Jove i participatiu : requisits del nou model de transmissió cultural

La imitació com a mètode d'aprenentatge humà mai ha estat un procés simple. L'evolució cultural de l'espècie humana que d'ella es deriva segueix arrelada a una actitud selectiva -els models escollits es caracteritzen per ser individus amb prestigi-, però sembla ser que aquesta reputació ja no recau en els mateixos de sempre. Mitjançant un estudi de camp amb els Tsimane' -un grup ètnic bolivià-, s'ha vist que el lideratge ha passat a mans dels més joves, tenint aquests un alt nivell educatiu i una forta vinculació amb el treball comunitari.La imitación como método de aprendizaje humano nunca ha sido un proceso simple. La evolución cultural de la especie humana que de ella se deriva sigue arraigada a una actitud selectiva -los modelos escogidos se caracterizan por ser individuos con prestigio-, pero parece ser que esa reputación ya no recae en los mismos de siempre. Mediante un estudio de campo con los Tsimane -un grupo étnico boliviano-, se ha visto que el liderazgo ha pasado a manos de los más jóvenes, teniendo éstos un alto nivel educativo y una fuerte vinculación con el trabajo comunitario.Imitation as a method of human learning has never been a simple process. The cultural evolution of the human species based on this method continues to be established in a selective attitude - the selected models are characterized for being prestigious individuals. However, it seems to be that this prestige is no longer conferred to the same models as before. A field study with the Tsimane' - an ethnic group in Bolivia-, has demonstrated that the leadership has moved to the hands of the youngest, who have a high educational level and strong links with community work

Human's Cognitive Ability to Assess Facial Cues from Photographs: A Study of Sexual Selection in the Bolivian Amazon

Background: Evolutionary theory suggests that natural selection favors the evolution of cognitive abilities which allow humans to use facial cues to assess traits of others. The use of facial and somatic cues by humans has been studied mainly in western industrialized countries, leaving unanswered whether results are valid across cultures. Methodology/Principal Findings: Our objectives were to test (i) if previous finding about raters' ability to get accurate information about an individual by looking at his facial photograph held in low-income non western rural societies and (ii) whether women and men differ in this ability. To answer the questions we did a study during July-August 2007 among the Tsimane', a native Amazonian society of foragers-farmers in Bolivia. We asked 40 females and 40 males 16-25 years of age to rate four traits in 93 facial photographs of other Tsimane' males. The four traits were based on sexual selection theory, and included health, dominance, knowledge, and sociability. The rating scale for each trait ranged from one (least) to four (most). The average rating for each trait was calculated for each individual in the photograph and regressed against objective measures of the trait from the person in the photograph. We found that (i) female Tsimane' raters were able to assess facial cues related to health, dominance, and knowledge and (ii) male Tsimane' raters were able to assess facial cues related to dominance, knowledge, and sociability. Conclusions/Significance: Our results support the existence of a human ability to identify objective traits from facial cues, as suggested by evolutionary theory

Moving beyond a snapshot to understand changes in the well-being of native Amazonians : panel evidence (2002-2006) from Bolivia

Forces such as the opening of trade, globalization, multinational corporate resource extraction, urbanization, acculturation, and colonization catalyze economic, ecological, and sociocultural change, which can threaten the well-being and habitat of native Amazonians. Understanding these forces is of paramount importance to improve the well-being of native Amazonians and to foster the conservation of biological diversity, yet most analyses of these forces rely on cross-sectional data. Though adequate to describe the association between variables at one point in time, cross-sectional data do not allow one to estimate changes in well-being over time. We collected data annually during five consecutive years (2002-2006, inclusive) from a foraging and farming society of native Amazonians in Bolivia (Tsimane') to estimate annual rates of change for seven indicators of adult well-being. Indicators encompassed both objective and subjective measures of well-being that included economic, health, psychological, and social dimensions that overlap well with Tsimane' notions of well-being. The annual rate of change in the inflation-adjusted (hereafter real) value of food consumption (+6.35%), body mass index (+0.71%), and incidence of anger (−10.40%) show significant improvements over time, but the annual rate of change in the self-reported number of recent ailments (+7.35%) shows a significant deterioration. Trends in other indicators of well-being (smiles, real wealth, social relations) show positive but insignificant rates of change. Results did not vary by sex and were consistent when using other indicators of well-bein

Evaluating indices of traditional ecological knowledge: a methodological contribution

BACKGROUND: New quantitative methods to collect and analyze data have produced novel findings in ethnobiology. A common application of quantitative methods in ethnobiology is to assess the traditional ecological knowledge of individuals. Few studies have addressed reliability of indices of traditional ecological knowledge constructed with different quantitative methods. METHODS: We assessed the associations among eight indices of traditional ecological knowledge from data collected from 650 native Amazonians. We computed Spearman correlations, Chronbach's alpha, and principal components factor analysis for the eight indices. RESULTS: We found that indices derived from different raw data were weakly correlated (rho<0.5), whereas indices derived from the same raw data were highly correlated (rho>0.5; p < 0.001). We also found a relatively high internal consistency across data from the eight indices (Chronbach's alpha = 0.78). Last, results from a principal components factor analysis of the eight indices suggest that the eight indices were positively related, although the association was low when considering only the first factor. CONCLUSION: A possible explanation for the relatively low correlation between indices derived from different raw data, but relatively high internal consistency of the eight indices is that the methods capture different aspects of an individual's traditional ecological knowledge. To develop a reliable measure of traditional ecological knowledge, researchers should collect raw data using a variety of methods and then generate an aggregated measure that contains data from the various components of traditional ecological knowledge. Failure to do this will hinder cross-cultural comparisons

Lessons for Research Policy and Practice: The Case of Co-enquiry Research With Rural Communities

This article explores the relationship between institutional funding for research and community-based or co-enquiry research practice. It examines the implementation of co-enquiry research in the COMBIOSERVE project, which was funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme for research and innovation, between the years 2012 and 2015. Research partnerships between Latin American and European civil society organisations, research institutions, and Latin American rural communities are analysed. Challenges for effective collaboration in co-enquiry and lessons learned for research policy and practice are outlined. Based on our case study we suggest that: (1) the established values and practices of academia seem largely unfavourable towards alternative forms of research, such as co-enquiry; (2) the policies and administrative practices of this European Commission funding are unsuitable for adopting participatory forms of enquiry; and (3) the approach to research funding supports short engagements with communities whereas long-term collaborations are more desirable. Based on our case study, we propose more flexible funding models that support face-to-face meetings between researchers and communities from the time of proposal drafting, adaptation of research processes to local dynamics, adaptation of administrative processes to the capacities of all participants, and potential for long-term collaborations. Large-scale funding bodies such as European Commission research programmes are leaders in the evolution of research policy and practice. They have the power and the opportunity to publicly acknowledge the value of partnerships with civil society organisations and communities, actively support co-enquiry, and foment interest in innovative forms of research

Commonality and variation in mental representations of music revealed by a cross-cultural comparison of rhythm priors in 15 countries

Music is present in every known society but varies from place to place. What, if anything, is universal to music cognition? We measured a signature of mental representations of rhythm in 39 participant groups in 15 countries, spanning urban societies and Indigenous populations. Listeners reproduced random 'seed' rhythms; their reproductions were fed back as the stimulus (as in the game of 'telephone'), such that their biases (the prior) could be estimated from the distribution of reproductions. Every tested group showed a sparse prior with peaks at integer-ratio rhythms. However, the importance of different integer ratios varied across groups, often reflecting local musical practices. Our results suggest a common feature of music cognition: discrete rhythm 'categories' at small-integer ratios. These discrete representations plausibly stabilize musical systems in the face of cultural transmission but interact with culture-specific traditions to yield the diversity that is evident when mental representations are probed across many cultures. [Abstract copyright: © 2024. The Author(s).

SELNET clinical practice guidelines for bone sarcoma

Bone sarcoma are infrequent diseases, representing < 0.2% of all adult neoplasms. A multidisciplinary management within reference centers for sarcoma, with discussion of the diagnostic and therapeutic strategies within an expert multidisciplinary tumour board, is essential for these patients, given its heterogeneity and low frequency. This approach leads to an improvement in patient's outcome, as demonstrated in several studies. The Sarcoma European Latin-American Network (SELNET), aims to improve clinical outcome in sarcoma care, with a special focus in Latin-American countries. These Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) have been developed and agreed by a multidisciplinary expert group (including medical and radiation oncologist, surgical oncologist, orthopaedic surgeons, radiologist, pathologist, molecular biologist and representatives of patients advocacy groups) of the SELNET consortium, and are conceived to provide the standard approach to diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of bone sarcoma patients in the Latin-American context

Knowledge and Consumption of Wild Plants: A Comparative Study in Two Tsimane’ Villages in the Bolivian Amazon

Researchers have often equated ethnobotanical knowledge collected through interview questions with actual uses of plants, but knowledge and uses of plants might or might not move in lockstep. Using data from 132 adults living in two villages of a foraging-farming society in the Bolivian Amazon, the Tsimane, we compare ethnobotanical knowledge with uses of wild and semi-domesticated plants. Villages differed in proximity to the market town and in dependence on forest resources. We find that people in the more remote village knew and used more plants than did people in the accessible village. We also find that individual ethnobotanical knowledge correlates positively with uses of plants in the pooled sample and in the isolated village, but not in the village with less dependence on forest resources. Researchers could use the gap between ethnobotanical knowledge and actual uses of plants to study erosion of ethnobotanical knowledge

Detector de eventos remotos basado en técnicas de procesamiento digital de video

El tema del presente proyecto profesional trata sobre las diferentes técnicas de procesamiento digital de imágenes aplicadas a un sistema de vigilancia, con cámaras IP conectadas en red. Estas técnicas de procesamiento hacen al sistema capaz de detectar automáticamente eventos remotos, tales como la detección de movimiento o el cambio de iluminación de una escena. El desarrollo del proyecto está dividido en cinco capítulos. El primer capítulo presenta un panorama general del proyecto. El segundo capítulo explica los fundamentos teóricos utilizados. El tercer capítulo muestra el desarrollo de los algoritmos utilizados para la detección automática de eventos. El cuarto capítulo expone las características del diseño y la implementación del sistema. Finalmente, el último capítulo es para realizar un análisis de los resultados obtenidos. Al finalizar el trabajo, luego de múltiples pruebas del sistema, se llegó a la conclusión de que la detección de eventos remotos utilizando técnicas de procesamiento digital de vídeo es un método de fácil implementación y superior a muchos sistemas actuales.Tesi