Giovanni Battista Montano as Architectural Draughtsman: Recording the Past and Designing the Future

Giovanni Battista Montano (1534-1621), who was born in Milan and trained as a woodcarver, relocated permanently to Rome in the early 1570s where his interest in sculpting was replaced by intense study of the city’s antique monuments and ruins. Although Montano carried out several sculptural and architectural projects during his time in Rome, it is his surviving corpus of drawings that testifies to his passion of exploring ancient architecture through the medium of drawing. While Montano was not famous during his lifetime, a large body of his intriguing designs became celebrated and widely circulated after his death thanks to the 1624 publication of Montano’s designs by his loyal pupil, Giovanni Battista Soria. Montano’s lifelong work differs from virtually all of his predecessors and contemporaries in its “fantastical” and ornamental nature. This thesis explores Montano’s artistic training as it relates to his later interest in imaginatively reconstructing antique buildings, along with his disregard for archaeological or historical accuracy. The subject matter upon which Montano focused is discussed, along with his objective in creating a large corpus of half-historical, half-invented drawings. His drawing techniques are explored with specific reference to the largest group of extant Montano drawings, today housed in Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, England, and also in reference to three original Montano drawings in the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal. Also explored is the legacy and impact of Montano’s drawings and the later publications of his designs on the works of Roman Baroque architects, specifically Borromini and Bernini. This thesis ultimately attempts to understand the impact of the intellectual and artistic environment surrounding Montano in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Rome, his drawing techniques, his choice of subject matter, and the reception that his unique works received from contemporary artists and intellectuals, along with those of the following generation.

Equalising opportunities for women in electoral politics in Ireland: The Views of Women Members of Parliament

This paper examines the attitudes of women political elites in Ireland toward positive action initiatives that would assist in increasing women's legislative presence. An earlier study isolated family responsibilities and lack of finance as significant barriers for Irish women wishing to enter, and stay in, political life. In addition, scholarly and policy debates on boosting women's parliamentary representation focus on manipulating electoral or party selection rules along with strategies for making a political career more compatible with women's socially determined responsibilities. This paper examines how Irish women politicians respond to various suggestions for positive action in these three arenas: combining legislative and family responsibilities, funding a political campaign and getting elected. The paper highlights the broad consensus among women politicians, irrespective of party, self-interest, or length of service, favoring certain positive action initiatives, as well as their reluctance to support other options. It also illustrates the complexity of implementing some of these reforms. In addition, the paper emphasizes how cultural expectations and values act to inhibit women's political agency.

Vibrational coherent quantum computation

A long-lived coherent state and nonlinear interaction have been experimentally demonstrated for the vibrational mode of a trapped ion. We propose an implementation of quantum computation using coherent states of the vibrational modes of trapped ions. Differently from earlier experiments, we consider a far-off resonance for the interaction between external fields and the ion in a bidimensional trap. By appropriate choices of the detunings between the external fields, the adiabatic elimination of the ionic excited level from the Hamiltonian of the system allows for beam splitting between orthogonal vibrational modes, production of coherent states, and nonlinear interactions of various kinds. In particular, this model enables the generation of the four coherent Bell states. Furthermore, all the necessary operations for quantum computation, such as preparation of qubits and one-qubit and controlled two-qubit operations, are possible. The detection of the state of a vibrational mode in a Bell state is made possible by the combination of resonant and off-resonant interactions between the ion and some external fields. We show that our read-out scheme provides highly efficient discrimination between all the four Bell states. We extend this to a quantum register composed of many individually trapped ions. In this case, operations on two remote qubits are possible through a cavity mode. We emphasize that our remote-qubit operation scheme does not require a high-quality factor resonator: the cavity field acts as a catalyst for the gate operation.

De la cooperativa agroalimentaria a la "learning netchain". Hacia un planteamiento teorico interorganizativo e interpersonal

Se propone un planteamiento teórico/conceptual para determinar si las relaciones interorganizativas e interpersonales de la netchain de las cooperativas agroalimentarias evolucionan hacia una learning netchain. Las propuestas del trabajo muestran que el mayor grado de asociacionismo y la mayor cooperación/colaboración vertical a lo largo de la cadena están positivamente relacionados con la posición horizontal de la empresa focal más cercana del consumidor final. Esto requiere una planificación y una resolución de problemas de manera conjunta, lo que está positivamente relacionado con el mayor flujo y diversidad de la información/conocimiento obtenido y diseminado a lo largo de la netchain. Al mismo tiempo se necesita desarrollar un contexto social en el que fluya la información/conocimiento y las nuevas ideas de manera informal y esto se logra con redes personales y, principalmente, profesionales y con redes internas y, principalmente, externas. Todo esto permitirá una mayor satisfacción de los socios de la cooperativa agroalimentaria y de sus distribuidores y una mayor intensidad en I+D, convirtiéndose la netchain de la cooperativa agroalimentaria, así, en una learning netchain.

Elafin prevents lipopolysaccharide-induced AP-1 and NF-kB activation via an effect on the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway

In this paper we follow on from our research into SLPI by assessing the immunomodulatory activity of elafin - an antiprotease related to SLPI and also present on the respiratory tract. We demonstrate for the first time that exogenously applied elafin inhibits lipopolysaccharide-induced activation of the NF-kappaB and AP-1 pathways in monocytes. I designed this project and supervised Marcus Butler during his MD thesis.

La valoración que los graduados tienen sobre su formación universitaria desde su situación laboral actual

En este artículo analizamos la valoración de los titulados universitarios sobre la formación recibida y su utilidad en la ocupación actual. El objetivo es analizar si existen diferencias por el nivel formativo de origen y el sexo de los estudiantes. A su vez, examinamos si las características de la situación laboral intervienen en estas relaciones afectando diferencialmente según las características sociodemográficas. Los resultados muestran la existencia de diferencias valorativas entre los jóvenes según su origen social y sexo, siendo las mujeres y los jóvenes de clase trabajadora los que valoran mejor su formación recibida. Finalmente, con la introducción de la situación laboral como variable de control constatamos que, en algunos casos, estas diferencias valorativas son debidas al contexto laboral actual de los graduados más que a diferencias sociodemográficas.