Racionalidad y Justicia Ambiental: La Elusiva Injusticia de la Vida

Law is not justice, says the Manifesto for Life. The justice system established in modernity (the legality of a positive law) does not manage to contain the will to dominate exercised by the ontological regime of modernity over the degradation of life and to adjust human behavior within the conditions of life. . Environmental justice transcends the order of the economy (even of the ecological economy) as a mechanism of the social distribution of human justice of environmental goods and services of nature, to institute another idea of ​​fairness under the principles of human dignity and in the immanence of life. Environmental justice seeks to establish a criterion of fairness for the construction of other possible worlds based on the principles that sustain the disjunctive category of environmental rationality: an ontology of the diversity of life, a politics of difference, and ethics of otherness.

From Bioinspired to Bioinformed: Benefits of Greater Engagement From Biologists

Bioinspiration and biomimetics is a rapidly growing field where insights from biology are used to solve current design challenges. Nature provides an abundance of inspiration to draw upon, yet biological information is under-exploited due to a concerning lack of engagement from biologists. To assess the extent of this problem, we surveyed the current state of the field using the Web of Science database and found that only 41% of publications on bioinspired or biomimetic research included an author affiliated with a biology-related department or organisation. In addition, most publications focus exclusively on a limited range of popular model species. Considering these findings, we highlight key reasons why greater engagement from biologists will enable new and significant insights from natural selection and the diversity of life. Likewise, biologists are missing unique opportunities to study biological phenomena from the perspective of other disciplines, particularly engineering. We discuss the importance of striving toward a bioinformed approach, as current limitations in the field can only be overcome with a greater understanding of the ecological and evolutionary contexts behind each bioinspired/biomimetic solution.

Tragedy, Pluralism, Agonism: Ancient Greek Tragedy as a foundation for pluralist theory, with an application to pluralist agonism

<p>In Fifth Century B.C. Athens, the tragic playwrights took upon themselves the traditional mantle of poet-sage and responded to the cultural crisis of their time: the rupture within the Athenian mindset between on the one hand, an emergent Enlightenment-style discourse based on the juridico-political rationality of the democratic polis and on a confident assessment of the human condition, and on the other, the archaic discourse of myth and its “pessimism of strength”. Their plays held the two in an uneasy yet creative tension, projecting a pluralist ethos grounded in the assertion of the ambiguity and limits of the human condition. The thesis seeks to elaborate on the nature of this pre-philosophical ethos through the exploration of ancient Greek history and thought and the plays themselves. It delineates the expression in this ethos of a dual movement of problematisation and renewal: a critical, problematising, attitude towards both “rational” and “mythic” discourses, and in the space of thought created by this self-questioning, the elaboration of a minimalist platform for claim-making compatible with both the tragic onto-epistemology of limits and moderation and life in the democratic polis. This reading of the plays recognizes the problematisation of monistic claim-making in terms of truth, identity, values and politics. For instance, the playwrights call into question the archaic code of honour of the hero or the instrumental rationality adopted by some of their contemporary Athenian politicians: both systems of value are deemed too rigid and too simplistic to accord with the ambiguity and diversity of life in the city. It also outlines the values of moderation, reciprocity, and public-interestedness that are put forward by the tragedians as palliatives to the antagonism generated by monistic claim-making. These form a pluralist platform on which the democratic contest can be played out without reifying any singular and substantive account of politics, and with a lesser likelihood of dividing the city into factions that seek power at the expense of the city’s survival. The thesis then concludes with an application of the pluralist ethos of classical tragedy to a contemporary pluralist theory. By maintaining the tension between rationalist and mythic discourses, classical tragedy presents to Athenians a “constructive deconstruction” of their worldview. Tragedy’s pre-philosophical and pluralist ethos can underpin the democratic theory of “pluralist agonism”, helping it to navigate a course between modern foundationalist and anti-foundationalist philosophical ethos and their expressions in democratic theory: the liberal reification of constitutionalism and the democratic privileging of popular sovereignty.</p>

Tragedy, Pluralism, Agonism: Ancient Greek Tragedy as a foundation for pluralist theory, with an application to pluralist agonism

<p>In Fifth Century B.C. Athens, the tragic playwrights took upon themselves the traditional mantle of poet-sage and responded to the cultural crisis of their time: the rupture within the Athenian mindset between on the one hand, an emergent Enlightenment-style discourse based on the juridico-political rationality of the democratic polis and on a confident assessment of the human condition, and on the other, the archaic discourse of myth and its “pessimism of strength”. Their plays held the two in an uneasy yet creative tension, projecting a pluralist ethos grounded in the assertion of the ambiguity and limits of the human condition. The thesis seeks to elaborate on the nature of this pre-philosophical ethos through the exploration of ancient Greek history and thought and the plays themselves. It delineates the expression in this ethos of a dual movement of problematisation and renewal: a critical, problematising, attitude towards both “rational” and “mythic” discourses, and in the space of thought created by this self-questioning, the elaboration of a minimalist platform for claim-making compatible with both the tragic onto-epistemology of limits and moderation and life in the democratic polis. This reading of the plays recognizes the problematisation of monistic claim-making in terms of truth, identity, values and politics. For instance, the playwrights call into question the archaic code of honour of the hero or the instrumental rationality adopted by some of their contemporary Athenian politicians: both systems of value are deemed too rigid and too simplistic to accord with the ambiguity and diversity of life in the city. It also outlines the values of moderation, reciprocity, and public-interestedness that are put forward by the tragedians as palliatives to the antagonism generated by monistic claim-making. These form a pluralist platform on which the democratic contest can be played out without reifying any singular and substantive account of politics, and with a lesser likelihood of dividing the city into factions that seek power at the expense of the city’s survival. The thesis then concludes with an application of the pluralist ethos of classical tragedy to a contemporary pluralist theory. By maintaining the tension between rationalist and mythic discourses, classical tragedy presents to Athenians a “constructive deconstruction” of their worldview. Tragedy’s pre-philosophical and pluralist ethos can underpin the democratic theory of “pluralist agonism”, helping it to navigate a course between modern foundationalist and anti-foundationalist philosophical ethos and their expressions in democratic theory: the liberal reification of constitutionalism and the democratic privileging of popular sovereignty.</p>

Age-Related Changes in Posture Steadiness in the Companion Dog

Aging is associated with changes in the sensory-motor system that could lead to dynamic instability. In fact, postural control deficits have been proposed as an early indicator of frailty. Measurements of the displacement of the center of pressure (COP) using pressure mat data are useful tools to determine postural steadiness. Companion dogs represent a powerful model to study aging in people because they share our environment and experience similar age-related diseases. To date, the effect of aging on postural control in dogs has not yet been evaluated. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation between age and the displacement of the COP in dogs during quiet standing. Due to the diversity of life expectancy in dogs according to their body size, age was normalized as a fraction of the predicted life expectancy. Dogs older than 75% of their life expectancy (n=18) were asked to stand on a pressure mat for 8 seconds per trial during at least five trials. Only the frames where the dogs were standing still and facing forward were analyzed. Age as a fraction of life expectancy was significantly correlated (p&lt;0.05) with the Medio-lateral Range, Root-Mean-Square Distance, 95% Confidence Ellipse, and Total Sway Area of the COP. These results show that, as in humans, aging in dogs is associated with postural control deficits and therefore reinforce the dog as a suitable model for translational studies of aging and postural steadiness.

Platinum (II) Nanofibers as Assembly-driven Inhibitors of Metabolic Adaptation in Cancer Cells

Nanostructure-based functions are omnipresent in biology and essential for the diversity of life. Despite their importance, it is difficult to establish mechanisms that define their bioactivity and rationalize them through synthetic designs. As such, strategies that connect bioactive functions through structure formation are scarce. Herein, we design a near-infrared emitting platinum (II)-tripeptide that undergoes a rearrangement using endogenous H2O2 to rapidly assemble into fibrillar superstructures. The resultant assembly inhibits the metabolism of aggressive metastatic MDA-MB-231 cells and A549 cells at the systemic level by blocking aerobic glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation, thereby shutting down ATP production. Hence, ATP-dependent actin formation and glucose metabolite-dependent histone deacetylase activity are downregulated, leading to apoptosis. By demonstrating that assembly-driven functions can inhibit broad biological pathways, supramolecular nanostructures could offer the next generation biomedical solutions beyond conventional applications.

Satirische Metabolistik: Jean Pauls Skizze „Über die Schriftstellerei“

Jean Paul’s collection Grönländische Prozesse, oder Satirische Skizzen (1783–4/1821) has been scrutinized regarding its exuberant similes and its satirical wit, but ranked low compared to his novels. From the beginning, however, it exposes a groundbreaking strategy resonating in his more famous literary and theoretical works alike. The first sketch “On literary writing. An opusculum posthumum” converts a rhetoric of the known material world – with its diversity of life forms – into a materialistic-physiological writing (and vice versa). The text interchanges processes of transformation (e. g. ‘metabolic,’ ‘biotic,’ ‘chemical’) with techniques that are capable of changing things rhetorically. Pertaining to Jean Paul’s later analysis of antithetical wit, I suggest grasping the structure of this interchanging as a rhetorical process in itself, which can be pinpointed by the figure of antimetabole (or commutatio). Consequently, this complex dynamics is connected to transitions between ‘alive’ and ‘dead’. The status of “On literary writing” as a posthumously published draft and pseudo-poetological treatise, introduced by a fictive editor, thus exactly fits the rhetorico-physiological processes it stages and complements a genuinely anticipatory writing.

The information signature of diverging lineages

The process of forming new species is the driving force behind the diversity of life on Earth. Yet, we have not answered the basic question: why are species unevenly distributed across taxonomic groups and geographic settings? This is because we lack the means to directly compare aspects of population (lineage) divergence across unrelated species because taxon-specific effects make comparisons difficult or impossible. Here, we present a new solution to this challenge by identifying the information signature of diverging lineages, calculated using partial information decomposition (PID), under different evolutionary scenarios. We show in silico how the informational decomposition of genetic metrics varies over time since divergence. Calculating PID over 97,200 lattices reveals that the decomposed nodes of Tajima’s D, θW, and π have strong information signatures, while FST was least useful for discriminating among divergence scenarios. The presence or absence of gene flow during divergence was the most detectable signature; mutation rate and effective population size (Ne) were also detectable whereas differences in recombination rate were not. This work demonstrates that PID can reveal evolutionary patterns that are minimally detectable using the raw metrics themselves; it does so by leveraging the architecture of the genome and the partial redundancy of information contained in genetic metrics. Our results demonstrate for the first time how to directly compare characteristics of diverging populations even among distantly related species, providing a foundational tool for understanding the diversity of life across Earth.

Life tables: construction and interpretation

Life tables, which describe how the risk of death (and sometimes fertility) changes with age, are a fundamental tool for describing and exploring the diversity of life histories. Numerous important life history metrics can be derived from them. This chapter provides a broad coverage of life table construction and use and use with a particular focus on nonhuman animals. The calculation of life tables can be divided into approaches: cohort-based, where the data are obtained from individuals born at (approximately) the same time that are followed until death; and period-based, where the data are obtained from a population of mixed ages followed for a particular time-frame (e.g. a year). Worked examples of both approaches are provided using data from published sources. Emphasis is placed on understanding concepts such as rates vs. probability, life expectancy, and generation time. Links are drawn between the survivorship curve (type I, type II, and type III survivorship) and entropy. The chapter also covers the concept of the Lexis diagram which is used to represent births and deaths for individuals in different cohorts. Finally, the assumptions and limitations of life tables are discussed, with pointers to further reading. Code and data are provided.

The Biography of the Earth

This chapter focuses on the first era of the Phanerozoic Eon (“visible life”), the Paleozoic Era, when life burgeoned after a rapid shift from a frozen setting during Snowball Earth times to dramatic warming related to greenhouse conditions. The chapter includes stories, such as that of the finding of the unique creatures of the Burgess Shale in Canada, that represent the diversity of life in the early part of the Paleozoic, the Cambrian Period. Several climatic shifts happened in the Paleozoic with resulting extinction events, the first occurring at the end of the Ordovician Period, the second at the end of the Devonian, and a third massive extinction at the end of the Permian Period. The latter was the largest extinction event ever recorded when 95 percent of all genera were killed as the supercontinent Pangea began to be split apart at the end of the Paleozoic.