Y el Madrid, Qué, ¿Otra Vez Campeón de Europa? ¿No? /And Real Madrid Once Again European Champion, Right? Spanish architecture and CIAM debates from 1953 to 1959

In August 11 1956 José Luis Sert opened the Dubrovnik CIAM 10 meeting with his speech on The Future of CIAM. Just two months earlier, June 13, the Real Madrid Football Club won the European Cup in Paris. It was the first European Cup as such and the first of the many trophies won by the Spanish club. This, of course, is an anecdote, but a fairly informative one. That a Spanish and exiled architect opened the CIAM 10 strongly contrasted with one of the few international events starred by Francoist Spain: winning the European cup. This is an oblique way of saying that CIAM debates were far from being a concern in the Spanish theoretical and professional architecture milieu in the 1950s. Spanish architects were starting to incorporate the basic trends of post-war modernism to their designs at this time, and the American and European modern architecture slowly began to filter, but they were far from being involved in the heated 1956 CIAM debate. However, one Spanish architect, José Antonio Coderch entered CIAM, following Sert’s suggestions, ready to participate as a Team 10 member in the 1959 Otterlo schwanengesang, and for sure some of the preoccupations that occupied CIAM also concerned the Spaniards. This paper recounts how in this brief period, say between 1953 and 1959 with the key middle date of 1956, the contemporary CIAM debates obliquely entered the previously isolated Spain, and how Spanish architects caught up (if so) with post-war modernism and its criticism at the same time.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biomimetic Engineering

Humankind is a privileged animal species for many reasons. A remarkable one is its ability to conceive and manufacture objects. Human industry is indeed leading the various winning strategies (along with language and culture) that has permitted this primate to extraordinarily increase its life expectancy and proliferation rate. (It is indeed so successful, that it now threatens the whole planet.) The design of this industry kicks off in the brain, a computing machine particularly good at storing, recognizing and associating patterns. Even in a time when human beings tend to populate non-natural, man-made environments, the many forms, colorings, textures and behaviors of nature continuously excite our senses and blend in our thoughts, even more deeply during childhood. Then, it would be exaggerated to say that Biomimetics is a brand new strategy. As long as human creation is based on previously acquired knowledge and experiences, it is not surprising that engineering, the arts, and any form of expression, is influenced by nature’s way to some extent. The design of human industry has evolved from very simple tools, to complex engineering devices. Nature has always provided us with a rich catalog of excellent materials and inspiring designs. Now, equipped with new machinery and techniques, we look again at Nature. We aim at mimicking not only its best products, but also its design principles. Organic life, as we know it, is indeed a vast pool of diversity. Living matter inhabits almost every corner of the terrestrial ecosphere. From warm open-air ecosystems to the extreme conditions of hot salt ponds, living cells have found ways to metabolize the sources of energy, and get organized in complex organisms of specialized tissues and organs that adapt themselves to the environment, and can modify the environment to their own needs as well. Life on Earth has evolved such a diverse portfolio of species that the number of designs, mechanisms and strategies that can actually be abstracted is astonishing. As August Krogh put it: "For a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, on which it can be most conveniently studied". The scientific method starts with a meticulous observation of natural phenomena, and humans are particularly good at that game. In principle, the aim of science is to understand the physical world, but an observer’s mind can behave either as an engineer or as a scientist. The minute examination of the many living forms that surround us has led to the understanding of new organizational principles, some of which can be imported in our production processes. In practice, bio-inspiration can arise at very different levels of observation: be it social organization, the shape of an organism, the structure and functioning of organs, tissular composition, cellular form and behavior, or the detailed structure of molecules. Our direct experience of the wide portfolio of species found in nature, and their particular organs, have clearly favored that the initial models would come from the organism and organ levels. But the development of new techniques (on one hand to observe the micro- and nanostructure of living beings, and on the other to simulate the complex behavior of social communities) have significantly extended the domain of interest

Algunas reflexiones en torno al modelo contable público español

El Prof. Vela se refirió a la normalización de la contabilidad pública en España, identificó a la LGP de 1977 como el paso fundamental de cambio, tanto en filosofía como herramienta de registro y control. Tras explicar la evolución de dicha contabilidad pública en las cuatro últimas décadas resalta a la imagen fiel como el objetivo prioritario de la misma, al mismo tiempo que el de control de la legalidad, a través del presupuesto. Finalmente señala que, en su opinión, el condicionamiento del PGCP al privado en aras de la homogeneización debiera ser revisado puesto que, a veces, puede generar información a través de los estados contables que no sea de interés para los gestores o políticos. En tal sentido aboga por unos estados contables más preocupados por la utilidad de los mismos para la toma de decisiones.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Selfo: A class of self-organizing connection games

Selfo is defined as a class of abstract strategy board games subscribed to the category of connection games. Its name derives from the phenomenon of self-organization (i.e. the increase in a system’s organization without external guidance), since during the game the sets of pieces might flow in a coordinated way as they step on the board. Despite its very simple definition (“group all your pieces by moving in turns to adjacent cells”) complex self-organization processes takes place under concrete circumstances (a balanced distribution of pieces and similar levels of expertise in the players), and are the result of abrupt and deep changes in the tactics. Since a big number of variants have been found to meet the conditions for self-organization, the particular values given to the traditional parameters that define a game (i.e., board tiling, size and initial position, or number of pieces and players) are not so relevant. The Selfo class of connection games is defined, instead, by the interrelations among parameters in order to favor selforganization

Computación evolutiva: El legado de Darwin en la Ingeniería Informática

La biomimética es la disciplina que estudia la aplicación de diseños naturales en áreas como la ingeniería o la medicina. El tren bala japonés, el nylon o el velcro se crearon a partir de características propias de la rapidez del martín pescador, la elasticidad de la tela de araña o la sujeción al tejido del espinoso cardo alpino. Otra prueba más de que la naturaleza es sabia

How can identity assert a claim to citizenship? In search of a safeguard against statelessness

There are currently 10 million stateless persons in the world, many of which have been rendered stateless due to the state with which they feel a bond of attachment refusing to acknowledge their claim to citizenship. The “genuine link” required for having access to citizenship is currently determined by certain principles. This paper aims to determine how identity can help an individual assert a claim to citizenship and whether this can provide individuals with a safeguard against statelessness

AI Methods in Algorithmic Composition: A Comprehensive Survey

Algorithmic composition is the partial or total automation of the process of music composition by using computers. Since the 1950s, different computational techniques related to Artificial Intelligence have been used for algorithmic composition, including grammatical representations, probabilistic methods, neural networks, symbolic rule-based systems, constraint programming and evolutionary algorithms. This survey aims to be a comprehensive account of research on algorithmic composition, presenting a thorough view of the field for researchers in Artificial Intelligence.This study was partially supported by a grant for the MELOMICS project (IPT-300000-2010-010) from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and a grant for the CAUCE project (TSI-090302-2011-8) from the Spanish Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio. The first author was supported by a grant for the GENEX project (P09-TIC- 5123) from the Consejería de Innovación y Ciencia de Andalucía

The Evolution of Controller-Free Molecular Motors from Spatial Constraints

Locomotion of robotic and virtual agents is a challenging task requiring the control of several degrees of freedom as well as the coordination of multiple subsystems. Traditionally, it is engineered by top-down design and finetuning of the agent’s morphology and controller. A relatively recent trend in fields such as evolutionary robotics, computer animation and artificial life has been the coevolution and mutual adaptation of the morphology and controller in computational agent models. However, the controller is generally modeled as a complex system, often a neural or gene regulatory network. In the present study, inspired by molecular biology and based on normal modal analysis, we formulate a behavior-finding framework for the design of bipedal agents that are able to walk along a filament and have no explicit control system. Instead, agents interact with their environment in a purely reactive way. A simple mutation operator, based on physical relaxation, is used to drive the evolutionary search. Results show that gait patterns can be evolutionarily engineered from the spatial interaction between precisely tuned morphologies and the environment.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Complex and Diverse Morphologies Can Develop from a Minimal Genomic Model

While development plays a critical role in the emergence of diversity, its mechanical and chemical actions are considered to be inextricably correlated with genetic control. Since in most extant species the complex growth from zygote to adult organism is orchestrated by a complex gene regulatory network (GRN), the prevalent view is that the evolution of diverse morphologies must result from the evolution of diverse GRN topologies. By contrast, this work focuses on the unique e ect of developmental processes through an abstract model of self-regulated structure without genetic regulation|only modulation of initial conditions. Here, morphologies are generated by a simple evolutionary algorithm searching for the longest instances of unfolding dynamics based on tensegrity graphs. The usual regulatory function of the genome is taken over by physical constraints in the graphs, making morphological diversity a pure product of structural complexi cation. By highlighting the potential of structural development, our model is relevant to both "structuralist" biological models and bio-inspired systems engineering.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech