FROM PADDY FIELDS TO SUSTAINABLE TOWN IN FOUR DECADES: TIGHT INTEGRATION OF URBAN PLANNING AND PLACE MANAGEMENT IN YUKARIGAOKA, JAPAN

Private real estate developers disproportionately focus on spatial planning and short-term returns, often forgetting the crucial role played by place management toward the achievement of sustainable communities. This research presents an alternative model of privately initiated urban development: Yukarigaoka, a new town in the eastern outskirts of Tokyo founded in the late 1970s. The case study has been analyzed through field research, assessments of local media, interviews and literature review, focusing on urban planning strategies and place management practices. Yukarigaoka is a non-speculative model entailing the developer’s long-term commitment to the creation of a community sustained by unique planning features and innovative, award-winning place management practices. As a result, the development avoided the demographic imbalance of many Japanese public new towns of the same period. Population has been constantly growing and the town has been attracting families, strengthening local engagement and a defined identity. Despite a degree of paternalism in approach and the mediocre design quality of the built environment, Yukarigaoka confirms that livable communities result from the tight integration of planning and management. It provides an important planning and management precedent for new and existing communities in other Asia-Pacific cities toward establishing a synergistic relationship between built and natural components and in advocating for long-term profit different from a predominantly neoliberal developmental model that maximizes immediate returns.

The role of indirect effects in coevolution as mutualism transitions into antagonism

Species interactions have evolved from antagonistic to mutualistic and back several times throughout life's history. Yet, it is unclear how changes in the type of interaction between species alter the coevolutionary dynamics of entire communities. This is a pressing matter, as transitions from mutualisms to antagonisms may be becoming more common with human-induced global change. Here, we combine network and evolutionary theory to simulate how shifts in interaction types alter the coevolution of empirical communities. We show that as mutualistic networks shift to antagonistic, selection imposed by direct partners begins to outweigh that imposed by indirect partners. This weakening of indirect effects is associated with communities losing their tight integration of traits and increasing their rate of adaptation. The above changes are more pronounced when specialist consumers are the first species to switch to antagonism. A shift in the outcome of species' interactions may therefore reverberate across communities and alter the direction and speed of coevolution.

Machining feature recognition based on deep neural networks to support tight integration with 3D CAD systems

Recently, studies applying deep learning technology to recognize the machining feature of three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) models are increasing. Since the direct utilization of boundary representation (B-rep) models as input data for neural networks in terms of data structure is difficult, B-rep models are generally converted into a voxel, mesh, or point cloud model and used as inputs for neural networks for the application of 3D models to deep learning. However, the model’s resolution decreases during the format conversion of 3D models, causing the loss of some features or difficulties in identifying areas of the converted model corresponding to a specific face of the B-rep model. To solve these problems, this study proposes a method enabling tight integration of a 3D CAD system with a deep neural network using feature descriptors as inputs to neural networks for recognizing machining features. Feature descriptor denotes an explicit representation of the main property items of a face. We constructed 2236 data to train and evaluate the deep neural network. Of these, 1430 were used for training the deep neural network, and 358 were used for validation. And 448 were used to evaluate the performance of the trained deep neural network. In addition, we conducted an experiment to recognize a total of 17 types (16 types of machining features and a non-feature) from the B-rep model, and the types for all 75 test cases were successfully recognized.

Effects of Vertical Integration Reform on Primary Healthcare Institutions in China: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study

Background: Integrated care is a global trend in international healthcare reform, particularly for piloting vertical integration involving hospitals and primary healthcare institutions (PHIs). However, evidence regarding the impact of vertical integration on primary healthcare has been mixed and limited. Our study aims to evaluate the empirical effects of vertical integration reform on PHIs in China, and examines variations across integration intensity (tight integration vs. loose collaboration). Methods: This study used a longitudinal design. The time-varying difference-in-difference (DID) method with a fixed-effect model for panel data was adopted. A total of 370 PHIs in the eastern, central, and western areas of China from 2009 to 2018 were covered. Outcome measures included the indicators at three dimensions regarding inpatient and outpatient service volume, patient flow between PHIs and hospitals and quality of chronic disease care (hypertension and diabetes). Results: Significant increases in absolute (the number) and relative (the ratio between PHIs and hospitals) volume of inpatient admissions have been found after reform under tight integration, peaking at 183% and 15.0% respectively, in the third reform year. The quality of hypertension and diabetes care (by indicators of control rate of blood pressure and blood glucose) showed significant improvements under both types of vertical integration after reform. It was much more distinct for the PHIs under tight integration, which had the most significant increase of 34.0% and 22.8% under tight integration for the control rate of hypertension and diabetes compared to the peak of 21.2% and 22.1% respectively under loose collaboration. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that vertical integration (especially tight integration) in China significantly contributed to strengthening primary healthcare in terms of inpatient services and quality of hypertension and diabetes care, providing empirical evidence to other countries on integrating primary healthcare-based health systems.

The challenges of the Dust-Field-Plasma (DFP) instrument onboard ESA Comet Interceptor mission

<p>The flyby of a dynamically new comet by ESA-F1 Comet Interceptor spacecraft offers unique multi-point opportunities for studying the comet's dusty and ionised cometary  environment in ways that were not possible with previous missions, including Rosetta. As Comet Interceptor is an F-class mission, the payload is limited in terms of mass, power, and heritage. Most in situ science sensors therefore have been tightly integrated into a single Dust-Field-Plasma (DFP) instrument on the main spacecraft A and on the ESA sub-spacecraft B2, while there is a Plasma Package suite on the JAXA second sub-spacecraft B1. The advantage of tight integration is an important reduction of mass, power, and especially complexity, by keeping the electrical and data interfaces of the sensors internal to the DFP instrument.</p><p>The full diagnostics located on the board of the 3 spacecrafts will allow  to modeling the comet environment and described the complex physical processes around the comet and on their surface including also the  description of wave particle  interaction in dusty cometary plasma. </p><p>The full set of DFP instrument on  board the Comet Interceptor  spacecraft will allow to model  the comet plasma environment and its interaction with the solar wind. It will also allow to describe the complex physical processes taking place including wave particle  interaction in dusty cometary plasma . </p><p>On spacecraft A, DFP consists of a magnetometer, a Langmuir and multi impedance probe/electric field instrument, an ion and an electron analyzer, a dust sensor, and a central data processing unit and electronics box. On spacecraft B2, the instrumentation is limited to a magnetometer and a dust sensor. The choice of sensors and their capabilities are such that it maximizes synergies and complementarities. </p><p>To give one example: While the dust instrument aims at establishing the dust spectrum for millimeter to micrometer sized particles, the Langmuir probes aided by the data processing unit will analyze the signatures of micrometer to nanometer sized particles.</p><p>Moreover, unique multi-point measurements will be obtained from magnetometers on the three spacecraft, from dust sensors on A and B2, and from ion measurements on A and B1.</p><p>The tight integration of dust-field-plasma sensor hardware and science targets embodied by DFP promises an optimized science return for the available resources.</p>

Network Capabilities: Brokerage as a Bridge Between Network Theory and the Resource-Based View of the Firm

We accomplish three tasks here: (a) We highlight the lack of cross-fertilization between research on network theory and the resource-based view of the firm (RBV). (b) We sketch by analogy what we believe should be a productive bridge between network brokerage as a core concept in network theory and integrating resources as a core concept in RBV. (c) Network brokerage quickly introduced, we distinguish and illustrate three levels to the proposed network-RBV analogy: tight integration of resources (closed networks for learning-curve efficiency), loose integration of resources (brokered clusters for resilience to market vicissitudes), and recombinatory integration of resources (broker leadership for innovation and robust response to market shock).