Office Tower Research Articles

Research Priorities in Gout: The Patient Perspective

To the Editor: Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis in adults1. PubMed publications for gout increased 3-fold from 181 in 2000 to 552 in 2012, indicating an increased interest in gout. The thinking is evolving on how to set the future research agenda for gout. The creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), a public-private partnership for funding clinical and patient-oriented research in the United States (www.pcori.org/research-we-support/priorities-agenda/), is an example of this change. PCORI recommends the involvement of patients at every stage of the research activity, including the selection of the research question. Outcome Measures in Rheumatology Clinical Trials (OMERACT), an international consortium of researchers and methodologists, pioneered active patient involvement in the development of disease outcome measures more than a decade ago (www.omeract.org). Including all the involved parties in the research is the way of the future, yet patient participation in prioritizing and conducting research is limited. To our knowledge, there are no studies of patient input into research-agenda setting for gout. Therefore, we aimed to perform a qualitative study and asked patients with gout what research should be done on that topic. Patients of our community-based outpatient clinic who had an International Classification of Diseases , ninth revision, common modification code for gout (274.xx) during 2011–2012 were invited to … Address correspondence to Dr. Singh, University of Alabama, Faculty Office Tower 805B, 510 20th Street S, Birmingham, Alabama 35294, USA. E-mail: Jasvinder.md{at}gmail.com

Understanding the risks and uncertainties introduced by common assumptions in energy simulations for Australian commercial buildings

Building performance simulation has a key role in facilitating effective retrofitting of commercial buildings, an essential task to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. Simulation users commonly rely on assumptions for certain ‘hard-to-measure’ building and behaviour inputs, and the range of values use can significantly affect predicted energy consumption. New financing methods in Australia may attach financial risk to this simulation uncertainty. This paper reports on a study examining the sensitivity of total predicted building energy consumption to hard-to-measure simulation inputs for two template Australian office buildings; a 10-storey office tower located in a Central Business District (CBD), and a 3-storey office on the fringe of a CBD. The predicted energy consumption for the archetypes varied by more than 50% from baseline consumption for all Australian capital cities, using high and low assumptions. The input parameters that significantly influence energy consumption were found to be; cooling set-point, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) power density, ICT usage schedule, and lighting power density. A case study of a simple lighting upgrade to a 10-storey office building in Sydney showed that the payback period could vary from 2.4 to 10.3 years depending on the simulation assumptions used.

Architecture, Economic Imaginaries and Urban Politics: The Office Tower as Socially Classifying Device

AbstractIn recent studies on the role of architecture in urban restructuring, city marketing and the related struggles for meaning, there has been a focus on high‐profile architects and iconic architecture. In this article I wish to examine architecture and building types as ‘socially signifying devices’, in order to take more everyday buildings and their images into account as well. Using Vienna as a case study, I explore how the commercial office tower is utilized to represent the internationalization of the local economy and render new urban political‐economic strategies socially meaningful. This is done by examining recent shifts in urban policy, and the means, channels and practices of discursive and visual representation of the local office architecture. Connecting the concept of economic imaginaries from cultural political economy (CPE) with a sociological approach to building types, I argue that economic imaginaries gain in plausibility if they are discursively and visually anchored in urban space. However, it is also shown that this kind of spatialization of new economic imaginaries is constructed on a selective visual representation of buildings: the assignment of international economic activities to local office towers is revealed to be only partially true in the case of Vienna.

Software Laboratory for Camera Networks Research

We present a distributed virtual vision simulator capable of simulating large-scale camera networks. Our virtual vision simulator is capable of simulating pedestrian traffic in different 3D environments. Simulated cameras deployed in these virtual environments generate synthetic video feeds that are fed into a vision processing pipeline supporting pedestrian detection and tracking. The visual analysis results are then used for subsequent processing, such as camera control, coordination, and handoff. Our virtual vision simulator is realized as a collection of modules that communicate with each other over the network. Consequently, we can deploy our simulator over a network of computers, allowing us to simulate much larger camera networks and much more complex scenes then is otherwise possible. Specifically, we show that our proposed virtual vision simulator can model a camera network, comprising more than one hundred active pan/tilt/zoom and passive wide field-of-view cameras, deployed in an upper floor of an office tower in downtown Toronto.

Inclined to Succeed

Clustered atop the deepest basement in the country, the International Finance Centre Seoul features a five-star hotel and a trio of office towers whose facades present a complex, sloping geometry. From its location at the center of Seoul’s transportation network, the project has become a new landmark in the city’s skyline.

Money Run by Jack Heath (review)

Reviewed by: Money Run by Jack Heath Elizabeth Bush Heath, Jack . Money Run. Scholastic, 2013. [256p]. ISBN 978-0-545-51266-4 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 7-10. Daring fifteen-year-old Ash Arthur and her brainiac sidekick Benjamin are the latest YA pair of dashing teen criminals in the first volume of this Australian thriller series. The Source, which has been providing them with caper leads for [End Page 379] some months, has directed them to the office of Hammond Buckland, a billionaire who wants to retire from his unfulfilling lifestyle. Buckland is presumed to have hidden something worth hundreds of millions on his premises, a prize that Ash is determined to find. However, as she's busy finding imaginative ways to break into heavily protected rooms in the office tower, hit man Michael Peavey is equally busy trying to off Buckland for the U.S. government, lest the billionaire give away his cash before he dies, leaving Uncle Sam with no way to claim the childless man's estate. The plot may be well-worn, but teen thriller aficionados will still relish the details of bugged-room break-ins, locked-room escapes, twists with competing assassins, a trashed Bugatti Veyron, and some darn creative methods for bumping off whomever gets in the way. This is all about the action—Heath doesn't waste much time in character development—and the set-up for further adventures is perfunctory but effective. Buckland ultimately lures Ash and Benjamin to the side of the angels, but their future of thievery for a good cause should provide readers with plenty of silver screen-worthy entertainment. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Enclave urbanism in Mumbai: An Actor-Network-Theory analysis of urban (dis)connection

Mumbai is changing quickly. Condominiums and office towers shoot up everywhere, shopping malls and multiplexes are opened, train lines, motorways and other infrastructures are planned and built, and informal settlements grow. These changes are easily read in terms of the alarmist narrative on urban fragmentation that depicts ‘enclave urbanism’ as a tool of urban elites. Employing the forces of globalisation, these elites are said to enhance their dominance through the development of walled and well-connected enclaves, while pushing away underprivileged groups. Analysing the Tardeo Towers project in Mumbai, this paper employs Actor-Network-Theory to reflect on the adequacy of this narrative. In this city urban enclaves turn out to be nothing new. And while globalisation and economic liberalisation do support the emergence of new urban enclaves, domestic characteristics like the existing urban landscape and its objects, the structure of the Indian state, land and building regulations, corruption, mafia, and the business-politics nexus structure the specific local expression of urban enclaves as well. We conclude that urban objects like the Tardeo Towers create and bind groups of stakeholders in new and surprising ways. While some elites do benefit from these urban enclaves, others resist, and underprivileged groups do benefit as well. Therefore, the study of ‘enclave urbanism’ has to move beyond a general alarmist narrative, towards precise empirical research into the causes and effects of the emergence of specific enclaves in specific local contexts.

Investigating Deep Retrofits for Toronto's Financial District Office Towers

In response to a perceived shift towards green building practices and an increased focus on energy efficiency in commercial office facilities management, in this report I examine the barriers and drivers related to deep retrofits for the purpose of developing recommendations for increasing the energy efficiency goals of future retrofit projects. Centered on the Financial District in Toronto, Ontario, I integrate the existing literature, interviews, and local case studies to indicate the current environment for whole building energy efficiency reductions. Recognizing deep retrofits as relatively new to the commercial real estate market, my ideas and recommendations include: corporate social responsibility reporting to build tenant demand; an easily accessible national energy labelling system; improving tools for benchmarking and industry knowledge; and providing innovative financial incentives.

A Study on the Evaluation Method for the Degree of Integration towards Office Towers in Different Climate Zones

High rise office buildings represent one of the most energy-intensive architectural typologies. The growth of urban population necessitates sustainable high rise towers that lessen environmental impacts and energy consumption. Among various sustainable strategies, the integrated design is long known to be an important process that has great impact on building's sustainability. The framework for this paper is based on the case study of integrated towers that are located in different climate zones. The paper specifically addresses to what extent climate conditions influence the design of a high rise building and what kinds of the climate integrated design has been implemented. Qualitative case studies were carried out using published data and architectural drawing set. The technical work presented in the paper is based on computer simulation that examines the insolation analysis using hourly recorded weather data. The analysis results revealed that the site and building envelope integration and the site and building service systems have shown the most frequently employed in the integrated towers through the implementation of renewable resource integration, high performance envelopes and sustainable building service systems. Internal comfort and further energy saving in the integrated towers are offered through an automatic building management system. Due to the dynamic climate conditions, integration of building systems requires a sophisticated approach to building sustainability.

You Too Can Teach Clinical Reasoning!

* Abbreviations: HSP — : Henoch-Schonlein Purpura RLQ — : right lower quadrant As part of the ongoing Council on Medical Student Education in Pediatrics series on skills and strategies used by great clinical teachers,1–6 this article focuses on practical knowledge and skills for teaching clinical reasoning. Building on SNAPPS and One Minute Preceptor models,6 we will address the clinical assessment portion of oral and written presentations that represents the culmination of the clinical reasoning process. Using the concepts of problem representation,7 semantic qualifiers,8 and illness scripts7,9,10 defined below, we will outline how you can guide your students’ clinical reasoning development. A problem representation is “the one-liner” at the end of a presentation that synthesizes the entire patient story (history details, physical findings, and investigations) into 1 “big picture” statement.7 To create a problem representation, physicians restructure pertinent patient details into abstract terms called semantic qualifiers. Semantic qualifiers are abstractions in medical rather than lay terminology and generally exist in divergent pairs, such as acute versus chronic and severe versus mild (Table 1, step 2).8 Here is an example of a problem representation, with the semantic qualifiers in italics: A previously well, 2-year-old unimmunized girl presents with an acute history of respiratory distress. She is febrile , looks unwell , and is drooling. View this table: TABLE 1 Teaching Steps for Clinical Reasoning Novice clinicians can be taught to generate problem representations by using semantic qualifiers. First, have your students write out a 1- to 2-sentence problem representation (summary of patient information) based on either a written … Address correspondence to Joseph Gigante, MD, Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 8232 Doctor’s Office Tower, Nashville, TN 37232-9225. E-mail: joseph.gigante{at}vanderbilt.edu

Combined Cycle/TES Plant Can Save $1,244,474 per Year

ABSTRACT This article presents a comparative analysis between an innovative “proposed,” combined heating/cooling cogeneration power plant and a “base” plant for an approximately 1.1 million ft2 hospital/office complex to be located in Toledo, Ohio. The complex consists of three buildings: a six-story hospital and two identical 12-story office towers: While each of the buildings in the base plant has its own central plant, the proposed Modular Hybrid Combined Cycle Cogeneration/TES plant is designed to serve the entire complex. The comparative analysis between the two plants has shown substantial cost savings for the proposed plant because of reduction in utility and maintenance costs and, therefore, the total annual operating costs of the overall plant. This reduction in operating costs is mainly due to the fact that approximately 95% of the total required annual electrical power is produced on-site by cogeneration, and therefore only 5% of its annual estimated power needs are needed to be purchased from ...

An Intelligent Control Strategy for Power Factor Compensation on Distorted Low Voltage Power Systems

Due to the proliferation of harmonic producing-loads, harmonic resonance has become a major hurdle for performing power factor compensation in commercial power systems, such as office towers and shopping complexes. This paper presents an intelligent power factor compensation controller that can perform power factor correction without exciting harmonic resonance under varying demand conditions. Practical and robust control algorithms are proposed for the purpose of easy implementation in a micro-controller. In addition, the controller relies on common low cost sensing devices and does not require additional measurements. As a result, the proposed controller can be constructed as a retrofitting device to replace existing power factor correction controllers with little effort. Analysis of representative case studies is conducted to illustrate how the proposed controller performs.

‘Vernacular’ accommodations: wordplay in contemporary-traditional architecture theory

One might be forgiven for thinking that the concept of ‘vernacular’ architecture is straightforward. First, it suggests a contemporary approach to building that uses local materials and crafts, as well as the indigenous architecture of tribal peoples, such as piledwellings over tropical waters, mud houses in the desert, or animal-hide teepees on the savannah. These buildings can be distinguished easily from other types of buildings that use industrialised construction techniques and materials, such as concrete, sheet glass, plastics and steel. Second, it might suggest an alternative and more wholesome set of values towards life, the environment and aesthetics, than that represented by the out-of-town retail park or the inner-city office tower. Why bother with the word ‘vernacular’, though, let alone ‘indigenous’ or the more problematic ‘primitive’, when ‘traditional’ works well enough? Nothing could be simpler.

Factors influencing the annual risk of bird–window collisions at residential structures in Alberta, Canada

Context Increasingly, ornithologists are being asked to identify major sources of avian mortality so as to identify conservation priorities. Aims Considerable evidence suggests that windows of office towers are a lethal hazard for migrating birds. The factors influencing the risk of bird–window collisions in residential settings are not understood as well. Methods Citizen scientists were requested to participate in an online survey that asked about characteristics concerning their homes and yards, general demographic information about participants, and whether they had observed evidence of bird–window collisions at their home. Key results We found that 39.0% of 1458 participants observed a bird–window collision in the previous year. The mean number of reported collisions was 1.7 ± 4.6 per residence per year, with 38% of collisions resulting in a mortality. Conclusions Collisions were not random, with the highest collision and mortality rates at rural residences, with bird feeders > rural residences without feeders > urban residences with feeders > urban residences without feeders > apartments. At urban houses, the age of neighbourhood was a significant predictor of collision rates, with newer neighbourhoods reporting fewer collisions than older neighbourhoods. Most people remembered collisions occurring in the summer months. Implications Our results are consistent with past research, suggesting that window collisions with residential homes are an important source of mortality for birds. However, we found large variation in the frequency of collisions at different types of residences. Proper stratification of residence type is crucial to getting accurate estimates of bird–window collisions when scaling local data into larger-scale mortality estimates.

SHAW'S LONDON THEN AND NOW

SHAW'S LONDON THEN AND NOW

'Radio Campanile': Sixties Modernity, the Post Office Tower and Public Space

No serious work has examined the history of the Post Office Tower, although recently it has figured in popular architecture and design journalism. Thus, Jonathan Glancey and Stephen Bayley have both referred to the tower’s significance in the 1960s and interpreted it as a symbol of the technological modernization of Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat’ of the ‘scientific revolution’. This article acknowledges that the Post Office Tower’s modernity is central to any interpretation but argues that white heat explanations are problematic and that its evolving design and public meaning were shaped by a wide range of factors, long preceding the 1960s Labour government, and are best understood in the context of an earlier and more protracted history. This historical context was the contested modernity of the late 1950s and issues around planning, landscape, popular access and democratic citizenship with their origins in the early post-war period. The latter issues are examined through debates about picturesque theory and through Adrian Forty’s discussion of welfare state architecture and the Festival Hall. It is argued that this focus reveals underlying but previously neglected aspects of the Post Office Tower’s design history.

Horace Trumbauer in Fairmont

Horace Trumbauer in Fairmont Frederick Platt Whether mansion or office tower, all the diverse structures that architect Horace Trumbauer erected in West Virginia were built in the same city for the same family. Fairmont was that city, the largest in Marion County and its county seat. Less than twenty-five miles below the Pennsylvania border, the city had arisen on the western bank of the Monongahela River as it meanders up to Pittsburgh. What is more, Fairmont was the site of the state's largest coalfield, fuel for the industrialization that gripped the nation after the Civil War. Railroads that hauled the local variety of bituminous coal would in addition find it ideal for powering their locomotives, so that many an eastern line ran on Fairmont coal. Whoever controlled this coalfield could expect great wealth, and that was the Watson family. Often called "father of the West Virginia coal industry,"1 James Otis Watson would gather thirty-seven mines into his Fairmont Coal Company. Soon after he died in 1902 at age eighty-seven, his holdings became the farther-flung Consolidation Coal Company with his youngest child, Clarence, as its president. This switch is symbolic of the one taking place in American business around the turn of the century, the handover from the fathers, wildcatters who founded the family fortune, to the sons, who introduced rudiments of modern management. Simultaneously came a change in how the generations hoped to be housed. By and large their parents were content in their provincial if commodious dwellings, but their more worldly offspring dreamt of palaces. Even those elders who built themselves new residences had most often been egged on by their children. With the United States entering the mainstream of leading nations, its architecture from homes to museums to libraries to banks took on Old World garb. Horace Trumbauer stood in the first rank of his era's tastemakers who adapted the European past to the American present. From his birth in l868 to his death in l938, he was a steadfast Philadelphian, although his buildings north to Maine and south to Florida, west to Colorado and east to England made him far from a local architect. After apprenticing in the city,2 he started his own office in l890 as soon as he reached the legal age of twenty-one. [End Page 53] At home his landmarks would include the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the central Free Library of Philadelphia. Beyond the region he created townhouses on Fifth Avenue in New York City and summer residences in Newport, Rhode Island, together with the Widener Library at Harvard and the dual campuses of Duke University. Right from the start he had attracted the well-to-do, although, to his credit, clients less wealthy than the Watsons likewise received their proportional share of his attention. Farm Group for C. W. Watson, 1907-1909 The first of the Watson properties to involve Horace Trumbauer had already been in the family more than six decades. Three years after Matilda Lamb became his bride in 1841, James Otis Watson purchased a farm two miles from the center of Fairmont. With the land came a log house of two stories, built around 1817 and likely the oldest house still standing today in Marion County. Six sons and four daughters would fill the house to its limit. Using early profits from coal plus his Civil War earnings made selling horses to the Union army, Watson erected during 1865 a three-story dwelling of brick, respectably Victorian with eyebrow dormers and a belvedere. He named the place La Grange after the home in Maryland that his grandfather had left behind upon settling in these parts. Upon the death of James Otis Watson, ownership transferred to Clarence Wayland Watson, that youngest child who now ran the family business. Renaming his new estate Fairmont Farms, the son immediately enlarged the residence, calling in not yet Trumbauer but another architect3 to update it outside and in, so that it approximated Spanish Mission style with multiple porches and overhanging eaves. At the same time and in the same style, the same architect put up an elaborate stable around three sides of a...

Central Park Mixed-Use Building in Jakarta

This paper describes challenges during the structural design phase as well as during the construction stage of this mega Central Park Project. Most of the challenges occurred due to the unique architectural design of this mixed-use building, which consists of three 50-floor apartment towers, a 42-floor office tower, a podium mall with 12-floor car park building, a 13-floor hotel building on top of the podium and car park, two layer basement for the entire building complex and a large open space garden at the ground floor. The total floor area is 720,000 square meters. Up to now, this is the largest mixed use project in Indonesia.A series of seismic site response investigation was conducted. The results were then used and combined with other loads which were taken into account in the structural analysis. Wind tunnel test were also performed since the current wind loading code in Indonesia has still not covered cases for tall buildings such as this project. Transfer beams and inclined columns were installed to accommodate some special requirements for the structural frames. Monitoring of building settlements during construction was carried out and the outcomes were then compared with the predicted values obtained as the results of the structural analysis.The construction was started in September 2007. The soft opening ceremony of the mall and the topping off of the whole project was conducted in September 9, 2009 and January 5, 2010 respectively.

Unintended Consequences of the Flexner Report: Women in Pediatrics

The 1910 Flexner report is recognized as a critical component of the transition to the current model of medical education. Within a decade of the report's publication, the curriculum of nearly every American medical school included 2 years of basic science education and 2 years of clinical apprenticeship. By midcentury, the practice of medicine focused on acute care visits and technologically sophisticated procedures performed in hospitals. As we mark the 100th anniversary of the Flexner report, it is also important to draw attention to one of the unintended consequences of Flexner-era reforms, namely, the near elimination of women in the physician workforce between 1910 and 1970. In this essay we briefly trace the history of women in medicine in the decades surrounding the Flexner report and suggest some implications for the future of pediatrics at a time when women outnumber men. In the late 19th century, there were hundreds of medical schools in the United States, and the quality of medical education varied substantially. Generally, medical schools offered minimal training in basic science, and few schools provided their students with the opportunity to acquire clinical skills. Concerned about this situation, the American Medical Association worked with the Carnegie Foundation to hire a professional educator, Abraham Flexner, to review the state of medical education in the United States. Flexner chose the Johns Hopkins Medical School as the model educational system, and he toured medical schools throughout the country to gather information about current standards of education. His report, which was considered provocative when it was issued in 1910, indicted the quality of medical education in most American medical schools. The recommendations focused on rigorous entrance requirements, longer periods of study, and more attention to the basic and clinical sciences. The principles in the … Address correspondence to Shari L. Barkin, MD, MSHS, 8232 Doctor's Office Tower, 2200 Children's Way, Nashville, TN 37232-9225. E-mail: shari.barkin{at}vanderbilt.edu

Højhuse i Danmark 1950-2010

Med udgangspunkt i det moderne højhus' fødsel i det 19. århundredes USA samt fænomenets internationale historie, belyser artiklen højhusets historie og udbredelse i Danmark. Fra velfærdsstatens funktionalistiske boligkolosser i midten af det tyvende århundrede, over 1970'erne og 80'ernes modreaktion og 'småt er godt'-mentalitet til de seneste årtiers individuelle og amerikansk inspirerede<br />prestige-projekter med vartegnsambitioner, sættes den danske udvikling ind i en europæisk kontekst og prioriteret bevidsthedshistorisk forklaringsramme. Siden midten af det tyvende århundrede har erhvervshøjhuse i bycenteret hørt til de mest karakteristiske træk ved storbyers udvikling verden over, men i Danmark er den slags højhuse endnu relativt sjældne. Også i danske byer peger udviklingen i de seneste år dog i retning af flere høje, markante byggerier i eller nær bymidten.<br /><br />Abstract:<br />In recent decades, the distinctive urban setup, with a nucleus dominated by clusters of office towers, has spread to most parts of the world. Economic growth and structural conditions are obviously of fundamental importance for this development, but as the present article shows, the limited construction of such centrally located high-rise buildings in Danish (and European) cities may also be put into a framework of history of consciousness. The first modern skyscrapers were erected in American cities in the late 19th Century, but it was not until the middle of the 20th Century that a related, but dissimilar development gained momentum in Europe and Denmark. In Copenhagen, as well as in other European cities, office towers fitted badly into the the maze of streets in the city centres, and they also conflicted with the laws that restricted building heights. Because of the post-war shortage of housing and the rapid economic growth of the 1950s and -60s, the first high-rise buildings in Denmark were built in the mid-1950s in the form of suburban residential towers. Since then, these pre-fabricated concrete towers have affected the Danish townscape for better and perhaps especially for worse; and this may be one of the reasons why high-rise buildings fell into disrepute in Denmark. At any rate, the first generation of high-rise buildings in this country was mostly suburban, and a child of European modernism and functionalism. Due to a fear of Americanization and the ruining of Copenhagen"s "unique" low skyline, only a few "American" highrise buildings were allowed to be built in Copenhagen"s inner city in this period. From the early 1970s until 1990, practically no high-rise buildings were constructed in Denmark. The building activity was affected by low economic growth; and in addition, the bad experience from the 1950s and -60s influenced the new catchword of the building industry: dense, low. Since the last decade of the 20th Century, however, high-rise buildings have once again become fashionable in Denmark. Not all types of high-rise buildings, though, but characteristic and unique "American" commercial high-rise buildings in or near city centres. This development may be seen not only in Copenhagen, but also in several of the larger provincial towns. Public opposition to these towers is still significant, but as a consequence of increased globalization and the race for attracting multinational companies and the favour of the professions, municipal councils in Denmark are bending over backwards to signal progressiveness and an attractive business environment - for instance by stimulating the<br />construction of office towers.<br />