The Changing Role of Student Housing as Social Infrastructure

The role of student housing within social infrastructure provision is arguably overlooked. This is a vital issue, as purpose-built student accommodation provides a significant stock of affordable accommodation for students in European university cities while also supporting their social integration in the urban environment. Although an increasing involvement of for-profit student home developers and providers has been diversifying the landscape of student housing across European university cities in the last decade, this change has been mainly associated with the internationalisation of students’ mobility and the financialisation processes driven by private investors. Subsequently, this article expands these supply and demand side perspectives by localising student housing as social infrastructure. Using Vienna as a case study, the authors mapped purpose-built student accommodation locations and conducted qualitative interviews to analyse recent changes in the provision of student housing and to discuss its implications for the social dimension of purpose-built student accommodation. Accordingly, the respective analysis identifies different logics of student housing providers concerning expansion plans and housing quality, which, in turn, affect the function of student housing as social infrastructure. As a result, this article emphasises the need to critically reflect on the overlooked role of student housing as social infrastructure and the role of public actors as well as their policies in the financialisation of purpose-built student accommodation

Silent Night

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Interaktivno modeliranje i razdioba fleksibilnog mehanizma jednakostraničnih trokuta

Based on the requests from architects, we developed a system which allows to interactively design and subdivide flexible triangular surfaces. Due to economical reasons the number of different types of building elements should be small. For that reason we only use equilateral base triangles of unique size with the possibility of subdivision. To allow to interactively move vertices and to ensure constant edge length we use force-directed methods instead of inverse kinematics. This paper describes the data structure, the algorithm and the influence of subdivision on the kinematic flexibility of the mesh.Prema zahtjevima arhitekata razvijamo sustav koji dozvoljava interaktivnu tvorbu i razdiobu fleksibilne triangulirane plohe. Broj različitih sastavnih dijelova iz ekonomskih razloga treba biti mali. Zbog toga koristimo samo sukladne jednakostranične bazne trokute s mogućnošću razdiobe. Kako bismo dozvolili interaktivno kretanje vrhova i osigurali konstantnost duljine bridova umjesto inverzne kinematike koristimo metodu upravljanja silom. Rad opisuje strukturu podataka, algoritam i utjecaj razdiobe na kinematičku fleksibilnost mreže

How to generalize Thales’ Theorem?

Klasičan Talesov teorem moguće je poopćiti – ovisno o interpretaciji – na nekoliko elementarnih i apstraktnih načina. U ovom se radu pokušava, ne zahtijevajući potpunost, klasificirati te generalizacije. Svojom strukturom rad je prilagođen obrazovnim svrhama s naglaskom na matematičkom istraživanju. Uz više ili manje poznate činjenice, predstavljamo nove uvide i pristupe jednom od najznačajnijih teorema geometrije.The classical theorem of Thales can be generalized – depending on someones interpretation – in several elemental or abstract ways. This paper tries to classify such generalizations without claim of completeness. We structured this work in a way that is suitable for educational purposes by emphasizing aspects of mathematical research. Beside more or less known facts, we present new insights and approaches to one of the most important theorems of geometry

How to generalize Thales’ Theorem?

Klasičan Talesov teorem moguće je poopćiti – ovisno o interpretaciji – na nekoliko elementarnih i apstraktnih načina. U ovom se radu pokušava, ne zahtijevajući potpunost, klasificirati te generalizacije. Svojom strukturom rad je prilagođen obrazovnim svrhama s naglaskom na matematičkom istraživanju. Uz više ili manje poznate činjenice, predstavljamo nove uvide i pristupe jednom od najznačajnijih teorema geometrije.The classical theorem of Thales can be generalized – depending on someones interpretation – in several elemental or abstract ways. This paper tries to classify such generalizations without claim of completeness. We structured this work in a way that is suitable for educational purposes by emphasizing aspects of mathematical research. Beside more or less known facts, we present new insights and approaches to one of the most important theorems of geometry

3-Dimensional Building Details from Aerial Photography for Internet Maps

This paper introduces the automated characterization of real estate (real property) for Internet mapping. It proposes a processing framework to achieve this task from vertical aerial photography and associated property information. A demonstration of the feasibility of an automated solution builds on test data from the Austrian City of Graz. Information is extracted from vertical aerial photography and various data products derived from that photography in the form of a true orthophoto, a dense digital surface model and digital terrain model, and a classification of land cover. Maps of cadastral property boundaries aid in defining real properties. Our goal is to develop a table for each property with descriptive numbers about the buildings, their dimensions, number of floors, number of windows, roof shapes, impervious surfaces, garages, sheds, vegetation, presence of a basement floor, and other descriptors of interest for each and every property of a city. From aerial sources, at a pixel size of 10 cm, we show that we have obtained positional accuracies in the range of a single pixel, an accuracy of areas in the 10% range, floor counts at an accuracy of 93% and window counts at 86% accuracy. We also introduce 3D point clouds of facades and their creation from vertical aerial photography, and how these point clouds can support the definition of complex facades

High throughput phenotypic screening of the human spermatozoon

Despite recent advances in male reproductive health research, there remain many elements of male infertility where our understanding is incomplete. Consequently, diagnostic tools and treatments for men with sperm dysfunction, other than medically assisted reproduction, are limited. On the other hand, the gaps in our knowledge of the mechanisms which underpin sperm function have hampered the development of male non-hormonal contraceptives. The study of mature spermatozoa is inherently difficult. They are a unique and highly specialised cell type which does not actively transcribe or translate proteins and cannot be cultured for long periods of time or matured in vitro. One large-scale approach to both increasing the understanding of sperm function and the discovery and development of compounds that can modulate sperm function is to directly observe responses to compounds with phenotypic screening techniques. These target agnostic approaches can be developed into high-throughput screening platforms with the potential to drastically increase advances in the field. Here, we discuss the rationale and development of high-throughput phenotypic screening platforms for mature human spermatozoa and the multiple potential applications these present, as well as the current limitations and leaps in our understanding and the capabilities needed to overcome them. Further development and use of these technologies could lead to the identification of compounds which positively or negatively affect sperm cell motility or function or novel platforms for toxicology or environmental chemical testing among other applications. Ultimately, each of these potential applications is also likely to increase the understanding within the field of sperm biology.</p

Social network analysis shows direct evidence for social transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees

The authors are grateful to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland for providing core funding for the Budongo Conservation Field Station. The fieldwork of CH was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the Lucie Burgers Stichting, and the British Academy. TP was funded by the Canadian Research Chair in Continental Ecosystem Ecology, and received computational support from the Theoretical Ecosystem Ecology group at UQAR. The research leading to these results has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) and from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) REA grant agreement n°329197 awarded to TG, ERC grant agreement n° 283871 awarded to KZ. WH was funded by a BBSRC grant (BB/I007997/1).Social network analysis methods have made it possible to test whether novel behaviors in animals spread through individual or social learning. To date, however, social network analysis of wild populations has been limited to static models that cannot precisely reflect the dynamics of learning, for instance, the impact of multiple observations across time. Here, we present a novel dynamic version of network analysis that is capable of capturing temporal aspects of acquisition-that is, how successive observations by an individual influence its acquisition of the novel behavior. We apply this model to studying the spread of two novel tool-use variants, "moss-sponging'' and "leaf-sponge re-use,'' in the Sonso chimpanzee community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. Chimpanzees are widely considered the most "cultural'' of all animal species, with 39 behaviors suspected as socially acquired, most of them in the domain of tool-use. The cultural hypothesis is supported by experimental data from captive chimpanzees and a range of observational data. However, for wild groups, there is still no direct experimental evidence for social learning, nor has there been any direct observation of social diffusion of behavioral innovations. Here, we tested both a static and a dynamic network model and found strong evidence that diffusion patterns of moss-sponging, but not leaf-sponge re-use, were significantly better explained by social than individual learning. The most conservative estimate of social transmission accounted for 85% of observed events, with an estimated 15-fold increase in learning rate for each time a novice observed an informed individual moss-sponging. We conclude that group-specific behavioral variants in wild chimpanzees can be socially learned, adding to the evidence that this prerequisite for culture originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans, long before the advent of modern humans.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe