Hearst Lecture: Gary Hack - Disruptive Changes and the Pattern of Cities

Today I want to talk about the future, but I do so by first looking back, focusing on the moments in a city’s long history when transformative change occurs. I am interested in this topic because I see a lot of cities planning and struggling to do things that have been on their agendas for many years. However, as planners, urban designers, and landscape architects, we need to be thinking about things that will be needed 10 to 15 years from now. I don’t see many cities reinventing their future in the plans they are making. There are reasons for that. It takes time for ideas to mature politically. It takes time to assemble resources to overcome opposition. It takes even longer to accomplish ambitious changes. But if the horizon is 10 to 15 years ahead, then changes being pursued based on current needs are likely to be largely out of date when they are completed. A while ago, working on the plan for New York City’s West side waterfront, I discovered that there were several very large piers, including the 16-acre Pier 40, that had never been used for the passenger ships they were designed to serve. Pier 40 was built to accommodate the fast fading service between New York and England, but it took so long to build that it was completed about three years after the last passenger liner left port. Meanwhile, as these dinosaurs were being constructed New York was lagging behind in building the international airports that provided the future links across the Atlantic. We run that risk in many of the plans we are pursuing today, just as the pace of change has accelerated. I find it instructive to look at how cities have coped with large changes in the past. What was behind the transformative changes they needed to harness? How did they foresee change? What plans did they make? With answers to these questions in mind, I will move on to discuss the four major forces that we ought to pay attention to today because I think they will have transformative effects on our cities

Environmental programming : creating responsive settings.

Thesis. 1976. Ph.D. cn--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.Bibliography: leaves 446-449.Ph.D.c

Urban Visual Intelligence: Studying Cities with AI and Street-level Imagery

The visual dimension of cities has been a fundamental subject in urban studies, since the pioneering work of scholars such as Sitte, Lynch, Arnheim, and Jacobs. Several decades later, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing how people move, sense, and interact with cities. This paper reviews the literature on the appearance and function of cities to illustrate how visual information has been used to understand them. A conceptual framework, Urban Visual Intelligence, is introduced to systematically elaborate on how new image data sources and AI techniques are reshaping the way researchers perceive and measure cities, enabling the study of the physical environment and its interactions with socioeconomic environments at various scales. The paper argues that these new approaches enable researchers to revisit the classic urban theories and themes, and potentially help cities create environments that are more in line with human behaviors and aspirations in the digital age

Floodwater farming, discontinuous ephemeral streams, and Puebloan abandonment in southwestern Colorado

Geoarchaeological study on the southern piedmont of Sleeping Ute Mountain in southwestern Colorado indicates the presence of discontinuous ephemeral streams that were the foci of episodic Puebloan occupation between A.D. 600s and 1280. Characterized by arroyos, discontinuous ephemeral streams contain alternating aggrading and degrading reaches and are well suited for ak chin floodwater agriculture. Episodic Puebloan abandonment of the southern piedmont correlates with periods of drought but does not appear to be linked to stream entrenchment. We question a priori assumptions of droughts correlated to stream entrenchment and urge caution in the use of drought-arroyo models for settlement shifts in alluvial flood plains without supporting stratigraphic or geomorphic evidence

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

The Changing Landscape for Stroke\ua0Prevention in AF: Findings From the GLORIA-AF Registry Phase 2

Background GLORIA-AF (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients with Atrial Fibrillation) is a prospective, global registry program describing antithrombotic treatment patterns in patients with newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation at risk of stroke. Phase 2 began when dabigatran, the first non\u2013vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulant (NOAC), became available. Objectives This study sought to describe phase 2 baseline data and compare these with the pre-NOAC era collected during phase 1. Methods During phase 2, 15,641 consenting patients were enrolled (November 2011 to December 2014); 15,092 were eligible. This pre-specified cross-sectional analysis describes eligible patients\u2019 baseline characteristics. Atrial fibrillation disease characteristics, medical outcomes, and concomitant diseases and medications were collected. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results Of the total patients, 45.5% were female; median age was 71 (interquartile range: 64, 78) years. Patients were from Europe (47.1%), North America (22.5%), Asia (20.3%), Latin America (6.0%), and the Middle East/Africa (4.0%). Most had high stroke risk (CHA2DS2-VASc [Congestive heart failure, Hypertension, Age  6575 years, Diabetes mellitus, previous Stroke, Vascular disease, Age 65 to 74 years, Sex category] score  652; 86.1%); 13.9% had moderate risk (CHA2DS2-VASc = 1). Overall, 79.9% received oral anticoagulants, of whom 47.6% received NOAC and 32.3% vitamin K antagonists (VKA); 12.1% received antiplatelet agents; 7.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. For comparison, the proportion of phase 1 patients (of N = 1,063 all eligible) prescribed VKA was 32.8%, acetylsalicylic acid 41.7%, and no therapy 20.2%. In Europe in phase 2, treatment with NOAC was more common than VKA (52.3% and 37.8%, respectively); 6.0% of patients received antiplatelet treatment; and 3.8% received no antithrombotic treatment. In North America, 52.1%, 26.2%, and 14.0% of patients received NOAC, VKA, and antiplatelet drugs, respectively; 7.5% received no antithrombotic treatment. NOAC use was less common in Asia (27.7%), where 27.5% of patients received VKA, 25.0% antiplatelet drugs, and 19.8% no antithrombotic treatment. Conclusions The baseline data from GLORIA-AF phase 2 demonstrate that in newly diagnosed nonvalvular atrial fibrillation patients, NOAC have been highly adopted into practice, becoming more frequently prescribed than VKA in Europe and North America. Worldwide, however, a large proportion of patients remain undertreated, particularly in Asia and North America. (Global Registry on Long-Term Oral Antithrombotic Treatment in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation [GLORIA-AF]; NCT01468701

Day Lighting

Architectural projects and/or sites mentioned: Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche (Franz Heinrich Schwechten and Egon Eiermann, 1891-1895) (Berlin, Germany) ; Metropolitan Museum of Art (Richard Morris Hunt and Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates, 1895) (New York, New York) ; San Francisco International Airport (1951-1954/1963/1971-1981) (San Francisco, California) ; Holyoke Center, Harvard University (José Luis Sert, 1958-1966) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) ; Saint Louis Priory and school (Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum, 1962) (Creve Coeur, Missouri) ; History Faculty Building, Cambridge University (James Frazer Stirling, 1964-1966) (Cambridge, United Kingdom) ; George Gund Hall, Harvard University (John Andrews, 1969-1972) (Cambridge, Massachusetts) ; John Hancock Tower (Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, 1969-1976) (Boston, Massachusetts) ; Johnson Controls Salt Lake City Office (Donald Watson, 1979-1982) (Salt Lake City, Utah) ; Tennessee Valley Authority Headquarters Building (Sim Van der Ryn) (Chattanooga, Tennessee)Audio files are EID restricted. Individuals without an EID should send an email request to [email protected] Librarie

Proteomic-based biotyping reveals hidden diversity within a microalgae culture collection: An example using Dunaliella

Accurate and defendable taxonomic identification of microalgae strains is vital for culture collections, industry and academia; particularly when addressing issues of intellectual property. We demonstrate the remarkable effectiveness of Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionisation Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) biotyping to deliver rapid and accurate strain separation, even in situations where standard molecular tools prove ineffective. Highly distinctive MALDI spectra were obtained for thirty two biotechnologically interesting Dunaliella strains plus strains of Arthrospira, Chlorella, Isochrysis, Tetraselmis and a range of culturable co-occurring bacteria. Spectra were directly compared with genomic DNA sequences (internal transcribed spacer, ITS). Within individual Dunaliella isolates MALDI discriminated between strains with identical ITS sequences, thereby emphasising and enhancing knowledge of the diversity within microalgae culture collections. Further, MALDI spectra did not vary with culture age or growth stage during the course of the experiment; therefore MALDI presents stable and accurate strain-specific signature spectra. Bacterial contamination did not affect MALDI’s discriminating power. Biotyping by MALDI-TOF-MS will prove effective in situations wherein precise strain identification is vital, for example in cases involving intellectual property disputes and in monitoring and safeguarding biosecurity. MALDI should be accepted as a biotyping tool to complement and enhance standard molecular taxonomy for microalgae