Psicología evolutiva en Miguel de Unamuno. .Recuerdos de niñez y de mocedad.

En este trabajo se comenta desde la perspectiva de la psicología evolutiva la obra autobiográfica "Recuerdos de niñez y de mocedad", escrita por el filósofo Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo. De la obra se extraen los fragmentos que ilustran conceptos típicamente evolutivos, como la causalidad, el realismo, el pensamiento mágico, el egocentrismo cognitivo, la contradicción lógica y la interacción entre iguales. El trabajo constituye un recurso didáctico para ejemplificar conceptos teóricos en la enseñanza de la psicología evolutiva.Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo filosofoak idatzitako "Recuerdos de niñez y de mocedad" liburu autobiografikoa aztertzen dugu lan honetan, garapenaren psikologiaren ikuspuntutik. Kausalitatea, errealismoa, pentsamendu magikoa, ezagutzazko egozentrismoa, kontraesan logikoa eta kideen arteko elkarrekintza bezalako kontzeptu bereziki ebolutiboak direnen atal adierazgarriak atera ditugu idazlan horretatik. Beraz, garapenaren psikologiako zenbait kontzeptu teoriko irakasteko adibideak proposatzen dituen baliabide didaktikoa eskaintzen dugu.Dans ce travail nous commentons depuis la perspetive de la psychologie du développment l'ouvrage autobiographique "Recuerdos de niñez y de mocedad" écrit par le philosophe Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, dont on peut extraire des fragments qu'illustrent quelques concepts tipiquement evolutifs: la causalité, le réalisme, la pensée magique, l'égocentrisme cognitif, la contradiction logique ou l'interaction entre les pairs. Ce travail peut être un ressource didactique pour offrir plusieurs exemples sur quelques concepts theoriques qu'on doit apprendre en psychologie du développment.The author comments, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, the autobiographic work "Childhood and Youth Reminiscences", written by philosopher Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo. The fragments that illustrate typically evolutionary concepts like causality, realism, magic thought, cognitive egocentrism, logic contradiction and the interaction between equals are extracted from that book. This work is a didactic resource to exemplify theoretical concepts in the teaching of evolutionary psychology

The role of astroglia in Alzheimer's disease: pathophysiology and clinical implications

BACKGROUND: Astrocytes, also called astroglia, maintain homoeostasis of the brain by providing trophic and metabolic support to neurons. They recycle neurotransmitters, stimulate synaptogenesis and synaptic neurotransmission, form part of the blood-brain barrier, and regulate regional blood flow. Although astrocytes have been known to display morphological alterations in Alzheimer's disease for more than a century, research has remained neurocentric. Emerging evidence suggests that these morphological changes reflect functional alterations that affect disease. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: Genetic studies indicate that most of the risk of developing late onset Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of the disease, affecting patients aged 65 years and older, is associated with genes (ie, APOE, APOJ, and SORL) that are mainly expressed by glial cells (ie, astrocytes, microglia, and oligodendrocytes). This insight has moved the focus of research away from neurons and towards glial cells and neuroinflammation. Molecular studies in rodent models suggest a direct contribution of astrocytes to neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative processes causing Alzheimer's disease; however, these models might insufficiently mimic the human disease, because rodent astrocytes differ considerably in morphology, functionality, and gene expression. In-vivo studies using stem-cell derived human astrocytes are allowing exploration of the human disease and providing insights into the neurotoxic or protective contributions of these cells to the pathogenesis of disease. The first attempts to develop astrocytic biomarkers and targeted therapies are emerging. WHERE NEXT?: Single-cell transcriptomics allows the fate of individual astrocytes to be followed in situ and provides the granularity needed to describe healthy and pathological cellular states at different stages of Alzheimer's disease. Given the differences between human and rodent astroglia, study of human cells in this way will be crucial. Although refined single-cell transcriptomic analyses of human post-mortem brains are important for documentation of pathology, they only provide snapshots of a dynamic reality. Thus, functional work studying human astrocytes generated from stem cells and exposed to pathological conditions in rodent brain or cell culture are needed to understand the role of these cells in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. These studies will lead to novel biomarkers and hopefully a series of new drug targets to tackle this disease

Family context, gifted, talented and high capacity children

En este trabajo se analiza el contexto familiar de sujetos de altas capacidades en una muestra de 530 escolares de 10 años de edad. Se identificaron 45 sujetos superdotados, 64 sujetos con talento creativo, 6 sujetos superdotados con talento creativo y 15 sujetos de altas capacidades. El nivel cultural materno, el tipo de centro y el estilo educativo asertivo aparecen como variables asociadas a los contextos familiares de los niños superdotados. El nivel cultural materno unido al hecho de no trabajar fuera de casa aparecen asociados a los contextos familiares de niños con talento creativo y a los contextos de niños superdotados y a la vez creativos. La inadaptación social aparece asociada a los contextos de niños con altas capacidades. Palabras clave: contexto familiar y altas capacidades.This study analyzes the family context of high capacity children in a sample of 530 10-year-old school children. 45 gifted subjects were identified alongside 64 with creative talent, 6 who were both gifted and possessed creative talent and 15 high capacity subjects. Maternal cultural level, type of school attended and assertive parenting style were identified as variables associated with the family contexts of gifted children. Maternal cultural level, linked to the mother not working outside the home, was found to be associated with the family contexts of children with creative talent, as well as to those of children who were both gifted and highly creative. Social inadaptation was associated with high capacity children. Key words: family context and gifted children

Implementation of an extended ZINB model in the study of low levels of natural gastrointestinal nematode infections in adult sheep

Background: In this study, two traits related with resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes (GIN) were measured in 529 adult sheep: faecal egg count (FEC) and activity of immunoglobulin A in plasma (IgA). In dry years, FEC can be very low in semi-extensive systems, such as the one studied here, which makes identifying animals that are resistant or susceptible to infection a difficult task. A zero inflated negative binomial model (ZINB) model was used to calculate the extent of zero inflation for FEC; the model was extended to include information from the IgA responses. Results: In this dataset, 64 % of animals had zero FEC while the ZINB model suggested that 38 % of sheep had not been recently infected with GIN. Therefore 26 % of sheep were predicted to be infected animals with egg counts that were zero or below the detection limit and likely to be relatively resistant to nematode infection. IgA activities of all animals were then used to decide which of the sheep with zero egg counts had been exposed and which sheep had not been recently exposed. Animals with zero FEC and high IgA activity were considered resistant while animals with zero FEC and low IgA activity were considered as not recently infected. For the animals considered as exposed to the infection, the correlations among the studied traits were estimated, and the influence of these traits on the discrimination between unexposed and infected animals was assessed. Conclusions: The model presented here improved the detection of infected animals with zero FEC. The correlations calculated here will be useful in the development of a reliable index of GIN resistance that could be of assistance for the study of host resistance in studies based on natural infection, especially in adult sheep, and also the design of breeding programs aimed at increasing resistance to parasites

Estimation of genetic parameters for cheese-making traits in Spanish Churra sheep

Artículo de investigaciónThe global production of sheep milk is growing, and the main industrial use of sheep milk is cheese making. The Spanish Churra sheep breed is one of the most important native dairy breeds in Spain. The present study aimed to estimate genetic parameters for a wide range of traits influencing the cheese-making ability of Churra sheep milk. Using a total of 1,049 Churra ewes, we studied the following cheese-making traits: 4 traits related to milk coagulation properties (rennet coagulation time, curd-firming time, and curd firmness at 30 and 60 min after addition of rennet), 2 traits related to cheese yield (individual laboratory cheese yield and individual laboratory dried curd yield), and 3 traits measuring curd firmness over time (maximum curd firmness, time to attain maximum curd firmness, and syneresis). In addition, a list of milk traits, including the native pH of the milk and several milk production and composition traits (milk yield; the fat, protein, and dried extract percentages; and the somatic cell count), were also analyzed for the studied animals. After discarding the noncoagulating samples (only 3.7%), data of 1,010 ewes were analyzed with multiple-trait animal models by using the restricted maximum likelihood method to estimate (co)variance components, heritabilities, and genetic correlations. In general, the heritability estimates were low to moderate, ranging from 0.08 (for the individual laboratory dried curd yield trait) to 0.42 (for the fat percentage trait). High genetic correlations were found within pairs of related traits (i.e., 0.93 between fat and dried extract percentages, −0.93 between the log of the curd-firming time and curd firmness at 30 min, 0.70 between individual laboratory cheese yield and individual laboratory dried curd yield, and −0.94 between time to attain maximum curd firmness and syneresis). Considering all the information provided here, we suggest that in addition to the current consideration of the protein percentage trait for improving cheese yield traits, the inclusion of the pH of milk as a measured trait in the Churra dairy breeding program would represent an efficient strategy for improving the cheese-making ability of milk from this breed.S

A Rank-Based Nonparametric Method for Mapping Quantitative Trait Loci in Outbred Half-Sib Pedigrees: Application to Milk Production in a Granddaughter Design

We describe the development of a multipoint nonparametric quantitative trait loci mapping method based on the Wilcoxon rank-sum test applicable to outbred half-sib pedigrees. The method has been evaluated on a simulated dataset and its efficiency compared with interval mapping by using regression. It was shown that the rank-based approach is slightly inferior to regression when the residual variance is homoscedastic normal; however, in three out of four other scenarios envisaged, i.e., residual variance heteroscedastic normal, homoscedastic skewed, and homoscedastic positively kurtosed, the latter outperforms the former one. Both methods were applied to a real data set analyzing the effect of bovine chromosome 6 on milk yield and composition by using a 125-cM map comprising 15 microsatellites and a granddaughter design counting 1158 Holstein-Friesian sires

Factors that control the geochemical evolution of hydrothermal systems of alkaline water in granites in Central Pyrenees (Spain)

La evolución geoquímica de las soluciones de los sistemas hidrotermales de Caldas de Boí, Artiés, Tredós y Les, situados en el Pirineo Central (Spain), muestra diferencias reflejadas en la concentración de sólidos disueltos y en la presencia de una situación de equilibrio o desequilibrio en profundidad de las soluciones respecto a la albita. La datación (14C) de las aguas pertenecientes a los distintos sistemas hidrotermales ha puesto de manifiesto que el tiempo de residencia no es el factor de control determinante de las diferencias existentes en el grado de evolución geoquímica alcanzado por las mismas, teniendo que contemplarse otro tipo de factores relacionados con la cinética de disolución de los minerales, como responsables de estas diferencias. El análisis de la influencia de los principales factores que controlan la tasa de disolución de los minerales y, más en concreto, de los feldespatos, muestra como las diferencias de temperatura de las soluciones en profundidad son capaces de justificar el distinto grado de evolución geoquímica, incluso en soluciones con tiempos de residencia muy similares

Reconstructing complex lineage trees from scRNA-seq data using MERLoT

Advances in single-cell transcriptomics techniques are revolutionizing studies of cellular differentiation and heterogeneity. It has become possible to track the trajectory of thousands of genes across the cellular lineage trees that represent the temporal emergence of cell types during dynamic processes. However, reconstruction of cellular lineage trees with more than a few cell fates has proved challenging. We present MERLoT (https://github.com/soedinglab/merlot), a flexible and user-friendly tool to reconstruct complex lineage trees from single-cell transcriptomics data. It can impute temporal gene expression profiles along the reconstructed tree. We show MERLoT’s capabilities on various real cases and hundreds of simulated datasets

Family context assessment in middle childhood: A tool supporting social, educational, and public health interventions

Quality of the family context has an important role in the physical and mental health of children; that is why it is important to have reliable and updated tools. This study aims to design and validate a new tool, the Haezi Etxadi Family Assessment Scale 7–11 (HEFAS 7–11), to assess family context quality in middle childhood. A sample of two cohorts of 772 Spanish families with children aged between 7 and 11 (M = 9.39 years; SD = 1.57; 51.2% girls), participated in the study. Results showed good psychometric properties for the instrument and the confirmatory factor analysis showed a five individual subscales structure: 1. Promotion of Cognitive and Linguistic Development (α = 0.79); 2. Promotion of Socio Emotional Development (α = 0.83); 3. Organization of Physical Environment and Social Context (α = 0.73); 4. Parental Stress & Conflict (α = 0.75); and 5. Parental Profile Fostering Child Development (α = 0.80). The association between HEFAS 7–11 and Trial Making Test was also analyzed to determine the concurrent validity of the instrument. The new scale shows its potential in the fields of research, social and educational, to know those variables that need to be promoted under the approach of positive parenting from a public health perspective