Sustainability and Community Networks

Community networks are IP-based computer networks that are operated by a community as a common good. In Europe, the most well-known community networks are Guifi in Catalonia, Freifunk in Berlin, Ninux in Italy, Funkfeuer in Vienna and the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network in Greece. This paper deals with community networks as alternative forms of Internet access and alternative infrastructures and asks: What does sustainability and unsustainability mean in the context of community networks? What advantages do such networks have over conventional forms of Internet access and infrastructure provided by large telecommunications corporations? In addition what disadvantages do they face at the same time? This article provides a framework for thinking dialectically about the un/sustainability of community networks. It provides a framework of practical questions that can be asked when assessing power structures in the context of Internet infrastructures and access. It presents an overview of environmental, economic, political and cultural contradictions that community networks may face as well as a typology of questions that can be asked in order to identify such contradictions.

On the microstructure, growth pattern and original porosity of belemnite rostra: insights from calcitic Jurassic belemnites

Calcitic belemnite rostra are usually employed to perform paleoenvironmental studies based on geochemical data. However, several questions, such as their original porosity and microstructure, remain open, despite they are essential to make accurate interpretations based on geochemical analyses.This paper revisits and enlightens some of these questions. Petrographic data demonstrate that calcite crystals of the rostrum solidum of belemnites grow from spherulites that successively develop along the apical line, resulting in a “regular spherulithic prismatic” microstructure. Radially arranged calcite crystals emerge and diverge from the spherulites: towards the apex, crystals grow until a new spherulite is formed; towards the external walls of the rostrum, the crystals become progressively bigger and prismatic. Adjacent crystals slightly vary in their c-axis orientation, resulting in undulose extinction. Concentric growth layering develops at different scales and is superimposed and traversed by a radial pattern, which results in the micro-fibrous texture that is observed in the calcite crystals in the rostra.Petrographic data demonstrate that single calcite crystals in the rostra have a composite nature, which strongly suggests that the belemnite rostra were originally porous. Single crystals consistently comprise two distinct zones or sectors in optical continuity: 1) the inner zone is fluorescent, has relatively low optical relief under transmitted light (TL) microscopy, a dark-grey color under backscatter electron microscopy (BSEM), a commonly triangular shape, a “patchy” appearance and relatively high Mg and Na contents; 2) the outer sector is non-fluorescent, has relatively high optical relief under TL, a light-grey color under BSEM and low Mg and Na contents. The inner and fluorescent sectors are interpreted to have formed first as a product of biologically controlled mineralization during belemnite skeletal growth and the non-fluorescent outer sectors as overgrowths of the former, filling the intra- and inter-crystalline porosity. This question has important implications for making paleoenvironmental and/or paleoclimatic interpretations based on geochemical analyses of belemnite rostra.Finally, the petrographic features of composite calcite crystals in the rostra also suggest the non-classical crystallization of belemnite rostra, as previously suggested by other authors.

"Paseo por una guerra antigua" (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1948-49): una contramemoria de la Guerra Civil

Este artículo pretende demostrar en qué medida Paseo por una guerra antigua (1948-1949), la práctica de segundo curso del Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematográficas (IIEC) en la que Juan Antonio Bardem rueda a un joven mutilado caminando por las ruinas de la Ciudad Universitaria de Madrid, constituye un intento pionero de desmontar los relatos oficiales de la Guerra Civil Española y rescatar la memoria de los vencidos. Filmar las ruinas del campus madrileño en aquellos años era un acto sub­versivo, puesto que el Régimen había emprendido su reconstrucción para borrar las huellas del Madrid republicano y de la Guerra Civil, resignificando por completo el recinto universitario. Por tanto, en Paseo por una guerra antigua, Bardem intenta reapropiarse de un espacio que en la época iba imponiéndose como uno de los “lugares de memoria” del franquismo. Esta película se vale de la función documental del cine para inmortalizar unas ruinas que simbolizan la República y la guerra, para preservarlas de la muerte simbólica que representa su reconstrucción. Mostrar esas ruinas en 1948-1949 equivale a “materializar” el pasado, a traerlo al presente de la posguerra, en un proceso que recuerda a los planteamientos sobre la Historia de Walter Benjamin, para proponer una visión alternativa de la contienda. Se trata de una visión teñida de una memoria íntima, ya que la película es un paseo no solo por las ruinas sino también por los recuerdos de este joven mutilado. En suma, Bardem propone una contramemoria de la Guerra Civil.

How to map the diversity of the audiovisual industry in the digital era. A Methodological Proposition

This article presents a methodological proposition to map the diversity of the audiovisual industry in the digital scenario by portraying the most important interactions between those who create, produce, distribute and disseminate audiovisual productions on line, paying special attention to powerful intermediaries and to small and medium independent agents. Taking as a point of departure a flexible understanding of social network analysis, the aim is to understand the structure of the audiovisual industry on the internet so that, taking into consideration a given sector, agents, their relations and the networks they give place to – as well as the structural conditions under which they operate – are studied. The aim is to answer questions such as: what is mapping, what is of interesting to map, how can it be done and what advantages and disadvantages the results will present.

Experiencias de danzaterapia de mujeres que han sufrido cáncer de mama. Un estudio fenomenológico

Objective: This essay aims at identifying, describing and analyzing possible changes both in the experience of the body and in interpersonal relations of women with breast cancer, which result from their participation in Dance Therapy group meetings.Method: This is a phenomenologically oriented qualitative research using Maria Fux´s dance therapy method for group experiences. Eight meetings are described here, and an analysis of descriptions based primarily on Merleau-Ponty and María Fux is provided.Results: The participants have been able to express pain and sorrow over the circumstances that breast cancer and its relational environments have brought to their lives. They have been able to go through moments of creation and surrender to the rhythmic body sensations and experiential environment with different emotions lived separately and jointly. They have revived memories and sensations of their childhood and adolescence, and finally, they have rediscovered their sensitive body through body resignifications marked by the absence of the breast, and by means of feelings of greater acceptance and integration of lived experiences in new gestalts.Conclusions: This project is still under way, but it is already possible to conclude that the life experiences provided in dance therapy have allowed these women to improve their integration and welfare. Likewise, they have felt positive changes in the perception of their corporality and in their way of being in the world and with other subjects, thus experiencing the body in a new and different way.

Consideraciones alrededor de la Danza-movimiento Terapia y sus aplicaciones en el ámbito social

El artículo presenta aspectos generales sobre la Danza Movimiento Terapia (DMT). Aborda sus orígenes históricos y su evolución en las últimas décadas. La DMT es un modelo de intervención psicoterapéutica, que comparte numerosos elementos con otras terapias creativas, y cuya singularidad se encuentra en la consideración de las manifestaciones no verbales y el movimiento creativo dentro de un proceso terapéutico. Se hace hincapié en su aspecto multidisciplinar y en su creciente aplicación en entornos sociales y educativos como un modo de promover y potenciar la salud. Finalmente, se presenta brevemente la situación actual de la profesión en España enmarcada en el contexto europeo.

Hegel’s Non-Metaphysical Idea of Freedom

the article explores the putatively non-metaphysical – non-voluntarist, and even non-causal – concept of freedom outlined in Hegel’s work and discusses its influential interpretation by robert Pippin as an ‘essentially practical’ concept. I argue that Hegel’s affirmation of freedom must be distinguished from that of Kant and Fichte, since it does not rely on a prior understanding of self-consciousness as an originally teleological relation and it has not the nature of a claim ‘from a practical point of view’.

Motivating film title translation: a cognitive análisis

This proposal is a non-quantitative study based on a corpus of real data which offers a principled account of the translation strategies employed in the translation of English film titles into Spanish in terms of cognitive modeling. More specifically, we draw on Ruiz de Mendoza and Galera’s (2014) work on what they term content (or low-level) cognitive operations, based on either ‘stands for’ or ‘identity’ relations, in order to investigate possible motivating factors for translations which abide by oblique procedures, i.e. for non-literal renderings of source titles. The present proposal is made in consonance with recent findings within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics (Samaniego 2007), which evidence that this linguistic approach can fruitfully address some relevant issues in Translation Studies, the most outstanding for our purposes being the exploration of the cognitive operations which account for the use of translation strategies (Rojo and Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2013: 10), mainly expansion and reduction operations, parameterization, echoing, mitigation and comparison by contrast. This fits in nicely with a descriptive approach to translation and particularly with skopos theory, whose main aim consists in achieving functionally adequate renderings of source texts.

La ética hacker frente al capitalismo netárquíco: software libre y peer production en las iniciativas de Economía Colaborativa en Andalucía

En los últimos años el término Economía Colaborativa se ha popularizado sin que, hasta el momento, haya sido definido de manera inequívoca. Bajo esta denominación se engloban experiencias tan diversas como bancos de tiempo, huertos urbanos, startups o grandes plataformas digitales. La proliferación de este tipo de iniciativas puede relacionarse con una multiplicidad de factores tales como el desarrollo tecnológico, la recesión económica y otras crisis superpuestas (medioambiental, de cuidados, de valores, de lo político) y un cierto cambio en los valores sociales. Entre 2014-2015 se han realizado dos investigaciones en Andalucía de manera casi paralela y con una metodología similar. La primera de ellas pretendía identificar prácticas de Economía Colaborativa en el entorno universitario. La segunda investigación identificaba experiencias de emprendimiento a nivel autonómico. A luz de los resultados obtenidos se plantea la siguiente cuestión sobre la naturaleza misma de la Economía Colaborativa: ¿nos encontramos ante prácticas postcapitalistas que abren el camino a una sociedad más justa e igualitaria o, más bien, estamos ante una respuesta del capital para, una vez más, seguir extrayendo de manera privada el valor que se genera socialmente? Este artículo, partiendo del análisis del conjunto de iniciativas detentadas en Andalucía, se centra en aquellas basadas en el software libre y la producción digital concluyendo cómo, gracias a la incorporación de ciertos aspectos de la ética hacker y las lógicas del conocimiento abierto, éstas pueden situarse dentro de un escenario de fomento de los comunes globales frente a las lógicas imperantes del capitalismo netárquico. 

Integrating Scientific Publication into an Applied Gaming Ecosystem

Salman, M. et al. (2016). Integrating Scientific Publication into an Applied Gaming Ecosystem. GSTF Journal on Computing (JoC), Volume 5 (Issue 1), pp. 45-51.

Time of Flight Measurements for Neutrons Produced in Reactions Driven by Laser-Target Interactions at Petawatt level

Abstract Short intense pulses of fast neutrons were produced in a two stage laser-driven experiment. Protons were accelerated by means of the Target Normal Sheath Acceleration (TNSA) method using the TITAN facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Neutrons were obtained following interactions of the protons with a secondary lithium fluoride (LiF) target. The properties of the neutron flux were studied using BC-400 plastic scintillation detectors and the neutron time of flight (nTOF) technique. The detector setup and the experimental conditions were simulated with the Geant4 toolkit. The effects of different components of the experimental setup on the nTOF were studied. Preliminary results from a comparison between experimental and simulated nTOF distributions are presented.

Endothelial cell-derived Pentraxin 3 limits the vasoreparative therapeutic potential of Circulating Angiogenic Cells

AIMS: Circulating Angiogenic Cells (CACs) promote revascularization of ischemic tissues although their underlying mechanism of action and the consequences of delivering varying numbers of these cells for therapy remain unknown. This study investigates molecular mechanisms underpinning CAC modulation of blood vessel formation.

METHODS & RESULTS: CACs at low (2x10(5)cells/ml) and mid (2x10(6)cells/ml) cellular densities significantly enhanced endothelial cell (EC) tube formation in vitro, while high density CACs (2x10(7)cells/ml) significantly inhibited this angiogenic process. In vivo, Matrigel-based angiogenesis assays confirmed mid-density CACs as pro-angiogenic and high density CACs as anti-angiogenic. Secretome characterization of CAC-EC conditioned media identified pentraxin 3 (PTX3) as only present in the high density CAC-EC co-culture. Recombinant PTX3 inhibited endothelial tube formation in vitro and in vivo Importantly, our data revealed that the anti-angiogenic effect observed in high density CAC-EC co-cultures was significantly abrogated when PTX3 bioactivity was blocked using neutralizing antibodies or PTX3 siRNA in endothelial cells. We show evidence for an endothelial source of PTX3, triggered by exposure to high density CACs. In addition, we confirmed that PTX3 inhibits FGF2-mediated angiogenesis, and that the PTX3 N-terminus, containing the FGF-binding site, is responsible for such anti-angiogenic effects.

CONCLUSIONS: Endothelium, when exposed to high density CACs, releases PTX3 which markedly impairs the vascular regenerative response in an autocrine manner. Therefore, CAC density and accompanying release of angiocrine PTX3 are critical considerations when using these cells as a cell therapy for ischemic disease.

Una planta sin clásicos. La berenjena en la farmacología medieval y renacentista

La berenjena (Solanum melongena L.) es una planta solanácea de múltiples variedades, cuyos ancestros salvajes se sitúan en Indochina y el este de África. Su cultivo fue muy temprano en zonas de China e India. Aun así, no se extendió al Occidente antiguo ni apenas se conoció, de ahí su ausencia en los textos clásicos de botánica y farmacología. Fueron los árabes quienes llevaron el cultivo de la planta por el Norte de África y Al-Andalus, de donde pasó ya a Europa. Los primeros testimonios occidentales de la berenjena aparecen en traducciones latinas de textos árabes, para incorporarse luego a la literatura farmacológica medieval y, más tarde ya, a la del Renacimiento, que empezó a tratar de ella por su posible parecido con una especie de mandrágora. Pese a que se le reconocían algunas virtudes medicinales, siempre se la tuvo bajo sospecha por ser de sabor poco agradable, indigesta y causante de algunas afecciones. Solo los botánicos de finales del Renacimiento describirían la planta y sus variedades con criterios más «científicos» y botánicos, ya sin apenas intereses farmacológicos.