Cities as emergent models: the morphological logic of Manhattan and Barcelona

This paper is set to unveil several particulars about the logic embedded in the diachronic model of city growth and the rules which govern the emergence of urban spaces. The paper outlines an attempt to detect and define the generative rules of a growing urban structure by means of evaluation techniques. The initial approach in this regards will be to study the evolution of existing urban regions or cities which in our case are Manhattan and Barcelona and investigate the rules and causes of their emergence and growth. The paper will concentrate on the spatial aspect of the generative rules and investigate their behaviour and dimensionality. Several Space Syntax evaluation methods will be implemented to capture the change of spatial configurations within the growing urban structures. In addition, certain spatial elements will be isolated and tested aiming to illustrate their influence on the main spatial structures. Both urban regions were found to be emergent products of a bottom up organic growth mostly distinguished in the vicinities of the first settlements. Despite the imposition of a uniform grid on both cities in later stages of their development these cities managed to deform the regularity in the preplanned grid in an emergent manner to end up with an efficient model embodied in their current spatial arrangement. The paper reveals several consistencies in the spatial morphology of both urban regions and provides explanation of these regularities in an approach to extract the underlying rules which contributed to the growth optimization process

Thermal Reshaping of Gold Nanorods in Micellar Solution of Water/Glycerol Mixtures

Gold nanorods (Nds) with aspect ratios of 4, 3.5, and 2.8 were prepared by the electrochemical method. The nanorods were thermally studied in binary solvents of aqueous glycerol at different ratios (25%–75%). The results illustrated that the longitudinal surface plasmon resonance (SPL) is strongly dependent on the dielectric constant. The maximum absorption is red shifted with increasing the glycerol/water ratio. This was attributed to the decreasing value of the dielectric constant of the binary solvents. Moreover, by increasing the temperatures, the results showed relative instability of the gold nanorods. This attributed to the relative instability of the micelle capping the nanorods

The Effectiveness of a Proposed Enrichment Program Based on Problem-Solving and Problem Posing in Developing the Ability of Mathematical Reasoning and Sense-Making among Grade Ten High Achievers

This study aimed to reveal the effectiveness of a proposed enrichment program based on problem-solving and problem posing in developing the ability of the mathematical reasoning and sense making among students of high achievement. To achieve this goal, an enrichment training program was designed to focus on a set of mathematical ideas and skills in mathematics using problem-solving and problem- posing strategies to solve and pose non-routine mathematical problems for students of high achievement to develop their mathematical reasoning and sense making ability. The researcher designed a test to measure the mathematical reasoning and sense making. In addition, the Test of Mathematical Abilities (TOMA-3) was used to measure the students' mathematical abilities before the experiment. The sample of the study consisted of 63 grade ten high achievers randomly selected from South Batinah governorate, which was divided into control and experimental groups. For testing the study hypothesis, data was analyzed by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) in which eta squared was obtained. The results showed that the proposed program was effective and the mathematical reasoning and sense making skills were highly achieved

An investigation into the cognitive, metacognitive, and spatial markers of creativity and efficiency in architectural design

This paper presents a preliminary study into the spatial features that can be used to distinguish creativity andefficiency in design layouts, and the distinct pattern of cognitive and metacognitive activity that is associated with creative design. In a design experiment, a group of 12 architects were handed a design brief. Their drawing activity was recorded and they were required to externalize their thoughts during the design process. Both design solutions and verbal comments were analysed and modelled. A separate group of experienced architects used their expert knowledge to assign creativity and efficiency scores to the 12 design solutions. The design solutions were evaluated spatially. Protocol analysis studies including linkography and macroscopic analysis were used to discern distinctive patterns in the cognitive and metacognition activity of designs marked with the highest and least creativity scores. Entropy models of the linkographs and knowledge graphs were further introduced Finally, we assessed how creativity and efficiency correlates to experiment variables, cognitive activity, metacognitive activity, spatial and functional distribution of spaces in the design solutions, and the number and type of design constraints applied through the course of design. Through this investigation, we suggest that expert knowledge can be used to assess creativity and efficiency in designs. Our findings indicate that efficient layouts have distinct spatial features, and that cognitive and metacognitive activity in design that yields a highly creative outcome corresponds to higher frequencies of design moves and higher linkages between design moves

Multiple Venous Malformations as a Cause of Pulsatile Tinnitus.

INTRODUCTION: Pulsatile tinnitus is a relatively common presentation in otolaryngology clinics, most cases of which have a treatable cause. This presentation warrants a thorough workup to identify treatable, and rule out life-threatening, etiologies. We present a case of a patient with pulsatile tinnitus arising from multiple dilated venous channels in the head and neck. Case Presentation. We present the case of a 65-year-old Caucasian female with a two-year history of progressive, bilateral pulsatile tinnitus, which had become debilitating. Computed-tomographic angiography (CTA) studies ruled out an intracranial vascular cause for her symptoms. However, computed tomography (CT) scanning and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) revealed multiple dilated bilateral, low-flow, venous channels throughout the head and neck. The proximity of such dilated venous channels to the temporal bone provides a route for sound to be transmitted to the inner ear. CONCLUSION: Arterial, venous, and systemic etiologies can cause pulsatile tinnitus. Arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) of the head and neck represent less than 1% of cases. In our patient, dilated low-flow venous malformations are the likely source of her symptoms, which is the first reported case in the literature.Peer Reviewe

The effect of nuclear deformation on level statistics

We analyze the nearest neighbor spacing distributions of low-lying 2+ levels of even-even nuclei. We grouped the nuclei into classes defined by the quadrupole deformation parameter (Beta2). We calculate the nearest neighbor spacing distributions for each class. Then, we determine the chaoticity parameter for each class with the help of the Bayesian inference method. We compare these distributions to a formula that describes the transition to chaos by varying a tuning parameter. This parameter appears to depend in a non-trivial way on the nuclear deformation, and takes small values indicating regularity in strongly deformed nuclei and especially in those having an oblate deformation.Comment: 10 Pages, 6 figure

Translating Analytical Descriptions of Cities into Planning and Simulation Models

With the increase in urban complexity, plausible analytical and design models became highly valued as the way to decode and reconstruct the organization that makes urban systems. What they lacked is a mechanism by which an analytical description of urban complexity could be translated into a design description. An attempt to define such a mechanism is presented in this paper, where knowledge is retrieved from the natural organization that cities settle into, and devised in a procedural model to support urban planning at the problem definition stage. The model comprises two automated modules, giving preference to street accessibility. The first module implements plausible spatial laws to generate street structures. The performance criteria of these structures are measured against accessibility scores and clustering patterns of street segments. In the second module, an Artificial Neural Networks model (ANNs) is trained on Barcelona’s data, outlining how street width, building height, block density and retail land use might be dependent on street accessibility. The ANNs is tested on Manhattan’s data. The application of the two computational modules is explored at the problem definition stage of a urban planning in order to verify how far deterministic knowledge-based models are in the transition from analysis to design. Our findings suggest that the computational framework proposed could be instrumental at generating simplified representation of an urban grid, whilst being effective at forecasting form-related and functional attributes within a minimum resolution of 200 m. It is finally concluded that as design progresses, knowledge-based models may serve as to minimize uncertainty about complex urban planning problems