Detecting Genetic Isolation in Human Populations: A Study of European Language Minorities

The identification of isolation signatures is fundamental to better understand the genetic structure of human populations and to test the relations between cultural factors and genetic variation. However, with current approaches, it is not possible to distinguish between the consequences of long-term isolation and the effects of reduced sample size, selection and differential gene flow. To overcome these limitations, we have integrated the analysis of classical genetic diversity measures with a Bayesian method to estimate gene flow and have carried out simulations based on the coalescent. Combining these approaches, we first tested whether the relatively short history of cultural and geographical isolation of four "linguistic islands" of the Eastern Alps (Lessinia, Sauris, Sappada and Timau) had left detectable signatures in their genetic structure. We then compared our findings to previous studies of European population isolates. Finally, we explored the importance of demographic and cultural factors in shaping genetic diversity among the groups under study. A combination of small initial effective size and continued genetic isolation from surrounding populations seems to provide a coherent explanation for the diversity observed among Sauris, Sappada and Timau, which was found to be substantially greater than in other groups of European isolated populations. Simulations of micro-evolutionary scenarios indicate that ethnicity might have been important in increasing genetic diversity among these culturally related and spatially close populations. © 2013 Capocasa et al

Prospects for improving the sensitivity of KAGRA gravitational wave detector

KAGRA is a new gravitational wave detector which aims to begin joint observation with Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo from late 2019. Here, we present KAGRA's possible upgrade plans to improve the sensitivity in the decade ahead. Unlike other state-of-the-art detectors, KAGRA requires different investigations for the upgrade since it is the only detector which employs cryogenic cooling of the test mass mirrors. In this paper, investigations on the upgrade plans which can be realized by changing the input laser power, increasing the mirror mass, and injecting frequency dependent squeezed vacuum are presented. We show how each upgrade affects to the detector frequency bands and also discuss impacts on gravitational-wave science. We then propose an effective progression of upgrades based on technical feasibility and scientific scenarios

Herramientas aportadas por TIC: La implementación de un laboratorio virtual en clases de genética

El uso de laboratorios virtuales o simuladores es una alternativa para la enseñanza práctica en Biología. En el presente trabajo, se clasificó laboratorios virtuales que desarrollen conceptos de Genética Mendeliana e identificó los niveles de comprensión alcanzados mediante el uso de un laboratorio virtual en alumnos de cuarto año de dos Instituciones secundarias de la ciudad de Córdoba. Este recurso colaboró en la comprensión del concepto Genotipo y Fenotipo, por lo cual promovemos la implementación de esta herramienta educativa, ya que permite visualizar fenómenos y promover el aprendizaje de los conceptos científicos a la vez que motiva alos alumnos.Fil: García Capocasa, María Constanza. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Cátedra de Taller de Investigación Educativa I y II; Argentina.Fil: Mari, Macarena M. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Cátedra de Taller de Investigación Educativa I y II; Argentina.Fil: Malin Vilar, Tania G. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Cátedra de Taller de Investigación Educativa I y II; Argentina.Fil: Valeiras, Nora. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Cátedra de Taller de Investigación Educativa I y II; Argentina.Educación General (incluye capacitación, pedagogía y didáctica

Un análisis de los discursos de diferentes actores sobre la diversidad biológica y su enseñanza

Fil: Bermúdez, Gonzalo M. A. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas. Cátedra de Didáctica Especial; Argentina.Fil: García Capocasa, María Constanza. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas. Cátedra de Didáctica Especial; Argentina.Fil: Battistón, Luisina Valeria. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas. Cátedra de Didáctica Especial; Argentina.Es necesario reconocer que en nuestra cultura cuando se habla de ecología se utilizan dos significados del término: como movimiento social –ecologismo- o como disciplina biológica. Asociado a este concepto, la biodiversidad –o diversidad biológica- suele ser utilizada en el ámbito cotidiano tanto como en el científico debido a la difusión de los medios de comunicación ya los importantes recursos que se destinan a la investigación de los distintos aspectos de la biodiversidad. En el sistema educativo, los discursos escritos acerca de qué debe enseñarse se encuentran, en primer lugar, en los programas oficiales nacionales y jurisdiccionales. Luego, las distintas instituciones, mediante sus proyectos y programas de centro, establecen los contenidos de la enseñanza de acuerdo a criterios propios. Los docentes con sus clases, definen el último eslabón del gradiente de concreción curricular, en la interacción con sus alumnos y con un objeto de conocimiento particular. En el marco de la teoría de la transposición didáctica también forman parte importante de la “esfera de los que piensan” (noosfera) los científicos, productores de saber sabio ecológico. El propósito del presente trabajo fue analizar los discursos de diferentes actores de la noosfera (docentes, ecólogos y didactas) sobre la biodiversidad y su enseñanza. Se realizaron entrevistas semi- estructuradas a: (a) seis docentes de Biología de la provincia de Córdoba, (b) diez científicos de distintas áreas relacionadas con la biodiversidad de Argentina, y (c) a seis didactas de distintas provincias de Argentina y de España. Se registró y luego se transcribió el audio de cada entrevista. A modo de síntesis de los resultados encontramos que todos los docentes enseñan el tema de la biodiversidad en sus clases, lo consideran importante para sus materias, aunque tienen trayectos de formación, conocimientos y metodologías de enseñanza diferentes. La mayoría de los ecólogos destaca la importancia de la biodiversidad y su conservación, y reconocen la polisemia del concepto. La mayoría de los didactas advierte un cierto distanciamiento entre las actuales posturas sobre enseñanza y aprendizaje y algunas prácticas actuales, además de sugerir lineamientos para la enseñanza que retoman aspectos sociales y biológicos de la biodiversidad.Fil: Bermúdez, Gonzalo M. A. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas. Cátedra de Didáctica Especial; Argentina.Fil: García Capocasa, María Constanza. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas. Cátedra de Didáctica Especial; Argentina.Fil: Battistón, Luisina Valeria. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas. Cátedra de Didáctica Especial; Argentina.Otras Ciencias de la Educació

Una propuesta de enseñanza de didáctica general y didáctica especial en la formación inicial de profesores de biología (Córdoba, Argentina)

La profesionalidad docente puede considerarse como uno de los aspectos característicos de las tendencias actuales en el campo de la didáctica y de la educación (Camilloni, 2016). De hecho, una de las preocupaciones de la gestión universitaria en Argentina está centrada más que nunca en transformar la formación de los profesores para la educación secundaria (Rasetto, 2012). De hecho, una de las preocupaciones de la gestión universitaria en Argentina está centrada más que nunca en transformar la formación de los profesores para la educación secundaria, recuperando la centralidad de la enseñanza como eje de la actividad profesional, la articulación teoría-práctica, la investigación educativa, la contextualización en los distintos ámbitos de intervención docente, así como también, los fundamentos éticos y el compromiso social de la tarea educativa (Rasetto, 2012). En esta ponencia relatamos la génesis y algunas experiencias que emergen del desarrollo de una propuesta de trabajo en las cátedras de Didáctica General (DG) y Didáctica Especial (DE) del quinto y sexto semestre, respectivamente, de la carrera de Profesorado en Ciencias Biológicas en la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. Con ello, nos proponemos no sólo dar sentido a nuestros posicionamientos epistemológicos, ideológicos, teórico-metodológicos -lo que abordaremos a continuación-, sino también, seguidamente, recuperar la reflexión a partir de la experiencia (Larrosa, 2006) como profesores de DG y DE

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

Perspectives on Open Science and scientific data sharing::an interdisciplinary workshop

Looking at Open Science and Open Data from a broad perspective. This is the idea behind "Scientific data sharing: an interdisciplinary workshop", an initiative designed to foster dialogue between scholars from different scientific domains which was organized by the Istituto Italiano di Antropologia in Anagni, Italy, 2-4 September 2013.We here report summaries of the presentations and discussions at the meeting. They deal with four sets of issues: (i) setting a common framework, a general discussion of open data principles, values and opportunities; (ii) insights into scientific practices, a view of the way in which the open data movement is developing in a variety of scientific domains (biology, psychology, epidemiology and archaeology); (iii) a case study of human genomics, which was a trail-blazer in data sharing, and which encapsulates the tension that can occur between large-scale data sharing and one of the boundaries of openness, the protection of individual data; (iv) open science and the public, based on a round table discussion about the public communication of science and the societal implications of open science. There were three proposals for the planning of further interdisciplinary initiatives on open science. Firstly, there is a need to integrate top-down initiatives by governments, institutions and journals with bottom-up approaches from the scientific community. Secondly, more should be done to popularize the societal benefits of open science, not only in providing the evidence needed by citizens to draw their own conclusions on scientific issues that are of concern to them, but also explaining the direct benefits of data sharing in areas such as the control of infectious disease. Finally, introducing arguments from social sciences and humanities in the educational dissemination of open data may help students become more profoundly engaged with Open Science and look at science from a broader perspective

A Standard Siren Measurement of the Hubble Constant from GW170817 without the Electromagnetic Counterpart

We perform a statistical standard siren analysis of GW170817. Our analysis does not utilize knowledge of NGC 4993 as the unique host galaxy of the optical counterpart to GW170817. Instead, we consider each galaxy within the GW170817 localization region as a potential host; combining the redshifts from all of the galaxies with the distance estimate from GW170817 provides an estimate of the Hubble constant, H 0. Considering all galaxies brighter than $0.626{L}_{B}^{\star }$ as equally likely to host a binary neutron star merger, we find ${H}_{0}={77}_{-18}^{+37}$ km s−1 Mpc−1 (maximum a posteriori and 68.3% highest density posterior interval; assuming a flat H 0 prior in the range $\left[10,220\right]$ km s−1 Mpc−1). We explore the dependence of our results on the thresholds by which galaxies are included in our sample, and we show that weighting the host galaxies by stellar mass or star formation rate provides entirely consistent results with potentially tighter constraints. By applying the method to simulated gravitational-wave events and a realistic galaxy catalog we show that, because of the small localization volume, this statistical standard siren analysis of GW170817 provides an unusually informative (top 10%) constraint. Under optimistic assumptions for galaxy completeness and redshift uncertainty, we find that dark binary neutron star measurements of H 0 will converge as $40 \% /\sqrt{(N)}$, where N is the number of sources. While these statistical estimates are inferior to the value from the counterpart standard siren measurement utilizing NGC 4993 as the unique host, ${H}_{0}={76}_{-13}^{+19}$ km s−1 Mpc−1 (determined from the same publicly available data), our analysis is a proof-of-principle demonstration of the statistical approach first proposed by Bernard Schutz over 30 yr ago

Advanced Virgo Plus: Future Perspectives

While completing the commissioning phase to prepare the Virgo interferometer for the next joint Observation Run (O4), the Virgo collaboration is also finalizing the design of the next upgrades to the detector to be employed in the following Observation Run (O5). The major upgrade will concern decreasing the thermal noise limit, which will imply using very large test masses and increased laser beam size. But this will not be the only upgrade to be implemented in the break between the O4 and O5 observation runs to increase the Virgo detector strain sensitivity. The paper will cover the challenges linked to this upgrade and implications on the detector's reach and observational potential, reflecting the talk given at 12th Cosmic Ray International Seminar - CRIS 2022 held in September 2022 in Napoli

KAGRA: 2.5 Generation Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detector

The recent detections of gravitational waves (GWs) reported by LIGO/Virgocollaborations have made significant impact on physics and astronomy. A globalnetwork of GW detectors will play a key role to solve the unknown nature of thesources in coordinated observations with astronomical telescopes and detectors.Here we introduce KAGRA (former name LCGT; Large-scale Cryogenic Gravitationalwave Telescope), a new GW detector with two 3-km baseline arms arranged in theshape of an "L", located inside the Mt. Ikenoyama, Kamioka, Gifu, Japan.KAGRA's design is similar to those of the second generations such as AdvancedLIGO/Virgo, but it will be operating at the cryogenic temperature with sapphiremirrors. This low temperature feature is advantageous for improving thesensitivity around 100 Hz and is considered as an important feature for thethird generation GW detector concept (e.g. Einstein Telescope of Europe orCosmic Explorer of USA). Hence, KAGRA is often called as a 2.5 generation GWdetector based on laser interferometry. The installation and commissioning ofKAGRA is underway and its cryogenic systems have been successfully tested inMay, 2018. KAGRA's first observation run is scheduled in late 2019, aiming tojoin the third observation run (O3) of the advanced LIGO/Virgo network. In thiswork, we describe a brief history of KAGRA and highlights of main feature. Wealso discuss the prospects of GW observation with KAGRA in the era of O3. Whenoperating along with the existing GW detectors, KAGRA will be helpful to locatea GW source more accurately and to determine the source parameters with higherprecision, providing information for follow-up observations of a GW triggercandidate