Evolution of architectural floor plans

Layout planning is a process of sizing and placing rooms (e.g. in a house) while a t t empt ing to optimize various criteria. Often the r e are conflicting c r i t e r i a such as construction cost, minimizing the distance between r e l a t ed activities, and meeting the area requirements for these activities. The process of layout planning ha s mostly been done by hand, wi th a handful of a t t empt s to automa t e the process. Thi s thesis explores some of these pa s t a t t empt s and describes several new techniques for automa t ing the layout planning process using evolutionary computation. These techniques a r e inspired by the existing methods, while adding some of the i r own innovations. Additional experimenLs are done to t e s t the possibility of allowing polygonal exteriors wi th rectilinear interior walls. Several multi-objective approaches are used to evaluate and compare fitness. The evolutionary r epr e s ent a t ion and requirements specification used provide great flexibility in problem scope and depth and is worthy of considering in future layout and design a t t empt s . The system outlined in thi s thesis is capable of evolving a variety of floor plans conforming to functional and geometric specifications. Many of the resulting plans look reasonable even when compared to a professional floor plan. Additionally polygonal and multi-floor buildings were also generated.

Ambivalent longings: Heim and its prefix : anxiety and the discourse of home

Please consult the paper edition of this thesis to read. It is available on the 5th Floor of the Library at Call Number: Z 9999 P55 N37 2005

Ethics, tourists and the environmental practices of the North American cruise ship industry: a comparison study of the ethical standards of Alaskan and Caribbean cruise ship tourists

Please consult the paper edition of this thesis to read. It is available on the 5th Floor of the Library at Call Number: Z 9999 R43 S54 2005

alpha-Tocopherol's Antioxidant Role: A Biophysical Perspective

I present evidence of an antioxidant mechanism for vitamin E that correlates strongly with its physical location in a model lipid bilayer. These data address the overlooked problem of the physical distance between the vitamin's reducing hydrogen and lipid acyl chain radicals. The combined data from neutron diffraction, NMR and UV spectroscopy experiments, all suggest that reduction of reactive oxygen species and lipid radicals occurs specifically at the membrane's hydrophobic-hydrophilic interface. The latter is possible when the acyl chain adopts conformations in which they snorkel to the interface from the hydrocarbon matrix. Moreover, not all model lipids are equal in this regard, as indicated by the small differences in the vitamin's location. The present result is a clear example of the importance of lipid diversity in controlling the dynamic structural properties of biological membranes. Importantly, these results suggest that measurements of alpha-tocopherol oxidation kinetics, and its products, should be revisited by taking into consideration the physical properties of the membrane in which the vitamin resides.