The Hinterland Urbanised?

What defines the urban? And can the non-urban necessarily always be classified as rural? Neil Brenner , Director of the Urban Theory Lab at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, reflects on the lack of an overarching theory to describe these realms, and argues that what we call the countryside or the hinterland has become key to the process of capitalist urbanisation.     

Found in translation: Mackintosh,Muthesius and Japan

The theme of this paper is the presence of the Japanese influence in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and, in particular, the Glasgow School of Art. This has often been observed but never satisfactorily explained. Rather than simply listing the evidence, this paper investigates the relationship between him and Hermann Muthesius against the background of the time Muthesius spent working as an architect in Tokyo. Using the correspondence held in the Deutscher Werkbund Archiv, Berlin, as evidence of the close relationship between the two men and the others of The Four, this paper suggests that it was Muthesius's sensitivity to Japanese architecture which encouraged the direction of Mackintosh's work in the late 1890s and early 1900s and in so doing, offers an explanation of the more idiosyncratic and unexplained features of the library at the Glasgow School of Art.     

Assessing and generating test sets in terms of behavioural adequacy

Identifying a finite test set that adequately captures the essential behaviour of a program such that all faults are identified is a well‐established problem. This is traditionally addressed with syntactic adequacy metrics (e.g. branch coverage), but these can be impractical and may be misleading even if they are satisfied. One intuitive notion of adequacy, which has been discussed in theoretical terms over the past three decades, is the idea of behavioural coverage: If it is possible to infer an accurate model of a system from its test executions, then the test set can be deemed to be adequate. Despite its intuitive basis, it has remained almost entirely in the theoretical domain because inferred models have been expected to be exact (generally an infeasible task) and have not allowed for any pragmatic interim measures of adequacy to guide test set generation. This paper presents a practical approach to incorporate behavioural coverage. Our BESTEST approach (1) enables the use of machine learning algorithms to augment standard syntactic testing approaches and (2) shows how search‐based testing techniques can be applied to generate test sets with respect to this criterion. An empirical study on a selection of Java units demonstrates that test sets with higher behavioural coverage significantly outperform current baseline test criteria in terms of detected faults. © 2015 The Authors. Software Testing, Verification and Reliability published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biodegradability of lubricant base stocks and fully formulated products

Increasing awareness of the environmental impact of consumer and industrial products has produced a demand for lubricants that biodegrade. There is a number of biodegradation tests that can be used on lubricants, although not all are always appropriate, as this paper explains. The CEC test is among the best known and is in use for both conventional and synthetic oils. There will, in future, be a greater movement to biodegradable oils in Europe, perhaps extending to all oils.     

大英博物馆世界保护与展示中心

世界保护与展示中心将提供世界顶级的设施,以确保大英博物馆更好的为后代保管和研究藏品。[The WCEC]will provide world class facilities that will allow the British Museum to ensure the care and understanding of its collections for future generations. 背景BACKGROUND世界保护与展览中心（WCEC）是大英博物馆260年来最大的再开发项目。该中心位于布鲁姆斯伯里地块的西北角,它将设置新的主展厅、最先进的实验室和工作室、世界顶级的藏品库以及博物馆,为英国乃至全球提供藏品租赁的设施。设计面临的挑战是：既要体现时代特征和大英博物馆的国际水准,又要达到其作为一级保护建筑在遗产保护方面更为宽泛的制度和建筑要求。