Order without design: How markets shape cities: Commentary and book review by Jens Kuhn, November 2021

During the many years of working in the field of Planning and Housing at municipal level, I often had flashes of insight that I classified as ‘realistic’, those being a reappraisal of the very specific situation on which I am working from a ‘land market’ point of view. Whether it was working at shielding urban agricultural land from use-change; building low-cost (and restitution) housing in District Six, or, fighting to retain low-income families in gentrifying areas, at the back of my head there was always a sense that after us officials have left said flashpoint, ‘markets’ will undo it all again. In fact, markets will return urban form back to what is ‘normal’ under capitalism

Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment of the 'Dangerous Activities' Categories Defined by the CISSM Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project

The Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project of the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) outlines a prototype oversight system for ongoing microbiological research to control its possible misapplication. This so-called Biological Research Security System (BRSS) foresees the creation of regional, national, and international oversight bodies that review, approve, or reject those proposed microbiological research projects that would fit three BRSS-defined categories: Potentially Dangerous Activities (PDA), Moderately Dangerous Activities (MDA), and Extremely Dangerous Activities (EDA). It is the objective of this working paper to assess these categories qualitatively and quantitatively. To do so, published US research of the years 2000-present (early- to mid-2005) will be screened for science reports that would have fallen under the proposed oversight system had it existed already. Qualitatively, these selective reports will be sorted according to the subcategories of each individual Dangerous Activity, broken down by microbiological agent, and year. Quantitatively, institutes and researchers, which conducted research that would have fallen under review by BRSS, will be listed according to category and year. Taken together, the results of this survey will give an overview of the number of research projects, institutes, and researchers that would have been affected had the new proposed system existed, and thus should allow estimating the potential impact of BRSS on US microbiological academic and industrial research in the future. Furthermore, this working paper might aid refining the proposed system

Serviced site: A solution?

Up until the late 1960s housing was considered by most classic economists to be a sure way of helping the na­tional economy to grind to a halt. Since then the World Bank, IMF and economists have come to accept hous­ing by the public sector as a vital, albeit long term investment, which has got to be made. Various forms of housing have since been tried, ranging from completed units, to core houses, to serviced sites. The site and service option seems to have won the day, by becoming the form preferred by the state in virtually all developing na­tions

Changing urban management doctrines in Cape Town, South Africa

This review article reflects on the history and growth of Cape Town from its founding to its present. In doing so, it identifies a sequence of six distinct attitudes towards urban growth and management. Such attitudes often remained unarticulated, for they appeared self-evident, even natural, to the society of their times. These attitudes coincide with the concept of Planning Doctrine, as proposed by Faludi, and lie silently behind actual policymaking and development of the day. Yet the Doctrine changes over time in response to political values, economic restructuring and settlement scale. Six doctrines dominated for a period of roughly 40 years, each termed by the author as corporate management; self-help; public works; town planning; up-scaling, and transformation

Near-Complete Genome Sequence of Lötschberg Virus (Mononegavirales: Filoviridae) Identified in European Perch (Perca fluviatilis Linnaeus, 1758).

We obtained the near-complete genome sequence of a novel virus, Lötschberg virus (LTBV), from a European perch metatranscriptome. Genome organization and pairwise sequence comparison indicated that LTBV represents a tentative new species and genus of the mononegaviral family Filoviridae

Switching opioid-dependent patients in substitution treatment from racemic methadone, levomethadone and buprenorphine to slow-release oral morphine: Analysis of the switching process in routine care

Since 2015 slow-release oral morphine (SROM) is approved for opioid substitution treatment (OST) in Germany. The SROMOS study (efficacy and tolerability of slow-release oral morphine in opioid substitution treatment) evaluates the efficacy and safety of SROM in routine care. This article describes the switching process from racemic methadone, levomethadone and buprenorphine to SROM.Between July 2016 and November 2017 180 patients in 23 study centers in Germany were included in the prospective, non-interventional, naturalistic observational study. Patients were already in OST and switched from a previous medication to SROM. The switching process was analyzed during a period of fourteen days.Data were available for 169 participants. The switching process had a different progression depending on premedication and pre dosage. On the fourteenth day of SROM treatment patients switched from racemic methadone took an average dosage of 922.2 mg/day, from levomethadone 801.0 mg/day and from buprenorphine 626.7 mg/day. Average conversion ratio racemic methadone to SROM was 1:11.8, levomethadone to SROM 1:17.4 and buprenorphine to SROM 1:58.0.This study provides the first data on the switching process from buprenorphine to SROM. Average dose ratio racemic methadone to SROM on the fourteenth day of treatment was considerably higher than recommended in the prescribing information

On the impossibility of temperature extraction from heavy ion induced particle spectra

Spectra of various particle species have been calculated with the Quantum Molecular Dynamics (QMD) model for very central collisions of Au+Au. They are compatible with the idea of a fully stopped thermal source which exhibits a transversal expansion besides the thermal distribution of an ideal gas. However, the microscopic analyses of the local flow velocities and temperatures indicate much lower temperatures at densities associated with the freeze-out. The results express the overall impossibility of a model-independent determination of nuclear temperatures from heavy ion spectral data, also at other energies e.g. CERN or for other species (i.e. pions, kaons, hyperons)!Comment: 15 pages, 4 Encapsulated PostScript figures, uses RevTeX and epsf.st