Japan-ness + Suchness:: Seeking to Seize an Understanding of an Ethereal Elusive Ethos

Japan is in many ways a mysterious society with a rich history and complex culture. Informed by longstanding traditions and deeply-rooted values, contemporary Japan struggles to chart paths forward while retaining strong threads binding yesterday to tomorrow. Modern planning, architecture and design in Japan, and perhaps most notably in its capital city of Tokyo, in many ways illuminates the tensions that exist between the authority of the past and the promise of the future. Inspired in part by pervasive spiritual paths, fundamentally Shintoism and Buddhism, design embraces notions of ephemerality, impermanence and non-attachment. It also characterizes the pursuit and acceptance of perfection through imperfection. Wabi-Sabi and similar approaches highlight a high degree of comfort with the uncertain, the flawed and the incomplete. That said, remarkable advances in high-technology and an aggressive uptake of digital media counter this acceptance of the indeterminate, both in social and physical spheres. People are increasingly connected and informed, yet ironically disconnected and unaware. While society writ-large is shaped by intense formal and informal expectations to conform (the nail the stands out gets hammered down), it also permits ample latitude for the proliferation of subcultures and the acceptance of the extraordinary. Metabolist Architecture, for example, demonstrated an unbridled openness to utopian vision, bold departures and iconic gestures. The present research, through meta-analysis of the literature, case studies and logical argumentation, critically examines the notions of ‘Japan-ness' and ‘suchness' in light of current turbulence and transformations. The author, an architect and psychologist with extensive first-hand experience of Japan, considers a spectrum of dimensions that serve to distinguish and define the country and culture. Viewed through scholarly lenses that include architecture, education, spirituality and homelessness, the paper delineates and interprets the many qualities of Japan that continue to uphold its interwoven veils of mystery, sensuality, advancement and atmosphere. The paper seeks to demonstrate how architecture and urbanism in Japan embodies historic, spiritual and cultural values & practices. Using Tokyo as one window into such aspects, the author explores a variety of facets of the metropolis that illustrate those qualities that contribute to ‘Japan-ness'. Discussion includes implications/impacts to an annual study abroad program in architecture and planning whereby graduate students search for contextual understanding and cultural meaning prior to embarking on dramatic and diverse urban design projects. Designing, in a studio setting, in such a complicated and charged milieu demands a willingness to know and a commitment to connect. The deliverables of the research include the portrayal of a series of features of Japan-ness woven into an approach for understanding the conditions, complexities and characteristics of this leading nation and its incomparable culture. The systems- oriented multi-pronged tactic, and its underpinning information, proves valuable for researchers, educators, students and visitors examining, discovering and engaging Japan

Wisdom of Persian Architecture: Exploring the Design of the M.T.O. Sufi Centres in Search for the ‘Spirit of Place’

[EN] The field of architecture and design has changed and been impacted by advanced technology over the past few decades. Our world, which was already experiencing drastic change, has recently encountered accelerated upheaval due to the global pandemic. Enamored by virtual reality (VR), 3D printing, global positioning, and the proliferation of robots, we are arguably too often surrounded by resultant superficial, meaningless, and soulless spaces to which we can neither relate nor connect. The sense of delight, serenity, poetry, and beauty that we inherently desire and yearn for, is becoming increasingly rare -- and at times even lost -- in today’s architecture. It can be argued that contemporary architecture risks becoming more a tool and product than a work of art that mirrors society and self. As architects, we are responsible to humanity through our quest to design spaces that reunite us with our inner selves and foster a sense of being. Considering recent challenges, crises, and catastrophes, designers are continuously researching the well-known traditional and aged architecture of the past for novel approaches that can enlighten future works. Architects are beginning to more assertively seek factors that propel transcendental experience in space. The present paper considers the case of Persian architecture - one of the richest and most eminent architectural styles in the world. Most buildings of this genre were designed by individuals who were most notably spiritual masters, mystics, astronomers, mathematicians, philosophers, and then architects. This paper interrogates architecture to critically delineate Persian architecture’s role in enhancing contemplation and provoking reflection while highlighting spaces that poetically respond to and nurture our soul. Deploying a literature review and analysis of recently built Sufi Centers in the United States, the research then builds an argument for linking the wisdom of Persian architecture with the spirit of place focusing on the encounter of transcendental moments in space. All these Sufi centers are affiliated with the Maktab Tarighat Oveysi (M.T.O.) Shahamaghsoudi School of Islamic Sufism. Analysis of case studies culls out qualities of space that give rise to sacred (non-religious) experiences including connection with self, balance/ harmony, and most important of all, unity, and oneness internally and externally. Persian architecture, as one of history’s most celebrated building traditions, considers the intense relationship between the sacred and profane, between mortal and immortal, and between the physical and the non-physical. The analysis of these exceptional case studies serves as the foundation for an anticipated and thought-provoking guide to ‘transcendental design,’ introducing a novel approach for designers that encourages advancing beyond the physical form to pursue and optimize the vital intersection of wisdom, space, place, and self.Esmaeili, N.; Sinclair, DB. (2023). Wisdom of Persian Architecture: Exploring the Design of the M.T.O. Sufi Centres in Search for the ‘Spirit of Place’. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 344-358. https://doi.org/10.4995/VIBRArch2022.2022.1523934435

Characteristics of older unpaid carers in England: A study of social patterning from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

\ua9 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society.Background: A growing number of older people provide unpaid care, but contemporary research evidence on this group is limited. Aim: This study aims to describe the characteristics of older people who provide unpaid care and how these vary by socioeconomic position. Methods: Using recent information from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA wave 9, 2019), we analysed cross-sectional data on 1,282 unpaid carers aged ≥50. Data on sociodemographics, health, social wellbeing, care intensity and caregiver-recipient relationships were extracted. Total net non-pension wealth quintiles were used as a relative measure of socioeconomic position. Differences between the poorest and richest wealth quintiles were examined through logistic regression. Findings: Most older carers in ELSA were female and looking after another older person. Poor mental and physical health and social isolation were common, and socially patterned. Compared with carers in the middle wealth group, the poorest group were more likely to be living with the person they cared for (odds ratio (OR) 1.56 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.03-2.36]) and more likely to experience loneliness (OR 2.29 [95% CI 1.42-3.69]), dependency (i.e.The need for help with activities of daily living) (OR 1.62 [95% CI 1.05-2.51]), chronic pain (OR 1.81 [95% CI 1.23-2.67]), a higher number of diseases (OR 1.75 [95% CI 1.15-2.65]) and fair/poor self-rated health (OR 2.59 [95% CI 1.79-3.76]). The poorest carers were also less likely to have a high quality of life (OR 0.51 [95% CI 0.33-0.80]) or be in work (OR 0.33 [95% CI 0.19-0.59]). Conclusion: Our findings suggest that financially disadvantaged unpaid carers (and their households) may have the greatest needs for intervention and support. Focussing resources on this group has potential to address social inequalities

Perturbations of nuclear C*-algebras

Kadison and Kastler introduced a natural metric on the collection of all C*-subalgebras of the bounded operators on a separable Hilbert space. They conjectured that sufficiently close algebras are unitarily conjugate. We establish this conjecture when one algebra is separable and nuclear. We also consider one-sided versions of these notions, and we obtain embeddings from certain near inclusions involving separable nuclear C*-algebras. At the end of the paper we demonstrate how our methods lead to improved characterisations of some of the types of algebras that are of current interest in the classification programme.Comment: 45 page

Overexpression of P70 S6 kinase protein is associated with increased risk of locoregional recurrence in node-negative premenopausal early breast cancer patients

The RPS6KB1 gene is amplified and overexpressed in approximately 10% of breast carcinomas and has been found associated with poor prognosis. We studied the prognostic significance of P70 S6 kinase protein (PS6K) overexpression in a series of 452 node-negative premenopausal early-stage breast cancer patients (median follow-up: 10.8 years). Immunohistochemistry was used to assess PS6K expression in the primary tumour, which had previously been analysed for a panel of established prognostic factors in breast cancer. In a univariate analysis, PS6K overexpression was associated with worse distant disease-free survival as well as impaired locoregional control (HR 1.80, P 0.025 and HR 2.50, P 0.006, respectively). In a multivariate analysis including other prognostic factors, PS6K overexpression remained an independent predictor for poor locoregional control (RR 2.67, P 0.003). To our knowledge, P70 S6 kinase protein is the first oncogenic marker that has prognostic impact on locoregional control and therefore may have clinical implications in determining the local treatment strategy in early-stage breast cancer patients

Functional Desaturase Fads1 (Δ5) and Fads2 (Δ6) Orthologues Evolved before the Origin of Jawed Vertebrates

Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs) such as arachidonic (ARA), eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids are essential components of biomembranes, particularly in neural tissues. Endogenous synthesis of ARA, EPA and DHA occurs from precursor dietary essential fatty acids such as linoleic and α-linolenic acid through elongation and Δ5 and Δ6 desaturations. With respect to desaturation activities some noteworthy differences have been noted in vertebrate classes. In mammals, the Δ5 activity is allocated to the Fads1 gene, while Fads2 is a Δ6 desaturase. In contrast, teleosts show distinct combinations of desaturase activities (e.g. bifunctional or separate Δ5 and Δ6 desaturases) apparently allocated to Fads2-type genes. To determine the timing of Fads1-Δ5 and Fads2-Δ6 evolution in vertebrates we used a combination of comparative and functional genomics with the analysis of key phylogenetic species. Our data show that Fads1 and Fads2 genes with Δ5 and Δ6 activities respectively, evolved before gnathostome radiation, since the catshark Scyliorhinus canicula has functional orthologues of both gene families. Consequently, the loss of Fads1 in teleosts is a secondary episode, while the existence of Δ5 activities in the same group most likely occurred through independent mutations into Fads2 type genes. Unexpectedly, we also establish that events of Fads1 gene expansion have taken place in birds and reptiles. Finally, a fourth Fads gene (Fads4) was found with an exclusive occurrence in mammalian genomes. Our findings enlighten the history of a crucially important gene family in vertebrate fatty acid metabolism and physiology and provide an explanation of how observed lineage-specific gene duplications, losses and diversifications might be linked to habitat-specific food web structures in different environments and over geological timescales

Using molecular data for epidemiological inference: assessing the prevalence of Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense in Tsetse in Serengeti, Tanzania

Background: Measuring the prevalence of transmissible Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense in tsetse populations is essential for understanding transmission dynamics, assessing human disease risk and monitoring spatio-temporal trends and the impact of control interventions. Although an important epidemiological variable, identifying flies which carry transmissible infections is difficult, with challenges including low prevalence, presence of other trypanosome species in the same fly, and concurrent detection of immature non-transmissible infections. Diagnostic tests to measure the prevalence of T. b. rhodesiense in tsetse are applied and interpreted inconsistently, and discrepancies between studies suggest this value is not consistently estimated even to within an order of magnitude. Methodology/Principal Findings: Three approaches were used to estimate the prevalence of transmissible Trypanosoma brucei s.l. and T. b. rhodesiense in Glossina swynnertoni and G. pallidipes in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania: (i) dissection/microscopy; (ii) PCR on infected tsetse midguts; and (iii) inference from a mathematical model. Using dissection/microscopy the prevalence of transmissible T. brucei s.l. was 0% (95% CI 0–0.085) for G. swynnertoni and 0% (0–0.18) G. pallidipes; using PCR the prevalence of transmissible T. b. rhodesiense was 0.010% (0–0.054) and 0.0089% (0–0.059) respectively, and by model inference 0.0064% and 0.00085% respectively. Conclusions/Significance: The zero prevalence result by dissection/microscopy (likely really greater than zero given the results of other approaches) is not unusual by this technique, often ascribed to poor sensitivity. The application of additional techniques confirmed the very low prevalence of T. brucei suggesting the zero prevalence result was attributable to insufficient sample size (despite examination of 6000 tsetse). Given the prohibitively high sample sizes required to obtain meaningful results by dissection/microscopy, PCR-based approaches offer the current best option for assessing trypanosome prevalence in tsetse but inconsistencies in relating PCR results to transmissibility highlight the need for a consensus approach to generate meaningful and comparable data

Fault-tolerant aggregation: Flow-Updating meets Mass-Distribution

Flow-Updating (FU) is a fault-tolerant technique that has proved to be efficient in practice for the distributed computation of aggregate functions in communication networks where individual processors do not have access to global information. Previous distributed aggregation protocols, based on repeated sharing of input values (or mass) among processors, sometimes called Mass-Distribution (MD) protocols, are not resilient to communication failures (or message loss) because such failures yield a loss of mass. In this paper, we present a protocol which we call Mass-Distribution with Flow-Updating (MDFU). We obtain MDFU by applying FU techniques to classic MD. We analyze the convergence time of MDFU showing that stochastic message loss produces low overhead. This is the first convergence proof of an FU-based algorithm. We evaluate MDFU experimentally, comparing it with previous MD and FU protocols, and verifying the behavior predicted by the analysis. Finally, given that MDFU incurs a fixed deviation proportional to the message-loss rate, we adjust the accuracy of MDFU heuristically in a new protocol called MDFU with Linear Prediction (MDFU-LP). The evaluation shows that both MDFU and MDFU-LP behave very well in practice, even under high rates of message loss and even changing the input values dynamically.- A preliminary version of this work appeared in [2]. This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (CNS-1408782, IIS-1247750); the National Institutes of Health (CA198952-01); EMC, Inc.; Pace University Seidenberg School of CSIS; and by Project "Coral - Sustainable Ocean Exploitation: Tools and Sensors/NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000036" financed by the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, and through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio