Urban utopics and the new digital view

Internet Webcam technology is a crucial nodal imaging device that delivers a plethora of new vantage points by which the visual experience of the city is now constructed. Delivered directly to the desktop, this distributed network extends the individual viewer beyond their physical limits.However, it also, remains a regulated system. Unlike sites like Flikr the representation of urban form and life is authored and thus locates the various promotional and proprietorial interests of those who own the view. More importantly, the figurative potency of the webcam image relies on its emblematic, descriptive form. Louis Marin, in ‘Utopics’ and ‘On Representation’ identifies how the use of narrative and descriptive image forms in early city maps constructed differences in the representation of sovereign power. Referring to Gomboust’s 1647 Map of Paris, Marin argues that the image, as a representational vehicle for the mediation of power, inevitably, constructs a gap or interval within any figurative continuity. Here the presence of competing intermediating referents undoes the map’s figurative consistency. In this sense, representations of this kind rupture their own ambition for semantic coherence.Referencing Marin’s observation that the representation of power establishes the basis of its own inevitable rupture, this paper will explore how the Internet webcam, simultaneously reveals the immanence of urban powerbrokers and delineates the mechanism by which this power is disrupted. The paper will examine how pixel-based geometry and image as ‘data’ unravels the narrative of linear perspective representation by supplanting its Cartesian coordinates and instead privileging experiential conditions of colour and luminosity. In rejecting the delineation of form through the line, the city’s image becomes a more affective, qualitative condition. Moreover, the ease by which this content can be repackaged and reassembled institutes a profound political shift in the image’s agency and the viewer’s visual engagement with urban space

Urban utopics: the politics of the digital city view

Digital Futures and the City of Today cuts through these issues to analyze the work of architects, designers, media specialists, and a growing number of community activists, laying out a multifaceted view of the complex integrated ..

New Imaging: transdisciplinary strategies for art beyond the new media

If the eighteenth century Picturesque can be regarded as a proprietorial strategy for mediating the visual experience of landscape, then the proliferation and configuration of webcam networks to promote iconic city form can be seen as its contemporary counterpart. These digital systems, in their most voyeuristic and passive form as a new privileged vantage point for the 'remote' tourist to view the city, allow civic authorities to curate the visual experience of the contemporary urban landscape. Unlike the formal stability of the Picturesque view, the webcam's digital conversion of the real provides viewers with the opportunity to adapt and mediate their experience. Importantly, this digital conversion is able to offer the designer new ways to materialize three-dimensional form. This adaptive facility of webcam content paradoxically subverts the surveillant and the promotional uses of these systems and converts it into qualitative and experiential material. The paper will discuss how open-source digital software can be recruited to process and interpret virtual qualitative data from webcams to the point where it can generate a formal response to civic space. This digital manipulation of the two-dimensional webcam view, asks the designer to relinquish the images commonly used to substantiate urban form and to respond to duplicate virtual and real-time sites whose coexistence shifts the temporal framework traditionally used to guide formal intervention. The application of this unprecedented technique reveals an opportunity to reinterpret the paradigm both for our experience of 'virtual' and urban space and for material intervention within it

National trends in retreatment of HCV due to reinfection or treatment failure in Australia

Background & Aims: Population-level uptake of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, including retreatment, can be estimated through administrative pharmaceutical dispensation data. However, the reasons for retreatment are not captured in these data. We developed a machine learning model to classify retreatments as reinfection or treatment failure at a national level. Methods: Retreatment data from the REACH-C cohort (n = 10,843 treated with DAAs; n = 320 retreatments with known reason), were used to train a random forest model. Nested cross validation was undertaken to assess model performance and to optimise hyperparameters. The model was applied to data on DAA retreatment dispensed during 2016-2021 in Australia, to identify the reason for retreatment (treatment failure or reinfection). Results: Average predictive accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity and F1-score for the model were 96.3%, 96.5%, 96.3%, 96.3% and 96.3%, respectively. Nationally, 95,272 individuals initiated DAAs, with treatment uptake declining from 32,454 in 2016 to 6,566 in 2021. Of those treated, 6,980 (7%) were retreated. Our model classified 51.8% (95% CI 46.7–53.6%; n = 3,614) of cases as reinfection and 48.2% (95% CI 46.4–53.3%; n = 3,366) as treatment failure. Retreatment for reinfection increased steadily over the study period from 14 in 2016 to 1,092 in 2020, stabilising in 2021. Retreatment for treatment failure increased from 73 in 2016 to 1,077 in 2019, then declined to 515 in 2021. Among individuals retreated for treatment failure, 50% had discontinued initial treatment. Conclusions: We used a novel methodology with high classification accuracy to evaluate DAA retreatment patterns at a national level. Increases in retreatment uptake for treatment failure corresponded to the availability of pangenotypic and salvage regimens. Increasing retreatment uptake for reinfection likely reflects increasing reinfection incidence. Impact and implications: This study used machine learning methodologies to analyse national administrative data and characterise trends in HCV retreatment due to reinfection and treatment failure. Retreatment for reinfection increased over time, reflecting increasing numbers of people at risk for reinfection following HCV cure. Increased retreatment for treatment failure corresponded to the availability of pangenotypic and salvage DAA regimens. The findings of this study can be used by public health agencies and policy makers to guide and assess HCV elimination strategies, while the novel methodology for monitoring trends in HCV retreatment has the potential to be used in other settings, and health conditions

The Accelerations of Stars Orbiting the Milky Way's Central Black Hole

Recent measurements, of the velocities of stars near the center of the Milky Way have provided the strongest evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy, but the observational uncertainties poorly constrain many of the properties of the black hole. Determining the accelerations of stars in their orbits around the center provides much more precise information about the position and mass of the black hole. Here we report measurements of the accelerations for three stars located ~0.005 pc from the central radio source Sgr A*; these accelerations are comparable to those experienced by the Earth as it orbits the Sun. These data increase the inferred minimum mass density in the central region of the Galaxy by an order of magnitude relative to previous results and localized the dark mass to within 0.05 +- 0.04 arcsec of the nominal position of Sgr A*. In addition, the orbital period of one of the observed stars could be as short as 15 years, allowing us the opportunity in the near future to observe an entire period.Comment: To appear in September 21 2000 issue of Natur

Multimode quantum interference of photons in multiport integrated devices

We report the first demonstration of quantum interference in multimode interference (MMI) devices and a new complete characterization technique that can be applied to any photonic device that removes the need for phase stable measurements. MMI devices provide a compact and robust realization of NxM optical circuits, which will dramatically reduce the complexity and increase the functionality of future generations of quantum photonic circuits