Public Art, strategies for the regeneration of public space

This paper discusses some of the key concepts in the consideration of public art as a central element in urban regeneration processes, especially in reference to its role in the processes of citizen participation.

BioSWR - Semantic Web services Registry for Bioinformatics

Article About the Authors Metrics Comments Related Content Abstract Introduction Functionality Implementation Discussion Acknowledgments Author Contributions References Reader Comments (0) Figures Abstract Despite of the variety of available Web services registries specially aimed at Life Sciences, their scope is usually restricted to a limited set of well-defined types of services. While dedicated registries are generally tied to a particular format, general-purpose ones are more adherent to standards and usually rely on Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). Although WSDL is quite flexible to support common Web services types, its lack of semantic expressiveness led to various initiatives to describe Web services via ontology languages. Nevertheless, WSDL 2.0 descriptions gained a standard representation based on Web Ontology Language (OWL). BioSWR is a novel Web services registry that provides standard Resource Description Framework (RDF) based Web services descriptions along with the traditional WSDL based ones. The registry provides Web-based interface for Web services registration, querying and annotation, and is also accessible programmatically via Representational State Transfer (REST) API or using a SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language. BioSWR server is located at http://inb.bsc.es/BioSWR/and its code is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bioswr/​under the LGPL license.

Semantic domain and grammatical class effects in the picture-word interference paradigm

The role of grammatical class in lexical access and representation is still not well understood. Grammatical effects obtained in picture-word interference experiments have been argued to show the operation of grammatical constraints during lexicalization when syntactic integration is required by the task. Alternative views hold that the ostensibly grammatical effects actually derive from the coincidence of semantic and grammatical differences between lexical candidates. We present three picture-word interference experiments conducted in Spanish. In the first two, the semantic relatedness (related or unrelated) and the grammatical class (nouns or verbs) of the target and the distracter were manipulated in an infinitive form action naming task in order to disentangle their contributions to verb lexical access. In the third experiment, a possible confound between grammatical class and semantic domain (objects or actions) was eliminated by using action-nouns as distracters. A condition in which participants were asked to name the action pictures using an inflected form of the verb was also included to explore whether the need of syntactic integration modulated the appearance of grammatical effects. Whereas action-words (nouns or verbs), but not object-nouns, produced longer reaction times irrespective of their grammatical class in the infinitive condition, only verbs slowed latencies in the inflected form condition. Our results suggest that speech production relies on the exclusion of candidate responses that do not fulfil task-pertinent criteria like membership in the appropriate semantic domain or grammatical class. Taken together, these findings are explained by a response-exclusion account of speech output. This and alternative hypotheses are discussed.

Is the influence of quality of life on urban growth non-stationary in space? A case study of Barcelona

There are several determinants that influence household location decisions. More concretely, recent economic literature assigns an increasingly important role to the variables governing quality of life. Nevertheless, the spatial stationarity of the parameters is implicitly assumed in most studies. Here we analyse the role of quality of life in urban economics and test for the spatial stationarity of the relationship between city growth and quality of life.

Urban space and industrial heritage

Postprint (published version)

Improving Label Space Usage for Ethernet Label Switched Paths

Ethernet is becoming the dominant aggregation technology for carrier transport networks; however, as it is a LAN technology, native bridged ethernet does not fulfill all the carrier requirements. One of the schemes proposed by the research community to make ethernet fulfill carrier requirements is ethernet VLAN-label switching (ELS). ELS allows the creation of label switched data paths using a 12-bit label encoded in the VLAN TAG control information field. Previous label switching technologies such as MPLS use more bits for encoding the label. Hence, they do not suffer from label sparsity issues as ELS might. This paper studies the sparsity issues resulting from the reduced ELS VLAN-label space and proposes the use of the label merging technique to improve label space usage. Experimental results show that label merging considerably improves label space usage

Characterizing major avalanche episodes in space and time in the twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries in the Catalan Pyrenees

With the aim of better understanding avalanche risk in the Catalan Pyrenees, the present work focuses on the analysis of major (or destructive) avalanches. For such purpose major avalanche cartography was made by an exhaustive photointerpretation of several flights, winter and summer field surveys and inquiries to local population. Major avalanche events were used to quantify the magnitude of the episodes during which they occurred, and a Major Avalanche Activity Magnitude Index (MAAMI) was developed. This index is based on the number of major avalanches registered and its estimated frequency in a given time period, hence it quantifies the magnitude of a major avalanche episode or winter. Furthermore, it permits a comparison of the magnitude between major avalanche episodes in a given mountain range, or between mountain ranges, and for a long enough period, it should allow analysis of temporal trends. Major episodes from winter 1995/96 to 2013/14 were reconstructed. Their magnitude, frequency and extent were also assessed. During the last 19 winters, the episodes of January 22-23 and February 6-8 in 1996 were those with highest MAAMI values,followed by January 30-31, 2003, January 29, 2006, and January 24-25, 2014. To analyze the whole twentieth century, a simplified MAAMI was defined in order to attain the same purpose with a less complete dataset. With less accuracy, the same parameters were obtained at winter time resolution throughout the twentieth century. Again, 1995/96 winter had the highest MAAMI value followed by 1971/72, 1974/75 and 1937/38 winter seasons. The analysis of the spatial extent of the different episodes allowed refining the demarcation of nivological regions, and improving our knowledge about the atmospheric patterns that cause major episodes and their climatic interpretation. In some cases, the importance of considering a major avalanche episode as the result of a previous preparatory period, followed by a triggering one was revealed.

A state-space approach for measuring regional manufacturing production indices

In this paper we propose a latent variable model, in the spirit of Israilevich and Kuttner (1993), to measure regional manufacturing production. To test the validity of the proposed methodology, we have applied it for those Spanish regions that have a direct quantitative index. The results demonstrate the accuracy of the methodology proposed and show that it can overcome some of the difficulties of the indirect method applied by the INE, the Spanish National Institute of Statistics.

Espacios olvidados, lugares diferenciados: transformación social del espacio urbano en Bogotá (1850- 1880) = Forgotten Spaces, distinct places: Social transformation of urban space in Bogotá (1850-1880)

The purpose of this article is linked to some forms of recovery of social and urban spaces fallen into oblivion that are evident in the social transformation of urban space in Bogotá between 1850 and 1880.The following paper presents the preliminary results of the research entitled practices and social uses of water in Bogotá (1850-1888). The text links in first discussions about the understanding of the city as a drawing in space, moving to describe, the growth of the city, integrating its historical, social and cultural structuring