¿Qué añade a la psicología el adjetivo cultural?

This article approaches the concept of cultural psychology via the confrontation of the naturalistic and personalistic attitudes to the psychological phenomena. It starts reviewing some of the basic agreements about how scientijic psychology approaches its subject-matter, and some of the basic presuppositions of a philosophy of culture. Time, and its relationship with change and development, is taking into account in order to accept a co-constructionist approach to the development of personal and public cultures, as well as to a consideration of meaning related to Peirce's semiotics. The relationship between the biological structures and the actions of the human psychological subject is viewed through the tools developed by neo-connectionist theoreticians. Conclusions call for interdisciplinary dialogue both within the subdisciplines ofpsychology and with neighbouring sciences, and adopting a constructionist and constructivist approachto psychology within a critical realism.Este trabajo examina el concepto de psicologia cultural a través de una confrontación entre las perspectivas naturalista y personalista (de las ciencias del espiritu) sobre lo psicológico. Para ello se comienza repasando algunos acuerdos básicos sobre el tratamiento científico que la psicologia realiza de su objeto y sobre algunos presupuestos básicos de unafilosofia de la cultura. Cuestiones como la temuoralidad en relación con el desarrollo, o la elección de una estrategia de separación inclusiva para el abordaje de la relación sujeto-ambiente, son consideradas a la hora de proponer una noción co-constructivista de la génesis de la cultura privada y la cultura pública, y a un tratamiento del significado apoyado en la semiótica de Peirce. La relación entre la base biológica y las acciones del sujeto son contempladas a través de la noción de esquema desarrollada por los teóricos neoconexionistas. Se concluye con la adscripción a una postura de realismo critico y con una defensa de la confrontación interdisciplinar tanto dentro de la propia psicologia como con otras disciplinas vecinas

Historia y memoria. Recuerdo y olvido

Justificación de la actividad. La conferencia es el punto de partida para desarrollar un proyecto de trabajo en el que profesorado en formación inicial elaborará una propuesta didáctica: Lugares de la memoria y enseñanza de la Historia (El Cementerio de San Rafael). Premisa (aprender desde la investigación y escritura sobre el pasado): • Justificación: Educar como saber y práctica guiada por una ética pública, convierte a la educación histórica en un fenómeno plural de interpretación y búsqueda de sentido del pasado. Escuela como lugar de la memoria y para la recuperación de historias silenciadas, olvidos y exclusiones. • Fundamentación teórica: Pedagogía de la Memoria (Paulo Freire) crea contextos escolares reflexivos que nos acerca a actores, discursos y narraciones del pasado para una resolución de futuro que se justifica por una educación transformadora. • Objetivos: o Crear propuesta didáctica para trabajar un lugar de la memoria. o Comprensión del pasado y acciones del presente. o Elaboración de una memoria personal y colectiva. o Construir significados del pasado desde los valores democráticos. o Conformar pensamiento histórico desde la crítica del pasado. o Configurar identidades y sistemas de consenso que permitan la construcción colaborativa de una memoria tolerante e inclusiva. • Contenido controvertido y abierto para la construcción de conocimiento histórico: o Plantear razonamientos y resolución de problemas. o Fuentes históricas contradictorias para decidir qué historiar. o Experimentar la narración y escritura de la Historia desde el diálogo con pasados vividos y futuros posibles. • Estrategias metodológicas o ¿cómo enseñar? Propiciando la investigación del alumnado y alfabetizando mediáticamente. o Aproximación al pasado como experiencia emocional (narraciones familiares). o Crítica de narraciones y fuentes históricas. o Valorar discursos divergentes y sus representaciones culturales. • ¿Cómo construir aprendizajes históricos? Aproximación al pasado como experiencia emocional. o Entendiendo el carácter afectivo del recuerdo para la comprensión ética del pasado desde la democracia y sus valores. o Negociando con diferentes interpretaciones del pasado. o Creando sus propias narraciones y escritura de la historia en soportes digitales. Rol docente: crea conflictos cognitivos para construir conocimiento histórico. Rol alumnado: constructor de su propio aprendizaje. o Recursos: narraciones, documentación, medios materiales, reflejar el proceso de documentación… en soportes digitales. o Referentes: Museo de la Memoria y los DD.HH. de Santiago de Chile.Con el título Historia y Memoria. Recuerdo y Olvido, la conferencia de Alberto Rosa abordó los usos sociales y educativos del conocimiento histórico, en los sistemas educativos de los estados-nación, cuestionando si estos siguen siendo útiles y moralmente sostenibles. A partir de la concepción cambiante que el tiempo y el pasado adquiere con la Ilustración, elaboró una disertación en la que señaló las funciones de la Historia Nacional como interpretación del pasado, para actuar en el presente y preparar para un futuro. Objetos, rituales del recuerdo y prácticas sociales han confluido para construir representaciones, sentimientos y explicaciones que elaboran una identidad colectiva. La Historia Nacional, que produce relatos enlazando eventos narrativos, negociando recuerdos y olvidos, ha tenido en la escuela pública un escenario privilegiado para estandarizar las representaciones del pasado, construir una comunidad imaginada y definir quiénes somos frente a otros. Pero ahora el Estado-nación está perdiendo soberanía, su población siente desafección hacia la política y miedo al futuro, al tiempo que su identidad se fractura. ¿Resulta entonces útil que siga siendo el eje que articule una única narrativa del pasado? En ese caso, ¿qué Historia enseñar? Quizás aquella que sirva para identificarse con un solapamiento de comunidades de pertenencia, con una ciudadanía que reclama derechos conociendo los avatares que estos han experimentado. Seleccionar contenidos para explicar conceptos que permitan identificarse con agentes históricos relevantes, que integren teorías a modo de herramientas para la interpretación del pasado, podría permitir superar la Historia de la nación, abordando una historical literacy basada en un conocimiento reflexivo y crítico que empodere al alumnado a pensar históricamente para ejercer una ciudadanía activa, transnacional, que reclama derechos y participación. A modo de conclusión, Alberto Rosa planteó la posibilidad de que la enseñanza de la historia contribuya a una educación en valores cívicos, abordando un conocimiento crítico y reflexivo dirigido a la mejora de la democracia. Un relato diverso y cambiante, escrito para formar una ciudadanía multicultural y tolerante, que deje de lado la celebración de esencias inmutables y se centre en la explicación del cambio, que es lo único permanente de lo que los humanos hacen.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

On kiwi (Apteryx mantelli) vocal behaviour and activity : relations to population densities and applications to conservation : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Zoology at Massey University, Manawatū, Aotearoa New Zealand

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), over 38,500 species of living organisms assessed (27.8%) are currently threatened with extinction. Reducing this startling percentage requires cost–effective monitoring of populations of many and varied species. Information regarding population trends is crucial to allow decision makers to judiciously allocate unavoidably limited resources. Acoustic monitoring has long been employed to document the presence and estimate populations of vocal species for conservation purposes. Determining populations trends without the need of sighting or capturing animals can drastically reduce costs and improve welfare. However, as with many other indirect monitoring practices, acoustic surveys impose a series of assumptions about the detectability of the observed animals and their vocal behaviour. Whereas the variability in detection distances and other observer–induced effects can be minimised using acoustic recorders, enabling the delivery of animal abundances using acoustic monitoring requires detailed knowledge of the target species’ behaviours to relate numbers of detected acoustic cues to those of animals in an area. The iconic North Island Brown Kiwi (Apteryx mantelli, Bartlett 1851) is a flightless nocturnal bird species endemic to Aotearoa New Zealand, fragmentedly distributed across its mainland range and some of its offshore islands. North Island Brown Kiwi are known for their characteristic vocalisations which differ between sexes, with males emitting series of whistle-like syllables, and females producing series of hoarser and lower frequency syllables. Indeed, acoustic surveys are routinely employed by conservation groups and the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai to monitor North Island Brown Kiwi. These surveys, known as Kiwi Call Counts, require observers to annotate sex, direction of arrival, and distance of the detected Kiwi vocalisations over a set period of time. However, little is known of North Island Brown Kiwi vocal behaviour and how this may relate to animal abundance and the development of more accurate and objective monitoring practices is included among the objectives of the Kiwi Recovery Plan (Germano et al., 2018). This thesis aimed to investigate North Island Brown Kiwi vocal behaviour and activity to build more objective and accurate acoustic monitoring protocols. Firstly, results from an extensive literature review on the acoustic playback technique — which has been shown to have the potential to enhance acoustic surveys in other species — led to the development of a set of recommendations to enable reproducibility when using playback. Secondly, results from playback experiments showed how single microphone acoustic recording units (ARUs) can be used to localise sound sources with reasonable degrees of uncertainty. This enables the potential transition of Kiwi Call Counts from relying on human observers to ARUs, which would allow for objective interpretation of the data while creating a potentially perpetual record. One of the thesis aims was to ascertain the potential of using playback to standardise the response of Kiwi populations. The results of experiments testing the effect of playback and environmental factors on kiwi vocal response show that there is no real relationship between the vocal activity of the target Kiwi community and playback. However, they corroborate and add to existing knowledge of Kiwi vocal behaviour by identifying relationships between the latter and external factors, such as lunar illumination and weather conditions. This thesis finally concentrated on the issue of relating vocal activity to animal abundance by developing and trialling the use of animal-borne acoustic recorders in conjunction to fixed ARUs. Since using animal-borne acoustic recorders entails handling target animals, we first performed an experiment on post–handling vocal behaviour to ascertain whether the vocal activity of handled birds of our target community differed from that of birds that had never been handled. The results from this experiment showed that the vocal activity recorded from a gully inhabited by never handled Kiwi did not differ from that of a gully inhabited by birds that were handled during the survey — and have been regularly handled over the last 17 years — in any detectable way. This is encouraging both for animal welfare purposes, and for comparing acoustic surveys from both managed and more wild Kiwi populations. Finally, the results from employing the animal-borne acoustic recorders to inform density estimates showed how information about individual vocal activity informs more realistic and consistent population estimates than methods based only on community–level vocalisations. On all the occasions sampled, results of population estimates only accounting for environmentally recorded vocalisations delivered lower abundance expectations for both males and females. Repeated sampling results show how estimates that account for individual vocal activity are both more consistent and closer to real densities than traditional methods, as estimated by paired sampling with a specialised dog survey. Lastly, information from individual vocal activity in some populations informed more accurate estimates for other populations without individually tagged animals. Taking advantage of having multiple populations with tagged individuals, we estimated abundances of a target population with three different models: unmarked, tagged with animal-borne acoustic recorders, and with information from other populations’ tagged individuals. This last estimate was in between the unmarked and with animal-borne acoustic recorders and apparently more accurate than the unmarked model. This thesis provides methods and shows encouraging results to eventually employ passive acoustic monitoring to infer Kiwi abundance in a cost-effective and non–invasive fashion at large scale, and invites further employment of animal-borne acoustic recorders to confidently deliver abundance estimates, crucial information for conservation decision makers. Using animal-borne acoustic recorders and ARUs together as a way to estimate populations does involve some invasive trials, but has the potential to lead to fully non–invasive robust abundance estimates though passive acoustic monitoring

Upregulation of inducible NO synthase by exogenous adenosine in vascular smooth muscle cells activated by inflammatory stimuli in experimental diabetes

BACKGROUND: Adenosine has been shown to induce nitric oxide (NO) production via inducible NO synthase (iNOS) activation in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Although this is interpreted as a beneficial vasodilating pathway in vaso-occlusive disorders, iNOS is also involved in diabetic vascular dysfunction. Because the turnover of and the potential to modulate iNOS by adenosine in experimental diabetes have not been explored, we hypothesized that both the adenosine system and control of iNOS function are impaired in VSMCs from streptozotocin-diabetic rats. METHODS: Male Sprague-Dawley rats were injected with streptozotocin once to induce diabetes. Aortic VSMCs from diabetic and nondiabetic rats were isolated, cultured and exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) plus a cytokine mix for 24 h in the presence or absence of (1) exogenous adenosine and related compounds, and/or (2) pharmacological agents affecting adenosine turnover. iNOS functional expression was determined by immunoblotting and NO metabolite assays. Concentrations of adenosine, related compounds and metabolites thereof were assayed by HPLC. Vasomotor responses to adenosine were determined in endothelium-deprived aortic rings. RESULTS: Treatment with adenosine-degrading enzymes or receptor antagonists increased iNOS formation in activated VSMCs from nondiabetic and diabetic rats. Following treatment with the adenosine transport inhibitor NBTI, iNOS levels increased in nondiabetic but decreased in diabetic VSMCs. The amount of secreted NO metabolites was uncoupled from iNOS levels in diabetic VSMCs. Addition of high concentrations of adenosine and its precursors or analogues enhanced iNOS formation solely in diabetic VSMCs. Exogenous adenosine and AMP were completely removed from the culture medium and converted into metabolites. A tendency towards elevated inosine generation was observed in diabetic VSMCs, which were also less sensitive to CD73 inhibition, but inosine supplementation did not affect iNOS levels. Pharmacological inhibition of NOS abolished adenosine-induced vasorelaxation in aortic tissues from diabetic but not nondiabetic animals. CONCLUSIONS: Endogenous adenosine prevented cytokine- and LPS-induced iNOS activation in VSMCs. By contrast, supplementation with adenosine and its precursors or analogues enhanced iNOS levels in diabetic VSMCs. This effect was associated with alterations in exogenous adenosine turnover. Thus, overactivation of the adenosine system may foster iNOS-mediated diabetic vascular dysfunction

Reassessing the projections of the World Water Development Report

Abstract The 2018 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report stated that nearly 6 billion peoples will suffer from clean water scarcity by 2050. This is the result of increasing demand for water, reduction of water resources, and increasing pollution of water, driven by dramatic population and economic growth. It is suggested that this number may be an underestimation, and scarcity of clean water by 2050 may be worse as the effects of the three drivers of water scarcity, as well as of unequal growth, accessibility and needs, are underrated. While the report promotes the spontaneous adoption of nature-based-solutions within an unconstrained population and economic expansion, there is an urgent need to regulate demography and economy, while enforcing clear rules to limit pollution, preserve aquifers and save water, equally applying everywhere. The aim of this paper is to highlight the inter-linkage in between population and economic growth and water demand, resources and pollution, that ultimately drive water scarcity, and the relevance of these aspects in local, rather than global, perspective, with a view to stimulating debate