantly to the electrostatic interactions. An increase in the concentration of SDS leads to a similar decrease of the interaction force. Moreover the repulsion at fixed SDS concentrations decreases over longer times. Finally, measurements of three-body interactions provide insight into the anisotropic nature of the interactions. The unique time-dependent and anisotropic interactions between particles at the oil-water interface allow tailoring of the aggregation kinetics and structure of the suspension structure.Comment: Submitted to Langmui

The Impact of Flavour Changing Neutral Gauge Bosons on B->X_s gamma

The branching ratio of the rare decay B->X_s gamma provides potentially strong constraints on models beyond the Standard Model. Considering a general scenario with new heavy neutral gauge bosons, present in particular in Z' and gauge flavour models, we point out two new contributions to the B->X_s gamma decay. The first one originates from one-loop diagrams mediated by gauge bosons and heavy exotic quarks with electric charge -1/3. The second contribution stems from the QCD mixing of neutral current-current operators generated by heavy neutral gauge bosons and the dipole operators responsible for the B->X_s gamma decay. The latter mixing is calculated here for the first time. We discuss general sum rules which have to be satisfied in any model of this type. We emphasise that the neutral gauge bosons in question could also significantly affect other fermion radiative decays as well as non-leptonic two-body B decays, epsilon'/epsilon, anomalous (g-2)_mu and electric dipole moments.Comment: 31 pages, 5 figures; version published on JHEP; added magic QCD numbers for flavour-violating Z gauge boson contribution to B -> X_s gamm

Interactions between proteins bound to biomembranes

We study a physical model for the interaction between general inclusions bound to fluid membranes that possess finite tension, as well as the usual bending rigidity. We are motivated by an interest in proteins bound to cell membranes that apply forces to these membranes, due to either entropic or direct chemical interactions. We find an exact analytic solution for the repulsive interaction between two similar circularly symmetric inclusions. This repulsion extends over length scales of order tens of nanometers, and contrasts with the membrane-mediated contact attraction for similar inclusions on tensionless membranes. For non circularly symmetric inclusions we study the small, algebraically long-ranged, attractive contribution to the force that arises. We discuss the relevance of our results to biological phenomena, such as the budding of caveolae from cell membranes and the striations that are observed on their coats.Comment: 22 pages, 2 figure

Past, present and future mathematical models for buildings (i)

This is the first of two articles presenting a detailed review of the historical evolution of mathematical models applied in the development of building technology, including conventional buildings and intelligent buildings. After presenting the technical differences between conventional and intelligent buildings, this article reviews the existing mathematical models, the abstract levels of these models, and their links to the literature for intelligent buildings. The advantages and limitations of the applied mathematical models are identified and the models are classified in terms of their application range and goal. We then describe how the early mathematical models, mainly physical models applied to conventional buildings, have faced new challenges for the design and management of intelligent buildings and led to the use of models which offer more flexibility to better cope with various uncertainties. In contrast with the early modelling techniques, model approaches adopted in neural networks, expert systems, fuzzy logic and genetic models provide a promising method to accommodate these complications as intelligent buildings now need integrated technologies which involve solving complex, multi-objective and integrated decision problems

Past, present and future mathematical models for buildings (ii)

This article is the second part of a review of the historical evolution of mathematical models applied in the development of building technology. The first part described the current state of the art and contrasted various models with regard to the applications to conventional buildings and intelligent buildings. It concluded that mathematical techniques adopted in neural networks, expert systems, fuzzy logic and genetic models, that can be used to address model uncertainty, are well suited for modelling intelligent buildings. Despite the progress, the possible future development of intelligent buildings based on the current trends implies some potential limitations of these models. This paper attempts to uncover the fundamental limitations inherent in these models and provides some insights into future modelling directions, with special focus on the techniques of semiotics and chaos. Finally, by demonstrating an example of an intelligent building system with the mathematical models that have been developed for such a system, this review addresses the influences of mathematical models as a potential aid in developing intelligent buildings and perhaps even more advanced buildings for the future

Mediterranean-climate streams and rivers: geographically separated but ecologically comparable freshwater systems

Streams and rivers in mediterranean-climate regions (med-rivers in med-regions) are ecologically unique, with flow regimes reflecting precipitation patterns. Although timing of drying and flooding is predictable, seasonal and annual intensity of these events is not. Sequential flooding and drying, coupled with anthropogenic influences make these med-rivers among the most stressed riverine habitat worldwide. Med-rivers are hotspots for biodiversity in all med-regions. Species in med-rivers require different, often opposing adaptive mechanisms to survive drought and flood conditions or recover from them. Thus, metacommunities undergo seasonal differences, reflecting cycles of river fragmentation and connectivity, which also affect ecosystem functioning. River conservation and management is challenging, and trade-offs between environmental and human uses are complex, especially under future climate change scenarios. This overview of a Special Issue on med-rivers synthesizes information presented in 21 articles covering the five med-regions worldwide: Mediterranean Basin, coastal California, central Chile, Cape region of South Africa, and southwest and southern Australia. Research programs to increase basic knowledge in less-developed med-regions should be prioritized to achieve increased abilities to better manage med-rivers