McPublic Spaces

This paper analyses the role of McDonald’s in Hong Kong as a consumption-oriented place where the production of social space happens under the constraints of the market’s spectacle and speculations. McDonald’s in Hong Kong have evolved from the original aesthetics of the company, with a colorful postmodern cafeteria look, to the latest concept “Next” with a bold design, neat materiality, touch screens and open layout. Throughout this process, its restaurant design and polices have evolved by appropriating the rhythms of the city and its citizens. Whereas Hong Kong’s city escape is commonly perceived as the product of top down strategies carried out by “coalitions” between public institutions and private corporations, McDonald’s offers a case study of informal activities influencing the way a global enterprise develops. Its new “Next” concept might be seen as an attempt to anticipate informality. Two opposing ideas underlie this “open look”: the aim to homogenize customers through the sanitation of the space, versus the provision of neutral spaces to allow for the occurrence of heterogeneity. The presence of the screen as an intermediary between the restaurant and its customers empowers a dichotomy between an impersonal fast food service and current paradigms that aim to prioritize people and food

Gobiernos y Parlamento en las Cortes de Cádiz y de Isabel II

GOBIERNOS Y PARLAMENTO EN LAS CORTES DE CÁDIZ Y DE ISABEL II. Pretendemos explicar el funcionamiento de las Cortes de Cádiz y los problemas políticos que generó la confusa relación entre los poderes ejecutivo y legislativo en la primera constitución española. En segundo lugar, analizaremos cómo se va articulando bajo la monarquía de Isabel II un incipiente régimen parlamentario. Un proceso obstaculizado por la deriva autoritaria del Ejecutivo en algunos momentos, por la injerencia de la Corona en la formación de los gobiernos y la devaluación de las Cortes por la debilidad de los partidos de "notables" que se alternaban en el Poder. Tres factores que dificultaron gravemente la evolución a una efectiva monarquía parlamentaria".Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

De la biografía a la prosopografía: los parlamentarios de la comunidad autónoma vasca (1977-1982) - Aritz Onaindia Martínez - Vitoria-Gasteiz, 2018, Parlamento Vasco, 515 páginas ISBN-978-84-939774-8-1

Reseña del libro "De la biografía a la prosopografía: los parlamentarios de la comunidad autónoma vasca (1977-1982)

Cádiz y el tráfico de esclavos. De la legalidad a la clandestinidad

Reúne este libro las ponencias presentadas al congreso internacional que se celebró en la Universidad de Cádiz a principios de octubre de 2017 bajo la denominación de “Cádiz en la red del tráfico negrero” y en dos bloques podemos dividir los trabajos que lo componen. El primero, agruparía a cuatro de los diez capítulos que conforman el libro y está directamente relacionado con la temática que define el título, Cádiz y la esclavitud, desde la Modernidad hasta el año 1867, mientras que el segundo –que agrupa a los otros seis capítulos- es un bloque más heterogéneo en el que se abordan temas relacionados con la trata de esclavos, pero desde una perspectiva espacial más amplia

The Effect of Pok\'emon Go on The Pulse of the City: A Natural Experiment

Pok\'emon Go, a location-based game that uses augmented reality techniques, received unprecedented media coverage due to claims that it allowed for greater access to public spaces, increasing the number of people out on the streets, and generally improving health, social, and security indices. However, the true impact of Pok\'emon Go on people's mobility patterns in a city is still largely unknown. In this paper, we perform a natural experiment using data from mobile phone networks to evaluate the effect of Pok\'emon Go on the pulse of a big city: Santiago, capital of Chile. We found significant effects of the game on the floating population of Santiago compared to movement prior to the game's release in August 2016: in the following week, up to 13.8\% more people spent time outside at certain times of the day, even if they do not seem to go out of their usual way. These effects were found by performing regressions using count models over the states of the cellphone network during each day under study. The models used controlled for land use, daily patterns, and points of interest in the city. Our results indicate that, on business days, there are more people on the street at commuting times, meaning that people did not change their daily routines but slightly adapted them to play the game. Conversely, on Saturday and Sunday night, people indeed went out to play, but favored places close to where they live. Even if the statistical effects of the game do not reflect the massive change in mobility behavior portrayed by the media, at least in terms of expanse, they do show how "the street" may become a new place of leisure. This change should have an impact on long-term infrastructure investment by city officials, and on the drafting of public policies aimed at stimulating pedestrian traffic.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures. Published at EPJ Data Scienc

Analysis of the molecular machinery implicated in multicellularity in bacillus cereus

Introduction: Bacillus cereus is a Gram-positive bacterium usually implicated in food poisoning outbreaks and human infections that sometimes result fatal. These events are closely related to the assembly of a biofilm that serves as a reservoir of cells, a nest for sporulation and protection from environmental stresses, host defenses or chemotherapy. Objectives: To perform a comprehensive comparative study of biofilm and planktonic cells to: i) delineate the molecular machinery implicated in the different steps of the biofilm life cycle, and ii) define new genes dedicated to biofilm formation. Materials & methods: Bacteria were grown under biofilm inducing conditions. Biofilm cells were separated from planktonic cells at different times and their whole mRNA was isolated, sequenced and analyzed. Results: Our results reveal a high number of genes associated to biofilm, many of them with unknown function, but highly conserved in others bacterial species. Besides, we found global changes in cell wall synthesis, metabolism and interspecies interaction molecules. ​ Conclusions: The interaction of B. cereus with other bacteria is conditioned by secondary metabolites, which are apparently overexpressed in biofilm. On the other hand, toxins are mainly expressed in planktonic cells, which are more oriented to interact with its hosts. These results reveal the defense and attacking positions of B. cereus in biofilm vs planktonic states.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A short version of the amyloid-like protein TasA fibrillates and supports biofilm formation in Bacillus cereus

The formation of bacterial biofilms is a doable thanks to the assembly of an extracellular matrix that provides to the entire community with i) an outstanding architectonic structure and ii) protection to the cells from external aggressions. In Bacillus subtilis, a structural element dedicated to the formation of the extracellular matrix is the amyloid-like protein TasA. To form fibers, TasA needs the participation of the protein TapA. Indeed, a tapA mutant resembles phenotypically to a tasA mutant, which is wrinkle-less pellicles or colonies with no distinguishable morphological features. tasA is widely spread within the Bacillus genus, but tapA is absent in the heterogeneous group of Bacillus cereus which includes environmental and pathogenic members; some of them are responsible for important food intoxication outbreaks. Then, we asked whether TasA would still retain functionality in biofilm formation in B. cereus. Comparative genomic analysis showed a region in B. cereus containing two orthologous of tasA, tasA and calY, and the orthologous of sipW, that encodes a signal peptidase. Our mutagenic studies revealed that the entire region was relevant for biofilm formation, and electron microscopy proved the major propensity of TasA than CalY to form fibers in the cell surfaces. These findings also indicated that in B. cereus as opposed to B. subtilis, an accessory TapA protein is not necessary for the fibrillation of TasA. Indeed, the heterologous expression of this region of B. cereus restored the capacity of a B. subtilis tasA operon mutant or a single tasA mutant to form pellicles. These pellicles stained with the amyloid dye Congo Red and the cells were decorated with fibers, both findings suggestive of an amyloid-like nature of the B. cereus TasA. Intriguingly, in a B. subtilis tapA mutant, only the entire region of B. cereus fully rescued pellicle formation, fibrillation or Congo Red staining, to a lesser extent did sipw-tasA, and no restoration was observed with sipW-calY. These observations led us to speculate that TapA might cross seed the fibrillation of TasA or CalY in B. subtilis. In summary, TasA is relevant for biofilm formation in these two bacterial species, which appears to be governed by its polymerizing nature. The fact that we count with two bacterial species containing versions of TasA with subtle differences will be of great value in our studies of the mechanistic of polymerization of these bacterial amyloid-like fibers and their contribution to the assembly of the extracellular matrix.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Cannibalism in Bonelli's Eagle (Aquila fasciata)

Letter.JC had a postdoctoral contract jointly financed by the ESF and by the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha (JCCM, Spain), in the framework of the Operational Programme FSE 2007–2013.Peer Reviewe