Transcendence has always been one of the human being's greatest desires. The hope of a real world that exists after death, in which we somehow continue living, has been the subject of multiple proposals since ancient times. Today, the consideration of the beginning and end of life has ceased to be an irremovable biological examination thanks to many advances in science. In this context, in which the borders between the biological and the artificial become increasingly blurred, the most radical transhumanist philosophy looks for an absolute abstraction of organic matter through the download or 'uploading' of our mind to a computer. This is a very complex and controversial proposal, but perhaps the only viable one when faced with the futuristic hypothesis of the definitive disappearance of the human species.
Se presenta una aproximación comparativa a los estudios de nivel superior en prevención de riesgos laborales en tres países de la Unión Europea: Francia, Portugal y Reino Unido. Con la selección de estos países se pretende describir las principales tendencias o líneas de trabajo que se están siguiendo en este campo, ejemplificadas en casos particulares. Desde un modelo muy escolarizado como el francés, pasando por otro también bastante regulado pero que permite muy diversas vías de acceso a la profesión como el portugués, hasta un contexto más liberal como el británico. En los aspectos más relevantes de la comparación se hace también una somera aproximación al conjunto de la Europa de los quince, para aportar una visión de conjunto que permita entender mejor el contexto general en el que conviven las distintas experiencias. ; This article introduces a comparative approach on the different higher education levels of occupational health and safety studies in three EU countries: France, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Such selection aims at describing the main trends and task lines in the field of health and safety education through particular cases. Cases vary from strictly academic, in the case of France, to strongly regulated models with different forms of access, like in Portugal, to more liberal patterns like the ones found in the UK. The most relevant aspects of this comparison also examine EU countries as a whole to allow a better understanding of the general context in which these experiences occur.
12 páginas y 4 tables ; We performed a comparative osteological analysis of middle trunk vertebrae (represented by V6) of representative species of all living genera of Salamandridae (Amphibia, Caudata). The qualitative morphological characters used were adapted from the traditional palaeontological literature; using this data set we inferred a phylogenetic hypothesis for the family. The same morphological matrix was then re-analysed using a weighting scheme for the characters derived from the answers of a psychological test taken by an international group of graduate unfamiliar with palaeoherpetology. We compared the phylogenetic results of both groups with the currently accepted evolutionary model for this family, which is based on mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences. The ranking of the relative (and subjective) conspicuity of vertebral structural units (prezygapophyses, neurapophyses, etc.) collectively made by the inexpert group, presumably, directly derives from a general (human) capability to recognise shapes. The same perceptive pattern also seems to be involved in the character set developed by the specialists, and both matrices obtained similar results in the quality of their respective phylogenetic inferences. Defining characters is the most important step in systematics and, therefore, we stress the importance of developing new tools and approaches for exploring new quantitative and qualitative characters in palaeontological research ; Research was supported by the Spanish Government grant CGL2011-28877 to BS. DB was supported by a JAE-DOC fellowship from the CSIC, under the program "Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios" co292 financed by the European Social Fund (ESF). ; Peer reviewed
Legume plants are able to establish nitrogen-fixing symbiotic relations with Rhizobium bacteria. This symbiosis is, however, affected by a number of abiotic constraints, particularly drought. One of the consequences of drought stress is the overproduction of reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen species (RNS), leading to cellular damage and, ultimately, cell death. Ascorbic acid (AsA), also known as vitamin C, is one of the antioxidant compounds that plants synthesize to counteract this oxidative damage. One promising strategy for the improvement of plant growth and symbiotic performance under drought stress is the overproduction of AsA via the overexpression of enzymes in the Smirnoff-Wheeler biosynthesis pathway. In the current work, we generated Medicago truncatula plants with increased AsA biosynthesis by overexpressing MtVTC2, a gene coding for GDP-L-galactose phosphorylase. We characterized the growth and physiological responses of symbiotic plants both under well-watered conditions and during a progressive water deficit. Results show that increased AsA availability did not provide an advantage in terms of plant growth or symbiotic performance either under well-watered conditions or in response to drought. ; This work had been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation-European Regional Development Fund (grant RTI2018-094623-B-C22) and the Government of Navarra (project PC112-113 LEGUSI). EL was a Ramón y Cajal fellow (RYC2018-023867-I) and LC-P and MR were Formación de Personal Investigador fellows from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (BES-2015-074411 and BES-2012-059972, respectively).
IMN acknowledge funding from the European Union FEDER, FSE. EURAMET EMPIR 17FUN06 SIQUST. SMS acknowledges funding from "Programa Internacional de Becas 'la Caixa'-Severo Ochoa". ICN2 is funded by the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. Part of the present work has been performed in the framework of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Materials Science PhD program. Part of the HAADF-STEM microscopy was conducted in the Laboratorio de Microscopias Avanzadas at Instituto de Nanociencia de Aragon-Universidad de Zaragoza. We acknowledge support from CSIC Research Platform on Quantum Technologies PTI-001. ; The growth of compound semiconductors on silicon has been widely sought after for decades, but reliable methods for defect-free combination of these materials have remained elusive. Recently, interconnected GaAs nanoscale membranes have been used as templates for the scalable integration of nanowire networks on III-V substrates. Here, we demonstrate how GaAs nanoscale membranes can be seamlessly integrated on silicon by controlling the density of nuclei in the initial stages of growth. We also correlate the absence or presence of defects with the existence of a single or multiple nucleation regime for the single membranes. Certain defects exhibit well-differentiated spectroscopic features that we identify with cathodoluminescence and micro-photoluminescence techniques. Overall, this work presents a new approach for the seamless integration of compound semiconductors on silicon.
The Earth system model EC-Earth3 for contributions to CMIP6 is documented here, with its flexible coupling framework, major model configurations, a methodology for ensuring the simulations are comparable across different high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and with the physical performance of base configurations over the historical period. The variety of possible configurations and sub-models reflects the broad interests in the EC-Earth community. EC-Earth3 key performance metrics demonstrate physical behavior and biases well within the frame known from recent CMIP models. With improved physical and dynamic features, new Earth system model (ESM) components, community tools, and largely improved physical performance compared to the CMIP5 version, EC-Earth3 represents a clear step forward for the only European community ESM. We demonstrate here that EC-Earth3 is suited for a range of tasks in CMIP6 and beyond. ; The development of EC-Earth3 was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under project IS-ENES3, the third phase of the distributed e-infrastructure of the European Network for Earth System Modelling (ENES) (grant agreement no. 824084, PRIMAVERA grant no. 641727, and CRESCENDO grant no. 641816). Etienne Tourigny and Raffaele Bernardello have received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement nos. 748750 (SPFireSD project) and 708063 (NeTNPPAO project). Ivana Cvijanovic was supported by Generalitat de Catalunya (Secretaria d'Universitats i Recerca del Departament d'Empresa i Coneixement) through the Beatriu de Pinós program. Yohan Ruprich-Robert was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program in the framework of Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant INADEC (grant agreement 800154). Paul A. Miller, Lars Nieradzik, David Wårlind, Roland Schrödner, and Benjamin Smith acknowledge financial support from the strategic research area "Modeling the Regional and Global ...