43 research outputs found
Evaluating ecosystem functions for coccolithovirus infection of Emiliania huxleyi: bridging micro, meso, and global scales
No full textThe coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi is a globally distributed marine algal species that regularly forms large surface ocean blooms that can last from weeks to months. As a cosmopolitan species that also forms calcium carbonate plates called coccoliths, E. huxleyi plays a critical role in influencing both organic and inorganic carbon cycles. North Atlantic blooms of the algae are regularly infected by a double stranded DNA virus called Coccolithovirus (EhV). The ecological and biogeochemical influences of viral infection in marine algae are largely unknown, although studies largely suggest infection enhances chemical cycling within the microbial loop. This dissertation investigates E. huxleyi-EhV interactions within marine algal communities to further elucidate the role viruses play in influencing their host as well as the surrounding ecosystem. On a local scale, this was investigated by locating and interrogating mesoscale North Atlantic blooms of E. huxleyi with a comprehensive toolset using MODIS/AQUA satellite imagery, a suite of diagnostic lipid- and gene-based molecular biomarkers, in situ optical sensors, and sediment traps to show that EhV infections are coupled with particle aggregation, high zooplankton grazing, and enhanced downward vertical fluxes of both particulate organic and particulate inorganic carbon from the upper mixed layer to the mesopelagic. The finding that viruses can stimulate vertical carbon flux through a mechanistic interplay with zooplankton grazers introduces novel complexities into microbial ecosystem interactions. These bloom communities are further investigated using optical absorption spectra, phytoplankton pigment composition, and flow cytometry, revealing EhV infection has little influence driving the variability in phytoplankton absorption compared to community photoacclimation within the blooms. It is further observed that photoacclimation driven absorption characteristics are discernible through different phytoplankton taxonomic compositions. On the global scale, the known biogeography of EhV infection and diversity of EhVs is expanded out of the North Atlantic Ocean using a combination of the Tara Oceans global metagenome database as well as targeted regional sampling throughout the Pacific Ocean. These results reveal that EhV infection is a global phenomenon tightly coupled to E. huxleyi production and is pervasive in bloom and non-bloom environments. Collectively, these studies show that EhVs are an influential regulator of carbon cycling by enhancing biological pump efficiency and through revealing their global distribution in the ocean.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Christien Philip Labe
A Burdensome Experiment
No full textIn the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans public school board fired nearly 7,500 teachers and employees. In the decade that followed, the city created the first urban public school system in the United States to be entirely contracted out to private management. Veteran educators, collectively referred to as the “backbone” of the city’s Black middle class, were replaced by younger, less experienced, white teachers who lacked historical ties to the city. In A Burdensome Experiment, Christien Philmarc Tompkins argues that the privatization of New Orleans schools has made educators into a new kind of racialized worker. As school districts across the nation backslide on school integration, Tompkins asks, who exactly deserves to teach our children? The struggle over this question exposes the inherent antiblackness of charter school systems and the unequal burdens of school choice.
“Anyone committed to creating liberatory models of education must read this book, not because it has all the answers but because it asks the right questions, with care and humility. And isn’t that what great teachers do?” — ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History, University of California, Los Angeles
“Christien Philmarc Tompkins’s trenchant labor ethnography goes beyond ‘what works’ in urban schools to attend to a city still reeling from the institutional violence of post-Katrina school reform.” — SAVANNAH SHANGE, author of Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco
“Theoretically precise and powerfully personal, this ethnographic analysis is spot-on and a uniquely important contribution to real-world understandings of the ways that the universalized, normative whiteness so prominent in design worlds continues to damage and destroy while claiming to solve problems.” — ELIZABETH CHIN, Editor in Chief, American Anthropologis
A Burdensome Experiment
No full textIn the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans public school board fired nearly 7,500 teachers and employees. In the decade that followed, the city created the first urban public school system in the United States to be entirely contracted out to private management. Veteran educators, collectively referred to as the “backbone” of the city’s Black middle class, were replaced by younger, less experienced, white teachers who lacked historical ties to the city. In A Burdensome Experiment, Christien Philmarc Tompkins argues that the privatization of New Orleans schools has made educators into a new kind of racialized worker. As school districts across the nation backslide on school integration, Tompkins asks, who exactly deserves to teach our children? The struggle over this question exposes the inherent antiblackness of charter school systems and the unequal burdens of school choice.
“Anyone committed to creating liberatory models of education must read this book, not because it has all the answers but because it asks the right questions, with care and humility. And isn’t that what great teachers do?” — ROBIN D. G. KELLEY, Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History, University of California, Los Angeles
“Christien Philmarc Tompkins’s trenchant labor ethnography goes beyond ‘what works’ in urban schools to attend to a city still reeling from the institutional violence of post-Katrina school reform.” — SAVANNAH SHANGE, author of Progressive Dystopia: Abolition, Antiblackness, and Schooling in San Francisco
“Theoretically precise and powerfully personal, this ethnographic analysis is spot-on and a uniquely important contribution to real-world understandings of the ways that the universalized, normative whiteness so prominent in design worlds continues to damage and destroy while claiming to solve problems.” — ELIZABETH CHIN, Editor in Chief, American Anthropologis
Colony-forming and single-cell picocyanobacteria nitrogen acquisition strategies and carbon fixation in the brackish Baltic Sea
No full textPicocyanobacteria are widespread and globally significant primary producers. In brackish waters, picocyanobacterial populations are composed of diverse species with both single-cell and colony-forming lifestyles. Compared to their marine counterparts, brackish picocyanobacteria are less well characterized and the focus of research has been weighted toward single-cell picocyanobacteria. Here, we investigate the uptake dynamics of single and colony-forming picocyanobacteria using incubations with dual carbon-13 and inorganic (ammonium and nitrate) or organic (urea and amino acids) nitrogen-15 sources during August and September 2020 in the central Baltic Sea. Phytoplankton community and group-specific uptake rates were obtained using an elemental analyzer isotope ratio mass spectrometer (EA-IRMS) and nano secondary-ion mass spectrometry (NanoSIMS). Picocyanobacteria contributed greater than one third of the ammonium, urea, amino acids, and inorganic carbon community uptake/fixation in September but 5% of the average phytoplankton biomass, suggesting that they are periodically important for the ecosystem. Colonial strain identification was not distinguishable using 16S rRNA gene amplicon data, highlighting a need for refined tools for identification of colonial forms. This study shows the significance of single-celled brackish picocyanobacteria to nutrient cycling and the importance of considering uptake and lifestyle strategies when assessing the role of picocyanobacteria in aquatic ecosystems
Architecture for Emergent Craftsmanship: Digitally manufactured, mass customized and reconfigurable workshops for makers
No full textThis project relates to 4th industrial revolution and the digital era and nswers the needs of todays craftsmen. Recent times prove that production of goods becomes decentralized while factories and mass production is being replaced by mass customization and digital craftsmanship. Todays artists and designers often collaborate and create co-workshops, alike co-working spaces. Author of this project spend half year to research on the needs of todays makers and their workshops along with digital fabrication and mass customization. That allowed to understand todays crafts and workshop layouts. The most important requirements considering todays workshops were easy reconfigurability, adaptability, connection between home and living and open sourceness. Digital fabrication research led to decision about building method - a digitally fabricated building system utilizing wood and fiberglass composite material joined with CNC milled friction locks. Mentioned building system had to provide an open source framework which could be easily modified and rebuild with time by the user. On the other hand it has to be intuitive and be composed of a low amount of elements. All that allowed to compose a system which provided accessible reconfiguration which is not limited by spans, sizes or floor numbers
Sustainable Water management scheme for the Negin Safari Park
No full textThough the perils of climate change on our environment are common knowledge its mitigation through informed planning is widely absent. This research project aims to aid the architect in developing a design which has a comparatively lower ecological footprint and focuses on opportunistic utilization of renewable resources readily available in the context. Within the preview of this thesis the potential of developing a sustainable water management scheme for the Negin safari park located in the Fars province of Iran is studied.Iran is facing a situation of drought for the past few years which has had an adverse impact on the region. One of the communities to have been affected by this are the Qashqai nomads of Iran, who have been threatened with deprivation of their freedom due to the economic woes brought by drought. The Negin safari park being developed in the region aims to uplift this community and provide a platform for them to be able to share their work and culture. However, the influx of tourists due to the development of a Safari park further increases the stress on the depleting water resources in the region. In turn development of water technologies facilitating the reclamation of waste water, conservation of water and mitigation of extreme withdrawal of resources needs to be studied and implemented. In order to create a design which consciously uses the water resources and facilitates re-use of waste water, different water technologies have been identified and studied to understand its feasibility for installation in Iran. Once the ideal technologies were identified, a water management scheme was developed which facilitated water autarky in the park. Further on the relation of the built form with the technology was explored. The technologies which were shortlisted entailed requirements which had a direct impact on the design of the built form and its spatial organization. The final product of this thesis entails a customized set of design guidelines for the development of a Safari park in Iran. These guidelines have stemmed from the optimization strategy used in designing the Negin safari park with the intended water technologies. Adhering to the concept of developing the park as an eco-tourist destination attention has been placed to propose sustainable technologies with lower energy requirement and maintenance. It is believed that through implementation of these technologies the added stress on water demand caused by the erection of a Negin safari park in a drought hit region can be reduced. The implementation of these technologies can also further help in educating the local community and lead to encouragement of widespread implementation of these systems. This graduation project is an attempt to develop an informed relation between resource flows and spatial design in order to enable an uninterrupted functioning of the Safari park leading to prosperity of the region and its people. Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science
RAC Facades: Retrofit Active Cooling Facade System for Tropical High-rise Residential Buildings
No full textThe aim of this paper is to design a retrofit façade-integrated cooling system for built high-rise residential public housing buildings in the tropical climate and evaluate its feasibility. Literature research into the climate, building design, cooling technologies and case studies of façade-integrated systems were important factors that led to the conceptual designs. Energy calculations and parametric optimization through Rhinoceros + Grasshopper were conducted to develop the façade concepts to suit the cooling load of the chosen building. Material and component costs were calculated to evaluate which façade concept proposal was more suitable and what design constraints were introduced by the limited available physical space. With a chosen façade concept, minor tweaks were made to account for additional issues such as conduction heat loss and the oversizing of components. Façade details with respect to structural elements, moving parts, system operation and maintenance procedures were developed. The overall implications and limitations of the design were discussed with the aid of daylighting simulations and extrapolative calculations to paint a broader picture of its overall feasibility and what it takes to be realized.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technology | Sustainable Desig
Design Off-Grid Negin Safari Park: Passive Techniques to Reduce the Energy Demand
No full textThis research will examine a design for an off-grid safari park in Iran. During this research different passive techniques from the vernacular architecture will be discussed. These principles will be used to reduce the energy demand of the safari park, since it should be an off-grid park, in order to deliver a design proposal with an achievable energy balance. One of the buildings, the entrance building, will be used as a case study to test the design principles. The courtyard, the increase of mass and the windcatcher are the most important principles to be implemented in the building. The energy reduction achievable with these techniques is weighted against the increase in cost of the building. In the design of the entrance building, a combination of windcatchers and underground ducts is used to cool the building, reducing the energy demand for cooling with 90%. Other principles, like an increase in mass and a courtyard also reduce the energy demand of the building significantly. The use of vernacular principles in the design will increase the cost of the building. However, it will decrease the cost needed for generating energy on site and, therefore, it is still beneficial. Future research, should focus on the exact amount of energy needed compared to the additional cost for the construction of the buildings. However, this research concludes that the use of vernacular principles in the park is beneficial.Negin Safari ParkArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technolog
Daylight Control in the Early Stages of the Design, Integrated in a BIM Environment
No full textArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Building Technolog
'Desigrated': Desiccant Integrated Facade System
No full textDesigrate’ is designed to serve as a façade component of office buildings. Therefore, the building technology aspect of climate, façade detailing, and façade assembly is thoroughly discussed, optimized and evaluated to provide a product which acts efficiently as a cooling system and enhances the insulation of the building. Hence serving as a cooling strategy both actively and passively. Furthermore, as the façade system is specifically designed for the hot and humid climate of Bangkok, both climate and cultural context are crucial aspects in designing the system. The design concept of the façade system is based on a vernacular approach to enhance the cultural value of the product which aims to reflects the “Thainess” identity to the built environment.COOL FacadeArchitecture, Urbanism and Building Science
