Ambiguous surfaces : dressing the wall, dressing the room, dressing the building

Fashion and architecture are the results of configuring surfaces. The surface of architecture is distanced and objective. The surface of fashion is tangible and sensible. Dressing of an individual provides a definition of private space. Dressing of a group of people provides a definition of communal space. My thesis interest is to explore the ambiguity between these two disciplines to create the intermedium layer of clothing surface and the building surface. The aim to explore different gradients of privacy between the private and the public, disconnections and reconnections, intimacy and distance to find a way in which they can all coexist. The goal of my thesis is not to arrive to a solution, but to provoke, question and inquire through the process of prototyping. By designing the prototypes to blur disciplinary boundaries between fashion and architecture. The blurry boundary is where I see the ambiguity, the matter between true and not true, between neither or both

The ProfessionAl Go annotation datasEt (PAGE)

The game of Go has been highly under-researched due to the lack of game records and analysis tools. In recent years, the increasing number of professional competitions and the advent of AlphaZero-based algorithms provide an excellent opportunity for analyzing human Go games on a large scale. In this paper, we present the ProfessionAl Go annotation datasEt (PAGE), containing 98,525 games played by 2,007 professional players and spans over 70 years. The dataset includes rich AI analysis results for each move. Moreover, PAGE provides detailed metadata for every player and game after manual cleaning and labeling. Beyond the preliminary analysis of the dataset, we provide sample tasks that benefit from our dataset to demonstrate the potential application of PAGE in multiple research directions. To the best of our knowledge, PAGE is the first dataset with extensive annotation in the game of Go. This work is an extended version of [1] where we perform a more detailed description, analysis, and application.Comment: Journal version of arXiv:2205.00254, under revie

Characterization of ammonium and phosphate adsorption by synthetic zeolite

The excess of nitrogen and phosphorus in the wastewater has caused crucial distortion in the nature such as eutrophication of water basins, disturbed the ecological balance and spoiled the water quality. Moreover, continuing population growth make that more fertilizers are needed to the agriculture. To resolve these issues, a large number of researches related to ammonium and phosphate removal and recovery from wastewater have been carried out in the last years. Between the studied techniques, ion-exchange is one of the most competitive due to its simplicity of application and operation, low cost and use of environmental friendly materials. The goal of this project is to characterize the overall sorption performance of a zeolite synthesized from coal fly ash which was provided in sodium form (Na-Ze), and its modification in potassium form (K-Ze). It was evaluate the sorption performance of these synthesized zeolites in ammonium single system and ammonium-phosphate binary system. Equilibrium and kinetic studies were performed through the batch experiments. Equilibrium experimental data was well fitted by Langmuir isotherm equation and reported sorption capacities of 109 mg·g-1 and 21 mg·g-1 for Na-Ze and 17 mg·g-1 and 29 mg·g-1 for K-Ze in single and binary system, respectively. Binary system experiments with both zeolite reported not significant phosphate sorption. Kinetic studies showed that both sorbents follow a pseudo second order reaction model and demonstrated that the NH4+ ions removal rate by K-Ze is initially very high, achieving 90% of total sorption in the first minute whereas Na-Ze achieved only the 60% of total ammonium uptake. Finally, regeneration and reuse studies evaluated by three continuous sorption-desorption cycles demonstrated that sorption capacities increased in most cases after desorption and regeneration, probably duo to the zeolite surface activation by hydroxides

Nanoscale Bandgap Tuning across an Inhomogeneous Ferroelectric Interface

We report nanoscale bandgap engineering via a local strain across the inhomogeneous ferroelectric interface, which is controlled by the visible-light-excited probe voltage. Switchable photovolatic effects and the spectral response of the photocurrent were explore to illustrate the reversible bandgap variation (~0.3eV). This local-strain-engineered bandgap has been further revealed by in situ probe-voltage-assisted valence electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). Phase-field simulations and first-principle calculations were also employed for illustration of the large local strain and the bandgap variation in ferroelectric perovskite oxides. This reversible bandgap tuning in complex oxides demonstrates a framework for the understanding of the opticallyrelated behaviors (photovoltaic, photoemission, and photocatalyst effects) affected by order parameters such as charge, orbital, and lattice parameters

Condensin Promotes Position Effects within Tandem DNA Repeats via the RITS Complex

SummaryTandem repetitive DNA is highly abundant in eukaryotic genomes and contributes to transcription control and genome stability. However, how the individual sequences within tandem repeats behave remains largely unknown. Here we develop a collection of fission yeast strains with a reporter gene inserted at different units in a tandem repeat array. We show that, contrary to what is usually assumed, transcriptional silencing and replication timing among the individual repeats differ significantly. RNAi-mediated H3K9 methylation is essential for the silencing position effect. A short hairpin RNA of ura4+ induces silencing in trans within the tandem array in a position-dependent manner. Importantly, the position effect depends on the condensin subunit, cut3+. Cut3 promotes the position effect via interaction with the RNA-induced transcriptional silencing (RITS) complex. This study reveals variations in silencing within tandem DNA repeats and provides mechanistic insights into how DNA repeats at the individual level are regulated

Asynchronous Federated Learning with Incentive Mechanism Based on Contract Theory

To address the challenges posed by the heterogeneity inherent in federated learning (FL) and to attract high-quality clients, various incentive mechanisms have been employed. However, existing incentive mechanisms are typically utilized in conventional synchronous aggregation, resulting in significant straggler issues. In this study, we propose a novel asynchronous FL framework that integrates an incentive mechanism based on contract theory. Within the incentive mechanism, we strive to maximize the utility of the task publisher by adaptively adjusting clients' local model training epochs, taking into account factors such as time delay and test accuracy. In the asynchronous scheme, considering client quality, we devise aggregation weights and an access control algorithm to facilitate asynchronous aggregation. Through experiments conducted on the MNIST dataset, the simulation results demonstrate that the test accuracy achieved by our framework is 3.12% and 5.84% higher than that achieved by FedAvg and FedProx without any attacks, respectively. The framework exhibits a 1.35% accuracy improvement over the ideal Local SGD under attacks. Furthermore, aiming for the same target accuracy, our framework demands notably less computation time than both FedAvg and FedProx

Project Renew Worcester

n The client for this capstone project is RENEW Worcester which is a fledgling solar power project whose main goals are to bring renewable energy in the form of solar power into local, primarily low-income communities and are committed to the mission of making the transition off of fossil fuels to clean, renewable power. Based in Worcester, Massachusetts, they are a local chapter of Co-op Power which is a consumer-owned sustainable energy cooperative (co-op) made up of numerous different local chapters all over the New England area as well as the state of New York. The problem that we will attempt to address is to determine what kind of organization RENEW should become: non-profit or for-profit, while taking into consideration that our recommendation should be in line with what would best be suited for their goals and mission. The purpose of this project is to provide research into the solar power industry – with special focus on the solar industry in Massachusetts – as well as provide detailed information on the different types of non-profit and for-profit organizations