Towards a More Equal City: Framing the Challenges and Opportunities

Cities are growing differently today than before. As much as 70 percent of people in emerging cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America is under-served. Furthermore, cities face challenges in four areas:Highest rates of urbanization are in sub-Saharan Africa, South and Southeast AsiaUrbanization is now happening in more low-income countries than in the pastThe share of poor people living in urban areas is on the rise worldwideCities in the Global South have the fewest public resources per capitaWe need a new approach that will benefit all urban residents and create sustainable, productive cities for the 21st century. The World Resources Report (WRR) examines if prioritizing access to core urban services, we can create cities that are prosperous and sustainable for all people.This first installment of the WRR developed a new categorization of cities into emerging, struggling, thriving, and stabilizing cities. It focuses on solutions for struggling and emerging cities—over half the cities included in the analysis—because they have the greatest opportunity to alter their development trajectory

Great expectations: The Australian Greens at the 2004 Federal Election

Prior to the 2004 federal election the Australian Greens were rising as the third force in the Australian political system. At the 2001 election they secured an increased share of the vote and returned a second Senator. Conversely the Australian Democrats, held to be the third force in Australian politics went backwards in 2001, losing a Senate seat. From 2001 to 2004 the Greens polled strongly and were buoyed by increased support for their anti-Iraq war and pro-refugee positions. As a party they appeared to be moving beyond single-issue status. Equally the Democrats were suffering from internal disunity and their support collapsed. By the time of the 2004 election the Greens were expected to win enough Senate seats to at least share the balance of power in the Senate. These high expectations were held by political commentators and the Greens themselves, buoyed by strong polling. This dissertation examines the expectations placed on the Greens. While it was found that expectations were too high, the Greens nevertheless had the capacity to perform better than they did in the Senate. The Greens\u27 underperformance at the 2004 federal election is generally consistent with \u27constraints theory\u27. While institutional barriers to minor party representation in the Australian parliament provided the greatest constraint on the Greens\u27 election performance, this dissertation also examines the impact of government and media attacks on the Greens during the 2004 election campaign and the Australian Embassy bombing on the Greens\u27 election results. ii

A Performer\u27s Analysis and Comparison of Hindemith\u27s Piano Sonata for Four Hands (1938) Transcription for wind band by Mark Spede to the original piano work.

The works of Paul Hindemith have become a staple of the wind band repertoire. The number of works is just a handful but there have been some interest in transcribing more of his works for teh wind band. This document explores and discusses a new transcription by Mark Spede of Hindemith\u27s Piano Sonata for Four Hands that will expand teh available the available repertoire for wind ensembles.During this process, the biographical information about Hindemith, his compositional style as it relates to the Sonata, and an analysis of the work. Also discussed is the progression Dr. Spede went through to create the transcription, from his first exposure to the piece, the research, orchestration methods, and reflections on the transcription. The document will also assist conductors in the preparation of the piece for performance

Frontier Port on the Mississippi: a History of the Legend of Natchez Under-The-Hill, 1800-1900

Natchez Under-the-Hill, from 1800 to 1840 the second leading river port on the Mississippi, played a central role in the economic life of the Old Southwestern frontier. Despite this, it was chiefly known to contemporaries in both America and abroad as a center of intemperance, prostitution, gambling, and violence. During the antebellum years this image of the Natchez waterfront was a symbol of the Myth of the Wild and Savage West, which assumed Westerners were violent, immoral, and uncivilized. The lawlessness and vice of the port, widely touted in travel journals and newspapers, provided evidence to non-westerners that their perceptions were correct. From 1800 to c.1835 the major contributors of such evidence were traveler-journalists. While most focused upon the port’s social vices, few provided details sufficient to prove lawlessness was actually a significant attribute of its society. However, their primary effect was to fix the image of the Natchez landing in the national mind. Beginning c. 1830, under the influence of the frontier tradition, this image evolved into a legend emphasizing gambling and violence due largely to its long association with the gamblers of the Mississippi Valley. The identification of the port and the gamblers in this tradition was assured by two events: the violent expulsion of the gamblers from Vicksburg and Natchez in 1835 and the tornado of 1840 which destroyed the landing town. Between 1865 and c.1900 the legend was virtually forgotten as a result of the influence of the genteel tradition and the Old South myth which required the suppression of all traditions that countered its own rosy view of the Southern past. This study concludes that what was written about Natchez Under-the-Hill in that period has less to do with the facts than with the myths by which Americans and others interpreted the experience of the young nation

Estimation and control of multi-object systems with high-fidenlity sensor models: A labelled random finite set approach

Principled and novel multi-object tracking algorithms are proposed, that have the ability to optimally process realistic sensor data, by accommodating complex observational phenomena such as merged measurements and extended targets. Additionally, a sensor control scheme based on a tractable, information theoretic objective is proposed, the goal of which is to optimise tracking performance in multi-object scenarios. The concept of labelled random finite sets is adopted in the development of these new techniques

The Role of Viperin in the Innate Antiviral Response

AbstractViral infection of the cell is able to initiate a signaling cascade of events that ultimately attempts to limit viral replication and prevent escalating infection through expression of host antiviral proteins. Recent work has highlighted the importance of the host antiviral protein viperin in this process, with its ability to limit a large variety of viral infections as well as play a role in the production of type I interferon and the modulation of a number of transcription factor binding sites. Viperin appears to have the ability to modulate varying conditions within the cell and to interfere with proviral host proteins in its attempts to create an unfavorable environment for viral replication. The study of the mechanistic actions of viperin has come a long way in recent years, describing important functional domains of the protein for its antiviral and immune modulator actions as well as demonstrating its role as a member of the radical SAM enzyme family. However, despite the rapid expansion of knowledge regarding the functions of this highly conserved and ancient antiviral protein, there still remains large gaps in our understanding of the precise mechanisms at play for viperin to exert such a wide variety of roles within the cell

The Evolution of Endothermy and Its Diversity in Mammals and Birds

Many elements of mammalian and avian thermoregulatory mechanisms are present in reptiles and the changes involved in the transition to endothermy are more quantitative than qualitative. Drawing on our experience with reptiles and echidnas, we comment on that transition and on current theories about how it occurred. The theories divide into two categories, depending upon whether selection pressures operated directly or indirectly on mechanisms producing heat. Both categories of theories focus on explaining the evolution of homeothermic endothermy but ignore heterothermy. However, noting that hibernation and torpor are almost certainly plesiomorphic (= ancestral, primitive), and that heterothermy is very common among endotherms, we propose that homeothermic endothermy evolved via heterothermy, with the earliest protoendotherms being facultatively endothermic and retaining their ectothermic capacity for "constitutional eurythermy". Thus, unlike current models for the evolution of endothermy which assume that hibernation and torpor are specialisations arising from homeothermic ancestry, and therefore irrelevant, we consider that they are central. We note the sophistication of thermoregulatory behavior and control in reptiles, including precise control over conductance, and argue that brooding endothermy seen in some otherwise ectothermic Boidae suggests an incipient capacity for facultative endothermy in reptiles. We suggest that the earliest insulation in protoendotherms may have been internal, arising from of re-distribution of the fat bodies which are typical of reptiles. We note that short-beaked echidnas provide a useful living model of what an (advanced) protoendotherm may have been like. Echdinas have the advantages of endothermy, including the capacity for homeothermic endothermy during incubation, but are very relaxed in their thermoregulatory precision and minimise energetic costs by using ectothermy facultatively when entering short or long term torpor. They also have a substantial layer of internal dorsal insulation. We favor theories about the evolution of endothermy which invoke direct selection for the benefits conferred by warmth, such as expanding daily activity into the night, higher capacities for sustained activity, higher digestion rates, climatic range expansion and, not unrelated, control over incubation temperature and the benefits for parental care. We present an indicative, stepwise schema in which observed patterns of body temperature are a consequence of selection pressures, the underlying mechanisms and energy optimization, and in which homeothermy results when it is energetically desirable, rather than as the logical endpoint