In most theories of the quantum measurement process changes in an observer’s perception of a state can take place without forces, as for example if a state is prepared in an eigenstate of \ but \ is measured. In the “special state” theory any change in wave function requires forces. This allows experimental tests to distinguish these ideas and in the present article two examples of such tests are considered. The first is a kind of double Stern–Gerlach experiment, the second (...) a check for angular momentum changes in a polarizer. (shrink)

In most theories of the quantum measurement process changes in an observer’s perception of a state can take place without forces, as for example if a state is prepared in an eigenstate of \ but \ is measured. In the “special state” theory any change in wave function requires forces. This allows experimental tests to distinguish these ideas and in the present article two examples of such tests are considered. The first is a kind of double Stern–Gerlach experiment, the second (...) a check for angular momentum changes in a polarizer. (shrink)

This review presents a state of the art in artificial intelligence applied to urban planning and particularly to land-use predictions. In this review, different articles after the year 2016 are analyzed mostly focusing on those that are not mentioned in earlier publications. Most of the articles analyzed used a combination of Markov chains and cellular automata to predict the growth of urban areas and metropolitan regions. We noticed that most of these simulations were applied in various areas of China. An (...) analysis of the publication of articles in the area over time is included. (shrink)

Herrera Restrepo, Daniel. José Félix de Restrepo 1760-1832. Nuestro filósofo Ilustrado. Cali: Programa Editorial de la Universidad del Valle, 2003.

Clinical trials of xenotransplantation may begin early in the next decade, with kidneys from genetically modified pigs transplanted into adult humans. If successful, transplanting pig hearts into children with advanced heart failure may be the next step. Typically, clinical trials have a specified end date, and participants are aware of the amount of time they will be in the study. This is not so with XTx. The current ethical consensus is that XTx recipients must consent to lifelong monitoring. While this (...) presents challenges to the right to withdraw in the adult population, additional and unanswered questions also linger in the paediatric population. In paediatric XTx, parents or guardians consent not only to the initial treatment of the child but also to lifelong monitoring, thus making a decision whose consequences will remain present as the child develops the capacity for assent, and finally the capacity for informed consent or refusal. This article presents and evaluates unanswered paediatric ethical questions in regard to the right to withdraw from XTx follow-up in the paediatric population. (shrink)

Neuroconstructivism postulates the progressive complexity of mental representation over the course of cognitive development and the role of the graphic representation of movement in the transformation of mental schemas, cognitive flexibility, and representational complexity. This study aims to: understand children’s resources in the drawing of movement ; and verify whether there are differences in the graphic representation of movement as an indicator of cognitive flexibility. The participants were N = 240 children aged 5–8 years; 1,440 drawings were collected representing 2,880 (...) characters from six stories. The analysis consisted: data quality control, using the kappa coefficient, and Generalizability Theory to test the instrument’s validity and reliability; Multivariate General Analysis and Mixed Linear Analysis of the factors ; Multivariate General Analysis of the graphic components: categories and microcategories, as well as the elements that make up the macrocategories: “Static,” “Indication,” and “Movement”; and calculation of the generalizability coefficient. The results show that: age best explains variability, with a high effect size across all components, thus increasing its complexity and at ages 6 and 7, “Indication” appears as a modulator of “Static” toward “Movement”. The generalizability coefficient is optimal. It is concluded that changes in the initial graphic representation of movement may interactively transform mental representation, thus increasing cognitive flexibility and prompting teaching applications to optimize such changes. (shrink)

Introducción, traducción y notas de Mari Luz Pintos PeñarandaUniversidad de Santiago de Compostela(Traducción realizada en colaboración con Evaristo Quintáns Hermida).

En la atención médica y en la investigación en salud resulta indispensable favorecer la toma de decisiones de los pacientes y/o participantes bajo el principio de autonomía. En particular, esta capacidad, consignada en la Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, se concreta mediante la detección de necesidades de asistencia, ajustes y apoyos que dan paso a una plena y efectiva capacidad de ejercicio. Las reflexiones bioéticas hechas desde la perspectiva principialista, personalista y de los Derechos Humanos ofrecen (...) elementos para potenciar la autonomía de las personas con discapacidad, promoviendo la figura de asistencia personal y enfatizando el interés superior, la gradualidad y la revisión judicial permanente como principios de figuras sustitutivas. (shrink)

School performance and cognitive competence can be conceptualized as social and relational constructs. Thus, we expect their association to vary as a function of other socially-embedded variables which have proven meaningful in the academic domain. The present study takes a critical theory approach to assess gender-related and contextual variability in the association between peer-assessed school performance and self-perceived cognitive competence. The sample consisted of 719 preadolescents living in lower- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods in Montreal, Canada and Barranquilla, Columbia. Multigroup comparisons revealed (...) that peer-assessed school competence was more strongly associated with self-perceived cognitive competence for upper-middle-class than lower-middle-class participants from Barranquilla, whereas the opposite pattern was observed with Montreal participants, and that the association between communal orientation and self-perceived cognitive competence was stronger for girls than for boys across the sample, especially in the upper-middle-class school in Montreal. These findings highlight the nuanced degree of gender differences in preadolescents’ perceived academic competence and emphasize the role of SES in shaping self-perceptions. (shrink)

In this work, we present a new approach to solve the location management problem by using the reporting cells strategy. Location management is a very important and complex problem in mobile computing which aims to minimize the costs involved. In the reporting cells location management scheme, some cells in the network are designated as reporting cells . The choice of these cells is not trivial because they affect directly to the cost of the mobile network. This article is focused on (...) the use of high performance computing to execute a parallel heuristic that places optimally the RCs in a mobile network, minimizing its total cost. The main goal of this work is to demonstrate that the collaborative work of different evolutionary algorithms can obtain very good results. For this reason, we have implemented a parallel heuristic and six evolutionary algorithms that works in a parallel way on a cluster to solve the RCs problem. (shrink)

Resumen: En este trabajo se presenta un abordaje explicativo del enfoque epistemológico -tal como es definido por J. Padrón- propio de la corriente de pensamiento convencionalmente denominada teoría crítica. En la primera parte abordamos su dimensión ontológica a través de la categoría de totalidad, tal como T. Adorno y M. Horkheimer la desarrollan a lo largo de sus trabajos, en oposición al empirismo popperiano. En la sección siguiente damos cuenta de la dimensión gnoseológica de la teoría crítica, desarrollando las reflexiones (...) y discusiones en torno a lo político en la producción científica y empleando como eje conductor el debate entre K. Popper y T. Adorno, con especial énfasis en el vínculo entre ciencia y praxis, entre producción de conocimiento científico e intencionalidad crítica y transformadora del mundo social, lo cual constituye un fundamento parcialmente meta-teórico clave para este enfoque. Finalmente, en las conclusiones, explicitamos algunas implicancias de lo trabajado para la investigación social actual: la centralidad de oponer a la creciente fragmentación e hiperespecialización del campo científico la noción ontológica de totalidad y la necesidad de acompañar la construcción crítica del conocimiento con una adecuada metacrítica de la posición teórica y práctica del investigador.: In this paper, we discuss the epistemological approach -as defined by J. Padrón- called critical theory. In the first part, we explain its ontological dimension through the category of totality, as T. Adorno and M. Horkheimer develop it throughout their works, in opposition to Popperian empiricism. In the following section, we analyse the gnoseological dimension of critical theory around the political in scientific production, using as a driving axis the debate between K. Popper and T. Adorno with special emphasis on the link between science and praxis, the production of scientific knowledge and a critical and transformational intentionality of the social world, which constitutes a partially meta-theoretical basis for this approach. Finally, in the conclusions, we explain some central implications for the current social research: the increasing fragmentation and hyper specialization of the scientific field against the ontological notion of totality, and the need to follow the critical construction of knowledge with an adequate meta-critical theoretical and practical position of the researcher. (shrink)

Against the modern theory of representation, which makes the world opaque, Polo Suggests reviviting the classical theory of ilumination. Intentionality of knowledge, according to Polo, makes possibe the "deveiling" of reality, and shows its radical dependence from God.

The goal of synthetic biology is to create artificial organisms. To achieve this it is essential to understand what life is. Metabolism-replacement systems, or (M, R)-systems, constitute a theory of life developed by Robert Rosen, characterized in the statement that organisms are closed to efficient causation, which means that they must themselves produce all the catalysts they need. This theory overlaps in part with other current theories, including autopoiesis, the chemoton, and autocatalytic sets, all of them invoking some idea of (...) closure. A simple model of an (M, R)-system has been implemented in the computer, and behaves in ways that may shed light on the requirements for a prebiotic self-organizing system. In addition to a trivial steady state in which nothing happens, it can establish a non-trivial steady state in which all intermediates have finite concentrations, with their rates of degradation balanced by their rates of synthesis. The system can be regenerated from the set of food components plus a single intermediate, and maintain itself in that state indefinitely, despite continuous degradation. At the very low compartment volumes that may have existed in prebiotic conditions, for example in cavities in minerals, or in micelles formed by simple amphiphiles, statistical fluctuations in the numbers of molecules need to be taken into account. With the stochastic approach there is no non-trivial steady state in strict mathematical terms, because the system will always collapse to the trivial state after sufficient time. However, the average time before collapse is so long for volumes greater than $10^{-19}\;{\textsc{l}}$ (much smaller than the volume of the order of $10^{-15}\;{\textsc{l}}$ for a typical bacterial cell) that for practical purposes the self-maintaining state of non-null concentrations becomes significant, recalling the situation of bistability that is observed in deterministic analysis. In turn, there exists a minimum size below which the self-organizing system cannot maintain itself on chemically relevant time scales. The value of the critical volume depends on the particular concentrations and rate constants assumed, but the principle could apply generally. (shrink)

Los principios filosóficos que constituyen el pensamiento de Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), se encuentran en la filosofía de Spinoza y Leibniz, como la nueva Herder-Forschung lo ha establecido. Las ideas de ambos filósofos racionalistas juegan un papel determinante en el tratado Sobre el conocer y el sentir del alma humana (1778), considerada su obra filosófica más importante. Con su reinterpretación de la Monadologie, Herder lleva a cabo una inflexión: de la ontología de la sustancia a una ontología de la fuerza (...) orgánica donde la corporeidad es integrada a una perspectiva monista (neo-espinosista). Los alcances de esta transformación se manifiestan en su teoría del alma (Seelenlehre), una concepción vitalista y organicista que promueve una psicología contraria a la visión reduccionista de la tradición racionalista. En este artículo muestro que la imaginación es la noción clave en la explicación herderiana de la unión del alma con el cuerpo. Esta disposición tiene además una importancia esencial en la propuesta de psicología cognitiva que se infiere de su teoría del alma. ¿Cuáles son las implicaciones de la tesis herderiana según la cual la imaginación se desarrolla genética e históricamente por el sentido del oído? Él anuncia así un epistemic turn: de la imaginación visual a la imaginación acroamática. (shrink)

The actual “crisis of care” in western societies highlights the limits of a sex/gender based citizenship and the persistence of the subordination of women. The fact that women are responsible for the provision of care in domestic units has never been a matter of difference but a matter of subordination against which we have developed legal strategies, such as anti-discrimination law, and political strategies, such as increasing the presence of women in decision-making. The paper shows some of these strategies and (...) their limits and argues that we need to resignify citizenship in a way that includes human dependency and the webs of relationships, both local and global, this dependency creates. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone exponer los momentos centrales de la teoría husserliana de la apodicticidad, señalar sus dificultades y ofrecer un principio de solución para los problemas más acuciantes. En relación con lo último, la idea rectora que conduce las consideraciones siguientes es que la apodicticidad que Husserl reclama para el yo debe comprenderse a la luz de la síntesis temporal y, en especial, de las notas que son propias del presente viviente. The current paper seeks to expound the (...) principal aspects of the husserlian theory of apodicticity, to present its dificulties and to offer a posible solution to its mains problems. In conection to the latter the directive idea that leads the followings considerations is that we must understand the apodicticity of the "I" in terms of the temporal synthesis, in particular, in the characteristics features of the living present. (shrink)

La problemática adaptativa constituye un tema central para la teoría evolutiva. Uno de los principales cuestionamientos está dado por aquellos procesos que tradicionalmente se han considerado como adaptativos y que a la luz de la evidencia actual deben ser redefinidos. El estudio de la adaptación en el caso del parasitismo reviste especial importancia por sus aspectos epidemiológicos, ecológicos y evolutivos, además de su impacto en medicina evolutiva. El objetivo del presente trabajo es hacer un estudio de casos en cestodes con (...) el propósito de contrastar el grado de aplicación de la definición de adaptación propuesta por Dressino y discutir su viabilidad, limitaciones y alcances para el fenómeno parasitario. Se analizan numerosas definiciones y conceptos de adaptación y se advierte que muchas de ellas no cuentan con los requerimientos formales necesarios para su corroboración empírica. En base al análisis de casos de cestodes y teniendo en cuenta los conceptos de “interrelación de eslabones del ciclo biológico” y “potencialidad del fenómeno parasitario”, se propondrá el concepto de “concatenación de adaptaciones”. En razón de las particularidades adaptativas observadas en parásitos y de la inviabilidad de las definiciones de adaptación aplicadas a estos grupos, este nuevo concepto supone una multiplicidad de adaptaciones que se enlazan unas con otras y que la modificación de cualquiera de ellas tiene profundas consecuencias en las restantes.Adaptative issues constitute a central topic in evolutionary theory. One of the main questions concerns the processes that have traditionally been considered as adaptative and that should be redefined in the light of current evidence. The study of the adaptation in the case of parasitism was especially important for its epidemiological, ecological and evolutionary aspects, besides its impact on evolutionary medicine. The purpose of this work is a study of cases in cestodes in order to contrast the degree of application of the definition of adaptation proposed by Dressino and to discuss its feasibility, limitations and reaches for the phenomenon of parasites. A large number of definitions and concepts of adaptation is analyzed and it is observed that many of them do not fulfill the necessary formal requirements for their empiric corroboration. Based on the analysis of cases of cestodes and keeping in mind the concept of “interrelationship of links in the biological cycle” and “potential of the parasitic phenomenon”, we proposed the concept of “concatenation of adaptations”. Due to the adaptative particularities observed in parasites and the non feasibility of the definitions of adaptation applied to these groups, this new concept assumes that there is a multiplicity of adaptations that are linked to each other and that the modification of any one of them has profound consequences on the remaining adaptations. (shrink)