TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IN CONSTRUCTION: A CONTINUUM FROM DISTANT PAST INTO THE FUTURE

For the past century urban infrastructures have been designed primarily with automobile use in mind. The built environment consequently reflects a neglect of the human scale, that is, pedestrians. This thesis looks at existing contemporary bridges and explores ways of bringing pedestrian-scaled activity and vitality back onto the bridge, thereby breaking the confines of vehicular bridges to create a continuum of the urban environment on both ends. This thesis investigates methods of integration and coordination of vehicular and pedestrian traffic as a way to maintain the bridge as a “connector” for transport purposes, resulting in a future where bridges may facilitate a higher quality urban environment. The site for this thesis is the Jacques Cartier Bridge, a vehicular bridge that spans the St. Lawrence River in Montreal. This thesis examines the history of the street versus the road, place versus non-place, mobility versus transport and the influence of the Megastructuralist movement in Montreal as applicable elements for future bridge design. This thesis will also find ways to reacquaint itself with the estranged concept of the inhabitable bridge and demonstrating how it can be reintegrated into current and future infrastructural bridge concepts.

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Introduction: The Instability of Scientific Truth

The Rejection of Continental Drift ◽

10.1093/oso/9780195117325.003.0005 ◽

1999 ◽

Author(s):

Naomi Oreskes

Keyword(s):

Underground Water ◽

Factual Knowledge ◽

Past Century ◽

Life And Death ◽

The Past ◽

The Earth ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

Success Of Science ◽

Scientific Truth

Scientists are interested in truth. They want to know how the world really is, and they want to use that knowledge to do things in the world. In the earth sciences, this has meant developing methods of observation to determine the shape, structure, and history of the earth and designing instruments to measure, record, predict, and interpret the earth’s physical and chemical processes and properties. The resulting knowledge may be used to find mineral deposits, energy resources, or underground water; to delineate areas of earthquake and volcanic hazard; to isolate radioactive and toxic wastes; or to make inferences and predictions about the earth’s past and future climate. The past century has produced a prodigious amount of factual knowledge about the earth, and prodigious demands are now being placed on that knowledge. The history of science demonstrates, however, that the scientific truths of yesterday are often viewed as misconceptions, and, conversely, that ideas rejected in the past may now be considered true. History is littered with the discarded beliefs of yesteryear, and the present is populated by epistemic resurrections. This realization leads to the central problem of the history and philosophy of science: How are we to evaluate contemporary science’s claims to truth given the perishability of past scientific knowledge? This question is of considerable philosophic interest and of practical import as well. If the truths of today are the falsehoods of tomorrow, what does this say about the nature of scientific truth? And if our knowledge is perishable and incomplete, how can we warrant its use in sensitive social and political decision-making? For many, the success of science is its own best defense. From jet flight to the smallpox vaccine, from CD players to desktop scanners, contemporary life is permeated by technology enabled by scientific insight. We benefit daily from the liberating effects of petroleum found with the aid of geological knowledge, microchips manufactured with the aid of physical knowledge, materials synthesized with the aid of chemical knowledge. Our view of life — and death — is conditioned by the results of scientific research and the capabilities of technological control.

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Inhabitable Bridge Infrastructure: A Reappropriation of the Street from Vehicular to Pedestrian Scale

10.32920/ryerson.14655102 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sacha Marthinez

Keyword(s):

Built Environment ◽

Urban Environment ◽

Past Century ◽

The Road ◽

The Past ◽

Human Scale ◽

History Of ◽

Pedestrian Traffic ◽

Automobile Use ◽

St Lawrence River

For the past century urban infrastructures have been designed primarily with automobile use in mind. The built environment consequently reflects a neglect of the human scale, that is, pedestrians. This thesis looks at existing contemporary bridges and explores ways of bringing pedestrian-scaled activity and vitality back onto the bridge, thereby breaking the confines of vehicular bridges to create a continuum of the urban environment on both ends. This thesis investigates methods of integration and coordination of vehicular and pedestrian traffic as a way to maintain the bridge as a “connector” for transport purposes, resulting in a future where bridges may facilitate a higher quality urban environment. The site for this thesis is the Jacques Cartier Bridge, a vehicular bridge that spans the St. Lawrence River in Montreal. This thesis examines the history of the street versus the road, place versus non-place, mobility versus transport and the influence of the Megastructuralist movement in Montreal as applicable elements for future bridge design. This thesis will also find ways to reacquaint itself with the estranged concept of the inhabitable bridge and demonstrating how it can be reintegrated into current and future infrastructural bridge concepts.

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Aftershocks

10.23943/princeton/9780691172330.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Seva Gunitsky

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Regime Change ◽

International System ◽

Political Legitimacy ◽

Great Powers ◽

Past Century ◽

The Past ◽

Sudden Rise ◽

The World ◽

National Borders

Over the past century, democracy spread around the world in turbulent bursts of change, sweeping across national borders in dramatic cascades of revolution and reform. This book offers a new global-oriented explanation for this wavelike spread and retreat—not only of democracy but also of its twentieth-century rivals, fascism, and communism. The book argues that waves of regime change are driven by the aftermath of cataclysmic disruptions to the international system. These hegemonic shocks, marked by the sudden rise and fall of great powers, have been essential and often-neglected drivers of domestic transformations. Though rare and fleeting, they not only repeatedly alter the global hierarchy of powerful states but also create unique and powerful opportunities for sweeping national reforms—by triggering military impositions, swiftly changing the incentives of domestic actors, or transforming the basis of political legitimacy itself. As a result, the evolution of modern regimes cannot be fully understood without examining the consequences of clashes between great powers, which repeatedly—and often unsuccessfully—sought to cajole, inspire, and intimidate other states into joining their camps.

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History of Tour de France from the Geographical Point of View

Sport Science Review ◽

10.2478/ssr-2013-0013 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 22 (3-4) ◽

pp. 255-277 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Vladimír Bačík ◽

Michal Klobučník

Keyword(s):

Point Of View ◽

The Past ◽

Advanced Technologies ◽

The World ◽

Spatial Dimensions ◽

Tour De France ◽

Wide Circle ◽

History Of ◽

Expert Community ◽

Geographical Point

Abstract The Tour de France, a three week bicycle race has a unique place in the world of sports. The 100th edition of the event took place in 2013. In the past of 110 years of its history, people noticed unique stories and duels in particular periods, celebrities that became legends that the world of sports will never forget. Also many places where the races unfolded made history in the Tour de France. In this article we tried to point out the spatial context of this event using advanced technologies for distribution of historical facts over the Internet. The Introduction briefly displays the attendance of a particular stage based on a regional point of view. The main topic deals with selected historical aspects of difficult ascents which every year decide the winner of Tour de France, and also attract fans from all over the world. In the final stage of the research, the distribution of results on the website available to a wide circle of fans of this sports event played a very significant part (www.tdfrance.eu). Using advanced methods and procedures we have tried to capture the historical and spatial dimensions of Tour de France in its general form and thus offering a new view of this unique sports event not only to the expert community, but for the general public as well.

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Variable oil and argumentative conflict in the Middle East

Tikrit Journal For Political Science ◽

10.25130/poltic.v0i0.222 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 824

Author(s):

Malik Daham Mata’ab

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Past Century ◽

Large Area ◽

The Past ◽

The World

Oil has formed since its discovery so far one of the main causes of global conflict, has occupied this energy map a large area of conflict the world over the past century, and certainly this matter will continue for the next period in our century..

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A Long, Long Way

10.1093/oso/9780190906252.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Greg Garrett

Keyword(s):

People Of Color ◽

Racial Reconciliation ◽

Cultural Narratives ◽

Truth Telling ◽

Religious Traditions ◽

The Past ◽

Hollywood Films ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

Race And Culture

Hollywood films are perhaps the most powerful storytellers in American history, and their depiction of race and culture has helped to shape the way people around the world respond to race and prejudice. Over the past one hundred years, films have moved from the radically prejudiced views of people of color to the depiction of people of color by writers and filmmakers from within those cultures. In the process, we begin to see how films have depicted negative versions of people outside the white mainstream, and how film might become a vehicle for racial reconciliation. Religious traditions offer powerful correctives to our cultural narratives, and this work incorporates both narrative truth-telling and religious truth-telling as we consider race and film and work toward reconciliation. By exploring the hundred-year period from The Birth of a Nation to Get Out, this work acknowledges the racist history of America and offers the possibility of hope for the future.

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A Long Stagnation, or Capitalism without Growth

10.1093/oso/9780198828211.003.0012 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Louçã Francisco ◽

Ash Michael

Keyword(s):

Great Recession ◽

World Economy ◽

Economic Stability ◽

Secular Stagnation ◽

The Great Recession ◽

The Past ◽

The World ◽

History Of ◽

Growth Prospects

Chapter 11 assesses the growth prospects of the world economy. The history of global economic doomsaying is traced briefly, a frequently reasonable position that has not done well with the facts for the past hundred years. Capitalism has been adept at escaping from the pit and pendulum. A set of global imbalances is then reviewed that are seen as posing a severe threat to global economic stability and certainly to the prospects for sustainable and equitable growth. The Great Recession following the Crash of 2007–8 might be “different this time.” Historical and contemporary fears of “secular stagnation” are discussed but the speculative nature of stagnationist assessments is acknowledged.

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Number of Siblings in Childhood, Social Outcomes in Adulthood

Journal of Family Issues ◽

10.1177/0192513x19873356 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 41 (2) ◽

pp. 212-234

Author(s):

Joseph J. Merry ◽

Donna Bobbitt-Zeher ◽

Douglas B. Downey

Keyword(s):

Conflict Management ◽

Negative Association ◽

Social Outcomes ◽

Past Century ◽

Adult Health ◽

Growing Up ◽

The Past ◽

National Longitudinal Study ◽

The World ◽

The Relationship

In many parts of the world, fertility has declined in important ways in the past century. What are the consequences of this demographic change? Our study expands the empirical basis for understanding the relationship between number of siblings in childhood and social outcomes among adults. An important recent study found that for each additional sibling an individual grows up with, the likelihood of divorce as an adult declines by 3%. We expand this work by (a) determining whether the original pattern replicates in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and (b) extending the analysis beyond divorce to consider whether growing up with siblings is related to prosocial adult behaviors (relationships with parents, friends, and views on conflict management with one’s partner). Our results confirm a negative association between number of siblings and divorce in adulthood. We find mixed results related to other prosocial adult behaviors.

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Camus's Absurd and the World of Melville's Confidence-Man

PMLA ◽

10.2307/461042 ◽

1967 ◽

Vol 82 (1) ◽

pp. 14-27

Author(s):

Leon F. Seltzer

Keyword(s):

Careful Analysis ◽

The Other ◽

The Novel ◽

The Past ◽

The World ◽

Critical Attention ◽

Confidence Man ◽

Ugly Duckling ◽

History Of ◽

The One

In recent years, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, a difficult work and for long an unjustly neglected one, has begun to command increasingly greater critical attention and esteem. As more than one contemporary writer has noted, the verdict of the late Richard Chase in 1949, that the novel represents Melville's “second best achievement,” has served to prompt many to undertake a second reading (or at least a first) of the book. Before this time, the novel had traditionally been the one Melville readers have shied away from—as overly discursive, too rambling altogether, on the one hand, or as an unfortunate outgrowth of the author's morbidity on the other. Elizabeth Foster, in the admirably comprehensive introduction to her valuable edition of The Confidence-Man (1954), systematically traces the history of the book's reputation and observes that even with the Melville renaissance of the twenties, the work stands as the last piece of the author's fiction to be redeemed. Only lately, she comments, has it ceased to be regarded as “the ugly duckling” of Melville's creations. But recognition does not imply agreement, and it should not be thought that in the past fifteen years critics have reached any sort of unanimity on the novel's content. Since Mr. Chase's study, which approached the puzzling work as a satire on the American spirit—or, more specifically, as an attack on the liberalism of the day—and which speculated upon the novel's controlling folk and mythic figures, other critics, by now ready to assume that the book repaid careful analysis, have read the work in a variety of ways. It has been treated, among other things, as a religious allegory, as a philosophic satire on optimism, and as a Shandian comedy. One critic has conveniently summarized the prevailing situation by remarking that “the literary, philosophical, and cultural materials in this book are fused in so enigmatic a fashion that its interpreters have differed as to what the book is really about.”

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