Decentralized biobanking “de-bi” applies blockchain technology and web3 values to embed the procedural principles of transparency, accountability, and inclusion into the biomedical research ecosyst...

The fundamental principles of the classical utilitarian school characterize this trend as an administrative and legal criminology. This had two implications. On the one hand, the motives, and ultimate causes of the behavior and the unequal consequences of an arbitrary rule were ignored. On the other hand, the role of the judge was reduced to enforcing the law, while it was up to the judge to set a penalty for each offence. At the end of the nineteenth century, these principles (...) saw the gradual emergence of another punitive episteme that had emerged as a result of the colonization of the legal space by the positive sciences and etiological action programs. This was not a planned and pre-established course, but the confluence of a series of theories and programs for penal prevention that Michel Foucault summarized as the realization that the law was increasingly functioning as a norm. Now, criminality, besides being the object of scientific interest, also constitutes the indicator of a social problem and therefore its insertion in an economy of changing power. (shrink)

Studies of individuals under conditions of confinement or severe social and physical restrictions have consistently shown deleterious mental health effects but also high levels of adaptability when dealing with such conditions. Considering the role of physical activity and sport in psychological adaptation, this paper describes a longitudinal study to explore to what extent the imposed restrictions due to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 may have affected athletes’ mental health outcomes and how far the process of adaptation to confinement conditions is differentially (...) affected depending on whether the sports activity was practiced individually or in a group, and outdoors, indoors, or both. Two hundred and seventy-four athletes were assessed over 7 weeks using the GHQ-28 and an ad hoc survey exploring the practice of physical activity. A mixed-model fixed effects ANCOVA was used to analyze the effects of time, place, and company in which the sport was practiced, with an index of the amount of physical activity expended as a covariate. Results show a significant effect of time in three out of four of the GHQ-28 subscales, in all cases showing a consistent adaptation to conditions over time. Results also show that playing sport indoors, outdoors, or both, and practicing alone vs. with others differentially affect the somatic symptoms exhibited during confinement: Athletes who practiced sport with others showed higher levels of somatic symptoms at the beginning of the set of data but a quicker rate of adaptation. Differences arising from practicing sport alone or with others were more pronounced in the case of indoor sports, which could be related to the fact that physical activity that can be practiced during confinement is more similar to that practiced indoors alone. Implications relating to what sport psychologists and other health professionals may offer to athletes in stressful situations are discussed. (shrink)

This is a Political Economy study on migrants-citizens relations management in the United States of America, with special attention to the religious factor and the pendulum effect. There is a model switch, from integration policies to official persecution, under a high social opportunity cost. Also, there is a split between the State and civil society, causing civil disobedience and sanctuary network across the country. The paper focuses on the development of the Sanctuary Movement, as a case of popular action against (...) to the power elite policies and their sanctions. There was a revival of this movement during the values crisis or 2008 recession, but at the same time there was a critical division into the movement, with higher tension for the migrants. (shrink)

In this paper we present a semantic analysis of the application of didactic constructivism to chemical education. We show that the psychological basis of constructivism yield, when applied to chemistry, an internalist semantics for the chemical names. Since these names have been presented as typical examples of an externalism for kind terms, a fundamental incompatibility ensues. We study this situation, to conclude that it affects chemical education at every level. Finally, we present a preliminary analysis of this problem from the (...) point of view of physics. (shrink)

Abstract“The Book of Secrets in the Results of Ideas”, usually called “The Book of Secrets” is a codex containing drawings and descriptions of thirty-one artifacts attributed to the engineer Alī Ibn Khalaf al-Murādī, who lived in Andalusia in southern Spain at the beginning of the 11th century. This manuscript is one of the first written testimonies that describe medieval mechanisms with complex precision. The aim of this work is to reconstruct and study from a historical and technological point of view (...) two of the ancient artifacts contained in the “Book of Secrets”, the “Fortress Demolisher” and the “Magic Well”. The “Fortress Demolisher” is a war machine designed to demolish the upper part of the walls or towers and consists of a battering ram mounted on a platform that can be raised several meters above the ground using a scissor mechanism. The “Magic Well” is a mechanism with several pulleys whose purpose is to raise water several meters from the bottom of a well by collecting a small portion of rope. To reconstruct the two artifacts, a digital model and a detailed study of the geometry and operation of the mechanisms, were first carried out. 3D printing, using the Fused Deposition Modelling technology, made the physical reproduction. The digitization and physical reproduction by 3D printing of the mechanisms represent an update of the traditional ways of transmitting knowledge. The use of these new technologies makes the knowledge more accessible, understandable and attractive. (shrink)

We propose a mathematical model for a class of predator–prey systems more complex than the usual one, involving a commensalism effect consisting in an influence of the predator on the sustainability of the prey. This effect induces interesting new features, including bi-stability. The question of the possibility of reaching a certain attractor starting from initial conditions with a small population of predators, which presents an interest from the vewpoint of the onset of the predator in evolution, is addressed. We propose (...) two possibilities: the classical one involving adapted conditions in the far past and a new one using biodiversity, specifically the presence of another predator which operates as a starter, being displaced in the sequel. (shrink)

I put forward an inferentialist account of Lewis structures (LSs). In this view, the role of LSs is not to realistically depict molecules, but instead to allow surrogate reasoning and inference in chemistry. I also show that the usage of LSs is a central part of a person’s identity as a chemist, as it is defined within educational identity theory. Taking these conclusions together, I argue that the inferentialist approach to LSs and chemistry identity theory can be studied in parallel, (...) as two complementary sides of the same research programme. (shrink)

The widespread critical evidence surrounding executive compensation of listed corporations has boosted shareholder activism in recent decades. The say-on-pay (SOP) mechanism—a vote in which shareholders express their (dis)agreement with executive pay designs—is one of the corporate governance mechanisms that has led to this activism among listed firms. Merging agency and socioemotional wealth (SEW) arguments, this paper analyzes how effective SOP voting results are among listed family firms in terms of CEO compensation efficiency and equity. Using a sample of UK listed (...) firms from 2011 to 2018, our results show that SOP effectiveness is positively influenced by family ownership and is strongly moderated by family involvement in management and in governance as well as by family generation. Our findings stress the strong family effect and the ethical perceptions of family shareholders on SOP voting, showing how family participation in the firm encourages fairer and more aligned CEO compensation packages. SOP institutional and practical implications oriented to preserve shareholder value and family wealth are finally outlined. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo se sostienen toda una serie de tesis interrelacionadas. En primer lugar, se argumenta que el escepticismo y el pensamiento crítico no gozan de especial buena salud el ámbito de la teoría social. En segundo lugar, se sostiene que esto es también así a nivel social general. En tercer lugar, se discuten algunos mecanismos que pueden permitir explicar por qué el bullshit y el oscurantismo, y no el pensamiento crítico y el escepticismo, proliferan en ambos contextos. En (...) cuarto lugar, se abordan tres ámbitos donde la crisis del pensamiento crítico resulta especialmente grave, tanto a nivel social como académico: a saber, los movimientos ecologista, feminista y antirracista. En este caso, se defiende que no se trata tan solo de que el bullshit y el oscurantismo estén presentes en estos debates tanto en el campo académico como en el político, sino que existe una relación causal entre ambos ámbitos, así como un proceso de falsificación de preferencias que puede ser peligroso tanto para la libertad intelectual, como para la libertad de expresión y la salud de la democracia. Finalmente, el ensayo se cierra con un apartado de conclusiones donde se exploran algunas posibles vías de solución. (shrink)

This is a critical-hermeneutical and historical-comparative study on Political Economy, Economic History and Social Thought, applied to the American utopias in the 19th century and its role in the colonisation of the United States (US) west. This review is based on a heterodox economic approach, used in the disciplines of Religion and Economics. It gives a general view of religious and ideological utopias, as cooperative enterprises of intentional life in farms and workshop, making a comparative analysis of efficiency and sustainability. (...) This study attempts to explain the colonial paradox of American utopias because the last established, with more inversion, they were the first to fall. This study shapes the development of the western territories, from the Quaker’s Holy Experiment framework and its support for the utopias experiments in the expansion to Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Contribution: This review offers a descriptive and explanatory study on the colonisation of the US west, under the hermeneutical turn from heterodox economic approaches, to deal with some current contradictions and anachronism in the mainstream view. Also, there is a systematisation of the American utopias, divided into religious and ideological experiments, with a comparison. (shrink)

Esta obra ofrece al lector un amplio relato de las enseñanzas de la Conferencia Episcopal Española a lo largo de todos los años posteriores al Concilio Vaticano II. Las enseñanzas de los Obispos se presentan según su temática, antecedentes y objetivos, y en su contexto social. Esta presentación permite al lector tener pleno conocimiento de la interpretación que los obispos hicieron de los acontecimientos históricos de la época. Por último, se añaden algunas observaciones críticas para comparar las ideas de los (...) obispos sobre los laicos con la doctrina del Concilio. (shrink)

Alternatives to convenience sampling (CS) are needed for HIV/STI surveillance of most-at-risk populations in Latin America. We compared CS, time space sampling (TSS), and respondent driven sampling (RDS) for recruitment of men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women (TW) in Lima, Peru. During concurrent 60-day periods from June-August, 2011, we recruited MSM/TW for epidemiologic surveillance using CS, TSS, and RDS. A total of 748 participants were recruited through CS, 233 through TSS, and 127 through RDS. The TSS (...) sample included the largest proportion of TW (30.7 %) and the lowest percentage of subjects who had previously participated in HIV/STI research (14.9 %). The prevalence of newly diagnosed HIV infection, according to participants' self-reported previous HIV diagnosis, was highest among TSS recruits (17.9 %) compared with RDS (12.6 %) and CS (10.2 %). TSS identified diverse populations of MSM/TW with higher prevalences of HIV/STIs not accessed by other methods. (shrink)

This article includes a study about the preface of Moreh ha-Moreh, a philosophical commentary on Guide for the Perplexed written by Sem Tob ibn Falaquera at the end of XIIIth century. In this introduction Sem Tob ibn Falaquera defends Maimonides and his works. In addition, he exposes his opinion about different subjects, like the nature, the determining factors and limits of philosophical labour or the harmony between reason and faith.

Ante las dificultades que presenta el camino que hace ya algún tiempo se decidió emprender en este país, un camino lúgubre en el que proliferan como hongos diversas reivindicaciones del derecho de autodeterminación, esto es, de la soberanía, por parte de distintos pueblos o naciones, se hace evidente la necesidad de reflexionar sobre el mismo concepto del poder soberano. En este texto se aborda tal problema desde tres perspectivas, fáctica, normativa y racional. Al mismo tiempo que se ponen de manifiesto (...) las insuficiencias de las dos primeras, se defiende una comprensión racional del poder soberano, que quizá podría contribuir a la disolución de los malos augurios que se ciernen sobre nuestro futuro. (shrink)

This paper shows that, for a large range of parameters, the journal editor prefers to delegate the choice to review the manuscript to the biased referee. If the peer review process is informative and the review reports are costly for the reviewers, even biased referees with extreme scientific preferences may choose to become informed about the manuscript’s quality. On the contrary, if the review process is potentially informative but the reviewer reports are not costly for the referees, the biased reviewer (...) has no incentive to become informed about the manuscript. Furthermore, if the reports are costly for referees but the peer review processes are not potentially informative, the biased reviewers will never become informed. In this paper, we also present a web resource that helps editors to experiment with the review process as a device for information transmission. (shrink)

La idea de racionalidad en Michel Foucault no se refiere a un criterio de razón universal a modo de conocimiento puro y neutral, sino conjugada en plural como «racionalidades». Funciona como un régimen de verdad que no solo produce nuevos conceptos y una organización histórica de la observación, sino también dominios de regulación e intervenciones políticas y técnicas. Aplicadas a la economía punitiva, y por extensión a la del poder, las racionalidades punitivas han permitido aflorar un análisis crítico inusual de (...) los sistemas del castigo mediante diferentes conceptos en apariencia usuales que alcanzan una radicalidad inusitada en la objetivación de las redes de poder/saber, y que desbordan tanto el campo de la política penal como el de las rígidas explicaciones materialistas. En última instancia, han permitido construir un orden punitivo macrosocial y unas macroformas de dominación a partir de la diversidad de micropoderes. (shrink)

El objetivo de este artículo es definir la concepción del acto involuntario de Francisco Suárez y mostrarla como un medio que permite comprender y profundizar en su teoría de la acción humana. En esta cuestión, el Doctor Eximio parte de presupuestos elaborados por Tomás de Aquino que amplía y adapta siguiendo sus propias tesis metafísicas y teológicas sobre la relación entre Dios y las creaturas. Mostraremos cómo Suárez vincula el verdadero involuntario con el _simpliciter_, lo forzado, necesario e indeseado, dejando (...) al _secundum quid_ como un acto mixto en el que la libertad y la voluntad, pese a las injerencias externas, no quedan anuladas. Por último, subrayaremos las consecuencias de la definición suareciana de lo involuntario sobre la noción de libertad, haciendo patente que tanto una como otra serían imposibles fuera del marco teórico que él sustenta, caracterizado por la eficiencia humana (y su dependencia de la divinidad) y no por la premoción física. (shrink)

A new approach to landscape ecology involves the application of the eco-field hypothesis and the General Theory of Resources. In this study, we describe the putative eco-field of bark beetles as a spatial configuration with a specific meaning-carrier for every organism-resource interaction. Bark beetles are insects with key roles in matter and energy cycles in coniferous forests, which cause significant changes to forestry landscapes when outbreaks occur. Bark beetles are guided towards host trees by the recognition of semiotic signals using (...) a specific eco-field. These signals mainly comprise a group of scents, which are called the odourtope. Their interactions with other organisms occur by sharing relevant information from the eco-field networks in the forest ecosystem. The eco-field networks modulate the expansion of the realized semiotic niche of the bark beetle towards the potential semiotic niche. Moreover, the niche construction process can be initiated by interchanging signals among species living in the same place, where these signals allow the exploitation of the required resources. If different organisms are interdependent on signals in eco-field networks, then this process may result in the establishment of mutualistic relationships. This is an example of how evolutionary processes are initiated by the recognition of signals in a network of eco-fields. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In the framework of population dynamics, we start from the logistic equation describing the evolution of one species with limited food supply. A split device allows us to consider the population as two sub-populations x and y evolving analogously. The dynamical system has a one-parameter family of equilibria which is structurally unstable. Then small perturbations of the system (describing functional or ethological differentiations between the sub-species) lead in general to a new system involving a fast and a slow dynamics with (...) a finite number of equilibria. In simple situations where the differentiation is clearly either an advantage or an inconvenience for one of the subspecies, the stable equilibrium amounts to extinction of the disadvantaged subspecies (elementary Darwinism). Oppositely more complex differentiations (involving both advantages and inconveniences) often lead to stable equilibria with well-defined non zero proportions of the sub-populations (preservation of the biodiversity). Other examples are concerned with symbiosis-like differentiations, leading to preservation, whereas the opposite case (mutual nuisances) has an unstable equilibrium and lead to extinction of one or the other subspecies according to the initial conditions. The case of a scission into three subspecies is more rich in consequences. In certain cases, predator-prey relations lead to auto-organization phenomena with stable diversity-preserving diversity. Cases of instability are also possible, leading to orbits tending towards a poly-cycle.This implies some kind of pseudo-extinction: this amounts to “pseudo-periodic-like” orbits with “pseudo-periods” larger and larger, tending to infinity; each pseudo-period contains parts where one of the sub-populations practically vanish. Other non-linear perturbations lead to stable orbits. (shrink)

The tumor suppressor protein p53 is intimately involved in the cellular response to DNA damage, controlling cell cycle arrest, apoptosis and the transcriptional induction of DNA damage inducible genes. A transcriptional target of p53, Gadd45, was recently found to bind to PCNA, a component of DNA replication/repair complexes, thereby implicating Gadd45 in DNA metabolism(1). Using biochemical assays, a role for Gadd45 in excision repair in vitro has been demonstrated(1). Antisense experiments have also indicated an in vivo role for the GADD45 (...) gene in UV‐irradiation survival. These discoveries establish a link between p53 and DNA repair through Gadd45. (shrink)

The Communicational Theory of Law (CTL) usually differentiates between Legal Sociology and Legal Theory, in the sense that Legal Sociology is concerned with the social validity of the rules and Legal Theory with the formal or legal validity of the rules. It can be argued that both disciplines are two different perspectives of the same empirical reality (legal rules). Also, legal System and social milieu are two closely linked realities; they cannot be separated because they need each other. The Law (...) is the form or order that the social milieu takes, and, at the same time, the social environment provides the ideas, collective representations and other matters that need a legal regulation. For this reason, the epistemological separation between Sociology and Legal Theory must be overcome when the theoretical perspective comes to legal decisions. Thus, the decisional moment becomes the meeting point between the legal System and the social milieu. This is where the concept of the legal System fulfils its main function, as it allows for the dynamism and adaptability of the legal order. The hermeneutic re-elaboration of the normative texts will be the channel through which the social facts and other material elements can inform the meaning or possible interpretations of the rules and institutions of the legal order. This happens primarily by influencing theoretical and doctrinal works of an expository and didactic nature; and secondarily by influencing the decisions of legal operators and courts. This study seeks to explain how the social context influences legal decisions and the formation of the legal System, from a communicational perspective of Law. In order to do so, it will be necessary to set out two epistemological premises of CTL: the semiotic tripartition of the Theory of Law and the legal Order-legal System distinction. (shrink)

Peut-on continuer à considérer les canons d’Elvire comme appartenant à un seul concile ? L’historiographie française la plus répandue jusqu'a ce jour a répondu affirmativement à cette question. Depuis la fin du siècle dernier, on assiste a un débat très anime sur l’authenticité et l’unité des Actes dits d’Elvire. Les différentes thèses se partagent entre deux approches totalement opposées : l’une soutient l’unité des Actes, sans refuser qu’ils aient pu être remanies au cours de leur transmission historique ; l’autre, a (...) la suite de l’article pionnier de M. Meigne (1975), défend le caractère composite des Actes, qui constitueraient une collection de dispositions juridiques hétérogènes. L’article présente l’état actuel de la recherche sur le concile d’Elvire ainsi que les enjeux principaux du débat. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructivist Model Building: Empirical Examples From Mathematics Education” by Catherine Ulrich, Erik S. Tillema, Amy J. Hackenberg & Anderson Norton. Upshot: I argue that radical constructivism poses a series of deep methodological constraints on educational research. We focus on the work of Ulrich et al. to illustrate the practical implications of these constraints.

En diciembre del 2019, en la provincia de Wuhan, China, se describió una nueva enfermedad respiratoria, aguda y potencialmente letal, causada por un coronavirus. A esta enfermedad se le denominó Covid-19. En México, la mortalidad por esta enfermedad es elevada y un porcentaje importante de los enfemos muere en los hospitales. Por ahora no existe en México un protocolo específico en el sistema de salud tanto público como privado, para que las familias puedan decirle adiós a los enfermos con Covid-19. (...) Un panel de expertos en cuidados paliativos y bioética proponen uno, para que pueda servir como referencia en cada unidad de salud de nuestro país. (shrink)