The Rhythm of our Lives. Aesthetic Perspectives East & West

The leading approach to everyday aesthetics for the past few decades has departed from analytic philosophical grounds, generating some tensions or dichotomies regarding its foundational cornerstones: the ordinary vs. extraordinary character of everyday aesthetic experience, contextual familiarity vs. strangeness, object vs. processual orientation, etc. Although John Dewey has been widely acclaimed as a sort of foundational figure for this burgueoning sub-discipline of aesthetics, maybe not enough emphasis has been laid on his very different pragmatist approach. In this regard, his reliance on Hegelian cum Darwinian premises might allow for a connection with other branches of continental as well as Asian philosophies, from which also some research on everyday aesthetics has been made. It is from this wider ontological framework that the notion of rhythm could be vindicated as a pivotal aspect of the aesthetic dimension of our everyday lives. Dewey deals extensively with it in Art as Experience, conceiving it as a sort of pattern of accomplished experiences, accounting also for his naturalistic approach and art and life continuity thesis. On the other hand, neo-pragmatist exponent Richard Shusterman, among others, has posited links of connection between Pragmatist aesthetics and East-Asian philosophies. Particularly, Dewey’s resonances with Asian philosophies have been studied, with a preeminence on the notions of harmony and rhythm. This paper will depart from the analysis of the notion of rhythm in Dewey’s philosophy, trying to hint at some possible developments of its implications. Particularly, it will expand on some East Asian paralelisms to his philosophy, trying to link them with the notion of rhythm as an epitomizing ground for the conjunction of the extraordinary (art) and the ordinary (life).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

The Poetic Dimension of Everyday Aesthetic Appreciation. Perspectives from East-Asian Cultures

As Yuriko Saito, one of the main exponents of everyday aesthetics holds, East-Asian cultures have long established a deep link between artistic practices and everyday life, transforming apparently mundane practices such as having a cup o ftea with cakes into a highly ritualized form of art (cha-no-yu) and allowing us to enjoy the fleeting moment. The tea ceremony example is grounded, as this paper aims at showing, on a whole East-Asian worldview (as exemplfieied in Confucianism, Daoism and Zen Buddhism philosophies) whereby aesthetic appreciation is deeply pervaded by a poetic feeling, mainly consisting in the interactive harmony or attunement established with the particular circumstances of one’s own life due precisely to its fleeting and evanescent nature. To accomplish this, savouring and perceiving the uniqueness ingrained in every single human experience, the adequate attitude is the poetic one, due to its holistic and non-discriminative nature. Having as its focus everyday life, or simply put, life as such in its specificity, traditional artistic practices in East-Asia as the arts of the brush, garden design or utilitarian crafts such as pottery, become means of revealing what, due to its closeness, lies hidden in ordinary experience. Utilitarian arts are, in this sense, a priviledged way of conveying this end due precisely to its practical link with ordinary existence, preventing the eventual arousal of a purely formal and detached apprehension. The only coherent way to develop this awareness of the extraordinary in the ordinary, to use Leddy’s expression, is through the main feature of all poetic qualities: indirect allusion and subdued reference so that what is close at hand may shine in a different light. Particularly, in association with Japanese Zen Buddhism, where the rootedness of aesthetics in the ordinary is stronger, it has frequently adopted the form of restraint, contention, reserve, or, as Saito puts it, “insufficiency”. This paper aims at showing with the help of a few examples how this difuse poetic attitude, so prevalent in Traditional East-Asian contexts, is required not only in standardized art practices, but also in a wider aesthetic level of awareness of our ordinary experiences. In order to justify these claims, it will refer first to the ideal of harmony or poetic resonance in Chinese aesthetics and then it will refer to some concrete Japanese aesthetic categories inspired by Zen Buddhism, such as mono-no-aware, sabi, wabi, or yugen

Phylogenetic inference's algorithms

Phylogenetic inference consist in the search of an evolutionary tree to explain the best way possible genealogical relationships of a set of species. Phylogenetic analysis has a large number of applications in areas such as biology, ecology, paleontology, etc. There are several criterias which has been defined in order to infer phylogenies, among which are the maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood. The first one tries to find the phylogenetic tree that minimizes the number of evolutionary steps needed to describe the evolutionary history among species, while the second tries to find the tree that has the highest probability of produce the observed data according to an evolutionary model. The search of a phylogenetic tree can be formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, which aims to find trees which satisfy simultaneously (and as much as possible) both criteria of parsimony and likelihood. Due to the fact that these criteria are different there won't be a single optimal solution (a single tree), but a set of compromise solutions. The solutions of this set are called "Pareto Optimal". To find this solutions, evolutionary algorithms are being used with success nowadays.This algorithms are a family of techniques, which aren’t exact, inspired by the process of natural selection. They usually find great quality solutions in order to resolve convoluted optimization problems. The way this algorithms works is based on the handling of a set of trial solutions (trees in the phylogeny case) using operators, some of them exchanges information between solutions, simulating DNA crossing, and others apply aleatory modifications, simulating a mutation. The result of this algorithms is an approximation to the set of the “Pareto Optimal” which can be shown in a graph with in order that the expert in the problem (the biologist when we talk about inference) can choose the solution of the commitment which produces the higher interest. In the case of optimization multi-objective applied to phylogenetic inference, there is open source software tool, called MO-Phylogenetics, which is designed for the purpose of resolving inference problems with classic evolutionary algorithms and last generation algorithms. REFERENCES [1] C.A. Coello Coello, G.B. Lamont, D.A. van Veldhuizen. Evolutionary algorithms for solving multi-objective problems. Spring. Agosto 2007 [2] C. Zambrano-Vega, A.J. Nebro, J.F Aldana-Montes. MO-Phylogenetics: a phylogenetic inference software tool with multi-objective evolutionary metaheuristics. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. En prensa. Febrero 2016

Cryomorphological topographies in the study of ice caves

Producción CientíficaThe current interest in ice caves requires that their varied manifestations be known as accurately as possible in view of their responses to a global change and also to their great potential as paleoenvironmental witnesses. This phenomenon has been known about for a long time but is still scarcely studied from the point of view of its cryological values and the evolution and distribution of many of their morphologies. For this, the development of cryomorphological topographies from traditional techniques to geodetic surveys with different tools, including terrestrial laser scanning, is one of the most current ways to characterize and quantify this type of cryospheric phenomena. It represents a new kind of periglacial cartography whose use is feasible in spite of the difficulties these environments present.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (project CGL2015-68144-R

Evaluation of the mechanical properties of self compacting concrete using current estimating models. Estimating the modulus of elasticity, tensile strength, and modulus of rupture of self compacting concrete

This study includes an analysis of the applicability of current models used for estimating the mechanical properties of conventional concrete to self-compacting concrete. The mechanical properties evaluated are: modulus of elasticity, tensile strength, and modulus of rupture. An extensive database which included the dosifications and the mechanical properties of 627 mixtures from 138 different references, was used. The models considered are: ACI, EC-2, NZS 3101:2006 (New Zealand code) and the CSA A23.3-04 (Canadian code). The precision in estimating the modulus of elasticity and tensile strength is acceptable for all models; however, all models are less precise in estimating the modulus of rupture

Coupled mantle dripping and lateral dragging controlling the lithosphere structure of the NW-Moroccan margin and the Atlas Mountains: A numerical experiment

Recent studies integrating gravity, geoid, surface heat flow, elevation and seismic data indicate a prominent lithospheric mantle thickening beneath the NW-Moroccan margin (LAB >200 km-depth) followed by thinning beneath the Atlas Domain (LAB about 80 km-depth). Such unusual configuration has been explained by the combination of mantle underthrusting due to oblique Africa-Eurasia convergence together with viscous dripping fed by asymmetric lateral mantle dragging, requiring a strong crust-mantle decoupling. In the present work we examine the physical conditions under which the proposed asymmetric mantle drip and drag mechanism can reproduce this lithospheric configuration. We also analyse the influence of varying the kinematic boundary conditions as well as the mantle viscosity and the initial lithosphere geometry. Results indicate that the proposed drip-drag mechanism is dynamically feasible and only requires a lateral variation of the lithospheric strength. The further evolution of the gravitational instability can become either in convective removal of the lithospheric mantle, mantle delamination, or subduction initiation. The model reproduces the main trends of the present-day lithospheric geometry across the NW-Moroccan margin and the Atlas Mountains, the characteristic time of the observed vertical movements, the amplitude and rates of uplift in the Atlas Mountains and offers an explanation to the Miocene to Pliocene volcanism. An abnormal constant tectonic subsidence rate in the margin is predicted. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Transport properties of a meson gas

We present recent results on a systematic method to calculate transport coefficients for a meson gas (in particular, we analyze a pion gas) at low temperatures in the context of Chiral Perturbation Theory. Our method is based on the study of Feynman diagrams with a power counting which takes into account collisions in the plasma by means of a non-zero particle width. In this way, we obtain results compatible with analysis of Kinetic Theory with just the leading order diagram. We show the behavior with temperature of electrical and thermal conductivities and shear and bulk viscosities, and we discuss the fundamental role played by unitarity. We obtain that bulk viscosity is negligible against shear viscosity near the chiral phase transition. Relations between the different transport coefficients and bounds on them based on different theoretical approximations are also discussed. We also comment on some applications to heavy-ion collisions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, IJMPE style. Contribution to the International Workshop X Hadron Physics (2007), Florianopolis, Brazil. Accepted for publication in IJMPE; 1 typo correcte