Based on the concepts of isovists and medial axes, we developed a set of algorithms that can automatically generate axial lines for representing individual linearly stretched parts of open space of an urban environment. Open space is the space between buildings, where people can freely move around. The generation of the axial lines has been a key aspect of space syntax research, conventionally ...

BACKGROUND Bed alarm systems intended to prevent hospital falls have not been formally evaluated. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether an intervention aimed at increasing bed alarm use decreases hospital falls and related events. DESIGN Pair-matched, cluster randomized trial over 18 months. Nursing units were allocated by computer-generated randomization on the basis of baseline fall rates. Pat...

China launched a pilot project of medical insurance reform in 79 cities in 2007 to cover urban nonworking residents. An urban population model was created in this paper for China's medical insurance scheme using microsimulation model techniques. The model made it clear for the policy makers the population distributions of different groups of people, the potential urban residents entering the me...

Four phases of interest in the distribution of city sizes are identified and current conflict in the literature is shown to be a consequence of poorly-selected units of observation. When urban regions are properly defined, US urban growth obeys Gibrat’s Law and the city size distribution is strictly Zipfian rank-size with coefficient q = 1.0. Care has to be taken with definition of the largest ...

OBJECTIVES To assess the impact of the quantity of resources for breast and cervical cancer screening on the participation rates in screening in clinical settings in municipalities, as well as to clarify whether lack of resources impairs access to cancer screening in Japan. METHODS Of the 1,746 municipalities in 2010, 1,443 (82.6%) and 1,469 (84.1%) were included in the analyses for breast an...

Brent D. Ryan first visited Detroit in 1993. Describing this experience, he says: ‘‘The sense of emptiness was overpowering. ... I felt as if I was walking into the ruin of America.’’ In his book ‘‘Design after decline—how America rebuilds shrinking cities,’’ Ryan tries to understand why so many American cities have been losing population, what was and is done to change the fortune of these cit...

BACKGROUND Small-area studies of health inequalities often have an urban focus, and may be limited in their translatability to non-urban settings. Using small-area units representing communities, this study assessed the influence of living in different settlement types (urban, town and rural) on the prevalence of four chronic diseases (heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke) and compared th...