La “naturaleza” y la filosofía del buen vivir

Aimé Cesaire, en su obra “Una Tempestad”, expone un diálogo constituyente de la modernidad europea. Es entre Próspero y Calibán. Próspero: -...simio maldito! ¡Cómo se puede ser tan feo! Calibán: -¡Vos me considerás feo, pero vos a mi no me parecés nada lindo! ... Próspero: -...podrías por lo menos agradecerme el haberte enseñado a hablar. ¡Un bárbaro! ¡Una bestia bruta que yo eduqué, formé, que yo saqué de la animalidad que todavía se manifiesta todo el tiempo! Calibán: -Desde ya eso no es verdad. Salvo, por supuesto a chapurrear tu lengua para comprender tus órdenes: cortar madera, lavar los platos, pescar, plantar legumbres, porque sos demasiado haragán para hacerlo. En cuanto a tu ciencia, ¿alguna vez me la enseñaste?... Próspero: -¿Qué serías vos sin mí? Calibán: -¿Sin vos?, Pero, ¡sencillamente el rey! ¡El rey de la isla! El rey de mi isla, a la que tengo derecho por Sycorax, mi madre. He ahí algunos datos del “encuentro de culturas”, que como es obvio en el diálogo, es un conflicto instalado desde la simiente del contacto colonial. De modo que la emergencia de nuevos conocimientos o aquilatadas experiencias de estos mundos del Abya Yala, adoptan el camino de la contraconquista que permita hacer emerger la la lucha por la emancipación. Es lo que advertiremos enseguida, al resumir las filosofías andinas y sus implicancias sobre la “idea” de Naturaleza de los pueblos originarios que han experimentado la experiencia del colonialismo imperial

Open science prevents mindless science.

Lessons from a case of academic misconduc

Effect of increasing the price of sugar-sweetened beverages on alcoholic beverage purchases: an economic analysis of sales data

This is the final published version. Available from BMJ Publishing Group via the DOI in this record.Background Taxing soft-drinks may reduce their purchase, but assessing the impact on health demands wider consideration on alternative beverage choices. Effects on alcoholic drinks are of particular concern, as many contain similar or greater amounts of sugar than soft-drinks and have additional health harms. Changes in consumption of alcoholic drinks may reinforce or negate the intended effect of price changes for soft-drinks. Methods A partial demand model, adapted from the Almost Ideal Demand System, was applied to Kantar Worldpanel data from 31 919 households from January 2012 to December 2013, covering drink purchases for home consumption, providing ~6million purchases aggregated into 11 groups, including three levels of soft-drink, three of other non-alcoholic drinks and five of alcoholic drinks. Results An increase in the price of high-sugar drinks leads to an increase in the purchase of lager, an increase in the price of medium-sugar drinks reduces purchases of alcoholic drinks, while an increase in the price of diet/ low-sugar drinks increases purchases of beer, cider and wines. Overall, the effects of price rises are greatest in the low-income group. Conclusion Increasing the price of soft-drinks may change purchase patterns for alcohol. Increasing the price of medium-sugar drinks has the potential to have a multiplier-effect beneficial to health through reducing alcohol purchases, with the converse for increases in the price of diet-drinks. Although the reasons for such associations cannot be explained from this analysis, requiring further study, the design of fiscal interventions should now consider these wider potential outcomes.UK Department of Health Policy Research ProgrammeMedical Research Council (MRC

Impact on alcohol purchasing of a ban on multi-buy promotions: A quasi-experimental evaluation comparing Scotland with England and Wales

Aims: To evaluate the impact of the 2011 Scottish ban on multi-buy promotions of alcohol in retail stores. Design and setting: Difference-in-differences analysis was used to estimate the impact of the ban on the volume of alcohol purchased by Scottish households, compared with those in England and Wales, between January 2010 and June 2012. Participants: A total of 22356 households in Scotland, England and Wales. Measurements: Records of alcohol purchasing from each of four categories (beer and cider, wine, spirits and flavoured alcoholic beverages), as well as total volume of pure alcohol purchased. Findings: Controlling for general time trends and household heterogeneity, there was no significant effect of the multi-buy ban in Scotland on volume of alcohol purchased either for the whole population or for individual socio-economic groups. There was also no significant effect on those who were large pre-ban purchasers of alcohol. Most multi-buys were for beer and cider or for wine. The frequency of shopping trips involving beer and cider purchases increased by 9.2% following the ban (P<0.01), while the number of products purchased on each trip decreased by 8.1% (P<0.01). For wine, however, these effects were not significant. Conclusions: Banning multi-buy promotions for alcohol in Scotland did not reduce alcohol purchasing in the short term. Wider regulation of price promotion and price may be needed to achieve this. © 2013 The Authors. Addiction published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society for the Study of Addiction

Policies for Tobacco and E-Cigarette Use: A Survey of All Higher Education Institutions and NHS Trusts in England.

INTRODUCTION: There is an absence of evidence regarding the impact of treating tobacco smoking and vaping equivalently in workplace policies. We aimed to describe and compare smoking and vaping policies in acute nonspecialist NHS Trusts (n = 131) and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) (n = 131) in England. METHODS: We conducted a census of smoking and vaping policies through organizational websites searches and direct requests for information. We recorded whether and where smoking and vaping were permitted. RESULTS: Smoking was prohibited indoors in all organizations. No NHS Trust permitted smoking freely outdoors, in contrast with 60% of HEIs. In 27% of NHS Trusts and 33% of HEIs smoking was permitted in designated areas, while in 73% of NHS Trusts and 8% of HEIs smoking was prohibited anywhere on site. Vaping was prohibited indoors in all NHS Trusts and all but one HEI, but permitted freely outdoors in 18% of NHS Trusts and 75% of HEIs. Vaping was permitted in designated outdoor spaces in 23% of NHS Trusts: 21% had areas shared with smokers; 2% had separate vaping areas. Vaping was permitted in designated outdoor areas in 18% of HEIs, all of which were shared with smokers. Vaping was prohibited anywhere on site in 54% of NHS Trusts and 6% of HEIs. CONCLUSIONS: Policies vary considerably in whether vaping and smoking are treated equivalently. Smoking policies in most HEIs should be reviewed to include more effective tobacco control approaches. Evidence is needed on the impact of imposing shared or separate spaces on vapers and smokers. IMPLICATIONS: This report provides a comprehensive review of smoking and vaping policies in two types of organization across England. It highlights key discrepancies between current public health recommendations for vaping and existing workplace policies, which often lead to smokers and vapers sharing spaces. The report identifies the need for evidence on the impact of imposing shared spaces on smokers and vapers to inform workplace policies that maximize public health benefit

Beyond choice architecture: advancing the science of changing behaviour at scale.

Addressing the global threats to population and planetary health requires changing many behaviours at scale. This demands consideration not only of the effect size of an intervention but also its reach - the proportion of the population exposed to the intervention.We propose that a relatively under-researched and generally poorly specified set of interventions involving changes to physical micro-environments - often referred to as Choice Architecture - has the potential to make a significant contribution to meeting this urgent challenge.Realising the potential of Choice Architecture interventions requires integration of basic - i.e. laboratory-based - and applied - i.e. field-based - research, generating interventions that can be delivered at scale alongside advancing theory. We illustrate this with examples to highlight the complementarity of laboratory and field studies informed by and in turn updating the results of evidence synthesis. The examples comprise two sets of interventions - changing the relative availability of products and changing their size - to reduce consumption of meat, energy from food and alcohol across populations

Beyond choice architecture:advancing the science of changing behaviour at scale

Abstract Addressing the global threats to population and planetary health requires changing many behaviours at scale. This demands consideration not only of the effect size of an intervention but also its reach – the proportion of the population exposed to the intervention. We propose that a relatively under-researched and generally poorly specified set of interventions involving changes to physical micro-environments – often referred to as Choice Architecture - has the potential to make a significant contribution to meeting this urgent challenge. Realising the potential of Choice Architecture interventions requires integration of basic – i.e. laboratory-based – and applied – i.e. field-based – research, generating interventions that can be delivered at scale alongside advancing theory. We illustrate this with examples to highlight the complementarity of laboratory and field studies informed by and in turn updating the results of evidence synthesis. The examples comprise two sets of interventions – changing the relative availability of products and changing their size - to reduce consumption of meat, energy from food and alcohol across populations

Application of Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry to river restoration

This research is funded by the Environment Agency and United Utilities whose support is gratefully acknowledged. Some of the methods employed in this work have been tested on the background of the results obtained in MorphSed (www.morphsed.es), a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competiveness and the European Regional Development Fund Scheme (FEDER; CGL2012-36394). The second author is funded by a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship (RYC-2010-06264). Authors acknowledge the support from the Economy and Knowledge Department of the Catalan Government through the Consolidated Research Group ‘Fluvial Dynamics Research Group’ (2014 SGR 645). The authors thank Manel Llena from the University of Lleida for his help and contribution to the camera calibration experiments. We are also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their comments that greatly improved the manuscript.Peer reviewedPostprin