508 research outputs found
Place Branding as a Mode of Urban Governance and Verticalisation: The Case of Tokyo and New York
This thesis explores how place branding activities are amalgamated into the urban governance policies and how skyscrapers are weaved into this process by studying two of the top ten most vertical cities in the world: Tokyo and New York.
Fascination with building up towards the sky is nothing new. Yet what is new is that skyscrapers are becoming as part of place branding strategies which are seeping into urban governance practices. Concepts of place branding, urban development, spatial planning and governance are now being discussed and understood as significant elements of the same process where branding informs configurations and development of urban landscape in order to attract inward investment, work force, people and corporations. In this aspect of branding, skyscrapers not only play a visual and promotional role but also constitute a strategic importance in shaping urban skyline.
Through this study, the author, while acknowledging the inequalities, the segregations and the gaps within the complexities of the social and economic fabric of the urban cannot be reduced down to such megastructures, also seeks to navigate into hypernormalisation of skyscrapers and their implications on urban governance
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Toward an understanding of an inside out perspective on city branding - a grounded theory study of Leeds and Istanbul
Adopting an inside out perspective to city branding, this doctoral thesis
examines the significance of residents and their relationship towards cities in
terms of association, identity and ownership of the physical environment, in
the context of city branding. This is important because the growing interest
towards city branding not only challenged the traditional understanding of
branding concepts but also forced academics and practitioners to seek ways
to mould and shape existing concepts to the context of city branding.
This qualitative study was undertaken within a constructivist grounded theory
methodology and uses Leeds, UK and Istanbul, Turkey as deliberately
contrasting case studies. In accordance with grounded theory, the literature
was only used to inform rather than direct the research design. The sampling
design involved initial and theoretical sampling and in total of 22 residents
interviewed from both cities.
The emergent place brand identity mosaic comprises of four main categories
of social process (SP), place attachment (PA), sense of place (SoP) and built
environment (BE), and the most significant feature of the place identity
mosaic is that it is processual, dynamic, and time and context specific. In
terms of contribution to knowledge, the present study bridges the gap in
between the subject fields of branding (brand management) and urban
studies by proposing an inside out approach to branding cities. The findings
indicate that the place brand identity mosaic elements provide a platform to
explain how residents make sense of where they live and to begin to
understand the concept of the city brand identity. Moreover, in regards to
practice, it brings a new perspective to the existing city managements by
highlighting a focal point of “keeping the existing customers happy” through
investigating and understanding the role and significance of residents, their
attachment to where they live and how this insight can be cooperated into
creating and developing a sustainable city brand
Mean platelet volume in brucellosis: correlation between brucella standard serum agglutination test results, platelet count, and C-reactive protein.
Background: Brucellosis, a zoonotic infection, was most widely diagnosed by the Brucella standard serum agglutination test (SAT). No previous publication has demonstrated a correlation between the degree of Brucella SAT agglutination positivity and the severity of brucellosis infection.Objective: To contribute to the clarification of the relationship between patelets and brucellosis. It is also aimed at evaluating the usefulness of the SAT titer as a measure of brucellosis severity.Material and Methods: We compared the control (n=60) and patients (n=96) groups in terms of mean platelet volume (MPV), C-reactive protein (CRP) and platelet values. Patients were grouped according to their degree of agglutination positivity titers and compared by means of CRP, MPV and platelet values. We also investigated the relationship among logarithmic values of MPV, platelet and CRP parameters for each group.Results: Although statistically meaningful difference was observed between control and patients group in terms of MPV and platelet value, there were no statistically significant differences observed among patients groups. The physiological negative correlation between MPV and platelet count was not encountered in group 2 and 3. Logarithmic values of CRP were not correlated with logarithmic values of MPV and platelet counts.Conclusion: The MPV could be a new parameter to evaluate hematologic abnormalities in patients with brucellosis. The SAT titer was not a useful measure for evaluation of the severity of brucellosis.Keywords: Brucella, CRP, platelet count, mean platelet volume, agglutinatio
A Survey About Nothing: Monitoring a Million Supergiants for Failed Supernovae
Extragalactic transient searches have historically been limited to looking
for the appearance of new sources such as supernovae. It is now possible to
carry out a new kind of survey that will do the opposite, that is, search for
the disappearance of massive stars. This will entail the systematic observation
of galaxies within a distance of 10 Mpc in order to watch ~10^6 supergiants.
Reaching this critical number ensures that something will occur yearly, since
these massive stars must end their lives with a core collapse within ~10^6
years. Using deep imaging and image subtraction it is possible to determine the
fates of these stars whether they end with a bang (supernova) or a whimper
(fall out of sight). Such a survey would place completely new limits on the
total rate of all core collapses, which is critical for determining the
validity of supernova models. It would also determine the properties of
supernova progenitors, better characterize poorly understood optical
transients, such as eta Carina-like mass ejections, find and characterize large
numbers of Cepheids, luminous blue variables and eclipsing binaries, and allow
the discovery of any new phenomena that inhabit this relatively unexplored
parameter space.Comment: final version, 7 pages, 5 figures, ApJ in pres
The Application of Simultaneous Mainstem Bronchus Dilation With Pulmonary Artery Stenting in the Context of Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) is a congenital diagnosis that necessitates immediate intervention at the beginning of life to ensure survival past infancy and to optimize left-side cardiac function. Often, these required procedures can lead to deleterious side effects and resultant complications. In this case report, we present a 15-month-old patient with HLHS who underwent multiple procedures, including two aortic arch surgeries. After the interventions, the patient experienced left main pulmonary bronchus compression along with pulmonary artery stenosis. In this case, we outline an approach to performing vascular dilation without compromise of airway patency
Enhanced self-collimation effect by low rotational symmetry in hexagonal lattice photonic crystals
In this study, we present the design of a photonic crystal (PC) structure
with a hexagonal lattice, where adjustments to the PC unit cell symmetry reveal
an all-angle self-collimation (SC) effect. By optimizing opto-geometric
parameters, such as the rotational angle of auxiliary rods and adjacent
distances, we analyze the SC property in detail, leveraging group velocity
dispersion (GVD) and third-order dispersion (TOD) characteristics. We also
investigate the relationship between symmetry properties and their influence on
dispersion characteristics. Through symmetry manipulation, we gain a
comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing light
collimation and confinement in the proposed configurations. The PC structure
with a symmetry group exhibits all-angle SC effect within the range of
and normalized frequencies, with a
bandwidth of . Further breaking the symmetry,
transforming from to group symmetry, enhances the SC bandwidth to
and reveals the perfect linear equi-frequency
contours (EFC) at two different frequency bands: all angle SC between
and normalized frequencies in the 4th
transverse magnetic (TM) band and between and
in the 5th TM band. Additionally, we propose a
composite/hybrid PC structure resembling group symmetry, where two
auxiliary rods are replaced by rectangular photonic wires with the same
refractive index and width equal to the diameter of auxiliary rods. This hybrid
structure exhibits an all-angle SC effect with an operating bandwidth of
, displays near-zero GVD and TOD performance
and offers enhanced robustness against potential fabrication precision issues
Nambu-Goldstone Dark Matter and Cosmic Ray Electron and Positron Excess
We propose a model of dark matter identified with a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone
boson in the dynamical supersymmetry breaking sector in a gauge mediation
scenario. The dark matter particles annihilate via a below-threshold narrow
resonance into a pair of R-axions each of which subsequently decays into a pair
of light leptons. The Breit-Wigner enhancement explains the excess electron and
positron fluxes reported in the recent cosmic ray experiments PAMELA, ATIC and
PPB-BETS without postulating an overdensity in halo, and the limit on
anti-proton flux from PAMELA is naturally evaded.Comment: 3 figure
End-to-End Joint Antenna Selection Strategy and Distributed Compress and Forward Strategy for Relay Channels
Multi-hop relay channels use multiple relay stages, each with multiple relay
nodes, to facilitate communication between a source and destination.
Previously, distributed space-time codes were proposed to maximize the
achievable diversity-multiplexing tradeoff, however, they fail to achieve all
the points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. In the presence of a
low-rate feedback link from the destination to each relay stage and the source,
this paper proposes an end-to-end antenna selection (EEAS) strategy as an
alternative to distributed space-time codes. The EEAS strategy uses a subset of
antennas of each relay stage for transmission of the source signal to the
destination with amplify and forwarding at each relay stage. The subsets are
chosen such that they maximize the end-to-end mutual information at the
destination. The EEAS strategy achieves the corner points of the optimal
diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (corresponding to maximum diversity gain and
maximum multiplexing gain) and achieves better diversity gain at intermediate
values of multiplexing gain, versus the best known distributed space-time
coding strategies. A distributed compress and forward (CF) strategy is also
proposed to achieve all points of the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff
for a two-hop relay channel with multiple relay nodes.Comment: Accepted for publication in the special issue on cooperative
communication in the Eurasip Journal on Wireless Communication and Networkin
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