Human-made Environments Research Articles

A new species of the oligotrophic genus Ochroconis (Sympoventuriaceae)

Ochroconis globalis, a novel species of the melanized genus Ochroconis (Sympoventuriaceae, Venturiales), is described and illustrated and distinguished phenotypically and molecularly from existing ochroconis-like species. Phylogenetic analyses using nuclear ribosomal DNA genes (nuSSU, ITS, nuLSU) and coding gene fragments (ACT1, BT2, TEF1) revealed clustering of all strains as a monophyletic clade which was well separated from known Ochroconis species. Most strains of the new species were obtained from human-made environments, while the natural habitat of the species remains enigmatic. The new combination Ochroconis musae is introduced for one of the most commonly encountered Ochroconis species, and a phenotypic key to all species is provided.

DEVELOPING A SERIES OF MAPS FOR ECOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL EVALUATION OF LAND RESOURCES OF THE NEW MOSCOW TERRITORY

The territory of Moscow increased significantly after the adjoining to the city the southwestern regions in 2012. Changing the status of these territories leads to changes in their economic, social and geographical position, functional structure and population of settlements, the configuration of transport, increase of housebuilding, land use change, raise of anthropogenic pressures on natural objects, etc. In view of those changes the Cartography and Geoinformatics department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2013 launched a project aimed in creation a series of maps for integrated environmental and geographical land assessment of the new Moscow territories. It implies the development of informational support for a comprehensive assessment of natural and human-made environment, the intensity of land use and population occupancy and movements with the aid of geotechnology, including geoprocessing operations and remote sensing data, implemented in geographic information system (GIS) and online technologies.

Big Data and the brave new world of social media research

The recent Facebook study about emotional contagion has generated a high-profile debate about the ethical and social issues in Big Data research. These issues are not unprecedented, but the debate highlighted that, in focusing on research ethics and the legal issues about this type of research, an important larger picture is overlooked about the extent to which free will is compatible with the growth of deterministic scientific knowledge, and how Big Data research has become central to this growth of knowledge. After discussing the ‘emotional contagion study’ as an illustration, these larger issues about Big Data and scientific knowledge are addressed by providing definitions of data, Big Data and of how scientific knowledge changes the human-made environment. Against this background, it will be possible to examine why the uses of data-driven analyses of human behaviour in particular have recently experienced rapid growth. The essay then goes on to discuss the distinction between basic scientific research as against applied research, a distinction which, it is argued, is necessary to understand the quite different implications in the context of scientific as opposed to applied research. Further, it is important to recognize that Big Data analyses are both enabled and constrained by the nature of data sources available. Big Data research is bound to become more widespread, and this will require more awareness on the part of data scientists, policymakers and a wider public about its contexts and often unintended consequences.

Foreword: Whence Urban Conservation, Via Lewis Mumford

The is both a physical utility for collective living and a symbol of those collective purposes and unanimities that arise under such favoring circumstance. With language itself, it remains man's [sic] greatest work of art.Lewis Mumford, What is a City? (1937)1Lewis Mumford, the towering urban intellectual of the twentieth century, rarely got things wrong. His magisterial histories and trenchant criticism mapped out the evolution of cities and urban culture as functions of changing technology, the need to forge human relationships with nature, and the art and science of designing settlements and buildings. While deeply informed by history, Mumford's urban analysis and critique very much engaged his contemporary city-or, more to his point, the regions in which we live and that are centered on cities. In this, Mumford mirrored the pragmatic challenge for the field of urban conservation, the subject of this issue of Change Over Time: cultivating a deep knowledge and appreciation of urban histories, and applying these notions to rework (not just critique) the urban present. Giving the urban past relevance in contemporary design, development, and planning is a project shared by Mumford and urban conservationists alike.Of Mumford's many time-honored insights, though, the one quoted above has always struck me as misbegotten-the as humankind's greatest work of art. The comparison sparks insight and provocation, to be sure. The design of cites indeed requires that we think of them as whole works, not just component pieces in the hands of individual designers. But what's revealed by the art metaphor-the role of artifice, cities' beautiful complexities, the rich and enduring human achievement they represent-obscures an important truth germane to urban conservation: the contradiction between conservation theories attached to artworks versus urban theories, in light of the social, cultural, and spatial complexities of urban change and consequent conservation tropes of repair, regeneration, renewal, etc.Mumford meant to assert the cultural values of urbanism, and how that cultural value is deposited vertically (through time), not only horizontally (in explosions of investment, rebuilding, or design), and protecting and cultivating this is the signal contribution of urban conservation. So the is not an object, but rather a place always in the making. As an object of conservation thinking, the is less a work of art than a place, a home (ioikos) and a process, a phenomenon unfolding but never unfolded. Or, in terms of contemporary theory, a cultural landscape, a network, or a system. How these different framings of city conflict and combine-this is the conceptual challenge underlying such a radically integrative discourse as urban conservation.All of which is to say that the foundational theory and practice of the conservation field, emanating from art and architectural theory, doesn't serve as well as a basis for urban conservation. It draws our attention to the critical notion that urban conservation is a distinctly different practice, complex in sufficiently different ways from traditional historic preservation, object conservation, and architectural conservation to occasion some deliberate rethinking.Channeling UrbanizationUrban conservation is the most urgent and least coherent area of contemporary conservation practice. But it is really not a cognate field or even subfield of practice. Debates about urban conservation are often ad hoc, unsupported by cogent theorization, and therefore open to attack. Practices of urban conservation take shape against the backdrop of urbanization processes-more specifically, those of modernity.Urbanization rightly dominates our understanding of human settlements. Whether fast-growing or in senescence, cities' quality of life is both reflected and enabled by the character and performance of human-made environments. To replay the oft-cited statistics: as of 2010, more than half of the world's population lived in cities; by 2050 it will be two-thirds. …

Anaerobic thermophiles.

The term “extremophile” was introduced to describe any organism capable of living and growing under extreme conditions. With the further development of studies on microbial ecology and taxonomy, a variety of “extreme” environments have been found and an increasing number of extremophiles are being described. Extremophiles have also been investigated as far as regarding the search for life on other planets and even evaluating the hypothesis that life on Earth originally came from space. The first extreme environments to be largely investigated were those characterized by elevated temperatures. The naturally “hot environments” on Earth range from solar heated surface soils and water with temperatures up to 65 °C, subterranean sites such as oil reserves and terrestrial geothermal with temperatures ranging from slightly above ambient to above 100 °C, to submarine hydrothermal systems with temperatures exceeding 300 °C. There are also human-made environments with elevated temperatures such as compost piles, slag heaps, industrial processes and water heaters. Thermophilic anaerobic microorganisms have been known for a long time, but scientists have often resisted the belief that some organisms do not only survive at high temperatures, but actually thrive under those hot conditions. They are perhaps one of the most interesting varieties of extremophilic organisms. These microorganisms can thrive at temperatures over 50 °C and, based on their optimal temperature, anaerobic thermophiles can be subdivided into three main groups: thermophiles with an optimal temperature between 50 °C and 64 °C and a maximum at 70 °C, extreme thermophiles with an optimal temperature between 65 °C and 80 °C, and finally hyperthermophiles with an optimal temperature above 80 °C and a maximum above 90 °C. The finding of novel extremely thermophilic and hyperthermophilic anaerobic bacteria in recent years, and the fact that a large fraction of them belong to the Archaea has definitely made this area of investigation more exciting. Particularly fascinating are their structural and physiological features allowing them to withstand extremely selective environmental conditions. These properties are often due to specific biomolecules (DNA, lipids, enzymes, osmolites, etc.) that have been studied for years as novel sources for biotechnological applications. In some cases (DNA-polymerase, thermostable enzymes), the search and applications successful exceeded preliminary expectations, but certainly further exploitations are still needed.

1 Design, Development & Evaluation of a Prototype Tracked Mobile Robot for Difficult Terrain

This paper reports the design, development andevaluation of a prototype tracked mobile robot for task executionin both natural and human-made environments with stairclimbing feature. First, different types of locomotion systems usedfor mobile robots are compared and their pros and cons arepresented. Then the mechanism designed for the prototypetracked mobile robot is described with the aid of a CAD model.Finally, the results of field testing of the actual robot are presentedand the behavior of tracked mobile robots in presence of slippageis discussed.

Design, Development & Evaluation of a Prototype Tracked Mobile Robot for Difficult Terrain

This paper reports the design, development andevaluation of a prototype tracked mobile robot for task executionin both natural and human-made environments with stairclimbing feature. First, different types of locomotion systems usedfor mobile robots are compared and their pros and cons arepresented. Then the mechanism designed for the prototypetracked mobile robot is described with the aid of a CAD model.Finally, the results of field testing of the actual robot are presentedand the behavior of tracked mobile robots in presence of slippageis discussed.

Design, Development & Evaluation of a Prototype Tracked Mobile Robot for Difficult Terrain

This paper reports the design, development andevaluation of a prototype tracked mobile robot for task executionin both natural and human-made environments with stairclimbing feature. First, different types of locomotion systems usedfor mobile robots are compared and their pros and cons arepresented. Then the mechanism designed for the prototypetracked mobile robot is described with the aid of a CAD model.Finally, the results of field testing of the actual robot are presentedand the behavior of tracked mobile robots in presence of slippageis discussed.

The Ergonomics of Dishonesty

Research in environmental sciences has found that the ergonomic design of human-made environments influences thought, feeling, and action. In the research reported here, we examined the impact of physical environments on dishonest behavior. In four studies, we tested whether certain bodily configurations—or postures—incidentally imposed by the environment led to increases in dishonest behavior. The first three experiments showed that individuals who assumed expansive postures (either consciously or inadvertently) were more likely to steal money, cheat on a test, and commit traffic violations in a driving simulation. Results suggested that participants’ self-reported sense of power mediated the link between postural expansiveness and dishonesty. Study 4 revealed that automobiles with more expansive driver’s seats were more likely to be illegally parked on New York City streets. Taken together, the results suggest that, first, environments that expand the body can inadvertently lead people to feel more powerful, and second, these feelings of power can cause dishonest behavior.

Isolation and Screening of Black Fungi as Degraders of Volatile Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Black fungi reported as degraders of volatile aromatic compounds were isolated from hydrocarbon-polluted sites and indoor environments. Several of the species encountered are known opportunistic pathogens or are closely related to pathogenic species causing severe mycoses, among which are neurological infections in immunocompetent individuals. Given the scale of the problem of environmental pollution and the phylogenetic relation of aromate-degrading black fungi with pathogenic siblings, it is of great interest to select strains able to mineralize these substrates efficiently without any risk for public health. Fifty-six black strains were obtained from human-made environments rich in hydrocarbons (gasoline car tanks, washing machine soap dispensers) after enrichment with some phenolic intermediates of toluene and styrene fungal metabolism. Based on ITS sequencing identification, the majority of the obtained isolates were members of the genus Exophiala. Exophiala xenobiotica was found to be the dominant black yeast present in the car gasoline tanks. A higher biodiversity, with three Exophiala species, was found in soap dispensers of washing machines. Strains obtained were screened using a 2,6-dichlorophenol-indophenol (DCPIP) assay, optimized for black fungi, to assess their potential ability to degrade toluene. Seven out of twenty strains tested were able to use toluene as carbon source.

Myths, Presumptions, and Facts about Obesity

BackgroundMany beliefs about obesity persist in the absence of supporting scientific evidence (presumptions); some persist despite contradicting evidence (myths). The promulgation of unsupported beliefs may yield poorly informed policy decisions, inaccurate clinical and public health recommendations, and an unproductive allocation of research resources and may divert attention away from useful, evidence-based information.MethodsUsing Internet searches of popular media and scientific literature, we identified, reviewed, and classified obesity-related myths and presumptions. We also examined facts that are well supported by evidence, with an emphasis on those that have practical implications for public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.ResultsWe identified seven obesity-related myths concerning the effects of small sustained increases in energy intake or expenditure, establishment of realistic goals for weight loss, rapid weight loss, weight-loss readiness, physical-education classes, breast-feeding, and energy expended during sexual activity. We also identified six presumptions about the purported effects of regularly eating breakfast, early childhood experiences, eating fruits and vegetables, weight cycling, snacking, and the built (i.e., human-made) environment. Finally, we identified nine evidence-supported facts that are relevant for the formulation of sound public health, policy, or clinical recommendations.ConclusionsFalse and scientifically unsupported beliefs about obesity are pervasive in both scientific literature and the popular press. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health.)

Review: George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher

George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany 12 September 2008–3 May 2009 Fundacion Pedro Barrie de la Maza, A Coruna, Spain 15 June–29 November 2009 Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma 2 February–1 May 2011 McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas 6 June–29 September 2011 Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington 29 October 2011–12 February 2012 Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 16 June–14 October 2012 Yale School of Architecture Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 8 November 2012–26 January 2013 In 1946 D. J. De Pree, director of the furniture company Herman Miller, hired George Nelson (1908–1986) as a furniture designer, and a year later he created the position of design director especially for Nelson. Later on, Nelson liked to remark that he took on his first assignment as a complete beginner, having never actually designed furniture before. Yet, by the end of the 1940s, Nelson was a leading American designer, shaping products for home and office and accepting commissions for architecture, graphic design, corporate communications, exhibitions, and interiors. To mark the one hundredth anniversary of Nelson’s birth, the Vitra Design Museum, which acquired the archives of Nelson’s office from his estate, created the traveling exhibition George Nelson: Architect, Writer, Designer, Teacher . The exhibit presented Nelson, whose life and career have received relatively little attention in comparison with other postwar designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, as a prolific and influential designer whose product designs shaped the experience of the home, the workspace, and the other new environments created by postwar modern architects. Nelson was educated at Yale, receiving a BA in architecture in 1928 and a BFA three years later. While in Europe from 1932 to 1934 as winner of the Rome Prize, he visited leaders of the emerging modern movement, including Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius. These visits resulted in a series of essays in Pencil Points , beginning in January 1935, that profiled leading European architects and launched Nelson’s career as a writer. That same year he joined Architectural Forum and soon became an associate editor there and at Fortune . In 1936 he opened an architectural practice in New York with William Hamby, but it was primarily as a writer that Nelson achieved early recognition. In 1944, Nelson and …

Backgroundless detection of pedestrians in cluttered conditions based on monocular images: a review

The significant progress in visual surveillance has been motivated by the need to emulate some of the human ability to monitor activity in human-made environments, particularly in the contexts of security and safety. The rapid rise in numbers of cameras installed in public and private places makes such automation desirable, at least to reduce CCTV workload. Real-world applications of visual surveillance impose the need of robust real-time solutions, able to deal with a wide range of circumstances and environmental conditions. Conventional approaches work based on what has become known as motion (or change) detection followed by tracking (in single or multiple camera systems). Objects of interest are represented by rectangular blobs and decisions on whether something might be interesting are made on rules or learned patterns of presence and trajectories of such blobs. There is growing interest in looking ‘inside the box’ for applications that are concerned with detailed human activity recognition and with robust detection of people even when image backgrounds change, as is the case of a moving camera. In this study, the authors consider the general problem of robust pedestrian detection irrespective of background, reviewing the state of the art, showing some representative results and suggesting ways forward.

Role of social wasps in Saccharomyces cerevisiae ecology and evolution

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most important model organisms and has been a valuable asset to human civilization. However, despite its extensive use in the last 9,000 y, the existence of a seasonal cycle outside human-made environments has not yet been described. We demonstrate the role of social wasps as vector and natural reservoir of S. cerevisiae during all seasons. We provide experimental evidence that queens of social wasps overwintering as adults (Vespa crabro and Polistes spp.) can harbor yeast cells from autumn to spring and transmit them to their progeny. This result is mirrored by field surveys of the genetic variability of natural strains of yeast. Microsatellites and sequences of a selected set of loci able to recapitulate the yeast strain's evolutionary history were used to compare 17 environmental wasp isolates with a collection of strains from grapes from the same region and more than 230 strains representing worldwide yeast variation. The wasp isolates fall into subclusters representing the overall ecological and industrial yeast diversity of their geographic origin. Our findings indicate that wasps are a key environmental niche for the evolution of natural S. cerevisiae populations, the dispersion of yeast cells in the environment, and the maintenance of their diversity. The close relatedness of several wasp isolates with grape and wine isolates reflects the crucial role of human activities on yeast population structure, through clonal expansion and selection of specific strains during the biotransformation of fermented foods, followed by dispersal mediated by insects and other animals.

Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future – Ritual, Reflexivity and the Hope for Renewal in Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Climate Change Communication Film "Home"

Spectre of the Past, Vision of the Future – Ritual, Reflexivity and the Hope for Renewal in Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Climate Change Communication Film "Home"

Priming a natural or human-made environment directs attention to context-congruent threatening stimuli

Research suggests that attention is attracted to evolutionary threats (e.g., snakes) due to an evolved “fear-module” that automatically detects biological threats to survival. However, recent evidence indicates that non-evolutionary threats (e.g., guns) capture and hold attention as well, suggesting a more general “threat-relevance” mechanism that directs attentional resources toward any potential danger in the environment. The current research measured how selective attentional resources were influenced both by the type of threat (e.g., snake vs. gun) and by the context in which the threat was encountered. Participants were primed with either natural or human-made environments to assess how these contexts influence attention to evolutionary and non-evolutionary threats, as measured by a spatial-cueing task. The results indicate that whether biological or non-biological threats receive greater attentional processing is determined by the context in which they are encountered.

Use of ribosomal introns as new markers of genetic diversity in Exophiala dermatitidis

Exophiala dermatitidis is one of the prevalent black yeasts found as opportunistic pathogens or colonizers in humans. In the tropics its natural habitat is thought to be fruit surfaces and it is also found in the digestive system of fruit-eating animals. However, it has recently been abundantly isolated from human-made environments (steam baths, railway ties, dishwashers) in tropical and temperate climates. Two genotypes have been distinguished within this species: genotype A, mostly corresponding to strains isolated from patients, and genotype B, to strains isolated from the natural environment. In human-made environments, both genotypes A and B occur. A previous study suggested that one genotype had been selected for in the human host. In our study, the distribution of ribosomal insertions agrees with an ecological specialization of E. dermatitidis genotypes by showing a significantly higher frequency of ribosomal insertions in clinical strains in comparison to environmental ones. The characterization of these insertions shows that they correspond to introns of group IC or IE, the most frequent types within the fungal kingdom. These ribosomal group I introns could be used as new markers for populations of E. dermatitidis.

Deciphering Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Contributions

The incapacity of many human societies to deal with contemporary environmental questions (such as climate change, health epidemics, land-use, forestry management, renewable and non- renewable resources, housing, poverty, and urban planning) can be contrasted with the viewpoint of many professionals and politicians who are convinced that they have the “right answers.” However, the lack of consensus about climate change, the stock of renewable and non-renewable resources, and the failure of so-called “model” housing estates and urban planning projects constructed since the 1950s in countries with socialist or free market economies clearly show that new ideas, working methods, objectives, and criteria are needed in both scientific research and professional practice. The challenges related to dealing with the above-mentioned problems concern their complexity, the compartmentalization of scientific and professional knowledge, the sector- based division of responsibilities in contemporary society, and the increasingly diverse nature of the societal contexts in which people live. In addition, the lack of effective collaboration between scientists, professionals, and policy decision-makers has led to the “applicability gap” in sectors that deal with both the natural and human-made environment. This article discusses the added value of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary contributions as well as the challenges that are commonly confronted by those who wish to implement them to deal with complex real-world issues

New Worlds Rising? The View from Transdisciplinary Lifelong Learning

The world will be very much what we make it – or, perhaps, make of it. Our approach to the places and spaces we live in has not been particularly caring. Knowledge and ignorance have combined in equal measure to generate short-term satisfactions and material improvement for some at the expense of many others, including those non-human animals who have not been party to progress, development, modernisation or hand-wringing sustainability. However, despite all the ideological obfuscations, academic calls for more research, and insistence on more growth or return to the old ontological verities, we – the human race – have little excuse to continue living our lives in the same ecologically profligate manner. There will always be a tomorrow, but not necessarily the one we will care for. So, of the future we know certain things. We know that grand plans rarely turn out the way they were originally conceived or intended. We know that institutions of higher education have been complicit in fashioning unsustainability. We know that education and learning is, in principle, at least critical to identifying and nurturing new ways of living and being and we know that learning is not something that only takes place at one period of our lives, but is continuous throughout the life course. We also know, I think, that learning frequently oscillates between the formal, the non-formal and the informal and that intended outcomes are not necessarily the same as actual ones ... thank God. And if we think about it carefully, we also know that this education and learning cannot be purely rational or instrumental. It must be fluent, creative, changing and adaptable, fostering a dynamic but sympathetic relationship between people, place, work and sustainability. The university is an important part of the wider society – a generator of work, income, knowledge and purpose. It is learning as well as work that gives life meaning, which is why universities are crucial to everyone wherever they may be – in a rural village, in the inner city, young or old, rich or poor. Education and lifelong learning is about action, or, more properly, conduct, which has at its core a sense of value and moral integrity that seeks to prepare the human-made environment for a new range of possibilities and capabilities, intentions, desires, impulses and judgements that will help craft the future. For the American philosopher John Dewey, our ends-in-view arise and function with action, and each action, each means, is an end en route to other ends which individuals may have to alter as actions are realized, or not. It is within the already crafted environment of physical infrastructures, spatial, ethnic and professional communities, big corporations and voluntary groups, political parties, pressure groups, social movements, towns and cities, faith-based organisations, the media (new and old), and schools, colleges and universities that human conduct is played out. In terms of practical (lifelong) learning for sustainability, this means more than buffing up the rhetoric of partnership, knowledge transfer and exchange, disciplinary specialisation, skills development and qualification frameworks. We need some other stars to steer

Skin infections caused by Stenotrophomnas maltophilia

Stenotrophonmas maltophilia is a nonfermentative, aerobic gram-negative bacillus that is widely distributed in natural and human-made environment. Now it is recognized as an important opportunistic pathogen which primarily infects immunosuppressive population. Multiple organs can be involved in this infection. Cutaneous mucosa infection with S.maltophilia usually results from blood dissemination and direct contact. Clinical manifestations of S, maltophilia infection are various, include primary cellulites, metastatic nodules or cellulites, ecthyma gangrenosum, cutaneous ulceration, etc. General attention has been attracted to the pathogenicity of this microorganism. Key words: Stenotrophomnas maltophilia; Skin; Infection