¿Culturas shakespearianas? Teoría mimética y América Latina

En la historia cultural latinoamericana, el espectador siempre ha sido un extranjero, cuya autoridad deriva de su condición ajena. Por ello, se convierte en modelo a ser imitado y nunca cuestionado –e incluso es emulado. Este mecanismo tautológico continúa vigente. ¿Es posible bosquejar una contribución propiamente latinoamericana a la teoría mimética? Esta pregunta es el eje principal de esta obra

How can ocean warming at the NW Iberian Peninsula affect mussel aquaculture?

Understanding and forecasting future consequences of climate change in mussel aquaculture industry require the assessment of changes in physical parameters which may affect mussel growth. The FLOW module of Delft3D model forced with climatic data was validated and calibrated for the Rías Baixas (NW Iberian Peninsula), one of the areas with the highest mussel production in the world. This model was used to perform historical (1999-2018) and future (2080-2099) projections. Temperature and stratification water conditions were compared in order to determine at what extent climate change can affect mussel production. Thermal stress will increase in a non-homogeneous throughout the water column and the comfort level of mussels will be reduced by more than 60% in the upper layers and more than 30% in deep layers in most of the mussel raft polygons. Water column stratification will increase ~ 5-10 cycles h-1 in most of the polygons reducing the vertical exchange of nutrients and oxygen. Hereby changes in water temperature and stratification at the end of the century will not be favorable for mussel growth.publishe

The impact of climate change on the geographical distribution of habitat-forming macroalgae in the Rías Baixas

In the current scenario of climate change characterized by a generalized warming, many species are facing local extinctions in areas with conditions near their thermal tolerance threshold. At present, the southern limit of the geographical distribution of several habitat-forming algae of cold-temperate affinities is located in the Northwest Iberian Peninsula, and the Rías Baixas may be acting as contemporary refugia at the range edge. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze future changes induced by ocean warming in this area that may induce changes in macroalgae populations. The Delft3D-Flow model forced with climatic data was used to calculate July-August sea surface temperature (SST) for the present (1999-2018) and for the far future (2080-2099). Mean daily SST was used to develop and calibrate a mechanistic geographical distribution model based on the thermal survival threshold of two intertidal habitat-forming macroalgae, namely Himanthalia elongata (L.) S.F.Gray and Bifurcaria bifurcata R. Ross. Results show that H. elongata will become extinct in the Rías Baixas by the end of the century, while B. bifurcata will persist and may occupy potential free space left by the decline in H. elongata.publishe

DiversityGAN: Diversity-Aware Vehicle Motion Prediction via Latent Semantic Sampling

Vehicle trajectory prediction is crucial for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistant systems. While existing approaches may sample from a predicted distribution of vehicle trajectories, they lack the ability to explore it -- a key ability for evaluating safety from a planning and verification perspective. In this work, we devise a novel approach for generating realistic and diverse vehicle trajectories. We extend the generative adversarial network (GAN) framework with a low-dimensional approximate semantic space, and shape that space to capture semantics such as merging and turning. We sample from this space in a way that mimics the predicted distribution, but allows us to control coverage of semantically distinct outcomes. We validate our approach on a publicly available dataset and show results that achieve state-of-the-art prediction performance, while providing improved coverage of the space of predicted trajectory semantics.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Parasite, Compartments, and Molecules: Trick versus Treatment on Chagas Disease

Chagas disease, caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, is endemic to Latin America, standing out as a socio-economic problem for low-income tropical populations. Such disease affects millions of people worldwide and emerges in nonendemic areas due to migration and climate changes. The current chemotherapy is restricted to two nitroderivatives (benznidazole and nifurtimox), which is unsatisfactory due to limited efficacy (particularly in chronic phase) and adverse side effects. T. cruzi life cycle is complex, including invertebrate and vertebrate hosts and three developmental forms (epimastigotes, trypomastigotes, and amastigotes). In this chapter, we will discuss promising cellular and molecular targets present in the vertebrate-dwelling forms of the parasite (trypomastigotes and amastigotes). Among the cellular targets, the mitochondrion is the most frequently studied; while among the molecular ones, we highlight squalene synthase, C14α-sterol demethylase, and cysteine proteases. In this scenario, proteomics becomes a valuable tool for the identification of other molecular targets, and some previously identified candidates will be also discussed. Multidisciplinary studies are needed to identify novel key molecules in T. cruzi in order to increase trypanocidal activity and reduce mammalian toxicity, ensuring the development of novel drugs for Chagas disease