Placeness: Mongolia A Call for the Creation of a Human Impact Assessment

Sense of place, place-­‐based identities, and “placeness” are fundamental ways through which human beings understand their physical place in the world. The means by which most Mongolians—and indeed most human beings—strive for placeness is fairly simple. First, one decides what location will become their place. Their place may be predetermined (i.e. a birthplace) or chosen (based on the wildlife, the scenery, the neighborhood, etc.). Once one has a place, sense of place necessarily follows. One’s place becomes the standard by which locations are understood, and by which one understands oneself. The latter process constitutes the formation of place-­‐based identities, which inform how one will strive for the feeling of placeness. Although the outcomes may vary, this framework can be seamlessly applied to any community, and is especially applicable in Mongolia. Mongolia is going through incredible demographic transitions, making it an especially unique location to study the different ways in which people understand their place in the world. The implications of individuals’ understandings of place were explored in four research locations: Galuut soum (Bayankhongor aimag), the UB ger district, Ulaanbaatar, and Ulgii (Bayan-­‐Ulgii aimag). The senses of place, place-­‐based identities and placeness of citizens in each of these locations were studied through literature review and synthesis, interviews, surveys and participant observation, and supplemented by photographs and vignettes. In the end, this research illuminated two trends. First, various cultural and geographical factors give rise to a diversity of social identities within Mongolia. Secondly, the deep importance of family to Mongolians tends to homogenize individual identities. At the end of this paper, I propose the creation of a law on Human Impact Assessments, which would require the assessment of the role of sense of place, place-­‐based identities, and placeness in communities affected by the activities of the central government and private companies

Discretization error estimates for penalty formulations of a linearized Canham-Helfrich-type energy

This article is concerned with minimization of a fourth-order linearized Canham–Helfrich energy subject to Dirichlet boundary conditions on curves inside the domain. Such problems arise in the modeling of the mechanical interaction of biomembranes with embedded particles. There, the curve conditions result from the imposed particle–membrane coupling. We prove almost-H. 5. 2 regularity of the solution and then consider two possible penalty formulations. For the combination of these penalty formulations with a Bogner–Fox–Schmit finite element discretization, we prove discretization error estimates that are optimal in view of the solution’s reduced regularity. The error estimates are based on a general estimate for linear penalty problems in Hilbert spaces. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical results by numerical computations. An important feature of the presented discretization is that it does not require the particle boundary to be resolved. This is crucial to avoid re-meshing if the presented problem arises as a subproblem in a model where particles are allowed to move or rotate

On differentiability of the membrane-mediated mechanical interaction energy of discrete-continuum membrane-particle models

We consider a discrete-continuum model of a biomembrane with embedded particles. While the membrane is represented by a continuous surface, embedded particles are described by rigid discrete objects which are free to move and rotate in lateral direction. For the membrane we consider a linearized Canham-Helfrich energy functional and height and slope boundary conditions imposed on the particle boundaries resulting in a coupled minimization problem for the membrane shape and particle positions. When considering the energetically optimal membrane shape for each particle position we obtain a reduced energy functional that models the implicitly given interaction potential for the membrane-mediated mechanical particle-particle interactions. We show that this interaction potential is differentiable with respect to the particle positions and orientations. Furthermore we derive a fully practical representation of the derivative only in terms of well defined derivatives of the membrane. This opens the door for the application of minimization algorithms for the computation of minimizers of the coupled system and for further investigation of the interaction potential of membrane-mediated mechanical particle--particle interaction. The results are illustrated with numerical examples comparing the explicit derivative formula with difference quotient approximations. We furthermore demonstrate the application of the derived formula to implement a gradient flow for the approximation of optimal particle configurations

The Boulder Valley Public Schools' Utilization of the Proposed Boulder Cable Communications System

This project is intended to provide a basis from which the administration of the Boulder Valley Public Schools can determine the processes necessary for thorough consideration and evaluation of a cable education system in the public schools. The intent is not to necessarily answer all questions, but rather to raise those questions which must be answered if a system is to be developed within reasonable parameters. In the discussion of methods, materials, equipment, personnel and programming every restraint has been applied to retain those parameters to the current state of technology. It is my goal that this project enable the school's administration to achieve a sound, reasonable decision on the questions and opportunities facing them

Free energy computation of particles with membrane-mediated interactions via Langevin dynamics.

We apply well-established concepts of Langevin sampling to derive a new class of algorithms for the efficient computation of free energy differences of fluctuating particles embedded in a ’fast’ membrane, i.e., a membrane that instantaneously adapts to varying particle positions. A geometric poten- tial accounting for membrane-mediated particle interaction is derived in the framework of variational hybrid models for particles in membranes. Recent explicit representations of the gradient of the geometric interaction poten- tial allows to apply well-known gradient based Markov Chain Monte-Carlo (MCDC) methods such as Langevin-based sampling