Peppermint
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Any idea where one could find the animations that accompany units in Watson's Molecular Biology of the Gene? No luck with torrents and video sites.
HarvardX - Biology
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LMAO yes it took me so long to reply!!!
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Yes there are people. Check out the works of Patrick Geddes and Konstantinos Doxiadis. They are dead people but they got me rolling.
Ok here goes (so sorry i didn't reply). I wanted to make a draft then just forgot it altogether. So i'm winging this.
To establish the analogy of cities as organisms, we confine ourselves to a structure or a rigor of analysis. For the following, I choose to name cities as cities and districts as districts but we view them from the POV of biology.
1. Let's take New York. New York has its districts and areas. Let's take the New York Central Park NYCP and 5th avenue new york.
2. What composes 5th ave and NYCP are people (those who reside there and pass by there), the steel, glass, and concrete that make up the streets and the vegetation. There are fixed but slowly growing components like the buildings that may change over time. The growth of these components require specific urban stocks i.e. water, raw concrete, steel, plastic that will be transported to 5th avenue by the truck loads as it would happen during construction. Similarly, things sold at 5th avenue are also transported there like food. These patterns are similar to the transport of nutrients to parts of the body like oxygen and calcium to the muscle cells etc. Thus, the biological macromolecules of the city are people, concrete, food components, etc., We call these urban stocks.
3. When we view cytoplasmic streaming, it's like traffic of the city from one point to another. I mean I look at live maps and can't help by marvel at how similar it is to cytoplasmic streaming.
4. There a soooo many patterns of exchanges and if ATP is the biological molecular currency, to the city it's cash. For example, a contractor needs cash or its forms (ATP or ADP) to mobilize the movement of steel from somewhere in China to 5th avenue. the cash exchange almost never occurs at 5th avenue itself so then there's a bit of an unknown there in the relationships of cash and movements of urban stocks or urban macromolecules but certainly, it plays a part. Either way, this is interesting because ATP is used differently in every cell.
5. Following this, we can imagine the mitochondria as a bank, or a business venture that produces lots of ATP. Just like the electron transport chain as a different amount of ATP production compared with Kreb's cycle, then yeah, same with businesses. For sure, the ATP production and usage of the city as an organism has a very different pattern compared to that of the human body. It would be interesting to take note of the differences.
6. circadian rhythms. cities run on a cycle, or a beat. this is apparent when we view live maps and same like human bodies.
Er. I'll just send you a private message @dragulagu I'll send you my manuscript there. hehe
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dragulagu
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Gotcha, take your time. Because -to me- it's a very abstract concept. But it's a fascinating one. First thing I'd associate it to is the way how ant hills work in regards to resourcing.
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Apologies for cursing but damnit I could not completely move on from this:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/biologists-rethink-the-logic-behind-cells-molecular-signals-20210916/
°floating proteins
°constantly changing lock and key mechanisms as if to transform
°getting hitched to another protein randomly as if by pure chance.
I feel like free will is there. Opportunity for change is in the very randomness of the complexities of life.
Escalated to the levels of the city: the stocks are also randomly transported and exchanged. There's no structure! Structure is anti-life! (In a way) Mainly, while order is evident of life, it is but a manifestation of the living. The actual meaning of living is in random oscillation and the inevitability of connection!
https://www.quantamagazine.org/biologists-rethink-the-logic-behind-cells-molecular-signals-20210916/
°floating proteins
°constantly changing lock and key mechanisms as if to transform
°getting hitched to another protein randomly as if by pure chance.
I feel like free will is there. Opportunity for change is in the very randomness of the complexities of life.
Escalated to the levels of the city: the stocks are also randomly transported and exchanged. There's no structure! Structure is anti-life! (In a way) Mainly, while order is evident of life, it is but a manifestation of the living. The actual meaning of living is in random oscillation and the inevitability of connection!
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Yes, absolutely. I'm going to explore it again. The outlines are fuzzy right now but I'm going to do it.
I'm considering mind-mapping policies akin to dendrites to visualize its equivalence to neural pathways. But I'm stuck here as my understanding of the computing network of a single neuron is poor. You mentioned big data. That stuck with me. There is probably a tool out there to establish artificial cognitive pathways as used via coding for artificial intelligence to which I'm considering aligning the paths of policies (the temporal urban stock of focus). However, if the computing speed and the input-output relationships for these are still crude, I'm going to need more time. I read the probabilities of computing a single thought for living organisms were much higher while artificial neural pathways are simplified. It makes sense, too. Hence if I'm going to pick this up, I will need further cross-disciplinary consult, which I'm not ready for at this point. I may also have missed something so I'll stock up on my literature. I'm thinking big data is already being used in analyzing urban areas but possibly not in an interwoven manner. I caught an intriguing case study done in Canberra but the publication itself lead to more questions, which means I have to reach out again. I need to pause for a bit in this aspect and re-organize my notes.
On the other hand, I'm considering revisiting the living cell to zero in on its possible parallelism to architecture. Differentiation still fascinates me and I intuit that most organic civilizations differentiated like multicellular organisms. Historically, we've had cities established via a top-down approach which should be the equivalent of an engineered organism. There were issues in its sustainability (thus challenges to homeostasis). But historically, the data sould be there. The organic growth spurt recurs today too via the growth patterns of informal settlements (as I have observed at face value, for now--- I have yet to validate my observation formally). To thoroughly discuss these urban equivalents of complex multicellular differentiation however, I'll have to revisit the biological cell in comparison to the single house. Chances are, if ephemeral places of commerce are some sort of stem cells; they could already be a differentiated form. I mean that it must have had a simpler form. I'm thinking the ephemeral food cart itself is the homeocytoblast prior to becoming an actual erythrocyte, if analyzed parallel to erythropoiesis. Following this, it should not be too far fetched to go back to man's most basic infrastructure need, which is the house and to look at it as something similar to an embryo. I'm thinking informally manifesting settlements are probably differentiating in manners similar to embryonic and eventually fetal development. To visualize the parallels, I'm planning to map the differences between metabolic exchanges for an embryo compared to the fetus when it is very clearly multi-cellular.
But then I also hit some sort of philosophical dilemma as I pored through this: are we better off with organically grown settlements or are engineered ones more sustainable? For now though, I'm setting the question aside as it's obvious that either one has caveats. For now, I want to look into the particulars again.
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dragulagu
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I don't have that much though don't mind helping. PM me if you want.
For neurological computing networks, it depends a bit what you want specifically, many different disciplines within that branch.
Though I think what you're aiming at is neural networks and machine learning? Optimising an idealistic learning path for an urban system to create an optimal urban environment.
You need a lot of input data to make concise models for that, and yeah that ain't an easy task to figure out what kind of big data is needed.
Big data now is used in conjunction to some urban aspects, to give an example in regards to resources: The oil industry is one of these
that heavily uses Big Data and AI predictions to optimise their production capacity for the world's demand : https://www.ibm.com/industries/oil-gas/big-data-analytics. Same goes for energy, water, etc.
So that would be a partial input for an urban environment projection. How would oil generation impact the urban environment, for example? Albeit those big data systems touch just a part of that aspect.
As for the living cell; perhaps on a macroscopic level for architectural complexity, are there parallelisms with cell biology and let's say the architectures created by "simple" animals, like insects (ants, bees, .. ) for example as these work as a super-organism, a bit like how it works within the human body?
And can that be pushed further into the macroscopic complexity of human beings and what they build? Not to set the direct parallelism with cell architecture aside, but it is an incredible jump from that point to what is essentially artificial architecture, made by the human hand/mind. Not to
say there isn't, eventually, a correlation.
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Yes. Do you have a resource similar to Harvard X's visualization that simplifies the rendering of how neural pathways work? I suppose the tough part is in the exchange of the input-output because that doesn't seem to be visualizable.
Yes. Material Flow Analyses and the discipline of urban metabolism works excellently for these. This is what the study at Canberra attempted. Access here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652620318175
Hmmmm... I'll look into it. I do worry that it might fail to take into account the temporal aspects of urbanisation, which is much of where the unsustainability is stemming from. The "economics" of these organisms tend to be simplistic in relation to the complexities of the human urban area what with non-quantifiable aspects like sociopolitics and sociocultural economics. If I take an otter for analysis, its apparent motivations for environmental configuration seem far more direct as with bees and ants. My challenge with that would probably be the tool that allows me to capture the decision-making drivers of these animals. Conversely, man is driven by psychological factors which the social sciences allow me to investigate further. I might have a more difficult time assuming the hierarchies of other organisms. Although, from a sustainability standpoint, the very manifestation of the otter-made environment as an organic environment makes it a viable concept for application via something like biophilic architecture. Then again, my motivation for viewing the urban area as an organism is so that I may find the right metabolic balance for the homeostasis of a larger region relative to its resource-consumption patterns. Perhaps, I could compare the levels of sustainability for each of these animal-made environments, but that is also a different conceptual framework. I'll keep it in mind though. I'll set it aside for now but I'll keep it in mind.
Thanks Dragu. This is obviously a rabbit hole. I'll take it up in silence for now.
dragulagu
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There are, bit of an artistic take on the first one lol.
Is there a way to access it without Elsevier's access? (might try sci-hub)
Hey, it's not my intention to downplay the concept, it's just to propose different take on different perspectives or steps to the whole theory, because it is a fascinating concept. But it is, to me, difficult to have a thread between A behaviour on a cellular level and B the behaviour during creation of urbanisation. There will be a lot of steps-in-between involved to get to these points.
I'm personally a strong believer in the concept that everything, eventually, can be explained through their base underlying concepts. Whereas it is urban architecture, or biology, or the grand physics of the universe. Everything is eventually built upon some base scientific principles where other, more complex principles are built upon. But every principle or theory, like these, should be proven by experiment whether by actual or simulation (like neural networks), step by step.
So, it's not a rabbit hole, but it's rather not the most obvious take to the complete theory. Not without extra steps. We're talking about an evolution point of several million years to eventually get to modern infrastructure, with just a minor part of that being the human itself. I agree with man being driven by a lot of psychological factors and the correlation to urban evolution. Liking the otter analysis. Social animals.
PS: An extra intake here as an experimental concept: I did a trip recently to Denmark and visited the Lego House at Billund. This colourful building is divided in different parts where children can experiment
and learn about engineering, environments, filmmaking etc. through Lego.
One of the more fascinating projects there that they have is a type of Lego City game where children could create their own building and place it in some kind of checker-pattern board. The board
had different coloured squares where the kids could put their creations on. Once they placed their building, small lego men came out of it through a projecting system and started building the city, based on
what was put on that specific square.
The thing though that we observed is that it wasn't just some standard pre-fabricated behaviour, somehow these little lego men were popping up, grouping together,
making their way and building around new squares. We saw a bunch of little red lego men just massing around a couple buildings, while others were just moving about in between.
I have no clue what was behind that logic there, or if the building you placed on had anything to do with it (guess that's a Lego secret), but it was interesting to watch these little citizens do their own way.
So, I was wondering if something like this could be simulated in a similar way with let's say certain resources, a population, specific buildings etc. Based on actual urban theory.
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Yaaay! Thanks!!! Once again!
I went the sci-hub route too.
Wah! No such negative feelings nor any such interpretations of downplaying sprung from your post at all! I received it as a different but rather valid take. My line of thinking did go like this: "that's a good point. I should thoroughly revisit this. Damnit I have no time.
", But feelings-wise, my Fe dominance has not made it complicated too much yet. Lol.True true true. I have to simplify. I plan to anchor it on macromolecules, still. I'll write about this more thoroughly when I've delineated it properly.
That's a good belief. I intend to go that route too but I realized I had to make a mountain of hypotheses which I should test.
Remember the paper? I revisited and realized that I might have taken in too much by starting at mid-scale. You are absolutely correct that it has to be founded at some base and that's what I'm trying to build in the next most immediate steps. Thus, instead of taking the neural route, I might have to begin with establishing a thorough hypothesis on the parallels of the biological cell and the humble home. Lalalalaalah. There's so much to do about this! I'll first have to minimise thinking out loud through these posts.
Hmmmmmmmm.... This is another interesting branch...
Add:
This study shows the complexity of urban areas interwoven as systems. I wanted to articulate where I'm trying to build the basal level of the concept. I'm convinced that it's in the metabolic exchange. It's in the input-output and the conversion in between that is similar across all organisms. Each one relies on an exchange in order to survive. The exchange occurs regardless of spatiotemporality of stocks or nutrients too. Take the neuron which receives input and releases output via electric or chemical pulsations. It's a seemingly simple chemical passage but in the greater picture, it sends out profound meanings such as the taste of corn or smell of poop or even profound psychological issues. The matter seems non-physical from a larger scale, when in fact it occurs physically on a microscopic level. My gut is trying to say that the exchange happens everywhere; whether on the cellular level; or for the management of building so that it may thrive, or even via the passage of rather temporal policies so a town may continue to exist. This is why I was afraid that focusing on the manifestations of ant hills might distract me. I want to articulate the different types of exchanges on the urban scale as best as I can.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Stock-and-Flow-general-structure_fig3_343169734
Heh. Sorry for thinking out loud again via this forum. I hope you don't mind the reading too!
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