Godzilla

I have never been to Tokyo and decided a couple of years ago that before my delirious vision of the place was contaminated by the cruel and contorting rigors of actual observation, I\u27d better do a project there; we\u27re still working on it. Although this building has come to be known as Godzilla around the studio, I don\u27t mean it to be sinister, just large, a building with—shall we say—presence

Modification of late time phase structure by quantum quenches

The consequences of the sudden change in the coupling constants (quenches) on the phase structure of the theory at late times are explored. We study in detail the three dimensional phi^6 model in the large N limit, and show that the phi^6 coupling enjoys a widened range of stability compared to the static scenario. Moreover, a new massive phase emerges, which for sufficiently large coupling becomes the dominant vacuum. We argue that these novel phenomena cannot be described by a simple thermalization effect or the emergence of a single effective temperature.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

PATRIMÔNIO ARQUITETÔNICO E METRÓPOLES EM EXPANSÃO

A questão levantada não é exatamente nova, mas nem por isso menos problemática por suafamiliaridade. Na medida em que a cultura é crescentemente globalizada e as formas arquitetônicas da autenticidade se tomam cada vez mais fáceis de manipular e reproduzir, corremos o risco de cair numa condição geral de desonestidade arquitetônica. A melhor defesa de uma arquitetura histórica autêntica é o complemento de uma autêntica arquitetura contemporânea

Driving on the Left: Sorkin's View of the Street, the City and architecture

Sardonic, cutting, insightful, provocative: Michael Sorkin is one of today's most radical architectural commentators with a staunch leaning to the political left and a literary bent for framing painful truths in ironic, and sometimes hilarious, verse. However, he should not be dismissed as a radical, isolated, or lone and unhindered voice however. He is a Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York, and he has been Professor of Urbanism and Director of the Institute of Urbanism at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In addition, he has taught at architecture schools across the world, including the Architectural Association, Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Cornell. Sorkin runs his own design studio and research institute and has been a contributing editor of the Architectural Record. He was the architecture critic of the Village Voice for ten years and has published innumerable articles and essays. A list of some of his books includes: Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, Variations on a Theme Park, Exquisite Corpse, The Next Jerusalem, Indefensible Space, and a long list of other etcs. and alsos .... In this interview-article, he offers his opinion on a range of issues, including the environmental threats to contemporary America, architectural symbolism and paranoia, the importance of political action on the streets of the modern city, and the role of the architecture critic in the complex tapestry of contemporary culture. With regard the position of the modern critic, he begins by responding to a question regarding the relevance of Noam Chomsky's description of the media as a form of propaganda and the contemporary journalist as functioning through the structure of what Chomsky defines as "filters," or constraints and biases that dictate what gets written and published in the press

Leading in Liminality: Implications on Individual and Collective Identity, and Knowledge Creation for School Leaders

In the spring of 2020, schools of all sectors across all nations were forced to close their doors as COVID-19 rippled through communities. Drawing upon the concept of liminality, which refers to a stage, state, or period of transition (Soderlund & Borg, 2017), this study investigated the intersections of the experience of liminality during the pandemic and functioning for Catholic school leaders. Interviews with urban school leaders were analyzed to understand key characteristics of liminality as experienced by school leaders within organizations. Findings indicate that school leaders responded to the liminal experience by sharpening the focus of work, which simultaneously complexified the traditional roles of individual and organization. These findings have significant potential in illuminating a path forward during liminal times for educators of all sectors. This paper provides an opportunity to interpret the impact of the pandemic across all sectors of education, with a primary analysis on Catholic schools

Surgical Approaches to Create Murine Models of Human Wound Healing

Wound repair is a complex biologic process which becomes abnormal in numerous disease states. Although in vitro models have been important in identifying critical repair pathways in specific cell populations, in vivo models are necessary to obtain a more comprehensive and pertinent understanding of human wound healing. The laboratory mouse has long been the most common animal research tool and numerous transgenic strains and models have been developed to help researchers study the molecular pathways involved in wound repair and regeneration. This paper aims to highlight common surgical mouse models of cutaneous disease and to provide investigators with a better understanding of the benefits and limitations of these models for translational applications

The influence of solution composition on protein loss during peritoneal dialysis

A number of recent studies in man [1–3] and rats [1, 4, 5] has investigated the influence of the composition of commercial peritoneal dialysis solutions on the microcirculation and on the removal of solutes during peritoneal dialysis. One of those studies [3] demonstrated that dialysis with a normal osmolality Krebs solution greatly enhanced the concentration of protein in the drainage solution in comparison to that obtained with commercial, 1.5% dextrose solutions. We proposed that these results represented an effect of osmolality on interstitial movement of protein [6]. Since protein movement in the interstitium probably occurs through water channels in the gel-like matrix of the interstitium [7, 8], a change to a high osmolality dialysis solution could dehydrate the interstitium. This would increase the resistance to protein movement and thus decrease the loss of protein in the dialysate. During the first few exchanges, the high osmolality of commercial dialysis solutions could also pull residual protein out of the interstitium because it produced a generalized dehydration of the interstitial tissues. This would lead to large concentrations of protein in the drainage solution during the first few exchanges and then a progressive fall in dialysate protein with subsequent exchanges. An alternative hypothesis to explain such results would be that there is simply a washout of residual protein from the peritoneal cavity or from tissue spaces within the cavity.The following studies were designed to test which of these two hypotheses, an increased resistance to protein movement through dehydration of the interstitial tissue or a washout of residual protein already present in the peritoneal cavity, could explain our previous findings [3]

Some remarks on the notions of general covariance and background independence

In the first part of this paper I review some of the difficulties that seem to obstruct generally valid definitions of "general covariance" and/or "background independence" The second and more historical part deals with a rather strange argument that Einstein put forward in his 1913 "Entwurf paper" with M. Grossmann to discredit scalar theories of gravity in order to promote general covariance.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to ``An assessment of current paradigms in the physics of fundamental interactions'', edited by I.O. Stamatescu (Springer Verlag, to appear

Cosmological implications of Karolyhazy uncertainty relation

Karolyhazy uncertainty relation, which can be viewed also as a relation between UV and IR scales in the framework of an effective quantum field theory satisfying a black hole entropy bound, strongly favors the existence of dark energy with its observed value. Here we estimate the dynamics of dark energy predicted by the Karolyhazy relation during the cosmological evolution of the universe.Comment: 4 pages, Version to appear in PLB, a few comments and a reference adde