Sexual Orientation and Choice

Is there a choice in sexual orientation? [Wilkerson, William S. : “Is It a Choice? Sexual Orientation as Interpretation”. In: Journal of Social Philosophy 40. No. 1, p. 97–116] argues that sexual desires require interpretation in order to be fully constituted, and therefore sexual orientation is at least partially constituted by choice. [Díaz-León, Esa : “Sexual Orientation as Interpretation? Sexual Desires, Concepts, and Choice”; In: Journal of Social Ontology] critically assesses Wilkerson’s argument, concluding that we still lack a good argument for the claim that choice plays a role in sexual orientation. Here I examine Díaz-León’s response to Wilkerson. I introduce what I call the conceptual act theory of sexual orientation, and argue that even if interpretation were not necessary to constitute sexual desires, it is a necessary element to constitute what we call sexual orientation. However, I conclude that even if we agree that interpretation is involved in sexual orientation, it does not follow that there is a choice involved

Multiplex networks in metropolitan areas: generic features and local effects

Most large cities are spanned by more than one transportation system. These different modes of transport have usually been studied separately: it is however important to understand the impact on urban systems of the coupling between them and we report in this paper an empirical analysis of the coupling between the street network and the subway for the two large metropolitan areas of London and New York. We observe a similar behaviour for network quantities related to quickest paths suggesting the existence of generic mechanisms operating beyond the local peculiarities of the specific cities studied. An analysis of the betweenness centrality distribution shows that the introduction of underground networks operate as a decentralising force creating congestions in places located at the end of underground lines. Also, we find that increasing the speed of subways is not always beneficial and may lead to unwanted uneven spatial distributions of accessibility. In fact, for London -- but not for New York -- there is an optimal subway speed in terms of global congestion. These results show that it is crucial to consider the full, multimodal, multi-layer network aspects of transportation systems in order to understand the behaviour of cities and to avoid possible negative side-effects of urban planning decisions.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. Final version with an additional discussion on the total congestio

GPS-derived Preliminary Vertical Tectonic Motions and Causes: Puerto Rico and Trinidad

Vertical tectonic motions were studied in the Caribbean using data from continuously operating Global Positioning System stations (cGPS). The island of Puerto Rico (PR) is located in the plate boundary zone between the Caribbean and North American plates. Today, this zone is dominated by east-to-west strike-slip motion with additional minor convergence, which created the PR trench north of the island. Uri ten Brink (2005) developed a series of models that show possible sub-surface trench geometries and possible causes of vertical motion in PR. Differences in long-term (1955- 2012) tide-gauge sea-level rise rates from PR suggested that differential vertical tectonic motion might be resolvable. Our preliminary results from seven cGPS sites in PR show that the northernmost sites with sufficiently long time series (2008- 2013) may be sinking at rates (2-sigma uncertainties) as follows: MOPR (-1.33 mm/yr ±2.76), MAYZ (-1.47 mm/yr ±2.77), AOPR (-5.33 mm/yr ±2.42), BYSP (-1.26 mm/yr ±1.73) and CUPR (-2.52 mm/yr ±1.76). This contrasts with the vertical motions of the suite of southern cGPS sites, which appear to be more vertically static: P780 (-0.5 mm/yr ±1.94) and MIPR (-0.6 mm/yr ±1.70). Trinidad is clearly tilting to the west into the Gulf of Paria’s pull-apart basin based on macroscopic geomorphic features (Ritter & Weber, 2007), and sits in nearly a mirror image plate tectonic setting to PR; Trinidad is located in the southeast corner of the Caribbean plate, in the Caribbean-South American plate boundary zone. In addition, causes of vertical motion are better understood in Trinidad than they are in PR (Weber et al., 2011). Therefore, we also determined preliminary rates of vertical tectonic motion for Trinidad using a similar approach, and we used this island as an analogue to better understand vertical motions in PR. We analyzed data from five Trinidadian cGPS sites (ALBI, CALD, FORT, GALE, GRAN), and from one episodic GPS site (POST) located on the sinking northwest coast. Our preliminary vertical GPS rates (2-sigma uncertainties) are as follows: ALBI (-2.20 mm/yr ±1.52), CALD (-0.97 mm/yr ±1.36), FORT (0.49 mm/ yr ±1.67), GALE (-0.90 mm/yr ±1.78), GRAN (-1.36 mm/yr ±1.62), and POST (-4.21 mm/yr ±1.96). Results from the northwestern Trinidadian sites (ALBI, POST) are consistent with subsidence. FORT on the southwestern coast has apparently moved down and then up, perhaps due to volcano mud inflation/ deflation. The other central and eastern Trinidad sites (CALD, GALE, GRAN) appear to be more vertically static. Our study now aims to define local vertical reference frames in PR and Trinidad and to use these to quantitatively solve for the differential vertical tectonic motions on each island. This approach should reduce formal uncertainties and bring the qualitative differential signals described above out of the noise. *This scholar and faculty mentor have requested that only an abstract be published

¿Centroamérica hacia la sociedad de la información?

The article presents a close view of the Central American situation in terms of the development towards the Information Society Model. In this way we offer some data related to the actual social and economical conditions, technological infrastructure, some educational projects, services and policies in order to reach an equity Internet and knowledge access. As can be seen, Costa Rican situation is better than the other Central American countries but we can not affirm that this level is completely satisfactory. In this region there are not established policies regarding the IS

Enhanced detectability of community structure in multilayer networks through layer aggregation

Many systems are naturally represented by a multilayer network in which edges exist in multiple layers that encode different, but potentially related, types of interactions, and it is important to understand limitations on the detectability of community structure in these networks. Using random matrix theory, we analyze detectability limitations for multilayer (specifically, multiplex) stochastic block models (SBMs) in which L layers are derived from a common SBM. We study the effect of layer aggregation on detectability for several aggregation methods, including summation of the layers' adjacency matrices for which we show the detectability limit vanishes as O(L^{-1/2}) with increasing number of layers, L. Importantly, we find a similar scaling behavior when the summation is thresholded at an optimal value, providing insight into the common - but not well understood - practice of thresholding pairwise-interaction data to obtain sparse network representations.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Síndrome del "cansancio del cuidador" en cuidadores de pacientes con daño cerebral adquirido.

El Daño Cerebral Adquirido (DCA) es un importante problema de salud que se caracteriza por la afectación de las estructuras encefálicas a lo largo de la vida causada por lesiones cerebrales que conducen a un deterioro del funcionamiento cognitivo, conductual, emocional y/o físico de la persona afectada y un deterioro de la calidad de vida relacionada con la salud (CVRS) de los cuidadores informales que le atienden, causado por la sobrecarga en la actividad que supone suplir la gran dependencia del paciente de DCA. El malestar físico y psicológico que pueden experimentar los cuidadores de pacientes con algún daño cerebral está estrechamente ligado con su rol (1), pudiendo generar el “síndrome de cansancio del cuidador o del cuidador quemado”. En el presente trabajo se aborda en un primer lugar una revisión de la literatura científica sobre el Daño Cerebral Adquirido como génesis de la dependencia en las personas afectadas y la necesidad de ayuda en el cuidado para el mantenimiento de las Actividades de la Vida Diaria (AVD). Posteriormente y sobre la experiencia personal vivida en el entorno familiar se plantea un estudio de caso y la gran actividad que genera el problema de DCA en el entorno familiar y sobre la persona responsable habitual del cuidado o “cuidador principal”, con las dificultades y alteraciones que esta actividad acaba generando, y que requiere de una ayuda sistemática y programada de las instituciones sanitarias, de los profesionales de Salud en general y de la Enfermería en particular

Lumbalgia crónica inespecífica ejercicio terapéutico y kinesiotape

La lumbalgia crónica inespecífica es el dolor localizado entre la parte inferior de las costillas y los glúteos. Este tipo de lumbalgia no se debe a enfermedades sistémicas, fracturas o traumatismos sino que en un gran porcentaje no presenta ningún tipo de lesión demostrable. Existen muchos estudios sobre cómo mejorar el dolor y la incapacidad producidos por la lumbalgia crónica inespecífica empleando diversos tratamientos. El objetivo de este trabajo es conocer tanto la eficacia del tratamiento con ejercicios terapéuticos como la eficacia del kinesiotape en la lumbalgia crónica inespecífica. Con este fin, se ha realizado una revisión de la bibliografía para el periodo comprendido entre 2000 y 2015 en las siguientes bases de datos: Medline, PEDro y SciELO. Se usaron como palabras clave para las búsquedas las siguientes: Specific chronic back pain, rehabilitation, physiotherapy, treatment, effective, therapeutic exercise y kinesiotaping, combinándolas con los operadores AND y OR. También se utilizaron filtros adicionales. Para desarrollar el trabajo, se han incluido los artículos de diferentes técnicas de ejercicio terapéutico y tratamiento de kinesiotape exclusivamente en la parte lumbar. Tras el análisis de la bibliografía escogida, se comprueba que los autores aprueban que el ejercicio terapéutico, utilizando distintas técnicas de tratamiento, puede fortalecer la musculatura lumbar. Sin embargo, sobre el tratamiento del vendaje de kinesiotape hay pocas evidencias científicas válidas. Además, la mayoría de los estudios destacan la aplicación del tratamiento cognitivo-conductual como beneficioso para este tipo de patologíasGrado en Fisioterapi