Enlightened mills: mechanizing olive oil production in Mediterranean Europe

© 2004 by the Society for the History of Technolog

Las drogas, sus implicancias culturales, políticas y económicas

Cinquenes Jornades de Foment de la Investigació de la FCHS (Any 1999-2000)Este trabajo tiene como intención demostrar como los diferentes estimulantes fueron apareciendo, desarrollándose y se asimilaron en diversas períodos históricos, según el desarrollo económico de cada época, a su vez estos ocuparon diversos lugares según la clase social. Para lograr hacer un pormenorizado análisis económico-político de esta problemática. Utilizo el materialismo histórico, basándome en la teoría del valor de Marx. Uso las categorías de mercancía, valor de uso, valor de cambio y en el estudio de las relaciones de poder que se dan al interior de estas sociedades productoras de drogas, me baso en el concepto de hegemonía. En el aspecto cultural, examino como el desarrollo de algunas sociedades ha estado fuertemente ligado al consumo de un número de substancias que alteran las funciones psíquicas del ser humano asociadas al desarrollo cultural de muchas civilizaciones, a través de una estructuración natural de la medicina y del ritual mágico-religioso, en contraposición, el uso indiscriminado de estas sustancias surge con el desarrollo de las sociedades de consumo, como parte de la cultura capitalista

Inca Garcilaso and global warming: keys to a contemporary reading of the royal Commentaries

Texto leído como charla inaugural en el Congreso Internacional “El Inca Garcilaso entre dos orillas: conmemorando los 400 años de su muerte”, Universidad de Alicante, 23-25 de noviembre del 2016.Se propone una lectura de los Comentarios reales (1609 y 1617) en clave contemporánea, es decir, encontrando en la obra significados pertinentes a problemáticas sociales e históricas de principios del siglo XXI. A diferencia de las lecturas tradicionales que se han hecho del Inca Garcilaso, basadas en criterios filológicos e historicistas, aquí se ensaya una interpretación hacia el futuro del Inca, es decir, según su validez para entender y contribuir a la solución de crisis actuales como el calentamiento global y el neocolonialismo.I propose a reading of the Royal Commentaries (1609 and 1617) in contemporary code, that is, finding in the work meanings pertinent to social and historical problems of the beginnings of the 21st century. In contrast to the traditional readings of the Inca Garcilaso, based on philological and historicist criteria, I offer an interpretation towards the future of the Inca, that is, according to his validity to understand and contribute to the solution of current crises such as global warming and neocolonialism

Physiological studies to optimize algal biomass production in phytoremediation processes

Nowadays microalgae are studied, and a number of species already mass-cultivated, for their application in many fields: food and feed, chemicals, pharmaceutical, phytoremediation and renewable energy. Phytoremediation, in particular, can become a valid integrated process in many algae biomass production systems. This thesis is focused on the physiological and biochemical effects of different environmental factors, mainly macronutrients, lights and temperature on microalgae. Microalgal species have been selected on the basis of their potential in biotechnologies, and nitrogen occurs in all chapters due to its importance in physiological and applicative fields. There are 5 chapters, ready or in preparation to be submitted, with different specific matters: (i) to measure the kinetic parameters and the nutrient removal efficiencies for a selected and local strain of microalgae; (ii) to study the biochemical pathways of the microalga D. communis in presence of nitrate and ammonium; (iii) to improve the growth and the removal efficiency of a specific green microalga in mixotrophic conditions; (iv) to optimize the productivity of some microalgae with low growth-rate conditions through phytohormones and other biostimulants; and (v) to apply the phyto-removal of ammonium in an effluent from anaerobic digestion. From the results it is possible to understand how a physiological point of view is necessary to provide and optimize already existing biotechnologies and applications with microalgae

Naphthalene crystal shape prediction from molecular dynamics simulations

We used molecular dynamics simulations to predict the steady state crystal shape of naphthalene grown from ethanol solution. The simulations were performed at constant supersaturation by utilizing a recently proposed algorithm [Perego et al., J. Chem. Phys., 142, 2015, 144113]. To bring the crystal growth within the timescale of a molecular dynamics simulation we applied Well-Tempered Metadynamics with a spatially constrained collective variable, which focuses the sampling on the growing layer. We estimated that the resulting steady state crystal shape corresponds to a rhombic prism, which is in line with experiments. Further, we observed that at the investigated supersaturations, the $\{00\bar{1}\}$ face grows in a two step two dimensional nucleation mechanism while the considerably faster growing faces $\{1\bar{1}0\}$ and $\{20\bar{1}\}$ grow new layers with a one step two dimensional nucleation mechanism