Victor Martinez

Deepfakes are manipulated videos where a person's face is supplanted by that of another through Artificial Intelligence. These photorealistic contents can become weapons of harassment, propaganda or social conflict. This theoretical innovation research delves into the emerging scientific literature on deepfake in Social Sciences, laying its foundations on the research of Wenceslao Castañares. Its objectives are to analyse the phenomenon, find tools to detect and combat it, and inaugurate a new way of moral digital literacy of special interest in the field of communication, due to its social and political importance. A two-step diachronic methodology is used. First, a longitudinal bibliographic investigation is carried out and a historical, systemic and descriptive description is offered, with the most important features of the phenomenon, nature, operation and possible uses. Second, there is a conscious scientific observation of more than fifty deepfake videos, to perceive the phenomenon, achieve greater generalization and guarantee the validity of the results. The results show that although detection software for this type of fakes has been created, it is not yet freely available. The only way to recognize the deepfake is through a digital moral education, which can detect a series of hyper-realistic visual parameters: the frequency of blinking, the subtle intermittent effect of the faces or the transitions between the head and neck. Los deepfakes son vídeos manipulados donde se suplanta la cara de una persona por la de otra a través de Inteligencia Artificial. Estos contenidos fotorrealistas pueden convertirse en armas de acoso, propaganda o conflicto social. Esta investigación de innovación teórica ahonda en la incipiente literatura científica sobre el deepfake en Ciencias Sociales, poniendo sus bases en los trabajos de Wenceslao Castañares. Sus objetivos son analizar el fenómeno, buscar herramientas para detectarlo y combatirlo, e inaugurar una nueva vía de alfabetización moral digital de especial interés en el campo de la comunicación, por su importancia social y política. Se emplea una metodología diacrónica en dos pasos. En primer lugar, se realiza una investigación bibliográfica longitudinal y se ofrece una descripción histórica, sistémica y descriptiva, con los rasgos más importantes del fenómeno, naturaleza, funcionamiento y posibles usos. En segundo lugar, se realiza una observación científica consciente de más de medio centenar de vídeos deepfake, para percibir el fenómeno, conseguir una mayor generalización y garantizar la validez de los resultados. Los resultados muestran que aunque se han creado softwares de detección de este tipo de fakes, aún no son de acceso libre y gratuito. La única manera de reconocer el deepfake es a través de una educación moral digital, que pueda detectar una serie de parámetros visuales hiperrealistas: frecuencia del parpadeo, efecto intermitente de las caras o transiciones entre cabeza y cuello.

Cooperative, connected and automated mobility technologies have the potential to revolutionize transportation systems and enhance safety, efficiency and sustainability. However, the increasing reliance on digital technologies also introduces new cybersecurity risks that can compromise the safety and privacy of passengers and the integrity of transportation systems. The purpose of this article is to examine the most important threats, vulnerabilities, risks and challenges related to automated mobility and to review the status of the most promising standardization initiatives on cryptography in a world where quantum computers will soon represent an actual threat.

En la atención médica y en la investigación en salud resulta indispensable favorecer la toma de decisiones de los pacientes y/o participantes bajo el principio de autonomía. En particular, esta capacidad, consignada en la Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, se concreta mediante la detección de necesidades de asistencia, ajustes y apoyos que dan paso a una plena y efectiva capacidad de ejercicio. Las reflexiones bioéticas hechas desde la perspectiva principialista, personalista y de los Derechos Humanos ofrecen elementos para potenciar la autonomía de las personas con discapacidad, promoviendo la figura de asistencia personal y enfatizando el interés superior, la gradualidad y la revisión judicial permanente como principios de figuras sustitutivas.

Establishing the basic knowledge, methodology, and technology for a framework for the continuous decoding of hand/arm movement intention was the aim of the ERC-funded project “Feel Your Reach”. In this work, we review the studies and methods we performed and implemented in the last 6 years, which build the basis for enabling severely paralyzed people to non-invasively control a robotic arm in real-time from electroencephalogram. In detail, we investigated goal-directed movement detection, decoding of executed and attempted movement trajectories, grasping correlates, error processing, and kinesthetic feedback. Although we have tested some of our approaches already with the target populations, we still need to transfer the “Feel Your Reach” framework to people with cervical spinal cord injury and evaluate the decoders’ performance while participants attempt to perform upper-limb movements. While on the one hand, we made major progress towards this ambitious goal, we also critically discuss current limitations.

The latest advances in quantum computing forced the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to launch an initiative for selecting quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. One of the best-known proposals is NewHope, an algorithm that was initially designed as a key exchange algorithm. In its original design, NewHope presented a reconciliation mechanism that is complex and represents an entry barrier for potential implementers. This contribution presents equivalent schemes in one, two and three dimensions, which allow anyone to make the transition to the 4D NewHope algorithm easier to undertake. In addition to that, the effect of modifying some of the parameters associated to NewHope’s reconciliation mechanism is studied, which has allowed us to propose different sets of parameters that could increase the security of NewHope implementations.

The topology of DNA duplexes changes during replication and also after deproteinization in vitro. Here we describe these changes and then discuss for the first time how the distribution of superhelical stress affects the DNA topology of replication intermediates, taking into account the progression of replication forks. The high processivity of Topo IV to relax the left‐handed (+) supercoiling that transiently accumulates ahead of the forks is not essential, since DNA gyrase and swiveling of the forks cooperate with Topo IV to accomplish this task in vivo. We conclude that despite Topo IV has a lower processivity to unlink the right‐handed (+) crossings of pre‐catenanes and fully replicated catenanes, this is indeed its main role in vivo. This would explain why in the absence of Topo IV replication goes‐on, but fully replicated sister duplexes remain heavily catenated.

La Iglesia de América Latina y el Caribe recibe del Concilio Vaticano II una fuerza crítica y profética, que se evidencia en la Segunda Conferencia del Episcopado, reunida en Medellín, en 1968. A partir de la originalidad propia de nuestra amerindia, este Concilio se asume, integra y traduce para vivir su inspiración y derroteros fundamentales. La iglesia de la que somos testigos hoy, 50 años después de Medellín, se ha entretejido desde allí. Prueba fehaciente de ello, en este continente, son aquellas comunidades que testimonian a una iglesia liberadora y misericordiosa, nazarena y samaritana, una iglesia que es pueblo de Dios y de los pobres, una iglesia comunitaria de comunidades y, siempre, en salida. Comunidades que han trabajado en aras de la paz, la justicia y la dignidad de todos; en una búsqueda y respuesta real de organización, de lucha ante la opresión y explotación de cualquier orden.

The distinctive security features of the Spanish electronic national identity card, known as Documento Nacional de Identidad electrónico, allow us to propose the usage of this cryptographic smart card in an authentication framework that can be used during the registration and login phases of internet services where the validation of the user’s age and real identity are key elements, as it is the case for example of the so-called social networks. Using this mechanism with NFC-capable devices, the identity and age of the potential user can be determined, allowing or denying the access to the service based on that information.