Tides of Revolution:Information and Political Mobilization in Venezuela (1789-1808)

Venezuela remained for years one of only a handful of Provinces in Colonial Spanish America without printing press. The lack of a printing press until 1808, however, did not prevent the Venezuelan public from reading, transcribing, or exchanging ideas during the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions. European travelers, such as Alexander Von Humboldt and François-Joseph Depons were impressed by the political environment that reigned in the Captaincy, whose inhabitants were well informed of recent political events in the Caribbean and Europe. Between 1789 and 1808, several popular rebellions and political movements against colonial rule erupted in Venezuela, and shortly after the 1808 Spanish Monarchical crisis, Venezuela became one of the first South American nations to declare independence from Spain. What kind of information, ideas and experiences fed the political imagination of Venezuelans? How did Venezuelan access these sources of information? My project explores the circulation of information and the formation of political communities in Venezuela during the Age of Revolutions, when Spanish authorities became obsessed with silencing and containing local echoes of Franco-Caribbean republican values. Paradoxically, the absence of printing technology in Venezuela made these efforts even more futile. Hand-copied samizdat materials flooded the cities and ports towns of Venezuela; foreigners shared news of the French and Caribbean revolutions with locals; and Venezuelans of diverse social backgrounds met to read hard-to-come-by texts and to discuss the ideas they expounded. My work shows that the population of Venezuela had greater access to a wide range of Caribbean and European revolutionary pamphlets, anonymous broadsides, and leaflets than to the Enlightenment texts of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Raynal, which were found in a few libraries. Though distant European political thinkers may have inspired the political debates of the era, these debates were spread, contextualized, adapted, and interpreted by Caribbean and Venezuelan actors. During the Age of Revolutions, efficient information networks created by locals served to spread anti-monarchical propaganda, and abolitionist and egalitarian ideas. I will present a brief overview of my research along with my findings at the UNM Library, especially in the Ibarra Collection. Cristina Soriano is presently the Albert R. Lepage Assistant Professor of Latin American History at Villanova University. She received her doctorate in History from New York University in 2011. Her current project analyses the circulation of information and the configuration of political communities in Venezuela during the Age of Revolutions. She has published several articles and book chapters in Latin American and European journals and books. Recently she published her piece “Librerías, Lectores y Saber en Caracas durante la Segunda Mitad del Siglo XVIII” in Idalia García y Pedro Rueda (edit.): El Libro en Circulación de América Colonial: Producción, Circuitos de Distribución y Conformación de Bibliotecas en los Siglos XVI al XVIII, Editorial Quivira, Ciudad de México, 2014 and her article “Revolutionary Voices: The Presence of Visitors, Fugitives and Prisoners from the French Caribbean in Venezuela (1789-1799), Storia e Futuro, Rivista di Storia e Storiografia, No. 30, November 2012.https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/greenleaf_scholars/1013/thumbnail.jp

Looking at metaphors: a picture-word priming task as a test for the existence of conceptual metaphor

Since 1987 a number of scholars have investigated the conceptualization of anger in several linguistic studies (Lakoff & Koveckes 1987, King, 1989, Matsuki, 1995). In their research, a body of conceptual metaphors have been identified that are supposed to structure the way we think about the emotion. In this paper, we evaluate the claim that conceptual metaphors are stable structures in the speakers’ minds (Murphy 1996; Lakoff & Kövecses 1980; Glucksberg & McGlone 1999). The present experiment was designed to investigate the use of conceptual metaphors by speakers of peninsular Spanish in relation to the emotion concept ANGER. The study evaluates the claim that conceptual metaphors are stable and automatic cross-domain conceptual projections in the speaker’s minds (Lakoff, 1993: 227-228, 245). Specifically, we examine the participation of domains like HOT FLUID or PRESSURIZED CONTAINER in the processing of anger expressions. Our specific goal is to study whether the activation of such source domains facilitates the recognition of anger words in a categorization task. In order to test this, a priming experiment was conducted in which subjects had to perform a categorization task after being exposed to an image. When the image was related to the source domain of an angerrelated conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Kövecses, 1987, Soriano, 2005), the emotion was more easily identified in the subsequent task than it was after an unrelated image

Autonomic modulation improves in response to harder performances while playing wind instruments

Background: Despite inducing autonomic benefits similar to exercise, playing wind instruments is a physical, and cognitive task of high attentional requirements, which demands musicians maximal efforts, leading to sympathetic hyperarousal and autonomic worsening. In this context of controversy, it remains unknown the autonomic response to playing highly demanding music performances, as compared to an easier one, which might be of interest in wind musicians' cardiovascular health. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate differences in the autonomic control of the heart with regard to task demands (TD), avoiding emotional influences (rehearsal performance). Methods: Eight healthy male professionals (29.13 ± 7.33 years) ranked a list of well-known musical scores according to their perception of the task demands. Later on, in 2 two normal rehearsals with no audience, musicians performed one mild performance (M), and another one ranked as hardest (H) on two alternative days. After 10 minutes of warm-up, they performed two laps of 20 minutes interspersed with 5 minutes of rest. Heart rate variability (HRV) was recorded in both laps, 20 minutes at baseline (before warming-up), and 20 minutes after cessation. Owing to non-stationarity of the cardiac signal, the root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) and Poincare-Plot indexes (SD1, SD2) were analyzed in the last 500 beats of each 20 minutes (Kubios software V. 2.1). Results: Musicians showed larger parasympathetic responses in H (lnRMSSD, lnSD1, SD2), mostly after 30 minutes playing, without RRi differences. Vagal control diminished in the first lap, where musicians might be coupling heart rate to changes in breathing. Later on, this initial discomfort disappeared, followed by autonomic reactivation in H. Sympathetic arousal due to neuromuscular and cognitive demands while playing demanding music seems to be vagally counteracted, suggesting that the more the difficulty, the more coupled the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (i.e., cardiovascular adjustments). Conclusions: Playing wind instruments seems healthy in terms of autonomic modulation, and the psychophysiological wellness of wind musicians might benefit from HRV monitoring in the long-term

Modulation of corticospinal output during goal-directed actions: Evidence for a contingent coding hypothesis.

Abstract Seeing a person perform an action activates the observer's motor system. The present study aimed at investigating the temporal relationship between execution and observation of goal-directed actions. One possibility is that the corticospinal excitability (CSE) follows the dynamic evolution of the pattern of muscle activity in the executed action. Alternatively, CSE may anticipate the future course of the observed action, prospectively extrapolating future states. Our study was designed to test these alternative hypotheses by directly comparing the time course of muscle recruitment during the execution and observation of reach-to-grasp movements. We found that the time course of CSE during action observation followed the time course of the EMG signal during action execution. This contingent coding was observed despite the outcome of the observed motor act being predictable from the earliest phases of the movement. These findings challenge the view that CSE serves to predict the target of an observed action

Self-learning through the PhysioExTM 9.0 simulator as a teaching tool in Veterinary Physiology. The opinion of the students

[EN] Self-learning has been proposed as an active and plausible methodology to promote the capability of students to reach assigned objectives. During the academic year of 2016-2017, the course of Veterinary Physiology (included in the degree of Veterinary Medicine, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain) was given using a self-learning method through the computer simulator PhysioExTM 9.0. The practice consisted in  solving 6 exercises, performing simulated laboratory actions, knowing the consequences of each of their actions and answering a series of questions that were discussed afterwards with their classmates. The objective of this learning methodology was to teach students to work independently as well as a team member, promoting their skills to solve problems that might appear later in their professional life. After the practice, the students completed a voluntary survey whose results showed a satisfying opinion about using this self-learning methodology, reaching an average score on the proposed statements (a total of 7) between 4.01 and 4.71 on a Likert scale from 1 to 5. Additionally, the students associated the practice with concepts as ‘classmates’, ‘doubts’, ‘dynamic’, ‘better’, ‘help’ and ‘knowledge’. In conclusion, this activity increased the collaborative learning process of students and enhanced dynamism in class.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Soriano Úbeda, C.; García Vázquez, F. (2018). Self-learning through the PhysioExTM 9.0 simulator as a teaching tool in Veterinary Physiology. The opinion of the students. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 407-414. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8005OCS40741

Microstructural and XRD analysis and study of the properties of the system Ti-TiAl-B4C processed under different operational conditions

High specific modulus materials are considered excellent for the aerospace industry. The system Ti-TiAl-B4C is presented herein as an alternative material. Secondary phases formed in situ during fabrication vary depending on the processing conditions and composition of the starting materials. The final behaviors of these materials are therefore difficult to predict. This research focuses on the study of the system Ti-TiAl-B4C, whereby relations between microstructure and properties can be predicted in terms of the processing parameters of the titanium matrix composites (TMCs). The powder metallurgy technique employed to fabricate the TMCs was that of inductive hot pressing (iHP) since it offers versatility and flexibility. The short processing time employed (5 min) was set in order to test the temperature as a major factor of influence in the secondary reactions. The pressure was also varied. In order to perform this research, not only were X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analyses performed, but also microstructural characterization through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Significant results showed that there was an inflection temperature from which the trend to form secondary compounds depended on the starting material used. Hence, the addition of TiAl as an elementary blend or as prealloyed powder played a significant role in the final behavior of the TMCs fabricated, where the prealloyed TiAl provides a better precursor of the formation of the reinforcement phases from 1100 °C regardless of the pressur

Efficient photovoltaic and electroluminescent perovskite devices

Planar diode structures employing hybrid organic-inorganic methylammonium lead iodide perovskites lead to multifunctional devices exhibiting both a high photovoltaic efficiency and good electroluminescence. The electroluminescence strongly improves at higher current density applied using a pulsed driving method

Cross-Border Higher Education : The Expansion of International Branch Campuses

The international expansion of higher education has intensified in recent decades with a rapidly growing number of international branch campuses appearing on the scene. This study investigates the economic, cultural and institutional, and educational determinants of transnational higher education on both the extensive margin (number of international branch campuses), and the intensive margin (the total number of educational programmes offered). Using the gravity equation, we applied fixed-effect empirical methods to a panel dataset that combined and extended the raw data from campuses and master's programmes in 33 source countries and 76 host countries in the period from 1948 to 2016. Estimates reveal that although cultural, economic and institutional ties foster cross-border educational relationships, their effect differs significantly from one margin to another. The study highlights the relevance of globalisation, research activities, and aggregate demand in international higher education