The sacredness in Angélica Liddell: A dialogue with María Zambrano

El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el pensamiento de lo sagrado que se despliega en el teatro de Angélica Liddell (1966-). El pensamiento de María Zambrano (1905-1991) en torno a la sacralidad, la divinidad y el sacrificio constituirá el marco teórico para examinar el pensamiento de lo sagrado que Angélica Liddell hace circular en sus textos teatrales. El pensamiento metafísico y ontológico de Zambrano conduce, en nuestra lectura de lo sagrado, a pensar el efecto catártico y (re)naciente que produce, como una epifanía, el teatro de LiddelThe aim of this article is to analyze the sacred thinking that is spread out at the plays of Angélica Liddell (1966-). The thinking of María Zambrano (1905-1991) about the sacredness, the divinity and the sacrifice will compose the theoretic frame to examine the sacred thinking that Angélica Liddell moves around in her plays. The metaphysic and ontological thinking of Zambrano leads us, in our reading of the sacredness, to think the cathartic and (re)nascent effect, like an epiphany, in the plays of Liddel

The potential risk induced by climate change in the context of mega-nourishments

Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Long-term and large-scale modeling of mega-nourishments

The Sand Engine, ZM (Zandmotor), is a hook-shaped mega-nourishment (21.5 millions m³) located on the Dutch coast with an alongshore length of 2.4 km and an offshore extension of 1 km. The mega-nourishment project was initiated as a coastal protection measure on decadal time scales to maintain the coastline under predicted sea level rise. It follows the philosophy of working in harmony with the forces of nature by taking advantage of the longshore transport as the main distributor of sand along the adjacent coast (Stive et al., 2013). In the present contribution we use the Q2Dmorfo model (van den Berg, et al., 2012) to predict the long-term dynamics of the ZM.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

La mortalidad en la infancia durante la Guerra Civil. Impacto territorial estimado a partir del Censo de 1940

En este artículo se utilizan las preguntas del Censo de 1940 sobre la fecundidad retrospectiva -hijos nacidos vivos e hijos supervivientes en el momento censal- de las mujeres casadas al menos una vez para estimar los niveles de supervivencia de sus descendientes y, por tanto, de mortalidad en la infancia (hasta los 15 años), según un método propuesto por W. Brass. Los resultados muestran que la Guerra Civil empeoró los niveles de supervivencia en la infancia en prácticamente todas las provincias españolas, pero tuvo un impacto diferencial muy contrastado. Comparando los niveles de supervivència antes y durante el conflicto bélico, se obtiene que fueron las provincias meridionales y levantinas las más afectadas, mientras que en Cataluña y la Meseta septentrional los niveles de mortalidad en la infancia parecen haber empeorado menos, pese a que mostraban posiciones extremas respecto a los niveles de supervivencia antes de la guerra. De esto se deduce que, a pesar de que debiera existir una cierta relación entre el nivel de desarrollo demográfico y la vulnerabilidad que muestran las provincias ante una coyuntura desfavorable, tales características no parecen jugar un papel significativo como factor explicativo de los niveles de supervivencia durante el conflicto bélico.Following a method proposed by W. Brass, this paper uses 1940 Spanish census data on retrospective fertility (based on questions addressed to married women about numbers of children born alive and surviving children at the time of the census) to estimate the survival levels of women's descendents at different ages and, therefore, child mortality up to the age of 15. The results show that the Spanish Civil War worsened child survival in practically all Spanish provinces, especially those of Andalusia and Levante, whereas the least affected provinces were those of Catalonia and the Northern Meseta, in spite of the fact that these two regions had had opposite experiences of child mortality before the war, with low levels in the former and high ones in the latter. This would seem to indicate that, although a region's level of development should be inversely related to its population's vulnerability to unfavourable situations, the previous demographic situation does not seem to significantly influence child mortality during the war

The Stellar Populations of NGC 3109: Another Dwarf Irregular Galaxy with a Population II Stellar Halo

We have obtained V and I-band photometry for about 17500 stars in the field of the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC3109, located in the outskirts of the Local Group. The photometry allows us to study the stellar populations present inside and outside the disk of this galaxy. From the VI color-magnitude diagram we infer metallicities and ages for the stellar populations in the main body and in the halo of NGC3109. The stars in the disk of this galaxy have a wide variety of ages, including very young stars with approximately 10^7 yr. Our main result is to establish the presence of a halo consisting of population II stars, extending out to about 4.5 arcmin (or 1.8 kpc) above and below the plane of this galaxy. For these old stars we derive an age of > 10 Gyr and a metallicity of [Fe/H] = -1.8 +/- 0.2. We construct a deep luminosity function, obtaining an accurate distance modulus (m-M)_0 = 25.62 +/- 0.1 for this galaxy based on the I-magnitude of the red giant branch (RGB) tip and adopting E(V-I) = 0.05.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal 23 pages, latex, 12 Figures (Fig 1 not available in electronic format

Exploring the balance between interpretability and performance with carefully designed constrainable Neural Additive Models

The interpretability of an intelligent model automatically derived from data is a property that can be acted upon with a set of structural constraints that such a model should adhere to. Often these are in contrast with the task objective and it is not straightforward how to explore the balance between model interpretability and performance. In order to allow an interested user to jointly optimise performance and interpretability, we propose a new formulation of Neural Additive Models (NAM) which can be subject to a number of constraints. Accordingly, our approach produces a new model that is called Constrainable NAM (or just CNAM in short) and it allows the specification of different regularisation terms. CNAM is differentiable and is built in such a way that it can be initialised as a solution of an efficient tree-based GAM solver (e.g., Explainable Boosting Machines). From this local optimum the model can then explore solutions with different interpretability-performance tradeoffs according to different definitions of both interpretability and performance. We empirically benchmark the model on 56 datasets against 12 models and observe that on average the proposed CNAM model ranks on the Pareto front of optimal solutions, i.e., models generated by CNAM exhibit a good balance between interpretability and performance. Moreover, we provide two illustrative examples which are aimed to show step by step how CNAM works well for solving classification tasks, but also how it can yield insights when considering regression tasks

The urban economy as a scale-free network

We present empirical evidence that land values are scale-free and introduce a network model that reproduces the observations. The network approach to urban modelling is based on the assumption that the market dynamics that generates land values can be represented as a growing scale-free network. Our results suggest that the network properties of trade between specialized activities causes land values, and likely also other observables such as population, to be power law distributed. In addition to being an attractive avenue for further analytical inquiry, the network representation is also applicable to empirical data and is thereby attractive for predictive modelling.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. E. 7 pages, 3 figures. (Minor typos and details fixed

Spatial Variation of Leaf Optical Properties in a Boreal Forest Is Influenced by Species and Light Environment

Leaf Optical Properties (LOPs) convey information relating to temporally dynamic photosynthetic activity and biochemistry. LOPs are also sensitive to variability in anatomically related traits such as Specific Leaf Area (SLA), via the interplay of intra-leaf light scattering and absorption processes. Therefore, variability in such traits, which may demonstrate little plasticity over time, potentially disrupts remote sensing estimates of photosynthesis or biochemistry across space. To help to disentangle the various factors that contribute to the variability of LOPs, we defined baseline variation as variation in LOPs that occurs across space, but not time. Next we hypothesized that there were two main controls of potentially disruptive baseline spatial variability of photosynthetically-related LOPs at our boreal forest site: light environment and species. We measured photosynthetically-related LOPs in conjunction with morphological, biochemical, and photosynthetic leaf traits during summer and across selected boreal tree species and vertical gradients in light environment. We then conducted a detailed correlation analysis to disentangle the spatial factors that control baseline variability of leaf traits and, resultantly, LOPs. Baseline spatial variability of the Photochemical Reflectance Index (PRI) was strongly influenced by species and to a lesser extent light environment. Baseline variability of spectral fluorescence derived LOPs was less influenced by species; however at longer near-infrared wavelengths, light environment was an important control. In summary, remote sensing of chlorophyll fluorescence has good potential to detect variation in photosynthetic performance across space in boreal forests given reduced sensitivity to species related baseline variability in comparison to the PRI. Our results also imply that spatially coarse remote sensing observations are potentially unrepresentative of the full scope of natural variation that occurs within a boreal forest.Peer reviewe

Número de ciclos cortos necesarios para inducir la diapausa en huevos y larvas de Sesamia nonagrioides (Lefebvre)

Se sometieron huevos de Sesamia nonagrioides (LEFEBVRE) durante su desarrollo embrionario a fotoperiodo corto 12:12 (L:O) y posteriormente a fotoperiodos 16:8 y 0:24, sin observar que se hubiera inducido diapausa en ellos. Las larvas neonatas sometidas a 1, 2, 3, 4 ó 5 ciclos cortos (12:12) no manifestaron diferencias en la duración del desarrollo respecto de las larvas sometidas a fotoperiodo 16:8 y por tanto no manifestaron diapausa. Las diferencias de desarrollo se manifestaron cuando las larvas neonatas se sometieron a 8 ó más ciclos cortos (12:12), por lo tanto, fueron necesarios 8 ó mas ciclos cortos para inducir la diapausa en las larvas neonatas.Sesamia nonagrioides eggs were submitted during their embryonic development to short photoperiodic cycles (12:12) and after that to long photoperiodic cycles (16:8) and 0:24 without observing diapause induction in them. Neonate larvae submitted to 1,2, 3, 4 or 5 short cycles (12:12) didn't show differences in duration of development with regard to the larvae submitted to 16:8. Hence, they didn't show diapause induction. Differences in the duration of development were shown when neonate larvae were submitted to 8 or more short cycles. So, 8 or more short cycles were needed to induce diapause in neonate larvae