“Writing's intimate spatialities: Drawing ourselves to our writing in self-caring practices of love”

This Commentary outlines four conceptual-spatial challenges of academic writing, and suggests an approach to navigating them. Academic writing, as feminist economic geographers argue, is underpinned by difference: emerging from and produced through different positionalities, differing access to stable employment and material, temporal and spatial resources, all set within structures of power and inequity—significant among them the neoliberal university. At the same time, for academics writing demands space in our lives: temporally, locationally, conceptually, and emotionally. Because these spatialities are potentially different for each writer each time we write and because they engage us spatially at a personal level, I term them writing's intimate spatialities, and suggest that care-fully navigating these conceptual-spatial challenges of academic writing stakes out a political position, one that may now be more important than ever: In an academic environment of neoliberalism and increasing precarity, I suggest that writing's prevalent emotional apprehensions may be able to be affirmatively conceptualized as a labor of self-care we come to with love.

Above the debris

<p>At an accelerating rate, over half of the world’s population is living in urban centres. The catastrophic risk to environmental, cultural, and economic resources amidst these high concentrations of livelihoods upon the wake of a disaster has the potential to be devastating. A city’s urban form consisting of its open space networks and street structures are important spatial resources that provide affected communities with efficient evacuation routes, assembly areas, temporary market spaces, and room for temporary shelters in the aftermath of a disaster. Open public spaces are especially important during these scenarios as they provide large volumes of space that can be adapted to a variety of different functions. However, these spaces are seldom designed with resilience in mind. This thesis investigates how open spaces are able to contribute to the disaster resiliency of urban centres, ensuring that the needs of the present are in light of the needs of the future.</p>

Above the debris

<p>At an accelerating rate, over half of the world’s population is living in urban centres. The catastrophic risk to environmental, cultural, and economic resources amidst these high concentrations of livelihoods upon the wake of a disaster has the potential to be devastating. A city’s urban form consisting of its open space networks and street structures are important spatial resources that provide affected communities with efficient evacuation routes, assembly areas, temporary market spaces, and room for temporary shelters in the aftermath of a disaster. Open public spaces are especially important during these scenarios as they provide large volumes of space that can be adapted to a variety of different functions. However, these spaces are seldom designed with resilience in mind. This thesis investigates how open spaces are able to contribute to the disaster resiliency of urban centres, ensuring that the needs of the present are in light of the needs of the future.</p>

Adequate Housing and COVID-19: Assessing the Potential for Value Creation through the Project

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected the relationship between people’s behaviors and residential spaces, bringing to public and academic attention, on the one hand, the exacerbation of pre-existing problems and, on the other, the potential of spaces, such as communal gardens and apartment-block terraces, to become important resources of sociability or privacy. Overall, this raises the question of how to assess the responsiveness of the existing residential stock to needs that transcend the traditional concept of housing adequacy—e.g., the need for adaptable, open, and livable spaces. This research moves from the assumption that underused spaces in residential neighborhoods represent a crucial asset for creating new economic and social values through architectural and urban projects. Consequently, moving from an in-depth observation of a selection of public housing buildings in Turin as a paradigmatic case study, the aim is to explore the potential for the adaptive reuse of residential spaces at different scales—from the apartment to the neighborhoods—highlighting the implications for design. In doing so, the paper puts forward a methodological approach, which widens the way housing adequacy is normally assessed, by focusing on the possibility of transformation of often neglected spatial resources.

Transcriptomic response of Cinachyrella cf. cavernosa sponges to spatial competition

Spatial competition in the intertidal zones drives the community structure in marine benthic habitats. Organisms inhabiting these areas not only need to withstand fluctuations of temperature, water level, pH, and salinity, but also need to compete for the best available space. Sponges are key members of the intertidal zones, and their life history processes (e.g., growth, reproduction, and regeneration) are affected by competition. Here we used transcriptomics to investigate the effects of interspecific competition between the tetillid sponge Cinachyrella cf. cavernosa, the zoantharid Zoanthus sansibaricus, and the macroalgae Dictyota ciliolata. The analysis of differentially expressed genes showed that Z. sansibaricus was the most stressful competitor to C. cf. cavernosa, which showed an increased rate of cellular respiration under stress of competition. Similarly, an up-regulation of energy metabolism, lipid metabolism, and the heat-shock protein (HSP) 70 was also observed along with an indication of a viral infection and decreased ability to synthesise protein. A down-regulation of purine and pyrimidine metabolism indicated reduction in physiological activities of the competing sponges. Moreover, a putative case of possible kleptocnidism, not previously reported in Cinachyrella cf. cavernosa was also observed. This study opens the door for more detailed investigations of marine organisms competing for spatial resources using transcriptome data.

Fragmented Approach to Spatial Management in Indonesia: When it Will Be Ended?

As a regulatory tool, spatial planning is important as it directs socio-economic development and prevents environmental and social damage by commercial and public projects. There should be an integrated spatial management to ensure the effective use of restricted spatial resources, balancing infrastructural, industrial and commercial business development with the available resources, including land, forest, and marine. However, the fragmented approach to spatial management has been thrived since the independence of Indonesia. The newly controversial Law No. 11 of 2020 on Job Creation has emerged a big hope that Indonesia will end the fragmented approach to spatial management. However, this Law seems to maintain this approach by enacting four different governmental regulation for four spatial issues, namely land use planning; forestry; energy and mineral resources; and marine and fishery. This fragmented approach has adverse consequences as it leads to overlapping authorities that may end up with disharmony and conflicting regulations. Besides, the insistence to employ fragmented approach to spatial management has linked to oligarchy issue as shown by old older, new order and the regional autonomy era.

Green Anole lizards (Anolis carolinensis) deposit eggs in nests of the Trap Jaw Ant, Odontomachus brunneus

Squamates eggs are rarely found in ant nests, and are largely restricted to the nests of neotropical fungus gardening in the tribe Attini. Ponerine ant nests have not previously been reported as nesting cavities for squamates, including the Green Anole (Anolis carolinensis). The current study reports the association of Green Anole eggs and hatchlings with the subterranean nest chambers of the trap jaw ant, Odontomachus brunneus. Hatching rates suggest that O. brunneus nests may be used communally by multiple females, which partition spatial resources with other recently introduced Anolis species in their native range. This new nesting strategy is placed in the context of know associations between frogs, snakes, legless worm lizards and ants.

Correlation between the spatial distribution and colony size was common for monogenetic bacteria in laboratory conditions

Background Geographically separated population growth of microbes is a common phenomenon in microbial ecology. Colonies are representative of the morphological characteristics of this structured population growth. Pattern formation by single colonies has been intensively studied, whereas the spatial distribution of colonies is poorly investigated. Results The present study describes a first trial to address the questions of whether and how the spatial distribution of colonies determines the final colony size using the model microorganism Escherichia coli, colonies of which can be grown under well-controlled laboratory conditions. A computational tool for image processing was developed to evaluate colony density, colony size and size variation, and the Voronoi diagram was applied for spatial analysis of colonies with identical space resources. A positive correlation between the final colony size and the Voronoi area was commonly identified, independent of genomic and nutritional differences, which disturbed the colony size and size variation. Conclusions This novel finding of a universal correlation between the spatial distribution and colony size not only indicated the fair distribution of spatial resources for monogenetic colonies growing with identical space resources but also indicated that the initial localization of the microbial colonies decided by chance determined the fate of the subsequent population growth. This study provides a valuable example for quantitative analysis of the complex microbial ecosystems by means of experimental ecology.

Modern trends in design of Higher educational institutions of Ukraine

The article deals with the problems of architectural and town-planning issues when creating and building buildings of higher educational institutions (hereinafter -HEIs) of Ukraine. The approaches to construction of the functional structure of the external and internal environments of the HEI of the architectural and planning, educational and laboratory blocks, three-dimensional spatial resources are analyzed. Keywords: town-planning, architecture, environment, higher education institutions.

Correlation between the Spatial Distribution and Colony size Was Common for Monogenetic Bacteria in Laboratory Conditions.

Background: Geographically separated population growth of microbes is a common phenomenon in microbial ecology. Colonies are representative of the morphological characteristics of this structured population growth. Pattern formation by single colonies has been intensively studied, whereas the spatial distribution of colonies is poorly investigated. Results: The present study describes a first trial to address the questions of whether and how the spatial distribution of colonies determines the final colony size using the model microorganism Escherichia coli, colonies of which can be grown under well-controlled laboratory conditions. A computational tool for image processing was developed to evaluate colony density, colony size and size variation, and the Voronoi diagram was applied for spatial analysis of colonies with identical space resources. A positive correlation between the final colony size and the Voronoi area was commonly identified, independent of genomic and nutritional differences, which disturbed the colony size and size variation. Conclusions: This novel finding of a universal correlation between the spatial distribution and colony size not only indicated the fair distribution of spatial resources for monogenetic colonies growing with identical space resources but also indicated that the initial localization of the microbial colonies decided by chance determined the fate of the subsequent population growth. This study provides a valuable example for quantitative analysis of the complex microbial ecosystems by means of experimental ecology.