How does segregation shape intergroup violence in contested urban spaces? Should nominal rivals be kept separate or instead more closely integrated? We develop an empirically grounded agent-based model to understand the sources and patterns of violence in urban areas, employing Jerusalem as a demonstration case and seeding our model with microlevel, geocoded data on settlement patterns. An optimal set of parameters is selected to best fit the observed spatial distribution of violence in the city, with the calibrated model used to assess how different levels of segregation, reflecting various proposed "virtual futures" for Jerusalem, would shape violence. Our results suggest that besides spatial proximity, social distance is key to explaining conflict over urban areas: arrangements conducive to reducing the extent of intergroup interactions-including localized segregation, limits on mobility and migration, partition, and differentiation of political authority-can be expected to dampen violence, although their effect depends decisively on social distance. R ecent outbreaks of violence in multiethnic cities across the world highlight the fragility of intergroup relations. Such conflict raises a fundamental issue: what can be done to foster harmonious coexistence in contested urban spaces? In particular, should nominal rivals be kept separate or instead more closely integrated? This question remains unresolved, given ambiguous empirical evidence and contrary theoretical perspectives about causal mechanisms, which together have engendered a vigorous, ongoing debate in the literature.On the one hand, observations from numerous cities around the world suggest that to mitigate intergroup

This study presents antibiofilm coating formulations based on Pickering emulsion templating. The coating contains no bioactive material because its antibiofilm properties stem from passive mechanisms that derive solely from the superhydrophobic nature of the coating. Moreover, unlike most of the superhydrophobic formulations, our system is fluorine-free, thus making the method eminently suitable for food and medical applications. The coating formulation is based on water in toluene or xylene emulsions that are stabilized using commercial hydrophobic silica, with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) dissolved in toluene or xylene. The structure of the emulsions and their stability was characterized by confocal microscopy and cryogenic-scanning electron microscopy (cryo-SEM). The most stable emulsions are applied on polypropylene (PP) surfaces and dried in an oven to form PDMS/silica coatings in a process called emulsion templating. The structure of the resulting coatings was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and SEM. The surface of the coatings shows a honeycomb-like structure that exhibits a combination of micron-scale and nanoscale roughness, which endows it with its superhydrophobic properties. After tuning, the superhydrophobic properties of the coatings demonstrated highly efficient passive antibiofilm activity. In vitro antibiofilm trials with E. coli indicate that the coatings reduced the biofilm accumulation by 83% in the xylene–water-based surfaces and by 59% in the case of toluene–water-based surfaces.

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