Los sexolectos o la caracterización del discurso femenino en el ámbito grecolatino

Son muchos y variados los testimonios antiguos que sugieren que hombres y mujeres tenían características discursivas propias. El estudio del discurso de los personajes de la literatura dramática grecolatina demuestra que no se trata únicamente de un estereotipo y que efectivamente existían mecanismos caracterizadores del discurso femenino en griego y en latín, como son el uso discriminado de juramentos, interjecciones, formas de cortesía, interpelaciones afectivas y términos enfáticos.There are many and various old proofs that suggest that men and women had discursive characteristics of their own. The study of the speech of the characters of the Greco-Latin dramatic literature shows that this is not just the case of a stereotype and that in fact mechanisms which are characteristic of the female speech existed in Greek and Latin. These are the cases of the discriminated use of oaths, interjections, forms of courtesy, emotional questions and emphatic terms

Efectos de la restricción calórica sobre el inicio de la pubertad y la calidad del esperma en la lubina europea (Dicentrarchus labrax)

Ponencia presentada en el XIII Congreso Nacional de Acuicultura celebrado en Barcelona del 21 al 24 de noviembre de 2011.This study reports the effects induced by a long fasting protocol on the reproductive performance of male sea bass during the first reproductive season. Two different treatments of food deprivation were carried out from July to March, one feed 1/4 and another feed 1/8 of the ration given to the control group (1/4C, 1/8C and C). Both restricted feed regimes resulted in a deep impact over the weight, length and growth rate indexes. Also, the fat visceral index decreased dramatically in November in both feed restricted groups (1/4C and 1/8C). Interestingly, both restricted and controls had similar gonadosomatic index values in November (IGS= 0.4-0.7%). Moreover, the histological analysis revealed the presence of a high number of death cell bodies in testis of those animals kept under both restricted feed regimes. Furthermore, we evaluated the sperm quality along the reproductive season (December-March) and it was shown that a long-term fasting affects sperm quality parameters of pubertal male sea bass such as, density (nº spz cells/ml) and quantity (ml/kg wt), although no differences were observed in motility (µm/seg). Additionally, no statically differences in 11KT plasma levels were observed among experimental groups. Our study evidences that a shortage on energy store is not enough to abolish partially or totally the puberty onset of prepubertal male sea bass.Proyecto Europeo LIFECYCLE (FP7-222719-1) y Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2010/003). S.E. disfrutó de una beca JAE-Predoc CSIC y M.S. disfrutó de una beca CIHEAM.Peer Reviewe

Towards Socially and Emotionally Believable ICT Interfaces

In order to realize an artificial intelligence focused on human needs, it is necessary to identify the interactional characteristics that describe human mood, social behavior, beliefs, and experiences. The cross-modal analysis of communicative macro-signals represents the first step in this direction. The second step requires the definition of adequate mathematical representations of these signals to validate them perceptively (on the human side) and computationally

Gender identification through handwriting: An online approach

The present study was designed to identify writer's gender trough online handwriting and drawing analysis. Two groups - one of 126 males (mean age 24.65, SD=2.45) and the other of 114 females (mean age 24.51, SD=2.50) participants were recruited in the experiment. They were asked to perform seven writing and drawing tasks utilizing a digitizing tablet and a special writing device. Seventeen writing features grouped into five categories have been considered. The experiment's results show that the set of considered features enable to discriminate between male and female writers investigating their performance while copying a house drawing (task 2), writing words in capital letters (task 3) and writing a complete sentence in cursive letters (task 7), in particular focusing on Ductus (number of strokes) and Time categories of writing features

Detección de daño estructural de losas de hormigón armado de puentes sometidas a fatiga

The complex nature of structural phenomena still requires the comparison between numerical models and the real structural performance. Accordingly, many civil structures are monitored to detect structural damage and provide updated data for numerical models. Monitoring usually relies on the change of dynamic properties (experimental modal analysis). Regarding concrete structures, existing works have typically focused on the progressive decrease of natural frequencies under gradually increasing loads. In this paper, high-cycle fatigue effects are analyzed. An experimental campaign on specimens reproducing the top slab of concrete girders has been carried out, including fatigue tests and a reference static test. Impact-excitation tests were done at different stages to extract dynamic properties. Output-only models (only based on the structural response to an external excitation that is not measured) were used as identification techniques. The evolution of dynamic properties was correlated with damage development, with emphasis on the fatigue process stages: crack formation, cyclic reduction of tension-stiffening and brittle fracture of the reinforcement.La naturaleza compleja de muchos fenómenos estructurales requiere que los modelos numéricos necesiten ser verificados con el comportamiento estructural real. Por ello, muchas estructuras son monitorizadas, tanto para detectar posibles daños estructurales como para proporcionar datos a incluir en los modelos. A menudo, la monitorización se basa en el cambio de las propiedades dinámicas mediante técnicas de análisis modal experimental. Con respecto al hormigón estructural, la mayoría de los trabajos existentes se ha centrado en el cambio de las frecuencias propias con cargas monótonamente crecientes. En este artículo se analizan los efectos de la fatiga. Se ha llevado a cabo una campaña experimental sobre piezas que reproducen la losa superior de tableros de puentes, realizándose ensayos de fatiga y uno estático de referencia. Las propiedades dinámicas se han ido extrayendo mediante técnicas de output-only a partir de ensayos de excitación mediante impacto. El cambio de las propiedades dinámicas se ha correlacionado con las etapas del proceso de fatiga: formación de fisuras, reducción de tension-stiffening y rotura frágil de la armadura

Novel galanin receptors in teleost fish: identification, expression and regulation by sex steroids

In fish, the onset of puberty, the transition from juvenile to sexually reproductive adult animals, is triggered by the activation of pituitary gonadotrophin secretion and its timing is influenced by external and internal factors that include the growth/adiposity status of the animal. Kisseptins have been implicated in the activation of puberty but peripheral signals coming from the immature gonad or associated to the metabolic/nutritional status are also thought to be involved. Additionally, there is evidence that the galaninergic system in the brain and testis of pre-pubertal male sea bass is a possible mediator involved in the translation of somatic signals leading to gonadal maturation. Here, the transcripts for four galanin receptors (GALR), named GALR1a, 1b, 2a and 2b, were isolated from European sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed the previously reported duplication of GALR1 in teleost fish, and unravelled the duplication of GALR2 in teleost fish and in some tetrapod species. Comparison with human showed that the key amino acids involved in ligand binding are present in the corresponding GALR1 and GALR2 orthologues. Transcripts for all four receptors are expressed in brain and testes of adult fish with GALR1a and GALR1b abundant in testes 15 and hardly detected in ovaries. In order to investigate whether GALR1 dimorphic expression was dependent on steroid context we evaluated the effect of 11-ketotestosterone and 17β-estradiol treatments on the receptor expression in brain and testes of pre-pubertal males. Interestingly, steroid treatments had no effect on the expression of GALRs in the brain while in the testes, GALR1a and GALR1b were significantly up regulated by 11KT. Altogether, these results support a role for the galaninergic system, in particular the GALR1 paralog in fish reproductive function

Emotional State Recognition Performance Improvement on a Handwriting and Drawing Task

In this work we combine time, spectral and cepstral features of the signal captured in a tablet to characterize depression, anxiety, and stress emotional state recognition on the EMOTHAW database. EMOTHAW contains the emotional states of users represented by capturing signals from sensors on the tablet and pen when the user is performing 3 specific handwriting and 4 drawing tasks, which had been categorized into depressed, anxious, stressed, and typical, according to the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS). Each user was characterized with six time-domain features, and the number of spectral-domain and cepstral-domain features for the horizontal and vertical displacement of the pen, the pressure on the paper, and the time spent on-air and off-air, depended on the configuration of the filterbank. As next step, we select the best features using the Fast Correlation-Based Filtering method. Since our dataset has 129 users, then as next step, we augmented the training data by randomly selecting a percentage of the training data and adding a small random Gaussian noise to the extracted features. We then train a radial basis SVM model using the Leave-One-Out (LOO) methodology. The experimental results show an average accuracy classification improvement ranging of 15%, and an accuracy classification improvement ranging from 4% to 34% compared with baseline (state of the art) for specific emotions such as depression, anxiety, stress, and typical emotional states

Effects of artificial day length on early sexual maturation, reproductive performance, and egg quality in female European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758)

Juvenile sea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758), (4-5 months old) were kept during four (experiment I) or three (experiment II) consecutive years under artificial photoperiod conditions. Compared with the control group, in experiment I, during the first reproductive cycle, the EX and LO groups showed a statistically significant advance and delay of 53 and 58 days, respectively, in mean spawning time. In Experiment II, the SLmar and CO groups presented a significant advance in spawning time, of 1 and 2 months, respectively, compared with the controls. From these results, it can be concluded that long-term application of artificial photoperiods can advance or delay the time of first spawning in D. labrax, as well as altering their rates of relative fecundity, and the quality of eggs and larvae.Se estudió la influencia del fotoperiodo en juveniles de lubina Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758), de 4-5 meses de edad, mantenidos en cautividad durante 4 y 3 años consecutivos (experimentos I y II, respectivamente). En el experimento I, durante el primer ciclo reproductor, se observó que los grupos EX (fotoperiodo expandido) y LO (fotoperiodo largo constante) adelantaron y retrasaron el periodo medio de puesta en 53 y 58 días, respectivamente, en comparación con el grupo control. En el siguiente ciclo reproductor, estos grupos retrasaron el periodo medio de puesta en 21 y 31 días, respectivamente, con respecto al control. En general, las fecundidades relativas y las tasas de viabilidad de huevos y larvas de los grupos experimentales fueron un 50 % más bajas que las observadas en el grupo control. En el experimento II, los grupos SLmar y CO adelantaron en 1 o 2 meses el periodo medio de puesta en comparación con el grupo control (NP). En conclusión, el fotoperiodo puede alterar la aparición de la primera madurez sexual en las hembras, el periodo de puesta, la fecundidad y las tasas de viabilidad de huevos y larvas.Instituto Español de Oceanografí