Re:Connection: exercises in unplugging and mindfully reconnecting

How can architecture encourage focused attention and mindfulness in an increasingly distracted and distractible world? As a primary means of connectivity in the 21st century, smartphones and social media have provided unparalleled efficiencies, connectivity and entertainment. However, constant engagement with richly-pixelated virtual worlds has also brought about mass addiction to devices as college students log more compulsive “screen time” than ever before. Mental health issues such as crippling anxiety, diminished attention spans, and unhappiness, are on the rise as students disconnect from the physical world and are consumed by their virtual one. This thesis is comprised of a series of architectural interventions created for unplugging and reconnecting the body with the physical world: analog spaces that prioritize attentiveness and consciousness over instant gratification and compulsion. As concentrated sensory environments, these retreats from technology exist to reintroduce awareness into everyday life and quiet hyperstimulated minds. Taking the Merchants Bank Building in Providence, Rhode Island, as a model location to demonstrate these concepts, this thesis demonstrates the power of mindfulness in everyday life. As a building that has historically worked to serve capitalistic and transactional goals at the juncture of downtown and major universities, the architectural interventions work to bring mindfulness to students who would otherwise pass unconsciously through this liminal space between academia and commerce. Through framing and magnifying meaningful aspects of the local environment (e.g. human connections, high-rise silhouettes, bodies of water, natural and artificial light, earth, and the sky) while softening peripheral stimuli with architectural filters and barriers, these mindful exercises in observing and participating serve as powerful aids for achieving a healthier mind, body, and life. While existential threats loom in today’s world, ranging from systemic inequalities and a worldwide pandemic to war abroad and global warming, the inward pursuit of mindfulness serves as an accessible yet imperative aid in healing not only individual minds and communities, but these large-scale issues

An Economist Looks at Solar Energy: The Government\u27s Role

The economist speaks in terms of free enterprise, and of competition. This most pure state of economic existence, where all economic textbooks begin, is a rare occurrence in the real world, however. The energy market is a notable example of how government involvement has skewed consumer choices. This is as it should be, for we expect the public decision making process to involve more than just considerations of economy. This paper will place solar energy in the context of a marketplace for energy, and justify the role of government in influencing solar energy market development and market penetration. It will also examine the concept of commercialization, the effect of government incentives, and the proper timing of government involvement

A Theorem of Sanderson on Link Bordisms in Dimension 4

The groups of link bordism can be identified with homotopy groups via the Pontryagin-Thom construction. B.J. Sanderson computed the bordism group of 3 component surface-links using the Hilton-Milnor Theorem, and later gave a geometric interpretation of the groups in terms of intersections of Seifert hypersurfaces and their framings. In this paper, we geometrically represent every element of the bordism group uniquely by a certain standard form of a surface-link, a generalization of a Hopf link. The standard forms give rise to an inverse of Sanderson's geometrically defined invariant.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol1/agt-1-14.abs.htm

The Retardation of Enamel Dissolution Rates by Adsorbed Long-Chain Ammonium Chlorides

Dissolution rate studies were conducted with hydroxyapatite and enamel in the presence of adsorbed surfactants. In general, the ability of the surfactant to retard the dissolution rate was directly related to its ability to adsorb onto apatite. Cetylpyridinium chloride adsorbed poorly onto apatite, and its influence on the dissolution rate was marginal. The long-chain protonated amines were much more effective as rate retarding agents, sometimes of the order of 1,000-, to 10,000-fold. These compounds were also found to adsorb much more strongly. A systematic dependence of the dissolution rate on chain length was found for these amines.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68179/2/10.1177_00220345690480040301.pd

Correction to: The hidden therapist: evidence for a central role of music in psychedelic therapy.

The article The hidden therapist: evidence for a central role of music in psychedelic therapy, written by Mendel Kaelen, Bruna Giribaldi, Jordan Raine, Lisa Evans, Christopher Timmerman, Natalie Rodriguez, Leor Roseman, Amanda Feilding, David Nutt, Robin Carhart-Harris, was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal

Operational reliability assessment of the GEOS A spacecraft

Decision theory application to GEOS A spacecraft operational reliability assessmen

Hsc70-induced changes in clathrin-auxilin cage structure suggest a role for clathrin light chains in cage disassembly

The molecular chaperone, Hsc70, together with its co-factor, auxilin, facilitates the ATP-dependent removal of clathrin during clathrin-mediated endocytosis in cells. We have used cryo-electron microscopy to determine the 3D structure of a complex of clathrin, auxilin401-910 and Hsc70 at pH 6 in the presence of ATP, frozen within 20 seconds of adding Hsc70 in order to visualize events that follow the binding of Hsc70 to clathrin and auxilin before clathrin disassembly. In this map, we observe density beneath the vertex of the cage that we attribute to bound Hsc70. This density emerges asymmetrically from the clathrin vertex, suggesting preferential binding by Hsc70 for one of the three possible sites at the vertex. Statistical comparison with a map of whole auxilin and clathrin previously published by us reveals the location of statistically significant differences which implicate involvement of clathrin light chains in structural rearrangements which occur after Hsc70 is recruited. Clathrin disassembly assays using light scattering suggest that loss of clathrin light chains reduces the efficiency with which auxilin facilitates this reaction. These data support a regulatory role for clathrin light chains in clathrin disassembly in addition to their established role in regulating clathrin assembly