Irish Studies in Spain: 2015-March 2016

In October 2015 the Irish fashion retailer chain Primark opened its second world-wide biggest premises in Madrid. Low-cost fashion, low-cost travel, low-cost food … low-cost life? What about quality? Fortunately, Irish-Spanish relationships cannot be reduced to economic endeavours or to the Kinahan mafia clan criminal forays into the Spanish “Costa del Sol” (Málaga). Even if the period covered by this review has not been particularly fruitful in terms of publications by Spanish or Spanish affiliated scholars, it has been rich in cultural events, both academic and informative, with assorted commemorations and celebrations of Irish culture, particularly music, cinema and literature. I will start here by first commenting on Spanish translations of both fictional and non-fictional works by Irish authors

Planning for Sea Level Rise: Redevelopment Concepts for San Francisco\u27s Embarcadero

In the Fall Quarter 2017, the third-year urban design studio run by the authors collaborated with San Francisco\u27s Port Authority in developing ideas for how the city\u27s Embarcadero waterfront could be redeveloped to its full potential, enhancing livability and preparing for sea-level rise. The thirty-two students, organized into six teams, developed plans and ideas for different sectors, as highlighted in these pages

Work and information processing in a solvable model of Maxwell's demon

We describe a minimal model of an autonomous Maxwell demon, a device that delivers work by rectifying thermal fluctuations while simultaneously writing information to a memory register. We solve exactly for the steady-state behavior of our model, and we construct its phase diagram. We find that our device can also act as a "Landauer eraser", using externally supplied work to remove information from the memory register. By exposing an explicit, transparent mechanism of operation, our model offers a simple paradigm for investigating the thermodynamics of information processing by small systems.Comment: Main Text (6 pages, 3 figures) + Suppl. Info. (3 pages). To appear in PNA

Urban Design Visions for Riverside, Paso Robles

Following the CRP Department\u27s tradition of community-oriented projects with real clients, the authors discuss their studio work for the City of Paso Robles Community Development Department. The students explored development scenarios and urban design ideas for the area between the Salinas River and the railroad tracks, including more memorable, walkable and livable spaces, and stronger connections to the downtown and the rest of the city

Envisioning a Future for Dinuba: Revitalizing Downtown and the Railroad Corridor

During the Spring Quarter 2018, a graduate and an undergraduate studio run by Hemalata Dandekar and Vicente del Rio, respectively, collaborated with Dinuba, a small town in California\u27s Central Valley. Responding to a request from the city manager, the students were charged with envisioning how to redesign and revitalize the city\u27s downtown and the abutting under-developed and under-utilized railroad corridor

Nootropics use in the workplace. Psychiatric and ethical aftermath towards the new frontier of bioengineering

OBJECTIVE: The authors have sought to expound upon and shed a light on the rise of nootropics, which have gradually taken on a more and more relevant role in workplaces and academic settings. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Multidisciplinary databases have been delved into by entering the following keys: "nootropics", "cognitive enhancement", "workplace", "productivity", "ethics", "bioengineering". In addition, a broad-ranging search has been undertaken on institutional websites in order to identify relevant analysis and recommendations issued by international institutions and agencies. Papers and reports have been independently pored over by each author. This search strategy has led to the identification of 988 sources but only 64 were considered appropriate for the purposes of the paper after being selected by at least 3 of the authors, independently. RESULTS: The notion of an artificially enhanced work performance - carried out by the 'superworker' - is particularly noteworthy and resonates with the conception of contemporary work on so many different levels: the rising need and demands for higher degrees of flexibility and productivity on the job, the implications of a '24/7' society, where more and more services are available at any time, the ever greater emphasis on entrepreneurial spirit, individual self-reliance and self-improvement, and last but not least, the impact of an ageing society on economic standards and performance. CONCLUSIONS: Moreover, it is worth mentioning that human enhancement technologies will predictably and increasingly go hand in hand with gene editing, bioengineering, cybernetics and nanotechnology. Applications are virtually boundless, and may ultimately affect all human traits (physical strength, endurance, vision, intelligence and even personality and mood)

X-ray polarization: General formalism and polarization analysis

The polarization of x-rays plays an outstanding role in experimental techniques such as non-resonant magnetic x-ray scattering and resonant x-ray scattering of magnetic and multipolar order. Different instrumental methods applied to synchrotron light can transform its natural polarization into an arbitrary polarization state. Several synchrotron applications, in particular in the field of magnetic and resonant scattering rely on the improvement in the signal/noise ratio or the deeper insight into the ordered state and the scattering process made possible through these polarization techniques. Here, we present the mathematical framework for the description of fully and partially polarized x-rays, with some applications such as linear x-ray polarization analysis for the determination of the scattered beam's polarization, and the Ge K-edge resonant scattering.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures and 1 table. To be published in proceedings of the workshop "Resonant Elastic X-ray Scattering", Aussois, France (2011

Extracellular cysteine in connexins: Role as redox sensors

Indexación: Scopus.Connexin-based channels comprise hemichannels and gap junction channels. The opening of hemichannels allow for the flux of ions and molecules from the extracellular space into the cell and vice versa. Similarly, the opening of gap junction channels permits the diffusional exchange of ions and molecules between the cytoplasm and contacting cells. The controlled opening of hemichannels has been associated with several physiological cellular processes; thereby unregulated hemichannel activity may induce loss of cellular homeostasis and cell death. Hemichannel activity can be regulated through several mechanisms, such as phosphorylation, divalent cations and changes in membrane potential. Additionally, it was recently postulated that redox molecules could modify hemichannels properties in vitro. However, the molecular mechanism by which redox molecules interact with hemichannels is poorly understood. In this work, we discuss the current knowledge on connexin redox regulation and we propose the hypothesis that extracellular cysteines could be important for sensing changes in redox potential. Future studies on this topic will offer new insight into hemichannel function, thereby expanding the understanding of the contribution of hemichannels to disease progression.http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphys.2016.00001/ful

Covid-19: when health care resources run short, how to pick who should (not) get treated?

: The World Health Organization had long warned of the onset of a pandemic that could throw national health systems into a major crisis, even in wealthy developed nations. Nonetheless, almost a year and a half after its appearance, Covid-19 continues to make painful triage choices necessary in granting access intensive care. Based on the opinions of numerous ethics committees and scientific societies, the article aims to illustrate the difference between the utilitarian-collectivist approach and the ethical approach, which inspired the guidelines drawn up in Italy in 2021 by SIAARTI in collaboration with SIMLA. Only medical parameters should be evaluated to establish the prognosis through which to identify the patients to be treated as a priority. Otherwise, the patient's interest is subordinated to that of the community. But moral judgment cannot concern only the choices of doctors. According to the principle of beneficence, hospital directors and national and local health policy managers must also take action, in particular to eliminate waste of economic resources so as to allocate more of them to health protection, especially in consideration of the predictability with which infection rates increase, and in light of the fact that immunization through vaccination is only temporary