Thickening the Public Realm: Choreographing the Interaction of the Public Realm with the Built Environment

The ground plane has always been the primary domain of public activities. However, cities developed under the Modernist influence demonstrate an “object-in-space” circumstance with proliferating sky-scrappers that fragment the city’s ground surface into mid-block spaces and vaguely defined plazas. The demands of motorized-transportation and private enterprise further scatter spaces for pedestrian activities across the plan, section and stratified layers of the city (subterranean or/and elevated networks).The result is an inconsistent public realm that remains from being animated by public vitality. Through the manipulation of the ground-plane, this thesis seeks to remedy such stratification. It posits that a thickening of the ground to create a three-dimensional spatial condition will amplify opportunities for social interaction within otherwise muted civic surfaces. Addressing the contemporary reality of the multiplied ground, this thesis advocates reactivating it as a thickened continuous public domain that dissolves the polarity between the built and social fabric of the city.

Thickening the Public Realm: Choreographing the Interaction of the Public Realm with the Built Environment

The ground plane has always been the primary domain of public activities. However, cities developed under the Modernist influence demonstrate an “object-in-space” circumstance with proliferating sky-scrappers that fragment the city’s ground surface into mid-block spaces and vaguely defined plazas. The demands of motorized-transportation and private enterprise further scatter spaces for pedestrian activities across the plan, section and stratified layers of the city (subterranean or/and elevated networks).The result is an inconsistent public realm that remains from being animated by public vitality. Through the manipulation of the ground-plane, this thesis seeks to remedy such stratification. It posits that a thickening of the ground to create a three-dimensional spatial condition will amplify opportunities for social interaction within otherwise muted civic surfaces. Addressing the contemporary reality of the multiplied ground, this thesis advocates reactivating it as a thickened continuous public domain that dissolves the polarity between the built and social fabric of the city.

Selective Effects of Focusing on Spatial Details in Episodic Future Thinking for Self-Relevant Positive Events

Mental simulations of positive future events increase their detail/vividness and plausibility, with effects on cognitive-affective processes such as anticipated and anticipatory pleasure. More recently, spatial details have been distinguished as important in increasing detail and elaborating mental scene construction. Building on this research, this study (N=54; M age=26.9) compared simulations of positive, self-relevant future events spatial details (i.e. people, objects, sequences of actions) with simulations focused on content details. Cross-sectionally at baseline, spatial details uniquely predicted phenomenological characteristics of future events, including anticipatory pleasure. The guided simulations increased detail and vividness, mental imagery, and pre-experiencing in both conditions. The content simulation condition did not increase content details relative to the spatial simulation condition, however, the inverse was true. Relatedly, overall detail and vividness was higher in the spatial condition, as was perceived control. The findings are discussed in relation to future thinking and mental health.

Urban Interiority: Emerging Cultural and Spatial Practices

Discourses on the urban interior recently have emerged as a series of provocations and experimentations that highlight the critical understanding of the urban realm from the interiority perspective. In the fast-moving development of modern global cities, the urban interior concept becomes increasingly important. Cities are fast becoming containers for contemporary spatial practice, with urban spaces becoming melting pots of diverse cultures and communities. Viewing urban settings from the interiority perspective allows us to comprehend unique local characters in particular contexts. This issue of Interiority presents a collection of works that illustrate the expanded understanding of the urban interior, especially in relation to cultural and spatial practice in urban contexts. This issue presents multiple perspectives on understanding the urban interior, raising arguments on how its spatial condition could perform as a container of cultural practice, while simultaneously offering possibilities on manoeuvring within the urban interior context through various ways of reading, interpretation and intervention. These perspectives and approaches promise further possibilities to expand our interior architectural practice in responding not only to current contemporary practice, but also to the future of urban inhabitation.

Identification of olfactory genes of a forensically important blow fly, Aldrichina grahami (Diptera: Calliphoridae)

Background The time-length between the first colonization of necrophagous insect on the corpse and the beginning of investigation represents the most important forensic concept of minimum post-mortem inference (PMImin). Before colonization, the time spent by an insect to detect and locate a corpse could significantly influence the PMImin estimation. The olfactory system plays an important role in insect food foraging behavior. Proteins like odorant binding proteins (OBPs), chemosensory proteins (CSPs), odorant receptors (ORs), ionotropic receptors (IRs) and sensory neuron membrane proteins (SNMPs) represent the most important parts of this system. Exploration of the above genes and their necrophagous products should facilitate not only the understanding of their roles in forging but also their influence on the period before PMImin. Transcriptome sequencing has been wildly utilized to reveal the expression of particular genes under different temporal and spatial condition in a high throughput way. In this study, transcriptomic study was implemented on antennae of adult Aldrichina grahami (Aldrich) (Diptera: Calliphoridae), a necrophagous insect with forensic significance, to reveal the composition and expression feature of OBPs, CSPs, ORs, IRs and SNMPs genes at transcriptome level. Method Antennae transcriptome sequencing of A. grahami was performed using next-generation deep sequencing on the platform of BGISEQ-500. The raw data were deposited into NCBI (PRJNA513084). All the transcripts were functionally annotated using Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were analyzed between female and male antennae. The transcripts of OBPs, CSPs, ORs, IRs and SNMPs were identified based on sequence feature. Phylogenetic development of olfactory genes of A. grahami with other species was analyzed using MEGA 5.0. RT-qPCR was utilized to verify gene expression generated from the transcriptome sequencing. Results In total, 14,193 genes were annotated in the antennae transcriptome based on the GO and the KEGG databases. We found that 740 DEGs were differently expressed between female and male antennae. Among those, 195 transcripts were annotated as candidate olfactory genes then checked by sequence feature. Of these, 27 OBPs, one CSPs, 49 ORs, six IRs and two SNMPs were finally identified in antennae of A. grahami. Phylogenetic development suggested that some olfactory genes may play a role in food forging, perception of pheromone and decomposing odors. Conclusion Overall, our results suggest the existence of gender and spatial expression differences in olfactory genes from antennae of A. grahami. Such differences are likely to greatly influence insect behavior around a corpse. In addition, candidate olfactory genes with predicted function provide valuable information for further studies of the molecular mechanisms of olfactory detection of forensically important fly species and thus deepen our understanding of the period before PMImin.

Spatial Distribution of Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas) Population Related Environment Factor in Coastal Water of Pabean Ilir, Indramayu

Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas, Thunberg, 1793) is a benthic organisme that tend to live and settle in the bottom. One of the pacific oyster habitat is Coastal Water of Pabean Ilir, Indramayu. The purpose of this study was to map spatial condition of the population related habitat of the oyster (Crassostrea gigas). The mapping were done with laptop, using Arc GIS. There were 15 points of sampling. The oyster population in Pabean Ilir can be categorized into three categories: low, medium, and high density. Based on the similarity of environmental characteristics the habitat were divided into four groups. Condition Coastal Water of Pabean Ilir such as temperature, salinity, pH, BOD, TSS, TDS, COD, and composition of substrate indicated Coastal Water of Pabean Ilir have compatibility optimum sufficient habitat to support the growth of pacific oyster

A mitochondrion-targeting Mn(ii)-terpyridine complex for two-photon photodynamic therapy

A mitochondrion-targeting MnII-terpyridine complex (MTP) has been developed for providing a good spatial condition to generate 1O2, which further promoted the two-photon photodynamic therapy (PDT) effect.

Concepts of hospitality and its application in the built space

Purpose This study began with the following question: how hospitality concepts have contributed to the quality of cities and to the qualification of urban tourist destinations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical evolution of the concepts of hospitality and their implications in the contemporary concept of the hospitality of the built space. Design/methodology/approach In this study an analytical empirical approach was used, focusing on the concepts and paradigms that support the studies of the hospitality of built space. The method was based on the representation of hospitality as spatial reading indexes according to the categories of analysis: identity, accessibility, and readability, as stated by Grinover (2007), Raymond (1997) and Lynch (1997). The empirical study, in the Brazilian context, took as its object of analysis the urban hospitality of the three cities that were capitals of Brazil throughout its history: Salvador da Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Brasília. Findings The results of the research confirm the pertinence of the categories of analysis proposed for the understanding of hospitality of the built space and proposes other categories of analysis related to accessibility in its interfaces with identity and readability. Practical implications This study can contribute with new understandings in the field of the hospitality of the built space as support to public managers and trade tourist managers that can give quality to the urban space for tourists, and for the citizens as well. Because, in the Brazilian context, the formulation of public policies for public transport services, mobility, accessibility and recreation areas are linked to public managers; in the same way that private initiatives and incentives for leisure, entertainment, and tourism are linked to the managers of the tourist trade. Originality/value New possibilities of the understanding of urban hospitality in tourist destinations by the categories of analysis listed – identity, readability and accessibility. Accessibility was the spatial condition that most needed attention as urban hospitality in the Brazilian tourist destinations studied. Otherwise, a contribution was made to the area of study in urban hospitality, given the scarcity of scientific literature on the subject.

Spatial Condition in Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-Means Clustering for Segmentation of Teeth in Dental Panoramic Radiographs

Dental panoramic radiographs heavily depend on the performance of the segmentation method due to the presence of unevenly illumination and low contrast of the images. Conditional Spatial Fuzzy C-mean (csFCM) Clustering have been proposed to achieve through the incorporation of the component and added in the FCM to cluster grouping. This algorithm directs with consideration conditioning variables that consider membership value. However, csFCM does not consider Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set to take final membership and final non-membership value into account, the effect does not wipe off the deviation by illumination and low contrast of the images completely for improvement to skip some scope. In this current paper, we introduced a new image segmentation method namely Conditional Spatial in Intuitionistic Fuzzy C-Means Clustering for Segmentation of Teeth in Dental Panoramic Radiographs. Our proposed method adds hesitation function aiming to settle the indication of the knowledge lack that belongs to the final membership function to get a better segmentation result. The experiment result shows this method achieves better segmentation performance with misclassification error (ME) and relative foreground area error (RAE) values are 4.77 and 4.27 respectively.