Characterising differences between self-reported and wastewater-identified drug use at two consecutive years of an Australian music festival.

BackgroundIn the context of drug prohibition, potential adulteration and variable purity pose additional health risks for people who use drugs, with these risks often compounded by the outdoor music festival environment. Ahead of the imminent implementation of drug checking services in Queensland, Australia, this study aims to characterise this problem using triangulated survey and wastewater data to understand self-reported and detected drug use among attendees of a multi-day Queensland-based music festival in 2021 and 2022.MethodsWe administered an in-situ survey focusing on drug use at the festival to two convenience samples of 136 and 140 festival attendees in 2021 and 2022 respectively. We compared survey findings to wastewater collected concurrently from the festival's site-specific wastewater treatment plant, which was analysed using Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry.ResultsMost survey respondents (82 % in 2021, 92 % in 2022) reported using or intending to use an illicit drug at the festival. Some respondents reported potentially risky drug use practices such as using drugs found on the ground (2 % in 2021, 4 % in 2022). Substances detected in wastewater but not surveys include MDEA, mephedrone, methylone, 3-MMC, alpha-D2PV, etizolam, eutylone, and N,N-dimethylpentylone.ConclusionMany substances detected in wastewater but not self-reported in surveys likely represent substitutions or adulterants. These findings highlight the benefits of drug checking services to prevent harms from adulterants and provide education on safer drug use practices. These findings also provide useful information on socio-demographic characteristics and drug use patterns of potential users of Queensland's future drug checking service

The Third Option: Removing Urban Highways

An Applied Research Option Paper Presented to Richard DagenhartThe objective of quickly transporting people and goods from one part of a city to another is a desirable one and many highways successfully do this. However, judging such highways solely on their ability to do so has lead to many drawbacks and negative effects from current highways. As they are set within the urban framework, their influence profoundly shapes the urban form as well as the actions of those inhabiting it. Furthermore, while there are arguments made against streets and that they negatively affect cities, these arguments are based on certain perceptions of what many of today’s streets are. What are not typically considered are the true political and social basis of streets and their millennia old function of forming the urban public framework. During the time of the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago, the street as something political and social in nature was exemplified in the process of building new cities. In the formation of every new Roman city, two streets were dedicated. These streets were the Cardo and the Decumanus, which crossed each other at right angles forming a plus sign. It was based off of these two streets that the rest of the roads and lots related to. Not only were these streets the main thoroughfares through the city, they were the symbol of order. Freeways do not serve the same purpose as streets, yet the two are both part of a modern transportation network and are closely related in the network’s function. This paper is neither anti-automobile nor anti-highway, but rather suggestive of a way to deal with current urban downtown highways once their function has been rethought. The American highway building age is over and we are now living with the consequences of design decisions made for the single purpose of maximizing traffic throughput. As Americans move back to cities there is a trend of rethinking our urban places and undoubtedly the infrastructure supporting them. This paper provides those questioning the role of some of our urban highways with a framework for rethinking urban highways, specifically the removal of the highway, which provides an impetus to redesign urban downtown freeway right-of-ways as part of a larger coordinated multi-modal transportation network. This paper examines six case studies of urban downtown freeways which have been successfully removed. Five of the cases are from American cities, the sixth is from Seoul, South Korea. Furthermore, it will provide an understanding of the challenges and benefits of removing such highways and offer those considering highway removal a guide of what to consider. Seoul’s mayor at the time of their highway removal, Lee Mung-bak, in support of removing the freeway said, “We want to make a city where people come first, not cars.” Cars should be there to serve people, not people serving for the cars. While removing urban freeways is seen by some as risky and detrimental to the downtown’s success and economic well being, this is not necessarily the case as the following case studies demonstrate. Robert Cervero, Professor of city and regional planning at U.C. Berkeley, describes removing highways in a different way, as “a re-ordering of municipal priorities” from high mobility towards, “economic and environmental sustainability, livability, and social equity.” Instead of viewing freeways as conduits for moving vehicles, thinking about their original purpose as a component of a modern transportation network to be coordinated with adjacent land use to adapt cities to the changes of the 19th and 20th centuries may help in getting over the initial shock of considering removing a highway. Just as the Interstate Highway System was about to change the face of the American city in 1957, Lewis Mumford already was weary of the consequences. “The goal of improving our cities could be achieved only if ‘we are prepared to apply our intelligence to the purposes of life instead of applying them merely to the means of life. That means eventually we will put the motor car in its place. We will cast off the mistress and live with our wives instead’” The First National Conference on City Planning took place in 1909 in Washington D.C. and transportation planning was one of the topics discussed. While the automobile itself was mentioned just once and not at all the focus of the conference, transportation and its ability for reshaping urban form were discussed. Transportation planning at the time was considered a holistic endeavor having a strong relationship with land use. Furthermore, these early planners understood the importance of multi-modalism. While wanting to provide facilities for private vehicles, these were to be part of a larger, more comprehensive system including streetcars and pedestrian facilities. The history of urban freeways is one that dates to the turn of the twentieth century. At that time, urban transportation problems were similar to those experienced today, most notably congestion. Other problems included slow and unsafe vehicles, manure in the streets, and horse carcasses clogging the streets. Contrary to popular thought, the pre-automobile city was not one of picturesque un-crowded streets, but one with its own transportation related problems. To the planners of the early 20th century, the private automobile may have seemed to be the solution to the urban transportation issues of their time. However, future automobile congestion was substantially different from the prior congestion of people, horses, and wagons. The automobile took up more space per-person than most other means of transportation. The urban highways we have come to know and are now rethinking do not portray these holistic views promoted during the early twentieth century. What happened between then and now? Before discussing the challenges and potential benefits of removing downtown urban highways, it is important to understand why and how our present-day highways developed in the manner that they did

The Distributed and Unified Numerics Environment, Version 2.4

The Dune project has released version 2.4 on September 25, 2015. This paper describes the most significant improvements, interface and other changes for the Dune core modules Dune- Common, Dune-Geometry, Dune-Grid, Dune-ISTL, and Dune-LocalFunctions

Lessons from Ten Cities

The Urban Design Laboratory - Fall 2010. Assignment 1: Re-Inhabiting the Urban Core - Lessons From Ten Cities - Two Weeks.Updated with edits per co-author Dr Richard Dagenhart, 11/23/2021This project focuses on the primary ingredient of urban form: the subdivision of urban territory into public and private domains (or public and private usage in some situations). Every project in existing urban cores - urban design, building or landscape - must understand the arrangement and dimension of lots, blocks and streets and their relationships to pre-existing ecological conditions, prior human occupation, previous interventions, political imprints and cultural desire. It is these relationships that irrigate this basic urban form with architecture and landscape potentials. Ideally at least one member of each team will have visited the selected city. The research must be accomplished quickly - realizing that the internet plus the library will have substantial information about each city. The documentation and analysis of each city will be presented in common format and graphics in three parts. First is the urban form in the city’s regional context, which may be geographic, topographic, ecological, political or some combination of those. This should reflect an understanding of the reasons for its location and its origins. Why was the city developed there in the first place? Second is the urban form itself, in three scales: 15K x 15k area of the urban core to show the primary urban form; a 7.5k x 7.5k area showing the urban core itself and its primary form characteristics, and a 1k x 1k area of blocks. The identical scales will allow visual comparisons among the five cities. Third will be a series of diagrams, illustrating the major design moves that created the distinctive urban form for each city. This might be understood as retroactive urban design - looking backward and then rebuilding them in sequence, based on your interpretation of the city's formal history. The conclusion of these diagrams will be a composite.Richard Dagenhar

Anomalous and anisotropic nanoscale diffusion of hydration water molecules in fluid lipid membranes

We have studied nanoscale diffusion of membrane hydration water in fluid-phase lipid bilayers made of 1,2-dimyristoyl-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) using incoherent quasi-elastic neutron scattering. Dynamics were fit directly in the energy domain using the Fourier transform of a stretched exponential. By using large, 2-dimensional detectors, lateral motions of water molecules and motions perpendicular to the membranes could be studied simultaneously, resulting in 2-dimensional maps of relaxation time, τ, and stretching exponent, β. We present experimental evidence for anomalous (sub-diffusive) and anisotropic diffusion of membrane hydration water molecules over nanometer distances. By combining molecular dynamics and Brownian dynamics simulations, the potential microscopic origins for the anomaly and anisotropy of hydration water were investigated. Bulk water was found to show intrinsic sub-diffusive motion at time scales of several picoseconds, likely related to caging effects. In membrane hydration water, however, the anisotropy of confinement and local dynamical environments leads to an anisotropy of relaxation times and stretched exponents, indicative of anomalous dynamics