Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area‐based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case‐study cities. The article examines the claims of the so‐called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on‐ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT‐driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.`

Attitudes and habits are extremely resistant to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring long-term, massive societal changes. During the pandemic, people are being compelled to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. Going forward, a critical question is whether these experiences will result in changed behaviors and preferences in the long term. This paper presents initial findings on the likelihood of long-term changes in telework, daily travel, restaurant patronage, and air travel based on survey data collected from adults in the United States in Spring 2020. These data suggest that a sizable fraction of the increase in telework and decreases in both business air travel and restaurant patronage are likely here to stay. As for daily travel modes, public transit may not fully recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels, but many of our respondents are planning to bike and walk more than they used to. These data reflect the responses of a sample that is higher income and more highly educated than the US population. The response of these particular groups to the COVID-19 pandemic is perhaps especially important to understand, however, because their consumption patterns give them a large influence on many sectors of the economy.

The phenomenon of Fano resonance is ubiquitous in a large variety of wave scattering systems, where the resonance profile is typically asymmetric. Whether the parameter characterizing the asymmetry should be complex or real is an issue of great experimental interest. Using coherent quantum transport as a paradigm and taking into account of the collective contribution from all available scattering channels, we derive a universal formula for the Fano-resonance profile. We show that our formula bridges naturally the traditional Fano formulas with complex and real asymmetry parameters, indicating that the two types of formulas are fundamentally equivalent (except for an offset). The connection also reveals a clear footprint for the conductance resonance during a dephasing process. Therefore, the emergence of complex asymmetric parameter when fitting with experimental data needs to be properly interpreted. Furthermore, we have provided a theory for the width of the resonance, which relates explicitly the width to the degree of localization of the close-by eigenstates and the corresponding coupling matrices or the self-energies caused by the leads. Our work not only resolves the issue about the nature of the asymmetry parameter, but also provides deeper physical insights into the origin of Fano resonance. Since the only assumption in our treatment is that the transport can be described by the Green’s function formalism, our results are also valid for broad disciplines including scattering problems of electromagnetic waves, acoustics, and seismology.

Persistent currents (PCs), one of the most intriguing manifestations of the Aharonov-Bohm (AB) effect, are known to vanish for Schrödinger particles in the presence of random scatterings, e.g., due to classical chaos. But would this still be the case for Dirac fermions? Addressing this question is of significant value due to the tremendous recent interest in two-dimensional Dirac materials. We investigate relativistic quantum AB rings threaded by a magnetic flux and find that PCs are extremely robust. Even for highly asymmetric rings that host fully developed classical chaos, the amplitudes of PCs are of the same order of magnitude as those for integrable rings, henceforth the term superpersistent currents (SPCs). A striking finding is that the SPCs can be attributed to a robust type of relativistic quantum states, i.e., Dirac whispering gallery modes (WGMs) that carry large angular momenta and travel along the boundaries. We propose an experimental scheme using topological insulators to observe and characterize Dirac WGMs and SPCs, and speculate that these features can potentially be the base for a new class of relativistic qubit systems. Our discovery of WGMs in relativistic quantum systems is remarkable because, although WGMs are common in photonic systems, they are relatively rare in electronic systems.

The modified Thomas test was developed to assess the presence of hip flexion contracture and to measure hip extensibility. Despite its widespread use, to the authors’ knowledge, its criterion reference validity has not yet been investigated. The purpose of this study was to assess the criterion reference validity of the modified Thomas test for measuring peak hip extension angle and hip extension deficits, as defined by the hip not being able to extend to 0º, or neutral. Twenty-nine healthy college students (age = 22.00 ± 3.80 years; height = 1.71 ± 0.09 m; body mass = 70.00 ± 15.60 kg) were recruited for this study. Bland–Altman plots revealed poor validity for the modified Thomas test’s ability to measure hip extension, which could not be explained by differences in hip flexion ability alone. The modified Thomas test displayed a sensitivity of 31.82% (95% CI [13.86–54.87]) and a specificity of 57.14% (95% CI [18.41–90.10]) for testing hip extension deficits. It appears, however, that by controlling pelvic tilt, much of this variance can be accounted for (r = 0.98). When pelvic tilt is not controlled, the modified Thomas test displays poor criterion reference validity and, as per previous studies, poor reliability. However, when pelvic tilt is controlled, the modified Thomas test appears to be a valid test for evaluating peak hip extension angle.

Many strength and conditioning coaches utilize the good morning (GM) to strengthen the hamstrings and spinal erectors. However, little research exists on its electromyography (EMG) activity and kinematics, and how these variables change as a function of load. The purpose of this investigation was to examine how estimated hamstring length, integrated EMG (IEMG) activity of the hamstrings and spinal erectors, and kinematics of the lumbar spine, hip, knee, and ankle are affected by changes in load. Fifteen trained male participants (age = 24.6 ± 5.3 years; body mass = 84.7 ± 11.3 kg; height = 180.9 ± 6.8 cm) were recruited for this study. Participants performed five sets of the GM, utilizing 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90% of one-repetition maximum (1RM) in a randomized fashion. IEMG activity of hamstrings and spinal erectors tended to increase with load. Knee flexion increased with load on all trials. Estimated hamstring length decreased with load. However, lumbar flexion, hip flexion, and plantar flexion experienced no remarkable changes between trials. These data provide insight as to how changing the load of the GM affects EMG activity, kinematic variables, and estimated hamstring length. Implications for hamstring injury prevention are discussed. More research is needed for further insight as to how load affects EMG activity and kinematics of other exercises.