La universitas, un crisol de la opinión

La lección recupera la categoría de natalidad en Hannah Arendt para poner de relieve el carácter único e iniciante de la palabra humana, que implicada en un intercambio dialógico de opiniones, donde el diseño del lugar y convivencia para un ejercicio gozoso de conversación que se abre reverentemente a la otredad de la persona con quien se dialoga, constituye la base fundamental de una comunidad política, asamblea, que se convierta en fermento de una sociedad más democrática. Ese es el rol, propone el autor, que puede jugar la universidad en las circunstancias que actualmente amenazan con condenarnos al silencio o a la unanimidad impuesta

Neural Connectivity with Hidden Gaussian Graphical State-Model

The noninvasive procedures for neural connectivity are under questioning. Theoretical models sustain that the electromagnetic field registered at external sensors is elicited by currents at neural space. Nevertheless, what we observe at the sensor space is a superposition of projected fields, from the whole gray-matter. This is the reason for a major pitfall of noninvasive Electrophysiology methods: distorted reconstruction of neural activity and its connectivity or leakage. It has been proven that current methods produce incorrect connectomes. Somewhat related to the incorrect connectivity modelling, they disregard either Systems Theory and Bayesian Information Theory. We introduce a new formalism that attains for it, Hidden Gaussian Graphical State-Model (HIGGS). A neural Gaussian Graphical Model (GGM) hidden by the observation equation of Magneto-encephalographic (MEEG) signals. HIGGS is equivalent to a frequency domain Linear State Space Model (LSSM) but with sparse connectivity prior. The mathematical contribution here is the theory for high-dimensional and frequency-domain HIGGS solvers. We demonstrate that HIGGS can attenuate the leakage effect in the most critical case: the distortion EEG signal due to head volume conduction heterogeneities. Its application in EEG is illustrated with retrieved connectivity patterns from human Steady State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEP). We provide for the first time confirmatory evidence for noninvasive procedures of neural connectivity: concurrent EEG and Electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings on monkey. Open source packages are freely available online, to reproduce the results presented in this paper and to analyze external MEEG databases

α′ corrections of Reissner-Nordström black holes

We study the first-order in α′ corrections to non-extremal 4-dimensional dyonic Reissner-Nordström (RN) black holes with equal electric and magnetic charges in the context of Heterotic Superstring effective field theory (HST) compactified on a T6. The particular embedding of the dyonic RN black hole in HST considered here is not supersymmetric in the extremal limit. We show that, at first order in α′, consistency with the equations of motion of the HST demands additional scalar and vector fields become active, and we provide explicit expressions for all of them. We determine analytically the position of the event horizon of the black hole, as well as the corrections to the extremality bound, to the temperature and to the entropy, checking that they are related by the first law of black-hole thermodynamics, so that ∂S/∂M = 1/T. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of the Weak Gravity Conjecture, clarifying that entropy corrections for fixed mass and charge at extremality do not necessarily imply corrections to the extremal charge-to-mass ratioThis work has been supported in part by the MCIU, AEI, FEDER (UE) grant PGC2018- 095205-B-I00, CONACyT grant 237351 and by the Spanish Research Agency (Agencia Estatal de Investigación) through the grant IFT Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV- 2016-0597. PAC was mostly funded by Fundación La Caixa through a La Caixa - Severo Ochoa" International pre-doctoral grant. In the last stages of this project PAC was supported by the KU Leuven grant \Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds C16/16/00

Force–velocity profiles in CrossFit athletes: A cross-sectional study considering sex, age, and training frequency

Introduction: The force–velocity profile has been analysed previously in different sports modalities; nevertheless, it has not been analysed in CrossFit. Objective: The aim of this study was to report neuromuscular characteristics of CrossFit athletes using their individual force-velocity profile, investigating differences according to sex, age, and training frequency. Materials and Meth-ods: 72 males (33.17 ± 6.86 years; BMI: 25.93 ± 3.64 kg/m2) and 18 females (30.11 ± 6.92 years; BMI: 23.53 ± 3.98 kg/m2) participated in this study. The force-velocity profile was calculated using Samo-zino’s method. Furthermore, neuromuscular characterization was completed with a squat jump and three drop jumps (20, 30, and 40 cm). Results: Regarding sex, significant differences in all analysed mechanical variables (p < 0.001) were found except for the theoretical maximal force (p = 0.944). No significant differences were found between age groups. Considering training frequency, athletes who train more than 5 days per week showed higher performance in all analysed mechanical variables (p < 0.05). Conclusion: CrossFit athletes have a force-velocity profile more oriented towards velocity than force. Males and females have different neuromuscular characteristics, also neuromus-cular improvements can be achieved at any age. Moreover, higher neuromuscular performance is developed with a training frequency of 5 days or more per week

Tool for applying mathematical morphology operators to grayscale images

Pasos previos a la medición y clasificación de rasgos y la posterior caracterización de imágenes, son el filtrado y la segmentación. Dada la utilidad de la morfología matemática en tales tareas, surgió la necesidad de incorporar una herramienta para la aplicación de operadores de morfología matemática sobre imágenes en escala de gris al prototipo Cimahis (Caracterización de imágenes histológicas), actualmente en desarrollo en la Universidad de Carabobo. La investigación se completó en tres etapas: un estudio del estado del arte del problema donde se revisaron las bases teóricas de la morfología matemática, sus aplicaciones prácticas y la documentación del Cimahis, seguida de una etapa de planificación y diseño usando la metodología Feature Driven Development (FDD) donde se crearon los artefactos de diseño y se hizo la planeación de actividades que guío la etapa de construcción y prueba en la cual se llevó a cabo la implementación e integración de la herramienta con el prototipo y se hicieron varios test para validar la correctitud en los operadores morfológicos y estimar la eficiencia relativa de la herramienta respecto de otros programas de procesamiento de imágenes. Al final se construyó una herrmienta funcional y eficiente que cuenta con doce operaciones morfológicas, entre las cuales están, el gradiente morfológico, las transformaciones top-hat, bottom-hat y dos operadores de reconstrucción morfológica. La mayoría de los resultados experimentales muestran tiempos de ejecución entre seis y treinta veces más bajos que los generados por las contrapartes disponibles en las herramientas de procesamiento morfológico usadas para hacer las pruebas.Steps prior to the measurement and classification of features and the subsequent characterization of images are filtering and segmentation. Given the usefulness of mathematical morphology in such tasks, the need arose to incorporate a tool for the application of mathematical morphology operators on grayscale images to the Cimahis prototype (Characterization of histological images), currently under development at the University of Carabobo . The research was completed in three stages: a study of the state of the art of the problem where the theoretical bases of mathematical morphology, its practical applications and the Cimahis documentation were reviewed, followed by a planning and design stage using the Feature Driven Development methodology. (FDD) where the design artifacts were created and the planning of activities was carried out that guided the construction and testing stage in which the implementation and integration of the tool with the prototype was carried out and several tests were carried out to validate the correctness in the morphological operators and estimate the relative efficiency of the tool compared to other image processing programs. In the end, a functional and efficient tool was built that has twelve morphological operations, among which are the morphological gradient, the top-hat, bottom-hat transformations and two morphological reconstruction operators. Most of the experimental results show execution times between six and thirty times lower than those generated by the available counterparts in the morphological processing tools used to do the tests