Grand Central Station Research Articles

The Participants

While universities increasingly offer institutional support for academic filmmaking, in the specific case of ethics this support can sometimes become an impediment to creativity. The requirement to follow comprehensive university ethical procedures - which are usually developed with great care and attention to the needs of researchers but with little or no focus on creative practice research - might stymie the artistic practice of filmmakers. My video The Participants: a reflection on the ethics of smartphone filmmaking as research aims to offer a provocation intended to challenge university practitioner-researchers to consider the ethics of their practice, but also, at the same time, a provocation to university ethics protocols and procedures. Specifically, the films seeks to encourage the viewer to reflect on the ways in which filmmaker researchers working in in public places might better consider the ethical issues raised by their practice, especially when subsequently employing (and manipulating) footage of individuals who have not given their consent to be filmed. For The Participants I used an iPhone 11 to capture video images of tourists videoing with their smartphones at Grand Central Station, New York.

Coupling an agent-based model and an ensemble Kalman filter for real-time crowd modelling.

Agent-based modelling has emerged as a powerful tool for modelling systems that are driven by discrete, heterogeneous individuals and has proven particularly popular in the realm of pedestrian simulation. However, real-time agent-based simulations face the challenge that they will diverge from the real system over time. This paper addresses this challenge by integrating the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) with an agent-based crowd model to enhance its accuracy in real time. Using the example of Grand Central Station in New York, we demonstrate how our approach can update the state of an agent-based model in real time, aligning it with the evolution of the actual system. The findings reveal that the EnKF can substantially improve the accuracy of agent-based pedestrian simulations by assimilating data as they evolve. This approach not only offers efficiency advantages over existing methods but also presents a more realistic representation of a complex environment than most previous attempts. The potential applications of this method span the management of public spaces under 'normality' to exceptional circumstances such as disaster response, marking a significant advancement for real-time agent-based modelling applications.

Semantic scene upgrades for trajectory prediction.

Understanding pedestrian motion is critical for many real-world applications, e.g., autonomous driving and social robot navigation. It is a challenging problem since autonomous agents require complete understanding of its surroundings including complex spatial, social and scene dependencies. In trajectory prediction research, spatial and social interactions are widely studied while scene understanding has received less attention. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of different encoding mechanisms to understand the influence of the scene on pedestrian trajectories. We leverage a recurrent Variational Autoencoder to encode pedestrian motion history, its social interaction with other pedestrians and semantic scene information. We then evaluate the performance on various public datasets, such as ETH-UCY, Stanford Drone and Grand Central Station. Experimental results show that utilizing a fully segmented map, for explicit scene semantics, out performs other variants of scene representations (semantic and CNN embedding) for trajectory prediction tasks.

Upadok i vosstanovlenie: problema gorodskogo razvitiya Harbina i ego reakciya posle Russko-yaponskoj vojny

The power of Russia in Northeast China had been greatly weakened along with the end of the Russo-Japanese war, and the cities and towns under its control had been decaying. In the face of such a series of problems as a capital loss, population reduction and economic recession, the Russian Empire had to make a timely adjustment to consolidate its dominance for the regions under its control. With the Grand Central Station of Chinese Eastern Railway, Harbin, as an example, the paper replays the recovery process of the township under control of the Russian through interpreting urban construction and planning history, such as urban economic recovery, urban population growth, public utility development, regional planning scheme and land transaction, trying to conclude the context and characteristics of urban development under this special historical background and enrich the research content of modern Chinese urban history, so as to provide a reference for relevant research.

The Spread of Retail Organizing

Stop by an Apple Store at Grand Central Station in New York City, and your salesperson may be a member of “Fruit Stand Workers United” and seeking union representation to negotiate for a minimum wage rate of $30/hour. According to the union's website, a union at the store is “necessary to ensure our team has the best possible standards of living in what have proven to be extraordinary times with the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic and once‐in‐a‐generation consumer price inflation.” Fruit Stand Workers United is affiliated with Workers United, which is currently on a major initiative to organize Starbucks locations across the country.

Margaret Sanger, “The Unrecorded Battle” (1912)

Margaret Sanger, “The Unrecorded Battle” (1912)

The Johns Hopkins Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Model: Weinberg Perianesthesia Interventions for a Healing Environment

<h3>Introduction</h3> Weinberg Perianesthesia Unit has 28 Prep/PACU bays divided by curtains. In this unit, diverse surgical patients are prepared/recovered from anesthesia and surgery. Patients/families described the unit as congested, cluttered, dim, noisy, and unfriendly. This Prep/PACU is the busiest adult unit in this Mid-Atlantic academic medical center and has been compared to "Grand Central Station." <h3>Identification of the problem</h3> After participating in the Weinberg EBP Competency Program in 2017, the staff identified the need to conduct EBP Healing Environment Project that focused on therapeutic nursing interventions. <h3>EBP Question/Purpose: PICO question. Databases utilized</h3> What are the best therapeutic nursing interventions to create a safe, caring, healing environment for perianesthesia patients being prepared and recovered from their surgeries? P = Prep/PACU patients having surgery; I – Therapeutic healing nursing interventions; C = Compared to standard Prep/PACU nursing care; and O = Safe, caring, and healing environment. PubMed, CINAHL, and Scopus databases identified 43 key articles relating to complementary techniques to promote relaxation, music therapy, guided imagery, massage therapy, noise reduction, light therapy, aromatherapy, and clean, uncluttered environment. <h3>Methods/Evidence</h3> Nineteen articles were appraised and leveled using Johns Hopkins Nursing EBP Model that revealed: 8 Level I's, 6 Level III's, and 5 Level IVs with a 19 Quality "A" rating for strength of the evidence. <h3>Significance of Findings/Outcomes</h3> Evidence revealed: Promoting filtering light correlates with higher satisfaction, decreased opioid use; decreasing noise during agitated emergence reduces anxiety; providing music listening reduces anxiety, improves pain management and easy to administer; offering relaxation therapy with guided imagery decreases anxiety and reduces pain; providing massage therapy and therapeutic touch are beneficial for relieving pain and anxiety. <h3>Implications for perianesthesia nurses and future research</h3> Increased lighting, decreased noise, relaxation techniques, guided imagery and music therapy improved the perianesthesia healing environment as well as patient care outcomes. The project raised staff awareness of the importance of using EBP to change practice by motivating staff to use complimentary techniques to improve the healing environment of the PACU. Currently, the PACU nurses are conducting randomized comparative clinical research study with music listening interventions to determine if patients' anxiety and pain are alleviated.

Contextual analysis of pedestrian mobility in transport terminals

Data acquisition using security cameras for pedestrian tracking and counting is inherently inaccurate due to limited video quality and the dynamics of pedestrian mobility. In this article we explore how specific patterns of pedestrian behavior in transport terminals can improve accuracy in tracking and counting. We show the effectiveness of our proposed techniques using data from the New York Grand Central Station. The proposed tool improves the accuracy of pedestrian labeling based on information about the dynamics of pedestrian mobility in the specific context of transport terminals.

Gate and common pathway detection in crowd scenes and anomaly detection using motion units and LSTM predictive models

In this paper, we propose two approaches to analyze the crowd scenes. The first one is motion units and meta-tracking based approach (MUDAM Approach). In this approach, the scene is divided into a number of dynamic divisions with coherent motion dynamics called the motion units (MUs). By analyzing the relationships between these MUs using a proposed continuation likelihood, the scene entrance and exit gates are retrieved. A meta-tracking procedure is then applied and the scene dominant motion pathways are retrieved. To overcome the limitations of the MUDAM approach, and detect some of the anomalies, that may happen in these scenes, we proposed another new LSTM based approach. In this approach, the scene is divided into a number of static overlapped spatial regions named super regions (SRs), which cover the whole scene. Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) is used in defining a predictive model for each of the scene SRs. Each LSTM predictive model uses its SR tracklets in the training, such that, it can capture the whole motion dynamics of that SR. Using apriori known scene entrance segments, the proposed LSTM predictive models are applied and the scene dominant motion pathways are retrieved. an anomaly metric is formulated to be used with the LSTM predictive models to detect the scene anomalies. Prototypes of our proposed approaches were developed and evaluated on the challenging New York Grand Central station scene, in addition to four other crowded scenes. Four types of anomalies that may happen in the crowded scenes were defined in the context, and our proposed LSTM based approach was used in detecting these anomalies. Experimental results on anomalies detection were applied too on a number of data sets. Ov erall, the proposed approaches managed to outperform the state of the art methods in retrieving the scene gates and common pathways, in addition to detecting motion anomalies.

Haploid male germ cells-the Grand Central Station of protein transport.

The precise movement of proteins and vesicles is an essential ability for all eukaryotic cells. Nowhere is this more evident than during the remarkable transformation that occurs in spermiogenesis-the transformation of haploid round spermatids into sperm. These transformations are critically dependent upon both the microtubule and the actin cytoskeleton, and defects in these processes are thought to underpin a significant percentage of human male infertility. This review is aimed at summarising and synthesising the current state of knowledge around protein/vesicle transport during haploid male germ cell development and identifying knowledge gaps and challenges for future research. To achieve this, we summarise the key discoveries related to protein transport using the mouse as a model system. Where relevant, we anchored these insights to knowledge in the field of human spermiogenesis and the causality of human male infertility. Relevant studies published in English were identified using PubMed using a range of search terms related to the core focus of the review-protein/vesicle transport, intra-flagellar transport, intra-manchette transport, Golgi, acrosome, manchette, axoneme, outer dense fibres and fibrous sheath. Searches were not restricted to a particular time frame or species although the emphasis within the review is on mammalian spermiogenesis. Spermiogenesis is the final phase of sperm development. It results in the transformation of a round cell into a highly polarised sperm with the capacity for fertility. It is critically dependent on the cytoskeleton and its ability to transport protein complexes and vesicles over long distances and often between distinct cytoplasmic compartments. The development of the acrosome covering the sperm head, the sperm tail within the ciliary lobe, the manchette and its role in sperm head shaping and protein transport into the tail, and the assembly of mitochondria into the mid-piece of sperm, may all be viewed as a series of overlapping and interconnected train tracks. Defects in this redistribution network lead to male infertility characterised by abnormal sperm morphology (teratozoospermia) and/or abnormal sperm motility (asthenozoospermia) and are likely to be causal of, or contribute to, a significant percentage of human male infertility. A greater understanding of the mechanisms of protein transport in spermiogenesis offers the potential to precisely diagnose cases of male infertility and to forecast implications for children conceived using gametes containing these mutations. The manipulation of these processes will offer opportunities for male-based contraceptive development. Further, as increasingly evidenced in the literature, we believe that the continuous and spatiotemporally restrained nature of spermiogenesis provides an outstanding model system to identify, and de-code, cytoskeletal elements and transport mechanisms of relevance to multiple tissues.

Marking failure, making space: feminist interventions in Security Council policy

Abstract Feminist interventions in international politics are, more often than not, understood (and visible) as interventions in relation to policy documents. These policies—in this case the United Nations Security Council's resolutions on Women, Peace and Security—often feature as the end point of feminist advocacy efforts or as the starting point for feminist analysis and critique. In this article the author responds to the provocations throughout Marysia Zalewski's work to think (and tell) the spaces of international politics differently, in this case by working with the concept of feminist failure as it is produced in feminist policy critique. Inspired by Zalewski's Feminist International Relations: exquisite corpse, the article explores the material and imaginary spaces in which both policies and critique are produced. It picks up and reflects upon a narrative refrain recognizable in feminist critiques on Women, Peace and Security policy—that we must not make war safe for women—as a way to reflect on the inevitability of failure and the ostensible boundaries between theory and practice. The author takes permission from Zalewski's creative interventions and her recognition of the value of the ‘detritus of the everyday’—here a walk from New York's Grand Central Station to the UN Headquarters, musings on the flash of a particular shade of blue, and the contents of a footnoted acknowledgement, begin to trace an international political space that is produced through embodied and quotidian practice.

When the Kids Conquered the Kitchen: Danish Taste Education and the New Nordic Kitchen

The New Nordic Kitchen has conquered the world, Agern and the Nordic Food Hall at Grand Central Station in New York City and Noma in Copenhagen serving as notable examples. Normally this development is perceived as something that came out of nowhere, or as the result of the initiatives of specific individuals such as René Redzepi, chef at Noma. In this article, we will argue that it is part of a much broader cultural movement replacing precision, nutrition, and hygiene with pleasure, taste, and creativity as the center of kitchen culture, food education, and child upbringing. We support this argument by focusing on children's cookbooks published in Denmark during the period 1971–2016.

Identifying motion pathways in highly crowded scenes: A non-parametric tracklet clustering approach

Many approaches that address the analysis of crowded scenes rely on using short trajectory fragments, also known as tracklets, of moving objects to identify motion pathways. Typically, such approaches aim at defining meaningful relationships among tracklets. However, defining these relationships and incorporating them in a crowded scene analysis framework is a challenge. In this article, we introduce a robust approach to identifying motion pathways based on tracklet clustering. We formulate a novel measure, inspired by line geometry, to capture the pairwise similarities between tracklets. For tracklet clustering, the recent distance dependent Chinese restaurant process (DD-CRP) model is adapted to use the estimated pairwise tracklet similarities. The motion pathways are identified based on two hierarchical levels of DD-CRP clustering such that the output clusters correspond to the pathways of moving objects in the crowded scene. Moreover, we extend our DD-CRP clustering adaptation to incorporate the source and sink gate probabilities for each tracklet as a high-level semantic prior for improving clustering performance. For qualitative evaluation, we propose a robust pathway matching metric, based on the chi-square distance, that accounts for both spatial coverage and motion orientation in the matched pathways. Our experimental evaluation on multiple crowded scene datasets, principally, the challenging Grand Central Station dataset, demonstrates the state-of-the-art performance of our approach. Finally, we demonstrate the task of motion abnormality detection, both at the tracklet and frame levels, against the normal motion patterns encountered in the motion pathways identified by our method, with competent quantitative performance on multiple datasets.

Evidence of a biomass hotspot for targeted fish species within Namena Marine Reserve, Fiji

Namena is Fiji’s oldest and second largest no-take marine reserve, and has relatively high abundance and biomass of targeted fishes within its boundaries due to a high level of protection since its creation in 1997 (formalised in 2005). Following anecdotal reports of exceptionally high fish abundance at the Grand Central Station dive site within Namena, we conducted a 500-m meandering diver-operated video transect along the main reef formation, to obtain abundance, length and biomass estimates for fish species targeted by local fishers. Our census revealed extremely high diversity, abundance and biomass (11436kgha−1) of targeted fishes. While demersal reef fishes were present at higher densities than on typical fished reefs in the region, they were dwarfed by aggregations of reef-associated pelagics, namely the barracuda Sphyraena forsteri (5540kgha−1) and the trevally Caranx sexfasciatus (4448kgha−1). These estimates are comparable to those of historically unfished or ‘pristine’ locations, an unexpected finding given the historical fishing pressure within the reserve before its establishment and ongoing pressure in surrounding fished areas. This finding presents Grand Central Station as a useful reference site for ecologists and managers, and highlights the ability of protected coral reefs to support or attract very high densities of fish.

Rereading the Future

I noticed the dynamic relation between age and narrative the second time i read edith wharton'sthe house of mirth.on my first experience of reading the novel, as an undergraduate of eighteen, I was engaged by its thwarted love story and saddened by Lily Bart's tragic but honorable end. When I reread the novel in graduate school, however, I was about to turn twenty-nine, the age at which Lily's marriage prospects and high expectations for the future begin to fade. Although Lily is widely admired for her remarkable beauty, readers are alerted in the novel's opening pages to the incipient erosion of that beauty. Even as Lawrence Selden finds his eyes “refreshed” when he catches a glimpse of Lily at Grand Central Station, remarking that “he had never seen her more radiant” (37), he credits this impression to the way her dark hat and veil have temporarily restored “the girlish smoothness, the purity of tint, that she was beginning to lose after eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing” (38). While Selden silently muses about her age (“here was nothing new about Lily Bart. … [H]ad she indeed reached the nine-and-twentieth birthday with which her rivals credited her?” [37–38]), Lily declares that she's “as old as the hills” (38); she perceives that “people are getting tired” of her and saying she “ought to marry” (42). Lily is ambivalent about marriage as her “vocation” (as Selden puts it [43]) but undertakes this quest. By the end of the novel, having lost her social and economic standing and failed to secure a husband—and thereby a future—she puts her affairs in order and overdoses on chloral (43). Her age is certainly not the only factor contributing to her decline: Selden's continuing fascination with Lily affirms that she has remained dis-tractingly attractive (even if, perhaps, “ever so slightly brightened by art” [39]), and the novel attributes her social descent more directly to her financial circumstances than to her age. Nevertheless, the opening scene ofThe House of Mirthemphatically establishes twenty-nine as a precipice over which Lily Bart falls to her doom.

Deciphering TRAPP complex function in yeast

All eukaryotes contain organelles that perform specialized functions essential for life. The Golgi complex, an organelle that is important for transport of cellular material, serves as the “Grand Central Station” of the cell by receiving, then sorting proteins and membranes to various locations. Many steps of vesicular trafficking at the Golgi complex are regulated by several families of small GTPases, which modulate between an active and inactive state. One particularly interesting GTPase is Rab1, which also has an established role in autophagy. Rab1 is activated by a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF), a process that is conserved from mammals to yeast. Discordantly, mammals contain two protein complexes named TRAPPII and TRAPPIII (transport protein particle) which activate Rab1; while in yeast, four (TRAPPI ‐ TRAPPIV) have been implicated as GEFs in Ypt1 (Rab1 homolog) activation. Yeast TRAPP complexes share a core set of six subunits. Additional subunits are thought to regulate the complex by adding substrate and compartmental specificity. TRAPPII contains four more subunits, while TRAPPIII and TRAPPIV include one additional subunit. Importantly, the precise functions of the accessory subunits remain unclear. We demonstrate that TRAPPII and TRAPPIII are the only two complexes present in yeast cells, which is consistent with findings in mammalian cells, by quantifying isolated TRAPP complexes and simultaneously monitoring the localization of all TRAPP complexes in vivo. We also find that, using an in vitro fluorescent nucleotide exchange assay, TRAPPIII activates Ypt1 more effectively than the other complexes. Concurrently, we notice that Trs85 localizes to the Golgi complex and that Ypt1 is mislocalized in vivo in the absence of the TRAPPIII‐specific subunit, Trs85. Additionally, using an in vitro membrane binding assay, we find that Trs85 has an affinity for membranes. These findings suggest that there are only two TRAPP complexes in yeast, and that TRAPPIII is involved in trafficking at the Golgi complex in addition to its established role in autophagy. Taken together, our model suggests that the main role of Trs85 in the TRAPPIII complex is to bring the catalytic core close to a membrane surface, localizing the active site to the right compartment in an orientation that facilitates localization and activation of Ypt1.Support or Funding InformationThis material is based upon work supported by the NSF GRFP under Grant DGE‐1144153, by NIH/NIGMS Grant R01GM116942, and by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Any opinions, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF, NIH, the Sloan Foundation or their trustees, officers, or staff.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

Frank J. Sprague and Railroad Safety [History

Once hailed a triumph of mechanical ingenuity and the largest and handsomest depot in the world, Grand Central Station was showing its age by the beginning of the 20th century, despite numerous improvements and renovations. Once at the northern edge of New York City, as the metropolis grew around it, the great rail yard had become an eyesore. The burgeoning steam-driven rail traffic in the tunnels to the north belched smoke, cinders, and steam that were not only increasingly offensive but also deadly.

Grand Central Station

Grand Central Station

Kodak’s Colorama and the Construction of the Gaze in Public Space

Between the 1950s and 1989, Kodak continuously occupied a surface of approximately one hundred square metres in New York’s Grand Central Station with a display of panoramic photographs that were changed regularly. These giant “Coloramas” presented photographed scenes that were taken specifically for the project, with the hundreds of images displayed during this period all showing an idealised representation of the American family. These photographs would, however, have remained ordinary had their defining feature not been the placement of the photographer within the frame of the image. By connecting photography to the point of view by which it is constructed, these panoramas seem to prescribe to their public a certain relation to the images, and to initiate a reflexive process which seems to have now become general. The huge area covered by the Coloramas has today given way to the more discreet surface of our smartphones, laptops and other digital tablets, which govern our various visual practices and reorganise the notions of image, point of view and reflexivity in new ways. Between the Coloramas of the 1960s and today’s touch screens, the question arises as to whether the multiplication and spread of visual surface has changed something in the way that image – and thus the gaze – is built in public space.

Culture Clash

Culture Clash Jacob Singer (bio) Heritage of Smoke Josip Novakovich Dzanc Books www.dzancbooks.org/our-books/heritage-of-smoke-by-josip-novakovich 240Pages; Print, $16.95 How much control do we actually have over our lives? This question binds Josip Novakovich’s latest collection of short stories Heritage of Smoke. Novakovich exerted his free will by leaving Yugoslavia to immigrate to the United States to study, write, and teach. In 2009, he moved to Canada to take a teaching position. While Novakovich has exerted control over his life, he is sensitive to those with less agency. They are the subject of this collection. Each story reveals the shallowness of safety and order in life, hinting at the turbulence swirling below the surface—be it social anarchy, mental derangement, or pure chance. Like William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954), many of the characters easily lose their self-control to participate in something uncivilized. These stories dramatize the relationship between individuals and their cultural contexts—primarily focusing on individuals from the Yugosphere. Here groups can be broken along many lines. There are Croatians, Serbians, Bosnians; Christians and Muslims; alcoholics and non-alcoholics. These are but a few of the identities that shape the characters, some who stay in the region once known as Yugoslavia; others who leave for a new life and adopt a new identity. In “Crossbar” the narrator loses himself while watching a semifinal UEFA Cup football match in Zagreb. He states, “Ordinarily I was a civilized architect, with a taste for macchiato and single malts. At the beginning of the match, I was still a civilized human, but now, by the end, I had taken off my shirt and was hollering for blood.” Later a crowd, including the narrator, jumps the fence, enters the pitch, and attacks the players and officials. The story continues to take twists and turns for the worse. But this is one example of how Novakovich dramatizes the fragility of civilization—that we are all a few pints away from barbarism. Civilization supposedly keeps humans from annihilating themselves. Law and justice keep men from attaining vengeance. The story ends with a sober narrator rediscovering his moral compass. Click for larger view View full resolution The story “Dutch Treat” opens in Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a flower seller named Esad recognizing Martin, who doesn’t recall the salesman. As a member of the Dutch unit in the United Nations, Martin served in Srebrenica when the Serbian military searched for Muslim terrorists. While the Dutch drank and played cards, the Serbians massacred thousands. Eventually news got out and Holland withdrew their forces in shame, and Martin quit to study theology. Decades later, thousands of miles away Esad spots Martin as a recognizable face from his time in Srebrenica. After the initial interaction, Martin returns to the train station to strike up a conversation with Esad. This inciting incident pushes the two together to examine how civilization can trap someone in the brutality of war. The fall of Yugoslavia, which was always a powder keg of nationalism waiting to explode, points to another example of the fragility of statehood. The story continues with Martin offering Esad compensation for his suffering, but this act, done with the best intention, breaks the law. During the interrogation, Martin realizes how his one act indirectly ripples through the world. It points to an interconnectedness that exists unseen. In this instance, the best of intentions can have the worst consequences. The story ends with civilization using its tools to collect enough happenstances to argue for intention: “‘It’s too much of a coincidence for us to let it go unquestioned—way too many ‘coincidences.’” Here civilization, with its access to surveillance technology, works without morality; Martin directly experiences the corruption of civilization, echoing his experience while working in a corrupted division of the UN. Many of these stories shake the reader’s sense of faith in institutions and systems. “Be Patient” applies this to the world of medicine. The story opens in Daruvar, Croatia, where Nenad takes his daughter to receive an immunization for the measles. During the walk home they pass a dog that Nenad...