Society

The firm QNORM, located in the Scientific and Technologic Park of the Girona University (UdG), participates in a European project that aims to transform vegetal biomass into plastic. The project, which is called BioConSepT (bio-conversion and separation technology), has a budget of 13 million euros (MEUR), funded by the European Union. The project wants to use vegetal biomass (such as fats, oils and straw) and turn it into plastic in order to reduce the use of petrol.

The use of rubber bullets by the Catalan Police is at the centre of a fierce social and political debate. The Catalan Parliament has recently decided to create a commission in order to discuss the methods used by riot police, which is expected to take place at the beginning of April. This kind of ammunition in Catalonia has allegedly caused the loss of an eye and sight loss to 8 people over the last three years and heart necrosis to a man. All sides in this conflict will be consulted in the parliamentary debate and a quick process is expected in order to respond to increasing public concern regarding this method.

Catalan first instance courts ordered 25,422 evictions last year, representing 25.1% of the total number in Spain. Two weeks ago the European Court of Justice declared the Spanish Mortgage Law to be abusive towards citizens. Home evictions have increasingly become a social drama in Catalonia and in the whole of Spain, particularly over the last two years, as the crisis became harsher. In 2009, a platform to unite people affected by house evictions was created in Barcelona and it has managed to stop hundreds of cases throughout Catalonia and Spain.

The Catalan Government’s grant will be reduced by 14% and revenue from advertising is expected to decrease by 10%. The budget reduction has been approved with loud protests from the workers, since it will mostly affect labour costs, which may plummet by 18%. Since 2010, the production and investment budget has dropped by 50%. The Catalan Public Television Broadcaster’s main station, TV3, has been clearly leading audience rankings in Catalonia for most of the years since its creation in 1983. The majority of the political parties and citizens in Catalonia support strong public television and radio stations. The idea of reducing the TV3 budget has been constantly presented by Spanish nationalists as the way to reduce Catalonia’s public deficit despite the €225 million public grant only representing 5% of the total budget adjustment to be accomplished in 2013.

During the Spanish Civil War, from 1936 to 1939, Franco’s rebels received military help from Italy among other countries. The Italian Legionary Air Force, based in Mallorca, was responsible for the aerial bombardment of the city of Barcelona from 16th March to 18th 1938, exactly 75 years ago. For three days, Italian aviation forces bombed civil targets and neighbourhoods and caused the death of approximately a thousand civilians. The bombing of the Catalan capital was one of the most lethal bombing missions of the Spanish Civil War. Barcelona High Court has ordered a full investigation on crimes against humanity.

The Popular Legislative Initiative promoted by the Platform is pending debate in the Spanish Parliament. The Mortgage Platform was founded in Barcelona in 2009. Over recent years, it has worked intensively to prevent and ultimately stop people from being evicted from their own homes. Subprime mortgages, very common during the first decade of this century, were one of the main consequences of the property bubble in Spain and have resulted in more than 400,000 foreclosures in the whole of Spain since 2007. This situation is aggravated due to the economic crisis, which increases social inequality and has placed evictions among the first concerns on the political agenda.

Complaints regarding prostitution in Barcelona have decreased in 2012 but the penalties for drinking on the street and street vending have increased. The Local Police filed 1,091 complaints for offering, asking for or having sexual relations on the street in Barcelona, a 39% decrease compared to 2011 figures. Furthermore, there was a 7.7% decrease in noise-related incidents; 16.6% in public spaces. The number of fines issued for drinking on the street increased by 2.26%.

Just a few years ago writing a message with the mobile phone meant exchanging short and important information with a few words. Today however, there are youngsters, especially girls, writing about 300 messages every day. Thanks to WhatsApp or similar apps, this is now possible. The use of this kind of smartphone applications seems to get more and more addictive in some population groups. Furthermore, they can bring a dangerous risk: instead of exchanging simple information, these apps can be used to control the movements of partners by young users. Changes in behaviour are becoming alarming and can lead to scarred relationships.

The Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) has introduced a world pioneering technique which allows four out of five patients who cannot undergo surgery to survive the illness. This technique causes less after-effects than the traditional radiotherapy. Furthermore, statistics show that with the regular treatment, two thirds of these patients die. However, Ferran Gadea, the Head of the Radiotherapy and Oncology Service, says that the best option to cure a lung cancer is still to undergo the operation when possible.

This is a real stride for the cancer research. The effects of a protein called condensing on colorectal cancer have been found out by a team of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry experts, at the Research Centre for Nanomedicine (CIBBIN-Nanomedicine) at the Vall d'Hebon Research Institute. The researchers have discovered that condensin helps the tumor cells to divide rapidly, so its inhibition leads to the death of tumour cells. The results of this research were published in the 'Journal of Biology and Chemistry', and they constitute a real hope for the fight against colorectal cancer.

The Spanish Supreme Court has rejected an appeal presented by one family against the Catalan Supreme Court’s decision adopted in March last year that validated the current public school model of linguistic immersion. The Spanish Supreme Court has stated that the Catalan Government does not have to change the entire Catalan school model, which has been in place since the early 1980s. However, it does have to consider individual petitions from families wanting to school their children in Spanish and make Spanish the language of instruction “in the proportion that the Catalan Government considers to be convenient” in “the school and class in which the offspring of the petitioner is being taught”.

The Spanish Drivers and Railway Assistant Workers Trade Union, which had called for the strike, has reached an agreement with the Catalan Government’s trains operating company and has cancelled the protest, scheduled for the 25th-28th of February. The strike had been planned to coincide and affect the Mobile World Congress, the main international event of the cell-phone-related industry, to be held in Barcelona next week.

The technique started in Catalonia in 2007 and by 2011 it was practiced on 40% of patients with renal failure. The Catalan Health Ministry hopes to cover 100% of the cases within the next 5 to 10 years. In the United States it started being used a year ago as they were waiting for clinical results to expand its use. Now, a clinical study on 900 patients from 27 different Catalan centres has proved that the technique reduces mortality by 30% on patients with kidney failure within the first three years. In addition, it improves quality of life, reduces hospitalisations by 22% and it also makes hypotension episodes drop by 28%.

Researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology have led the largest international study on breast cance4r and nutrition. The 8-year study has been based on 335,062 women between 35 and 70 years old. It has involved 23 centres in 10 European countries and it has been published in the ‘International Journal of Cancer’. The study concludes that the Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 6% among women in general and 7% in the case of post-menopausal patients.

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) have managed to completely cure dogs with type 1 diabetes through a single session of gene therapy. It is the first time ever that the effectiveness of a treatment against this illness in large animals has been proved in the world. This achievement opens the door to being able to translate a similar therapy to humans and cure type 1 diabetes, which currently has no cure and means that patients have to control their blood insulin levels for their whole lives through hormone injections, as untreated it can be fatal. Diabetes mellitus type 1 is an autoimmune illness that destroys the cells of the pancreas that produce insulin, an essential hormone in the process of transforming glucose into energy for the body’s cells.