The impossible interview with the man of the neuron doctrine. Interview by Edward G Jones

This paper follows the form of that by Mazzarello that precedes it (Mazzarello, 2006) and presents an imaginary interview with Santiago Ramón y Cajal in December 1906. A few days earlier Cajal had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, an award that he shared equally with Professor Camillo Golgi. Golgi had been recognized for his work as a pioneer into investigations of the nervous system, primarily on account of his discovery of the "black reaction" of silver chromate impregnation of whole nerve cells and their processes. Cajal had been recognized for his implementation of that method and for laying with it the foundations of what was to become modern neuroanatomical science. Paradoxically, the two awardees had been led by their researches to diametrically opposed views of the organization of the nervous system. Golgi believed in a continuous network of axons that formed the basis of all the integrative properties of the nervous system, while Cajal had provided the information that led to the formulation of the neuron doctrine that saw the nervous system as being made up of chains of discontinuous cells joined by polarized functional contacts that we now call synapses. The paper takes the form of an interview with Professor Cajal in the Grand Hotel Stockholm. His responses to questions posed by the imaginary interviewer are all taken from Cajal's own writings.     

Monocentricity and Directional Heterogeneity: A Conditional Parametric Approach

The basic monocentric city model implies a decreasing relationship between distance to the Central Business District and outcome variables such as population density, housing prices, land rent, and income. Implicitly, the monocentric model implies directional homogeneity, that is, the distance effect does not depend on the direction in which it is being measured. Only a few works have analyzed the problem of directional heterogeneity. A new conditional parametric approach is introduced to deal with the issue. We study how this approach performs under different spatial patterns comparing with several other methods. An application to the spatial distribution of wage income in the municipality of Madrid is carried out to illustrate the main characteristics of the method and to show the comparative advantages.     

Testing recipes: an experimental approach to paint production processes in Levantine rock art (Spain)

Over more than a century, several proposals have been made on the composition and technical features of the pictorial recipes used by Levantine prehistoric painters. In this paper all these proposals are surveyed and tested through systematic experiments to determine the technical affordance of pigments and binders in different pictorial recipes. Experimental results were then used as independent analytical parameters employed as diagnostic criteria to systematically study an archaeological sample of nine sites located in the Maestrazgo region (Spain) and their surroundings. Results reveal that out of 112 experimental recipes, only 16 afforded the production of paintings technically similar to Levantine rock art.     

Guest Editorial: Does Anglophone hegemony permeate Gender,Place and Culture?

This editorial is seen as a comment on the on-going concern expressed in several Anglophone geography journals about the hegemony of Angloamerican production and its role in formulating the terms of international academic debate. We examine the extent to which Angloamerican dominance is equally true with regard to feminist geography, by looking at how/whether Gender, Place and Culture (GPC) deals with this bias. Finally we forward some suggestions for positive action towards enhancing the international character of the journal.

¿La hegemonía Anglosajona impregna Gender, Place and Culture?

Esta nota editorial trata de un tema que en la actualidad es motivo de preocupación en algunas revistas anglosajonas, la hegemonía de la producción anglosajona en geografía y su papel crucial en la formulación de los debates académicos internacionales. A través del anàlisis de la revista Gender Place and Culture, se discute cómo esta situación se da también en la geografía feminista. Finalmente, se proponen una serie de acciones positivas para potenciar el carácter internacional de la revista.     

The Beauty of a Beam: The Continuity of Joan Torras’s Beam of Equal Strength in the Work of his Disciples—Guastavino,Gaudí, and Jujol

Joan Torras, professor of the strength of materials at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (1871–1910), considered the beam of equal strength not only as a structurally extremely efficient beam, but also as beautiful because of its ability to reflect the material’s strength. Torras’ structures have left their special mark on Barcelona and on the work of his most illustrious students: Rafael Guastavino in the United States published similar structures, but it was Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujol who transfigured them mimetically for Barcelona’s Park Güell and Tarragona’s Metropol Theatre, respectively. These examples will show how an expressive gesture can thoroughly transform a “technical form” into an “artistic form”, a fact that inevitably recalls the wisdom of classical Greek mimesis.