Privatizing Creation of the Public Realm: The Fruits of New York City\u27s Incentive Zoning Ordinance

New York City\u27s 1961 zoning ordinance granted property owners specified floor area bonuses for creating publicly accessible street-floor plazas and arcades. The author traces the origins and evolution of the ordinance and exanlines the over 500 privately owned public spaces which it has produced since 1961. The author concludes that a high proportion of these spaces are of only marginal value, due mostly to a lack of clearly articulated design and maintenance standards, and that nearly half of the spaces are out of compliance with the legal requirements regarding design, public accessibility, and maintenance that govern them. Marrying careful legal and historical research with close empirical observation, the book highlights the difficulties inherent in making private actors the agents of public policy

Toward a Net-Zero Carbon Planet: A Policy Proposal

The effort to address climate change is global in scale and increasingly urgent, yet it lacks an effective policy framework. President Obama\u27s determination to elevate clean energy to a national policy priority, Congress\u27s consideration of a federal cap-and-trade regime for greenhouse gases, and the upcoming revisions to the Kyoto Protocol all provide an opportunity to move toward adopting a globally balanced carbon budget. A balanced carbon budget could replace the current, somewhat arbitrary greenhouse gas reduction targets with a scientifically derived calibration limiting global carbon emissions to the rate of carbon absorption. Carbon sub-budgets could then be allocated to each nation or region, which could choose its own measures to meet its carbon budget through a carbon-management plan. These measures will likely fall into four broad categories: reduction of carbon emissions through demand reduction and greater efficiency; increased carbon absorption through reforestation and carbon capture; substitution of non-carbon-based fuels; and, because of the lag time in achieving carbon equilibrium through implementing these measures, adaptation to climate change. Such a balanced carbon budget approach has the virtues not only of long-term safety, but also of clarity, comprehensiveness, and choice. Recent experience shows that choice-allowing units of government and industry flexibility in meeting budget targets-is the key to gaining and retaining public support and to harnessing ingenuity and innovation. This overall approach requires an unprecedented level of monitoring, reporting, and adjustment to achieve the desired result. It may also require some departures from current environmental orthodoxies favoring smart growth and opposing nuclear power

Exocomets from a Solar System Perspective

Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More recently, they have been detected through photometric transits from space, and through far-IR/mm gas emission within debris disks. As (exo)comets are considered to contain the most pristine material accessible in stellar systems, they hold the potential to give us information about early stage formation and evolution conditions of extra Solar Systems. In the Solar System, comets carry the physical and chemical memory of the protoplanetary disk environment where they formed, providing relevant information on processes in the primordial solar nebula. The aim of this paper is to compare essential compositional properties between Solar System comets and exocomets. The paper aims to highlight commonalities and to discuss differences which may aid the communication between the involved research communities and perhaps also avoid misconceptions. Exocomets likely vary in their composition depending on their formation environment like Solar System comets do, and since exocomets are not resolved spatially, they pose a challenge when comparing them to high fidelity observations of Solar System comets. Observations of gas around main sequence stars, spectroscopic observations of "polluted" white dwarf atmospheres and spectroscopic observations of transiting exocomets suggest that exocomets may show compositional similarities with Solar System comets. The recent interstellar visitor 2I/Borisov showed gas, dust and nuclear properties similar to that of Solar System comets. This raises the tantalising prospect that observations of interstellar comets may help bridge the fields of exocomet and Solar System comets.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures. To be published in PASP. This paper is the product of a workshop at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden, the Netherland

Three Pseudomonas putida FNR Family Proteins with Different Sensitivities to O-2

The Escherichia coli fumarate-nitrate reduction regulator (FNR) protein is the paradigm for bacterial O2-sensing transcription factors. However, unlike E. coli, some bacterial species possess multiple FNR proteins that presumably have evolved to fulfill distinct roles. Here, three FNR proteins (ANR, PP_3233, and PP_3287) from a single bacterial species, Pseudomonas putida KT2440, have been analyzed. Under anaerobic conditions, all three proteins had spectral properties resembling those of [4Fe-4S] proteins. The reactivity of the ANR [4Fe-4S] cluster with O2 was similar to that of E. coli FNR, and during conversion to the apo-protein, via a [2Fe-2S] intermediate, cluster sulfur was retained. Like ANR, reconstituted PP_3233 and PP_3287 were converted to [2Fe-2S] forms when exposed to O2, but their [4Fe-4S] clusters reacted more slowly. Transcription from an FNR-dependent promoter with a consensus FNR-binding site in P. putida and E. coli strains expressing only one FNR protein was consistent with the in vitro responses to O2. Taken together, the experimental results suggest that the local environments of the iron-sulfur clusters in the different P. putida FNR proteins influence their reactivity with O2, such that ANR resembles E. coli FNR and is highly responsive to low concentrations of O2, whereas PP_3233 and PP_3287 have evolved to be less sensitive to O2

The Science of Sungrazers, Sunskirters, and Other Near-Sun Comets

This review addresses our current understanding of comets that venture close to the Sun, and are hence exposed to much more extreme conditions than comets that are typically studied from Earth. The extreme solar heating and plasma environments that these objects encounter change many aspects of their behaviour, thus yielding valuable information on both the comets themselves that complements other data we have on primitive solar system bodies, as well as on the near-solar environment which they traverse. We propose clear definitions for these comets: We use the term near-Sun comets to encompass all objects that pass sunward of the perihelion distance of planet Mercury (0.307 AU). Sunskirters are defined as objects that pass within 33 solar radii of the Sun’s centre, equal to half of Mercury’s perihelion distance, and the commonly-used phrase sungrazers to be objects that reach perihelion within 3.45 solar radii, i.e. the fluid Roche limit. Finally, comets with orbits that intersect the solar photosphere are termed sundivers. We summarize past studies of these objects, as well as the instruments and facilities used to study them, including space-based platforms that have led to a recent revolution in the quantity and quality of relevant observations. Relevant comet populations are described, including the Kreutz, Marsden, Kracht, and Meyer groups, near-Sun asteroids, and a brief discussion of their origins. The importance of light curves and the clues they provide on cometary composition are emphasized, together with what information has been gleaned about nucleus parameters, including the sizes and masses of objects and their families, and their tensile strengths. The physical processes occurring at these objects are considered in some detail, including the disruption of nuclei, sublimation, and ionisation, and we consider the mass, momentum, and energy loss of comets in the corona and those that venture to lower altitudes. The different components of comae and tails are described, including dust, neutral and ionised gases, their chemical reactions, and their contributions to the near-Sun environment. Comet-solar wind interactions are discussed, including the use of comets as probes of solar wind and coronal conditions in their vicinities. We address the relevance of work on comets near the Sun to similar objects orbiting other stars, and conclude with a discussion of future directions for the field and the planned ground- and space-based facilities that will allow us to address those science topics

The Flexibility of Nonconsciously Deployed Cognitive Processes: Evidence from Masked Congruence Priming

Background: It is well accepted in the subliminal priming literature that task-level properties modulate nonconscious processes. For example, in tasks with a limited number of targets, subliminal priming effects are limited to primes that are physically similar to the targets. In contrast, when a large number of targets are used, subliminal priming effects are observed for primes that share a semantic (but not necessarily physical) relationship with the target. Findings such as these have led researchers to conclude that task-level properties can direct nonconscious processes to be deployed exclusively over central (semantic) or peripheral (physically specified) representations. Principal Findings: We find distinct patterns of masked priming for "novel" and "repeated" primes within a single task context. Novel primes never appear as targets and thus are not seen consciously in the experiment. Repeated primes do appear as targets, thereby lending themselves to the establishment of peripheral stimulus-response mappings. If the source of the masked priming effect were exclusively central or peripheral, then both novel and repeated primes should yield similar patterns of priming. In contrast, we find that both novel and repeated primes produce robust, yet distinct, patterns of priming. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that nonconsciously elicited cognitive processes can be flexibly deployed over both central and peripheral representations within a single task context. While we agree that task-level properties can influence nonconscious processes, our findings sharply constrain the extent of this influence. Specifically, our findings are inconsistent with extant accounts which hold that the influence of task-level properties is strong enough to restrict the deployment of nonconsciously elicited cognitive processes to a single type of representation (i.e. central or peripheral).13 page(s

Target 2035-update on the quest for a probe for every protein

Twenty years after the publication of the first draft of the human genome, our knowledge of the human proteome is still fragmented. The challenge of translating the wealth of new knowledge from genomics into new medicines is that proteins, and not genes, are the primary executers of biological function. Therefore, much of how biology works in health and disease must be understood through the lens of protein function. Accordingly, a subset of human proteins has been at the heart of research interests of scientists over the centuries, and we have accumulated varying degrees of knowledge about approximately 65% of the human proteome. Nevertheless, a large proportion of proteins in the human proteome (∼35%) remains uncharacterized, and less than 5% of the human proteome has been successfully targeted for drug discovery. This highlights the profound disconnect between our abilities to obtain genetic information and subsequent development of effective medicines. Target 2035 is an international federation of biomedical scientists from the public and private sectors, which aims to address this gap by developing and applying new technologies to create by year 2035 chemogenomic libraries, chemical probes, and/or biological probes for the entire human proteome

Maternal Administration of Solithromycin, a New, Potent, Broad-Spectrum Fluoroketolide Antibiotic, Achieves Fetal and Intra-Amniotic Antimicrobial Protection in a Pregnant Sheep Model

Solithromycin (CEM-101) is a new antibiotic that is highly potent against Ureaplasma and Mycoplasma spp. and active against many other antibiotic-resistant organisms. We have explored the maternal-amniotic-fetal pharmacokinetics of CEM-101 in a pregnant sheep model to assess its potential for treating intrauterine and antenatal infection. Chronically catheterized pregnant ewes (n = 6 or 7) received either a single maternal intravenous (i.v.) infusion of CEM-101 (10 mg/kg of body weight), a single intra-amniotic (i.a.) injection (1.4 mg/kg of estimated fetal weight), or a combined i.v. and i.a. dose. Maternal plasma (MP), fetal plasma (FP), and amniotic fluid (AF) samples were taken via catheter at intervals of 0 to 72 h postadministration, and concentrations of solithromycin and its bioactive polar metabolites (N-acetyl [NAc]–CEM-101 and CEM-214) were determined. Following maternal i.v. infusion, peak CEM-101 concentrations in MP, FP, and AF were 1,073, 353, and 214 ng/ml, respectively, representing a maternal-to-fetal plasma transfer efficiency of 34%. A single maternal dose resulted in effective concentrations (>30 ng/ml) in MP, FP, and AF sustained for >12 h. NAc–CEM-101 and CEM-214 exhibited delayed accumulation and clearance in FP and AF, resulting in an additive antimicrobial effect (>48 h). Intra-amniotic solithromycin injection resulted in elevated (∼50 μg/ml) and sustained CEM-101 concentrations in AF and significant levels in FP, although the efficiency of amniotic-to-fetal transfer was low (∼1.5%). Combined i.v. and i.a. administration resulted in primarily additive concentrations of CEM-101 in all three compartments. Our findings suggest that CEM-101 may provide, for the first time, an effective antimicrobial approach for the prevention and treatment of intrauterine infection and early prevention of preterm birth