Evaluating Practical Implementation of Geodesign and its Impacts on Resilience

Using systems thinking, geodesign offers a promising mixture of design process and strategic analysis for building more resilient landscapes. Although the scholarship and literature on geodesign is increasing rapidly (C.-L. WU & CHIANG 2018), there is little evidence of an empirical evaluation of the geodesign approach in practice. Do geodesign processes encourage more resilient outcomes? Using content analysis and multivariate regression, we evaluate 35 geodesign projects from the 2019 International Geodesign Collaboration to determine the connections between geodesign processes and resilience. The projects were submitted by academics from over 50 different places across the world as part of landscape or urban design studios. We find that most of the submitted projects include a comprehensive and explicit set of design objectives and a wide range of diverse strategies. Most projects, however, fail to address process relationships, raising concerns that this deficiency might reduce the diversity and dynamics of design outcomes. Our evaluation also found that projects with more robust and comprehensive design strategies scored higher in our resilience measures. The findings offer insights for designers, practitioners, and policymakers to better utilize the geodesign approach

Transcranial magnetic stimulation of the prefrontal cortex in awake nonhuman primates evokes a polysynaptic neck muscle response that reflects oculomotor activity at the time of stimulation.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has emerged as an important technique in cognitive neuroscience, permitting causal inferences about the contribution of a given brain area to behavior. Despite widespread use, exactly how TMS influences neural activity throughout an interconnected network, and how such influences ultimately change behavior, remain unclear. The oculomotor system of nonhuman primates (NHPs) offers a potential animal model to bridge this gap. Here, based on results suggesting that neck muscle activity provides a sensitive indicator of oculomotor activation, we show that single pulses of TMS over the frontal eye fields (FEFs) in awake NHPs evoked rapid (within ∼25 ms) and fairly consistent (∼50-75% of all trials) expression of a contralateral head-turning synergy. This neck muscle response resembled that evoked by subsaccadic electrical microstimulation of the FEF. Systematic variation in TMS location revealed that this response could also be evoked from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Combining TMS with an oculomotor task revealed state dependency, with TMS evoking larger neck muscle responses when the stimulated area was actively engaged. Together, these results advance the suitability of the NHP oculomotor system as an animal model for TMS. The polysynaptic neck muscle response evoked by TMS of the prefrontal cortex is a quantifiable trial-by-trial reflection of oculomotor activation, comparable to the monosynaptic motor-evoked potential evoked by TMS of primary motor cortex. Our results also speak to a role for both the FEF and dlPFC in head orienting, presumably via subcortical connections with the superior colliculus

Quantum-dot gain without inversion:Effects of dark plasmon-exciton hybridization

We propose an initial-state-dependent quantum-dot gain without population inversion in the vicinity of a resonant metallic nanoparticle. The gain originates from the hybridization of a dark plasmon-exciton and is accompanied by efficient energy transfer from the nanoparticle to the quantum dot. This hybridization of the dark plasmon-exciton, attached to the hybridization of the bright plasmon-exciton, strengthens nonlinear light-quantum emitter interactions at the nanoscale, thus the spectral overlap between the dark and the bright plasmons enhances the gain effect. This hybrid system has potential applications in ultracompact tunable quantum devices.Physics, Condensed MatterSCI(E)[email protected]

Tensor-product representations for string-net condensed states

We show that general string-net condensed states have a natural representation in terms of tensor product states (TPS) . These TPS's are built from local tensors. They can describe both states with short-range entanglement (such as the symmetry breaking states) and states with long-range entanglement (such as string-net condensed states with topological/quantum order). The tensor product representation provides a kind of 'mean-field' description for topologically ordered states and could be a powerful way to study quantum phase transitions between such states. As an attempt in this direction, we show that the constructed TPS's are fixed-points under a certain wave-function renormalization group transformation for quantum states.Comment: 11 pages. RevTeX

Polarized linewidth-controllable double-trapping electromagnetically induced transparency spectra in a resonant plasmon nanocavity

Surface plasmons with ultrasmall optical mode volume and strong near field enhancement can be used to realize nanoscale light-matter interaction. Combining surface plasmons with the quantum system provides the possibility of nanoscale realization of important quantum optical phenomena, including the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), which has many applications in nonlinear quantum optics and quantum information processing. Here, using a custom-designed resonant plasmon nanocavity, we demonstrate polarized position-dependent linewidth-controllable EIT spectra at the nanoscale. We analytically obtain the double coherent population trapping conditions in a double-L quantum system with crossing damping, which give two transparent points in the EIT spectra. The linewidths of the three peaks are extremely sensitive to the level spacing of the excited states, the Rabi frequencies and detunings of pump fields, and the Purcell factors. In particular the linewidth of the central peak is exceptionally narrow. The hybrid system may have potential applications in ultra-compact plasmon-quantum devices.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000325349300008&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Multidisciplinary SciencesSCI(E)PubMed11ARTICLE2879

Transplantation of human pulpal and gingival fibroblasts attached to synthetic scaffolds

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72582/1/j.0909-8836.1999.eos107408.x.pd