Plastids and mitochondria arose through endosymbiotic acquisition of formerly free-living bacteria. During more than a billion years of subsequent concerted evolution, the three genomes of plant cells have undergone dramatic structural changes to optimize the expression of the compartmentalized genetic material and to fine-tune the communication between the nucleus and the organelles. The chimeric composition of many multiprotein complexes in plastids and mitochondria (one part of the subunits being nuclear encoded and another one being encoded in the organellar genome) provides (...) a paradigm for co-evolution at the cellular level. In this paper, we discuss the co-evolution of nuclear and organellar genomes in the context of environmental adaptation in species and populations. We highlight emerging genetic model systems and new experimental approaches that are particularly suitable to elucidate the molecular basis of co-adaptation processes and describe how nuclear-cytoplasmic co-evolution can cause genetic incompatibilities that contribute to the establishment of hybridization barriers, ultimately leading to the formation of new species. (shrink)

Simon Conway Morris, noted Cambridge University paleontologist, argues that in evolutionary natural history humans (or beings rather like humans) are an inevitable outcome of the developing speciating processes over millennia; humans are “inherent” in the system. This claim, in marked contrast to claims about contingency made by other prominent paleontologists, is based on numerous remarkable convergences—similar trends found repeatedly in evolutionary history. Conway Morris concludes approaching a natural theology. His argument is powerful and informed. But does it face adequately the (...) surprising events in such history, particularly notable in unexpected co‐options that redirect the course of life? The challenge to understand how humans are both on a continuum with other species and also utterly different remains a central puzzle in paleontology. (shrink)

Electronics can be defined as electromagnetic technology dealing with information, and meta-electronics as a field encompassing all the synergistic technologies in which electronics plays a dominant role. Examining the broad field corresponding to this definition we realize that its history starts some seventy years earlier than the customarily accepted birth of electronics, and, what is more significant, that electronics undergoes a true evolution. This new evolution creates rich, diverse structures similar to those created by the biological evolution. Like biology, electronics (...) is non-teleological, which allows for its unlimited evolutionary development. We propose electronic analogies of all essential biological categories, at all levels: population, speciation, common ancestor, phenotype, extended phenotype, co-evolution, convergent evolution, evolutionary arms race, extinction and mass extinction, hierarchical levels, generative entrenchment, genes, alleles, genome, genetic pool, recombination, mutation, genetic drift, lateral gene transfer, etc. The evolutionary algorithm operating in electronics, like a Darwinian one, includes variation within a population of device models, heredity, natural selection, and a form of selection based on aesthetics and fashion which resembles sexual selection. Algorithm is especially similar to artificial selection, thus possessing directionality in the variational part. Electronic development is orders of magnitude faster than biological, accelerated by that directionality and by other distinct, identifiable mechanisms. Speciation in electronics, as in biology, is best represented on a phylogenetic tree, which starts from a common ancestor, but lately exhibits a unification trend. If continued, this trend may lead to the appearance of a common descendant absent in biology. Our analysis may explain emerging anti-social aspects of electronics and our conclusions add new urgency to recent concerns with unchecked development of Artificial Intelligence. (shrink)

All organisms live in close association with microbes. However, not all such associations are meaningful in an evolutionary context. Current debate concerns whether hosts and microbes are best described as communities of individuals or as holobionts (selective units of hosts plus their microbes). Recent reports that assortative mating of hosts by diet can be mediated by commensal gut microbes have attracted interest as a potential route to host reproductive isolation (RI). Here, the authors discuss logical problems with this line of (...) argument. The authors briefly review how microbes can affect host mating preferences and evaluate recent findings from fruitflies. Endosymbionts can potentially influence host RI given stable and recurrent co‐association of hosts and microbes over evolutionary time. However, observations of co‐occurrence of microbes and hosts are ripe for misinterpretation and such associations will rarely represent a meaningful holobiont. A framework in which hosts and their microbes are independent evolutionary units provides the only satisfactory explanation for the observed range of effects and associations. (shrink)

Contributed articles on modern philosophy, Saiva Siddhanta and Cō. Kiruṣṇarājā.

Este livro pretende ser um convite à leitura das obras de Álvaro Vieira Pinto. Chama-se 'Esperança e democracia' porque no núcleo do pensar desse, que foi o mais consistente filósofo do nacionalismo brasileiro, estão a esperança - o ânimo de quem não teme o destino e quer projetar no mundo as marcas da sua vontade - e a democracia, o regime político dos homens comuns.

This comprehensive sourcebook of Philo of Alexandria presents topics and themes drawn from commonly studied Philonic texts in seven chapters: theology, cosmology, anthropology, ethics, biblical characters, Jewish Law, and Jewish worship and observances.

This book examines Philo's understanding of the acquisition of virtues and the avoidance of vices using the Greek concept of piety as a central virtue in his ethical discourse. Naveros exceptionally shows how Philo construes his understanding of living ethically within both the Hellenistic Jewish and Greek traditions.

Esta contribución, enmarcada en las V y VI convocatorias de proyectos de innovación docente de la Universidad de Cantabria (España), demuestra los resultados obtenidos tras la incorporación de metodologías docentes de gamificación y de creación de video-píldoras informativas en el contexto de aprendizaje de Geo-tecnologías. El alumnado participante mostró un grado de satisfacción muy elevado con el proyecto de innovación, alcanzando una media de 4.45 sobre 5 y las competencias de la asignatura se lograron satisfactoriamente. La experiencia es exportable a (...) otros contextos docentes sin necesidades de financiación específicas. (shrink)

"Contra la postmodernidad" entabla una polémica con las principales contribuciones políticas, sociológicas y filosóficas de los últimos tiempos. Comparecen ante el tribunal pensadores como Zygmunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens, Agnes Héller, Toni Negri, Simon Critchley, Gianni Vattimo, Eloy Fernández Porta y Jean-François Lyotard, entre otros. Se discuten las falacias de la economía neoclásica, el fetichismo de la alteridad radical y la retórica de la diferencia. A esto se añade una ardua polémica con aquella forma de filosofía obsesionada con el suicidio de (...) la razón, la muerte de la metafísica y la superación de la Modernidad. También se debate sobre la crisis del proyecto europeo y sobre movimientos sociales recientes como el 15-M o la primavera árabe. La tesis principal del libro afirma que la postmodernidad hace tiempo que llegó a su fin, sus categorías no son aplicables a un tiempo como el nuestro, marcado por una grave crisis económica, ecológica y social. Asistimos al regreso de la lucha de clases, la geopolítica, las estrategias neocoloniales, el populismo y el fundamentalismo étnico, cultural y religioso. En este contexto de grandes transformaciones, la apuesta normativa del postmodernismo resulta intelectualmente muy pobre y políticamente inútil. El afán por las cuestiones culturales e identitarias lleva a que muchos de sus autores olviden deliberadamente el análisis económico del sistema. Por este motivo, el postmodernismo resulta ser, en la mayor parte de los casos, una réplica exacta de la ideología neoliberal. (shrink)