Fluid Architecture : Synthesis : City

This proposal intends to manipulate the streams of the city and their potential overlaps and deviations in order to create an intervention that will revitalize both economically and aesthetically a localized area. By further developing the city streams that are already present, the pre-existing conditions, and subsequently introducing those streams that are not present in order to produce the desired result, a successful dynamic node of convergent streams with the potential to link back to larger scales

The bee fauna of an Atlantic coastal plain tidal marsh community in Southern New England, USA

 With growing evidence of changes in local abundance, geographical range, and species diversity of wild bees, it is imperative to document wild bee communities in representative habitats throughout North America. The Connecticut shoreline has historically been subject to many natural and anthropogenic disturbances, and there is a lack of baseline data regarding bee biodiversity in Connecticut’s maritime habitats. In this study, we characterize the wild bee fauna of a discrete maritime habitat in Connecticut, USA, and examine salt-marsh, beach dune, and coastal scrub bee communities adjacent to Long Island Sound. Patterns found are discussed in relation to recent coastal surveys in New England. Biweekly surveys were conducted at Grass Island (Guilford, CT) over a two-year period (2011-2012) using pan traps and effort-based (timed) net collecting from flowers. A total of 3928 individual bees were collected, representing five families, 18 genera and at least 80 species. Floral records for 374 individuals resulted in associations of 35 bee species with 19 species of flowers. Seventy percent of the bees captured in the net survey were visiting alien plants, with the exotic Rosa rugosa Thunb. having the highest level of bee diversity and relative abundance. The total number of bee species collected in this survey represents approximately 23% of the known Connecticut fauna, including four specialists associated with coastal and wetland habitats. The abundance and diversity of bees visiting alien plants on Grass Island, as well as the occurrence of these sand specialists, may prove to be of conservation concern as the Connecticut shoreline continues to be altered. &nbsp

Artistic Patrimony and Cultural Politics in Early Seicento Venice

In the period following the Cinquecento Renaissance, contemporary seventeenth century Venetian artists were presented with two enormous challenges. The first was to attempt to reinterpret their visual tradition within a shifting political climate without declining into an overt stylistic retrospection. The second was to try and retain a semblance of the personification of state identity—those qualities that had been established and distinguished by Venetian art in the Cinquecento —and which were present in the visual patrimony of paintings and drawings. Carlo Ridolfi, art critic and author of Le maraviglie dell’Arte (1648) eloquently stated the problem in his biography of Giovanni Contarino, a student of Titian’s, when he praised the work of the Cinquecento masters as the epitome of artistic production to the extent that he says, “it is with reason that one could use as motto the two columns of Hercules with the words: “Ultra quid faciam?" it is in fact vain to pretend better examples, and rarer beautiful things could be made.” This dissertation considers two parallel issues at work: the stylistic legacy of Cinquecento Venetian masters and their importance in the work of their Seicento heirs, and the purposeful dissolution and sale of collections of work by those masters during the seventeenth century. The business activities of art dealers Marco Boschini (1602/5—1681), Paolo del Sera (1614—1672) and their associates are examined alongside their perceptions and criticisms of Cinquecento and Seicento artistic production, and the voracious appetite of English collectors for Venetian pictures in the opening decades of the seventeenth century is considered. Exploring the situations—political (the artist), economic (the dealer), and social (the patron)—present in Venice during the early seventeenth century and their direct relation to the perceived aesthetics of a cultural legacy, this project provides a reassessment of how established value sets in Venetian art were considered successful or not within their cultural context, and how those stylistic evaluations affected artists working in Venice during the early Seicento

Using Web Archives to Model Academic Migration and Identify Brain Drain

Presentation for the IIPC General Assembly and Web Archiving Conference held on May 10-12, 2023 in Hilversum, Netherlands. This presentation discusses academic migration at Historically Black Colleges & Universities through analysis of web archives and introduces challenges faced throughout the project

Urban Pollinator Community Abundance and Richness: Bridgeport, Connecticut

James Durrell, Tracy Zarrillo, and Kimberly Stoner's study of the pollinator community in around the University of Bridgeport campus

Fulminant Cerebral Fat Embolism: Case Description and Review of the Literature

The release of fat and bone marrow fragments is a common occurrence following traumatic and nontraumatic events. In most cases, they go symptomless or cause only minor disturbances, but occasionally they can determine a multiorgan dysfunction whose severity ranges from mild to fatal. The authors describe the case of a patient who became deeply comatose and ultimately died after a traffic accident in which he suffered the exposed right femoral and tibial fracture in the absence of other injuries. He underwent the external fixation of the fractured bones 2 hours after the admission under general anesthesia. Three hours later, he failed to awake at the suspension of the anesthetic agents and became anisocoric; a CT scan demonstrated a diffuse cerebral edema with the herniation of the cerebellar tonsils; these abnormalities were unresponsive to the treatment and the brain death was one day later. The causes, the mechanisms, the symptoms, the prevention, and the treatment of the syndrome are reviewed and discussed

Dual focus polarisation splitting lens

We have successfully designed and measured a unique polarisation splitting lens which focuses the orthogonal linear polarisations side-by-side in the lens focal plane. This concept can find application in situations where there is limited space for the beam splitters and focusing optics that are required for incoherent detectors

Urban Native Flora and Noteworthy Bee Species: Bridgeport, CT

The economic value of bees and other pollinators in the United States, as a whole, is estimated to be approximately $3 billion per year. Bees in urban matrixes provide crucial pollination services to urban community farms and gardens. The decline of notable bee species (A. mellifera, B. affinis, B. terrnarius) has prompted the expansive initiative of determining conservation status of all bee species. Urban areas have long been under-sampled, especially for bees, which surprisingly sometimes can provide refuge for insects. urban bee communities, and the flora they use for brood provisioning and nutrition, is not well understood. Here, we present several notable bee species and floral interactions observed in Bridgeport, Connecticut across multiple flight seasons

Recovering Dietary Information from Extant and Extinct Primates Using Plant Microremains

When reconstructing the diets of primates, researchers often rely on several well established methods, such as direct observation, studies of discarded plant parts, and analysis of macrobotanical remains in fecal matter. Most of these studies can be performed only on living primate groups, however, and the diets of extinct, subfossil, and fossil groups are known only from proxy methods. Plant microremains, tiny plant structures with distinctive morphologies, can record the exact plant foods that an individual consumed. They can be recovered from recently deceased and fossil primate samples, and can also be used to supplement traditional dietary analyses in living groups. Here I briefly introduce plant microremains, provide examples of how they have been successfully used to reconstruct the diets of humans and other species, and describe methods for their application in studies of primate dietary ecology

Communication and visiting policies in Italian intensive care units during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave and lockdown: a nationwide survey

Background: During the first coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic wave, an unprecedented number of patients with respiratory failure due to a new, highly contagious virus needed hospitalization and intensive care unit (ICU) admission. The aim of the present study was to describe the communication and visiting policies of Italian intensive care units (ICUs) during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave and national lockdown and compare these data with prepandemic conditions. Methods: A national web-based survey was conducted among 290 Italian hospitals. Each ICU (active between February 24 and May 31, 2020) was encouraged to complete an individual questionnaire inquiring the hospital/ICU structure/organization, communication/visiting habits and the role of clinical psychology prior to, and during the first COVID-19 pandemic wave. Results: Two hundred and nine ICUs from 154 hospitals (53% of the contacted hospitals) completed the survey (202 adult and 7 pediatric ICUs). Among adult ICUs, 60% were dedicated to COVID-19 patients, 21% were dedicated to patients without COVID-19 and 19% were dedicated to both categories (Mixed). A total of 11,102 adult patients were admitted to the participating ICUs during the study period and only approximately 6% of patients received at least one visit. Communication with family members was guaranteed daily through an increased use of electronic devices and was preferentially addressed to the same family member. Compared to the prepandemic period, clinical psychologists supported physicians more often regarding communication with family members. Fewer patients received at least one visit from family members in COVID and mixed-ICUs than in non-COVID ICUs, l (0 [0–6]%, 0 [0–4]% and 11 [2–25]%, respectively, p < 0.001). Habits of pediatric ICUs were less affected by the pandemic. Conclusions: Visiting policies of Italian ICUs dedicated to adult patients were markedly altered during the first COVID-19 wave. Remote communication was widely adopted as a surrogate for family meetings. New strategies to favor a family-centered approach during the current and future pandemics are warranted