Empty Urbanism: the bursting of the Spanish housing bubble

The depth of the Spanish housing crisis manifests itself in the collapse of construction activity and in the amount of housing and land stocks. The geography of the crisis shows its widespread nature, and the intensity of the previous bubble explains spatial differences. Resulting from this collapse are some problematic areas of 'empty urbanism'. An enormous land bubble, emerging from the peculiar Spanish urban development model, was a key factor in the impacts - caused by the crisis - on the territory and land-use plans. The crisis has demonstrated the unsustainability of this and the urgency of change in the existing land-use plans

Balancing the effect of corona on therapeutic efficacy and macrophage uptake of lipid nanocapsules

Several studies have shown the potential of biocompatible lipid nanocapsules as hydrophobic drug delivery systems. Understanding the factors that determine the interactions of these oil-in-water nanoemulsions with cells is a necessary step to guide the design of the most effective formulations. The aim of this study was to probe the ability of two surfactants with a markedly different nature, a non-ionic poloxamer, and a charged phospholipid, to prepare formulations with shells of different composition and different surface properties. Thus we determined their effects on the interaction with biological environments. In particular, we investigated how the shell formulation affected the adsorption of biomolecules from the surrounding biological fluids on the nanocapsule surface (corona formation). A complete physicochemical characterization including an isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) study revealed that the use of poloxamer led to nanocapsules with a marked reduction in the number of protein-binding sites. Surface hydrophilicity and changes in corona formation strongly correlated to changes in uptake by cancer cells and by macrophages. Our results indicate that the nature and concentration of surfactants in the nanocapsules can be easily manipulated to effectively modulate their surface architecture with the aim of controlling the environmental interactions, thus optimizing functionality for in vivo applications. In particular, addition of surfactants that reduce protein binding can modulate nanoparticle clearance by the immune system, but also screens the desired interactions with cells, leading to lower uptake, thus lower therapeutic efficacy. The two effects need to be balanced in order to obtain successful formulations. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved