The multiplicity of built form manifestations: Situating the domestic form within interwoven syntactic and semiotic domains

Abstract Transformations in Amman's economic and political status have triggered a number of fundamental changes in the socio-cultural and urban forms of the city. Nourished by the oil-boom of the 1970s, Amman, the capital of Jordan, has been subjected to accelerated processes of change at every scale, creating a novel physical and sociocultural environment which bears little affinity with its older counterpart (Fethi et al, 1996: 173). Post-oil-boom domestic villas have displayed formal stylistic features of extreme eclecticity, ostentatiousness and extravagance, not readily comparable with those of any previous era Amidst these representational stylistic varieties of villa form, the architectural research in this paper is primarily directed towards the investigation of stylistic differences as indicators of socio-architectural preferences within the contemporary dynamic. Although understanding built form is an integral part of the objective of any built-environment paradigm, a methodical understanding of how its architecture is influenced by different socio-cultural aspects has been notably lacking. Most researchers have treated the different tangible and intangible components of form in isolation; their studies focused on one aspect of the multiplicity of built form manifestations, spatial, stylistic or semiological, ignoring others or leaving them to related yet independent research, without trying to situate the domestic form within interwoven domains. The analytical and empirical methodology used in this paper, for investigating the eclectic architecture of modern Amman-Jordan goes some way towards rectifying these deficiencies. It was concluded that it is necessary to 81.2 reconceptualise the different manifestations of architectural form from a semiological point of view, and to decode their components within a perceptual and analytical perspective. Domestic forms are accordingly analysed at three levels: the stylistic rules that operated to produce their facade complexity, the syntactic spatial principles that structured the configurational properties of the layouts, and the semiological perceptions which defined the way in which the architectural variety is grasped by the owners. 1.Past research In general as well as specific architectural literature, the subject of domestic architecture has been extensively examined. The home has been described by many authors as the most multi-dimensional territorial centre Alternative approaches to the study of domestic form have sought an understanding of the psychological and social-symbolism of the architecture of the house Environmental and semiological paradigms provided alternative approaches to the study of forms and tried to offer a theoretical framework relating physical and psychological factors operating on the aesthetic experience of forms (Canter, 1993, p659-698; Nasar, 1989 The literature showed that while formal visual procedures have concentrated on the particularities of form at the expense of content, behavioural, psychological and semiological studies seem to have exhausted a converse approach, producing an extensive body of socio-cultural, abstracted knowledge, which does not explain the particularity of form. 81.3 Proceedings . 4th International Space Syntax Symposium London 2003 The theoretical perspective The most suitable methods to the analysis of the domestic forms of this research seem to be those which allow villas to be examined, described, and analysed within their socio-cultural context and which stress the insights of forms over the primacy of their basic and physical structures. The actual interest of this research is not in the traditional scale drawings of plans and facades, but in how the spatial layout of certain classes of plan illustrate the social concepts involved, and how the visual perception of the different forms of facades and their components might activate the universe of the signified in viewers' minds. Glassie's approach provides a comprehensive conceptual framework for the investigation of the different facets of change, and attempts to understand the hidden logic of architectural elements, by focusing on the semiotics of the syntax of forms (Glassie, 1975). However, and despite its theoretical strength, it does not develop very far, from a methodological perspective. Although Hillier et al.'s syntactic approach provides a powerful tool for the analysis of socio-cultural expression as embodied in the spatial patterns of domestic forms, where spatial layout is described structurally and comprehended objectively within a semiological framework The stylistic layer In the light of the literature review, the aim here is to establish an appropriate model for the description and classification of Amman's forms. By responding to the strengths of each of the ideas mentioned, it became possible to develop a compound theoretical and methodological logic that can read the variety of Amman's facades which: a) responds to the architectural and perceptual aspects of material artefacts and relates to the characteristic context of facades b) accounts for the way in which perception of forms affects recognition of the stylistic criteria; c) develops a mixed matrix method that can describe the different levels of similarity and difference between facades and accounts for the importance of elements, features and masses whether perceived separately or collectively. Layer 5: at this stage, the constructive and decorative details of stone finish, columns, cornices and roofing are added to provide the final image. Layer 6: along with these five stages, a sixth stage was developed to give an account of the entire range of stylistic features appearing in each villa. In order to support analysis, these dependent forms were removed from their real facades and grouped into a category labelled 'stylistic features'. Figure 2: Layers of abstraction / cumulative complexity The multiplicity of built form manifestations 81.6 Based on the frontal aspects of buildings, "the proportion expressed on the front façade" and "massing", it was possible to classify 202 villas of the 230 stylistic villas into eleven different types The perceptual layer Despite the analysis in the previous stylistic layer, which identified the stylistic typologies of west Amman, the findings of these analyses remain incomplete, because their initial concern has always been the syntax of facade. Although investigations were conducted within a framework which draws heavily on the perceptual recognition of forms, these investigations did not delve into the second stage of perception, which involves the meanings of forms. Within this context, the question arising is: are there certain shared feelings and generated symbolic vocabularies that can enrich the knowledge gained about investigated facades and thus suggest a new way of looking at forms? To determine the extent to which particular types of stylistic expression may be consistently perceived as similar to or different from each other, and to find which of these recognised design strategies are preferred over others, it was necessary to focus on how people recognise the variety of Amman. A "Piling task" was designed in which interviewees (29 villa owners) were presented with colour photographs of twenty-seven stylistically diverse villas, covering the different stylistic types identified in the stylistic layer. Interviewees were instructed to attend to the nature of these forms, and to sort villas into as many piles as necessary, so that the villas in any pile were more similar to one another than to villas in any other pile. The whole twentyseven photographs were presented at one time, to help interviewees anchor their judgements (Naser, 1989). 81.8 By reviewing the way in which each of the twenty-nine owners interviewed piled the twenty-seven photographs of the diverse villas, it became possible to formulate a clear picture of people's recognition and clustering of forms, and the extent to which the logic which developed these clusterings is different from or similar to that used in architectural circles. Interviewees clustered the villas into four sets When the respondents were asked about what were their criteria for making these piles? and; is there an order of preference within these piles? It became clear especially after using semantic-scale investigations that it is possible to put respondent groups of west Amman into two diverse categories: one which found set A the most desirable, because, as they argue, all its villas are distinguished by their grandness, expansiveness, and status; and one which found this same set the least preferred and even the most distasteful because its villas manifest a noveau-rich approach to the search for socially appreciated status. By referring to the clustering and preference judgement of the four sets combined, it becomes clear that while some sets occupied different positions in people's preferences, and were symbolically loaded with diverse social connotations, other sets have similar preference profiles and occupied the mid-scale of groups' judgements. Nevertheless, and despite the variety within the norm of the findings, what remains significantly consistent, is respondents' piling, regardless of the attached symbolic meaning of the villas and heedless of their background. This confirms that inhabitants' recognition of stylistic forms is almos

VITAMIN-D DEFICIENCY AND RISK OF ACUTE CORONARY SYNDROME

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the relation between vitamin D plasma concentrations and prevalence of prespecified coronary risk factors, and to assess the role of vitamin D deficiency as an independent risk factor for the acute coronary syndrome (ACS).Methods: In this study, plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels were measured in 60 consecutive ACS patients at hospital presentation, and patient data including socio-demographics and clinical variables were recorded at the time of admission. We used the Independent samples T-test and the chi-square test to compare differences in the continuous and categorical variables, respectively. The partial correlation coefficient was used to measure association between plasma vitamin D levels and acute coronary syndrome while controlling for traditional cardiovascular risk factors.Results: This study found significant associations between low plasma vitamin D levels and prevalence of hypertension and smoking. Whereas, no significant association between low plasma vitamin D levels and prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) was found. There was a statistically significant correlation between vitamin D deficiency and acute coronary syndrome, even after controlling for traditional cardiovascular risk factors (P = 0.028).Conclusion: Vitamin D deficiency is independently associated with acute coronary syndromes, and could be an independent risk factor for the acute coronary syndrome (ACS)

Asthma diagnosis and treatment - 1012. The efficacy of budesonide in the treatmetn of acute asthma in children: a double-blind, randomized, controlled trial.

Background Current evidence suggests that inhaled glucocorticoids (IGC) have a more profound topical none genomic effect on bronchial airways as compared to systemic glucocorticoids. The value of adding IGC to current therapy of acute asthma is not well established. Methods We conducted a double-blind, randomized, two-arm, parallel groups, controlled clinical trial to compare the addition of budesonide 1500 mcg or placebo (normal saline) to standard acute asthma treatment (albuterol and ipratropium bromide) administered in 3 divided mixed doses within 1 hour in the emergency department (ED). Children 2-12 years of age with moderate or severe acute asthma, scoring 8-15/15 on a well-validated scoring system were included. Both groups received a single dose of prednisone 2 mg/kg/day (max. 60 mg) at the beginning of therapy. The primary outcome was admission rate within 2-4 hours from starting therapy. Results A total of 723 children were enrolled in the study over 17 months duration, of whom 139 were allowed to re-enroll and be randomized to constitute 906 randomization assignments (458 on the treatment group and 448 on the control group); with baseline mean + SD asthma score of 10.63 + 1.73; age 5.52 + 2.76 years; 35% girls; 30.8% (16.5%) with baseline severe asthma score of ≥12 (≥ 13). Statistical Analysis plan allowed for the potential dependency in response due to reenrollments of a subset of children, using Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling (GLMM) techniques. Baseline demographic and clinical characteristics were not significantly different between the two randomized groups. Seventy-five out of 458 (16.4%) of the treatment group vs. 82/448 (18.3%) of the control group were admitted, (OR 0.85, CI: 0.59-1.23, p-value=0.39). Among the severe asthmatics with baseline score ≥13, treatment vs. placebo group, GLMM adjusted admission rate was 30% vs. 47%, indicating a 17% difference in admission rate in favor of the treatment group (adjusted OR of 0.49, CI: 0.25-0.95; p-value= 0.035) that indicated a 51% reduction in the risk of admission for the treatment vs. control group. Conclusions Children with baseline severe asthma score ≥13 who were treated with budesonide had a significant reduction in their admission rate

Potent Tau aggregation inhibitor D-Peptides selected against Tau-repeat 2 using mirror image phage display

Alzheimer's disease and other Tauopathies are associated with neurofibrillary tangles composed of Tau protein, as well as toxic Tau oligomers. Therefore, inhibitors of pathological Tau aggregation are potentially useful candidates for future therapies targeting Tauopathies. Two hexapeptides within Tau, designated PHF6* (275-VQIINK-280) and PHF6 (306-VQIVYK-311), are known to promote Tau aggregation. Recently, the PHF6* segment has been described as the more potent driver of Tau aggregation. We therefore employed mirror-image phage display with a large peptide library to identify PHF6* fibril binding peptides consisting of D-enantiomeric amino acids. The suitability of D-enantiomeric peptides for in vivo applications, which are protease stable and less immunogenic than L-peptides, has already been demonstrated. The identified D-enantiomeric peptide MMD3 and its retro-inverso form, designated MMD3rev, inhibited in vitro fibrillization of the PHF6* peptide, the repeat domain of Tau as well as full-length Tau. Dynamic light scattering, pelleting assays and atomic force microscopy demonstrated that MMD3 prevents the formation of tau β-sheet-rich fibrils by diverting Tau into large amorphous aggregates. NMR data suggest that the D-enantiomeric peptides bound to Tau monomers with rather low affinity, but ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) data demonstrated binding to PHF6* and full length Tau fibrils. In addition, molecular insight into the binding mode of MMD3 to PHF6* fibrils were gained by in silico modelling. The identified PHF6*-targeting peptides were able to penetrate cells. The study establishes PHF6* fibril binding peptides consisting of D-enantiomeric amino acids as potential molecules for therapeutic and diagnostic applications in AD research

Slider—maximum use of probability information for alignment of short sequence reads and SNP detection

Motivation: A plethora of alignment tools have been created that are designed to best fit different types of alignment conditions. While some of these are made for aligning Illumina Sequence Analyzer reads, none of these are fully utilizing its probability (prb) output. In this article, we will introduce a new alignment approach (Slider) that reduces the alignment problem space by utilizing each read base's probabilities given in the prb files

Potent Tau Aggregation Inhibitor D-Peptides Selected against Tau-Repeat 2 Using Mirror Image Phage Display

Alzheimer's disease and other Tauopathies are associated with neurofibrillary tangles composed of Tau protein, as well as toxic Tau oligomers. Therefore, inhibitors of pathological Tau aggregation are potentially useful candidates for future therapies targeting Tauopathies. Two hexapeptides within Tau, designated PHF6* (275-VQIINK-280) and PHF6 (306-VQIVYK-311), are known to promote Tau aggregation. Recently, the PHF6* segment has been described as the more potent driver of Tau aggregation. We therefore employed mirror-image phage display with a large peptide library to identify PHF6* fibril binding peptides consisting of D-enantiomeric amino acids. The suitability of D-enantiomeric peptides for in vivo applications, which are protease stable and less immunogenic than L-peptides, has already been demonstrated. The identified D-enantiomeric peptide MMD3 and its retro-inverso form, designated MMD3rev, inhibited in vitro fibrillization of the PHF6* peptide, the repeat domain of Tau as well as full-length Tau. Dynamic light scattering, pelleting assays and atomic force microscopy demonstrated that MMD3 prevents the formation of tau β-sheet-rich fibrils by diverting Tau into large amorphous aggregates. NMR data suggest that the D-enantiomeric peptides bound to Tau monomers with rather low affinity, but ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) data demonstrated binding to PHF6* and full length Tau fibrils. In addition, molecular insight into the binding mode of MMD3 to PHF6* fibrils were gained by in silico modelling. The identified PHF6*-targeting peptides were able to penetrate cells. The study establishes PHF6* fibril binding peptides consisting of D-enantiomeric amino acids as potential molecules for therapeutic and diagnostic applications in AD research

IUPred2A: context-dependent prediction of protein disorder as a function of redox state and protein binding

The structural states of proteins include ordered globular domains as well as intrinsically disordered protein regions that exist as highly flexible conformational ensembles in isolation. Various computational tools have been developed to discriminate ordered and disordered segments based on the amino acid sequence. However, properties of IDRs can also depend on various conditions, including binding to globular protein partners or environmental factors, such as redox potential. These cases provide further challenges for the computational characterization of disordered segments. In this work we present IUPred2A, a combined web interface that allows to generate energy estimation based predictions for ordered and disordered residues by IUPred2 and for disordered binding regions by ANCHOR2. The updated web server retains the robustness of the original programs but offers several new features. While only minor bug fixes are implemented for IUPred, the next version of ANCHOR is significantly improved through a new architecture and parameters optimized on novel datasets. In addition, redox-sensitive regions can also be highlighted through a novel experimental feature

Notable sequence homology of the ORF10 protein introspects the architecture of SARS-CoV-2

The current Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) shows similar pathology to MERS and SARS-CoV, with a current estimated fatality rate of 1.4%. Open reading frame 10 (ORF10) is a unique SARS-CoV-2 accessory protein, which contains eleven cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) epitopes each of nine amino acids in length. Twenty-two unique SARS-CoV-2 ORF10 variants have been identified based on missense mutations found in sequence databases. Some of these mutations are predicted to decrease the stability of ORF10 in silico physicochemical and structural comparative analyses were carried out on SARS-CoV-2 and Pangolin-CoV ORF10 proteins, which share 97.37% amino acid (aa) homology. Though there is a high degree of ORF10 protein similarity of SARS-CoV-2 and Pangolin-CoV, there are differences of these two ORF10 proteins related to their sub-structure (loop/coil region), solubility, antigenicity and shift from strand to coil at aa position 26 (tyrosine). SARS-CoV-2 ORF10, which is apparently expressed in vivo since reactive T cell clones are found in convalescent patients should be monitored for changes which could correlate with the pathogenesis of COVID-19

DescribePROT: database of amino acid-level protein structure and function predictions

We present DescribePROT, the database of predicted amino acid-level descriptors of structure and function of proteins. DescribePROT delivers a comprehensive collection of 13 complementary descriptors predicted using 10 popular and accurate algorithms for 83 complete proteomes that cover key model organisms. The current version includes 7.8 billion predictions for close to 600 million amino acids in 1.4 million proteins. The descriptors encompass sequence conservation, position specific scoring matrix, secondary structure, solvent accessibility, intrinsic disorder, disordered linkers, signal peptides, MoRFs and interactions with proteins, DNA and RNAs. Users can search DescribePROT by the amino acid sequence and the UniProt accession number and entry name. The pre-computed results are made available instantaneously. The predictions can be accesses via an interactive graphical interface that allows simultaneous analysis of multiple descriptors and can be also downloaded in structured formats at the protein, proteome and whole database scale. The putative annotations included by DescriPROT are useful for a broad range of studies, including: investigations of protein function, applied projects focusing on therapeutics and diseases, and in the development of predictors for other protein sequence descriptors. Future releases will expand the coverage of DescribePROT. DescribePROT can be accessed at http://biomine.cs.vcu.edu/servers/DESCRIBEPROT/