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The paper aims at introducing some critical views on 'multicultural quarters', reflecting on the cases of Spitalfields in London and Torpignattara in Rome. Urban practices and policies that led these places to be recognised as 'Banglatowns' are explored, disentangling two major narratives of multicultural quarters, respectively, commodification of diversity and everyday multiculturalism. Whether literature tends to establish an opposition between these interpretative frameworks, the paper argues that context-based research shows how both categories are interlaced. The coexisting aspects of commodification of ethnicity and encounter are explored, focusing on the human and spatial agents supporting the construction of the image of the (multi)ethnic quarters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the recent advances in complex network theory, urban mobility flow patterns, typically encoded as origin-destination (OD) matrices, can be represented as weighted directed graphs, with nodes denoting city locations and weighted edges the number of trips between them. Such a graph can further be augmented by node attributes denoting the various socio-economic characteristics at a particular location in the city. In this paper, we study the spatio-temporal characteristics of "hotspots" of different types of socio-economic activities as characterized by recently developed attribute-augmented network centrality measures within the urban OD network. The workflow of the proposed paper comprises the construction of temporal OD networks using two custom data sets on urban mobility in Rome and London, the addition of socio-economic activity attributes to the OD network nodes, the computation of network centrality measures, the identification of "hotspots" and, finally, the visualization and analysis of measures of their spatio-temporal heterogeneity. Our results show structural similarities and distinctions between the spatial patterns of different types of human activity in the two cities. Our approach produces simple indicators thus opening up opportunities for practitioners to develop tools for real-time monitoring and visualization of interactions between mobility and economic activity in cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban heat island has significant impacts on buildings' energy consumption. The phenomenon is associated with increased urban air temperatures compared to the air temperature of the surrounding rural or suburban areas. The ambient air temperature growth due to climate changes and the urban heat island phenomenon are dramatically increasing the cooling demand in buildings. This is worsened by irradiation conditions, construction technologies, and subjective comfort expectations. This paper examines the impact of the urban environment on the energy demand of buildings, considering the case of two districts of the city of Rome, Italy: one is representative of a central zone, the other of a rural zone. Weather data were then used to calculate the thermal demand of a typical Italian building, ideally located in the monitored areas of the city. Standalone building with modified weather file was modeled in TRNSYS. Results show that urban heat island intensity causes an increase in cooling demand up to +33% for the urban area (+20% for the rural area) compared to the demand calculated using weather data from airportual areas. On the other hand, urban heat island intensity has a positive effect on heating demand which turns out to decrease up to -32% for the urban area (-14% for the rural area). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voters' division into opposing territorial blocs seems to be a noticeable feature of current European politics, as traditional-left parties remain entrenched in the 'centers' and parties of the populist Right surge in the 'peripheries'. This electoral dynamic is also affecting metropolitan areas, where inner districts represent the bastions of cosmopolitanism, while the outer ones the realm of ethnonationalism. In this regard, some authors argue that advanced post-industrial democracies are affected by a 'metropolitanization of politics' process. Against this backdrop, the present contribution advances the thesis that the emergence of the 'transnational cleavage' and its strengthening during the 'long crises-decade' (2008-2019) gave a boost to the electoral metropolitanization process. This thesis is tested on two case studies: London and Rome, the capitals of two countries where populist radical right forces proliferated in the 2010s and apparently widened the division between centers and suburbs. First, I investigate whether there has really been a pattern of metropolitanization of the vote in London and Rome. Second, relying on the data collected by the British Election Study (BES) and the Italian National Election Studies (ITANES), I verify whether the presumed electoral polarization corresponds to the concentration of GAL (green/alternative/libertarian) values in inner districts and TAN (tradition/authority/national) values in the suburbs. Findings help to discern not only if the metropolitanization of politics thesis holds in the UK and in Italy, but also if the transnational cleavage has a rooted territorial dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impetus for this essay is the discovery of three new facts about 'Miss Cotterell', one of the passengers who in 1820 sailed to Italy on the Maria Crowther alongside John Keats and Joseph Severn. There is a summary of the research that culminated in finding Miss Cotterell's christening, death record and first name, before sketching her traditional place in Keats' biography. We also give a short account of her brother, Charles Cotterell, who lived and worked in Naples. The essay also describes the project that sparked this research in the first place: an attempt to narrate Keats' 'Final Voyage' from London to Rome and his final months at 26 Piazza di Spagna on the online platform Google Earth. Having reviewed the challenges these purgatorial months have posed scholars and biographers over the last 200 years, the essay ends by asking two main questions. What impact (if any) do these facts have on our understanding of Miss Cotterell and also this last act in Keats' life? And what does it mean to be preserved for two centuries years as a bit-part player in the posthumous life of an artist like John Keats? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common infections in all age groups. Fast and accurate diagnosis is essential to ensure a timely and effective therapy. Alongside with reference culture-based methods, several point-of-care tests (POCTs) for early detection of UTIs have been developed, but they have not been significantly implemented in current clinical practice. The Micro Biological Survey (MBS) POCT is a simple test developed by MBS Diagnostics Ltd. (London, UK) for the detection and management of UTIs. The present study has been undertaken to investigate the potentials and limits of the MBS POCT. A total of 349 patients were enrolled in two open-label, monocentric, non-interventional clinical trials in collaboration with an Emergency Medicine department and the outpatient clinic of two hospitals in Rome. Results of urine analysis using the MBS POCT were compared with those of the routine culture-based tests for UTI diagnosis performed by the hospital laboratory. The MBS POCT provided fast results revealing high bacterial count UTIs (≥ 105 CFU/ml) with 97% accuracy, 92% sensitivity, 100% specificity, 99% PPV, and 96% NPV within a 5-h analytical time threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]