Between Old and New: Urban Interventions in German City Centres

The collective memory of European cities is preserved not only in monuments and urban artefacts,but also in the minute structure of urban parcels and blocks,in the layout of streets,squares and natural elements.This memory,often canceled and partially removed during last century,survives beyond its material dimension,also through the representation of its image transmitted to us through iconographic documents.Through these documents we can imagine these spaces that have slowly built up over time as real lieux de mémoire.The rebirth of those places inside German historical centers is based on different levels:the morphological layout of urban spaces and blocks,the typological solution of each house,the urban image recreated,between philologic re-proposal and critical reinterpretation.The aim of regaining its lost historicity depends on the appropriateness of architectural and technical solutions adopted in each project,beyond too simplistic oppositions between terms like Old&New or Authentic&Fake.In this sense,such case-studies are not to be understood as nostalgic attempts to reproduce the city as it was,nor as artificial simulacra or hyperrealities,but as mature examples of critical reconstruction,according to the meaning introduced in the European debate since the 1970s.

The Limits of Domestic Spatiality in the Information Age-A Secondary Publication

The limits of spatiality have blurred in the information age;a phenomenon that can be observed through the socio-spatial implications of Internet use in the domestic sphere.How and why are the use and organization of space-time around the Internet shaping a new domestic spatiality that intertwines the digital space with the production of social space through the practice of habits,presence,and interaction of individuals?What are the repercussions of the superimposition of digital space on human existence?The units of analysis were integrated through the sum of people and middle-class housing in the face of the digitalization process in the city of San Luis Potosi,Mexico.The questionnaire consisted of 35 questions designed from the Likert scale under the thematic order of presence,interaction,and habituality.The data were analyzed using SPSS software.This research contributes to explaining the current period in the history of inhabitable space,dominated by the simultaneous interrelationships between individuals,digital space,and architecture,which result in the detachment and devaluation of physical domestic space,while also highlighting the lack of control and regulation of individuals over the Internet.

Progress on CASEarth Satellite Development

CASEarth satellite is the first space Earth science satellite produced by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.The satellite has three payloads:high-definition Thermal Infrared Spectrometer(TIS),highdefinition Glimmer Imager for Urbanization(GIU),and high-definition Multispectral Imager for Inshore(MII).These payloads are used to explore the urbanization level and residential layout,the coastal ecosystem,and new methods and approaches of environmental detection during night-time and even under conditions of polar aurora and provide scientific evidence for the refined depiction of human traces.The CASEarth satellite can provide space observation data for A Project on Big Earth Data Science Engineering as well as scientific and application studies inside and outside China.

Fusion of urban remote image based on multi-characteristics

A fusion approach is proposed to refine the resolution of urban multi-spectral images using the corresponding high-resolution panchromatic （PAN） images. Firstly, the two images are decomposed by wavelet transformation, and five texture features are extracted from high-frequency detailed sub-images. Then a multi-characteristics fusion rule is used to merge wavelet coefficients from the two images according to the extracted features. Experimental results indicate that, comparing with the non-characteristic methods, the proposed method can efficiently preserve the spectral information while improving the spatial resolution of the urban remote sensing images.

Numerical Study of the Impacts of Urban Expansion on Meiyu Precipitation over Eastern China

The Yangtze River Delta（YRD） has experienced significant urban expansion in recent years, while the Meiyu belt of China has demonstrated a decadal northward shifting trend. Thus, it is of interest to assess how urban expansion affects Meiyu precipitation and hopefully to reveal the underlying physical mechanisms involved. In this study, the urban extents over the YRD in 2001 and 2010 are derived based on land use/land cover（LULC） category data and nighttime light image data. Two parallel groups of10-summer（2001-2010） numerical simulations are carried out with the urban extents over the YRD in2001 and 2010, respectively. The results show that the urban expansion in the YRD tends to result in increased（decreased） Meiyu precipitation over the Huaihe River（Yangtze River） basin with intensities of0.2-1.2 mm day-1. Further analysis indicates that the spatiotemporal pattern of the Meiyu precipitation change induced by the urban expansion resembles the third empirical orthogonal function（EOF） mode of the observed Meiyu precipitation. Analyses of the possible underlying physical mechanisms reveal that urban expansion in the YRD leads to changes in the surface energy balance and warming（cooling） of tropospheric（stratospheric） air temperature over eastern China. Anomalous upward（downward） motion and moisture convergence（divergence） over the Huaihe River（Yangtze River） basin occur, corresponding to the increases（decreases） of the Meiyu precipitation over the Huaihe River（Yangtze River） basin.