Star Architecture as Socio-Material Assemblage

Taking inspiration from new materialism and assemblage, the chapter deals with star architects and iconic buildings as socio-material network effects that do not pre-exist action, but are enacted in practice, in the materiality of design crafting and city building. Star architects are here conceptualized as part of broader assemblages of actors and practices ‘making star architecture’ a reality, and the buildings they design are considered not just as unique and iconic objects, but dis-articulated as complex crafts mobilizing skills, technologies, materials, and forms of knowledge not necessarily ascribable to architecture. Overcoming narrow criticism focusing on the symbolic order of icons as unique creations and alienated repetitions of capitalist development, the chapter’s main aim is to widen the scope of critique by bridging culture and economy, symbolism and practicality, making star architecture available to a broad, fragmented arena of (potential) critics, unevenly equipped with critical tools and differentiated experiences

Changing mega-events’ spatial strategies and cultural policy: scaling down, spacing out, and assembling organizations in the cases of London and Milan

Despite the proposed ‘certainty’ in a city or region hosting a mega-event, there has long been issues of uncertainty surrounding the planning and implementation of what have until now essentially been mega-projects. Large events have found a variety of ways to adapt and respond to unforeseen circumstances due to political conflicts, planning of oversize venues, limited time of implementation, and legacies that are difficult to manage. Considering the further increased uncertainty surrounding the planning of mega-events as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines how an accompanying cultural component—e.g., the Cultural Olympiad—may help cities that plan for events like the Olympics transition toward diversified drivers and long-term legacy. In particular, the case of cultural offering in Milan between the two mega-events of Expo 2015 and the upcoming 2026 Milano-Cortina Olympic Games shows how host cities can address growing uncertainty through the expanded role of a cultural programme combined with the rescaling of traditional mega-event formats. With this purpose, 2012 London Cultural Olympiad has been selected as an antecedent example—with positive and negative outcomes—to critically review the relationships between the Olympics and the Cultural Olympiad, as well as their widespread spatial strategy and public engagement. In addition, the paper offers more general conclusions regarding learning potentials of jointly studying mega-events and cultural policy

Learning from Gulf Cities

Learning from Gulf Cities is the culmination of a long-term collaboration between Harvey Molotch and Davide Ponzini, with architectural photographer, Michele Nastasi, whose photography critically investigates and interprets urbanization within the Gulf and beyond its boundaries. His work illustrates the transference of similar urban modeling from one region to another, a process that is often flawed or incomplete. Nastasi’s images reveal to us how local context alters the nature of an architectural design project, however “global” the architect or international the funding source. In their dual roles as receivers and transmitters of contemporary urban trends, cities like Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi increasingly influence the shape of places beyond the Gulf and the region. This exhibition challenges depictions of Gulf cities as insular, insubstantial or merely flamboyant imitators, and instead portrays them as both originating, as well as reflecting, what is happening in the wider urban world

Analysis of aerodynamic indices for racing sailing yachts: a computational study and benchmark on up to 128 CPUs

This work presents a feasibility study for trustable and affordable CFD analysis of aerodynamic indices of racing sailing yachts. A detailed reconstructed model of a recent America’s Cup class mainsail and asymmetrical spinnaker under light wind conditions has been studied using massive parallel RANS modeling on 128 CPUs. A detailed comparison between computational and experimental data has been performed and discussed, thanks to wind tunnel tests performed with the same geometry under the same wind conditions. The computational grid used was of about 37 millions of tetrahedra and the parallel job has been performed on up to 128 CPUs of a distributed memory Linux cluster using a commercial CFD code. An in deep analysis of the CPU usage has been performed during the computation by means of Ganglia and a complete benchmark of the studied case has been done for 64, 48, 32, 16, 8 and 4 CPUs analyzing the advantages offered by two kind of available interconnection technologies: Ethernet and Infiniband. Besides to this computational benchmark, a sensitivity analysis of the global aerodynamic force components, the lift and the drag, to different grid resolution size has been performed. In particular, mesh size across three orders of magnitude have been investigated: from 0.06 million up to 37 million cells. The computational results obtained here are in great agreement with the experimental data. In particular, the fully tetrahedral meshes allow appreciating the beneficial effect of the increasing of the grid resolution without changing grid topology: a converging trend to the experimental value is observed. In conclusion, the present results confirm the validity of RANS modeling as a design tool and show the advantages and costs of a large tetrahedral mesh for downwind sail design purposes

Do pre-treatment biopsy characteristics predict early tumor progression in feline nasal diffuse large B-cell lymphoma treated with radiotherapy

The standard of care treatment for localised feline nasal lymphoma (FeNL) is radiation therapy (RT). Early local or systemicfailure occurs in 17%–45% of cats treated with RT with or without chemotherapy. The aim of this study was to determine if pre-treatment biopsy characteristics could predict early tumour progression in FeNL. Inclusion criteria consisted of histologicallyconfirmed FeNL, available paraffin blocks of diagnostic quality, localised to the sinonasal cavity on staging pre-RT, treated withIMRT/IGRT (10 × 4.2 Gy) without chemotherapy and at least 1 year follow-up. All pre-RT biopsies were reviewed and evaluatedwith CD3, CD20, CD79a, pan- CK and Ki- 67 immunohistochemistry and the mitotic activity index was determined. The primaryendpoint was progression-free survival (PFS) at 1 year and hazard-ratios (HR) with confidence interval (CI) were calculated.Twenty-eight cats fit the inclusion criteria, and all had diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Seventeen cats (61%) were progression freeat 1 year. Of the 11 cats that progressed in the first year, two had local progression, two had both local and systemic progressionand seven had systemic progression. The mitotic index (HR: 1.03, CI 0.9–1.19, p = 0.645), Ki- 67 (HR: 1.00, CI 0.98–1.02, p = 0.845)and > 30% of tumour-infiltrating T cells (HR: 0.38, CI 0.09–1.56, p = 0.175) were not significantly associated with PFS. In this uni-formly RT treated population of FeNL, none of the evaluated pre-RT histologic parameters could predict early treatment failure

Factors Influencing Internal Medicine Resident Beta Blocker Discontinuation in Acute Decompensated Heart Failure

Background: Heart failure is one of the leading causes of hospital admissions in North America. Although guidelines support the continuation of beta blockers on admission, hemodynamic considerations and mechanistic reasoning may prompt beta blocker discontinuation even in the absence of contraindications. Resident physicians often face this dilemma and are an important group in which to evaluate this decision-making. Methods: Internal medicine residents at two institutions were presented with two scenarios: 1) whether to continue outpatient metoprolol succinate for a patient without evidence of shock admitted with acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) and 2) beta blocker selection during a patient's index presentation with heart failure. Results: 142 of 287 (49.5%) residents responded to the survey. In scenario 1, 61% of residents discontinued metoprolol succinate on admission. The top three concerns about continuing metoprolol were precipitating cardiogenic shock, discomfort with the vital signs range, and attending physician disagreement. In scenario 2, 74% of participants initiated metoprolol succinate, 25% chose carvedilol, and only 1 participant chose bisoprolol. Conclusions: Drivers of inpatient beta blocker discontinuation should be considered by internal medicine training programs and heart failure guideline writers when opportunities arise to enact practice changes that align with evidence