C. L. Gonzalez

Adaptive Optics (AO) is the field of Astrophysics that corrects the wavefronts of light coming from celestial sources to earth-based telescopes. One of the most common instruments in AO systems are Laser Guide Stars (LGS), laserbeams used to measure the shape of turbulences in the close neighbourhood of the scientific target. Even with its popularity, LGSs can introduce uncertainties in the measurements due to their limited height and width, producing effects such as anisoplanatism and cone effects. There have been different attempts for improving this tool, such as Pupil Plane Projected Pattern (PPPP) system, that have also introduced the use of Neural Networks for turbulence tomography. In this paper, we propose a new technique called Wavefronts Obtained from Measurements from Beam-profiles through Atmospheric Turbulence, which expands the capabilities of PPPP.

Este artículo explora la relación entre política e institucionalidad en el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt, enfocándose en la “aporía fundacional”, es decir, la (im)posibilidad de introducir el espíritu revolucionario en el orden político constituido. A través del análisis de Arendt y sus comentadores, se identifican tres respuestas principales, evaluando sus fortalezas y debilidades. El estudio ofrece claves para comprender mejor el dilema arendtiano y enfrentar los desafíos contemporáneos en la relación entre política e institucionalidad.

Background Older adults, especially those with dementia, are often excluded from health research due to physical and medical comorbidities, and the assumption that those with cognitive impairment won’t be able to consent. Using routinely collected data for research purposes is a way to include older people in research, and therefore the benefits of research. However, very little research has been done to examine the attitudes of older people towards sharing their routinely collected health data for research purposes. Method Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with older health service users in the Counties Manukau health district of Auckland, New Zealand. The interviews explored participants’ views around the use of de-identified health data for health service improvement and health services research. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results Themes identified were: 1) Benefits: participants believed that there were benefits to sharing their health data such as helping others, improving health services, advancing scientific knowledge, and giving back to the health system; sharing health data was also seen as a reflection of good character, and people felt that their pre-existing views about whether they wished to share health data should be respected even if they were no longer able to consent. 2) Concerns: participants had concerns about sharing data with private companies, the use of inaccurate data, and the potential personal and societal consequences of sharing health data. 3) Expectations: participants encouraged collaboration between institutions in New Zealand, but expected data privacy to be maintained, processes to be transparent and cultural values around data to be respected; there was an expectation those sharing health data (patients or institutions) should benefit from any private sector gains. Conclusion Older people in our study were supportive of sharing their deidentified health data for research purposes provided that the research would benefit others, now and in the future. This provides more confidence in the use routinely collected health data of older people for research, provided that researchers handle data in a respectful way and use it to benefit communities while avoiding potential harms. Trial Registration NA.

Adaptive optics play a crucial role in acquiring high-quality images in ground-based telescopes. The primary challenge lies in mitigating the impact of atmospheric turbulence on captured light, which induces aberrations in the wavefront, resulting in distorted images. Over the past decade, several studies have been carried out exploring the application of predictive models to this technology, aiming to increase the efficiency of the process, reduce costs as well as improve the response time of the system. In particular, neural networks have been proven to be a powerful tool toward this end. This study assesses the potential of novel training and data processing techniques, while also evaluating the influence of specific parameters such as input data length and system frequency. In this study, the ideal training parameters are first analyzed through several low-complexity models, followed by the integration of more sophisticated neural networks. The feasibility of predicting slopes from sensor images has been demonstrated, validating the use of image-based sensor data. These results also open the path for exploring multi-scale sensors, like pyramid sensors, which could further improve predictions by capturing data at different spatial resolutions.

In the recruitment process, manually selecting suitable candidates from curriculum vitae (CVs) for a job description (JD) is both time-consuming and expensive. Traditional keyword-based methods struggle to capture skill semantics, prompting the development of more advanced JD-CV matching systems. This paper aims to investigate and construct an ontology-based skills recommendation system, with objectives including creating a skills ontology and developing skills matching methods for JD-CV pairs. The objective of our approach is to enhance the accuracy and contextual relevance of recommendations by utilizing the proposed score. The proposed skills ontology and skills matching strategies are applied to a real dataset in Vietnam. The results of our study can automatically recommend a list of CVs for a given JD. Furthermore, the findings indicate that our proposed model surpasses comparative approaches by a margin of at least 1% to 5%. Overall, the study demonstrates the potential of utilizing ontology-based approaches to offer a practical solution for enhancing hiring practices.

A través del análisis y la recolección de los relatos procedentes de supervivientes del Holocausto, este artículo presenta una investigación social y educativa sobre el papel que jugó la música durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, concretamente en campos de exterminio como el de Auschwitz-Birkenau. Para ello nos basamos en fuentes primarias obtenidas en instituciones de prestigio, como Museum of Yad Vashem (en Jerusalén), el Museum of Jewish Heritage (en Nueva York), el House of Terror Museum (en Budapest), el Centro Sefarad Israel (Madrid), la Fábrica de Schindler (en Cracovia), el Museo judío de Berlín, la Fundación Canal (en Madrid), el Museo estatal Auschwitz-Birkenau (en Oświęcim) o el Holocaust Memorial Center (en Budapest). También, de un exhaustivo estudio de campo, acercándonos a la realidad de las vivencias y experiencias de las personas, mediante un proceso organizado y ético, además de analizar varias historias de vida recopiladas de primera mano de supervivientes de estos lugares. El análisis de estos documentos, escritos y audiovisuales, nos han permitido exponer la implicación de la música como medio de salvación, rebelión y supervivencia dentro del contexto citado.

En este trabajo investigamos el método que utiliza Juan de Borja para convencer al lector de su doctrina. El autor pone sus recursos retóricos al servicio de su sistema de valoración teleológica tomista, para persuadir al lector de su importancia. En las _Empresas morales_ (1680) Borja propone al lector considerar el valor de las cosas terrenales en relación con el fin último. Podemos ver una importante influencia de la teoría del signo de Santo Tomás de Aquino en su obra. Según ella, los emblemas tienen un objetivo transcendente: persuadir al lector de las valoraciones propuestas, para convencerlos de la importancia de una verdadera reforma moral.

Dean MacCannell (Washington, 1940), catedrático emérito de paisajismo de la Universidad de California en Davis, es un autor de referencia internacional en antropología, sociología y ética del turismo, con obras fundamentales como _The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class _(1976), _Empty Meeting Grounds_ (1992) – ambas publicadas en España por la editorial Melusina- o _The Ethics of Sightseeing_ (2011). Considerando que uno de los principales atractivos de su obra es su capacidad para captar la relación entre el turismo y las transformaciones culturales y socio-económicas de los últimos cincuenta años, quisimos dirigirle una serie de preguntas para profundizar sobre su obra y reflexionar sobre el turismo en el mundo post-pandemia de la Covid-19. (Traducción al español a cargo de Carmen González)

Resumen Las tecnologías actuales no son neutrales. Reflejan las necesidades, perspectivas y experiencias de quienes las desarrollan. Estos sesgos han dado lugar a la creación de armas digitales como los deepfakes, una tecnología que, de manera desproporcionada, se utiliza en mujeres para crear contenido sexual. El presente estudio analiza el auge de aplicaciones deepfake en América Latina y el Caribe (ALAC), enfocándose en su disponibilidad, facilidad de uso y los riesgos que representan en contextos de desigualdad estructural y violencia digital de género. Para ello, se realizó una recolección automatizada de datos mediante una API, identificando 105 aplicaciones deepfake disponibles a diciembre de 2024 en Google Play Store. Posteriormente, se llevó a cabo una evaluación fundamentada en dimensiones como año, alcance, diseño, accesibilidad, modelos de negocio y funcionalidades. Finalmente, se realizó un análisis crítico para comprender cómo estas herramientas configuran dinámicas de poder, perpetúan narrativas de cosificación y amplifican la violencia digital contra las mujeres. Los hallazgos evidencian un diseño intencionado que facilita la adopción de estas aplicaciones, eliminando barreras técnicas y normalizando la cosificación de los cuerpos de las mujeres, siendo el 89.5% de estas herramientas un potencial peligro para ellas. La investigación enfatiza la urgencia de cuestionar la supuesta neutralidad de estas tecnologías y la necesidad de repensar su desarrollo desde una perspectiva que contribuya a construir entornos digitales más seguros y respetuosos para todas las personas. Abstract Current technologies are not neutral; they reflect the needs, perspectives, and experiences of their developers. These biases have led to the creation of digital weapons like deepfakes, a technology that is disproportionately used against women to create sexual content. This study examines the rise of deepfake applications in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), focusing on their availability, ease of use, and the risks they pose in contexts of structural inequality and digital gender-based violence. To that end, an automated data collection was carried out using an API, identifying 105 deepfake applications available on the Google Play Store as of December 2024. Subsequently, an evaluation was conducted based on criteria such as year, scope, design, accessibility, business models, and functionalities. Finally, a critical analysis was performed to understand how these tools shape power dynamics, perpetuate objectification narratives, and amplify digital violence against women. The findings reveal an intentional design that facilitates the adoption of these applications, removing technical barriers and normalizing the objectification of women's bodies, with 89.5% of these tools posing a potential danger to them. The research emphasizes the urgency of questioning the supposed neutrality of these technologies and the need to rethink their development from a perspective that contributes to building safer and more respectful digital environments for everyone.

This study aims to analyze the perceptions of Spanish secondary school teachers in the fields of social and experimental sciences (n = 215) regarding the formative relevance of argumentative competence in the context of citizenship education. It also seeks to provide a psychometric instrument supported by robust empirical evidence of reliability and validity to achieve this goal. Based on a non-experimental, cross-sectional design, the AASES (Assessment of Argumentation in Social and Experimental Sciences) instrument,—developed ad hoc,—is administered to identify the potential relationship of sociodemographic factors with the theoretical subconstructs it comprises, the statistical association between age, origin, and gender, and the mediating role of gender in the relationship between age/place of origin and the defined latent factors, and the existence of significant differences among sociodemographic groups. The results indicate that, although a statistical association between age and gender was observed, the mediating role of gender in the relationship between age, origin, and the latent factors cannot be confirmed. SEM analyses showed that none of the sociodemographic predictors (age, origin, and gender) exert statistically significant direct or mediating effects on the latent factors. Furthermore, the comparative analyses complement the model by indicating that perceptions vary moderately by gender and age, even though these variables do not explain the latent factors in the SEM. Indeed, the analysis of variance revealed significant differences in the Critical and Ethical Skills dimension based on these two factors, with higher scores among male teachers and in the oldest age group, as well as increasing trends, with age, in the perceived importance of argumentation for the development and acquisition of critical thinking skills, informed decision-making, and ethical discussion. The findings highlight the need to incorporate specific spaces within the curriculum and teacher education programs to foster argumentative competencies and informed engagement with controversial socio-scientific issues, taking into account sociodemographic variables as influential factors in the educational process.

In response to the COVID‐19 pandemic philosophers and governments have proposed scarce resource allocation guidelines. Their purpose is to advise healthcare professionals on how to ethically allocate scarce medical resources. One challenging feature of the pandemic has been the large numbers of patients needing mechanical ventilatory support. Guidelines have paradigmatically focused on the question of what doctors should do if they have fewer ventilators than patients who need respiratory support: which patient should get the ventilator? There is, however, an important higher level allocation problem. Namely, how are we to ethically distribute newly obtained ventilators across hospitals: which hospital should get the ventilator(s)? In this paper, we identify a set of principles for allocating newly obtained ventilators across hospitals. We focus particularly on low and middle income countries, who frequently have limited pre‐existing intensive care capacity, and have needed to source additional ventilators. We first provide some background. Second, we argue that the main population healthcare aim during the COVID‐19 pandemic should be to save the most lives. Next, we assess a series of potential heuristics or principles that could be used to guide allocation: allocation to the most densely populated cities, random allocation, allocation based on the ratio of patients to ICU personnel, prioritisation in terms of intrahospital mortality, prioritisation of younger populations, and prioritisation in terms of population mortality. We conclude by providing a plausible ranking of the principles, while noting a number of epistemological challenges, in terms of how they best further the aim of increasing the probability of saving the most lives.

Desde su origen en el marco de la concepción presocrática de la physis la idea de la melancolía ha comportado un excedente de sentido, al aprehender la afectividad como apertura del sujeto al mundo y como cumplimiento de sentido. Este excedente de sentido implica una pulsión inherente de totalidad en el sujeto que sobrepasa el lenguaje común y da forma a la pérdida y añoranza de un absoluto inalcanzable. El campo semántico cultivado por el thymos es ocupado por la fisiología, mientras el proyecto aristotélico de la metafísica deviene en la devaluación de la vida como mera vida y en la desvitalización de la materia como materia inerte. En este artículo se recrea la mirada melancólica como la indisponibilidad de la experiencia natural para el sujeto, enfrentado a un horizonte «desmundanizado» de objetos melancólicos y se define el pensar melancólico como el ejercicio de una autorreflexividad improductiva.

Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related covariates (e.g., mistrust). In a multinational sample from 15 countries (N = 14,978), VJS was positively associated with both general and specific conspiracy beliefs (about vaccines and climate change) within countries, though these associations varied across countries. However, economic, sociopolitical and cultural country-level factors that might explain the cross-country variability (e.g., GDP, Human Freedom Index, individualism–collectivism), including indices of collective exposure to direct violence, did not moderate the studied associations. Future research should investigate the relationship between victimhood and conspiracy beliefs, considering both intraindividual and intergroup perspectives.

Social and environmental principles have been gaining an undeniable role in investment and financing decisions ever since the last decade of the last century. Various different ways of measuring the socially responsible investment (SRI) of organizations have been proposed by the ratings agencies. In general, responsible investments are understood to be those initiatives that, while bearing in mind the financial criteria, incorporate and prioritize guidelines for action relating to areas of social, environmental, and corporate management present in society. This paper shows a comparative study of the most important Spanish financial institutions included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and identifies their strengths and weaknesses in this area. The analysis of the findings has allowed general conclusions to be drawn on the management of sustainability in organizations and makes specific recommendations on areas for improvement in the companies considered in the sample.

La cultura digital nos plantea una nueva relación entre teatro y sociedad impulsada por el impacto de las nuevas tecnologías, con el consecuente desplazamiento de sus códigos representacionales: texto y puesta en escena. Modelos híbridos, virtuales y presenciales emergen como perfiles experimentales de creación escénica. Sin embargo, estas relaciones entre virtualidad, tecnología, innovación y teatro han estado presentes a lo largo de su historia, siendo la virtualidad un factor consustancial al hecho escénico tanto en lo dramatúrgico como en lo espectacular.

La didáctica se ejecuta con estudiantes policiales de la Escuela de Suboficiales y Nivel Ejecutivo Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, los cuales multiplicaran a los estudiantes rurales del municipio de Sibaté.El propósito del proyecto fue diseñar una estrategia didáctico pedagógica que permita fortalecer las Habilidades Comunicativas implementando la lectoescritura, en los estudiantes policiales y a la vez a los estudiantes de las Instituciones Educativas Rurales de Sibaté Cundinamarca. Metodológicamente, el proyecto se realizó mediante el enfoque cualitativo de carácter etnográfico. En conclusión, se motivó la implementación de varias actividades de lectura y escritura, con extensión a estudiantes del sector Rural.

This issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics contains articles on the ethics of: xenotransplantation; the UN and ethical approval for research with human participants; medical assistance in dying; person-centred care; genomic healthcare; the obligations of the health system; rescue ethics; ethical preparedness; and mitochondrial replacement techniques. In this editorial, I want to focus on a timely article by Kögel et al on how a multicriteria approach to patient selection would look like when considering the first clinical trials of cardiac xenotransplantation.1 The ethics of xenotransplantation has come, again, to the fore after a series of gene-edited heart and kidney pig organs were transplanted to humans in 2022, 2023 and 2024. All patients survived the operations, but sadly, of the five patients who received an organ four have died.2–6 I have no doubt that with research in xenotransplantation gaining steam, biomedical researchers and policymakers will look to medical ethicists for guidance on several matters that …

Cognitive models that represent individuals provide many benefits for understanding the full range of human behavior. One way in which individual differences emerge is through differences in knowledge. In dynamic situations, where decisions are made from experience, models built upon a theory of experiential choice (instance-based learning theory; IBLT) can provide accurate predictions of individual human learning and adaptivity to changing environments. Here, we demonstrate how an instance-based learning (IBL) cognitive model, implemented in a cognitive architecture (Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational), can be used to model an individual's decisions in a cybersecurity defense task, accounting for both population average and individual variances. The same IBL model structure with identical architectural parameters generates the full range of human behavior through stochastic memory retrieval processes operating over and contributing to unique experiences. Recurrence quantification analyses allow us to look beyond average behavior between and within individuals to sequential patterns of trial-to-trial behavior. We show how model-tracing and knowledge-tracing techniques can be used to align the model to an individual in real time to drive adaptive and personalized signaling algorithms for a cybersecurity defense system. We also present a method for introspecting into the cognitive model to gain further insight into the cognitive salience of features factored into individual decisions. The combination of techniques provides a blueprint for personalized modeling of individuals. We discuss the results and implications of this adaptive and personalized method for cybersecurity defense and more generally for intelligent artifacts tailored to individual differences in domains such as human–machine teaming.

El estallido de la pandemia de la COVID-19 conmocionó a las sociedades de todo el mundo. En su esfuerzo por adaptar sus respuestas a la crisis a sus propias condiciones de supervivencia, los gobiernos tendieron desde el principio a recurrir a argumentos que limitaban la rendición de cuentas frente a la población. Las democracias liberales no fueron ajenas a esta forma de abordar el problema. En ese contexto, sus dirigentes esgrimieron la metáfora de la guerra para describir su posición como garantes de la supervivencia de la población frente a la nueva amenaza. Atenazados entre la incertidumbre y la necesidad de predecir la naturaleza y la evolución del enemigo invisible, sus respuestas pusieron en entredicho la responsabilidad política, profesional y personal de los dirigentes. En este artículo se ofrece una reflexión sobre el nivel de responsabilidad de los gobiernos de las democracias liberales en la gestión de la pandemia. Durante la crisis, los decisores tendieron a dejarse llevar por las narrativas que les resultaban más beneficiosas para escabullirse de sus responsabilidades, apuntalando así sus necesidades políticas a corto plazo a través del uso de metáforas belicistas, el juego de culpas, la competición con otros países y la dispersión de las fuentes en el proceso de toma de decisiones. Esta realidad supone hoy un llamado a la reflexión a los actores sociales, incluidos los expertos, intelectuales y medios de comunicación, para trascender la retórica predominante en la gestión de la pandemia y la "nueva normalidad" que le siguió, de manera que la dinámica de alteraciones constantes de las reglas del juego y las responsabilidades pueda dar paso, en el futuro, a un escenario con menos arbitrariedad y más rendición de cuentas.

In recent years, we have experienced rapid development of advanced technology, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), intended to interact with and augment the abilities of humans in practically every area of life. With the rapid growth of new capabilities, such as those enabled by generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT), AI is increasingly at the center of human communication and collaboration, resulting in a growing recognition of the need to understand how humans and AI can integrate their inputs in collaborative teams. However, there are many unanswered questions regarding how human–AI collective intelligence will emerge and what the barriers might be. Truly integrated collaboration between humans and intelligent agents may result in a different way of working that looks nothing like what we know now, and it is important to keep the essential goal of human societal well-being and prosperity a priority. In this special issue, we begin to scope out the underpinnings of a socio-cognitive architecture for Collective HUman-MAchine INtelligence (COHUMAIN), which is the study of the capability of an integrated human and machine (i.e., intelligent technology) system to achieve goals in a wide range of environments. This topic consists of nine papers including a description of the conceptual foundation for a socio-cognitive architecture for COHUMAIN, empirical tests of some aspects of this architecture, research on proposed representations of intelligent agents that can jointly interact with humans, empirical tests of human–human and human–machine interactions, and philosophical and ethical issues to consider as we develop these systems.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered machines are increasingly mediating our work and many of our managerial, economic, and cultural interactions. While technology enhances individual capability in many ways, how do we know that the sociotechnical system as a whole, consisting of a complex web of hundreds of human–machine interactions, is exhibiting collective intelligence? Research on human–machine interactions has been conducted within different disciplinary silos, resulting in social science models that underestimate technology and vice versa. Bringing together these different perspectives and methods at this juncture is critical. To truly advance our understanding of this important and quickly evolving area, we need vehicles to help research connect across disciplinary boundaries.This paper advocates for establishing an interdisciplinary research domain—Collective Human-Machine Intelligence (COHUMAIN). It outlines a research agenda for a holistic approach to designing and developing the dynamics of sociotechnical systems. In illustrating the kind of approach, we envision in this domain, we describe recent work on a sociocognitive architecture, the transactive systems model of collective intelligence, that articulates the critical processes underlying the emergence and maintenance of collective intelligence and extend it to human–AI systems. We connect this with synergistic work on a compatible cognitive architecture, instance-based learning theory and apply it to the design of AI agents that collaborate with humans. We present this work as a call to researchers working on related questions to not only engage with our proposal but also develop their own sociocognitive architectures and unlock the real potential of human–machine intelligence.

Monika Piotrowska has defended a new account of reproduction. Her account seems able to answer the question of whether reproduction takes place, and who reproduces, when we employ biotechnologies that bear little to no resemblance to naturally occurring human sexual reproduction. Piotrowska's account also seems to increase our understanding of biological individuality and seems to be compatible with the theory of evolution via natural selection. In this paper, I do two things. First, I show that Piotrowska's account is found wanting, because it is extensionally inadequate. Second, I show that her criticism of James Grisemer's account of reproduction is mistaken.