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The purpose of this study is to better understand the processes and procedures adopted by micro-influencers to create 'instagrammable' content. It is based on 17 in-depth interviews with foodie micro-influencers based in London and Barcelona. Interview data was complemented with participant observation in restaurants or cafes. This paper makes three original contributions. Firstly, the study expands the understanding of the concept of 'instagrammability' by approaching it from the perspective of influencers creating content to satisfy and/or grow an audience. Secondly, it illustrates how two dominant factors drive influencers' content creation process: the self/audience focus content branding orientation. The 'audience-focus' content development process varied drastically, with some influencers being very conscious of responding to their audiences' needs whereas others maintained first and foremost a very strong 'self-focus'. However, even for the influencers who were the most responsive to their audiences' perceived wishes, a sense of 'self-focus' was maintained as an anchor point in all developed content, often linked to a passion for a certain type of food. Thirdly, this paper maps and describes the behind-the-scenes content creation process adopted by micro-influencers, including four stages (1) Content Planning, (2) Media Gathering, (3) Editing, and (4) Publishing, which was followed by an engagement phase. This study offers a timely contribution to better comprehend the content creation cycle adopted by micro-influencers by using foodie influencers as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English continues to rise as the lingua franca of academic philosophy. Philosophers from all types of linguistic backgrounds use it to communicate with each other across the globe. In this paper, we identify how the rise of English leads to linguistic injustices. We argue that these injustices are similar in an important regard: they are all instances of distributive epistemic injustice. We then present six proposals for addressing unjust linguistic discrimination and evaluate them on how well they can mitigate the specific types of distributive epistemic injustice that we identify. We accept that there is much more to be said. But we hope that what we say will motivate other philosophers to take these types of injustices more seriously and encourage them to make academic philosophy a more inclusive global community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future projections indicate a global increase in heat waves, especially in urban areas due to climate change and the heat island effect, leading to adverse human, economic, and environmental outcomes. Cities worldwide respond by integrating climate mitigation and adaptation measures. While long-term strategies dominate research, this paper explores the increasing interest in short-term solutions, examining the Barcelona Climate Shelter Network. Investigating climate shelter initiatives, it highlights the use of public or private spaces for respite during extreme heat. This model offers insights for other European cities facing escalating heat waves, encouraging reflections on reshaping public services amidst climate crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, rental housing has emerged as a new field of financialization, highlighting the importance of rent to understanding contemporary urban dynamics. Despite rental markets expressing juridical relations, empirical research on the articulations between law and rent is absent in the existing literature. In light of critical legal approaches, the paper addresses this gap through an ethnographic exploration of conflictual residential rent relations in Barcelona. The paper argues that contracts are not only legal objects crucial for the existence and articulation of rent, but their constant opening and closing, enabled by property law, result in both judicial and invisible evictions, which increase tenant turnover, thus securing incremental rental-based streams. The contract disobedience strategy enacted by the tenant movement in Barcelona has exposed how contracts are tools of domination and poses a critique of the political and legal doctrine of the 'freedom of contract'. This mobilisation has simultaneously articulated a political demand for implementing rent controls, which are placed in a broader, gradually emerging legal countermovement to protect habitation that finds its epitome in parliamentary debates and legislative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2022 IEEE World Congress on Services will be held in a hybrid mode with physical presence in Barcelona, Spain. SERVICES is the premier international forum for presenting and discussing the most recent and significant technical research contributions in the field of services computing. Centered around web-based services, SERVICES 2022 covers various systems and networking research pertaining to cloud, edge and IoT, as well as technologies for intelligent computing, learning, Big Data, blockchain, and digital healthcare applications, addressing critical issues such as knowledge network, high performance, security, privacy, dependability, trustworthiness, and cost-effectiveness. Particularly, the 2022 Congress will welcome papers on the aftermath and the impact of COVID-19 on services and the world infrastructure. In addition to co-located theme-topic conferences, the Congress will also include symposia supporting deep-dive discussions on emerging topics, and complement the SERVICES 2022 program with industry and application presentations and panels. Authors are invited to prepare early and submit original and unpublished papers to any of these conferences at www.easychair.org. All submitted manuscripts will be peer- reviewed by at least three reviewers. Accepted and presented papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press. SERVICES 2022 is the only premier professional event for the services computing field offered by IEEE, under the auspice of the Technical Committee on Services Computing (TCSVC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global rise in urban energy demand poses severe environmental and economic health challenges. We need adaptive policies in urban planning to reduce the need for urban energy. This has become a prominent agenda in urban planning, encompassing social (education and innovation in consumption), economic (real pricing), and physical (urban morphology) aspects. This research aims to investigate the influential role of urban form, particularly the physical environment, on energy performance. The methodological approach is centered on conducting analytical-comparative research to examine how urban form influences theoretical energy requirements. Yazd City is selected as a case study because of its distinctive features and traditional approaches to urban sustainability, which have been largely overlooked in previous energy consumption investigations. In a broader comparative context, five tissue types (morphological units) have been selected from Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, and Venice and used as the analytical basis of the study. The research categorizes urban forms into three levels: macro (fabric), medium (block), and micro (building patterns). Heating, cooling, and total energy consumption were computed at each level. The findings indicate that, at the macroscale, the Barcelona fabric offers the highest potential for adaptation in the hot, dry climate of Yazd City. Moreover, the paper analyzes the most recurring morphological indices in the tissues and proposes guidelines for new developments tailored to Yazd City's unique climatic conditions. By focusing on urban form's impact on energy performance, this research contributes to the broader understanding of sustainable urban planning. It offers valuable insights for energy-sensitive urban development in other contexts facing similar climate challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizens participate in various activities to fulfill their needs, advance their socio-economic status, and enhance their well-being through social and health-related engagements. However, activity participation is influenced by many factors in the built environment, such as the spatial and temporal dissemination of activities, which therefore necessitate travel to overcome physical distances. Moreover, individual attributes such as gender, daily schedules, and other socio-economic characteristics also influence mobility patterns. In this paper, we aim to investigate these factors in the specific context of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area using three different samples of residents from annual mobility surveys conducted between 2018 and 2020. To this end, we employ a sequence analysis method that examines the entire trajectory of an individual's daily activities and travel, considering the number, order, and duration of activities. In this way, we analyse in detail how various individual characteristics and the built environment influence the fragmentation of activities. Our study yields multiple results. First, we find that even in a transport-oriented city, the fragmentation of activities is shaped by gender, especially after age 30, when major changes occur in an individual's life course, in particular caring responsibilities and family status. Second, we observe that the educational level and year of the sample also play a central role in shaping mobility patterns. Finally, our paper makes a methodological contribution by defining sequence distances, after projecting the original space onto the factorial one defined by the Multiple Correspondence Analysis. This study shows that mobility policies should not focus solely on transport aspects, but also consider the built environment, dwelling location, gender, equity, and individual lifetime characteristics in an integrated manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at the Methodology of Research in Educational Effectiveness Symposium that was held in Barcelona, Spain in 2005 is presented. The paper of Bert Creemers provided an overview of the educational effectiveness theory and research and the international studies in educational effectiveness. On the other hand, Leonidas Kyriakedes paper focused on the importance of developing and testing integrated multilevel school effectiveness models.

There is an urgent need to develop a coherent political strategy to address the current crisis of care. Allocation of care through the market or the state leads to a care and democratic deficit. Organising care on the logic of the commons provides an alternative paradigm rooted in democracy and solidarity. Municipalism aims to build institutions to enable the commons; it represents a political strategy for the crisis of care at scale. In this paper we explore Barcelona en Comu 's experiments in care to build upon what has been termed 'care; municipalism'. Our case study focuses on domestic care work as a domain that reflects the core inequalities of the crisis. Through our analysis we have identified three key features of care municipalism: firstly, a feminist narrative of care; secondly, new forms of organising care and thirdly, building social infrastructures. The paper closes with a reflection on the limitations of Barcelona en Comu 's experiments in care from a perspective of the commons, before outlining a future research agenda to contribute towards more caring cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Barcelona has become a nodal point of the transnational social space of the Pakistani diaspora. Despite being quite invisible, Pakistanis stand out for their entrepreneurial activities, especially in the food and telecommunication sectors. This paper aims to shed light on the transnational dimension of Pakistani ethnic businesses of Barcelona through the lens of 'transnational mixed embeddedness' and a multi-level approach that combines analytical levels (macro, meso and micro) and territorial levels (local/national and transnational). This is within the theoretical debate around globalization from below, immigrant entrepreneurship and transnational entrepreneurship, and by using a mixed-methods design. The results show how migrant entrepreneurs can be placed in a 'continuum of transnational embeddedness', depending on the interrelation of agency and micro-sociological processes entailing in-group differences with meso-market and macro-structural factors from a dynamic point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a statistical study of cirrus geometrical and optical properties based on 4 years of continuous ground-based lidar measurements with the Barcelona (Spain) Micro Pulse Lidar (MPL) is analysed. First, a review of the literature on the two-way transmittance method is presented. This method is a well-known lidar inversion method used to retrieve the optical properties of an aerosol–cloud layer between two molecular (i.e. aerosol and cloud-free) regions below and above, without the need to make any a priori assumptions about their optical and/or microphysical properties. Second, a simple mathematical expression of the two-way transmittance method is proposed for both ground-based and spaceborne lidar systems. This approach of the method allows the retrieval of the cloud optical depth, the cloud column lidar ratio and the vertical profile of the cloud backscatter coefficient. The method is illustrated for a cirrus cloud using measurements from the ground-based MPL and from the spaceborne Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). Third, the database is then filtered with a cirrus identification criterion based on (and compared to) the literature using only lidar and radiosonde data. During the period from November 2018 to September 2022, 367 high-altitude cirrus clouds were identified at 00:00 and 12:00 UTC, of which 203 were successfully inverted with the two-way transmittance method. The statistical results of these 203 high-altitude cirrus clouds show that the cloud thickness is 1.8 ± 1.1 km, the mid-cloud temperature is - 51 ± 8 ∘ C and the linear cloud depolarization ratio is 0.32 ± 0.13. The application of the transmittance method yields an average cloud optical depth (COD) of 0.36 ± 0.45 and a mean effective column lidar ratio of 30 ± 19 sr. Statistical results of the errors associated with the two-way transmittance method retrievals are also provided. The highest occurrence of cirrus is observed in spring and the majority of cirrus clouds (48 %) are visible (0.03 < COD < 0.3), followed by opaque (COD > 0.3) with a percentage of 38 %. Together with results from other sites, possible latitudinal dependencies have been analysed together with correlations between cirrus cloud properties. For example, we noted that in Barcelona the COD correlates positively with the cloud base temperature, effective column lidar ratio and linear cloud depolarization ratio and negatively with the cloud base height. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current industrial food system is failing in all aspects of sustainability. Alternative Food Initiatives (AFIs) and the industrial green food market (iGFM) both claim that they are building sustainable food models. This study looks into common strengths and challenges of AFIs in relation to iGFM. The research conducted a comparative case study of AFIs in the city of Sant Cugat del Vallès in the metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain) through a combination of qualitative methods. The results show that strengths reside in their socially embedding characteristics with decommodification and commoning aspects, whereas the biggest challenge for AFIs is to manage being competitive while keeping their principles. The paper concludes that AFIs contribute more to building sustainable food models than the iGFM, as the latter only partially green the system for profit. For AFI models to prevail, public sector support to shift the power imbalance of the market is significant. Key Policy Highlights: Alternative food initiatives (AFIs) are socially embedding sustainable food models. AFIs need help to compete within the current industrial green food market. The city government can play a counterbalancing role in favour of AFIs. Examples of city government measures include the cession of public space or providing farmland to AFIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary societies are increasingly multireligious, multiethnic, and multicultural, but to what extent are they ready for coexistence? This paper evaluates the competencies for intercultural and interreligious dialogue in two very different contexts: Barcelona and Melilla, two cities with great ethnic and cultural diversity, in which it is easy to have contact with people of different cultures and religions. To this end, we worked with a total of 1353 adolescents and young people, and four scales were used to evaluate intercultural and interreligious sensitivity, conflict management skills, and prejudices towards unaccompanied migrant minors. The findings suggest that in neither of these two contexts do adolescents and young people form relationships with these minors, despite accepting religious diversity and being educated at school in topics relating to coexistence and spirituality. In fact, participants showed a high level of prejudice towards this population. Implementation of more effective intervention programs in both cities is therefore recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Housing social movements, in the course of their everyday activities, continually share and produce knowledge, a process defined as learning. This paper addresses a gap in the literature on housing activism, looking at learning as a crucial domain of housing movements' politics and practice. By looking at housing activism through the lens of theories on learning in social movements, we provide a nuanced understanding of Barcelona's neighbourhood-based housing groups. Previously centralized in one movement (the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca), housing activism in the city is now spread into a heterogeneous network, including small and localized collectives. The paper examines one neighbourhood housing group, the Grup d'Habitatge de Sants, and its relations with other groups, scrutinizing how processes and potentials of learning unfold in four critical moments: assemblies, workshops, direct action and debates/congresses. We reveal learning as a complex and multilayered phenomenon, arguing that it is fundamental for housing activism and an essential path towards achieving housing justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of homeownership in the working-class peripheries of post-war Europe has received little attention in planning history. The main reason is probably that public housing built at the time of massive operations of constructing Modernist housing estates in Western and Eastern Blocs adopted tenancy as the predominant form of tenure in almost all cases. In the context of widespread growth of urban homeownership during the second half of the twentieth century in European countries, this paper addresses the singularities of ownership in Francoist Spain. In this case, the main peculiarity is that the working classes that flocked to inhabit the new outskirts were the main protagonists of the intense process of the spread in homeownership. First, the article discusses the ideological roots of the spread of homeownership in Spain as a singular phenomenon. Second, the spectacular growth of homeownership in the peripheral working-class districts of Barcelona and in the municipalities of its metropolitan area is analysed. Then, the paper considers the relationships observed between ownership in the new peripheries and the development of powerful urban movements. A final epilogue places such movements in the Western European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barcelona is in an area of low- to medium-seismicity and its earthquake vulnerability and risk has been assessed in different studies over the last 20 years. Most of these works have developed vulnerability models for the representative building classes of the city, trying to capture their main characteristics, and have been mostly represented through fragility curves. However, due to the lack of data for historical earthquake losses in the city, it has not been possible to validate, nor calibrate, any of these vulnerability models. In the absence of earthquake loss data, the objective of this paper is to compare the earthquake risk results of Barcelona, using common hazard and exposure datasets and different sets of vulnerability functions from previous studies to see how they rank compared with other locations with similar studies but more complete historical loss data. The results show large differences between the analysed vulnerability datasets, with some results that in our view tend to overestimate earthquake risk in Barcelona, and also allow identifying critical aspects that require future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the concept of affordable housing and urban planning instruments that incentivize its development, especially in city centers. Considering the shortage of affordable housing in Zagreb, the research aims to identify contemporary urban planning practices that focus on the social function of housing and the role that local urban and housing policies have in ensuring access to it. By comparing the strategic documents for the housing development of the cities of Lyon and Barcelona and models of their implementation in the local urban plans for the areas of city centers and contact brownfield areas, the provisions incentivizing the development of the affordable housing (right of pre-emption, category of subsidized housing, inclusionary zoning, density bonus, and protection of residential use) are singled out. In the context of urban renewal of the historic center of Zagreb and of brownfield redevelopment in the contact zone of the city center, inclusion of the aforementioned provisions in local urban plans is examined, demonstrating the potential that such instrument has for the development of affordable housing in the city center. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines social disadvantage in tourist sites through the lens of labour geography by focusing on the residential trajectories of a sample of workers in Barcelona (N = 8,651) over a decade (2008–2019). Contrasting with the common view that tourism growth brings prosperity to local communities, it suggests instead that buoyant destinations may be prone to leaving their workforces behind. Path analysis modelling reveals that tourism sector workers are at a higher risk of residential displacement. Our analysis unearths stratifications in such results, pointing to different tactics to cope with housing market pressure depending on sex, age, and nationality. Residential displacement and the self-imposed devaluation of housing conditions are introduced in this paper as key avenues leading to social exclusion. In this sense, we contribute to the concern of critical tourism geographies with the inequality and disadvantage ingrained in tourist space production, bridging to the domain of labour geography and social mobility. The city of Barcelona offers a template for other urban contexts that have been reliant on tourism as a major driver of economic growth in recent decades. Following the call for closer attention to labour in the debate on transitions to sustainability in tourism, our results hint at future research avenues that extend their interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis severely disrupted the lives of hospitality and tourism workers worldwide. In Southern European cities, overly dependent on the visitor economy, a substantial part of the workforce plunged into uncertainty, adding to the rising challenge of housing affordability resulting from a rapid financialisation of real estate assets over the last decade. This paper examines how interactive service workers have coped with, resisted and negotiated such augmented and double-edged precarity during the COVID-19 crisis in Barcelona. From an intersectional perspective, the study deploys an assemblage-based analysis to trace the variety of ways through which capacities for sustaining labour and securing homes emerged during the pandemic. We foreground a topology of adaptation practices and different trajectories nested to critical events to reveal the many forms in which social precarity is produced and embodied in labour and housing spaces. The research findings suggest that pre-pandemic labour and housing conditions were linked to the awkward welfare arrangements and the forms of social protection during COVID-19, which in most cases created new conditions for precarity and hopelessness. Different contingencies were coped at the margin of institutional support, nuancing emerging geographies of precarity and (re)produced through residential deprivation and embracing informality. The desire to work in the tourism and cultural sectors while imagining where and how to dwell surfaced as a controversial negotiation that affected workers unequally and foregrounded the possibility spaces of the precarious geography of tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper investigates the location patterns and the effects co-working spaces (CWS) generate on the urban context. The focus is on Barcelona, one of the most important creative hubs in Europe in terms of knowledge-based, creative, digital, and sharing economy, and the city hosting the largest number of co-working spaces in Spain. The paper addresses three main questions: (1) Which are the location patterns of co-working spaces in Barcelona? (2) Do CWS agglomerate in the same areas? And, (3) Do CWS coagglomerate with the creative industries (CIs)? To do that, this paper uses open data on Barcelona neighbourhoods' socioeconomic composition provided by the Statistics Department of the Council of Barcelona and micro-geographic data of private CWS and creative labs in Barcelona. By using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Kd functions of agglomeration and coagglomeration, results show that CWS are highly concentrated in central areas of Barcelona where there are greater chances to meet customers and suppliers, the proximity to urban amenities and the fact of being associated to a specific place-image. Moreover, they coagglomerate with CIs firms, especially with symbolic and synthetic knowledge-based CIs. These results are relevant when assessing the actual goal of urban policies in Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In relation to the dynamic behavior of soils, the damping (D) and the dynamic shear modulus (G) has always acquired special relevance, since its evaluation has allowed the application of simplified models of dynamic soil behavior. They depend on many factors, being necessary to include the combination of monotonic (τo) and cyclical shear stress (τc) that are inevitably present under any structure. As part of an extensive testing programme, the objective of the present paper, besides the identification and classification tests, was to perform 139 simple cyclic shear tests with different levels of static stresses (τo) before the cyclic phase. This paper refers to the influence that the combination of monotonic (τo) and cyclic shear (τc) stresses has on the damping of a soft cohesive soil susceptible to sudden failure. Laboratory tests were carried out on undisturbed samples from the Port of Barcelona, in Spain. The samples were obtained at depths between 29 m and 52 m, that correspond to an effective vertical stress of (σ′ov) between 277 kPa and 413 kPa, respectively. In general, the results indicate that: a) the combination of τo and τc controls the damping ratio (D), b) in the combined monotonic and cyclic case, it is possible to establish empirical functions of the type D = D(N, γc), D = D(N, G/σ′ov) and D = D(N, u/σ′ov), for different (τo/σ′ov) ratios and c) it is possible propose a chart to evaluate the damping ratio as a function of N, G/σ′ov and u/σ′ov, for different (τo/σ′ov) ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to advance knowledge of social innovation through understanding how public policy frameworks can both support and constrain its efficacy in an ever-changing world. In doing so, this article contributes to the framework for studying interventions related to innovation models that emerge from a multidisciplinary approach to interpreting ecosystems. The question this paper attempts to answer: how can we best mitigate and overcome challenges and obstacles posed to social innovation in growing ecosystems? To answer this, we examined empirical data from actors involved in social innovation projects from two distinct, growth-stage ecosystems: Guadalajara, Mexico and Barcelona, Spain. The analysis yields three key constraining factors that obstruct social innovation: 1) Lack of critical mass for social innovation. 2) Fragmentation of actors' efforts in the innovation ecosystem. 3) Lack of citizen participation. By synthesising both the existing literature and this paper's findings, we'll propose three strategies that address issues that growing ecosystems face in their efforts to implement social innovation. The first strategy refers to mechanisms that connect citizens to scientific knowledge. The second pertains to the construction of common frameworks of action by different actors. Finally, the third strategy highlights the importance of citizen participation in social innovation projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic is a persistent problem in westernised cities. Yet it is also a key mediator, affording and assisting the everyday. In small apartments, it supports daily life by assisting with waste management, storage, and provisioning of affordable ornaments and furniture. Plastic, in this context, is a mundane and utilitarian substrate to apartment life, as well as being a problematic potential pollutant. Recognising the diverse contributions to research on high‐density living, this paper draws on vertical urbanism and relational ideas of home. It explores the socio‐material entanglements of plastic in apartments through household interviews across Melbourne, London, Barcelona, and Perth. The research reveals ways in which plastic mediates the material inequalities of high‐rise living, typified by entanglements of space constraint, transience, and waste management. The contribution is twofold. Theoretically, our work suggests a direction for socio‐materialities research in reframing ideas of home as a static, physical site, to one that is more contingent materially and spatially. As various households adapt and make do, their refuges in the sky are being reconfigured physically and symbolically by and through plastic. Relational approaches can help to reveal the mundane but critical entanglements of plastic and everyday life in apartments. Second, empirically, we show that mundane infrastructures matter; they shape the spaces and places of plastic and apartment inequalities. Thus, policy interventions that target household behaviours can only have a marginal impact on plastic consumption where uneven infrastructures remain. Moreover, they may direct attention away from where change might be more promising, such as wider social rules and meanings around plastic, and the materialities of building design/management for waste infrastructures both inside and outside the apartment. As a problem material, the elimination of plastic waste globally presents a particular challenge to ordinary and lower income apartment households that "make do" with the use of plastic. From a large empirical study, this paper analyses households' own accounts, revealing the socio‐material entanglements of plastic with waste, space, and time management. The authors point to the importance of spatial dimensions of domestic practices and the ways in which transience entangles with practice, influencing the meanings and logics of home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detection of epileptic seizures is key for neurologists to initiate the right treatment at the earliest. However, the traditional methods are dependent on manual diagnosis which are error-prone. Hence, the current article presents an automated machine learning-based approach with competing results to detect seizures and its types using traditional features. Towards this goal, the present paper explores the performance of two fractal parameters namely Higuchi and, Kat'z fractal dimension, along with power spectral density and spectral entropy to detect EEG signals with seizure and non-seizure characteristics. To validate the performance via cross-validation technique, the features are extracted and experimented from three publically available databases such as Bern-Barcelona (focal, non-focal), Khas (preictal, interictal, ictal), and Bonn. Thereafter evaluated with different machine learning algorithms like Random Forest classifier, Ada Boost classifier, Gradient Boosting classifier, Extra Tree classifier, SVM classifier, and Naive Bayes classifier. The experiments showed 100% F1 score and accuracy in classifying focal and non-focal signals for random forest and extra tree classifier methods. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper reporting this score for the Bern-Barcelona dataset. The same features are also experimented for the detection of interictal, ictal and preictal scenarios. In the process, 100% accuracy is obtained in classifying interictal and ictal EEG signals, and an accuracy of 94% is attained in classifying interictal-preictal signals. This score is 14% higher than the current state-of-the-art methods using the same database. The features are also used in the Bonn database, where the proposed approach gave an accuracy of 100% same as the state-of-the-art methods. • Obtained competing evaluation score relative to SOTA methods using ML methods. • Competing score reported for interictal-preictal based classification of EEG data. • EEG classification is performed in the sensing time domain itself. • The proposed approach is validated using three benchmark datasets. • The performance is evaluated using cross-validation technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intermediate living arrangements, like shared flats, collective accommodation or double residence, have become increasingly common due to the individualization of life scripts, and because of economic and cultural shifts in western societies. However, they have been assumed to be negligible in Mediterranean Europe, where housing transitions are 'late but simple'. This paper challenges this assumption, using Catalonia (Spain) as a case study. Data coming from the 2017 Catalan Youth Survey offer some clear-cut results. First, shared flats and double residence are not uncommon among Catalans: respectively 15.7% and 8.1% of youngsters experience them sometime during their twenties. Second, multinomial regression models show that double residence implies economic reliance on parents, it is most common among university students, especially those with well-off parents, and among young people coming from rural areas. Conversely, shared flats appear to be linked to precarious economic situations, and they are common among young immigrants, and those living in the city of Barcelona. Both arrangements are transitory, being less frequent among older people. Some expected predictors of intermediate living turned out to predict double residence instead, so this semi-dependent practice could be the equivalent of 'living away from home' for youngsters in 'familistic' territories as Catalonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper a statistical study of cirrus geometrical and optical properties based on 5 years of continuous ground-based lidar measurements with the Barcelona (Spain) Micro Pulse Lidar (MPL) is analysed. First, a review of the literature on the two-way transmittance method is presented. This method is a well-known lidar inversion method used to retrieve the optical properties of an aerosol/cloud layer between two molecular (i.e. aerosol/cloud-free) regions below and above, without the need to make any a priori assumptions about their optical and/or microphysical properties. Second, a simple mathematical expression of the two-way transmittance method is proposed for both ground-based and spaceborne lidar systems. This approach of the method allows the retrieval of the cloud optical depth, the columnar cloud lidar ratio and the vertical profile of the cloud backscatter coefficient. The method is illustrated for a cirrus cloud using measurements from a ground-based MPL and from the spaceborne Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization (CALIOP). Third, the data base is then filtered with a cirrus identification criterion based on (and compared to) the literature using only lidar and radiosonde data. During the period from November 2018 to September 2022, 367 high-altitude cirrus clouds have been identified at 00 and 12 UTC, of which 203 were successfully inverted with the two-way transmittance method. The statistical results of these 203 high-altitude cirrus clouds show that the cloud thickness is 1.8 ± 1.1 km, the mid-cloud temperature is -51 ± 8 °C and linear cloud depolarization ratio is 0.32 ± 0.13. The application of the transmittance method yields an average cloud optical depth (COD) of 0.36 ± 0.45 and a mean lidar ratio of 30 ± 19 sr. It is observed that the highest occurrence of cirrus is in spring and the majority of cirrus clouds (48 %) are visible (0.03 < COD < 0.3), followed by opaque (COD > 0.3) with a percentage of 38 %. Together with results from other sites, a possible latitudinal dependence of lidar ratio is detected: the lidar ratio increases with increasing latitude. We also note that in Barcelona the COD correlates positively with the cloud base temperature, lidar ratio and linear cloud depolarization ratio and negatively with the cloud base height. On the one hand, the decrease of the cloud base temperature and COD associated to an increase of the cloud base height occurs because clouds located at higher altitudes are formed from air masses with a lower water vapour content and, therefore, their geometric and optical thickness are smaller. On the other hand, the lidar ratio increases with increasing cloud optical depth, as the complexity and diversity of ice crystal shapes increases, due to collisions and turbulence. Lastly, the linear cloud depolarization ratio has a slightly positive tendency with the cloud optical depth, because as the cloud optical depth increases, the number of ice crystals increases and, as a consequence, the randomly aggregation of ice crystals within the cloud occurs more frequently, making ice crystals rougher and thus more depolarizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities play increasingly recognised roles in global climate change responses: as change laboratories, spaces of opportunity, and as administrative and economic hubs that concentrate human and financial resources and needs. They host high climate mitigation potential and acute climate adaptation vulnerabilities. Scholarship flags conventional urban planning approaches to limit global warming to 1.5°C as inadequate. Yet urban sustainability transitions literature features few examples of functioning alternative governance and planning paradigms. This paper assesses one such approach, new municipalism: social movements centred on a democratic transformation of the local economy and state. We combine attention to urban sustainability transitions and new municipalism research to interrogate whether and how the latter can facilitate the provision of leadership and institutional arrangements that enable urban transformation to sustainability. Our desk study considers two prominent examples of new municipalism in Spain, where Barcelona en Comú and Ahora Madrid arose as anti-austerity movements to combat neoliberal urban agendas during the 2010s. We find that the praxis of collective decision-making associated with new municipalism does offer inclusive, innovative policy pathways and the potential to implement experimental knowledge and learning in complex real-world settings at the urban scale. We argue, however, that powerful neoliberal mechanisms impose structural constraints on the very push for deep political change that new municipalist movements embody. By linking transformative climate governance needs with new municipalism movements and wider political economic structuring forces, we explicate the tensions and contested dynamics of institutionalising progressive social movements in the multi-scalar governance of urban sustainability transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1965, in the midst of Franco's dictatorship in Spain, four bottlenose dolphins travelled from Miami to Barcelona Zoo. These became the inhabitants of one of the first dolphinariums in Europe. The arrival of the dolphins was preceded by two trips of the zoo's director, accompanied by an architect and a politician, to visit the installations at the Miami Seaquarium, Sea World San Diego, and Marineland of the Pacific in California. In this paper, I reflect on how knowledge and practices about a completely new animal and its keeping were acquired in the Barcelona Zoo. This was a time when exhibitions, popular perception, and scientific research regarding marine mammals were being developed. The training and exhibition of dolphins was shaped by a mixture of circus-like practices and scientific knowledge. Dolphins arrived in Europe with "knowledges" and practices attached, but also with a lot of uncertainty. However, circumstances like geography, logistics, and the corporate character of American aquaria prevented a straightforward flow of information from the United States to Europe. How did Barcelona Zoo keepers manage to gather information on the building and maintenance of a dolphinarium? And how did they gather information on how to feed, care, train, and exhibit the dolphins? This paper seeks to understand how the particular setting of Barcelona Zoo, as well as its social, scientific, and political context shaped the exhibition of and creation of knowledge about animals at the zoo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of a smart city is still being developed despite the lack of a single universally accepted definition. It is implemented through different approaches in different cities around the world. The presented study concerns the improvement of this idea and the possibility of applying the solutions from Barcelona to the city of Kraków. This paper is based on the author's experience and observations during a trip to Catalonia and its capital - Barcelona - as well as a study of literature on the smart city. The author takes into account the specific topographical and environmental conditions of each city and the human-environment interactions that have shaped both cities over the centuries. The paper continues to focus on the challenges to smart cities following the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has demonstrated the need to modify ICT (Information and Telecommunications Technologies) applications related to the functioning of the city. Preliminary conclusions drawn from the pandemic also indicate that further development of smart cities should be based not only on ICT applications in public services and public spaces, but also on guaranteeing individual spaces for citizens to live in long-term isolation. In addition, attention was drawn to the need to improve both direct and electronic communication, especially by telephone with the authorities of Kraków, to enable "co-governance" in areas where the voice of the city's residents can be very valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores childcare as a matter of social reproduction and the commons, in tension with some ethical and political questions regarding the status of children as political actors. How can we think through the political practice and significance of childcare commoning? What might a radical politics of childcare look like? Looking at three modalities of childcare commoning in the neighbourhood of Poble Sec in Barcelona - mothers' networks, self-organized childcare groups, and municipal policies of childhood - this text emphasizes the role of neighbourhood networks and municipal institutions in childcare commoning. Narrating examples of transversal and sympoietic organizing across the private, public and commons spheres, the paper situates the organizing of childcare in the contemporary feminist and municipalist context of Barcelona, in which I myself partake. It points to agents and dynamics that are under-explored in extant organizational and commons studies: mothers, midwives, post-partum classes, creches, playgrounds, municipal offices, neighbourhood chat groups, and not least children. This raises the question: Who is the subject of childcare, and how might we envisage subjectivity and political agency differently, learning from social ecosystems of care? This paper offers a novel look at how emergent feminist politics articulate autonomy and interdependence, as well as the commons and public systems in alternate ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to dissect the presence of female writers in the main four cultural supplements of Spanish reference press: Babelia (El país), Cultura/s (La vanguardia), El cultural (El mundo) and ABC cultural (ABC). For this, we analyzed the "books of the year" recommended between 2010 and 2021 (n = 1,286), as well as the juries in charge of elaborating these ranks. The results show the subsidiary role reserved for women in this sphere of cultural information: they barely author 25.3% of the selected books, although some degree is progress is observed in the historical series, after going from 4.8% in 2011 to 37.8% in 2020. The increase in the presence of women in the juries has contributed to this phenomenon --the correlation between ratio of women in both lists being statiscally significant (rs = 0.647, p < 0.001)--, together with the commitment of supplement such as Babelia and Cultura/s to literature written by women. On the contrary, there still seem to be pockets of exclusion in El cultural and ABC cultural, which reduce the visibility of work of female writers in Spain. According to our findings, women authors stand out for their youth (they are between 8 and 20 years younger than men, depending on the indicator), cosmopolitism (there are more foreign female writers, especially American, than Spanish) and origin (mainly, Madrid and Barcelona). This article evinces the collective imaginary, settled for centuries, by which literature was considered a men's affair, and reflects on the role of cultural journalism and its prescriptive function when it comes to breaking down gender stereotype --a task that, in view of the data provided in this paper, is still far from been completed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of urban pedestrian networks, this paper presents a method of modeling the street network from the perspective of foot traffic, beyond the vehicle-focused street centerline representation approach in transportation research. A scalable method to extract the centerlines of the complete walkable urban area from its polygon representation at a one-meter resolution is discussed, using open-source tools. To evaluate the betweenness centrality in a spatially directed graph, the process is applied to the study of the 'walkable Barcelona', focusing on three key parameters: 1) the street width, 2) the longitudinal slope, and 3) the crosswalks connecting the sidewalk platforms. The results identify the uneven distribution of these parameters within a complex urban fabric, and the high-resolution cartography allows the identification of critical areas within the network, introducing future lines of research and applications of the workflow. This is especially relevant considering the increasing awareness of citizens and the urban agendas worldwide, aimed at improving and widening the sidewalk infrastructure that supports local activity in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Imaging spectroscopy discloses the secrets of Picasso's painting "La Copa Blava". • Reflectance hyperspectral imaging enabled visualisation of earlier versions of the painting. • New-insights on the Picasso Blue period are gained with imaging spectroscopy. • Reflectance hyperspectral imaging has a potential for museums educational tasks. Reflectance hyperspectral imaging (HSI) in the Visible and Near-IR (VNIR) to the Short Wave IR (SWIR) ranges is acknowledged as one of the most effective techniques for non-invasive examination of paintings. Recently, in some important museums worldwide a new trend has emerged towards a more systematic use of reflectance HSI, which is applied as advanced imaging technique to attain at once analysis and documentation of the painted surfaces and inner layers. As an example of this trend, in the framework of the interdisciplinary program "Picasso: Blue Project" recently carried out at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, a selection of paintings of the Blue Period (1901–1904) collection were revisited through the eye of cutting-edge analytical techniques, including reflectance HSI. The present paper focuses on the painting "The Blue Glass" (La Copa Blava, 1903), which was examined by using a high-performance reflectance HSI instrumentation. Under its visible surface, this iconic oil on canvas featured a stratification of different compositions that perfectly witnessed the Picasso's creative process. The HSI data enabled an unprecedented visualisation of the artistic metamorphosis of this painting. The well-known Picasso's creative practice of repainting on his own canvas was brought to the light by means of HSI images, which offered unique materials for visualising the hidden layers of the painting, by disclosing subsequent and unknown earlier versions and the artistic evolution of the painting. The outcomes of the project were disseminated in an exhibition, that addressed the ambitious objective of sharing with the wide public scholarly advanced knowledge hitherto gained on the Picasso Blue Period. Within this context, reflectance HSI proved to be exceptionally effective, not only for addressing analytical tasks, but also for educational purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the last decade's major challenges faced by tourist cities has been dominated by the increasing tourism flows that have harmed the quality of life of residents, the neighbourhood's sense of belonging, and the stakeholders' concerns regarding reliance on tourism. However, tourism mobilities are not the only drivers of structural change in cities. The advent of temporary residents, digital nomads, international students, short-stay expats, and creative workers have shaped the way cities have evolved together with tourism mobilities. This paper will present research conducted in the Vila de Gràcia neighbourhood in Barcelona, which has undergone a thoughtful transformation in terms of tourism-oriented businesses specialisation, housing market prices, sociodemographic changes, the use of public space and nightlife leisure. Gradually, the Vila de Gràcia neighbourhood has become an emblematic area of leisure and tourism consumption experience in Barcelona. Based on ethnographic fieldwork begun in 2017 and in-depth semi-structured interviews with lifelong and new residents, the research analyses residents' attitude toward touristification processes related to social discontent, nightlife noise, the rise in housing market prices and overcrowding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A description of a mentalization informed home‐based project, an adaptation of the ECID project (Equipo Clínico de Intervención a Domicilio), into a time‐limited first aid mental health team in response to heightened mental health needs during the COVID Pandemic in Barcelona, Spain is offered. ECID is a project with a developmental psychodynamic understanding of psychopathology and relational dynamics informing a highly flexible treatment approach. This paper describes a focus on the need for clinicians to take an active role whilst adapting to the specific needs and situation of each child and family, instead of continuing to ask them to adapt to what services can or are prepared to offer. Clinical examples are given to illustrate the value of an integrative community approach informed by both systemic and psychodynamic lenses. Specifically, we reflect on the benefits of a mentalization informed approach to working with families during high levels of psychosocial stress for both families and practitioners. We illustrate how of a mentalization informed clinical service can promote and support the development of a therapeutic alliance when internal safety is impacted by a very real external threat. Finally, preliminary data is presented regarding the impact of parental stress and trauma on children and adolescents' adaptation to a potentially traumatic situation as well as their capacity for returning to a progressive development pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an innovative methodology to study the application of seasonality (the existence of cyclical patterns) to help predict the level of crime. This methodology combines the simplicity of entropy-based metrics that describe temporal patterns of a phenomenon, on the one hand, and the predictive power of machine learning on the other. First, the classical Colwell's metrics Predictability and Contingency are used to measure different aspects of seasonality in a geographical unit. Second, if those metrics turn out to be significantly different from zero, supervised machine learning classification algorithms are built, validated and compared, to predict the level of crime based on the time unit. The methodology is applied to a case study in Barcelona (Spain), with month as the unit of time, and municipal district as the geographical unit, the city being divided into 10 of them, from a set of property crime data covering the period 2010-2018. The results show that (a) Colwell's metrics are significantly different from zero in all municipal districts, (b) the month of the year is a good predictor of the level of crime, and (c) Naive Bayes is the most competitive classifier, among those who have been tested. The districts can be ordered using the Naive Bayes, based on the strength of the month as a predictor for each of them. Surprisingly, this order coincides with that obtained using Contingency. This fact is very revealing, given the apparent disconnection between entropy-based metrics and machine learning classifiers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to foster electric vehicle (EV) adoption rates, the availability of a pervasive and efficient charging network is a crucial requirement. In this paper, we provide a decision support tool for helping policymakers to locate and size EV charging stations. We consider a multi-year planning horizon, taking into account different charging technologies and different time periods (day and night). Accounting for these features, we propose an optimization model that minimizes total investment costs while ensuring a predetermined adequate level of demand coverage. In particular, the setup of charging stations is optimized every year, allowing for an increase in the number of chargers installed at charging stations set up in previous years. We have developed a tailored heuristic algorithm for the resulting problem. We validated our algorithm using case study instances based on the village of Gardone Val Trompia (Italy), the city of Barcelona (Spain), and the country of Luxembourg. Despite the variability in the sizes of the considered instances, our algorithm consistently provided high-quality results in short computational times, when compared to a commercial MILP solver. Produced solutions achieved optimality gaps within 7.5% in less than 90 s, often achieving computational times of less than 5 s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an urbanized world, the challenges posed by climate change need to be met through innovative planning for cities and regions. Urban resilience demands that cities adopt new models centered on carbon neutrality, ecosystem services and biodiversity enhancement, circularity, and social inclusion. In light of the multiple interdependencies of metropolitan systems and the natural and territorial potentialities present on their fringes, this paper discusses the metropolitan fringes as strategic for urban resilience and sustainable transitions. By combining a mixed-method analysis of adaptation and urban plans with semi-structured interviews performed with key technicians, the analysis is focused on an inter-municipal fringe zone within the Barcelona Metropolitan Area - the Besòs territory. Aiming to contribute to the discussions related to Territorial innovation for cities and regions, the paper offers a multi-scale perspective and illustrates innovative urban transformation strategies across scales. The results highlight that governance and multiple planning and participation instances together with technical and financial support are essential for consensus building in an incremental process. Furthermore, the planning strategies of the case study sought to integrate and enhance the green and blue infrastructures and transform consolidated urban areas with a focus on energy transition, sustainable mobility, circularity, and social inclusion. In conclusion, it is argued that resilience has a multi-scalar perspective within the metropolitan context and should be integrated with planning policies at different scales from a coordinated vision. Although adaptation and urban projects have a critical local element, a broader and more strategic vision is necessary, especially in metropolitan fringe areas. • Although adaptation and resilience have an essential local element, a broader and more strategic vision is necessary. • Metropolitan planning and governance towards urban resilience must have a multi-scalar perspective. • Metropolitan fringes are key to urban resilience and sustainable transitions due to their environmental and urban attributes. • A coordinated metropolitan vision with technical and financial support is vital for sustainable urban transitions in fringe areas. • The intermediate scale is critical since it represents a bridge between supra-municipal instances and municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas are increasingly adopting the tool of urban food policies (UFPs) to address food-related challenges, especially for a sustainable transition of their food systems (FS). Indeed, FS were assessed to have a great environmental impact, and cities are recognized as privileged actors to address this challenge. More recently, the problem of justice in such transition was raised. One dimension of vulnerability proven to crosscut all FS stages, and to increase exposure to climate change effects, is gender. However, literature on just food transition and UFPs does not seem to always consider this dimension of potential vulnerability. This paper firstly elaborates on the concept of "just food transition" (JFT), then presents relevant literature on gender differences in FS to argue that interventions aimed at JFT should apply gender mainstreaming. Later, it analyzes twenty relevant cases of UFPs to assess whether they consider gender differences, with the aim of demonstrating that, although theory seems to prove its relevance, a gender mainstreaming approach is still widely lacking from policy practice and rather some policies risk to reinforce existing gender stereotypes related to the FS. The paper ends with conclusions and suggestions for further research. • Gender differences have been proven to exist throughout all stages of the food system. • Just food transition literature tends to overlook implications of gender differences. • A gender mainstreaming approach is widely lacking from urban food policies. • The urban food policies of Zaragoza and Barcelona are innovative in their attention to gender differences in urban matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a novel framework for enriching time series data in smart cities by supplementing it with information from external sources via semantic data enrichment. Our methodology effectively merges multiple data sources into a uniform time series, while addressing difficulties such as data quality, contextual information, and time lapses. We demonstrate the efficacy of our method through a case study in Barcelona, which permitted the use of advanced analysis methods such as windowed cross-correlation and peak picking. The resulting time series data can be used to determine traffic patterns and has potential uses in other smart city sectors, such as air quality, energy efficiency, and public safety. Interactive dashboards enable stakeholders to visualize and summarize key insights and patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative clusters are increasingly being recognized as vital tools in the promotion of the competitiveness, innovation, urban development, and growth of cities in developed countries. This paper studies the geography of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) in Barcelona (Spain) for the years 2009 and 2017. We investigate the spatial distribution of firms using the Scan methodology, which identifies the localization of clusters and assigns them statistical significance. Our findings indicate that CCIs are not located haphazardly— they tend to cluster in and around Barcelona's prime districts. The evolution of the clusters over these nine years reveals distinct patterns of clustering among the twelve CCI sub-sectors. The mature clusters in Barcelona's core tend to have greater growth and enhanced transformation capabilities. Our results can guide CCI cluster policy, taking into account the specificity of each sub-sector. In addition, they can direct place-based development strategies, creative urban and rural planning, and restructuring in a polycentric context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While the health risks of air pollution attract considerable attention, both scholarly and within the general population, citizens are rarely involved in environmental health research, beyond participating as data subjects. Co-created citizen science is an approach that fosters collaboration between scientists and lay people to engage the latter in all phases of research. Currently, this approach is rare in environmental epidemiology and when co-creation processes do take place, they are often not documented. This paper describes the first stages of an ongoing co-created citizen science epidemiological project in Barcelona (Spain), that included identifying topics that citizens wish to investigate as regards air pollution and health, formulating their concerns into research questions and co-designing the study protocol. This paper also reflects key trade-offs between scientific rigor and public engagement and provides suggestions to consider when applying citizen science to environmental health studies.Methods: Experts created an online survey and analyzed responses with descriptive statistics and qualitative coding. A pop-up intervention was held to discuss with citizens their concerns about air pollution and health. Later on, a community meeting was organized to narrow down the research topics and list potential research questions. In an online survey, citizens were asked to vote for the research question they would like to investigate with the experts. A workshop was held to choose a study design in which citizens would like to partake to answer their preferred research question.Results: According to 488 respondents from the first survey, cognitive and mental health were the main priorities of investigation. Based on the second survey, with 27% of the votes from 556 citizens, the most popular research question was, "How does air pollution together with noise and green/blue spaces affect mental health?". The study design selected was an observational study in which citizens provide daily repeated measures of different cognitive and mental health outcomes and relate them to the air pollution concentrations.Conclusions: Based on the co-creation activities and the results obtained, we conclude that applying citizen science in an environmental health project is valuable for researchers despite some challenges such as engaging citizens and maximizing representativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top‐down "closed" spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) vice‐versa, the mechanisms through which bottom‐up, open spaces can be co‐opted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of 'governance‐driven democratization' describes top‐down and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracy‐driven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizens' demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they co‐exist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic factor models are a powerful technique for analysing vast volumes of data, more precisely, time series. However, the large volumes of data that come from public transport networks tend to have heterogeneity and a cluster structure. In this paper, Dynamic Factor Models with Cluster Structure (DFMCS) are used to forecast hourly entrances in the different stations of the Barcelona subway network. The main and most novel contribution lies in the use of clustering techniques to make an initial grouping of the behaviour of the elements belonging to the time series, in order to subsequently be able to predict future patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the edition and commentary of three papyrus fragments from the collections preserved at the Abbey of Montserrat and the Archive of the Jesuits in Barcelona. They have in common that they might be interpreted as connected to magical or divinatory practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plastic debris in aquatic and marine environments often breaks up into fragments that are smaller than 5 millimeters, which are then classified as microplastics. While there is not yet a standardized and validated methodology for characterizing microplastics, the protocol developed in this study uses methods for isolating and observing microplastics and for the investigation of how they interact with organisms present in biofilms from urban waterways. Project-based learning (PBL) has been proven to be a successful strategy in K–12 science education; the implementation of PBL provides opportunities for student-driven inquiry and provides teachers with a means to integrate curriculum with current research and to consider the effects of human impacts on the environment. This paper describes the protocol developed for high school teachers to educate students about microplastics and how to successfully isolate and observe them. Teachers and students in Maryland successfully isolated microplastics from biofilm samples from the Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland, and shared their results. International teachers and students in Barcelona, Spain, involved in a related project, had similar results and shared experiences through images, video, and online meetings. These collaborations provide important opportunities for student-driven inquiry and for them to engage in methods of current scientific research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the process of gendering platform co-operativism through a case study of two rider co-operatives owned and managed by women: Señoritas Courier in São Paulo, Brazil and Les Mercedes in Barcelona, Spain. While both co-operatives arose in response to similar concerns and have adopted a common approach, one is located in the global South, while the other is in the global North. This allows for a comparison of how prefigurative politics have shaped the terms of platform co-operativism, as well as an analysis of the transnational character of worker struggle. The article is particularly interested in: What was the impetus for the formation of the two women-owned platform co-operatives? How have the co-operatives sought to redefine the relationship between gender, work, and technologies? The paper argues that the expansion of women-owned platform co-operatives constitutes an opportunity to advance a more inclusive, feminist digital economy. Members see co-operatives as an important dimension of collective organisation and the articulation between paid and unpaid care work. Both co-operatives strive to create a safe environment which provides support in work and motherhood. However, platform co-operatives have struggled to expand amidst a highly competitive market. The article concludes with a discussion on the need for public policies that can support platform co-operativism among women delivery workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many developed cities around the world, vehicle sharing is becoming an increasingly popular form of green transportation. While such services are associated with lower emissions and easier mobility, their management poses a significant challenge. In this paper, we examine a dataset collected in Barcelona during the months of august and september 2020 in order to investigate relocation strategies and user clustering. By proposing a neighborhood area split and relating it to user demand, we propose two different areas based on majority demand and users' requests and provide interpretations of both. We then aim to identify groups of similar users using a variant of Recency Frequency Monetary/Duration (RFM or RFD) clustering that extends to GPS coordinates of voyages in order to differentiate scores based on economic and geographical factors; furthermore, a user-based clustering approach was used to maximize client preferences. As a result of our analysis, the sharing company may be able to make more informed decisions regarding where to focus its resources. In fact, we find that the majority of the demand is concentrated in an area that represents 7.47 percent of the city's area. Additionally, we propose a discount-based approach in order to influence the user's behavior in parking the vehicle where it is most needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the connections between nightlife leisure, everyday places and young people in the transition towards adulthood. When thinking about the discovery of nightlife, the places where leisure takes place are central: they are often places of confidence and belonging – features that offer both young people and families the conditions for the first autonomous explorations of urban space at night. These places also give young people the possibility for new practices and interactions with peers, that are in key in identity processes. The analysis is based on qualitative data collected in Barcelona, Spain, with young people (14–16 years old). The paper will focus on three dimensions: the neighbourhood, the 'legitimate spaces' of consumption and the ephemeral places of festivals. I argue that these places' specific features play an important role in how adolescents progressively build autonomous practices of space and new social networks during the night. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]