Design With Cities, Not For Them

How To Build More Resilient Cities

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding

An Urbanizing Planet

The video, entitled An Urbanizing Planet, takes viewers on a stunning satellite-viewed tour around our planet. By combining more than 10 datasets, and using GIS processing software and 3D graphic applications, the video shows not only where urbanization will be most extensive, but also how the majority of the expansion will occur in areas adjacent to biodiversity hotspots.

The video was produced to present the framework of a new book Global Urbanization, Biodiversity, and Ecosystems: Challenges and Opportunities — A Global Assessment. The scientific foundation of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook project, the book presents the world’s first assessment of how global urbanization and urban growth impact biodiversity and ecosystems. It builds on contributions by more than 200 scientists worldwide.

When the big Blue Marble photograph was first seen, there was this idea that it was going to change people’s view of ecology and everyone was going to become an environmentalist because of it. It was a big deal to see that image and now it’s just become so commonplace that no one even thinks about how incredible it is to look down on Earth from that perspective or just the technology it takes to create that image.

In the space of 40 years, we’ve come from this very primitive satellite that was taking photographs and scanning the pictures one line at a time, which took hours, to being able to just go online. It’s changed people’s perspective on space. People don’t think about distance anymore. It’s almost as if the geographic distance has evaporated.

It puts space in front of us as thing that we operate in but no longer think about. I think that’s why people get so frustrated in their cars when they want to get someplace quickly, because they’re so used to thinking distance doesn’t exist.  We’ve become spatial animals, we’ve become people that really track ourselves everywhere we go. When you go for a run, you’ve got your little Nike thing hooked to your cell phone. When you’re on Twitter you can use its place location wherever you’re tweeting from.

An interview with John Hessler, a cartography expert at the Library of Congress and one of the people behind the new book, Map: Exploring The World.

[Maps: Left: A Map of Vesuvius (1832) by John Auldjo. Right: Hurricane Katrina Flooding Estimated Depths and Extent (2005) (University of Otago, NOAA)]

What would have once sounded like a far-fetched feminist fantasy – women forming the majority of a parliament – is a reality in one country in the world, Rwanda.

In fact, women are making gains throughout all of Africa, but these achievements have been met with a loud silence from the western feminist movement. 

African women are blazing a feminist trail - why don’t we hear their voices? (The Guardian) 

Surf Girls And Waves http://bit.ly/1bNWtfB

Breathtaking Images of Underwater Life Captured by Freediving Photographers Alex Voyer and Alex Roubaud

“We are not facing a future without work. We are facing a future without jobs.“

READ MORE: Jobs, Work, and Universal Basic Income

Big Data's religious faith denies the reality of failed promises, privacy Chernobyls

Maciej Ceglowski (previously) spoke to a O'Reilly’s Strata Big Data conference this month about the toxicity of data – the fact that data collected is likely to leak, and that data-leaks resemble nuclear leaks in that even the “dilute” data (metadata or lightly contaminated boiler suits and tools) are still deadly when enough of them leak out (I’ve been using this metaphor since 2008).

Ceglowski also raises a critical point: Big Data has not lived up to its promises, especially in life sciences, where we were promised that deep analysis of data would yield up new science that has spectacularly failed to materialise. What’s more, the factors that confound Big Data in life science are also at play in other domains, including the business domains where so much energy has been expended.

The key point is that people react to manipulation through Big Data: when you optimize a system to get people to behave in ways they don’t want to (to spend more money, to click links they aren’t interested in, etc) then people adapt to your interventions and regress to the mean.

Big Data’s advocates believe that all this can be solved with more Big Data. This requires them to deny the privacy harms from collecting (and, inevitably, leaking) our personal information, and to assert without evidence that they can massage the data so that it can’t be associated with the humans from whom it was extracted.

As Ceglowski puts it, ‘people speak of the “data driven organization” with the same religious fervor as a “Christ-centered life”.’

Read the rest

Silica nanoparticles could be used to repair damaged teeth

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown how the development of coated silica nanoparticles could be used in restorative treatment of sensitive teeth and preventing the onset of tooth decay.

The study, published in the Journal of Dentistry, shows how sub-micron silica particles can be prepared to deliver important compounds into damaged teeth through tubules in the dentine.

The tiny particles can be bound to compounds ranging from calcium tooth building materials to antimicrobials that prevent infection.

Professor Damien Walmsley, from the School of Dentistry at the University of Birmingham, explained, “The dentine of our teeth have numerous microscopic holes, which are the entrances to tubules that run through to the nerve. When your outer enamel is breached, the exposure of these tubules is really noticeable. If you drink something cold, you can feel the sensitivity in your teeth because these tubules run directly through to the nerve and the soft tissue of the tooth.”

“Our plan was to use target those same tubules with a multifunctional agent that can help repair and restore the tooth, while protecting it against further infection that could penetrate the pulp and cause irreversible damage.”

The aim of restorative agents is to increase the mineral content of both the enamel and dentine, with the particles acting like seeds for further growth that would close the tubules.

Previous attempts have used compounds of calcium fluoride, combinations of carbonate-hydroxypatite nanocrystals and bioactive glass, but all have seen limited success as they are liable to aggregate on delivery to the tubules. This prevents them from being able to enter the opening which is only 1 to 4 microns in width.

However, the Birmingham team turned to sub-micron silica particles that had been prepared with a surface coating to reduce the chance of aggregation.

When observed using high definition SEM (Scanning Electron Microsopy), the researchers saw promising signs that suggested that the aggregation obstacle had been overcome.

Professor Zoe Pikramenou, from the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, said, “These silica particles are available in a range of sizes, from nanometre to sub-micron, without altering their porous nature. It is this that makes them an ideal container for calcium based compounds to restore the teeth, and antibacterial compounds to protect them. All we needed to do was find the right way of coating them to get them to their target.  We have found that different coatings does change the way that they interact with the tooth surface.”

“We tested a number of different options to see which would allow for the highest level particle penetration into the tubules, and identified a hydrophobic surface coating that provides real hope for the development of an effective agent.”

Our next steps are to optimise the coatings and then see how effective the particles are blocking the communication with the inside of the tooth.  The ultimate aim is to provide relief from the pain of sensitivity.

University of Birmingham

Nanotechnology World Association