Small matters: Explaining the city through a medieval wall

In the city of Kranj, Slovenia, three former medieval defence towers were redesigned as public spaces. The three interventions are positioned and discussed within the frame of small-scale interventions, specifically as urban acupuncture. First, small-scale interventions are looked at as an approach to designing open space, and parallels with landscape approach are presented. Second, the Three Towers project is discussed, focussing on the relationship it establishes between the city and its context. As the city is built on top of a conglomerate canyon, the interventions open up the slopes and offer distinct views of the surrounding landscape. In this way, they rediscover and emphasise the relationships between the existing contextual amenities and the city itself. The experience of the site grounds the visitor in a physical and historical context and thus fulfils the mental map one might create of Kranj. In this way, the three small interventions influence the perception of the whole city

Small matters: Explaining the city through a medieval wall

In the city of Kranj, Slovenia, three former medieval defence towers were redesigned as public spaces. The three interventions are positioned and discussed within the frame of small-scale interventions, specifically as urban acupuncture. First, small-scale interventions are looked at as an approach to designing open space, and parallels with landscape approach are presented. Second, the Three Towers project is discussed, focussing on the relationship it establishes between the city and its context. As the city is built on top of a conglomerate canyon, the interventions open up the slopes and offer distinct views of the surrounding landscape. In this way, they rediscover and emphasise the relationships between the existing contextual amenities and the city itself. The experience of the site grounds the visitor in a physical and historical context and thus fulfils the mental map one might create of Kranj. In this way, the three small interventions influence the perception of the whole city

The city of future: biourbanism and constructural law

Nowadays dynamic elements in urban fabric are often concealed by the insertion of stylish new architecture; real patterns of social life (‘bios’), have been replaced by rigid geometric grids and compact building blocks. New Urbanism and Biourbanism affirm that cities are now risking to be unstable and deprived of healthy social interactions. As an expansion of older historical urban fabric patterns, harmonious architecture can have a positive impact on the fitness of both human body and mind. Not only Biourbanism attempts to reinstate balance and lost values in the urban fabric, but also reinforces human-oriented design emergences in micro and macro scales. As a multifaceted discipline, it embraces laws of physics, such as Constructal Law and acknowledges its noticeable and unremitting influence to urban human behaviours. Urban life and behaviours are based upon systems of human communication formed by dynamic patterns; we are now talking about negotiating boundaries between human activities, changes in geographic mapping and mainly about sustainable systems to support uninterrupted growth of communities worldwide. Therefore, as a vital shift in architectural education, not only Biourbanism offers the opportunity to explore patterns and linguistics deeply imbedded into the built environment, but also enables scholars and communities to come together and participate actively into fast and innovative urban interventions. Projects developed during educational and professional training aim at reinstating memorable and preferential paths of communication, favouring everyday life rituals of the body and mind. Hence, by following everlasting laws of physics and formulas inherited from nature, architectural forms can be considered as the real innovation in urban design and planning of the City of the Future.Conference presentation funded by Department of Engineering

Automatic verification of road databases using multiple road models

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Biopiracy <i>versus </i>one-world medicine – from colonial relicts to global collaborative concepts

Background: Practices of biopiracy to use genetic resources and indigenous knowledge by Western companies without benefit-sharing of those, who generated the traditional knowledge, can be understood as form of neocolonialism.Hypothesis: : The One-World Medicine concept attempts to merge the best of traditional medicine from developing countries and conventional Western medicine for the sake of patients around the globe.Study design: Based on literature searches in several databases, a concept paper has been written. Legislative initiatives of the United Nations culminated in the Nagoya protocol aim to protect traditional knowledge and regulate benefit-sharing with indigenous communities. The European community adopted the Nagoya protocol, and the corresponding regulations will be implemented into national legislation among the member states. Despite pleasing progress, infrastructural problems of the health care systems in developing countries still remain. Current approaches to secure primary health care offer only fragmentary solutions at best. Conventional medicine from industrialized countries cannot be afforded by the impoverished population in the Third World. Confronted with exploding costs, even health systems in Western countries are endangered to burst. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is popular among the general public in industrialized countries, although the efficacy is not sufficiently proven according to the standards of evidence-based medicine. CAM is often available without prescription as over-the-counter products with non-calculated risks concerning erroneous self-medication and safety/toxicity issues. The concept of integrative medicine attempts to combine holistic CAM approaches with evidence-based principles of conventional medicine.Conclusion: To realize the concept of One-World Medicine, a number of standards have to be set to assure safety, efficacy and applicability of traditional medicine, e.g. sustainable production and quality control of herbal products, performance of placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized clinical trials, phytovigilance, as well as education of health professionals and patients

Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology: clinical implications

Abstract Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology, which was first described in 1936, is the study of the interactions between the psyche, neural and endocrine functions and immune responses. The aim of psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology is to apply medical knowledge to the treatment of different allergic, immune, autoimmune, rheumatic, neoplastic, endocrine, cardiovascular and dental pathologies, among other disorders. Epigenetic factors and major stresses from different types of stimuli acting through distinct pathways and neurotransmitters are highly involved in altering the psychoneuroimmunoendocrine axis, resulting in the emergence of disease. The main purpose of this report is to expand the understanding of psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology and to demonstrate the importance of the above-mentioned interactions in the etiology of multiple pathologies. In this review, a search of the medical literature using PubMed (free access search engine for the Medline database of the National Library of Medicine of the United States) over the years 1936 to 2016 was conducted, and descriptive and experimental studies and reviews of the scientific literature were included. Keywords: Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology, Stress, Immune system, Endocrine system, Nervous system, Psychiatry, Allergy, Behavior, Psychological disorders, Immunolog

Complementary and Alternative Medicine use by Native Hawaiians and Part-Hawaiians with Type 2 Diabetes: A Feasibility Study.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017