The Space of Bad Faith

Provoked by Ananya Roy’s activist lecture tour, this essay questions the efficacy of academia’s social critique and the notions of agency and vocation that emerge therefrom. Moving from Roy’s reinterpretation of liberalism and Marxism to an appraisal of academic space as a faithless one shorn of its intended social and urban impact, this essay wonders out loud if academic production is too safe a space when it comes down to the political. Academics are necessarily involved in the production of sociopolitical conditions which are the subject of academic criticism. Rather than disavowing their connection to the nation state, academics should acknowledge their role in it. Taking cues from popular culture, this essay polemically prods scholars toward a discomfiting disengagement from the academic comfort that may stand in the way of difficult engagement with the world beyond academia. Aspirational as this is, the hope is that the practice of humbling (self-)honesty short-circuits to a hubristic heroism, mortal as that may be.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154845/1/AlBader_TheSpaceofBadFaith.pd

An Overall Policy Decision-Support System For Educational Facilities Management: An Agent-Based Approach

Although K-12 public school facilities infrastructure investments are second only to highways, schools continue to suffer from an approximately $38 billion annual funding gap. Massive reductions in funding are forcing school districts to make tough decisions to optimize maintenance expenditures. Over the last three decades, a huge body of research has determined that the condition of school facilities do affect student health and performance, and some have further demonstrated that schools are overwhelmed by deteriorating facilities that threaten the health, safety, and learning opportunities of students. The currently available educational facility management approaches oversee the influence of the complex and mutual interactions between a school facility and its occupants. This thesis aimed to develop an overall decision support system for decision-makers that promotes efficient planning and management of educational infrastructure system by embracing a proactive management style rather than reactive. The proposed system consists of three main components: (1) an overall condition prediction model for educational facilities as a whole, (2) a tactical level Agent-based model (ABM) for classroom interaction simulation, and (3) a strategic level ABM for maintenance budget allocation. ABM was selected for its flexibility, natural representation of the problem, and suitability for modeling real-world complex systems with heterogenous agents. The first tool was accomplished through the development of a three-stage condition prediction methodology. The first stage aims to recognize the deterioration pattern of the educational facility as a whole by utilizing a Markov chain modeling approach. The second stage focuses on determining the overall useful service life of educational facilities. The third stage identifies the higher and lower limits of the educational facilities’ deterioration rate. The resulted model can help decision-makers plan and forecast their maintenance needs and better manage the available resources. The proposed methodology can be applied to any multi-component asset. The second tool, the tactical level decision support ABM, was developed to provide decision-makers with new insights into the effects of different maintenance polices on the educational system. The model simulates day-by-day classroom interactions and highlights the importance of preventive maintenance on the educational system’s major stakeholders (agents). The third decision support tool presented in this research is the strategic level model for testing the effects of different maintenance budget allocation strategies on the school district revenues, overall performance, enrollment size, and land values over years. ABM enhances the overall comprehension of the current situation and its complex relations, increases resource allocation efficiency, highlights the important factors affecting the system that are overlooked in traditional management styles, thereby improving the quality of educational outcomes. The main challenge in developing the proposed ABM was identifying and quantifying the main stakeholders’ complex interactions due to the uncertainties inherent in human behavior. This thesis demonstrated the need for a holistic bottom-top asset management modeling approach rather than asset-centric top-down approach. The case study results of this research confirmed that ABM has great potential as an asset management tool for decision-makers that can provide a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the system dynamics

Passing Through: Repatriation Bureaucratically Considered

Separation is common in our world even though it is often neglected. While much architecture attempts to minimize spatial separation, there are situations where separation is considered a necessity. These spaces are usually those of extraordinary or unfortunate circumstance. They are essentially exceptions to the norm, zones of legal limbo that ought to have a physical definition that is enriched by separation. The recent outbreak of Ebola and the current refugee crisis remind us of the precarious position we are in, especially with the dearth of institutions that can handle the complex human cases that emerge. Combining the bureaucratic side of humanitarianism with a presence-in-the- field in the global south, a UNHCR Global Service Center takes foot in West Africa. As a flagship model of an architecture for transient conditions, this thesis posits a building that is both humanitarian transit center and bureaucratic edifice

How do sovereign wealth funds pay their portfolio companies’ executives? Evidence from Kuwait

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are major players in the global markets. This paper examines the possible value SWFs bring to their domestic holdings by examining the impact of SWF ownership on firms’ executive compensation. Using data on Kuwaiti SWFs, we find that having an SWF as an ultimate owner enhances the pay–performance sensitivity (PPS) to levels matching those in more developed markets. This pay–performance enhancement increases as the rights of the SWF to manage and oversee the firm’s cash-flow increase. Moreover, having an SWF as the firm’s ultimate owner alleviates the adverse effects of the divergence in cash-flow and control rights. This evidence supports the notion that SWFs create value for their target investments through activism, monitoring and corporate governance enhancements

Some communication algorithms for Gaussian and Eisenstein-Jacobi networks

Interconnection networks play important roles in designing high performance computers. Recently two new classes of interconnection networks based on the concept of Gaussian and Eisenstein-Jacobi integers were introduced. In this research, efficient routing and broadcasting algorithms for these networks are developed. Furthermore, constructing edge disjoint Hamiltonian cycles in Gaussian networks are also investigated. Some resource placement methods for Eisenstein-Jacobi networks are also studied

Psychosocial Aspects of Living With Diabetes Mellitus: An Enhancement of Diabetic Program of Primary Health Care in Doha, Qatar

Diabetes mellitus has a detrimental impact on one's well-being. Psychological and social aspects play a significant role in diabetes care and it is believed that these issues are important in the overall health of Qatari patients with diabetes mellitus. This descriptive cross-sectional research was conducted to determine the psychological and social aspects of living with diabetes mellitus. Two hundred eighty patients with diabetes mellitus were included as respondents of the study. It has shown that the respondents were, in general, psychologically and socially well. They were satisfied with their own selves and lived in a purposeful manner, however, they were anxious about the complications of the disease. Family members were concerned about their condition wherein they could talk freely about diabetes mellitus. Educational attainment and living arrangement were significantly correlated with psychological well-being. Presence of illnesses not related to diabetes was significantly correlated with both psychological and social well-being. To conclude, despite having diabetes mellitus, the patients still feel good about themselves, maintain healthy relationships and exhibit good psychological health and social well-being. To achieve the goals of diabetes care and to meet the challenges of diabetes, psychosocial interventions should be included as part of ongoing diabetes management. Keywords: diabetes mellitus; psychosocial aspect of diabetes mellitus; diabetic program; primary health car

SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types

A first update on mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19

peer reviewe

A CAMPUS BIOGRAPHY

ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2020: Divergence in Architectural Research, March 5-6, 2020, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.The university, as an institution and as a space, is complex. A middle scale outside the comfort zone of architects, the campus bridges between the architectural and the urban. In response to professional pressures on architects, the study of campus planning emerged in the mid-twentieth century as a technocratic concern. The campus became a spatial type worthy of analytical attention and epistemic production. The functionalist approach to campus studies eventually gave way to more academic and less instrumental interests in the subject. To take stock of the development of the conceptualization of the campus as an object of analysis, I utilize the biographical method as a lens through which to read the differentiation within the field. This essay vicariously traces the contours of the campus’ discursive landscape by focusing on the oeuvre of the discourse’s prime inciter to discourse, Richard Dober. Through a close reading of his monographs, a textured picture of campus studies emerges; the discourse first coalesces around modernist, functionalist, and subsequently international concerns about the efficacy and adequacy of the spatial provisions accorded to rapidly expanding higher education. This is followed by a discursive turn towards more humanistic concerns like history and art, ushered by the publication of Paul Turner’s seminal history of the campus in the United States. Dober was not immune to this discursive shift, but took it in stride, producing many books attempting to reconcile his rationalist, modernist predilections with the ascendance of lyricism and beauty as core analytical concerns. His oeuvre developed and expanded, incorporating campus history and aesthetics as primary interpretive threads. The ardent functionalist of yesteryear had to adapt and assume a humanistic outlook in his later years. In sum, campus discourse’s story is a bipolar one, jumpstarted by modernist concerns spearheaded by Dober only to later be inflected by the Turner plot point towards scholarship in the vein of that produced by historian-aesthetes. Because Dober lived, worked, and wrote prolifically through all this, his collective works serve as an index of the evolution and differentiation of the campus discourse, and his books as lampposts along the shifting discursive landscape of campus planning and design. This deep dive into Dober’s oeuvre and its interfaces with discursive developments illuminates how his oeuvre is reflected in and inflected by the evolution of the campus discourse. Uniquely intertwined with the discourse, Dober’s biography is an opportune proxy through which to sketch a biography of the discursive campus

Spatializing the Knowledge Economy: The Campus as a Discursive Project, Parallel Project, and More-than-Institutional Project

In contrast to the normative scholarly and professional expectation that the university’s spatialization be tightly coupled with its institutional purposes and prerogatives, this dissertation posits that the institution and the campus may purposively be loosely coupled. Employing a multimodal research design that incorporates interpretive, historiographical, and qualitative strategies to bear upon textual, visual, and spatial data, this dissertation can be understood as a multipronged study that nuances the campus-institution relationship and challenges a straightforward indexicality between them. Guided by this overarching objective, this dissertation comprises three distinct core chapters, each with its own focus under the larger umbrella of the campus-institution nexus. This set of approaches allows me to parse both the conceptual context of higher educational spatialization as well as specific instances of this spatialization at the intersection of the institutional, the national, and the global. The first core chapter takes up the campus as a discursive project, surveying the range of campus planning and design monographs to trace the ways in which scholars, practitioners, and other authors have written the campus into existence as a spatial concept, rather than an institutional metaphor. Showing that variant understandings of the campus’ orientation towards its institution animate this discursive production, this chapter posits what might be called ‘the discursive campus’ as a conceptual assemblage of these different epistemic logics. The second core chapter elucidates the relationship between institutional and spatial form during the rapid founding of an elite graduate research institution, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in Saudi Arabia, a wealthy absolute monarchy. This context – where both the institution and the campus started out as blank canvases for founders to aspirationally shape – shows that their formation were parallel projects, with the campus project ultimately serving as a Saudi-based anchor for the globally-oriented institutional project. The third core chapter focuses on the masterplans of Sabah Al-Salem University City (SSUC), a new campus for a preexisting but spatially-fragmented public university in Kuwait, a parliamentary emirate. Here, campus design had to contend with institutional and contextual pressures, such as the need for additional space and to heed a new segregation-of-the-sexes law; this chapter shows how two successive masterplans in turn engaged and addressed concerns much broader than the institution’s. Though ostensibly products of specific campus design commissions, these masterplans constituted more-than-institutional documents. These three core chapters substantiate my affirmation of the viability of a discursive and designerly understanding of the campus that is not in lockstep with the university institution. This examination of the discourse alongside two projects in relatively understudied Gulf countries demonstrates that the planning and design of campuses entail much more than simply responding to given institutional data and desiderata. Campus projects are means of working through a broader cacophony of desires, and serve as records of their management, reconciliation, or obfuscation.PHDArchitectureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/176557/1/balbader_1.pd