The concept of 'sustainable development' as used by the Brundtland Commission was meant to separate environmental policy from distributional conflicts. Increases in income sometimes are beneficial for the environment, but higher incomes have meant higher emissions of greenhouse gases, and higher rates of genetic erosion. In the aftermath of the Rio conference of June 1992, this article analyses some unavoidable links between distributional conflicts and environmental policy. Often, environmental movements have tried to keep environmental resources and services outside the market, (...) but there are now attempts to establish property rights on, and to give money values to environmental resources and services, such as agricultural genetic resources and the CO2 absorption facility provided by the oceans and new vegetation. European 'green' proposals to impose an 'eco-tax', and proposals from India to create a world market for CO2 emission permits are considered. The issue raised by the growing Third World agroecology movement, of payment of 'farmers' rights' for in situ agricultural biodiversity is discussed. The article includes a short discussion of the North American free trade agreement between Mexico and the USA, in so far as it involves so-called 'ecological dumping', i.e. trading at values which do not include environmental costs. In the last sections, the article asks how prices in ecologically-extended markets would be formed, how much such prices will depend on distribution, and how much such payments would change distribution of income. Environmental movements of the Poor are faced with the dilemma of keeping environmental resources and services out of the market, or else asking for property rights to be placed on them. (shrink)

El autor estudia el metabolismo socio-económico, en términos de flujos de materiales y energía y de la producción de residuos, y clasifica y estudia los conflictos ambientales correspondientes. Presenta una tipología de conflictos acerca del uso de recursos naturales y de la contaminación. Llamamos Ecología Política al estudio de esos conflictos ecológico-distributivos. Los actores de tales conflictos usan diversos lenguajes de valoración. Por ejemplo, pueden argumentar que quieren lograr una compensación monetaria equivalente a los daños ambientales sufridos pero también pueden (...) decir que el territorio en cuestión es sagrado o pueden apelar a la defensa de los derechos humanos o de los derechos colectivos indígenas, o pueden insistir en valores ecológicos que no pueden ser realmente expresados en dinero. La Economía Ecológica estudia las relaciones entre el crecimiento económico y el medio natural. Desde el punto de vista de la sustentabilidad «fuerte», eso requiere usar indicadores físicos como la HANPP o la Contabilidad de Flujos de Materiales. Este artículo tiene la intención de mostrar que los conflictos ecológico-distributivos pueden ser explicados e incluso previstos por esos indicadores físicos de (in)sustentabilidad. (shrink)

Degrowth is the literal translation of 'decroissance', a French word meaning reduction. Launched by activists in 2001 as a challenge to growth, it became a missile word that sparks a contentious debate on the diagnosis and prognosis of our society. 'Degrowth' became an interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement where numerous streams of critical ideas and political actions converge. It is an attempt to re-politicise debates about desired socio-environmental futures and an example of an activist-led science now (...) consolidating into a concept in academic literature. This article discusses the definition, origins, evolution, practices and construction of degrowth. The main objective is to explain degrowth's multiple sources and strategies in order to improve its basic definition and avoid reductionist criticisms and misconceptions. To this end, the article presents degrowth's main intellectual sources as well as its diverse strategies (oppositional activism, building of alternatives and political proposals) and actors (practitioners, activists and scientists). Finally, the article argues that the movement's diversity does not detract from the existence of a common path. (shrink)

This paper presents the manner in which the DNA, the molecule of life, was discovered. Unlike what many people, even biologists, believe, it was Johannes Friedrich Miescher who originally discovered and isolated nuclein, currently known as DNA, in 1869, 75 years before Watson and Crick unveiled its structure. Also, in this paper we show, and above all demonstrate, the serendipity of this major discovery. Like many of his contemporaries, Miescher set out to discover how cells worked by means of studying (...) and analysing their proteins. During this arduous task, he detected an unexpected substance of unpredicted properties. This new substance precipitated when he added acid to the solution and it dissolved again when adding alkali. Unexpectedly and by a mere fluke, Miescher was the first person to obtain a DNA precipitate. The paper then presents the term serendipity and discusses how it has influenced the discovery of other important scientific milestones. Finally, we address the question of whether serendipitous discoveries can be nurtured and what role the computer could play in this process. (shrink)

Perhaps the hottest topic in the philosophy of chemistry is that of the relationship between chemistry and physics. The problem finds one of its main manifestations in the debate about the nature of molecular structure, given by the spatial arrangement of the nuclei in a molecule. The traditional strategy to address the problem is to consider chemical cases that challenge the definition of molecular structure in quantum–mechanical terms. Instead of taking that top-down strategy, in this paper we face the problem (...) of the reduction of molecular structure to quantum mechanics from a bottom-up perspective: our aim is to show how the theoretical peculiarities of quantum mechanics stand against the possibility of molecular structure, defined in terms of the spatial relations of the nuclei conceived as individual localized objects. We will argue that, according to the theory, quantum “particles” are not individuals that can be identified as different from others and that can be reidentified through time; therefore, they do not have the ontological stability necessary to maintain the relations that can lead to a spatially definite system with an identifiable shape. On the other hand, although quantum chemists use the resources supplied by quantum mechanics with successful results, this does no mean reduction: their “approximations” add certain assumptions that are not justified in the context of quantum mechanics or are even inconsistent with the very formal structure of the theory. (shrink)

Texto de presentación para el monográfico _De São Paulo a Puebla: la izquierda iberoamericana entre el retorno y la transformación (1990-2024)._.

Although during the last decades the philosophy of chemistry has greatly extended its thematic scope, the main difficulties appear in the attempt to link the chemical description of atoms and molecules and the description supplied by quantum mechanics. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the difficulties that threaten the continuous conceptual link between molecular chemistry and quantum mechanics can be overcome or, at least, moderated from the perspective of BM. With this purpose, in “The quantum-mechanical challenges” section (...) the foundational incompatibility between chemical and SQM descriptions will be briefly recalled. “Bohmian mechanics” section will be devoted to explain the main features of BM. In “Empirical equivalence and underdetermination” section, the consequences of the empirical equivalence between SQM and BM will be discussed. Finally, in the Conclusion, we will stress the scope of the obtained conclusions and the philosophical difficulties that still remain even after adopting BM for foundational purposes. (shrink)

En este artículo el profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez expone los temas más importantes de la reflexión teológica de Antonio Royo Marín. Se centra especialmente en una de sus obras más importantes La Teología de la Perfección. Royo Marín ha sido un predicador infatigable. Muestra de ello son los numerosos escritos que dejó y su amplia divulgación entre muchos fieles cristianos. Varios grupos, repartidos en diversos lugares del mundo, siguen nutriéndose de su teología. La profundidad con la que están escritos (...) y la claridad de su exposición permiten a muchos lectores un acercamiento a la espiritualidad cristiana y a sus fuentes. Los Santos Padres de los primeros siglos del cristianismo, Santo Tomás, Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa de Lisieux, Santa Catalina de Siena, Juan González Arintero, entre otros, inspiraron la reflexión teológica de Royo Marín.El 17 de abril se cumplirán cinco años de su fallecimiento. Con este motivo y respondiendo a las numerosas demandas que nos han llegado, ofrecemos a todos los lectores la magnífica descripción que de su teología ha escrito en Ciencia Tomista el profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez Juan. (shrink)

En este artículo el profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez expone los temas más importantes de la reflexión teológica de Antonio Royo Marín. Se centra especialmente en una de sus obras más importantes La Teología de la Perfección. Royo Marín ha sido un predicador infatigable. Muestra de ello son los numerosos escritos que dejó y su amplia divulgación entre muchos fieles cristianos. Varios grupos, repartidos en diversos lugares del mundo, siguen nutriéndose de su teología. La profundidad con la que están escritos (...) y la claridad de su exposición permiten a muchos lectores un acercamiento a la espiritualidad cristiana y a sus fuentes. Los Santos Padres de los primeros siglos del cristianismo, Santo Tomás, Santa Teresa de Jesús, San Juan de la Cruz, Santa Teresa de Lisieux, Santa Catalina de Siena, Juan González Arintero, entre otros, inspiraron la reflexión teológica de Royo Marín.El 17 de abril se cumplirán cinco años de su fallecimiento. Con este motivo y respondiendo a las numerosas demandas que nos han llegado, ofrecemos a todos los lectores la magnífica descripción que de su teología ha escrito en Ciencia Tomista el profesor Manuel Ángel Martínez Juan. (shrink)

Although during the last decades the philosophy of chemistry has greatly extended its thematic scope, the main difficulties appear in the attempt to link the chemical description of atoms and molecules and the description supplied by quantum mechanics. The aim of this paper is to analyze how the difficulties that threaten the continuous conceptual link between molecular chemistry and quantum mechanics can be overcome or, at least, moderated from the perspective of BM. With this purpose, in “The quantum-mechanical challenges” section (...) the foundational incompatibility between chemical and SQM descriptions will be briefly recalled. “Bohmian mechanics” section will be devoted to explain the main features of BM. In “Empirical equivalence and underdetermination” section, the consequences of the empirical equivalence between SQM and BM will be discussed. Finally, in the Conclusion, we will stress the scope of the obtained conclusions and the philosophical difficulties that still remain even after adopting BM for foundational purposes. (shrink)

In connection with some known results on uncountable cardinal sequences for superatomic Boolean algebras, we shall describe some open questions for superatomic Boolean algebras concerning singular cardinals.

By using the notion of a simplified (κ,1)-morass, we construct κ-thin-tall, κ-thin-thick and, in a forcing extension, κ-very thin-thick superatomic Boolean algebras for every infinite regular cardinal κ.

El Jubileo Extraordinario de la Misericordia ha sido un importante acontecimiento eclesial, que ha permitido profundizar en esta realidad que el Papa Francisco define como “la viga maestra que sostiene la vida de la Iglesia”. En la historia de la Iglesia, los santos han vivido la experiencia de la misericordia de Dios de diversas maneras, y como vivencia personal la han reflejado en sus escritos. Es el caso de San Juan de Ávila, quien trató abundantemente sobre la misericordia tanto (...) en sus obras impresas como en su epistolario y en sus predicaciones. El presente artículo pretende resumir la riqueza del magisterio del Apóstol de Andalucía sobre la misericordia. (shrink)

In April 2015, an international team of researchers announced the measurement, for the first time, of the first ionization energy of lawrencium, a superheavy element of atomic number 103. The experimental result, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, led to the reopening of a long-standing debate that concerns the elements that should be part of group 3 of the periodic table. The aim of this paper is to introduce a new line of argumentation to elucidate this problem.

Cognitive Archaeology is a theoretical perspective in archaeology, the boundaries of which fade into the field of cognitive science. From a classic perspective, Cognitive Archaeology is, according to Huffman Beach , “the study of prehistoric ideology: the ideals, values, and beliefs that constitute a society’s worldview” . For this purpose a cognitive archaeologist studies historical and archaeological evidence in a series of diverse objects like material symbols, tools, the relation with the space, political and religious thinking. However, an approach to (...) these topics involves taking into account the way people of antiquity represented their reality. In other words, it involves thinking about how the mind has built itself through history by its interaction with the material world.To explore the limits of our conceptions of the material world and their relations with the mind in the constitution of human cognition Lambros Malafouris presents How Things Shape the Mind: A Th .. (shrink)

Avec la publication de La communauté désœuvrée et La communauté inavouable, Maurice Blanchot et Jean-Luc Nancy commencent, au début des années 1980, un dialogue dont l’objet fut le thème de la communauté. Ce dialogue, cependant, n’impliquait pas seulement les noms de Blanchot et Nancy : ils se reconnaissaient héritiers d’une réflexion qui avait déjà commencé Nietzsche et Bataille. Plusieurs années plus tard, dans La communauté désavouée, Nancy revient sur ce débat et il s’y interroge : qu’est-ce que Blanchot voulait dire (...) avec les arguments qu’il avait opposé contre le livre écrit par Nancy? Partant de cette question, avec laquelle Nancy commence le dernier essai autour ce thème, ce travail propose de reconstruire le dialogue entre Blanchot et Nancy pour y trouver le lien entre communauté et écriture. (shrink)

Con el objeto de identificar lo que creemos constituye una ontología política posmetafísica en el pensamiento de Bataille –fuertemente vinculada a la práctica de la escritura– el presente trabajo intenta situar la especificidad teórica que ocupa el exceso como problema ontológico en su filosofía, a partir del desarrollo de un recorrido que reflexiona sobre el estatuto de dicho exceso en Lévi-Strauss y el posestructuralismo, por un lado, y en el pensamiento político posfundacional, por el otro.

Con el objeto de identificar lo que creemos constituye una ontología política posmetafísica en el pensamiento de Bataille –fuertemente vinculada a la práctica de la escritura– el presente trabajo intenta situar la especificidad teórica que ocupa el exceso como problema ontológico en su filosofía a partir del desarrollo de un recorrido que reflexiona sobre el estatuto de dicho exceso en Lévi-Strauss y el posestructuralismo, por un lado, y en el pensamiento político posfundacional, por el otro.

In the present paper we address the problem of optical isomerism embodied in the socalled “Hund’s paradox”, which points to the difficulty to account for chirality by means of quantum mechanics. In particular, we explain the answer to the problem proposed by the theory of decoherence. The purpose of this article is to challenge this answer on the basis of a conceptual analysis of the phenomenon of decoherence, that reveals the limitations of the theory of decoherence to solve the difficulties (...) posed by optical isomerism and, in general, by quantum measurement. (shrink)

El objetivo principal de este artículo es diseñar un método para detectar qué cosas pueden considerarse “evidentes”. Comienza analizando cómo se ha entendido la evidencia en la tradición aristotélica y tomista hasta nuestros días. Después del estudio histórico, en el Capítulo III se procede a realizar un análisis sistemático de la noción de evidencia y sus clases. En este trabajo se descubren diez características que aparecen en las cosas evidentes (en las ideas, en los primeros principios, nociones más básicas, pruebas, (...) etc.). Definidas estas diez características, la forma de diseñar una prueba de evidencia resulta fácil. El Capítulo IV hace esto: primero se diseña un test negativo, que muestra que algún argumento no es evidente, y luego un test positivo, que indica que alguna idea, principio, prueba, etc. parece ser evidente. Terminamos este trabajo con algunas consideraciones sobre cómo este test-dual puede funcionar en la ciencia del derecho. (shrink)

The retina pigment epithelium (RPE) is a highly specialised epithelium that serves as a multifunctional and indispensable component of the vertebrate eye. Although a great deal of attention has been paid to its transdifferentiation capabilities and its ancillary functions in neural retina development, little is known about the molecular mechanisms that specify the RPE itself. Recent advances in our understanding of the genetic network that controls the progressive specification of the eye anlage in vertebrates have provided some of the initial (...) cues to the mechanisms responsible for RPE patterning. Here, we have outlined many recent findings that suggest that a limited number of transcription factors, including Otx2, Mitf and Pax6 and a few signalling cascades, are the elements required for the onset of RPE specification in vertebrates. Furthermore, using this information and the data available on the specification of the pigmented cells of primitive chordates, we have ventured some hypotheses on the origin of RPE cells during evolution. BioEssays 26:766–777, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Objective: To describe how local research ethics committees (LRECs) consider and apply research ethics in the evaluation of biomedical research proposals. Design: A qualitative study was conducted using purposeful sampling, focus groups and a grounded theory approach to generate data and to analyse the work of the LRECs. Setting and participants: 11 LRECs of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS). Results: LRECs considered ethics to be implicit in all types of research, but that ethics reviews were only necessary (...) for projects that included the direct participation of human beings. The LRECs appeared to understand the importance of consent, as in the completion of a consent form, but did not emphasise the importance of the process of acquiring ‘informed’ consent. The committees considered their main roles or functions to be: (a) to improve the methodological quality of research and to verify – if applicable – the ethical aspects; (b) to encourage personnel to undergo research training; (c) to follow‐up research to oversee the adherence to norms and compliance with a specified research timetable. Conclusions: This study provides a valuable insight into how these LRECs understand the ethical review process. The emphasis of the committees was on rules, regulations, improving research methodology and research training, rather than a focus on efforts to protect the rights and well being of research subjects. The results encourage further normative and descriptive lines of investigation concerning education and the development of LRECs. (shrink)

In recent decades, the expansion of economic activity has been accompanied by negative environmental impacts. In response, there have been dramatic changes worldwide in terms of an increased demand for environmentally friendly products and services. To achieve these eco-innovations, firms have sought to acquire knowledge and implement operational flexibility by cooperating with different agents such as universities through a value cocreation system that is also expected to enhance firms’ performance. Using a sample of 250 companies, the present paper examines the (...) role of cooperation with universities in the development of diverse environmental innovations and building operational flexibility and, through this, improving firm performance. Results show that firms that value cooperation with universities develop a wider range of environmental innovations and increase their sales and benefits. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe social content of affective stimuli has been proposed as having an influence on cognitive processing and behaviour. This research was aimed, therefore, at studying whether automatic exogenous attention demanded by affective pictures was related to their social value. We hypothesised that affective social pictures would capture attention to a greater extent than non-social affective stimuli. For this purpose, we recorded event-related potentials in a sample of 24 participants engaged in a digit categorisation task. Distracters were affective pictures varying in (...) social content, in addition to affective valence and arousal, which appeared in the background during the task. Our data revealed that pictures depicting high social content captured greater automatic attention than other pictures, as reflected by the greater amplitude and shorter latency of anterior P2, and anterior and posterior N2 components of the ERPs. In addition, social content also provoked greater allocation of processing resour... (shrink)

Quantum chemistry is the branch of chemistry whose primary focus is the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems at the molecular level. Precisely due to its peculiar position between chemistry and physics, in the last times it has begun to engage the interest of the philosophers of chemistry. Nevertheless, in this philosophical field, quantum chemistry has been studied mainly from a historical viewpoint or from a perspective interested on methodological issues. By contrast, the question that will guide this article (...) is: what kind of ontic items are those studied by quantum chemistry? In order to develop the argumentation, first the relevance of the ontological questions will be addressed. Then, it will be considered in what measure the Born-Oppenheimer approximation and the quantum-chemistry concept of electron fit in the quantum theoretical context. Finally, some issues about what quantum chemistry refers to will be discussed. (shrink)