Architecture's Spiritual Utility in the 21st Century

How does architecture, in the built sense, influence humanity?s desire to connect with something beyond ourselves? What responsibility does an architect hold in that condition? Tracing history through religions, movements of culture and the subsequent architecture erected, we can see how various built forms simultaneously reflected and influenced people?s connection to worlds both earthly and celestial. Is there a chance, at this moment, to build upon our historical accomplishments toward a broader engagement that stirs the most fundamental longings within us? A chance to resurrect stories and analogies beyond the frames of traditional religious architecture in a poetic, ecumenical sense. This project proposes a solution to define architecture?s spiritual utility as we inevitably press forward through time, technology and science. It elicits an attempt to distinguish the nearly imperceivable thread that connects all of us, our poetic imagination, through built architecture at several locations across the world. Taking intersubjective doctrines, cults, creeds and ideologies of various cultures and casting them to the cosmos, this project seeks to question how architecture may continue to inspire our distinguished and communal desire for interconnection

Finding Business "Idols": A New Model to Accelerate Start-Ups

Explores a novel approach to finding high-tech entrepreneurial enterprises that is transforming how high-tech entrepreneurs are identified, their businesses launched, and the growth of their operations accelerated

Proof of Concept Centers: Accelerating the Commercialization of University Innovation

Examines two proof-of-concept centers -- the Deshpande Center at MIT and the von Liebig Center at UCSD -- and provides a template for universities to use in replicating the model

Autofiction's Interrogation of Neoliberal Subjectivity

Recent scholarship has highlighted the affinity between autofiction—a development in the contemporary novel that incorporates a fictionalized version of the author in the work—and the neoliberal economy. Through readings of contemporary autofictional novels by Nicole Krauss and Sheila Heti, this essay argues that autofiction—in addition to being a method by which the author can respond to the injunction to develop his or her own portfolio of human capital—is a form that interrogates the animating logics behind the contemporary subject of capital. Heti’s How Should a Person Be? (2010) dramatizes the formation of the artist as neoliberal subject as the adoption of enterprise unification of purpose in order to function within the competitive field. Motherhood (2018) describes a writer in her late thirties who stages a confrontation between the cultural directive to have children and the demands of a subjectivity marked by the injunction to achieve continuous progress, even when none is available. Krauss’s Forest Dark. (2017) turns the critical lens back onto autofiction itself, pairing alternating narratives that coalesce to form a critique of autofiction’s ambiguous capacity to alter the author’s public image. All three novels conclude with an ambivalence toward the continual making of self that lies at the heart of both the subject of late capitalism and the autofictional gesture, and in so doing, reject the ubiquity of growth narratives in favor of a depiction of self-investment as a recursive, self-perpetuating circuit

Reassessment of mid-Carboniferous glacial extent in southwestern Gondwana (Rio Blanco Basin, Argentina) inferred from paleo-mass transport of diamictites

Late Paleozoic glacial diamictites occur in many localities in western Argentina, indicating that the region was strongly affected by glaciation during the mid-Carboniferous (late Serpukhovian–early Bashkirian). In most instances these diamictites are found in steeply walled paleovalley settings in the Andean Precordillera. This study presents new data from a locality north of the Precordillera that suggests an additional, distinct, volume of ice existed in the region during the Carboniferous. The glacigenic diamictites in the Rio Blanco Basin were ultimately emplaced as gravity flows, precluding inferences of paleo-ice volume. Fold nose orientation and soft-sediment groove orientations within the diamictites indicate that the deposits were emplaced from north to south, suggesting that glacial ice was most likely not sourced from the proto-Precordillera at this locality, requiring the need for another ice center to the north of the basin. Diamictite facies indicates that the sediment was initially supplied to the study area by a warm-based glacier.Fil: Gulbranson, Erik L.. University of California at Davis; Estados Unidos. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Isbell, John L.. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Montañez, Isabel P.. University of California at Davis; Estados UnidosFil: Limarino, Carlos Oscar. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Geología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Marenssi, Sergio Alfredo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Geología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Comercio Interno y Culto. Dirección Nacional del Antártico. Instituto Antártico Argentino; ArgentinaFil: Meyer, Kyle. University of California at Davis; Estados UnidosFil: Hull, Clara. University of California at Davis; Estados Unido

Compromised OX40 function in CD28-deficient mice is linked with failure to develop CXC chemokine receptor 5-positive CD4 cells and germinal centers

Mice rendered deficient in CD28 signaling by the soluble competitor, cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated molecule 4-immunoglobulin G1 fusion protein (CTLA4-Ig), fail to upregulate OX40 expression in vivo or form germinal centers after immunization. This is associated with impaired interleukin 4 production and a lack of CXC chemokine receptor (CXCR)5 on CD4 T cells, a chemokine receptor linked with migration into B follicles. Germinal center formation is restored in CTLA4-Ig transgenic mice by coinjection of an agonistic monoclonal antibody to CD28, but this is substantially inhibited if OX40 interactions are interrupted by simultaneous injection of an OX40-Ig fusion protein. These data suggest that CD28-dependent OX40 ligation of CD4 T cells at the time of priming is linked with upregulation of CXCR5 expression, and migration of T cells into B cell areas to support germinal center formation

Permian diamictites in northeastern Asia: Their significance concerning the bipolarity of the late Paleozoic ice age

© 2015 Elsevier B.V. Despite a lack of detailed sedimentologic analyses, diamictites in the Middle Permian Atkan Formation were previously interpreted as glaciomarine and glacially-influenced marine deposits. This interpretation allowed this unit to play a prominent role in paleoclimatic and biogeographical reconstructions associated with presumed bipolar glaciation during the late Paleozoic ice age (LPIA). In this sense, the LPIA is considered to be a close analog to bipolar glaciation and climate change during the Cenozoic. Here, results are presented that challenge the glacigenic interpretation for these strata and negate interpretations of the bipolar nature of the LPIA. The 400 to 1500-m-thick Atkan Formation was deposited in back-arc basins associated with activity of the Okhotsk-Taigonos volcanic arc along the leading edge of Pangea as it drifted across the North Polar Circle. The occurrence of tuffs, volcanic clasts, and glass shards indicate derivation from a nearby arc. Cooling and solidification of some clasts during sedimentation is suggested by the occurrence of clasts with embayments and protrusions that extend into the surrounding matrix, clasts with columnar-like jointing, and alteration of the matrix surrounding some clasts. CA-TIMS dating of tuff zircons indicate a late Capitanian age, which is consistent with fossils within the strata. Bedded diamictites deposited as debrites dominate. These diamictites, which occur as tens of m thick downlapping packages that thicken then thin upward, were deposited as prograding and abandoning sediment gravity-flow fans. Chaotic and folded strata formed as slumps. Graded sandstones and conglomerates were deposited as turbidites, and mudstones were deposited as mudflows, low-density turbidites, and hemipelagic deposits. Striated clasts and outsized clasts piercing bedding were not observed in the study area. Strata above and below the Atkan Formation contain abundant graded beds and deep-water trace fossils indicating deposition as turbidites. The combination of debrites, turbidites, slumps, volcanic grains (clasts, glass, and tuffs), and an absence of glacigenic indicators suggest that Atkan strata were deposited in deep-water basins associated with the development of the volcanic arc rather than due to glacial activity. These findings are significant as they require reconsideration of current views of LPIA glaciation and suggest that ice sheets were limited to Gondwana

Paleoenvironments and age of the Talampaya Formation: The Permo-Triassic boundary in northwestern Argentina

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. The Talampaya Formation is the basal unit of the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión rift system and has been traditionally assigned to the Triassic based on stratigraphic relationships. A median U-Pb age of 252.38 (+0.09/-0.22) Ma was obtained from volcanic zircons collected from a tuff bed close to the top of this unit at the Bordo Atravesado locality in the Cuesta de Miranda area (La Rioja, Argentina). This radiometric age is very close to the accepted Permian-Triassic boundary indicating that, at least in this locality, sedimentation occurred during the Late Permian but may have extended into the earliest Triassic. This new evidence indicates that the onset of the extensional event that gave rise to the rift basins in western Argentina started during the Permian. Detailed sedimentological studies of the 260 m thick Talampaya Formation allowed subdividing the succession into seven facies associations grouped into three evolutionary stages indicating that sedimentary environments initially evolved from alluvial fans to a braided river system. Subsequent intrabasinal volcanism associated with sediment deposition by low-to moderate-sinuosity rivers is recorded in the lower third of the column. The middle and upper part of the unit captures the evolution from ephemeral fluvial systems with an eolian interval to an ephemeral clastic lake with intermittent volcanic ash deposits. These changes indicate a progressive lowering of the landscape and a transition towards arid or semiarid conditions

Glacial Deposits in the Río del Peñón Formation (Late Carboniferous), Río Blanco Basin, Northwestern Argentina

The Río del Peñón Formation (Borrello, 1955 nom. subst. González y Bossi, 1986) forms the upper part of the late Paleozoic outcropping in the Río Blanco anticline (northwest Precordillera, La Rioja Province). This unit is predominantly composed of a thick (1270 m.) sandstone and mudstone sequence including thin levels of coal and scarce conglomerates (Scalabrini Ortiz, 1972; Scalabrini Ortiz and Arrondo, 1973; González and Bossi, 1986). These deposits represent a complex interfingering of shallow marine and fluvial deposits recording relative sea-level fluctuations during the Late Carboniferous-Early Permian. The Río del Peñón Formation overlies andesites and volcanic breccias of the Punta del Agua Formation (Fig. 1 and 2a). Despite well known Late Carboniferous glacigenic deposits from different localities within the Precordillera (López Gamundí, 1987, 1997; López Gamundí and Martinez, 2000; Marenssi et al., 2004; Limarino and Spalletti, 2006; Henry et al., in press), glaciogenic deposits have not been reported from the Río del Peñón Formation. This documentation of glacial-related sediments in this succession serves to further constrain our knowledge of the temporal and paleogeographic distribution of Gondwanan glacial deposits

Viral Superantigen Drives Extrafollicular and Follicular B Cell Differentiation Leading to Virus-specific Antibody Production

Mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV[SW]) encodes a superantigen expressed by infected B cells. It evokes an antibody response specific for viral envelope protein, indicating selective activation of antigen-specific B cells. The response to MMTV(SW) in draining lymph nodes was compared with the response to haptenated chicken gamma globulin (NP-CGG) using flow cytometry and immunohistology. T cell priming occurs in both responses, with T cells proliferating in association with interdigitating dendritic cells in the T zone. T cell proliferation continues in the presence of B cells in the outer T zone, and B blasts then undergo exponential growth and differentiation into plasma cells in the medullary cords. Germinal centers develop in both responses, but those induced by MMTV(SW) appear later and are smaller. Most T cells activated in the T zone and germinal centers in the MMTV(SW) response are superantigen specific and these persist for weeks in lymph nodes draining the site MMTV(SW) injection; this contrasts with the selective loss of superantigen-specific T cells from other secondary lymphoid tissues. The results indicate that this viral superantigen, when expressed by professional antigen-presenting cells, drives extrafollicular and follicular B cell differentiation leading to virus-specific antibody production