Strategic Sites Research Articles

A collaborative spatial decision support system applied to site selection problems

Nowadays, urban areas face many challenging issues; one of the most demanding is site selection. Strategic site selection issues are typically complex problems that require consideration of multiple alternatives (sites), multiple criteria and multiple decision-makers with conflicting interests, preferences and desires. In this perspective we propose a new decision making framework based on three areas of high importance: multi-agent systems, geographic information system and multiple-criteria decision analysis. These three tools are combined in a manner so that the shortcoming of one tool is complemented by the strength of the others. To assist the decision makers in selecting the compromise alternative from a number of feasible alternatives, the proposed decision support system will be enriched with a protocol of negotiation based on argumentation approach, which allows agents (decision makers) to exchange complex justification positions rather than just simple proposals, this property of argumentation protocols can lead to faster and beneficial agreements to the group.

Global Cities, Global (in)Securities: An Introduction

The urban landscape is already the main center of social interaction in the globe since the vast majority of the world’s population inhabit cities. As the core of contemporary social life, urban areas concentrate most of the conflictive encounters opposing a great variety of actors. From small villages to major ‘Global Cities’ (Sassen 1991, 2005) and impres-sive megacities, urban space constitutes the main field in which political and economic endeavours take place. Therefore, it is not surprising that most of the crucial and more violent conflicts of our age occur in urban areas.It is true that cities and violence have a long and common old history (Ashworth 1991). Across the globe, and since ancient ages, cities have been the stage for protection as well as for pillage, massacres, upheavals, starvation, and military sieges. In Europe, cities had a crucial role in the process in which Modern States emerged. Then, fortified cities gave way to overpopulated urban spaces while the political, legal and military limits ex-panded until they were established along national borders (Tilly 1990). The emergence of interstate/international relations, as an immediate reflection of the political power cen-tralisation within the states, was accompanied by the elaboration of sophisticated legal and political-philosophical discourses that justified the existence of the state as the only entity capable of keeping internal peace and order in a troubled world (Neocleous 2014; Foucault 2003; Rodrigues forthcoming). However, the violent and tumultuous history of the nation-state is also the history of conflict and struggle within urban spaces.In the nineteenth century, the emergence of the so-called ‘total war era’ (Keegan 1993) transformed industrial cities into strategic sites in which the vast majority of economic,

Inclusive experiences of urban regeneration: abandoned barracks in the suburbs of Udine

For the University of Udine, abandoned barracks named “Osoppo” and “Piave”, located in the suburbs of Udine, represent, in collaboration with the Municipality, great occasions of experimentation, inclusion and urban regeneration. The urban fabric deals with the presence of a significant number of barracks, realized during the last century as a direct consequence of the recent history, representing an emblematic case. These structures, with a considerable size, are located in strategic sites that limit urban development and condition the social context, as they establish themselves as isolated and impregnable areas. This essay presents feasibility studies’ results, achieved while comparing with the international debate and connecting strategies of social inclusion with instruments and methods of technological intervention, paying attention to the realization process’s requisites, both national and international.

Trafficking and processing of bacterial proteins by mammalian cells: Insights from chondroitinase ABC.

BackgroundThere is very little reported in the literature about the relationship between modifications of bacterial proteins and their secretion by mammalian cells that synthesize them. We previously reported that the secretion of the bacterial enzyme Chondroitinase ABC by mammalian cells requires the strategic removal of at least three N-glycosylation sites. The aim of this study was to determine if it is possible to enhance the efficacy of the enzyme as a treatment for spinal cord injury by increasing the quantity of enzyme secreted or by altering its cellular location.Methodology/Principal findingsTo determine if the efficiency of enzyme secretion could be further increased, cells were transfected with constructs encoding the gene for chondroitinase ABC modified for expression by mammalian cells; these contained additional modifications of strategic N-glycosylation sites or alternative signal sequences to direct secretion of the enzyme from the cells. We show that while removal of certain specific N-glycosylation sites enhances enzyme secretion, N-glycosylation of at least two other sites, N-856 and N-773, is essential for both production and secretion of active enzyme. Furthermore, we find that the signal sequence directing secretion also influences the quantity of enzyme secreted, and that this varies widely amongst the cell types tested. Last, we find that replacing the 3’UTR on the cDNA encoding Chondroitinase ABC with that of β-actin is sufficient to target the enzyme to the neuronal growth cone when transfected into neurons. This also enhances neurite outgrowth on an inhibitory substrate.Conclusion/SignificanceSome intracellular trafficking pathways are adversely affected by cryptic signals present in the bacterial gene sequence, whilst unexpectedly others are required for efficient secretion of the enzyme. Furthermore, targeting chondroitinase to the neuronal growth cone promotes its ability to increase neurite outgrowth on an inhibitory substrate. These findings are timely in view of the renewed prospects for gene therapy, and of direct relevance to strategies aimed at expressing foreign proteins in mammalian cells, in particular bacterial proteins.

Industrial location and global restructuring in Australian cities

ABSTRACTGlobalisation has impacted both the balance of economic power between cities as well as the distribution of economic activities within them. Studies focusing on the impacts of globalisation often investigate one or the other, but rarely tie the two together. In Australian cities, central business districts (CBDs) and inner suburbs since the 1980s have become revalorised as strategic sites for multinational firm activities, complementing an already robust agglomeration of commodities-oriented firms, domestic manufacturing, and state-led industries. This paper compares the spatial organisation of Australian firm activity across Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. It first focuses on how the firms of each of these cities extend overseas through global branch office operations, and then shifts to the distribution of firms within each capital city region. Data are drawn from a complete set of 2196 listed Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) firms with operations in more than 100 countries. We find that while the mix of industries differs significantly between cities, the overall industrial patterns observed are relatively consistent from one city to the next. Australian cities are economically fairly centralised and services-oriented industries in particular are most prominent within CBDs. Sydney’s firms are found to be the most globalised, although all cities have significant numbers of global firms. However, we find that locational requirements are significantly varied from one industry to the next and between firm headquarters and branches. This has implications for planning cities to meet firm requirements in an economy that is digital and globally connected, and for national-level policy that distributes core economic competencies amongst Australian cities.

College Students’ Positive Strategic SNS Involvement and Stress Coping in the United States and China

Based on a self-administered online survey of undergraduate students, this study aimed to explore college students’ social media involvement in relation to their stress coping in the United States and China. A total of 262 survey responses were received from American participants and 265 survey responses were received from Chinese participants. Results indicated that American student users’ positive strategic social networking sites (SNS) involvement to a certain extent assisted in their adaptive coping with stress. However, the positive effect of positive strategic SNS involvement was not found as an adaptive coping strategy among Chinese student respondents. In addition, perceived support from friends on Facebook was the key mediator of positive strategic SNS involvement and adaptive coping for U.S. students.

Cognitive impairment in acute stroke patients with isolated infarcts in the territory of lenticulostriate arteries

Background: Cognitive impairment associated with lesions in the head of the caudate nucleus or the genu of the internal capsule have been well recognized, which are referred to as ‘strategic site’ infarcts. In contrast, cognitive profiles of damage to the territory of lenticulostriate arteries (LSA), which supplies the lentiform nucleus and corona radiata, are largely unknown.

Curative Tourism Development in Egypt: Case of Al-Wadi Al-Jadid Governorate

Curative tourism is one of the fastest growing sub-sectors of the international tourism industry, due to the increasing stress from life and work; it has become an important issue for modern people to release stress and pursuit health in everyday life and leisure time. Medical Tourism Association stated that health tourism has a constant annual increase of 20% with a considerable demand potential, this has boosted the development of health and well-being tourism activities all over the world. Having al-Wadi al-Jadid Governorate as a case study, which was pointed out as one of the important strategic tourism development site in Egypt, this paper aims to examine the development for potential of Curative Tourism in al-Wadi al-Jadid Governorate by adopting a quantitative and a qualitative research method to achieve the research objectives.

Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney (1988–2015)

AbstractProvision of public services by state governments rather than municipalities is considered an important urban governance factor preventing deeper levels of socio‐spatial inequality in Australian cities. The paper examines the spatial patterns of investment by the New South Wales state government in a wide range of services and infrastructure in metropolitan Sydney over 28 budget years from 1988/89 to 2015/16. We examined the relationship between volume and type of investment in infrastructure and services, and considered a local area's socioeconomic characteristics, distance from the central business district, and designation as a strategic site in metropolitan plans. Despite an overall redistributive approach favouring relatively disadvantaged areas, the most disadvantaged suburbs in metropolitan Sydney had significantly lower levels of investment. When funding was directed to the most disadvantaged suburbs, it was often in the form of new social housing development, reinforcing both the concentration of poverty and disadvantage in resource access. The findings suggest that this is a case of under‐investment by the state government in areas already populated by disadvantaged communities rather than a market‐driven process whereby disadvantaged households move into poorly resourced neighbourhoods.

The Politics of Commiseration: On the Communicative Labors of “Co‐Mothering” in El Alto

In El Alto, Bolivia, the communicative and affective capacities of local neighborhood women are often valorized as strategic sites for circulating governmental discourses across ethnolinguistic boundaries. Nowhere is this more evident than in the domain of public health. As this article explores, municipal health projects in El Alto increasingly cast neighborhood women in para‐governmental roles, hoping to tap into the networks of community‐based belonging they create and maintain through their everyday communicative labors. By focusing on the work performed by an often‐overlooked genre of gendered discourse—comadreando, or “co‐mothering” speech—this article calls attention to the concrete semiotic forms that mediate this kind of local governmentality. As I argue, everyday events of comadreando enact rituals of commiseration that build mutual trust and sympathy (confianza) between women and the households they head. But when figured in public health projects, they become vehicles of a broader politics of commiseration, one that aims to forge reliable channels of trust, goodwill, and sympathetic understanding between neighborhood actors and the state. However, as I also argue, the mobilization of such forms can open up such governmental strategies to unanticipated reappropriations, as the affective and communicative labors of women are diverted to more ambiguous ends.

Construction of hexahedral finite element mesh capturing realistic geometries of a petroleum reserve

The three-dimensional finite element mesh capturing realistic geometries of the Bayou Choctaw site has been constructed using the sonar and seismic survey data obtained from the field. The mesh consists of hexahedral elements because the salt constitutive model is coded using hexahedral elements. Various ideas and techniques to construct finite element mesh capturing artificially and naturally formed geometries are provided. The techniques to reduce the number of elements as much as possible to save on computer run time while maintaining the computational accuracy is also introduced. The steps and methodologies could be applied to construct the meshes of Big Hill, Bryan Mound, and West Hackberry strategic petroleum reserve sites. The methodology could be applied to the complicated shape masses for various civil and geological structures.

Identification and Analysing the Regional Role’ Determinants of Qatar in the Middle East

Studying the potentials of the regional role of Qatar has a big importance as a result of expanding and increasing this role, especially after the changing in its directions which draw the attention for interesting and study. Therefore this study aimed to investigate the determinants of the Qatari regional role towards the Middle East countries, especially the Arab countries in the absence of the big regional partners- Egypt and Saudi Arabia, also determine the factors, bases, tools and characteristics of this determinants that influencing the strength and expansion of this role in the region. The study concluded that Qatar as a small state and its geographic size didn’t enhance the determinants for acting as a regional force, but Qatar occupies a central place in the territory of the Middle East region, in addition to Physical force, and political statesmanship can be substituted in the diplomatic game management, all the way to the strategic goals and the task of maintaining the state and its political system that burgles them, not by the big powers, but by competing regional powers to dominate the region. Thus, it utilize its strategic site and invested in the appropriate opportunities which have been provided after the Arab Spring.

Selecting China\u2019s strategic petroleum reserve sites by multi-objective programming model

An important decision for policy makers is selecting strategic petroleum reserve sites. However, policy makers may not choose the most suitable and efficient locations for strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) due to the complexity in the choice of sites. This paper proposes a multi-objective programming model to determine the optimal locations for China’s SPR storage sites. This model considers not only the minimum response time but also the minimum transportation cost based on a series of reasonable assumptions and constraint conditions. The factors influencing SPR sites are identified to determine potential demand points and candidate storage sites. Estimation and suggestions are made for the selection of China’s future SPR storage sites based on the results of this model. When the number of petroleum storage sites is less than or equals 25 and the maximum capacity of storage sites is restricted to 10 million tonnes, the model’s result best fit for the current layout scheme selected thirteen storage sites in four scenarios. Considering the current status of SPR in China, Tianjin, Qingdao, Dalian, Daqing and Zhanjiang, Chengdu, Xi’an, and Yueyang are suggested to be the candidate locations for the third phase of the construction plan. The locations of petroleum storage sites suggested in this work could be used as a reference for decision makers.

Assessment and monitoring of water quality of the gulf of Morbihan, a littoral ecosystem under high anthropic pressure

This field study is intended to propose a global methodology to assess and monitor the water quality of the gulf of Morbihan, a littoral ecosystem under increasing anthropic pressure. To this end, the Locmariaquer site, where Crassostrea gigas is extensively cultivated, was selected to perform a one-year follow-up of tissular glutathione S-transferase and acetylcholinesterase specific activities in this filter feeder organism. Calculation of an integrated index, corresponding to the ratio of the two enzymes activities, allowed to discriminate from the environmental noise, several clusters which could be representative environmental stress, potentially latent pollution. Moreover, the estrogenic activity was assessed in water samples collected at Locmariaquer and other strategic sites of the gulf. The results evidenced a low estrogenic-disrupting compound contamination of waters. Overall, this methodology produced an accurate outlook of a basal state for the gulf and could be developed in the context of a chronic monitoring of this site.

Reliability and O&M sensitivity analysis as a consequence of site specific characteristics for wave energy converters

Estimates for lifetime costs of wave energy arrays are difficult to obtain due to the uncertainty surrounding weather windows and failure rates for wave energy converters (WECs). An operations & maintenance (O&M) simulation tool has been used to assess the sensitivity of WEC failure rates on the profitability of a wave farm, with the Pelamis P2 device used as a case study. Two offshore wave energy sites in the UK have been characterised and presented in terms of accessibility for marine operations and power generation. It was found that a wave farm at one site would incur higher costs due to vessels having to wait longer for suitable weather windows. This was balanced by higher generated revenue, showing how the tool can be used to support strategic planning and site selection. The results identify the sensitivity to failure rate estimations for different components, helping target future work to reduce uncertainties and costs. The results highlight the need for WEC developers to collaborate closely with component manufacturers in order to design the best device possible for the challenging marine environment. Collaboration enables more realistic failure rate estimates to be obtained, leading to better understanding of the operational costs for commercial wave energy farms.

Apuntes para un análisis sociológico de la Virgen del Panecillo

The topographic importance of Panecillo is notorious within the City of Quito, since it sets limits between the Northern and the Southern part of town. During Pre Incaic and Incaic times, it was a sacred ceremonial place. The monument to the Virgin, built on its top in the 20th Century, during the seventies, shows the triumph of one culture over another, as well as the use of references to the sacred within the symbolic space of the city. The former Indigenous place of worship became a strategic site for urban logistics, the disposition of which shows the Virgin facing progress, the Northern part of town, and turning her back to the Southern part of town, the city of the poor. This has generated stereotypes and social valuation systems. Panecillo has therefore been an important and unavoidable reference for the topography of Quito and, as such, it has arisen sociological, religious and artistic interest.

The Marketsite: A New Conceptualization of Market Spatiality

abstractEconomic geographers have deployed a variety of spatial categories (e.g., scale, territory and border) to describe and theorize the spatiality of market making and marketization processes. This article supplements these accounts with insights from the work of post-structural geographers oriented toward the site. To this end, the article introduces the notion of the marketsite. Marketsites are points where heterogeneous elements are brought together and assembled in an effort to realize the conditions required for the performance of model markets and market subjectivities. Using the example of smart disclosure, the article argues that the use of disclosure labels to improve consumer decision making has transformed the point of sale and other transactional junctures into incipient marketsites—niches where various behavioral techniques are deployed to summon into being subjects who behave as if they were Homines economici. The behavioral turn in economics has focused the market-making efforts of a variety of actors on the market subject and strategic sites in people’s everyday lives where they can be guided and nudged into alignment with market models. Together such marketsites delineate a new, and largely uncharted, geography of encounter between (behavioral) economic theory and actually existing markets. Drawing on fieldwork developing and testing a fee disclosure box for a prepaid debit card, I show that the production of marketsites, where Homo economicus can survive, is a messy process that rarely succeeds. Regardless, such efforts reveal valuable insights into how the behavioral turn in economics is reshaping the spatiality of market-making processes.

Diversity of attitudes to English in non-professional public discourse: A focus on Lithuania

This paper stems from the ongoing debate on the changing role and status of English in different parts of the world, with a special interest in the socio-historical background of a post-Soviet country. The international status of English has given rise to different reactions among speakers, ranging from attraction to resentment (cf. Onysko, 2009: 34). These reactions are expressed in public online discourse, which provides a rich resource of empirical evidence to study public attitudes and language ideologies. Digital media offers an especially important strategic site to disseminate ideologies and shape public opinions. This paper analyses the spectrum of discourses operating within Lithuanian digital media to perpetuate attitudes towards English and the values associated with it.

Innovation incommensurability and the science park

The gap between science park aspiration and accomplishment is conceptualized as ‘innovation incommensurability,’ the persisting dilemma of a physical structure oriented innovation mechanism. A typology of science park impetuses and growth–analyzing critical elements, goals/ends and paths/means–suggests an appropriate balance between ‘exogenous’ and ‘endogenous’ innovation strategies in various regional circumstances. Alternative strategies of science park development are a ‘strategic research site’ to evaluate the roles of a university–industry–government triple helix in developing the science park model. Innovation incommensurability can be overcome by a longer‐term endogenous strategy combined with significant public investment. Ambitious science park projects, which were either early failures or later lost support, may succeed once a triple helix base is built to achieve an innovation eco‐system.

Addiction Treatment Clients' Reactions to Graphic Warning Labels on Cigarette Packs.

Graphic warning labels (GWLs) on cigarette packs have been tested among diverse groups at high risk for tobacco use. However, little is known about the effectiveness of GWL interventions for persons with substance use disorders, whose smoking prevalence is 3 to 4 times that of the general population. After an experimental study which exposed clients in residential addiction treatment to GWLs for 30 days, we conducted five focus groups with trial participants (N = 33) to explore how exposure to the labels may have impacted their readiness to quit smoking. Focus group interviews were analyzed thematically. Interviewees reported that GWLs were more effective than text-based warnings for increasing quit intentions due to greater cognitive and emotional impact. Male and female interviewees expressed gender-specific reactions to the labels. Addiction treatment programs are a strategic site for GWL and other tobacco interventions due to the tobacco-vulnerable populations they serve.