Planning, Participation, and Power in a Shrinking City: The Detroit Works Project

Scholars and practitioners have argued that authentic public participation is crucial in developing strategic plans for so-called shrinking cities, not only for informing the content of the resulting plans but also for fostering public support, civic capacity, and equitable outcomes. The Detroit Works Project, launched in 2010, provided an opportunity to examine the crafting of a high-profile strategic plan for a major U.S. city challenged by decades of population loss and disinvestment. We find that the project was yet another instance of urban planning that began with an assurance that public involvement would play a central role but then failed to fulfill that promise. Transparency and accountability were compromised as a result of the privatization of public responsibilities. The resulting plan did not reflect the priorities, insights, or needs of most Detroiters. Justice was subordinated to the perceived imperative of the market within an ideological frame of neoliberal austerity

German and Israeli Innovation: The Best of Two Worlds

This study reviews – through desk research and expert interviews with Mittelstand companies, startups and ecosystem experts – the current status of the Israeli startup ecosystem and the Mittelstand region of North Rhine- Westphalia (NRW), Germany. As a case study, it highlights potential opportunities for collaboration and analyzes different engagement modes that might serve to connect the two regions. The potential synergies between the two economies are based on a high degree of complementarity. A comparison of NRW’s key verticals and Israel’s primary areas of innovation indicates that there is significant overlap in verticals, such as artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), sensors and cybersecurity. Israeli startups can offer speed, agility and new ideas, while German Mittelstand companies can contribute expertise in production and scaling, access to markets, capital and support. The differences between Mittelstand companies and startups are less pronounced than those between startups and big corporations. However, three current barriers to fruitful collaboration have been identified: 1) a lack of access, 2) a lack of transparency regarding relevant players in the market, and 3) a lack of the internal resources needed to select the right partners, often due to time constraints or a lack of internal expertise on this issue. To ensure that positive business opportunities ensue, Mittelstand companies and startups alike have to be proactive in their search for cooperation partners and draw on a range of existing engagement modes (e.g., events, communities, accelerators). The interviews and the research conducted for this study made clear that no single mode of engagement can address all the needs and challenges associated with German-Israeli collaboration

Automatic discovery of cross-family sequence features associated with protein function

BACKGROUND: Methods for predicting protein function directly from amino acid sequences are useful tools in the study of uncharacterised protein families and in comparative genomics. Until now, this problem has been approached using machine learning techniques that attempt to predict membership, or otherwise, to predefined functional categories or subcellular locations. A potential drawback of this approach is that the human-designated functional classes may not accurately reflect the underlying biology, and consequently important sequence-to-function relationships may be missed. RESULTS: We show that a self-supervised data mining approach is able to find relationships between sequence features and functional annotations. No preconceived ideas about functional categories are required, and the training data is simply a set of protein sequences and their UniProt/Swiss-Prot annotations. The main technical aspect of the approach is the co-evolution of amino acid-based regular expressions and keyword-based logical expressions with genetic programming. Our experiments on a strictly non-redundant set of eukaryotic proteins reveal that the strongest and most easily detected sequence-to-function relationships are concerned with targeting to various cellular compartments, which is an area already well studied both experimentally and computationally. Of more interest are a number of broad functional roles which can also be correlated with sequence features. These include inhibition, biosynthesis, transcription and defence against bacteria. Despite substantial overlaps between these functions and their corresponding cellular compartments, we find clear differences in the sequence motifs used to predict some of these functions. For example, the presence of polyglutamine repeats appears to be linked more strongly to the "transcription" function than to the general "nuclear" function/location. CONCLUSION: We have developed a novel and useful approach for knowledge discovery in annotated sequence data. The technique is able to identify functionally important sequence features and does not require expert knowledge. By viewing protein function from a sequence perspective, the approach is also suitable for discovering unexpected links between biological processes, such as the recently discovered role of ubiquitination in transcription

Rooting Formal Methods Within Higher Education Curricula for Computer Science and Software Engineering — A White Paper

This white paper argues that formal methods need to be better rooted in higher education curricula for computer science and software engineering programmes of study. To this end, it advocates improved teaching of formal methods;systematic highlighting of formal methods within existing, ‘classical’ computer science courses; andthe inclusion of a compulsory formal methods course in computer science and software engineering curricula. These recommendations are based on the observations that formal methods are an essential and cost-effective means to increase software quality; howevercomputer science and software engineering programmes typically fail to provide adequate training in formal methods; and thusthere is a lack of computer science graduates who are qualified to apply formal methods in industry. This white paper is the result of a collective effort by authors and participants of the 1st International Workshop on Formal Methods – Fun for Everybody which was held in Bergen, Norway, 2–3 December 2019. As such, it represents insights based on learning and teaching computer science and software engineering (with or without formal methods) at various universities across Europe.</p

Robot-assisted image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation for somatotopic mapping of the motor cortex: a clinical pilot study

Shape and exact location of motor cortical areas varies among individuals. The exact knowledge of these locations is crucial for planning of neurosurgical procedures. In this study, we have used robot-assisted image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (Ri-TMS) to elicit MEP response recorded for individual muscles and reconstruct functional motor maps of the primary motor cortex

Neutrinos and Cosmic Rays Observed by IceCube

The core mission of the IceCube Neutrino observatory is to study the origin and propagation of cosmic rays. IceCube, with its surface component IceTop, observes multiple signatures to accomplish this mission. Most important are the astrophysical neutrinos that are produced in interactions of cosmic rays, close to their sources and in interstellar space. IceCube is the first instrument that measures the properties of this astrophysical neutrino flux, and constrains its origin. In addition, the spectrum, composition and anisotropy of the local cosmic-ray flux are obtained from measurements of atmospheric muons and showers. Here we provide an overview of recent findings from the analysis of IceCube data, and their implications on our understanding of cosmic rays.Comment: Review article, to appear in Advances in Space Research, special issue "Origins of Cosmic Rays

Pathogenesis, diagnosis and management of pneumorrhachis

Pneumorrhachis (PR), the presence of intraspinal air, is an exceptional but eminent radiographic finding, accompanied by different aetiologies and possible pathways of air entry into the spinal canal. By reviewing the literature and analysing a personal case of traumatic cervical PR after head injury, we present current data regarding the pathoanatomy, clinical and radiological presentation, diagnosis and differential diagnosis and treatment modalities of patients with PR and associated pathologies to highlight this uncommon phenomenon and outline aetiology-based guidelines for the practical management of PR. Air within the spinal canal can be divided into primary and secondary PR, descriptively classified into extra- or intradural PR and aetiologically subsumed into iatrogenic, traumatic and nontraumatic PR. Intraspinal air is usually found isolated not only in the cervical, thoracic and, less frequently, the lumbosacral regions but can also be located in the entire spinal canal. PR is almost exceptional associated with further air distributions in the body. The pathogenesis and aetiologies of PR are multifold and can be a diagnostic challenge. The diagnostic procedure should include spinal CT, the imaging tool of choice. PR has to be differentiated from free intraspinal gas collections and the coexistence of air and gas within the spinal canal has to be considered differential diagnostically. PR usually represents an asymptomatic epiphenomenon but can also be symptomatic by itself as well as by its underlying pathology. The latter, although often severe, might be concealed and has to be examined carefully to enable adequate patient treatment. The management of PR has to be individualized and frequently requires a multidisciplinary regime

Neutrino interferometry for high-precision tests of Lorentz symmetry with IceCube

We acknowledge the support from the following agencies: USA—US National Science Foundation–Office of Polar Programs, US National Science Foundation–Physics Division, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Open Science Grid (OSG), Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), US Department of Energy–National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, Particle astrophysics research computing centre at the University of Maryland, Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research at Michigan State University and Astroparticle physics computational facility at Marquette University; Belgium—Funds for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS and FWO), FWO Odysseus and Big Science programmes, and Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo); Germany—Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics (HAP), Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), and High Performance Computing cluster of the RWTH Aachen; Sweden—Swedish Research Council, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC), and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation; Australia—Australian Research Council; Canada—Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Calcul Québec, Compute Ontario, Canada Foundation for Innovation, WestGrid and Compute Canada; Denmark—Villum Fonden, Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF); New Zealand—Marsden Fund; Japan—Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Institute for Global Prominent Research (IGPR) of Chiba University; Korea—National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); Switzerland—Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); UK—Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and The Royal Society