The bodily other and everyday experience of the lived urban world

This article explores the relationship between the bodily presence of other humans in the lived urban world and the experience of everyday architecture. We suggest, from the perspectives of phenomenology and architecture, that being in the company of others changes the way the built environment appears to subjects, and that this enables us to perform simple daily tasks while still attending to the built environment. Our analysis shows that in mundane urban settings attending to the environment involves a unique attentional mode, which does not rely on concentrating on, or appreciating the architectural objects, but rather on social attention and on the subject’s kinesthesis in relation to the built environment

Fourier-Splitting methods for the dynamics of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates

We present a new method to propagate rotating Bose-Einstein condensates subject to explicitly time-dependent trapping potentials. Using algebraic techniques, we combine Magnus expansions and splitting methods to yield any order methods for the multivariate and nonautonomous quadratic part of the Hamiltonian that can be computed using only Fourier transforms at the cost of solving a small system of polynomial equations. The resulting scheme solves the challenging component of the (nonlinear) Hamiltonian and can be combined with optimized splitting methods to yield efficient algorithms for rotating Bose-Einstein condensates. The method is particularly efficient for potentials that can be regarded as perturbed rotating and trapped condensates, e.g., for small nonlinearities, since it retains the near-integrable structure of the problem. For large nonlinearities, the method remains highly efficient if higher order p > 2 is sought. Furthermore, we show how it can adapted to the presence of dissipation terms. Numerical examples illustrate the performance of the scheme.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, as submitted to journa

Nuevas técnicas de procesado de señal aplicadas al sistema MC-CDMA en enlace ascendente

La presente tesis puede darnos una idea de la complejidad de la transmisión ascendente (UL) y su especificidad en comparación con el esquema descendente, también destacando el impacto que puede tener este modo de transmisión sobre el diseño de los receptores MC-CDMA. La verosimilitud de la detección en el modo ascendente en los sistemas MC-CDMA ha orientado las investigaciones internacionales a desarrollar otros esquemas de transmisión que son considerados más apropiados al modo ascendente como el SS-MC-MA. Por nuestra parte, consideramos que el modo ascendente para los sistema MC-CDMA ha sido poco contemplado el de los trabajos de investigación y que a pesar de la complejidad del modo UL existen todavía oportunidades de investigación para reducir estas dificultades que suponen un gran reto científico. Por lo revisado hasta este punto podeos considerar de gran interés científico-técnico las aportaciones y las soluciones desarrollada en esta tesis. Las lineas de investigación aportan soluciones para el modo UL en los sistemas con modulación MC-CDMA en los campos de inserción de los pilotos y la estimación de canal, la sincronización, y la detección multi usuario, la inserción de pilotos con un patrón hexagonal que permite la estimación de canal para varios usuarios activos, la utilización de un esquema híbrido que permite establecer tanto el sincronismo temporal como frecuencial de las señales entrantes de las señales entrantes en la estación base y finalmente nuevos esquemas de detección multi-usuario (MUD) con el procesado en frecuencia

Carbon fluxes in a mature deciduous forest under elevated CO₂

This PhD thesis addressed several major aspects of the carbon (C) cycle in a c. 100-year-old, mixed deciduous forest under elevated CO₂ with an emphasis on below-ground processes. The aim was to assess the responses of tree fine roots and soil respiration to canopy CO₂ enrichment (? 550 ppm) in this tallest forest studied to date. Furthermore, leaf gas-exchange of the five study species was examined to ascertain the long-term response of photosynthetic carbon uptake to elevated atmospheric CO₂. Investigations at the Swiss Canopy Crane (SCC) experimental site were guided by the following key questions: (1) Does below-ground C allocation to fine root production increase in response to CO₂ enrichment in order to acquire more nutrients to match the enhanced C supply in the forest canopy? (2) Is below-ground metabolism enhanced and therefore forest soil respiration stimulated by canopy CO₂ enrichment? (3) Is leaf-level photosynthesis persistently stimulated by elevated CO₂ in this stand or had these mature broad-leaved trees reduced their carbon up- take by photosynthetic down-regulation under long-term CO₂ enrichment? Findings from earlier studies at the SCC site, including 13C isotope tracing, all point towards an in- creased flux of C through CO₂-enriched trees to the soil but neither fine root biomass nor soil respiration were stimulated by elevated CO₂. Surprisingly, fine root biomass in bulk soil and ingrowth cores showed strong reductions by ? 30% in year five and six but were unaffected in the following seventh year of CO₂ enrichment. Given the absence of a positive biomass response of fine roots, we assumed that the extra C assimilated in the CO₂-enriched forest canopy was largely respired back to the atmosphere via increases in fine root and rhizosphere respiration and the metabolization of increased root derived exudates by soil microbes. Indeed, 52% higher soil air CO₂ concentration during the growing season and 14% greater soil microbial biomass both in- dicated enhanced below-ground metabolism in soil under CO₂-enriched trees. However, this did not translate into a persistent stimulation of soil respiration. At times of high or continuous precipitation soil water savings under CO₂-exposed trees (resulting from reduced sapflow) led to excessive soil moisture (> 45 vol.-%) impeding soil gas-exchange and thus soil respiration. Depending on the interplay between soil temperature and the consistently high soil water content in this stand, instantaneous rates of soil respiration were periodically reduced or increased under elevated CO₂ but on a diel scale and integrated over the growing season soil CO₂ emissions were similar under CO₂-enriched and control trees. Soil respiration could therefore not explain the fate of the extra C. The lacking sink capacity for additional assimilates led us to assume downward adjustment of photosynthetic capacity in CO₂-enriched trees thereby reducing carbon uptake in the forest canopy. Photosynthetic acclimation cannot completely eliminate the CO₂-driven stimulation in carbon uptake, but a reduction could hamper the detection of a CO₂ effect considering the low statistical power inevitably involved with such large-scale experiments. However, after eight years of CO₂ enrichment we found sustained stimulation in leaf photosynthesis (42-49%) indicating a lack of closure in the carbon budget for this stand under elevated atmospheric CO₂

The grounding argument against non-reductive moral realism

The supervenience argument against non-reductive moral realism threatens to rule out the existence of irreducibly normative properties by establishing that for every normative property there is a corresponding non-normative property that is necessarily co-extensive with it. This chapter identifies a hyperintensional analogue of the supervenience argument that threatens non-reductionism even within a hyperintensional setting by establishing that for every normative property there is a corresponding non-normative property that has the very same grounds and is, accordingly, hyperintensionally equivalent. It is then argued that non-reductionism can nevertheless be salvaged by distinguishing the different grounding relations that are involved in grounding the normative property and the corresponding non-normative property. Non-reductionist versions of moral realism thus turn out to be committed to there being irreducibly different grounding relations.</p