scholarly journals La genètica de les migracions humanes: Seguint el rastre de les migracions a través del nostre genoma

Author(s):  
David Comas Martínez

Various academic disciplines shed light on human migrations, helping us to reconstruct the past. Studying the genetic diversity of human populations today reveals past demographic and migratory events that have left an imprint on our genome. Armed with knowledge of migrations in prehistoric times, we can test hypotheses put forward in other scientific disciplines. Similarly, the distribution of genetic diversity in the future will largely depend on today’s extensive human migrations, facilitated by technological advances.

Author(s):  
Matthew Bagot

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 323-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Ellis ◽  
Jerry Rawicki

This article extends the research of Jerry Rawicki and Carolyn Ellis who have collaborated for more than eight years on memories and consequences of the Holocaust. Focusing on Jerry’s memories of his experience during the Holocaust, they present dialogues that took place during five recorded interviews and follow-up conversations that reflect on the similarity of Hitler’s seizing of power in the 1930s to the meteoric rise of Donald Trump. Noting how issues of class and race were taking an increasingly prominent role in their conversations and collaborative writing, they also begin to examine discontent in the rural, White working class and Carolyn’s socialization within that community. These dialogues and reflections seek to shed light on the current political climate in America as Carolyn and Jerry struggle to cope with their fears and envision a hopeful path forward for their country.


Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 361 (6405) ◽  
pp. 876-880 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifan Cheng

Cryo–electron microscopy, or simply cryo-EM, refers mainly to three very different yet closely related techniques: electron crystallography, single-particle cryo-EM, and electron cryotomography. In the past few years, single-particle cryo-EM in particular has triggered a revolution in structural biology and has become a newly dominant discipline. This Review examines the fascinating story of its start and evolution over the past 40-plus years, delves into how and why the recent technological advances have been so groundbreaking, and briefly considers where the technique may be headed in the future.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 809-833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Breidbach ◽  
Sunmee Choi ◽  
Benjamin Ellway ◽  
Byron W. Keating ◽  
Katerina Kormusheva ◽  
...  

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the history and future of service operations, with the goal to identify key theoretical and technological advances, as well as fundamental themes that can help to imagine the future of service operations in 2050. Design/methodology/approach A review of the service operations literature was undertaken to inform a discussion regarding the role that technology will play in the future of service operations. Findings The future of service operations is framed in terms of three key themes – complexity, orchestration, and elasticity. The paper makes three contributions to the service science literature by: reviewing key themes underpinning extant service operations research to frame future trajectories of service operations research; elaborating a vision of service operations in 2050 based on history and technology; and outlining a research agenda for future service operations. Practical implications The case of service automation is used to provide an illustration of how the three themes converge to define future service operations, and in particular, to show how technology is recasting the role of the firm. Originality/value Service operations in the next 30 years will be very different from what it was in the past 30 years. This paper differs from other review papers by identifying three key themes that will characterize and instill new insights into the future of service operations research.


2021 ◽  
pp. 303-316
Author(s):  
Abdullah Al Maruf ◽  
Chad Bousman

Matching individuals to tolerable and efficacious pharmacotherapies in mental health has proven challenging. As such, efforts to personalize psychotropic prescribing in mental health has received considerable attention over the past decade. This attention has been fueled by technological advances in genomics, specifically, pharmacogenomics, and, more recently, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics that have facilitated the identification of clinically useful biological markers to guide medication selection and dosing. The convergence of these omic technologies is arguably the future of personalized psychotropic prescribing. This chapter provides an overview of the current genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic knowledgebase as it relates to psychotropic drug response in an effort to identify promising linkages between and facilitate convergence across these approaches to guide safe and effective pharmacotherapy relevant to psychiatry.


2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (15) ◽  
pp. 8250-8253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben C. Rick ◽  
Daniel H. Sandweiss

We live in an age characterized by increasing environmental, social, economic, and political uncertainty. Human societies face significant challenges, ranging from climate change to food security, biodiversity declines and extinction, and political instability. In response, scientists, policy makers, and the general public are seeking new interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches to evaluate and identify meaningful solutions to these global challenges. Underrecognized among these challenges is the disappearing record of past environmental change, which can be key to surviving the future. Historical sciences such as archaeology access the past to provide long-term perspectives on past human ecodynamics: the interaction between human social and cultural systems and climate and environment. Such studies shed light on how we arrived at the present day and help us search for sustainable trajectories toward the future. Here, we highlight contributions by archaeology—the study of the human past—to interdisciplinary research programs designed to evaluate current social and environmental challenges and contribute to solutions for the future. The past is a multimillennial experiment in human ecodynamics, and, together with our transdisciplinary colleagues, archaeology is well positioned to uncover the lessons of that experiment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 789-810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve MacFeely

Abstract As economies, societies, and environments change, official statistics evolve and develop to reflect those changes. In reaction to disruptive innovations arising from globalisation, technological advances, and cultural changes, the pace of change of official statistics will accelerate in the future. The motivation for change may also be more existential than that of the past as official statisticians consider the survival of their discipline. This article examines some of the emerging developments and questions whether they present threats or offer opportunities.


2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rubén Heradio ◽  
David Fernández-Amorós ◽  
Francisco Javier Cabrerizo ◽  
Enrique Herrera-Viedma

In the past two decades, the use of digital libraries (DLs) has grown significantly. Accordingly, questions about the utility, usability and cost of DLs have started to arise, and greater attention is being paid to the quality evaluation of this type of information system. Since DLs are destined to serve user communities, one of the main aspects to be considered in DL evaluation is the user’s opinion. The literature on this topic has produced a set of varied criteria to judge DLs from the user’s perspective, measuring instruments to elicit users’ opinions, and approaches to analyse the elicited data to conclude an evaluation. This paper provides a literature review of the quality evaluation of DLs based on users’ perceptions. Its main contribution is to bring together previously disparate streams of work to help shed light on this thriving area. In addition, the various studies are discussed, and some challenges to be faced in the future are proposed.


2000 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 145-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gottfried Hagen

The past to which a society refers in search of clues for self-identification and confirmation for its hopes and aspirations is not an objective reality. It is a myth that can be defined as “a (preferably narrative) reference to the past in order to shed light from there on present and future” (Assmann 1997, p. 78). However, the function of myth is not generally to legitimize the present order or to continue it into the future. It may also work as a counter-principle of the present, contrasting it with a better past and betraying the experience of a fundamental deficiency in present society. Assmann thus distinguishes several functions of the myth collectively termed mythomotoric: It can either serve the present (präsentisch, fundierend) or criticize it (kontrapräsentisch, in its extreme forms revolutionary) (Assmann 1997, pp. 80-86).


2008 ◽  
Vol 89 (12) ◽  
pp. 2933-2942 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda de Graaf ◽  
Albert D. M. E. Osterhaus ◽  
Ron A. M. Fouchier ◽  
Edward C. Holmes

Human (HMPV) and avian (AMPV) metapneumoviruses are closely related viruses that cause respiratory tract illnesses in humans and birds, respectively. Although HMPV was first discovered in 2001, retrospective studies have shown that HMPV has been circulating in humans for at least 50 years. AMPV was first isolated in the 1970s, and can be classified into four subgroups, A–D. AMPV subgroup C is more closely related to HMPV than to any other AMPV subgroup, suggesting that HMPV has emerged from AMPV-C upon zoonosis. Presently, at least four genetic lineages of HMPV circulate in human populations – A1, A2, B1 and B2 – of which lineages A and B are antigenically distinct. We used a Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) framework to determine the evolutionary and epidemiological dynamics of HMPV and AMPV-C. The rates of nucleotide substitution, relative genetic diversity and time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) were estimated using large sets of sequences of the nucleoprotein, the fusion protein and attachment protein genes. The sampled genetic diversity of HMPV was found to have arisen within the past 119–133 years, with consistent results across all three genes, while the TMRCA for HMPV and AMPV-C was estimated to have existed around 200 years ago. The relative genetic diversity observed in the four HMPV lineages was low, most likely reflecting continual population bottlenecks, with only limited evidence for positive selection.


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