Architecture & Research: a possible structure

This article results from three conferences organized by the research project titled “Architectural research framework” developed by the research center Architectural Lab – LabART – of the Lusófona University, and also by my personal experiences and dialogs with other members of the EAAE research committee. Architectural research always existed, but only recently some major questions have emerged, by the time that Europe started the last universitary reform on the 80’s. Two aspects are crucial in understanding the problematic that we are referring to. On the one hand we verify that the architectural teaching should maintain the articulation and close relationship between the theoretical and practical aspects. On the other hand, there is a need to confer academic degrees, as the MsC and PhD’s in the Faculties of Architecture. Inevitably, discussions began about the scientificity of architecture (its grounding), the types of research, methodological models, as well as on the evaluation criteria and the quality of research, or the relevance of the results. We will try to approach some of these discussions, and by the end, establish a basic structure that allows us to obtain an open model for research in architecture.

Memory-based Embodied Cognition: a computational architecture

At its most fundamental, cognition as displayed by biological agents (such as humans) may be said to consist of the manipulation and utilisation of memory. Recent discussions in the field of cognitive robotics have emphasised the role of embodiment and the necessity of a value or motivation for autonomous behaviour. This work proposes a computational architecture – the Memory-Based Cognitive (MBC) architecture – based upon these considerations for the autonomous development of control of a simple mobile robot. This novel architecture will permit the exploration of theoretical issues in cognitive robotics and animal cognition. Furthermore, the biological inspiration of the architecture is anticipated to result in a mobile robot controller which displays adaptive behaviour in unknown environments.

Architecture for Living Neuronal Network Control of a mobile robot

The intelligent controlling mechanism of a typical mobile robot is usually a computer system. Research is however now ongoing in which biological neural networks are being cultured and trained to act as the brain of an interactive real world robot – thereby either completely replacing or operating in a cooperative fashion with a computer system. Studying such neural systems can give a distinct insight into biological neural structures and therefore such research has immediate medical implications. The principal aims of the present research are to assess the computational and learning capacity of dissociated cultured neuronal networks with a view to advancing network level processing of artificial neural networks. This will be approached by the creation of an artificial hybrid system (animat) involving closed loop control of a mobile robot by a dissociated culture of rat neurons. This paper details the components of the overall animat closed loop system architecture and reports on the evaluation of the results from preliminary real-life and simulated robot experiments.

Ancient lakes of the Sahara

As a result of climate change over the past 5000 years the Sahara changed from savannah to a desert landscape. The beds of ancient lakes are home to snail shells and the petrified roots of trees and shrubs. Examples of human occupation can also be seen in the form of fireplaces and discarded tools. Examination of the geological history of these sites can give a clearer picture of how the climate changed and how humans coped with these changes.

Experimental crop growing in Jordan to develop methodology for the identification of ancient crop irrigation

Crop irrigation has long been recognized as having been important for the evolution of social complexity in several parts of the world. Structural evidence for water management, as in the form of wells, ditches and dams, is often difficult to interpret and may be a poor indicator of past irrigation that may have had no need for such constructions. It would be of considerable value, therefore, to be able to infer past irrigation directly from archaeo-botanical remains, and especially the type of archaeo-botanical remains that are relatively abundant in the archaeological record, such as phytoliths. Building on the pioneering work of Rosen and Wiener (1994), this paper describes a crop-growing experiment designed to explore the impact of irrigation on the formation of phytoliths within cereals. If it can be shown that a systemic and consistent relationship exists between phytolith size, structure and the intensity of irrigation, and if various taphonomic and palaeoenvironmental processes can be controlled for, then the presence of past irrigation can feasibly be inferred from the phytoliths recovered from the archaeological record.

Ancient lakes of the Sahara

As a result of climate change over the past 5000 years the Sahara changed from savannah to a desert landscape. The beds of ancient lakes are home to snail shells and the petrified roots of trees and shrubs. Examples of human occupation can also be seen in the form of fireplaces and discarded tools. Examination of the geological history of these sites can give a clearer picture of how the climate changed and how humans coped with these changes.

A management architecture for active networks

In this paper we present an architecture for network and applications management, which is based on the Active Networks paradigm and shows the advantages of network programmability. The stimulus to develop this architecture arises from an actual need to manage a cluster of active nodes, where it is often required to redeploy network assets and modify nodes connectivity. In our architecture, a remote front-end of the managing entity allows the operator to design new network topologies, to check the status of the nodes and to configure them. Moreover, the proposed framework allows to explore an active network, to monitor the active applications, to query each node and to install programmable traps. In order to take advantage of the Active Networks technology, we introduce active SNMP-like MIBs and agents, which are dynamic and programmable. The programmable management agents make tracing distributed applications a feasible task. We propose a general framework that can inter-operate with any active execution environment. In this framework, both the manager and the monitor front-ends communicate with an active node (the Active Network Access Point) through the XML language. A gateway service performs the translation of the queries from XML to an active packet language and injects the code in the network. We demonstrate the implementation of an active network gateway for PLAN (Packet Language for Active Networks) in a forty active nodes testbed. Finally, we discuss an application of the active management architecture to detect the causes of network failures by tracing network events in time.