Towards a geography of displacement. Moving out of Brussels’ gentrifying neighbourhoods

This paper takes up recent calls for re-invigorating research activity on the socio-spatial effects of gentrification, and on gentrification-induced displacement in particular. It does so by analysing the socio-economic profiles and destination municipalities of individuals who moved out of Brussels’ gentrifying neighbourhoods in the early 2000s. Findings clearly indicate that highly contrasted residential mobility patterns are conflated in this set of migrants. Surely, the majority of these out-migrants do not match the idea of low-status residents forced out of their neighbourhoods as gentrification develops. Yet, results also highlight a specific residential mobility pattern associated with low-status individuals moving out of gentrifying neighbourhoods. I argue that these findings outline a believable picture of the geography of displacement, that is, they show where former inhabitants displaced by gentrification are most likely to relocate. These movements are mostly over short distances, and directed towards impoverished working-class neighbourhoods within the city. Nevertheless, others leave the city as a whole. These findings echo earlier comments on the growing social-spatial polarisation of the Brussels’ urban landscape, and validate to some extent appraisals by local community organisations that stress that part of the urban poor are being “exported” from gentrifying inner neighbourhoods in Brussels towards generally depressed, old industrial regions in the rest of the country.

Toward multiple catheters detection in fluoroscopic image guided interventions

Catheters are routinely inserted via vessels to cavities of the heart during fluoroscopic image guided interventions for electrophysiology (EP) procedures such as ablation. During such interventions, the catheter undergoes nonrigid deformation due to physician interaction, patient's breathing, and cardiac motions. EP clinical applications can benefit from fast and accurate automatic catheter tracking in the fluoroscopic images. The typical low quality in fluoroscopic images and the presence of other medical instruments in the scene make the automatic detection and tracking of catheters in clinical environments very challenging. Toward the development of such an application, a robust and efficient method for detecting and tracking the catheter sheath is developed. The proposed approach exploits the clinical setup knowledge to constrain the search space while boosting both tracking speed and accuracy, and is based on a computationally efficient framework to trace the sheath and simultaneously detect one or multiple catheter tips. The algorithm is based on a modification of the fast marching weighted distance computation that efficiently calculates, on the fly, important geodesic properties in relevant regions of the image. This is followed by a cascade classifier for detecting the catheter tips. The proposed technique is validated on 1107 fluoroscopic images acquired on multiple patients across four different clinics, achieving multiple catheter tracking at a rate of 10 images/s with a very low false positive rate of 1.06.     

Changes in membrane fatty acids and murein composition of Bacillus cereus and Salmonella Typhi induced by gamma irradiation treatment

This present study was carried out to evaluate the effects of gamma irradiation on the fatty acids (FA) and mureins composition of two different radiotolerant bacteria. Bacillus cereus LSPQ 2872 and Salmonella Typhi ATCC 19430 were used for this study. The bacterial strains were treated with a sublethal radiation dose of 1 kGy to cause a cellular damage. Gas chromatography (GC) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis were performed to demonstrate respectively the modification of the FA composition and the changes in muropeptide profile. Results obtained show, for both bacteria, that this treatment had a significant effect (P ≤ 0.05) on the FA content with an increase of unsaturated FA percentage. Substantial changes were also noticed for the relative percentage and the number of the muropeptides. This study represents one of the few to demonstrate the modifications on bacterial membrane as a cellular response to survive the ionising radiation stress.     

Multiscale transparent electrode architecture for efficient light management and carrier collection in solar cells

The challenge for all photovoltaic technologies is to maximize light absorption, to convert photons with minimal losses into electric charges, and to efficiently extract them to the electrical circuit. For thin-film solar cells, all these tasks rely heavily on the transparent front electrode. Here we present a multiscale electrode architecture that allows us to achieve efficiencies as high as 14.1% with a thin-film silicon tandem solar cell employing only 3 μm of silicon. Our approach combines the versatility of nanoimprint lithography, the unusually high carrier mobility of hydrogenated indium oxide (over 100 cm(2)/V/s), and the unequaled light-scattering properties of self-textured zinc oxide. A multiscale texture provides light trapping over a broad wavelength range while ensuring an optimum morphology for the growth of high-quality silicon layers. A conductive bilayer stack guarantees carrier extraction while minimizing parasitic absorption losses. The tunability accessible through such multiscale electrode architecture offers unprecedented possibilities to address the trade-off between cell optical and electrical performance.     

Reconstructing the 3D shape and bone mineral density distribution of the proximal femur from dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry

The accurate diagnosis of osteoporosis has gained increasing importance due to the aging of our society. Areal bone mineral density (BMD) measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is an established criterion in the diagnosis of osteoporosis. This measure, however, is limited by its two-dimensionality. This work presents a method to reconstruct both the 3D bone shape and 3D BMD distribution of the proximal femur from a single DXA image used in clinical routine. A statistical model of the combined shape and BMD distribution is presented, together with a method for its construction from a set of quantitative computed tomography (QCT) scans. A reconstruction is acquired in an intensity based 3D-2D registration process whereby an instance of the model is found that maximizes the similarity between its projection and the DXA image. Reconstruction experiments were performed on the DXA images of 30 subjects, with a model constructed from a database of QCT scans of 85 subjects. The accuracy was evaluated by comparing the reconstructions with the same subject QCT scans. The method presented here can potentially improve the diagnosis of osteoporosis and fracture risk assessment from the low radiation dose and low cost DXA devices currently used in clinical routine.     

Ultrafast Doppler imaging of blood flow dynamics in the myocardium

Imaging intramyocardial vascular flows in real-time could strongly help to achieve better diagnostic of cardiovascular diseases. To date, no standard imaging modality allows describing accurately myocardial blood flow dynamics with good spatial and temporal resolution. We recently introduced a novel ultrasonic Doppler imaging technique based on compounded plane waves transmissions at ultrafast frame rate. The high sensitivity of this ultrafast Doppler technique permits to image the intramyocardial blood flow and its dynamics. A dedicated demodulation-filtering process is implemented to compensate for the large tissue velocity of the myocardium during the cardiac cycle. A signed power Doppler processing provides the discrimination between arterial and venous flows. Experiments were performed in vivo in a large animal open chest model ( N = 5 sheep) using a conventional ultrasonic probe placed at the surface of the heart. Results show the capability of the technique to image intramyocardial vascular flows in normal physiological conditions with good spatial (200 μm) and temporal resolution (10 ms). Flow dynamics over the cardiac cycle were investigated and the imaging method demonstrated a phase opposition of flow waveforms between arterial and venous flows. Finally, ultrafast Doppler combined with tissue motion compensation was found able to reveal vascular flow disruption in ischemic regions during occlusion of the main diagonal coronary artery.     

A Context-Aware Network Equipment for Dynamic Adaptation of Multimedia Services in Wireless Networks

B3G (Beyond 3rd Generation) networks is the next step in the wireless world. It will enable the delivery of services to end-users, on different underlying wireless access networks and customised to users’ context. Furthermore, seamless mobility between networks and switch of devices will be handled in a transparent way. In this paper, a Context-Aware Network Equipment (CANE) is introduced, that is able to dynamically adapt multimedia services according to the users’ context. The term context includes the users’ device, the users’ preferences, the network conditions as well as the service provider adaptation policies. As a proof of concept, an implementation of a CANE is given for a 802.11 network use-case. An evaluation of the prototype as well as simulations of the proposed solution, both for an audio streaming service and a video streaming service, are presented. The results show that adapting multimedia services in case of network overload can enable to maintain an acceptable quality of service delivered to end-users and even to allow more users to enjoy the services, which will not be possible without the CANE.     

Silver versus white sheet as a back reflector for microcrystalline silicon solar cells deposited on LPCVD‐ZnO electrodes of various textures

We compare the performance of two back reflector designs on the optoelectrical properties of microcrystalline silicon solar cells. The first one consists of a 5‐µm‐thick low‐pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD)‐ZnO electrode combined with a white sheet; the second one incorporates an Ag reflector deposited on a thin LPCVD‐ZnO layer (with thickness below 200 nm). For this latter design, the optical loss in the nano‐rough Ag reflector can be strongly reduced by smoothing the surface of the thin underlying ZnO layer, by means of an Ar‐plasma treatment. Because of its superior lateral conductivity, the thin‐ZnO/Ag back reflector design provides a higher fill factor than the dielectric back reflector design. When decreasing the roughness of the front electrode with respect to our standard front LPCVD‐ZnO layer, the electrical cell performance is improved; in addition, the implementation of the thin‐ZnO/Ag back reflector leads to a significant relative gain in light trapping. Applying this newly optimized combination of front and back electrodes, the conversion efficiency is improved from 8.9% up to 9.4%, for cells with an active‐layer thickness of only 1.1 µm. We thereby highlight the necessity to optimize simultaneously the front and back electrodes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.