A dual approach to the linear analysis of elastic structure

Imperial Users onl

A critical appraisal of the design, construction and influence of the Unité d'Habitation, Marseilles, France

The Unité d'Habitation is a seventeen-storey apartment block built between 1947 and 1952 in Marseilles, France. Today the construction of such a building, in almost any part of the world, would hardly be newsworthy; however the construction of the Unité d'Habitation not only attracted global interest at the time, but it can also be seen as one of the most influential buildings of the twentieth century. This was for a number of reasons. The architect was Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris who, better known as Le Corbusier for most of his adult life, was probably the most influential architect of the twentieth century. The building, in many ways, initiated the hegemony of Modern Movement architecture throughout the world. But, perhaps most importantly, it was seen by much of the architectural profession as a prototype for how people should be housed in the future – with consequential major social, environmental and urban impacts. This paper examines the background of the design and describes the construction in detail. It also comments critically on the building's suitability as a model for mass housing, revealing the extent of its various functional failings that have not, as far as the author is aware, previously been exposed

Visualisation and Exploration of Personal Data in Virtual Reality

Recent research in the personal informatics feld has focused on correlating aspects of self-tracked data, supporting users to arrive at meaningful insights when reecting on aggregated datasets. To date, no research has been completed on how users could explorepersonal data using virtual reality, and the opportunities this presents for users' understanding of multidimensional datasets.In this study we evaluate the open-ended exploration of multidimensional datasets using two separate visualisations. Be The Data immerses users in a three-dimensional scatterplot, allowing them to interpret a dataset from new perspectives. The second visualisation,Parallel Planes, enables a multi-faceted dataset to be chained together, supporting users in perceiving a holistic overview of interrelated dimensions.Through an insight-based evaluation methodology, we find that users conducted depth based explorations of the Parallel Planes visualisation, arriving at valuable and signicant insights through hypothesising about the data. We also find that there was no overall task workload difference between traditional visualisation paradigms and virtual reality. We conclude by outlining future research directions, and making recommendations for future evaluation approaches for data visualisation in VR

Exploring Data in Virtual Reality: Comparisons with 2D Data Visualizations

© 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Virtual Reality (VR) has often been discussed as a promising medium for immersive data visualization and exploration. However, few studies have evaluated users’ open-ended exploration of multi-dimensional datasets using VR and compared the results with that of traditional (2D) visualizations. Using a workload- and insight-based evaluation methodology, we conducted a user study to perform such a comparison. We find that there is no overall task-workload dierence between traditional visualizations and visualizations in VR, but there are dierences in the accuracy and depth of insights that users gain. Our results also suggest that users feel more satisfied and successful when using VR data exploration tools, thus demonstrating the potential of VR as an engaging medium for visual data analytics

Graphic Interlude

This graphic interlude features a selection of pictures which can illustrate the topic of this issue: “Are you Game?”.Cet interlude iconographique comporte une sélection d’images illustrant à leur manière le thème de ce numéro: « Êtes-vous prêt(e) à jouer ? »

A phase 1b/2a multicenter study of the safety and preliminary pharmacodynamic effects of selective muscarinic M1 receptor agonist HTL0018318 in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease.

Funder: Allergan Incorporated (now AbbVie)INTRODUCTION: This study examined the safety and pharmacodynamic effects of selective muscarinic M1 receptor orthosteric agonist HTL0018318 in 60 patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) on background donepezil 10 mg/day. METHODS: A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled 4-week safety study of HTL0018318 with up-titration and maintenance phases, observing exploratory effects on electrophysiological biomarkers and cognition. RESULTS: Treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were mild and less frequently reported during maintenance versus titration. Headache was most commonly reported (7-21%); 0 to 13% reported cholinergic TEAEs (abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue, nausea) and two patients discontinued due to TEAEs. At 1 to 2 hours post-dose, HTL0018318-related mean maximum elevations in systolic and diastolic blood pressure of 5 to 10 mmHg above placebo were observed during up-titration but not maintenance. Postive effects of HTL0018318 were found on specific attention and memory endpoints. DISCUSSION: HTL0018318 was well tolerated in mild-to-moderate AD patients and showed positive effects on attention and episodic memory on top of therapeutic doses of donepezil

The Anatomy of Memory Politics: A Formalist Analysis of Tate Britain’s ‘Artist and Empire’ and the Struggle over Britain’s Imperial Past

In this paper, I propose a new approach for understanding the meaning of memory politics, which draws upon the archetypal literary criticism of Northrop Frye. I suggest that the four archetypes elaborated by Frye—comedy, romance, tragedy, and satire—can be used as a heuristic device for interpreting the contested historical narratives that are associated with the politics of memory. I illustrate this approach through a case-study of Artists and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past, an exhibition held at Tate Britain in 2016, amidst increasing contestation over the meaning of the British Empire. In sum, I find that the exhibit narrated Britain’s imperial past as a comedy, in which a key theme was the progressive cultural mixing of the British and the people they colonized. To conclude, I discuss the implications of such a narrative for constructing an inclusive, postcolonial British identity. As an alternative, I draw on Aristotle to suggest that a tragic narrative would have been more propitious

Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America

Although debate continues, there is agreement that dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were first domesticated in Eurasia, spreading from there to other parts of the world. However, while that expansion already extended as far as Europe, China, and North America by the early Holocene, dogs spread into (and south of) the tropics only much later. In South America, for example, the earliest well attested instances of their presence do not reach back much beyond 3000 cal. BC, and dogs were still absent from large parts of the continent – Amazonia, the Gran Chaco, and much of the Southern Cone – at European contact. Previous explanations for these patterns have focused on cultural choice, the unsuitability of dogs for hunting certain kinds of tropical forest prey, and otherwise unspecified environmental hazards, while acknowledging that Neotropical lowland forests witness high rates of canine mortality. Building on previous work in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mitchell 2015) and noting that the dog’s closest relatives, the grey wolf (C. lupus) and the coyote (C. latrans), were likewise absent from South and most of Central America in Pre- Columbian times, this paper explores instead the possibility that infectious disease constrained the spread of dogs into Neotropical environments. Four diseases are considered, all likely to be native and/or endemic to South America: canine distemper, canine trypanosomiasis, canine rangeliosis, and canine visceral leishmaniasis caused by infection with Leishmania amazonensis and L. colombiensis. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which the hypothesis that disease constrained the expansion of dogs into South America can be developed further

Visualisation and Exploration of Personal Data in Virtual Reality

Recent research in the personal informatics feld has focused on correlating aspects of self-tracked data, supporting users to arrive at meaningful insights when reecting on aggregated datasets. To date, no research has been completed on how users could explorepersonal data using virtual reality, and the opportunities this presents for users' understanding of multidimensional datasets.In this study we evaluate the open-ended exploration of multidimensional datasets using two separate visualisations. Be The Data immerses users in a three-dimensional scatterplot, allowing them to interpret a dataset from new perspectives. The second visualisation,Parallel Planes, enables a multi-faceted dataset to be chained together, supporting users in perceiving a holistic overview of interrelated dimensions.Through an insight-based evaluation methodology, we find that users conducted depth based explorations of the Parallel Planes visualisation, arriving at valuable and signicant insights through hypothesising about the data. We also find that there was no overall task workload difference between traditional visualisation paradigms and virtual reality. We conclude by outlining future research directions, and making recommendations for future evaluation approaches for data visualisation in VR