Improving energy modeling of large building stock through the development of archetype buildings

12th Conference of International Building Performance Simulation Associatio

La cultura popular, la poesía popular y la décima

En este artículo exploro, en primer lugar, el origen, características, estructura y usos de la décima, tal como aparece en los versos de la poesía popular en América Latina y, más específicamente, en Chile. Luego, examino la suspicaz interrogante de algunos estudiosos de la literatura acerca del proceso por el cual una expresión como la décima, proveniente de una fuente literaria culta, se traspasa a la poesía popular y adquiere tal relevancia en ella, sobre todo en el contexto latinoamericano. Desarrollando ese anterior punto, en la última parte de este texto, intento proyectar esa interrogante (acerca de lo culto en lo popular) examinando los alcances culturales de ese fenómeno y, puntualmente, la reflexión que éste promueve (y, de algún modo, hace estallar) acerca de la definición misma de “cultura popular”

Can’t stop coyote

I work hard to keep language out of my studio. Language reminds me of my mom’s voice, people telling me what to do, not having the right accent, critiques, criticism in general, mis-truths, and never being good enough. Language is the material of my thoughts, and most of my thoughts, or the ones on a constant loop anyhow, are all those voices over and over again. Painting is where I get to be me, with myself, and in my body. Painting is my home, family, refuge, and best friend. I’m not looking at myself from the outside, no one can fucking tell me what to do, and I don’t have to explain myself. Naturally writing a “thesis” feels counterintuitive and is absolute last thing I want to do. It’s a messed up hierarchy, where after two years of material investigations and dialogue, “schooling” is only complete with a written component. It feels like beating a dead horse or killing the whole damn thing. I’ve thought of a lot of ways to do this part of my education without actually doing it: 1. Commission essays about my work 2. Conduct interviews and use transcripts 3. Provide a quick abstract stating my position followed up by a curated reading list 4. Write an exhaustive list of all the voices in my head that I have to shut down before I paint 5. Type up the notes from my Can’t Stop Coyote book 6. Include other manifestos or make my own 7. Smoke a final pack of cigarettes one last time and “write a thesis” whatever that means 8. Try to get an exemption 9. Submit the exemption letter as my thesis. The bottom line is I’m not ready to write and have no desire to. As I lay here on my stomach and think about forcing myself to sit, reflect, and name stuff, I feel like I want to kill myself and smoke till I die. I don’t know what the following pages that make up my “thesis” will contain. It might be linear, impressionistic, or fragmented. They might be my words or the words of others. It may describe my paintings or not. My compromise is that I am willing to try, for the sake of my “education”, to explore some other possibilities for language in relation to my practice

Fiscal, deficit, inflation, money supply and exchange rate in South Africa

This study empirically investigates the relationship between fiscal deficit, inflation, M3 money supply and the exchange rate in South Africa. The study makes use of quarterly macroeconomic time-series data sets comprising 84 observations, covering the period from 1994Q1 to 2015Q4. The unit root tests conducted employed the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) tests. The results reveal that the variables become stationary at first difference. The Johansen co-integration technique suggests that there is at least one co-integrating equation among the variables. The results of the Engle-Granger approach, which is residual based, show that the residuals are stationary, thus validating the existence of a long-run relationship between the model variables. The study carried out a Granger causality test. The results indicate that there is a strong Granger causal relationship between the variables (IF) and (FD). Another strong causal relationship emerges between inflation and money supply. The ECM model was employed to identify the speed of adjustment as a response to the departures from the long-run equilibrium path. The estimated coefficient of the ECM error term has the required sign and is statistically significant at the five per cent level of significance. The error term indicates a quick convergence to equilibrium. The study concludes that the dependent variable (FD) is jointly caused by all the independent variables in the long-run. The results of the variance decomposition of the variable (FD) to innovations resulting from IF, MS and RER indicate that own shocks remain the dominant source of total fluctuations in the forecast error of the variables. The findings of the study are efficient and reliable as the estimated model passed all the major diagnostic tests. By implication the findings suggest that the estimated model show high goodness of fit and is thus reliable for policy making. The study recommends a fiscal adjustment that will enhance economic growth. Additionally, a fiscal policy that will aim at identifying and mitigating other possible leakages that narrow the tax base should be considered

The Role of Calcium Signalling in Autophagy

Autophagy is a catabolic process that is important for degradation of cellular components, and for cell survival, and has also been associated with pathological disorders and tumour growth. Autophagy is a complex process; many factors and messengers converge to control steps along the autophagic pathway. Ca2+ has been proposed to regulate autophagy. However, Ca2+ has been proposed to be both pro- and anti-autophagic. To better understand how Ca2+ has these opposing effects, this study investigated in what ways particular sources of Ca2+, and the characteristics of Ca2+ signals impacted on autophagy. The fundamental need for Ca2+ in the activation of autophagy was demonstrated by loading cells with an exogenous Ca2+ buffer, which prevented various stimuli from triggering autophagy. Autophagy could be activated by inhibiting the transfer of Ca2+ from the endoplasmic reticulum to the mitochondrial matrix. This was achieved by expressing an enzyme that prevented Ca2+ release from inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptors, inhibition of mitochondrial respiration, and knockdown of the mitochondrial Ca2+ uniporter. The triggering of autophagy under these conditions was due to reduced cellular ATP levels. These data suggest that Ca2+ signals arising from InsP3Rs suppress autophagy. Additional studies used a well-characterised Ca2+ transport pathway to generate cellular Ca2+ signals, and examined their ability to trigger autophagy. This pathway, known as ‘store-operated Ca2+ entry’ (SOCE), was activated by depleting endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ stores using inhibitors of sarco/endoplasmic reticulum ATPases (SERCA). It was found that sustained cellular Ca2+ signals arising via chronic inhibition of SERCA were pro-autophagic. The activation of autophagy absolutely required the presence of extracellular Ca2+, and was not due to cellular stress. Using pharmacological inhibition of various Ca2+-sensitive kinases, it was found that at least part of the autophagy that occurred during SOCE was due to activation of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent kinase kinase-β (CaMKK-β, also known as CaMKK-2)