The changes in technology and cultures of mobility within dense North American cities have resulted in a space that intervenes between one thing and another which often generates seemingly uninhabitable zones and problematic discontinuities in the physical and social fabric. Over time, the pattern of cities has changed; movement spaces have fractured the social spaces. The social dimension in the design of movement spaces has been neglected and thus these spaces have primarily become products of the functional dimension, i.e. traffic flow, circulation, and access for vehicles. These approaches to developments and prioritizing the movement space over the social space have contributed to the creation of fractured people spaces in between the fabric of cities. This thesis proposes to reconnect the broken fabric of cities that are shaped as result of the juxtaposition of movement infrastructure. Furthermore, the research studies the methods by which such spaces can become transformed into successful people place through literature review of what constitutes a successful urban space. Case studies of successful places adjacent to roads, waterfronts, and in between the fabric of cities were studied to understand the methods by which underused, and fractured spaces were transformed to successful urban places. This thesis further implements the methods of place making into creating the new physical, visual, cognitive, and ecological connection between the fractured spaces. / Master of Landscape Architecture

A library has always been a doorway into learning. Learning, in today's world, has become a complex and varied process. The built form must therefore embody the vastness of this available knowledge. The building must, through its very structuring, make easy and accessible learning. It must also express the intricacies and inter-relationships of knowledge using an architectural vocabulary. The making of the building is analogous to the development of the individual. lt is from the collective that the individual emerge. The built form encapsulates society in both scale and complexity. lt is an amalgamation of difference, offering opportunity for individualized growth to a collective social education. The building reveals itself slowly through its relationship. It encourages exploration at every level. It is a beginning, an instrument of search, a ground for discovery. The transformation of the process of study into built form is drawn out along its connections. The language of architecture is used to bind together the many strands of learning through universally interpretable metaphors into a coherent reality. / Master of Architecture

La tesis doctoral se refiere al proceso fundacional escasamente conocido por encontrarse sus fuentes primarias en los archivos de Londres y París de la población menorquina anteriormente denominada Georgetown, hoy Es Castell, planificada por el ingeniero militar escocés Patrick Mackellar en el puerto de Mahón durante la segunda dominación británica de la isla (1763-1782).Se trata de una labor de investigación que está estructurada en tres partes. En la primera, se realiza una aproximación al urbanismo de origen militar desarrollado por Gran Bretaña a lo largo de los siglos XVII y XVIII, coincidiendo con el auge de la artillería bélica. En este sentido es demostrable la influencia, en el plano teórico, de la supremacía militar de Francia y sobre todo, de la polifacética labor de Vauban reflejada, entre otras cuestiones, en los Manuales de Fortificación de obligatorio estudio durante la formación de los ingenieros militares británicos.Hasta el siglo XVIII, los ingenieros agrupados en torno a la Board Ordnance tuvieron escasas ocasiones de crear nuevas ciudades, fundamentalmente por dos razones. La primera, que Inglaterra no inició su expansión colonial hasta la resolución de sus problemas internos que finalizaron con la anexión de Irlanda y Escocia. La segunda, que su condición insular la obligó a basar la defensa de sus territorios en el desarrollo de una poderosa flota armada.Sin embargo, el modelo colonial inglés, basado en el protagonismo de las compañías comerciales, propicia la intervención de los ingenieros militares en las labores de planificación y verificación de los nuevos asentamientos del norte de Irlanda, la costa de Coromandel, el este norteamericano y las Antillas.La segunda línea de investigación incursiona en la vida del planificador de Georgetown, destacando su experiencia bélica en los frentes americanos durante la Guerra de los Siete Años (1756-1763). Gracias a su participación en las campañas militares, Patrick Mackellar conoce en primera persona las características del urbanismo practicado por Inglaterra y Francia en los territorios de ultramar, y se dota de un importante bagaje cultural que demostrará cuando, en su definitivo destino como Ingeniero-Jefe en Menorca, acomete la empresa de planificar y diseñar una nueva ciudad.La tercera línea de investigación se centra en el proceso fundacional de Georgetown. La operación basada en razones defensivas consistió en demoler un asentamiento surgido a los pies de la principal fortaleza de la Isla, y trasladar la morada de sus casi cuatro mil pobladores a una enclave prudentemente alejado de la fortificación.Llamada Vila Jordi por sus primeros moradores, Georgetown resultó un excelente ejemplo de pragmatismo urbanístico. La plaza central o génesis del asentamiento, se ubicó sobre una pequeña meseta portuaria que ya había sido elegida por un ingeniero militar galo durante la dominación francesa de la isla y se aprovechó el trazado de una antigua vía de comunicación territorial como eje longitudinal del nuevo conjunto urbano. Igualmente, el reparto de suelo se realizó en función del tamaño de las parcelas existentes en el pueblo anterior. Sin embargo, la atención a las gentes y a una geografía del lugar marcada por la costa portuaria, no impidió a Mackellar el desarrollo de un conjunto urbano de calles rectas, paralelas y jerarquizadas trazadas a partir de un espacio central conformado por las edificaciones propias de una ciudadela militar barroca.Tras una comparación formal con otras poblaciones estudiadas, el desarrollo de la tesis analiza, finalmente, los elementos principales de la población, tales como la anchura y distancia de las calles, los edificios cuarteleros y otras construcciones notables, la tipología residencial y la historia de la población en los dos últimos siglos.Como conclusión, el autor considera que el proyecto de Mackellar para Georgetown combina acertadamente las bases empíricas que lo sustentan con una variante del prototipo urbanístico aplicado en la colonización de Nueva Escocia como garantía de la satisfacción de las exigencias de orden y regularidad propias de la planificación militar y del urbanismo dieciochesco.Nacida entre la agonía del Antiguo Régimen y el estallido de las revoluciones americana y francesa, hija del Barroco y madre del urbanismo decimonónico, esta operación urbanística financiada por la corona inglesa fue el fruto de un compromiso, un proyecto de transición. / The doctoral thesis refers to the foundation process quite unknown, as the first sources are in the archives of London and Paris of the Minorca's town before named Georgetown, nowadays known as Es Castell, planned by the Scottish military Engineer Patrick Mackellar in Mahon's harbour during the second british domination on the island (1763-1782).It is a research work and is structured in 3 parts. First part, it's an approximation to a source of military urbanism developed by Great Britain during the XVII and XVIII centuries, coinciding with the increase of war artillery. This is shown by the influence in the theoretical survey, of France's military supremacy and above all, the versatile labour of Vauban revealed, apart from other issues, by the Guides of Fortifications which were of compulsory study, for the british military engineers during their training.Until the XVIII century, the engineers round about the Board Ordnance had few occasions to create new towns, basically for two reasons. The first, is that England didn't begin its colonial expansion until it had solved its own internal problems, which came to an end with the annexation of Ireland and Scotland. The second, that it's insular status obliged it to base its defence of its territories in the development of a powerful navy.Nevertheless, the english colonial model, based on the commercial companies playing the main part, helped the intervention of the military engineers in the work of verifying and planning the new settlement in North Ireland, the Coromandel Coast, the east part of North America and the Antilles.The second line of research attacked the life of the planner of Georgetown, emphasising his war experience on the american front during the Seven-Year War (1756-1763). Thanks to his partaking in the military campaigns, Patrick Mackellar found out himself the characteristics of English and French development overseas, and he endowed himself with an important cultural knowledge which he revealed when, in his last post as Chief Engineer in Minorca, he undertook the designing and planning of a new town.The third research is centred in the foundational process of Georgetown. The transaction based on defensive reasons consisted in demolishing a settlement at the foot of the main fort of the island, and moves the homes of its almost 4.000 inhabitants to a more prudential area, away from the fort.Named Villa Jordi by its first inhabitants, Georgetown was an excellent example of city planning pragmatism. The central square or genesis of the settlement, was built on a small portside plateau which had already been chosen by a french military engineer during the France's domination of the island and, an old communicating land route, was made use of as an essential longitudinal part of the new urban unit. In the same manner the distribution of the ground was made according to the size of the existing plots in the old village. Nevertheless, the attention to the people and the geographical situation, marked by the port coastland, didn't stop Mackellar developing an urban unit with straight roads, parallel hierarchical layout from a central space, almost exactly like the buildings of a baroque military fortress.After a formal comparison with other populations under study, finally the thesis development analyses the principal elements of the population, like the length and the distance of the streets, the barrack buildings and other notable constructions, the residential types and the history of the population over the last two centuries.Concluding, the author considers that Mackellar's project for Georgetown, succeeds in combining the empirical bases that maintains it with a variation of the urban prototype applied in the colonization of New Scotland as a guarantee of satisfaction for the demand and regularity of a military planning as well as eighteenth century urbanism. Born between the agony of the Old Regime and the outburst of the american and French revolutions, daughter of the Baroque and mother of nineteenth century development, this town planning exploitation financed by the English Crown, was the result of a commitment, a design of the transitional period.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-251). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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In this dissertation I argue that properly situating Van Rensselaer Potter's bioethics makes it newly available to those seeking an alternative conceptual framework for global bioethics discourse. Locating Potter in the heretofore unappreciated context of the land-grant college ideology (evinced by those institutions established by the 1862 federal Morrill Act with a charge to democratize higher education and apply knowledge in the best interests of the public) and the Wisconsin Idea (a still–extant Progressive – era policy of applying university research to social legislation) not only illuminates its distinctive features but renders transparent its previously opaque epistemic culture. I outline how American bioethics as it is commonly understood took form at Georgetown University in the early 1970s with a mandate to consider the impact of new medical technologies on society, particularly in relation to reproductive and human fetal tissue research. This work yielded a vision that became known as principlism, the now-dominant form of Western bioethical discourse. I look at the various criticisms of principlism, as well as the inability of its critics to discard the principles framework. I then contrast principlism with the distinctly different understanding of bioethics that was offered in 1970 by Van Rensselaer Potter when he coined the word "bioethics." I discuss how, when Potter first began to speak of bioethics, he envisioned a "bridge to the future, " a union of science and the humanities that would foster cross–disciplinary thinking in anticipation of, and in the hope of averting, a worsening ecological crisis and its resultant negative impact on human health and well–being. The response to threats posed by technology — "dangerous knowledge" — was not to limit knowledge, but to respond with more knowledge, with the kind of contextual and moral vision that only transdisciplinary knowledge could provide. While Potter originally envisioned this work as a specific obligation of scientists, he gradually came to understand it as a social activity, a shift in communal perceptions and obligations. Finally, I suggest that Potter's bioethics has tremendous potential for redeeming bioethics and offers an alternative vision that is truly redemptive.

Some organizations considering tackling racial injustice are engaging in historical accountability processes for past harms. Here, I explore three cases of organizational historical accountability: APA’s public apology and action plan to address its history of perpetuating racism, Georgetown University grappling with its history of slavery, and the land transfer from Yale Union to the Native Arts and Culture Foundation as an act of land re-matriation. Using an exploratory case study approach based on analysis of publicly available documents, 16 interviews with involved stakeholders and 10 interviews with academics and activists, I explore these organizations’ processes of historical accountability, the facilitating factors and challenges these organizations encountered, and the elements stakeholders saw as particularly essential to these projects. These case studies exemplify ways these processes can connect past patterns with present and future dynamics, deconstruct destructive dynamics, reconstruct constructive dynamics, and also maintain existing patterns. These case studies reveal stakeholders often have different aims and lenses for viewing these processes. Given these differences, I propose five orientations for the ways organizations can take on historical accountability projects: perform, reform, repair, dismantle, and realign. These orientations are not mutually exclusive, but may help distinguish different aims, logics, theories of change, and elements that undergird historical accountability projects aimed at racial justice.

Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space. These interior and environmental forces are both general and particular, generic and circumstantial. Architecture as the wall between inside and outside becomes the spatial record of this resolution and its drama. And by recognizing the difference between the inside and the outside, architecture opens the door once again to an urbanistic point of view. Robert Venturi It is the role of design to adjust to the circumstantial. Louis Kahn The existential purpose of building (architecture) is therefore to make a site become a place, that is, to uncover the meanings potentially present in the environment. Christian Norberg-Schulz / Master of Architecture

DNA copy number change is an important form of structural variation in human genome. Somatic copy number alterations (CNAs) can cause over expression of oncogenes and loss of tumor suppressor genes in tumorigenesis. Recent development of SNP array technology has facilitated studies on copy number changes at a genome-wide scale, with high resolution. Quantitative analysis of somatic CNAs on genes has found broad applications in cancer research. Most tumors exhibit genomic instability at chromosome scale as a result of dynamically accumulated genomic mutations during the course of tumor progression. Such higher level cancer genomic characteristics cannot be effectively captured by the analysis of individual genes. We introduced two definitions of chromosome instability (CIN) index to mathematically and quantitatively characterize genome-wide genomic instability. The proposed CIN indices are derived from detected CNAs using circular binary segmentation and wavelet transform, which calculates a score based on both the amplitude and frequency of the copy number changes. We generated CIN indices on ovarian cancer subtypes' copy number data and used them as features to train a SVM classifier. The experimental results show promising and high classification accuracy estimated through cross-validations. Additional survival analysis is constructed on the extracted CIN scores from TCGA ovarian cancer dataset and showed considerable correlation between CIN scores and various events and severity in ovarian cancer development. Currently our methods have been integrated into G-DOC. We expect these newly defined CINs to be predictors in tumors subtype diagnosis and to be a useful tool in cancer research. / Master of Science

Only a few individual cells within less than 5% of all primary tumors form the cell lines commonly used in cancer research. These growth bottlenecks result in cell lines that are often poor models of primary tumors. Co-culture of primary tumor-derived cells with an irradiated mouse fibroblast feeder layer and ROCK inhibitor, known as the Georgetown Method, offers a way to culture over 80% of tumor-derived cells in vitro to create more representative tumor cell models. In our studies, we optimized the Georgetown Method to culture head and neck cancer cells, including oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma, and investigated its mechanism of conditionally immortalizing cells in culture. Differential trypsinization and regular feeder layer replacement were found to significantly improve the efficacy of immortalizing co-cultured cells at both atmospheric and physiological oxygen levels. Medium conditioned by irradiated fibroblasts can also substitute for direct co-culture with a feeder layer. The Georgetown Method was found to maintain low levels of p16 in co-cultured cells, suggesting a potential mechanism by which the Georgetown Method prevents differentiation and senescence. Our ability to culture over 80% of primary tumor-derived cells allows us to test the translational value of tumor-derived cell cultures and xenografts using BH3 profiling. Conditioned medium simplifies maintenance of cell cultures and will also allow us to perform high-throughput screens without the need to separate tumor-derived cells from the fibroblast feeder layer. The Georgetown Method provides opportunities to expand small tissue specimens for future diagnostics, therapeutics, and biobanking.