Erlebte, Konzipierte und Verhandelte Bilder – Wegbereiter einer transformativen Landschaftsforschung?

In komplexen, landschaftlichen Transformationsprozessen, in denen Akteure mit unterschiedlichen fachlichen Hintergründen ko-kreativ Wege in eine nachhaltige Zukunft suchen, stellt sich die Frage: Wie lässt sich Komplexität so ausdrücken und darstellen, dass sie von möglichst vielen verstanden und als Herausforderung angenommen wird? Diese Frage steht vor allem in transdisziplinären Forschungssettings wie etwas Reallaboren im Mittelpunkt. Unterschiedliche bildliche Darstellungen können dabei, so die These dieses Beitrags, implizites Wissen versammeln und niedrigschwellige Zugänge zu komplexen Diskussionen schaffen. Anders als etwa lange textliche Darstellungen und Tabellen fungieren Bilder als Anker der Erinnerung, mit denen sich Akteure auch in länger andauernden Prozessen immer wieder verorten können. Um „die Landschaftsforschung anschlussfähig an den Erwartungs-, Erfahrungs-, Wissens- und Überzeugungshorizont betroffener Menschen zu machen“ (Berr 2018b, S. 4) können Erlebte, Konzipierte und Verhandelte Bilder zentrales Verständigungs-Medium sein

Soft materials as biological and artificial membranes

The past few decades have seen emerging growth in the field of soft materials for synthetic biology. This review focuses on soft materials involved in biological and artificial membranes. The biological membranes discussed here are mainly those involved in the structure and function of cells and organelles. As building blocks in medicine, non-native membranes including nanocarriers (NCs), especially liposomes and DQAsomes, and polymeric membranes for scaffolds are constructed from amphiphilic combinations of lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates. Artificial membranes can be prepared using synthetic, soft materials and molecules and then incorporated into structures through self-organization to form micelles or niosomes. The modification of artificial membranes can be realized using traditional chemical methods such as click reactions to target the delivery of NCs and control the release of therapeutics. The biomembrane, a lamellar structure inlaid with ion channels, receptors, lipid rafts, enzymes, and other functional units, separates cells and organelles from the environment. An active domain inserted into the membrane and organelles for energy conversion and cellular communication can target disease by changing the membrane's composition, structure, and fluidity and affecting the on/off status of the membrane gates. The biological membrane targets analyzing pathological mechanisms and curing complex diseases, which inspires us to create NCs with artificial membranes.This article is published as Tang, Shukun, Zahra Davoudi, Guangtian Wang, Zihao Xu, Tanzeel Rehman, Aleksander Prominski, Bozhi Tian, Kaitlin M. Bratlie, Haisheng Peng, and Qun Wang. "Soft materials as biological and artificial membranes." Chemical Society Reviews 50, no. 22 (2021): 12679-12701. DOI: 10.1039/D1CS00029B. Copyright 2021 The Royal Society of Chemistry. Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC 3.0). Posted with permission

Extreme-city-territories. Coastal geographies in the Veneto region

Water urbanism and more in general climate change adaptation are an essential part of urban transition processes. While sea level rising demands a re-evaluation of the new geography of extreme-cities, it emerges a temporal and conceptual gap between climate prediction, policies, adaptation strategies, and factual interventions. Consequently, the very same method of urban analysis needs to be reconsidered in light of this new horizon. This paper addresses extreme-cities as spaces of transition, and analyses the case of the Veneto Region via a multi-scalar process of mapping entailing: (i) zoning transition; (ii) mapping microtopography; (iii) sampling urban-topographical patterns; (iv) re-designing a territorial transect. The resulting representations disclose two types of information: (a) they suggest a set of rules for transitioning urban landscape in coastal areas according to different SRL scenarios; (b), they indicate the specificities of the same study area, disclosing a taxonomy of past and potential future elements of modification