George Bugliarello

Technology in society: An international journal

• Social, ethical and sustainability considerations that impact on designed solutions (ACTDEK040) • Development of products, services and environments, with consideration of economic, environmental and social sustainability (ACTDEK041) Collaborating and managing • Work independently, and collaboratively to manage projects, using digital technology and an iterative and collaborative approach. Considers time, cost, risk and safety (WATPPS60)

Phase Separation in Suspensions Flowing through Bifurcations: A Simplified Hemodynamic Model

In the laminar flow of a suspension of neutrally buoyant spheres through a bifurcation, intended as a simplified macroscopic model of the flow of blood, the concentration in the side branch is generally lower than in the main branch, and is affected primarily by the ratio of discharges in the two branches, the concentration up-stream, and by the branch size.

High-Speed Microcinematographic Studies of Blood Flow in vitro

The macroscopically steady flow of human blood at varying hematocrit values and flow rates through small glass capillaries has been studied by following in detail the motion of individual erythrocytes. At the microscopic level the flow was found to be nonuniform and unsteady. The shape of the average velocity profile of the erythrocytes was found to be in general more blunt than the Newtonian profile, and to be affected by concentration and flow rate, particularly in the capillaries of smaller diameter.

Concentration Redistribution Phenomena in the Shear Flow of Monolayers of Suspended Particles

The full range of phenomena occurring in the flow of suspensions remains still unexplored. This paper describes phenomena observed in a neutrally buoyant suspension consisting of a single layer (a monolayer) of rigid spherical particles, flowing through a 220‐cm long rectangular channel of high‐aspect ratio (1:16) with its minor dimension (116in.) 1.6 times larger than the particle diameter. The flow was investigated over a range of particle Reynolds numbers between 101 and 407, and of concentrations between 1.7 and 5%. Concentration distributions obtained from a detailed analysis of direct photographic observations show the existence of four consecutive regions as the suspension moves down the channel: (a) an initial region, close to the channel entrance, characterized by essentially uniform particle distribution. (b) A region in which the particles move away from the wall forming a particle‐free layer next to it. The core containing the particles does not have a uniform concentration distribution but ex...

A New Trivium and Quadrivium

Today’s conflicts between the views that the humanities hold of science and engineering and the views science and engineering hold of the humanities weaken the very core of our culture. Their cause is lack of integration in today’s education among subjects that hark back to the medieval trivium and quadrivium. A new trivium is needed to provide every educated person with a basic understanding of the endeavors and instruments that help us address our world and shape a new morality—the humanities, in the noblest sense of the word, to civilize, science to understand nature, and engineering, broadly defined, to encompass the kindred activities that modify nature. Integration of these endeavors is urgent. It involves, in turn, an intimate interaction (the “biosoma”) of biological organisms, society, and machines—a new quadrivium. No domain can any longer be considered and learned in isolation.

Critical New Bio-Socio-Technological Challenges in Urban Sustainability

Cities are pivotal and growing instruments of human advancement, but also concentrated sites of poverty and dysfunctionalities. The explosive growth of cities since the beginning of the last century is leading to concerns about their sustainability, their impact on the sustainability of our global resources, and on the environment. Will todays cities be sustainable in the long run? What are the long-term global implications of urbanization? Are megacities inevitable? desirable? Will the world be capable of accomplishing the huge paradigm shifts necessary to achieve urban sustainability globally? Answers to questions such as these will depend on our still incomplete understanding of the rapidly evolving urban cycle of interactions and on the response to a set of emerging critical demographic, socioeconomic, and biological challenges—beyond the fundamental and more familiar ones of water, energy, and infrastructures, with which there are, however, inextricable interconnections. How we address the emerging new challenges will determine the future trajectory of human settlements and, ultimately, of our species. This will require comprehensive paradigms of urban dynamics and a new vision of engineering.

Megacities: Four Major Questions

MEGACITIES are not a new phenomenon in the history of the world. After the emergence of towns and cities made possible by the onset of agriculture 10,000 years ago, cities, like Athens, Baghdad, Rome, London, Paris, and Beijing became so powerful and populous as to stand out from other human aggregations. Today, the largest cities—the megacities, currently defined by the United Nations as having over 10 million inhabitants— are unprecedented in magnitude, and still not fully understood in their geopolitical impacts and critical implications for global sustainability. The explosive growth of many megacities confronts policy-makers and citizens with emerging and urgent challenges, as well as opportunities. This paper will endeavor briefly to address these challenges in response to four major questions about the future of megacities that were asked at the Convention of the Pan American Federation of Engineering Societies (UPADI) in Brasilia at the beginning of December 2008: Is the building up of megacities unavoidable? Could family agriculture around the perimeters of megacities be a positive factor for them? How should megacities address systems problems such as traffic, high real estate costs, and urban waste disposal? Is the growth of megacities controllable? Paper based on the invited presentation by the author at the December 2008 UPADI (Pan American Federation of Engineering Societies) and WFEO (World Federation of Engineering Organizations) Convention in Brasilia.

Urban sustainability: science, technology, and policies

Akey long-term problem facing our species is sustainability, that is, in a well known, but somewhat simplified definition, a world development, “which meets present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” With urban areas now home to about half of the world’s population and an even larger portion, about four-fifths, in developed countries, global sustainability is becoming ever more a problem of urban sustainability. Urban sustainability represents the intersection of two enormous and increasingly overlapping challenges: that of urbanization and that of sustainability. (See Figure 1.) A focus on urban sustainability must involve by necessity science (“What do we know?”), technology (“What can we do?”), and the development of appropriate policies (“What do we want to do?”). Physical, biological, social, and environmental sciences are needed to understand both the urban phenomenon and the complex question of sustainability; technology (that is, engineering, health care, agriculture, and other activities that modify nature) is needed to translate our understandings into designs and functions that enhance urban and global sustainability; appropriate policies are needed to respond to these scientific understandings and technological capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to present three sets of questions about urban sustainability, with particular focus on science, technology, and pertinent policies: Urban Sustainability: Science, Technology, and Policies 1

Urban knowledge parks, knowledge cities and urban sustainability

Urban knowledge parks are a new mechanism for the transformation of cities into knowledge cities, in which the leit motif is knowledge and information. These cities offer one of the desirable paradigms for the sustainable cities of the future. Urban knowledge parks are a subset of knowledge parks. Their distinguishing characteristics and the processes by which they come into being are briefly outlined, and reference is made to a specific case – Metrotech, in New York City.

Reflections on Technological Literacy

Technological literacy means far more than just the ability to use computers and other machines. It implies an understanding of the factors involved in the creation and development of technologies and of the impacts of technology on society, on individuals, and on the environment. Ignorance of any of these facets can have serious consequences in a future in which technology will play an ever more determinant role. Unfortunately, the importance as well as the intrinsically interdisciplinary nature of technological literacy have not yet been perceived by the educational system and used to enrich the content of school curricula and of traditional liberal arts college curricula. The diffusion of technological literacy is an urgent priority in helping shape our culture, in providing a sense of optimism about our future, and in enabling us to avoid the disasters that the neglect of technology has wreaked historically on other societies.