Residents\u27 Social Interactions in Market Square and Its Impact on Community Well-Being

This study aims at ameliorating the associated challenges emanated from the ineffective planning, management and design of market square as well as appraisal of the interactions among people of diverse ethnicity. Hence, the study explores users\u27 interactions and activities within three markets square in rural neighborhoods of South-west, Nigeria. The significant relationship between resident\u27s interactions and the community well-being was explored. Consequently, this study highlights the influence of the market square as a typical neighborhood open space on residents\u27 well-being. The study\u27s quantitative approach encircled the purposive structured survey questionnaire data obtained from Yorubas, Hausas, and Ibos respondents (n=382); and analyzed by SPSS statistical package (version 22). Meanwhile, the qualitative data included observation of various activity pattern among the three ethnic groups. The study\u27s findings revealed that an improvement in the market square quality becomes necessary in order to increase residents\u27 interactions and well-being. Also, the study elucidates the appropriate link between the built environment, residents\u27 interactions, and well-being. It is concluded that residents\u27 well-being is a reflection of an experience manifested within the interplay of individuals and groups\u27 social interactions. This study of people and place relationships could better equip the professionals in the built environment on the importance of creating a sustainable open space towards improving residents\u27 well-being and rural community revitalization efforts

Lower bounds on the estimation performance in low complexity quantize-and-forward cooperative systems

Cooperative communication can effectively mitigate the effects of multipath propagation fading by using relay channels to provide spatial diversity. A relaying scheme suitable for half-duplex devices is the quantize-and-forward (QF) protocol, in which the information received from the source is quantized at the relay before being forwarded to the destination. In this contribution, the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) is obtained for the case where all channel parameters in a QF system are estimated at the destination. The CRB is a lower bound (LB) on the mean square estimation error (MSEE) of an unbiased estimate and can thus be used to benchmark practical estimation algorithms. Additionally, the modified Cramer-Rao bound (MCRB) is also presented, which is a looser but computationally less complex bound. An importance sampling technique is developed to speed up the computation of the MCRBs, and the MSEE performance of a practical estimation algorithm is compared with the (M)CRBs. We point out that the parameters of the source-destination and relay-destination channels can be accurately estimated but that inevitably the source-relay channel estimate is poor when the instantaneous SNR on the relay-destination channel is low; however, in this case, the decoder performance is not affected by the inaccurate source-relay channel estimate

Cultural Memories for Better Place Experience: The Case of Orabi Square in Alexandria, Egypt.

Globalization is associated with significant transformations in city forms and cultural and social performances. Governments and cultural heritage organisations increasingly appreciate the importance of preserving diverse physical cultural heritage through rehabilitation and the implementation of conservation plans. Nevertheless, there is a need to evaluate whether these plans understand the importance of cultural memory in societies, as well as how it affects the human psyche. Utilizing Orabi Square, which is one of the richest Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) in the metropolitan city of Alexandria in Egypt, this study aims to answer the question; to what extent does Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) management present a situation that maintains cultural memory and achieve psychosocial well-being? The research explored the site’s old and new conditions and place experience, applying a qualitative approach through onsite face-to-face semi-structured interviews combined with data from a Facebook group—Alexandria’s Spirit. The QSR Nvivo12 analysis program was used for the data interpretation and for charting the intangible values accompanying cultural memory such as emotions and behaviour. The study indicated that cultural memory is an affective catalyst for emotional attachment to place and is an important factor informing sense of place. Based on our study, inclusion of cultural memories should be an integral element in the future management plans of Orabi Square to enhance place experience and psychosocial well-being

A formal justification of the Ancient Chinese Method of Computing Square Roots

In this paper a formal justification of the ancient Chinese method for computing square roots is given. As a result, some already known properties of the square root which is computed with this method are deduced. If any other number base is used, the justification given shows that the method is applied in the same way and that the deduced properties are still being fulfilled, facts that highlight the importance of positional number systems. It also shows how to generalize the method to compute high orders roots. Although with this elementary method you can compute the square root of any real number, with the exact number of decimal places that you want, the mathematicians of ancient China were not able to generalize it for the purpose of computing irrational roots, because they did not know a positional number system. Finally, in order for high school students gain a better understanding of number systems, the examples given in this paper show how they can use the square root calculus with this method to practice elementary operations with positional number systems with different bases, and also to explore some relationships between them

Europeanization as a Process: Thoughts on the Europeanization of Private Law

Professor Christian Joerges delivered the Second Annual Herbert L. Bernstein Memorial Lecture in Comparative Law in 2003 and this article is based on his remarks. The article is included in the inaugural volume of CICLOPs that collects the first six Bernstein lectures. Professor Joerges puts forth a three part thesis concerning the “Europeanization of Private Law”, the process by which the European Community influences the legal and political policies of its member states within a framework of transnational cooperation. Joerges first establishes the eroding importance of the idea that legal systems operating at the national level fulfill the goals of Europeanization, arguing this to be the result of Europe being a multi-level system rather than a coalition of autonomous nation-states. He then discusses how the process of Europeanization defies the conventional modes of analysis provided by three different patterns of juridification, each attempting to square Europeanization within the framework of legal science. Finally, Joerges focuses on the normative issues raised by Europeanization as process, such as the role Europeanization plays in resolving the extra-territorial effects of policies enacted by the various nation-states within the Community. Throughout his paper, the Europeanization process is described as a useful tool for the members of the Community to coordinate mutually beneficial policies but also as a hindrance to the autonomous exercise of power within the territory of each individual member; illustrated by controversial cases coming out of France, Greece, and Spain

Polynomial-Time Algorithms for Quadratic Isomorphism of Polynomials: The Regular Case

Let $\mathbf{f}=(f\_1,\ldots,f\_m)$ and $\mathbf{g}=(g\_1,\ldots,g\_m)$ be two sets of $m\geq 1$ nonlinear polynomials over $\mathbb{K}[x\_1,\ldots,x\_n]$ ($\mathbb{K}$ being a field). We consider the computational problem of finding -- if any -- an invertible transformation on the variables mapping $\mathbf{f}$ to $\mathbf{g}$. The corresponding equivalence problem is known as {\tt Isomorphism of Polynomials with one Secret} ({\tt IP1S}) and is a fundamental problem in multivariate cryptography. The main result is a randomized polynomial-time algorithm for solving {\tt IP1S} for quadratic instances, a particular case of importance in cryptography and somewhat justifying {\it a posteriori} the fact that {\it Graph Isomorphism} reduces to only cubic instances of {\tt IP1S} (Agrawal and Saxena). To this end, we show that {\tt IP1S} for quadratic polynomials can be reduced to a variant of the classical module isomorphism problem in representation theory, which involves to test the orthogonal simultaneous conjugacy of symmetric matrices. We show that we can essentially {\it linearize} the problem by reducing quadratic-{\tt IP1S} to test the orthogonal simultaneous similarity of symmetric matrices; this latter problem was shown by Chistov, Ivanyos and Karpinski to be equivalent to finding an invertible matrix in the linear space $\mathbb{K}^{n \times n}$ of $n \times n$ matrices over $\mathbb{K}$ and to compute the square root in a matrix algebra. While computing square roots of matrices can be done efficiently using numerical methods, it seems difficult to control the bit complexity of such methods. However, we present exact and polynomial-time algorithms for computing the square root in $\mathbb{K}^{n \times n}$ for various fields (including finite fields). We then consider \\#{\tt IP1S}, the counting version of {\tt IP1S} for quadratic instances. In particular, we provide a (complete) characterization of the automorphism group of homogeneous quadratic polynomials. Finally, we also consider the more general {\it Isomorphism of Polynomials} ({\tt IP}) problem where we allow an invertible linear transformation on the variables \emph{and} on the set of polynomials. A randomized polynomial-time algorithm for solving {\tt IP} when $\mathbf{f}=(x\_1^d,\ldots,x\_n^d)$ is presented. From an algorithmic point of view, the problem boils down to factoring the determinant of a linear matrix (\emph{i.e.}\ a matrix whose components are linear polynomials). This extends to {\tt IP} a result of Kayal obtained for {\tt PolyProj}.Comment: Published in Journal of Complexity, Elsevier, 2015, pp.3

Small Town Urban Revitalization: The Effect of Pullman Square on Downtown Huntington, West Virginia

After many years of being the center of shopping, business and entertainment, the downtown began to decline nationally. This decline began after the end of WWII and ran concurrent to the beginning of suburbanization and the emergence of large, indoor shopping malls. Many cities began to realize the importance of a healthy downtown and implemented strategies to revitalize their downtown. This thesis focuses on the emergence of Pullman Square in Huntington, WV, its effect on the downtown, and how it has spawned other retail development and revitalization strategies throughout the city center