Identifying the Benefits from Home Ownership:A Swedish Experiment

Scientific Conference (2016, December)

Integration of meta-omics data: approaches and applications

Scientific Conference (2016, December)

Chronique Administration européenne Principes du droit administratif européen

in Revue Française d'Administration Publique (2016)

Numerical Analysis for the determination of Stress Percolation in Dry-Stacked Wall Systems

in Masonry International (2016)

This paper comprises a portion of a PhD study concluding on the potential use of a new mortarless and modular masonry system by taking into consideration the outcome of a multidisciplinary study including ... [more ▼]

This paper comprises a portion of a PhD study concluding on the potential use of a new mortarless and modular masonry system by taking into consideration the outcome of a multidisciplinary study including aspects of experimental, numerical and analytical investigations in relation to a practical and economical development of modular load-bearing dry-stacked masonry systems. Different forms of interlocking masonry elements have been modelled and optimised thermo-mechanically. Full-scale masonry walls were assembled and tested experimentally under compressive, flexural, shear, cyclic and long term loads. The overall structural behaviour was compared to conventional masonry systems such as hollow and shuttering blocks. The investigations showed overall relative high structural performances for the developed dry-stacked elements. The effect of dry joint interfaces was extensively investigated experimentally and numerically under FE analysis. Based on the experimental observations, a numeric-analytical failure mechanism of the dry-stacked masonry structure is anticipated under axial and flexural loading. The structural investigations and engineering processes are completed by the development of a package of dry-stacked units consisting of interlocking modular masonries and an accompanying array of various other precast parts. This confirmed the practical issues and solutions towards the exploitation of the developed dry-stacked elements for the construction of ready-to-build, modular and load-bearing walls. The portion of work presented herein proposes a new numerical technique for the determination of stress-percolation in dry stacked load-bearing structures. The model is developed in three steps under a numerical computing environment. First, based on geometrical properties of the dry-stacked elements and with a linear-elastic material behaviour, the load percolation and intensity in dry-stacked masonry walls is determined. In a second step, a phenomenon known as a plastic accommodation which accompanies the redistribution of the stress percolations, is incorporated in the model. This enables the understanding of the evolution of the stress percolations in the post-elastic phase, which is crucial for the determination of the load capacity and stability of the structure in function of an increased external load. This paper also supports the better understanding of early fissuring in dry-stacked masonry structures which has an important influence on the overall stability of the structure. Finally, in a third step, the improvement of dry-stacked structures is pursued by further analysis of the results obtained through the algorithm. This paper represents a new tool for investigating the localized and randomly defined internal stress distribution induced by external compression forces on dry-stacked structures. Furthermore, the algorithm illustrates that experimental investigations on dry-stacked systems may only give real indications on the load capacity of the structure, when the number of joint interfaces and height to length ratio of the block is respected and that results of experimental investigations on reduced prism specimens may not be extrapolated to full sized walls as they may over-evaluate the effective loaded masonry sections and therefore the overall load capacity. [less ▲]

Symbiose aus Stahl und Stein - innovative Lösungen

in Revue Technique Luxembourgeoise (2016), 04/2016

Assessing Performance of Internet of Things-based Mobile Crowdsensing Systems for Sensing as a Service Applications in Smart Cities

in 8th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom) (2016, December)

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm makes the Internet more pervasive. IoT devices are objects equipped with computing, storage and sensing capabilities and they are interconnected with communication ... [more ▼]

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm makes the Internet more pervasive. IoT devices are objects equipped with computing, storage and sensing capabilities and they are interconnected with communication technologies. Smart cities exploit the most advanced information technologies to improve public services. For being effective, smart cities require a massive amount of data, typically gathered from sensors. The application of the IoT paradigm to smart cities is an excellent solution to build sustainable Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platforms and to produce a large amount of data following Sensing as a Service (S^2aaS) business models. Having citizens involved in the process through mobile crowdsensing (MCS) techniques unleashes potential benefits as MCS augments the capabilities of existing sensing platforms. To this date, it remains an open challenge to quantify the costs the users sustain to contribute data with IoT devices such as the energy from the batteries and the amount of data generated at city-level. In this paper, we analyze existing solutions, we provide guidelines to design a large-scale urban level simulator and we present preliminary results from a prototype. [less ▲]

Die Jugend der Gemeinde Strassen Entwicklungen, Probleme und Perspektiven: Ergebnisbericht der Jugendstudie im Rahmen des Jugendkommunalplanes für die Gemeinde Strassen

Report (2016)

Die vorliegende Studie zur Situation der Jugendlichen in der Gemeinde Strassen wurde von der Forschergruppe „youth research“ an der Forschungseinheit INSIDE (Integrative Research Unit on Social and ... [more ▼]

Die vorliegende Studie zur Situation der Jugendlichen in der Gemeinde Strassen wurde von der Forschergruppe „youth research“ an der Forschungseinheit INSIDE (Integrative Research Unit on Social and Individual Development) der Universität Luxemburg im Auftrag des Bürgermeister- und Schöffenrates der Gemeinde Strassen erstellt. Diese Studie ist Teil des Jugendkommunalplans für die Gemeinde Strassen und hat zum Ziel, den Verantwortlichen in Politik, Verwaltung und Jugendarbeit Informationen zu liefern, die zu einem besseren Verständnis der Jugendlichen in der Gemeinde beitragen. Denn die Gruppe der Jugendlichen repräsentiert mit ihren Wünschen, eigenen Sichtweisen und Erwartungen eine zentrale Entwicklungsperspektive für die Gemeinde Strassen. Unter anderem aus diesem Grund sind die Ergebnisse dieser Studie eine wichtige Informations- und Diskussionsgrundlage für die zukünftige Planung und Umsetzung der kommunalen Jugendpolitik und ein wichtiges Fundament für „Evidence-based-policy-making“, also eine wissensbasierte Jugendpolitik in Strassen. Diesem Anliegen entsprechend wurde diese Studie als Situations- und Bedarfsanalyse konzipiert. Wichtige thematische Aspekte sind insbesondere die Lebenswelten, das Freizeitverhalten und die Freizeitinteressen der Jugendlichen in Straßen aber auch die sozialen Herkunftsmilieus die einen starken Einfluss auf die Startbedingungen, Lebensentwürfe und Zukunftsperspektiven der Jugendlichen haben. Nicht zuletzt interessiert auch die Frage, wie die Jugendlichen unterschiedlicher Herkunft in der Gemeinde integriert sind, wie zufrieden sie mit den Angeboten und der Infrastruktur sind, welche Möglichkeiten der Partizipation für sie wichtig sind und inwiefern die Maßnahmen und Angebote der kommunalen Politik die Jugendlichen erreichen. In diesem Zusammenhang ist auch ein genauerer Blick auf die Situation der Jugendlichen mit einer ausländischen Nationalität von Interesse, zum Beispiel die Frage, wo Defizite aber auch Chancen einer stärkeren Integration oder Beteiligung dieser großen Zahl an Jugendlichen am Gemeindeleben bestehen. Bei vielen Themenbereichen sind Vergleiche mit anderen luxemburgischen oder mit internationalen Jugendstudien möglich. Dadurch können Gemeinsamkeiten sowie Besonderheiten der Gemeinde Straßen deutlich gemacht werden. [less ▲]

Design Strategies for ARX with Provable Bounds: SPARX and LAX

in Cheon, Jung Hee; Takagi, Tsuyoshi (Eds.) Advances in Cryptology --- ASIACRYPT 2016, 22nd International Conference on the Theory and Application of Cryptology and Information Security, Hanoi, Vietnam, December 4-8, 2016, Proceedings, Part I (2016, December)

We present, for the first time, a general strategy for designing ARX symmetric-key primitives with provable resistance against single-trail differential and linear cryptanalysis. The latter has been a ... [more ▼]

We present, for the first time, a general strategy for designing ARX symmetric-key primitives with provable resistance against single-trail differential and linear cryptanalysis. The latter has been a long standing open problem in the area of ARX design. The Wide-Trail design Strategy (WTS), that is at the basis of many S-box based ciphers, including the AES, is not suitable for ARX designs due to the lack of S-boxes in the latter. In this paper we address the mentioned limitation by proposing the Long-Trail design Strategy (LTS) -- a dual of the WTS that is applicable (but not limited) to ARX constructions. In contrast to the WTS, that prescribes the use of small and efficient S-boxes at the expense of heavy linear layers with strong mixing properties, the LTS advocates the use of large (ARX-based) S-Boxes together with sparse linear layers. With the help of the so-called long-trail argument, a designer can bound the maximum differential and linear probabilities for any number of rounds of a cipher built according to the LTS. To illustrate the effectiveness of the new strategy, we propose Sparx -- a family of ARX-based block ciphers designed according to the LTS. Sparx has 32-bit ARX-based S-boxes and has provable bounds against differential and linear cryptanalysis. In addition, Sparx is very efficient on a number of embedded platforms. Its optimized software implementation ranks in the top-6 of the most software-efficient ciphers along with Simon, Speck, Chaskey, LEA and RECTANGLE. As a second contribution we propose another strategy for designing ARX ciphers with provable properties, that is completely independent of the LTS. It is motivated by a challenge proposed earlier by Wallen and uses the differential properties of modular addition to minimize the maximum differential probability across multiple rounds of a cipher. A new primitive, called LAX is designed following those principles. LAX partly solves the Wallen challenge. [less ▲]

A three-dimensional movement analysis of the spike in fistball

in Sports (2016), 4(4), 1-12

Due to its relevancy to point scoring, the spike is considered as one of the most important skills in fistball. Biomechanical analyses of this sport are very rare. In the present study, we performed a ... [more ▼]

Due to its relevancy to point scoring, the spike is considered as one of the most important skills in fistball. Biomechanical analyses of this sport are very rare. In the present study, we performed a three-dimensional kinematic analysis of the fistball spike, which helps to specify performance parameters on a descriptive level. Recorded by four synchronized cameras (120 Hz) and linked to the motion capture software Simi Motion® 5.0, three female fistball players of the second German league (24–26 years, 1.63–1.69 m) performed several spikes under standardized conditions. Results show that the segment velocities of the arm reached their maximum successively from proximal to distal, following the principle of temporal coordination of single impulses. The wrist shows maximum speed when the fist hits the ball. The elbow joint angle performs a rapid transition from a strong flexion to a (almost) full extension; however, the extension is completed after the moment of ball impact. In contrast, the shoulder joint angle increases almost linearly until the fistball contact and decreases afterward. The findings can be used to optimize the training of the spike. [less ▲]

Messen (Mittelalter/Frühe Neuzeit)

in Historisches Lexikon Bayerns (2016)