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Dataset for: Progesterone and allopregnanolone facilitate excitatory synaptic transmission in the infralimbic cortex via activation of membrane progesterone receptors. Neuroscience
No full textHighlighting A Gap in Journalism’s Environmental Discourse on the Integration of Artificial Intelligence
Get PDFAs artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into the field of journalism, there is a pressing need to address its environmental implications, a facet often overlooked in discussions shaping the industry's trajectory. This paper provides a foundational overview of AI's complex environmental impacts by examining existing literature and emerging trends. It underscores the challenges stemming from AI's rapid adoption while emphasizing journalism's pivotal role in influencing a push towards sustainability. Furthermore, the paper emphasizes the important role journalism plays in fostering public awareness of AI's environmental implications and highlighting the need for the adoption of interdisciplinary sustainable practices. Finally, the paper discusses potential strategies for mitigating AI's environmental impact, including the development of standardized reporting systems and the prioritization of renewable energy sources in AI operations. By fostering collaborative efforts between the public, researchers, and industry stakeholders, the journalism community can contribute significantly to shaping a more sustainable future for AI-driven journalism and beyond
Gradient-Free Aeroacoustic Shape Optimization Using High-Order Implicit Large Eddy Simulation
Get PDFAviation noise poses significant challenges to both the quality of life for those living near airports and the sustainable growth of the aviation industry. Accurate aeroacoustic shape optimization methods are required to reduce this noise. To address this, we propose an innovative approach for aeroacoustic shape optimization using Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The gradient-free Mesh Adaptive Direct Search (MADS) algorithm minimizes sound pressure levels for observers at varying distances. Near-field predictions rely on a high-order unstructured flow solver, while far-field predictions employ an acoustic solver based on the Ffowcs Williams and Hawkings (FW-H) time-domain formulation. The acoustic solver is verified and validated using analytical test cases and comparison with results obtained directly from the flow solver. The optimization framework is implemented in parallel, enabling concurrent objective function evaluations at each iteration. This removes the dependency of the computational runtime of the MADS algorithm on the total number of design variables, given the availability of sufficient resources. Different problems are considered to evaluate the performance of the proposed optimization framework, including flow over a deep open cavity, tandem cylinders configuration, and a NACA 4-digit airfoil. Initially, noise reduction for a near-field observer is addressed for these geometries under low Reynolds numbers and in two-dimensional settings. Subsequently, the approach is extended to three dimensions, and finally, shape optimization is conducted to minimize noise for a far-field observer. The results affirm the efficacy of the proposed optimization framework by significant noise reduction across all cases
A Mutable “Type:” August Sander and the Politics of the Peasant Portrait in Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time) (1929)
Get PDFPublished in 1929, August Sander’s photobook Face of Our Time is one of the most celebrated photographic documents of the ill-fated Weimar Republic. Although Sander’s photobook included a broad typological spectrum of Weimar society and was eventually censured under National Socialism in 1936, scholars such as Leesa Rittelmann and George Baker have argued that Sander’s decision to foreground six portraits of peasant farmers at the outset of Face of Our Time can be understood as comparable to the romanticization of rural Aryan “types'' found in slightly later right-wing publications such as Erna Lendvai-Dircksen’s Face of the German Race of 1932. In response to this claim, I contend that this is a misinterpretation of Sander’s use of the peasant “type” which has cast the photographer’s œuvre in an undeservedly reactionary light. By drawing attention to Sander’s inclusion of key images of social change within the typological category of the peasant, I argue that Sander’s foregrounding of the peasant “type” is, in fact, a progressive acknowledgment of modernization rather than a reactionary statement on the disappearance of traditional, rural ways of life. In support of my argument, I carry out close readings of the six photographs in question while also attending to the ways in which these images form a narrative that asserts social change over fixed typological continuity. In doing so, my research sheds light on the ambiguous politics at the heart of Sander’s body of work and the ideological mutability of the peasant “motif” within twentieth-century German visual culture
Occupancy Monitoring and Pattern Analysis for Urban Building Energy Modeling
No full textOne of the main required actions for moving forward in zero-carbon cities’ goals is to increase building energy efficiency. Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM) can help optimize the built environment's energy efficiency and improve the design and operation of building energy systems. Moreover, building modeling provides key information for Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) control, building energy management, different building energy efficiency scenarios, and feedback to the occupants. In order to parametrize Urban Building Energy Modeling (UBEM), individual buildings' characteristics, such as constructions, internal loads, energy systems, etc., are required. Many dynamic UBEMs have already been developed, yet most use simplified assumptions for some of the parameters needed. The capabilities required for having a comprehensive UBEM are creating detailed 3D urban building geometry, creating a comprehensive building attributes library, conducting detailed archetype selection, and assignment of this construction information to the building surfaces. More importantly, occupant behavior is another important factor that influences the modeling results, and it is the root of high uncertainty in UBEM results. Most existing tools have a significant weakness in dealing with occupant related monitoring data or estimation of likely schedules.
Many studies have been conducted to develop and introduce different occupant behavior measurements and methods for urban building energy modeling. However, none of the previous studies introduced scalable and practical occupant behavior monitoring on an urban scale. Some of the main challenges that prevent the scalability of the already developed occupant behavior methods and measurements are the fact that they suffer from threatening the occupant's privacy and the high cost of their infrastructure and deployment.
This thesis aims to leverage passive WiFi sensing methods for occupant behavior monitoring and pattern analysis for UBEM using commercial off-the-shelf WiFi devices, for which the infrastructure is already available in many buildings. Passive and device-free WiFi sensing does not threaten the occupant's privacy, and its deployment cost is low. Therefore, this method of occupancy measurement has the potential to be used on an urban scale and to play an essential role to manage energy in zero carbon and smart cities in the future
Inside Job Search: Impacts of the Work-Nonwork Interface and Goal Adjustment
Get PDFThis study examined the impact of the work-nonwork interface on job search behaviour. Specifically, I investigated the effects of work-nonwork conflict and enrichment on job search intensity, job search quality, and haphazard job search, as well their indirect effects on these variables via downward and upward adjustment of job search goals. I also explored the role of three career motives, authenticity, balance, and challenge, as moderators of the relations between conflict and enrichment, and goal adjustment. Survey data were collected from 308 participants who were employed and actively looking for a new job. A correlational, sequential, time-lagged design was used, with three surveys distributed at one-week intervals. I found that conflict is positively related to haphazard job search, which is low quality job searching, whereas enrichment is positively related to job search quality, which is high quality job searching. In addition, I found that upward goal adjustment serves as a linking mechanism between enrichment and both job search intensity and quality. No support was found for the proposed moderation hypotheses, although some direct effects of career motives on job search goal adjustment were found. This research provides job seekers with insight into how their experiences with conflict and enrichment can shape their goal adjustment patterns and job search behaviours. Findings offer practical guidance on how people can adapt their behaviour to foster achievement of their goals and choose strategies to enhance the quality of their job search
Testing and Investigation of GaN-Based High Voltage Inverters for Electric Drives
Get PDFIn recent times, scholarly attention on Wide-bandgap (WBG) devices, like silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) transistors, focuses on power conversion for heightened efficiency in electric vehicles. GaN HEMTs, with superior characteristics like low on-resistance and high-speed switching, enable compact power converters with increased integration and power density, crucial for EV advancement.
GaN-powered converters require accurate models for device behavior. Manufacturers use internal data and physics-based models, but these are unavailable to the public and time-consuming to develop. Accurate analytical models, mimicking transistor dynamics and predicting energy loss, offer a solution without extensive computational demands.This thesis validates superior GaN device switching model, proven via experiments and reduced parasitics confirmed with double pulse tests, affirming enhanced accuracy.
Due to the fast switching of GaN device, high voltage slew rate or dv/dt at the inverter output gives rise to switching harmonics, higher voltage stress at the motor winding, and EMI issues in the motor drive system. This thesis conducts a comprehensive review of filter design for GaN-based inverters to attenuate the harmonics and hence mitigate the high dv/dt and EMI issues. A case study is also provided for a three-phase inverter developed. Another limitation of GaN-based converter technology has resulted from the limited voltage and current capability of GaN transistors available in the market. To apply GaN transistors in high-power applications, multi-phase multi-level converter design is also investigated in this thesis. A comparative study on a new neutral pointless multi-level inverter against the traditional topologies is carried out
Illuminating the Visio Dei: Vision and Devotion in the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg
Get PDFThe Psalter-Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg is a small illuminated manuscript and personal prayer book that was made in Paris in the mid-fourteenth century for the Duchess of Normandy’s daily private devotional practice. While the texts are mostly in Latin, the manuscript concludes with a selection of prayers that meditate on Christ’s Passion, written in vernacular French. The two final illuminated pages from this section, The Crucifixion and The Wound of Christ, form a distinctly climactic moment in the manuscript and have drawn much attention from scholars of Medieval piety.
In this thesis, the Psalter of Bonne of Luxembourg serves as a case study to examine how political and theological developments of the early fourteenth century influenced the private devotional practice of Bonne of Luxembourg. My analysis takes into account the historical context of lay women’s use of devotional literature, Bonne’s monastic upbringing, the Valois court and theories of vision from the Patristic era that were highly influential during the late Middle Ages. This thesis argues how the portrait of Bonne and her husband, John II of France, in the Crucifixion miniature along with its accompanying prayers and marginalia provide evidence that her prayer book may have facilitated a visual devotional strategy that prepared her for the visio Dei, or the beatific vision of God, which was a subject of particular importance in Paris during Bonne’s lifetime
Locating the Queer Gesture: Point and Line to Flesh
Get PDFIn this thesis, I seek to articulate queerness as an embodied politic and poetic of disorientation I call the gesture, which I locate within the works and my encounters with Agnes Martin, Marlow Moss, and Catherine Opie. Here, through both visual analysis, critical theory, embodied experience and its memory, I illuminate queer aspects and potentialities of encounters with works of art not through indicting the body of viewer (myself), the artists I discuss, nor the particular aesthetics of their works towards the production of a stable archive, but rather through the ephemeral and disorienting encounters of identification both found and challenged in the works of art I discuss. In my methodology, I seek to maintain a poetic posture of opacity and respect the refusal I locate in these works and in myself, as I engage auto theory. My thesis seeks to articulate queerness as a plurality of strategy and embodiment, through describing my experiences and analyses of the works of Agnes Martin, Marlow Moss, and Catherine Opie—three artists who mean a great deal to me, as a queer subject
Tribological Evaluation of Polymer Matrix Composites for Green Alternative Replacement in Alpine Sports: Scaling up between Laboratory and Field Testing
No full textFor ecological considerations, the International Ski Federation (FIS) has imposed a
prohibition on the use of fluorinated waxes in ski and snowboard race preparation. Current
substitutes exhibit inferior friction-reducing properties. This assessment aims to corroborate
frictional performance in both laboratory-based evaluations and field trials. The evaluation
employs a categorical approach, introducing incremental considerations for cost, lead time, and
representativeness of actual competition conditions.
Traditional base material in snowboards, Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene
(UHMWPE), serves as the baseline. Insights from aerospace investigations indicate that polymer
composite structures with fibers aligned in the normal direction (NOFRC) exhibit performance in
environments involving ice adhesion suggesting potential suitability for the cold and wet
conditions characteristic of ski and snowboard competitions. Laboratory examinations include
Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), tribometer
tests utilizing a ball-on-disk linear tribometer (Anton-Paar TRB3 tribometer), contact angles, and
time trials on High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) synthetic ice.
Field testing incorporates the use of inertial measurement units (IMUs) alongside 50-meter
time trials conducted by athletes. Comparative analysis is conducted utilizing metrics such as
surface energy, material composition, surface roughness values, coefficients of friction, and trial
time. The findings reveal that, under conditions of dry friction and elevated temperatures, NOFRC
demonstrates favorable tribological effects. However, UHMWPE emerges as the superior�performing material across all low temperatures and moisture instances. The consistency of
categorical evaluations throughout the testing environments provides a valuable framework for
appraising potential material alternatives for snowboard bases