Globally Anisotropic High Porosity Silica Aerogels

We discuss two methods by which high porosity silica aerogels can be engineered to exhibit global anisotropy. First, anisotropy can be introduced with axial strain. In addition, intrinsic anisotropy can result during growth and drying stages and, suitably controlled, it can be correlated with preferential radial shrinkage in cylindrical samples. We have performed small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) to characterize these two types of anisotropy. We show that global anisotropy originating from either strain or shrinkage leads to optical birefringence and that optical cross-polarization studies are a useful characterization of the uniformity of the imposed global anisotropy.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures, submitted to Journal of Non-Crystalline Solid

Manila: City Beautiful Lost? A Historical and Configurational Analysis of Daniel Burnham’s Proposed 1905 City Beautiful Plan

Metro Manila’s contemporary socio-spatial inequities and problems with urbanization are usually traced by popular discourse to the incomplete implementation of Daniel Burnham’s City Beautiful masterplan. This unfinished work is further compounded by the poorly managed post-war reconstruction and haphazard growth of the city into a metropolitan region after independence from the United States. This study reviews the relevant historical timeframes that define the typo-morphological stages of Manila’s spatial development. These stages then become the basis for this study’s use of quantitative spatial network analytical methods under space syntax theory. This methodology is used to understand the Burnham Plan’s spatial network vis-à-vis the city’s prior conditions, and the succeeding post-(non)implementation effects of the Burnham Plan on its eventual expansion outside of the original city limits. This uncovers the underlying spatial configuration of the Burnham Plan’s spatial network, showing how the intent to create a civic core does the opposite and leads to the shifting of spatial network centralities away from the civic spaces proposed by Burnham, and how it creates new latent socio-spatial enclaves in the city. This foreshadows the fragmentation of Metro Manila’s broader spatial network centralities as it grows out of its city limits. This study calls the critical attention of Philippine planning and architecture to add quantitative nuance to the contemporary discourse on Burnham’s City Beautiful Plan for Manila, hopefully to move on from it, and forward to the use of similar quantitative methods in not just researching about, but in planning and designing Philippine Cities

A tool to support sustainable neighbourhood design in contexts of uncertainty of building's geometry

La presente propuesta de investigación tiene como objetivo desarrollar una herramienta capaz de respaldar el diseño de vecindarios sostenibles en contextos donde existe una alta incertidumbre con respecto a la geometría "final" de los edificios. Esta incertidumbre es propia de contextos en los que el desarrollo de viviendas progresivas es común y la aplicación de la ley es débil. El objetivo se justifica en la revisión de la literatura, que muestra que hasta ahora se han desarrollado dos líneas de investigación independientes, la dinámica de la construcción por un lado y la simulación-optimización de los flujos de recursos para el diseño urbano sostenible por el otro. La revisión de la literatura también muestra que ambas líneas de investigación están convergiendo de tal manera que actualmente es posible proponer una integración. Se planteó una hipótesis para permitir el correcto funcionamiento de la herramienta propuesta. La hipótesis se basa en el control que el diseñador urbano podría ejercer sobre el desarrollador individual mediante el uso de restricciones distintas a las legales, en particular, cómo el diseño de la cuadrícula de calles y el patrón de parcela podría limitar las opciones de diseño de viviendas disponibles que tiene un autoconstructor, por lo que todo el vecindario, el sistema podría conducir a un mejor desempeño en materia de sostenibilidad. Se propone una metodología basada en el flujo de trabajo de Shi et al. (2017) para la generación de la forma urbana basada en simulación y optimización. La metodología consta de tres pasos: recopilación de datos, generación de geometrias y optimización. El primer paso se realizará mediante una consulta a través de fuentes confiables y fotogrametría UAV. El segundo utilizará modelos basados en agentes para generar geometrías de edificios basadas en la simulación del comportamiento de las personas. El tercero utilizará una herramienta de modelado de energía junto con algoritmos de optimización multiobjetivo.The present research proposal aims to develop a tool able to support sustainable neighbourhood design in contexts where high uncertainty exists regarding the ‘final’ geometry of buildings. This uncertainty is proper of contexts where the petty commodity form of housing production is widespread, incremental dwelling development is common and law enforcement is weak. The aim is justified on the literature review, which shows that so far two independent lines of research have been developed, building dynamics on one hand and simulation‐optimization of the resource flows for sustainable urban design on the other. The literature review also shows that both lines of research are converging in such a way that currently is possible to propose an integration. A hypothesis was posed to allow the proper functioning of the proposed tool. The hypothesis is based on the control that the urban designer could exercise on the individual developer by using constraints other than legal, in particular how street grid and plot pattern design could limit the available dwelling design options a self‐builder has, so the whole neighbourhood system could be driven to better sustainability performance. A methodology based on Shi et Al.’s (2017) workflow for simulation‐based urban form generation and optimization modelling is proposed. The workflow should first serve to test the hypothesis and then serve as a base for the proposed tool. The methodology consists of three steps: Data collection, form generation and optimization. The first step will be done by a through reliable sources consultation and UAV photogrammetry. The second will use Agentbased modelling to generate building geometries based on people’s behaviour simulation. The third will use an energy modelling tool coupled with Multi‐objective optimization algorithms.Reino Unido. Consorcio de Entrenamiento Doctoral “White Rose”. Beca de Métodos Cuantitativos Avanzados (AQM) para la investigación en ciencias sociales

City branding and place attachment: a case study about Viana do Castelo

The competitiveness of places has been growing with no signs of slowing down. People are more informed and demanding when looking for a place to live or visit and the development of an emotional marketing has been an important dimension in city and tourism management. The literature has focused on factors promoting place attachment and its consequence in place satisfaction and loyalty. However, little is known about the contrary - the effect of city brand in place attachment. This study analyses how the construction of a territorial brand and the perceived identity of it enhance the place attachment. Viana do Castelo city, in the north of Portugal, whose city brand was created in 2010, was chosen as a unit of analysis. A mixed methodology was conducted. To analyse the brand's construction, the City's Councilor of Culture was interviewed. To identify the brand's perceived identity, two important personalities of the city were interviewed. A focus group with residents and visitors discussed the elements of the city brand and an inquiry with a sample of 285 respondents was used to measure the place attachment to the city. The results show that place attachment is strong, especially concerning emotional factors. The study highlights the need to motivate the interaction between the target audience and the brand managers to monitoring city brand performance, by adopting a more engaging and active communication strategy. When the averages dimensions of the connection to the place are analysed, the place identity is higher than the place dependence for residents and visitors. These results suggest an effect of emotional city branding strategies in place attachment.(undefined

Fear and Misinformation as Predictors of Support for Sex Offender Management Policies

This study investigated the public\u27s agreement with sex offender management policies. Respondents (N = 703) were randomly sampled from the state of Michigan, using a CATI system. Two pathanalysis models were used to test if personal characteristics, level of fear of sex offenders, and misinformation regarding this population were predictive of agreement with: (a) sex offender registration and community notification policies; and (b) more severe sanctions (life in prison and chemical castration). The findings suggest that greater fear of sex offenders and acceptance of misinformation were predictive of more support of sex offender management policies. Research has found that these policies are costly and ineffective in promoting community safety. Effective and efficient policy development occurs when policy is based on evidence. Community and legislative education may promote thoughtful policy development that holds offenders accountable and promotes successful reintegration

WSAM: Visual Explanations from Style Augmentation as Adversarial Attacker and Their Influence in Image Classification

Currently, style augmentation is capturing attention due to convolutional neural networks (CNN) being strongly biased toward recognizing textures rather than shapes. Most existing styling methods either perform a low-fidelity style transfer or a weak style representation in the embedding vector. This paper outlines a style augmentation algorithm using stochastic-based sampling with noise addition to improving randomization on a general linear transformation for style transfer. With our augmentation strategy, all models not only present incredible robustness against image stylizing but also outperform all previous methods and surpass the state-of-the-art performance for the STL-10 dataset. In addition, we present an analysis of the model interpretations under different style variations. At the same time, we compare comprehensive experiments demonstrating the performance when applied to deep neural architectures in training settings.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figure

Identifying Appropriate Sanctions For Youth Sexual Behavior: The Impact Of Age, Gender, And Sexual Orientation

Although statutory rape laws were initially developed to protect youth from coercion by adults, youth are sometimes also prosecuted under these laws. This article investigates public attitudes regarding sanctions for youth engaging in sexual behaviors with peers. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to determine if age and gender of the offending youth, and sexual orientation of the relationship,has an impact on the public\u27s level of agreement for sanctioning youth for three types of sexual behavior: intercourse, oral sex, or touching. The study participants (N= 757) were drawn from the general population of adult Michigan residents; the sample was racially representative of the state but included an overrepresentation of women (66%). The findings show that respondent support for sanctions varied by the age difference between the youth. There was also an increase in level of sanction agreement by type of sexual behavior. Gender of the offending youth was not shown to significantly impact sanction agreement. Sexual orientation of the relationship was only significant for certain types of sexual activity. The public\u27s beliefs about youth sexual behavior is in concert with the intended goals of the juvenile justice system, in that the suggested sanctions are focused on rehabilitation for 15-year-olds. However, the public is more supportive of severe sanctions for 18- and 22-year-olds, but also suggest counseling and probation. The significance of these findings informs policy making in that they suggest a more balanced approach for sanctioning consensual sexual relationships between youths

Age Differences in Women’s Anger Experience and Expression

Research on women’s anger is relative scarce. In this study the authors examined differences in anger experience and expression in women across three distinct age groups: 18-30, 31-49, and 50 and above. The authors used the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 (STAXI-2) to survey a sample of 239 women in the United States and Canada. The groups were established according to hypothesized transitional life stages of changing responsibilities and expectations. A MANCOVA was used to test the effect of age and covariates of education, employment, relationship status, and country of residence on participants’ experience and expression of anger. The authors discuss limitations relative to sampling strategies as well as sample demographics and size, and discuss implications the implications of the findings for practice and future research

Identifying Appropriate Sanctions For Youth Sexual Behavior: The Impact Of Age, Gender, And Sexual Orientation

Although statutory rape laws were initially developed to protect youth from coercion by adults, youth are sometimes also prosecuted under these laws. This article investigates public attitudes regarding sanctions for youth engaging in sexual behaviors with peers. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to determine if age and gender of the offending youth, and sexual orientation of the relationship,has an impact on the public\u27s level of agreement for sanctioning youth for three types of sexual behavior: intercourse, oral sex, or touching. The study participants (N= 757) were drawn from the general population of adult Michigan residents; the sample was racially representative of the state but included an overrepresentation of women (66%). The findings show that respondent support for sanctions varied by the age difference between the youth. There was also an increase in level of sanction agreement by type of sexual behavior. Gender of the offending youth was not shown to significantly impact sanction agreement. Sexual orientation of the relationship was only significant for certain types of sexual activity. The public\u27s beliefs about youth sexual behavior is in concert with the intended goals of the juvenile justice system, in that the suggested sanctions are focused on rehabilitation for 15-year-olds. However, the public is more supportive of severe sanctions for 18- and 22-year-olds, but also suggest counseling and probation. The significance of these findings informs policy making in that they suggest a more balanced approach for sanctioning consensual sexual relationships between youths