Fallen Cities: Architecture and Reconstruction

This chapter explores the role of Architecture within social movements, especially the idea of the Arab Spring and in the context of the existing destruction in Syria and proposals for imminent reconstruction

Scale as a Problem, Architecture as a Trap

The book chapter explores the intersection between architecture and anthropology. Drawing on anthropological texts, it challenges the foundational role of ‘shelter’ in architectural discourse by drawing on the concept of the ‘trap’ as articulated by the anthropologist Alfred Gell. In doing so it attempts to raise the problem of human subjectivity within discourse on architecture in a new way, to foreground the role that architecture plays in shaping human habits and character – rather than see architecture as a provision that is able to nullify a lack – as in the provision of shelter

What Works: Transforming Conditions and Health Outcomes for Boys and Men of Color

What Works is a guide to best practices and movement-building lessons learned from the surge of efforts to improve life conditions and health outcomes for boys and men of color in California. The report lifts up effective on-the-ground efforts to place the practices in a broader context in a way that can be applicable not only to work in California, but across the nation

Biosynthesis: A new (old) way of hijacking tRNA.

Aminoacylation of tRNA is the cellular process for providing aminoacyl donors for the ribosome synthesis of polypeptides. New research highlights an unexpected structural overlap between enzymes involved in this process and those involved in the biosynthesis of cyclodipeptides, an important class of bioactive molecules

Unconventional superconductivity in CuxBi2Se3

We report point contact measurements in high quality single crystals of Cu0.2Bi2Se3. We observe three different kinds of spectra: (1) Andreev-reflection spectra, from which we infer a superconducting gap size of 0.6mV; (2) spectra with a large gap which closes above Tc at about 10K; and (3) tunneling-like spectra with zero-bias conductance peaks. These tunneling spectra show a very large gap of ~2meV (2Delta/KTc ~ 14)

Required Density of Multicast Capable Optical Cross Connects to Assure Efficient Multicasting

International audienceMany algorithms are developed to deploy multicast in optical networks. Those algorithms are designed to resolve the main issue of multicasting in optical networks, which is not all optical cross-connect in the network are capable to split an incoming light signal to more than one output interface. Some of those algorithms are based on additional signaling exchanged to generate the appropriate multicast trees, some use rerouting to source, and some generate multiple multicast trees for the same multicast group. The performance of those algorithms depends basically on the number and location of multicast capable cross-connects. A multicast capable cross-connect (MCOXC) is an optical node equipped with light splitter that allows splitting an incoming light signal to any two or more output interfaces. This paper studies how many nodes in optical networks must be equipped with light splitters to assure good performance of multicast algorithms in sparse splitting networks. This depends basically on the topology in terms of number of nodes, the average node degree and the variation of the node degree distribution over the network nodes. The more the variation of the node degree is, the more splitters are required