Human dignity: Is there a place for it in planning?

Although human dignity has caught the attention of scholars in many different fields, planners remain unresponsive. Three reasons may be given for planners’ neglect of human dignity: (1)  so far, nobody has inspired planners to cherish human dignity as a planning value or goal; (2)  planners respect and protect human dignity, but do not use the term; (3)  planners distrust values that are not too complex for laypersons. Two cases illustrate the possible consequences of ‘planning for dignity’ – the case of the knitting ladies of Blikkiesdorp (Cape Town), and the poor door controversy of 2014. The most important conclusions are that planners, in order to align their plans with human dignity (or ubuntu), must co-produce their selves within local communities affected by their plans. Moreover, planners must recognize the tension that exists between social justice and human dignity: A plan that is socially just can still be humiliating

Bodenmarkt/Bodenpolitik

Bodenmärkte erzeugen und verteilen Gelegenheiten zur privaten Bodennutzung. Die Allokation von Nutzungen und die Distribution von Vor- und Nachteilen erfolgt unter Rahmenbedingungen, die durch Eigentumsregeln, räumliche Planung und öffentliche Investitionen aufgestellt werden. Responsive Bodenpolitik begleitet die Allokation und Distribution durch den Ausgleich zwischen vielfältigen Interessen

The Road to Global Citizenship?

Barrientos A, Pellissery S, Leisering L, et al. The Road to Global Citizenship? ZiF-Mitteilungen. 2011;2011(3):15-28

Transfer of heroin profiling method from conventional GC-MS to Fast-GC-MS and UHPLC-MS/MS

Peer reviewe

Wolf 1130: A Nearby Triple System Containing a Cool, Ultramassive White Dwarf

Following the discovery of the T8 subdwarf WISEJ200520.38+542433.9 (Wolf 1130C), with common proper motion to a binary (Wolf 1130AB) consisting of an M subdwarf and a white dwarf, we set out to learn more about the old binary in the system. We find that the A and B components of Wolf 1130 are tidally locked, which is revealed by the coherence of more than a year of V band photometry phase folded to the derived orbital period of 0.4967 days. Forty new high-resolution, near-infrared spectra obtained with the Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrometer (IGRINS) provide radial velocities and a projected rotational velocity (v sin i) of 14.7 +/- 0.7 km/s for the M subdwarf. In tandem with a Gaia parallax-derived radius and verified tidal-locking, we calculate an inclination of i=29 +/- 2 degrees. From the single-lined orbital solution and the inclination we derive an absolute mass for the unseen primary (1.24+0.19-0.15 Msun). Its non-detection between 0.2 and 2.5 microns implies that it is an old (>3.7 Gyr) and cool (Teff<7000K) ONe white dwarf. This is the first ultramassive white dwarf within 25pc. The evolution of Wolf 1130AB into a cataclysmic variable is inevitable, making it a potential Type Ia supernova progenitor. The formation of a triple system with a primary mass >100 times the tertiary mass and the survival of the system through the common-envelope phase, where ~80% of the system mass was lost, is remarkable. Our analysis of Wolf 1130 allows us to infer its formation and evolutionary history, which has unique implications for understanding low-mass star and brown dwarf formation around intermediate mass stars.Comment: 37 pages, 9 Figures, 5 Table

The Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog: Structural Parameters for Approximately Half A Million Galaxies

We present the Advanced Camera for Surveys General Catalog (ACS-GC), a photometric and morphological database using publicly available data obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The goal of the ACS-GC database is to provide a large statistical sample of galaxies with reliable structural and distance measurements to probe the evolution of galaxies over a wide range of look-back times. The ACS-GC includes approximately 470,000 astronomical sources (stars + galaxies) derived from the AEGIS, COSMOS, GEMS, and GOODS surveys. Galapagos was used to construct photometric (SEXTRACTOR) and morphological (GALFIT) catalogs. The analysis assumes a single Sersic model for each object to derive quantitative structural parameters. We include publicly available redshifts from the DEEP2, COMBO-17, TKRS, PEARS, ACES, CFHTLS, and zCOSMOS surveys to supply redshifts (spectroscopic and photometric) for a considerable fraction (similar to 74%) of the imaging sample. The ACS-GC includes color postage stamps, GALFIT residual images, and photometry, structural parameters, and redshifts combined into a single catalog.NASA/ESA GO-10134, GO-09822, GO-09425.01, GO-09583.01, GO-9500NASA NAS 5-26555NSF AST00-71048NASA LTSA NNG04GC89GESO Paranal Observatory LP175.A-0839Astronom

Verified Implementations for Secure and Verifiable Computation

Formal verification of the security of software systems is gradually moving from the traditional focus on idealized models, to the more ambitious goal of producing verified implementations. This trend is also present in recent work targeting the verification of cryptographic software, but the reach of existing tools has so far been limited to cryptographic primitives, such as RSA-OAEP encryption, or standalone protocols, such as SSH. This paper presents a scalable approach to formally verifying implementations of higher-level cryptographic systems, directly in the computational model. We consider circuit-based cloud-oriented cryptographic protocols for secure and verifiable computation over encrypted data. Our examples share as central component Yao\u27s celebrated transformation of a boolean circuit into an equivalent garbled form that can be evaluated securely in an untrusted environment. We leverage the foundations of garbled circuits set forth by Bellare, Hoang, and Rogaway (CCS 2012, ASIACRYPT 2012) to build verified implementations of garbling schemes, a verified implementation of Yao\u27s secure function evaluation protocol, and a verified (albeit partial) implementation of the verifiable computation protocol by Gennaro, Gentry, and Parno (CRYPTO 2010). The implementations are formally verified using EasyCrypt, a tool-assisted framework for building high-confidence cryptographic proofs, and critically rely on two novel features: a module and theory system that supports compositional reasoning, and a code extraction mechanism for generating implementations from formalizations

The Science Advantage of a Redder Filter for WFIRST

WFIRST will be capable of providing Hubble-quality imaging performance over several thousand square degrees of the sky. The wide-area, high spatial resolution survey data from WFIRST will be unsurpassed for many decades into the future. With the current baseline design, the WFIRST filter complement will extend from the bluest wavelength allowed by the optical design to a reddest filter (F184W) that has a red cutoff at 2.0 microns. In this white paper, we outline some of the science advantages for adding a K_s filter with a 2.15 micron central wavelength in order to extend the wavelength coverage for WFIRST as far to the red as the possible given the thermal performance of the observatory and the sensitivity of the detectors