Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

Aim: To explore the feasibility and accuracy of virtual reality (VR) derived from cardiac computed angiography (CCTA) data to predict left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) device size. Method: Retrospective data of patients who underwent LAAO according to clinical indication were reviewed; all patients underwent a pre-procedural CCTA. Measurements of the left atrial appendage (LAA) orifice diameters by CCTA, VR, and transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) (acquired during the procedure) were compared to the implanted device size. The LAA perimeter was calculated using the Ramanujan approximation. Statistical analyses included Lin's Concordance Correlation Coefficient (ρ c ), the mean difference, and the mean square error (MSE). Results: The sample was composed of 20 patients (mean age 75.7 ± 7.5 years, 60% males) who underwent successful LAAO insertion (ACP™ N = 8, Watchman™ N = 12). The CCTA, VR, and TEE maximal diameter ρ c was 0.52, 0.78 and 0.60, respectively with mean differences of +0.92 ± 4.0 mm, -1.12 ± 2.3 mm, and -3.45 ± 2.69 mm, respectively. The CCTA, VR, and TEE perimeter calculations ρ c were 0.49, 0.54, and 0.39 respectively with mean differences of +4.69 ± 11.5 mm, -9.88 ± 8.0 mm, and -16.79 ± 7.8 respectively. Discussion: A VR visualization of the LAA ostium in different perspectives allows for a better understanding of its funnel-shaped structure. VR measurement of the maximal ostium diameter had the strongest correlation with the diameter of the inserted device. VR may thus provide new imaging possibilities for the evaluation of complex pre-procedural structures such as the LAA.

This essay will examine a place and community in the city of Haifa, Israel, that no longer exists - a resilient community that survived destruction for decades, until it gave in to the attempts of destruction and evacuation by the municipality of Haifa. The essay will review the history of the urban planning of the place as appears in surveys, maps and planning schemes, in parallel, the essay will explore the history of the place as narrated through a series of essay-form documentary films. The paper will explore the potential for a variegated, full and rich history of the resilient Wadi Rushmia and its inhabitants. The paper will describe the formal history of Wadi Rushmia as it appears in historical documents and planning materials such as maps and plans, and then examine its history through documentary films that use self-narrated stories of inhabitants and poetic point of view of the film maker, to challenge conventional top down planning practices. It will be argued that the destruction of the community and nature of the Wadi and its replacement by a network of roads, has turned it from what Augé (1995) refers to as a 'place', in which people have lived their everyday life, accumulating memories, time spent together, and collective history, into a 'non-place' a space of transience, in which the time of living and social communication is replaced by an accelerated temporality. The paper will then refer to film, to demonstrate the immense generative potentials presented by the filmmaking medium to research of the built environment and that using particular filming methodologies may contribute to the accumulation of multi-media knowledge of place. Film, it will be argued, works against these processes of destruction of the place, as it captures the spatial and temporal experience of the daily lives of the Wadi's community, in its final years. It will be argued that films form an alternative archive, of the everyday life of ordinary people, an archive which will not only guard the past, but also project into the future, to the imagination of a more ethical and sustainable urban reality.

Introduction Simpson's rule is generally used to estimate cardiac volumes. By contrast, modern methods such as Virtual Reality (VR) utilize mesh modeling to present the object's surface spatial structure, thus enabling intricate volumetric calculations. In this study, two types of semiautomated VR models for cardiac volumetric analysis were compared to the standard Philips dedicated cardiac imaging platform (PDP) which is based on Simpson's rule calculations. Methods This retrospective report examined the cardiac computed tomography angiography (CCTA) of twenty patients with atrial fibrillation obtained prior to a left atrial appendage occlusion procedure. We employed two VR models to evaluate each CCTA and compared them to the PDP: a VR model with Philips-similar segmentations (VR-PS) that included the trabeculae and the papillary muscles within the luminal volume, and a VR model that only included the inner blood pool (VR-IBP). Results Comparison of the VR-PS and the PDP left ventricle (LV) volumes demonstrated excellent correlation with a ρc of 0.983 (95% CI 0.96, 0.99), and a small mean difference and range. The calculated volumes of the right ventricle (RV) had a somewhat lower correlation of 0.89 (95% CI 0.781, 0.95), a small mean difference, and a broader range. The VR-IBP chamber size estimations were significantly smaller than the estimates based on the PDP. Discussion Simpson's rule and polygon summation algorithms produce similar results in normal morphological LVs. However, this correlation failed to emerge when applied to RVs and irregular chambers. Conclusions The findings suggest that the polygon summation method is preferable for RV and irregular LV volume and function calculations.

In a quest after the essence of memory, a crucial distinction is made between the notions of memory and remembrance, following Plato’s distinction between mneme (memory) and hypomnesis (archive). The article’s main argument is that memory has to do with the technical aspect of life, while remembrance has to do with what we live for. This is because the unwilled event of remembrance, which un-joins time, is always remembrance of one thing alone, i.e. the Thing. The notion of the Thing—addressed both by Heidegger and Freud—is analyzed in its psychoanalytic, theological and historical sense, as located in un-archiveable time, and as appearing in a spectral, violent fashion in our daily lives. Discussion is accompanied with examples taken from Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time and François Ozon’s film “Frantz.”

The Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly the University of Ife) campus in Nigeria is one of the identifiable modern heritage sites of Africa. It is significant to the history of tertiary education and the political history of Nigeria and especially to the global history of modern architecture as an exemplar of buildings shorn of ornamental colonial ostentation, emphasizing lightness and green vegetation and aspirational for the newly independent African states. Its manifestation is often labeled “tropical architecture”, interpreted as the adaptation of modern architecture to the tropical climate. This paper presents an argument for the importance of this work to Modern Heritage of Africa.

Major attention has been given to safety, environmental, and health hazard issues which arise from using toxic inorganic colorants and pigments in ceramic and glass technologies. A safe alternative is presented, wherein organic colorants approved for human use are entrapped within sol–gel aluminosilicate hybrid matrices and used for glazing porcelain ceramic and glass substrates. Among the colorants used are brilliant blue FCF replacing the toxic cobalt blue, curcumin replacing the toxic cadmium sulfide yellow, and a mixture of carmine and allura-red replacing the toxic cadmium selenide red. Additional advantages of the proposed approach are lowering of energy consumption, offering convenient and efficient recyclability of the colored glasses (thus also solving the current requirements for color-classified recycling), offering a huge library of thousands of organic colorants, opening for the artist and product designer a wide range of visual effects, and opening new artistic coloration methods to be explored. Full characterization was carried out including UV-vis spectroscopy, photoluminescence, topographic thickness analysis, wettability, SEM and XRD analyses, and FIB elemental analyses. The glazes are bright, of the order of 250 microns thick, crack free, chemically stable, with good adherence to both ceramic and glassy surfaces, and recyclable to the pure colorless ceramics or glass by heating. The potential for artistic applications, is demonstrated. Porcelain tile glazed with an aluminosilicate thick layer, doped with colorants safe for human use.

In the last three decades Architectural Prototyping (AP) has been reinstated as a useful teaching tool by a growing number of architecture higher education institutions. These institutions are using AP within two main frameworks: designbuild courses and Digital Fabrication Laboratories (DFL). These frameworks are characterized by intensive technological and hybrid digital-physical environments, and they promote an alternative teaching and learning approach to mainstream architectural education. However, the ways in which learning is constructed within these frameworks is yet to be fully understood. Therefore, this research aims to explore how AP affects the ways in which architectural knowledge is being constructed in contemporary architectural educational settings. Our multidisciplinary research is positioned at the intersection of three research areas: architectural education, craft practice, and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI). It adopts the ‘enactivism’ epistemology and investigates the cognitive processes behind the craft of architectural prototyping within the context of entangled social-material and digital learning environments. Full access at: https://www.tandfonline.com/share/NC3WCRPFSKCXAF6MAIPT?target=10.1080/14606925.2022.2053421

Background Key to curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic are wide-scale screening strategies. An ideal screen is one that would not rely on transporting, distributing, and collecting physical specimens. Given the olfactory impairment associated with COVID-19, we developed a perceptual measure of olfaction that relies on smelling household odorants and rating them online. Methods Each participant was instructed to select 5 household items, and rate their perceived odor pleasantness and intensity using an online visual analogue scale. We used this data to assign an olfactory perceptual fingerprint, a value that reflects the perceived difference between odorants. We tested the performance of this real-time tool in a total of 13,484 participants (462 COVID-19 positive) from 134 countries who provided 178,820 perceptual ratings of 60 different household odorants. Results We observe that olfactory ratings are indicative of COVID-19 status in a country, significantly correlating with national infection rates over time. More importantly, we observe indicative power at the individual level (79% sensitivity and 87% specificity). Critically, this olfactory screen remains effective in participants with COVID-19 but without symptoms, and in participants with symptoms but without COVID-19. Conclusions The current odorant-based olfactory screen adds a component to online symptom-checkers, to potentially provide an added first line of defense that can help fight disease progression at the population level. The data derived from this tool may allow better understanding of the link between COVID-19 and olfaction.

In this paper, we present a review of how the various aspects of any study using an eye tracker (such as the instrument, methodology, environment, participant, etc.) affect the quality of the recorded eye-tracking data and the obtained eye-movement and gaze measures. We take this review to represent the empirical foundation for reporting guidelines of any study involving an eye tracker. We compare this empirical foundation to five existing reporting guidelines and to a database of 207 published eye-tracking studies. We find that reporting guidelines vary substantially and do not match with actual reporting practices. We end by deriving a minimal, flexible reporting guideline based on empirical research (Section 6).<br/

Cervical spinal injury and neck pain are common disorders with wide physical implications. Neck pain and disability are reported to occur in females more often than in males, and chronic or persistent neck pain after whiplash is twice as common in females. Female athletes also sustain a higher percentage of concussions compared to male athletes. Still, while sexual differences in clinical presentation and outcome are well‐established, the underlying etiology for the disparity remains less clear. It is well‐established that the origin and insertion landmarks of posterior neck muscles are highly variable, but we do not know if these interindividual differences are associated with sex. Expanding our knowledge on sexual dimorphism in the anatomy of the cervical muscles is essential to our understanding of the possible biomechanical differences between the sexes and hence improves our understanding as to why females suffer from cervical pain more than males. It is also of paramount importance for accurate planning of posterior cervical spine surgery, which cuts through the posterior cervical musculature. Therefore, our main objective is to characterize the anatomy of posterior neck musculature and to explore possible sexual differences in the location of their attachment points. Meticulous posterior neck dissection was performed on 35 cadavers, 19 females, and 16 males. In each specimen, 8 muscle groups were examined bilaterally at 45 osseous anatomical landmarks. Muscles and their attachment sites were evaluated manually then photographed and recorded using Microscribe Digitizer technology built into 3D models. A comparison of attachment landmarks between males and females for each muscle was conducted. Out of the eight muscles that were measured, only two muscles demonstrated significant sex‐related anatomical differences—Spinotranversales (splenius capitis and cervicis) and Multifidus. Male Spinotransversales muscle has more attachment points than female. It showed more cranial insertion points in the upper cervical attachments (superior nuchal line, C1 posterior tubercle, and mastoid process) and more caudal insertion points in the spinous processes and transverse processes of the lower cervical and upper thoracic vertebrae. Thus, the male subjects in this study exhibited a greater coverage of the posterior neck both cranially and caudally. Female Multifidus has more attachment points on the spinous processes and articular processes at middle and lower cervical vertebrae and at the transverse processes of the upper thoracic vertebrae. All remaining muscles exhibited no sexual differences. Our findings highlight, for the first time, a sexual dimorphism in attachment points of posterior cervical musculature. It reinforces the notion that the female neck is not a scaled version of the male neck. These differences in muscle attachment could partially explain differences in muscle torque production and range of motion and thus biomechanical differences in cervical spine stabilization between sexes. It sheds a much‐needed light on the reason for higher whiplash rates, concussion, and chronic cervical pain among females. Surgeons should take these sexual morphological differences into consideration when deliberating the best surgical approach for posterior cervical surgery.

This chapter takes up the issue of art-without-artists from another angle: creation by accident. Can you choreograph chance or make music of accidental noise? Can you create what you do not control? The works of artists such as Ives Klein, Bas Jan Ader, and Ana Mendieta suggest these possibilities. In so doing, they also explore how freedom can quickly turn into violence. In a Nietzschean spirit, this penultimate chapter explores the danger that can accompany fusing art and life. Becoming the artist of one’s life requires ceding some control—art might now be a crime against the norms of a given culture or a form of violence for which the punishment is personal and possibly tragic.

This chapter presents a close reading of one work by artist Tino Sehgal who transforms everyday experiences, such as conversations or walks, into artistic creations. For six weeks in 2009, Sehgal’s performative piece, This Progress, occupied the entire Guggenheim museum in New York. Emptied of objects, the modernist museum was filled instead with people who moved up the rotunda while having both stylized and unscripted conversations. This Progress involved hundreds of “interpreters” talking with thousands of visitors each day and revealed the way in which life can be transformed into—and already is—a work of art. What causes that transformation? This chapter follows the details of this process and explores the intersection of daily life and artistic creation.

This chapter argues that Nietzsche’s understanding of tragedy articulates the intimate links between life and art. In his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche rejected the notion of art as a leisure activity. Instead, he argued that it was one of the most fundamental human activities. Nietzsche’s work summons us to become the artists of our lives. A paired interlude reads Nietzsche’s invocation against Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut. The coupling of Nietzsche with Kubrick allows us to understand the film through the lens of the Apollonian-Dionysian conflict—as a tragic struggle between the form-giving god of light, Apollo, and the madness and ecstasy of Dionysian revelry.

This chapter asks: why do humans make art? It explores snapshots from the long history of art—including cave art, Egyptian pyramids, and classical Greek architecture—to understand the connection between art and historical developments in our consciousness of life. Art provided a way to touch the content of the mind, visualize our thinking, and make mental states concrete so that we can examine, shape, and share them. Consecutive generations over thousands of years have used art to communicate their experiences of life. What we now call art represents the oldest repository of our forms of life, crafted through concrete social activity.

This chapter links the discovery of linear perspective in the Renaissance with the development of our understanding of the individual self. The early modern self was first constructed as a viewer for whom the world is given for observation and knowledge. Centuries later, the Cartesian cogito would articulate this discovery with respect to one’s own mental states. The loss of linear perspective in modernism spelled the loss of that point of view and experience of self. This chapter extends the controversial claim that art making is life making, and it explores the notion that advances in ways to express and represent the world yield developments in thinking and self-consciousness.

This chapter follows Benjamin’s last work, The Arcades Project, as a model for how to observe the forms of one’s life as if walking through an exhibition. Ordinary life can be transformed into art or art transformed into life while strolling in the city, watching people, or window-shopping. The everyday can serve as our museum. A short interlude couples this reading of Benjamin’s text with a case study of experiencing Bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv. Reflecting on the tradition of the Bauhaus as it emigrated from Germany to Israel, it charts alternative histories in a Benjaminian spirit that searches for remnants of the past as a way of inhabiting the present.