44 research outputs found
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
Destabilizing gender norms: Women in masculine occupations in the Islamic Republic of Iran
No full textThis dissertation tackles the vastly discussed puzzle of women’s low rates of labor force participation in the Middle East, using the case of Iran while focusing on an under-explored perspective. Iran has one of the lowest rates of female labor force participation in the region and marks an unstable labor market with minimum institutional supports for attracting and retaining women in the workplace. Through an in-depth exploration of the experiences, challenges, and aspirations of women within traditionally masculine careers — as a group who face most severe forms of discrimination to access those sectors that fit into their needs, interests, and backgrounds — the dissertation sheds light on the shortcomings of the dominant approaches of women’s work and employment in the region in two ways. First, while women’s underrepresentation in the labor market is predominantly ascribed to patriarchal states and their conservative gender ideologies, the narratives of women who participated in this research show that the mechanisms that “gender” and “sexualize” the arena of work against women are multi-faceted and multi-level, and that the concept of state patriarchy does not capture the complexities embedded in discrimination against and inequalities toward women in the workplace. Second, while liberal-feminist accounts of women’s agency imagine women’s empowerment only in actions or movements against incidences and manifestations of patriarchy, my analysis suggests that women can empower themselves from within patriarchal discourses by strategically cultivating them to become empowering tools for their public participation and livelihoods, particularly at work. Contextualizing the narratives of participants into the broader post-revolutionary gender discourse in Iran, the dissertation examines what constitutes the core of discrimination against women and their reactions and strategies for overturning incidents of inequality and oppression. In so doing, the dissertation draws on the experiences of women from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and walks of life—not solely middle-upper class, educated women, who tend to be better represented in current scholarly and political accounts of women in work.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2020-08-01The student, Negin Sattari, accepted the attached license on 2018-06-23 at 12:57.The student, Negin Sattari, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2018-06-23 at 13:12.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2018-06-26 at 08:54.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #12665 on 2018-09-27 at 11:33:37Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-27T16:45:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
SATTARI-DISSERTATION-2018.pdf: 1947948 bytes, checksum: 39a1d5b17af455fc05a455baf21621b4 (MD5)
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Previous issue date: 2018-06-26Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 107868
Lift date: 2020-09-27T16:45:39Z
Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemEmbargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 107868
Lift date: 2020-09-27T16:47:41Z
Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemLimited Restriction Lifted for Item 107868 on 2020-09-28T09:15:13Z
Polynomial approximations for fast predictive analysis of infrastructure systems: Applications to power and transportation systems
No full textThe student, Negin Alemazkoor, accepted the attached license on 2019-08-21 at 11:03.The student, Negin Alemazkoor, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2019-08-21 at 11:17.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2019-08-23 at 09:36.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #14431 on 2020-02-28 at 17:35:12Made available in DSpace on 2020-03-02T22:38:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Previous issue date: 2019-08-23Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 113963
Lift date: 2022-03-02T22:39:04Z
Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemLimited Restriction Lifted for Item 113963 on 2022-03-03T10:15:27Z.Infrastructure systems are complex networks with inherent sources of uncertainty. Optimal operation of these systems directly affects the welfare of society. Accurate analysis and predictions for infrastructure systems are vital to achieve optimal management and operation. Data for predictive analysis can be from different sources, including computationally expensive system simulations or sensors placed within the system. For a reliable predictive analysis, it is necessary to (a) incorporate significant uncertainty in behavior of the system induced by inherent variability of system components, and (b) capture the changes within the system and adjust the predictions accordingly. This study aims to address some of the main challenges regarding these two pillars of a reliable predictive analysis for infrastructure systems.
Specifically, consider power transmission or distribution systems, where computationally expensive power flow simulations must be run to evaluate the future state of the system. Conventionally, uncertain variables, such as power consumption, are treated as deterministic variables. This can result in unreliable predictions and consequently suboptimal decisions. On the other hand, quantifying the uncertainty in the system's state using sampling approaches may require thousands of simulations and can be computationally intractable. To reduce the computational burden, full scale simulations should be replaced with analytical surrogates such as polynomial functions, radial basis functions, and Gaussian processes. Accuracy of these surrogates directly affects the accuracy of system analysis and the optimality of the decisions made based on the analysis. In this dissertation, we focus on polynomial surrogates and develop innovative methodologies to improve the accuracy of the polynomial surrogates. We use several numerical examples to validate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed methodologies. Also, as demonstration on the application side, we apply the developed methodologies to a power distribution system with various uncertainty, such as power generation and consumption uncertainty. The results demonstrate that our proposed approaches substantially reduce the computational cost associated with probabilistic power flow analysis and probabilistic system control.
Additionally, for the cases that data is constantly streaming from the sensors within the system, a computationally fast online predictive model is introduced, that is capable of adjusting the predictions once system faces significant disruptions. The efficiency and accuracy of the proposed approach is demonstrated using a real-world extreme scenario, namely the Woolsey wildfire in California, following which traffic patterns significantly changed. Specifically, we study traffic conditions in locations close to the wildfire and show that the proposed approach can capture and accurately predict the post-disaster changes.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2021-12-0
Nuclear Factor kappa B is required for the production of infectious human herpesvirus 8 virions
No full textHuman herpesvirus 8 (HHV8) infection leads to potent activation of nuclear factor kappa B (NFB) in primary and transformed cells. We used recombinant HHV8 (rKSHV.219) expressing green fluorescent protein under the constitutive cellular promoter elongation factor 2 and red fluorescent protein under an early HHV8 lytic gene promoter T1.1, to monitor replication during infection of human foreskin fibroblasts (HF), noting changes in NFB activity. In primary HF, NFB levels do not affect HHV8 ability to establish infection or maintain latency. Furthermore, there was no effect on the percent of cells undergoing reactivation from latency, and there were similar numbers of released and cell associated HHV8 viral particles following reactivation in the presence of inhibitors. Reactivation of HHV8 in latently infected HF in the presence of NFB inhibitors resulted in production of viral particles that did not efficiently establish infection, due to deficiencies in binding and/or entry into normally permissive cells. Exogenous expression of glycoprotein M, an envelope protein involved in viral binding and entry was able to partially overcome the deficiency induced by NFB inhibitors. Our data indicate that in primary cells, NFB is not required for infection, establishment of latency, or entry into the lytic cycle, but is required for the expression of virion associated genes involved in the initial steps of virion infectivity. These studies suggest that strategies to inhibit NFB may prevent HHV8 spread and should be considered as a potential therapeutic target for preventing HHV8 associated diseases
Effect of different surface treatments on microtensile bond strength of two types of composite substructures with ceramic by resin cements
No full textIntroduction: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of different surface treatments on the microtensile bond strength (µTBS) of two types of composite substructures with Vita Mark II ceramics by resin cement.
Materials & Methods: Sixty-four substructure specimens were molded from two dual-cure composites Core.it and Build-it, equally, and cured by LED light. The specimens of each group were randomly divided into 4 subgroups (n=8) treated by one of HF acid 10%, air abrasion, Er: YAG laser, and one group without any treatment (control group), and then the specimens of each group were bonded to Vita Mark II CAD/CAM ceramic blocks using two Duo-Link and Panavia F 2.0 resin (n=4 and 20 slice in any group). Each final specimen was thermocycled between 5 °C and 55 °C for 2500 cycles and then cut by a slow speed saw to obtain 5 sticks with cross-section dimensions of about 1×1 mm². The µTBS test was done at a speed of 0.5 mm/min by Universal Testing Machine. The fracture pattern was then determined using a stereomicroscope. Statistical differences between groups were determined by one-way ANOVA using Tukey's multiple comparison tests.
Results: Among all 16 groups, the highest µTBS was observed in the group with Core.it substructure composite and Duo-link resin cement without any surface treatment and after that in the second step in build-it substructure composite group and Panavia resin cement without surface treatment. The most common fracture pattern in all groups was cohesive in resin cement (P value<0.05).
Conclusion: According to this study, composite substructure surface treatment by hydrofloridric acid, laser and air abrasion reduced µTBS between substructure- ceramic and so is not recommended
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
Evaluating firms’ R&D performance using best worst method
No full textSince research and development (R&D) is the most critical determinant of the productivity, growth and competitive advantage of firms, measuring R&D performance has become the core of attention of R&D managers, and an extensive body of literature has examined and identified different R&D measurements and determinants of R&D performance. However, measuring R&D performance and assigning the same level of importance to different R&D measures, which is the common approach in existing studies, can oversimplify the R&D measuring process, which may result in misinterpretation of the performance and consequently fallacy R&D strategies. The aim of this study is to measure R&D performance taking into account the different levels of importance of R&D measures, using a multi-criteria decision-making method called Best Worst Method (BWM) to identify the weights (importance) of R&D measures and measure the R&D performance of 50 high-tech SMEs in the Netherlands using the data gathered in a survey among SMEs and from R&D experts. The results show how assigning different weights to different R&D measures (in contrast to simple mean) results in a different ranking of the firms and allow R&D managers to formulate more effective strategies to improve their firm's R&D performance by applying knowledge regarding the importance of different R&D measures.Transport and Logistic
University Relationship Management
No full textIn recent decades, to gain a competitive advantage, firms have improved their relationships with universities as the main generators of science and technology in modern societies. There are various goals and drivers that inspire firms to engage in such relationships. These goals and drivers, along with several facilitators, in turn indicate the existence of different types of relationships between firms and universities, which are characterized by different elements, like trust, commitment, and communication. It is very important for firms to manage the level of different elements in these relationships for different types of interactions, in what we call university relationship management (URM). The main purpose of this paper is to propose a generic framework for URM, to discuss the most important antecedents and consequences of URM, and to provide conclusions and avenues for future research
Investigating the influence of pigmentation on the electrolyte transport properties of organic coatings using ORP-EIS
No full textIn this work, the correlation between electrolyte transport properties and the variation of pigment volume concentration (PVC) in a series of organic coatings is explored. Using an odd random phase electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (ORP-EIS) approach, the diffusion of ions independent from water take-up is analysed. A higher PVC resulted in a more homogeneous coating morphology, which could be associated with a faster diffusion of ions following a Fickian regime and enhanced water uptake. In the case of lower pigment loading, the obtained heterogenous morphology of the coating introduced new challenges to the physical interpretation of the proposed electrochemical equivalent circuit.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Team Shoshan Abraham
"You can't go to the park, you can't go here, you can't go there": Exploring parental experiences of COVID-19 and its impact on their children's movement behaviours
No full textThe COVID-19 outbreak and related public health guidelines have changed the daily lives of Canadians and restricted opportunities for healthy movement behaviours for children. The purpose of this study was to explore how parents experienced the pandemic-related restrictions and how they impacted their children’s movement behaviours. Methods: Twenty-nine semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted (June–July 2020) with parents of children (5–11 years old) in Ontario and British Columbia. Interviews lasted between 24–104 min, were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analyzed. Results: Findings emphasized various individual (e.g., motivation), interpersonal (e.g., parent work schedule), built (e.g., closure of parks) and natural environment (e.g., weather) factors related to children’s movement behaviours. The findings highlighted the loss of structured activities and destinations for children’s physical activity, and restricted opportunities for outdoor play exacerbated by shrinking childhood independent mobility. Conclusion: Families are adapting to many pandemic-related challenges including adhering to public health restrictions, parents juggling multiple roles, conducting work and school from home, as well as exacerbating factors like weather. It will be important to continue to encourage outdoor time, support policies and practice that facilitate independent mobility, and develop centralized resources that help families in the maintenance of healthy movement behaviours.Peer reviewedFinal article publishedphysical activityinterviewoutdoor playqualitativescreen tim
