Hard, soft and thin governance spaces in land-use change: comparing office-to-residential conversions in England, Scotland and the Netherlands

In recent years, converting office buildings to residential use became a high-profile issue in the UK and in the Netherlands. There has, however, been differentiation in the policy response between England and Scotland (planning policy being devolved within the UK), and the Netherlands. We conceptualize this differentiation through the lens of variegated neoliberalism in the forms of hard, soft and thin governance spaces. England, where planning deregulation is more strongly adopted, represents a thin governance space. Scotland, where there has been little policy change, illustrates a hard governance space. The Netherlands represents a soft governance space, where proactive partnerships between government and developers predominate. This paper characterizes these distinct governance spaces and explores their impact on housing delivery and place-making, and the impact of underlying ideologies and planning culture(s) in governing office-to-residential conversions in the three countries. Drawing on national government assessments and statistics, interviews with stakeholders, and case study data from three cities: Leeds, Glasgow and Rotterdam, we conclude that while both hard and soft governance spaces, to different degrees and with different merits, are environments that enable planning, thin governance spaces – being driven more by ideology than notions of good governance – imply weak planning and place-making

Human lectins, their carbohydrate affinities and where to find them

POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007265Lectins are a class of proteins responsible for several biological roles such as cell-cell interactions, signaling pathways, and several innate immune responses against pathogens. Since lectins are able to bind to carbohydrates, they can be a viable target for targeted drug delivery systems. In fact, several lectins were approved by Food and Drug Administration for that purpose. Information about specific carbohydrate recognition by lectin receptors was gathered herein, plus the specific organs where those lectins can be found within the human body.publishersversionpublishe

Research into the quality standard of homes delivered through change of use permitted development rights

The report provides the findings of independent research into the quality standard of homes delivered through certain national permitted development rights for the change of use. The research considers the quality of homes delivered in 11 case study areas in England in respect of size, amenity, location and design, drawing out the differences between homes delivered through permitted development compared with planning applications

Thoracic high resolution computed tomography (HRCT) in asthma

INTRODUCTION: High-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) is a widespread medical imaging method for the study of thoracic diseases. In asthma it is very useful particularly when it is difficult to achieve an effective control of disease, and in severe deterioration. AIM: It was intended to evaluate the imaging changes by HRCT in asthmatic patients and to assess the expression according to the symptoms and duration of disease. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Thirty three patients from the Outpatient Department, with asthma classified in the different clinical severity stages according to GINA, were randomly included. They were submitted to HRCT (Somaton Plus-4, Siemens). The lesions were classified in reversible (mucoid impaction, acinar pattern centrilobular nodules and lobar collapse) and irreversible (bronchiectasis, bronchial wall-thickening, sequellar line shadows and emphysema). RESULTS: The 33 asthmatic patients (20 female) had an average age of 44.76 +/- 16.98 years and a mean disease evolution time of 23.39 +/-14.83 years. 30% had mild persistent asthma, 43% moderate persistent asthma and 27% severe persistent asthma. All the patients were under inhaled corticotherapy. Only 6 patients had normal HRCT 4 with mild persistent asthma (4 to 25 years of duration of disease) and 2 with moderate persistent (10 to 48 years of duration of disease). 81.81% of the patients had changes in HRCT, being the irreversible lesions the most frequent. The most important irreversible lesions were observed in severe asthma patients with longer duration of disease. All the patients with reversible lesions had also irreversible changes. Most of the bronchiectasis were centrally located and were found in severe asthma patients. Irreversible changes were identified in 3 patients with mild asthma and a maximum of 6 years of duration of disease. DISCUSSION: HRCT findings were related with asthma severity and long lasting disease but there are some asthmatics that also present early abnormalities, even in milder forms. All the groups of asthmatic patients presented all types of imaging changes, including the irreversible ones. In asthma these changes can be the result of individual patterns of response to frequent exacerbations, leading to a persistent chronic inflammatory process that will determine airway remodelling, even in early stages of disease and/or mild asthma

Coupling of an SPH-based solver with a multiphysics library

Financiado para publicación en acceso aberto: Universidade de Vigo/CISUGA two-way coupling between the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics-based (SPH) code with a multiphysics library to solve complex fluid-solid interaction problems is proposed. This work provides full access to the package for the use of this coupling by releasing the source code, completed with guidelines for its compilation and utilization, and self-contained template setups for practical uses of the novel implemented features, is provided here. The presented coupling expands the applicability of two different solvers allowing to simulate fluids, multibody systems, collisions with frictional contacts using either non-smooth contact (NSC) or smooth contact (SMC) methods, all integrated under the same framework. The fluid solver is the open-source code DualSPHysics, highly optimised for simulating free-surface phenomena and structure interactions, uniquely positioned as a general-purpose Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software with a GPU-accelerated solver. Mechanical systems that comprise collision detection and/or multibody dynamics are solved by the multiphysics library Project Chrono, which uses a Discrete Element Method (DEM). Therefore, this SPH-DEM coupling approach can manage interactions between fluid and complex multibody systems with relative constraints, springs, or mechanical joints.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. PID2020-113245RB-I00Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED431C 2021/44Xunta de Galicia | Ref. ED481A-2021/337Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Xunta de Galicia con fondos de la Unión Europea NextGenerationEU y el Fondo Europeo Marítimo y de Pesca | Ref. PRTR-C17.I

Spectroscopy characterization of humic acids isolated from Amazonian dark earth soils (Terra Preta De Índio).

Description and morphologic characterization; Extraction, chemical fractionation and purification of the humic material; DRIFT Spectroscopy analysis

Development of quantitative metabolomics for Pichia pastoris

Accurate, reliable and reproducible measurement of intracellular metabolite levels has become important for metabolic studies of microbial cell factories. A first critical step for metabolomic studies is the establishment of an adequate quenching and washing protocol, which ensures effective arrest of all metabolic activity and removal of extracellular metabolites, without causing leakage of metabolites from the cells. Five different procedures based on cold methanol quenching and cell separation by filtration were tested for metabolomics of Pichia pastoris regarding methanol content and temperature of the quenching solution as key parameters. Quantitative evaluation of these protocols was carried out through mass balance analysis, based on metabolite measurements in all sample fractions, those are whole broth, quenched and washed cells, culture filtrate and quenching and washing solution. Finally, the optimal method was used to study the time profiles of free amino acid and central carbon metabolism intermediates in glucose-limited chemostat cultures. Acceptable recoveries (>90%) were obtained for all quenching procedures tested. However, quenching at −27°C in 60% v/v methanol performed slightly better in terms of leakage minimization. We could demonstrate that five residence times under glucose limitation are enough to reach stable intracellular metabolite pools. Moreover, when comparing P. pastoris and S. cerevisiae metabolomes, under the same cultivation conditions, similar metabolite fingerprints were found in both yeasts, except for the lower glycolysis, where the levels of these metabolites in P. pastoris suggested an enzymatic capacity limitation in that part of the metabolism

DualSPHysics: from fluid dynamics to multiphysics problems

DualSPHysics is a weakly compressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) Navier–Stokes solver initially conceived to deal with coastal engineering problems, especially those related to wave impact with coastal structures. Since the first release back in 2011, DualSPHysics has shown to be robust and accurate for simulating extreme wave events along with a continuous improvement in efficiency thanks to the exploitation of hardware such as graphics processing units for scientific computing or the coupling with wave propagating models such as SWASH and OceanWave3D. Numerous additional functionalities have also been included in the DualSPHysics package over the last few years which allow the simulation of fluid-driven objects. The use of the discrete element method has allowed the solver to simulate the interaction among different bodies (sliding rocks, for example), which provides a unique tool to analyse debris flows. In addition, the recent coupling with other solvers like Project Chrono or MoorDyn has been a milestone in the development of the solver. Project Chrono allows the simulation of articulated structures with joints, hinges, sliders and springs and MoorDyn allows simulating moored structures. Both functionalities make DualSPHysics especially suited for the simulation of offshore energy harvesting devices. Lately, the present state of maturity of the solver goes beyond single-phase simulations, allowing multi-phase simulations with gas–liquid and a combination of Newtonian and non-Newtonian models expanding further the capabilities and range of applications for the DualSPHysics solver. These advances and functionalities make DualSPHysics an advanced meshless solver with emphasis on free-surface flow modelling