Good Design is Good Business: An Analysis in Mixed-Use Architecture

Over the past several decades, a buzz-word has surfaced in the related fields of architecture, finance, and their intersection in the commercial real estate industry – “mixeduse.” Although this may seem like a new form of urban design, it can be traced back hundreds of years to the walled cities of medieval Europe. As centuries of urban development, decay, and redevelopment have played out, influential voices have been calling for an abandonment of single-use urban design and a return to a mix of uses. While mixed-use can be defined as simply as a development than contains three or more revenue-generating components on the same site, it is far more nuanced than that. A successful mixed-use development relies on cooperation between architects, developers, government officials, and community stakeholders. Additionally, it requires adherence to particular processes – engagement, scaling, and anticipation – and principles – place, equity, and detail – to be successful, both from an architectural and financial perspective. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of this thesis, a section will address the challenges and benefits that come with financing mixed-use developments and some of their unique financial features. These include high barriers to entry for smaller firms, a large required flexibility in project planning and debt structuring, a higher risk and return profile compared to single-use assets, and diversification and operational benefits. As it pertains to the architectural nature of this thesis, field research and observations for analytical discussion will be conducted at four award-winning, mixed-use developments: City Point in Brooklyn, NY, CityCenterDC in Washington, DC, CityCentre in Houston, TX, and Union Station in Denver, CO. These case studies will be analyzed along the processes and principles previously mentioned to determine what makes a successful mixed-use development.Plan II Honors Progra

Generation of Hyperentangled Photons Pairs

We experimentally demonstrate the first quantum system entangled in every degree of freedom (hyperentangled). Using pairs of photons produced in spontaneous parametric downconversion, we verify entanglement by observing a Bell-type inequality violation in each degree of freedom: polarization, spatial mode and time-energy. We also produce and characterize maximally hyperentangled states and novel states simultaneously exhibiting both quantum and classical correlations. Finally, we report the tomography of a 2x2x3x3 system (36-dimensional Hilbert space), which we believe is the first reported photonic entangled system of this size to be so characterized.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, published versio

Genome wide expression profiling reveals suppression of host defence responses during colonisation by Neisseria meningitides but not N. lactamica.

Both Neisseria meningitidis and the closely related bacterium Neisseria lactamica colonise human nasopharyngeal mucosal surface, but only N. meningitidis invades the bloodstream to cause potentially life-threatening meningitis and septicaemia. We have hypothesised that the two neisserial species differentially modulate host respiratory epithelial cell gene expression reflecting their disease potential. Confluent monolayers of 16HBE14 human bronchial epithelial cells were exposed to live and/or dead N. meningitidis (including capsule and pili mutants) and N. lactamica, and their transcriptomes were compared using whole genome microarrays. Changes in expression of selected genes were subsequently validated using Q-RT-PCR and ELISAs. Live N. meningitidis and N. lactamica induced genes involved in host energy production processes suggesting that both bacterial species utilise host resources. N. meningitidis infection was associated with down-regulation of host defence genes. N. lactamica, relative to N. meningitidis, initiates up-regulation of proinflammatory genes. Bacterial secreted proteins alone induced some of the changes observed. The results suggest N. meningitidis and N. lactamica differentially regulate host respiratory epithelial cell gene expression through colonisation and/or protein secretion, and that this may contribute to subsequent clinical outcomes associated with these bacteria

Separation of Ethylbenzene and m-Xylene

Chemistr