Arabidopsis thaliana is able to sense tomato Systemin promoting defense against fungal pathogens

Pòster presentat al Symposium on Small Molecules in Plant Research: Chemistry and Biology Come Together (Valencia, Spain, 10-11 December 2019).Systemin is a small tomato peptide that regulates the plant response against herbivores and pathogenic fungi. It is released from a larger precursor upon wounding or pathogen attack and binds to a membrane receptor of the adjacent cell inducing a cascade of plant defences, including JA-related responses, that lead to the accumulation of protease inhibitors in local and systemic tissue. Although the tomato Systemin has been the focus of many recent studies, very little is known about the perception and function of Systemin in heterologous species

Myopic PPPs: Risk allocation and hidden liabilities for taxpayers and users [WP]

Drawing on evidence from three case studies, we show how the State’s Financial Liability has worked in assigning risk in large PPP contracts in Spain. Project failure and the concessionaires’ bankruptcy have resulted in the government having to assume heavy financial obligations, which have ultimately been absorbed by taxpayers and users. In contrast, Spain’s leading construction companies, which were also major investors in the concessionaires, have been able to minimize their risk. Myopic PPPs have been entered into based on the transference of liabilities to taxpayers and users, and the, consequent, minimization of risks for the main private investors

Public and private production in a mixed delivery system: regulation, competition and costs

Academics and policy makers are increasingly shifting the debate concerning the best form of public service provision beyond the traditional dilemma between pure public and pure private delivery modes, because, among other reasons, there is a growing body of evidence that casts doubt on the existence of systematic cost savings from privatization, while any competition seems to be eroded over time. In this paper we compare the relative merits of public and private delivery within a mixed delivery system. We study the role played by ownership, transaction costs, and competition on local public service delivery within the same jurisdiction. Using a stochastic cost frontier, we analyze the public-private urban bus system in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. We find that private firms have higher delivery costs than those incurred by the public firm, especially when transaction costs are taken into account. Furthermore, tenders tend to decrease delivery cost

Public and Private Production in a Mixed Delivery System: Regulation, Competition and Costs [WP]

Academics and policy makers are increasingly shifting the debate concerning the best form of public service provision beyond the traditional dilemma between pure public and pure private delivery modes, because, among other reasons, there is a growing body of evidence that casts doubt on the existence of systematic cost savings from privatization, while any competition seems to be eroded over time. In this paper we compare the relative merits of public and private delivery within a mixed delivery system. We study the role played by ownership, transaction costs, and competition on local public service delivery within the same jurisdiction. Using a stochastic cost frontier, we analyze the public-private urban bus system in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. Our results suggest that private firms tendering the service have higher delivery costs than those incurred by the public firm, especially when transaction costs are taken into account. Tenders, therefore, do not help to reduce delivery costs. Our results suggest that under a mixed delivery scheme, which permits the co-existence of public and private production, the metropolitan government and the regulator can use private delivery to contain costs in the public firm and, at the same time, benefit from the greater flexibility of private firms for dealing with events not provided for under contract

The impact of socioeconomic characteristics on CO2 emissions associated with urban mobility: Inequality across individuals

Concerns about the unequal distribution of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to mobility are gaining increasing attention in scholarly analyses as well as in the public policy arena. The factors influencing the emissions of individuals are largely undocumented, but they are assumed to be the same for all, be they low or high emitters. We use a household travel survey conducted in the metropolitan area of Barcelona to differentiate the factors that result in different rates of emission. It shows that the top 10% of emitters produce 49% of total emissions while 'non-daily' emitters make up 38.5% of the sample. We adopt a quantile regression approach, which reveals significant socioeconomic differences between groups of emitters. ..

The influence of population aging on global climate policy

We study the connection between the demographic transition to an aging population and global climate policy ambition in the outcomes from recent international agreements on climate change: We test whether the share of the elderly in a population is a significant determinant of the quantity and ambition of a country's policy actions against climate change. We use different indicators of climate policy ambition as measured by the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) of the Paris Agreement as updated in the Glasgow Climate Pact. We also use the number of climate change laws passed in a country to further test robustness of main results. We resort to instrumental variables as part of our identification strategy to account for potential endogeneity. Our econometric results indicate a negative association between the share of the elderly and both policy ambition in climate agreements and the intensity of regulatory initiatives to fight climate change. This suggests that the increasing political influence of the older population as a consequence of aging hinders climate policy ambition. Policy implications are discussed

An evaluation of optimal scale and jurisdiction size to improve efficiency in metropolitan bus systems

Urban bus services operate under concession regime in many cities around the world. Their area boundaries are usually an institutional or administrative legacy, which do not necessarily meet the criteria of optimal jurisdictions. This means that some concessions suffer from a sub-optimal size, either because they are too small, and so fail to exploit economies of scale and/or density, or too big, and so operate in diseconomies of them. This study, by estimating the values of the economies of scale and density for the regulated concessions, identifies the dimensions for optimal exploitation in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) for public and private bus providers. Our data cover the period 2012-2018 and we apply a stochastic frontier model for panel data to estimate both economies of scale and density. We found that the optimal size for a passenger bus service concession in terms of economies of scale in the AMB is between 0.5 and 1 million net km per annum. In the case of density economies, the size is considerably lower, at somewhere between 430,000 and 1,000,000 net km per year. We recommend ensuring that the size of the service provision area is optimal before the tendering proces

An evaluation of optimal scale and jurisdiction size to improve efficiency in metropolitan bus systems

Urban bus services operate under concession regime in many cities around the world. Their area boundaries are usually an institutional or administrative legacy, which do not necessarily meet the criteria of optimal jurisdictions. This means that some concessions suffer from a sub-optimal size, either because they are too small, and so fail to exploit economies of scale and/or density, or too big, and so operate in diseconomies of them. This study, by estimating the values of the economies of scale and density for the regulated concessions, identifies the dimensions for optimal exploitation in the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) for public and private bus providers. Our data cover the period 2012-2018 and we apply a stochastic frontier model for panel data to estimate both economies of scale and density. We found that the optimal size for a passenger bus service concession in terms of economies of scale in the AMB is between 0.5 and 1 million net km per annum. In the case of density economies, the size is considerably lower, at somewhere between 430,000 and 1,000,000 net km per year. We recommend ensuring that the size of the service provision area is optimal before the tendering process

Accurate and easy method for systemin quantifcation and examining metabolic changes under diferent endogenous levels

Background: Systemin has been extensively studied since it was discovered and is described as a peptidic hormone in tomato plants and other Solanaceae. Jasmonic acid and systemin are proposed to act through a positive feedback loop with jasmonic acid, playing synergistic roles in response to both wounding and insect attack. Despite its biological relevance, most studies regarding the function of systemin in defence have been studied via PROSYSTEMIN (PROSYS) gene expression, which encodes the propeptide prosystemin that is later cleaved to systemin (SYS). Interest‑ ingly, hardly any studies have been based on quantifcation of the peptide. Results: In this study, a simple and accurate method for systemin quantifcation was developed to understand its impact on plant metabolism. The basal levels of systemin were found to be extremely low. To study the role of endogenous systemin on plant metabolism, systemin was quantifed in a transgenic line overexpressing the PROSYS gene (PS+) and in a silenced antisense line (PS−). We evaluated the relevance of systemin in plant metabolism by analysing the metabolomic profles of both lines compared to wildtype plants through untargeted metabolomic profling. Compounds within the lignan biosynthesis and tyrosine metabolism pathways strongly accumulated in PS+compared to wild-type plants and to plants from the PS− line. The exogenous treatments with SYS enhanced accumulation of lignans, which confrms the role of SYS in cell wall reinforcement. Unexpectedly, PS+plants displayed wild-type levels of jasmonic acid (JA) but elevated accumulation of 12-oxo-phytodienoic acid (OPDA), suggesting that PS+should not be used as an over-accumulator of JA in experimental setups. Conclusions: A simple method, requiring notably little sample manipulation to quantify the peptide SYS, is described. Previous studies were based on genetic changes. In our study, SYS accumulated at extremely low levels in wild-type tomato leaves, showed slightly higher levels in the PROSYSTEMIN-overexpressing plants and was absent in the silenced lines. These small changes have a signifcant impact on plant metabolism. SA and OPDA, but not JA, were higher in the PROSYS-overexpressing plants

El Departament d’Urbanisme i Ordenació del Territori (DUOT) y la enseñanza del Urbanismo

Nobody fails to notice the dramatic transformations and constant changes that society is experiencing. This has a special effect on educational processes since, in addition to the need for a review of contents, it is also essential to reformulate educational structures, methodologies and learning systems. This work explores some changes in the educational practice of the Department of Urbanism and Regional Planning (DUOT, for its acronym in Spanish) of the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB, for its acronym in Spanish) in recent years, and its place in a wider context.A nadie se le escapa la vertiginosa transformación y el constante cambio que continuamente experimenta nuestra sociedad. Ello repercute de manera muy especial en los procesos de formación, ya que además de hacerse imperiosa la revisión de contenidos, se hace imprescindible replantear también las estructuras docentes, metodologías y sistemas de aprendizaje. En este texto se valoran algunos cambios en la práctica docente del Departamento de Urbanismo y Ordenación del Territorio (DUOT) de la Escuela de Arquitectura de Barcelona en los últimos años, así como su encaje en un contexto más amplio