Maria Martinez

Food environments (FEs) are central to debates on food systems transformation but are often conceptualized as contextual determinants of individual choice. This study reconceptualizes FEs as dynamic, relational configurations co-produced through everyday interactions, focusing on youth consumption and food vendors’ selling practices in Addis Ababa and Butajira, Ethiopia. Drawing on Social Practice Theories (SPT) and Lived Experience Research (LER), we combine photo-journals, ethnographic observations, and semi-structured interviews with youth and vendors. Findings show that, through their everyday practices, they actively co-construct FEs and enact informal governance: youth navigate tensions between socializing, nourishment, and abstinence, while vendors shape these spaces through care, credit, and daily negotiations of hygiene and moral responsibility. These dynamics reveal FEs as negotiated and constantly evolving rather than fixed contexts. In rapidly urbanizing Ethiopian contexts and comparable low- and middle-income country (LMIC) settings, the informal governance performed by youth and vendors offers critical insights into how food system transformations can be pursued from the ground up.

Ian Hacking has proposed a series of notions for analyzing the human sciences. In this paper, we explore his idea of the looping effect in relation to the classification of mental illnesses. While his proposal has met with objections, we believe that the notion of the looping effect retains significant value for critically analyzing the classification system of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In particular, we understand that the dynamics of interaction involved in the looping effect, which are established between the diagnostic categories and the classified individuals, could shed light on the ongoing revision of some of the psychiatric diagnoses listed in this manual. The article begins by analyzing the notion of the looping effect in the context of classifications of mental illnesses. Next, we examine the distinction between indifferent and interactive kinds, their relationship to the looping effect, and the instability of certain psychiatric objects and categories. We then present some of the main objections raised to this Hackinian proposal, particularly those that question the general scope of the looping effect and its capacity to differentiate between human and natural kinds. Finally, we argue that, despite existing criticisms, the notion of the looping effect remains a fruitful conceptual tool for the critical analysis of the DSM, and fundamentally for explaining the recurrent revision of some of its diagnostic categories.

There has been an increase in the number of jurisdictions legalizing or decriminalizing Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). Legal frameworks worldwide strive to balance respect for autonomy with regulatory safeguards that both operationalize voluntary choice and prevent access to MAiD in cases of remediable despair or coerced decision‐making. However, the implementation of such an equilibrium diverges. Some legal systems prioritize personal autonomy and informed consent as the main criterion to access MAiD (e.g., US jurisdictions), while others also add the alleviation of suffering (e.g., The Netherlands). Using the lens of relational autonomy and focusing on Spain's MAiD legislation as a case study, this article poses the question of what notion of autonomy is implied in this system, and whether the imposition of certain safeguards might inadvertently undermine or restrict autonomy, in some specific cases. To that aim, we first analyze its stringent requirements for assessing the so‐called “euthanasic context” which establishes eligibility conditions to access MAiD; then, we highlight how some of its assessments can interfere with the person's autonomy. The analysis highlights how protective measures (e.g., three external assessments before the request is either granted or denied) may imply forms of pathogenic vulnerability, in which safeguards meant to protect autonomy could paradoxically heighten an individual's vulnerability while diminishing autonomy through forms of epistemic injustice. We conclude that these highly protective laws might fall into the “trap of protection,” illustrating the tension between safeguarding autonomy and respecting individuals’ capacity for self‐determination in the context of MAiD.

This study investigates the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility (CSR) decoupling, wherein firms' CSR disclosures diverge from their actual CSR performance, often resulting in misleading portrayals of environmental and social commitments commonly associated with greenwashing. Drawing on resource dependence and agency theories, the research examines how specific board attributes—board tenure, board-specific skills and board cultural diversity—function as governance mechanisms to reduce CSR decoupling by enhancing board effectiveness in aligning managerial actions with stakeholder expectations. Using a large international sample of 14,004 firm-year observations from 34 countries between 2012 and 2023, the study also explores the moderating role of board gender diversity, an area underexplored in prior research. The results confirm that longer board tenure, greater board-specific skills, and higher board cultural diversity significantly reduce CSR decoupling. However, the presence of female directors unexpectedly weakens these beneficial effects, indicating a complex and nuanced interaction between board gender diversity and other board characteristics in shaping CSR outcomes. These findings contribute to the literature by clarifying how corporate governance mechanisms influence the authenticity of CSR engagement, highlighting the importance of considering gender diversity as a moderator in governance studies.

The issue of suicide has generated concern, unease and countless views on the phenomenon. This work is based on the objective of describing the theoretical elaborations that have been made on the phenomenon of suicide based on Freud's psychoanalytic theory and some other contributions from other psychoanalysts, in order to gain a greater understanding of it and whether this can guide a more useful clinical listening approach to suicidal ideation, or to be able to accompany those who suffer from it, have attempted suicide or have suffered the loss of someone close to them who has committed suicide. Thus, based on psychoanalytic reflections, some notions will be reformulated insofar as they are currently relevant to addressing the phenomenon of suicide. Questioning whether prevention is possible, but more than that, whether there is a right to die, as there is a right to live. And suicide, as both a social and individual phenomenon.

Organ Donation after Medical Aid in Dying (OD-MAiD) is currently practised in four countries: Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain. While OD-MAiD shares some similarities with MAiD (absent the possibility of organ donation) and with standard organ donation protocols, the combination of OD and MAiD involves unique circumstances that present novel ethical challenges. These challenges revolve around donors' consent and protection, the dead donor rule, and organ allocation. This paper explores these moral challenges and proposes strategies to ensure ethical safeguards in the context of OD-MAiD. An underlying question is whether OD-MAiD, if permitted, should follow the ethical guidelines of living donation or deceased donation, as these two practices commonly operate under distinct moral paradigms. While the living donation paradigm is centred on the protection of donors' interests and emphasises individual choice by allowing donors to decide who receives their organs, the deceased donation framework places more emphasis on enabling recipients to benefit from transplant, and organ allocation is typically based on impartiality. OD-MAiD also raises ethical concerns about how the possibility of donation could influence a patient's decision to seek euthanasia and/or interfere with optimal end-of-life care. Proposing organ donation to individuals considering MAiD could conceivably create pressure to proceed with euthanasia, either to realise a social good or to satisfy the needs of loved ones (if a family member requires an organ). This may undermine the patient's autonomy or well-being at the end of life.

Time series forecasting is a well-known deep learning application field in which previous data are used to predict the future behavior of the series. Recently, several deep learning approaches have been proposed in which several nonlinear functions are applied to the input to obtain the output. In this paper, we introduce a novel method to improve the performance of deep learning models in time series forecasting. This method divides the model into hierarchies or levels from simpler to more complex ones. Simpler levels handle smoothed versions of the input, whereas the most complex level processes the original time series. This method follows the human learning process where general/simpler tasks are performed first, and afterward, more precise/harder ones are accomplished. Our proposed methodology has been applied to the LSTM architecture, showing remarkable performance in various time series. In addition, a comparison is reported including a standard LSTM and novel methods such as DeepAR, Temporal Fusion Transformer, NBEATS and Echo State Network.

Feature selection is a widely studied technique whose goal is to reduce the dimensionality of the problem by removing irrelevant features. It has multiple benefits, such as improved efficacy, efficiency and interpretability of almost any type of machine learning model. Feature selection techniques may be divided into three main categories, depending on the process used to remove the features known as Filter, Wrapper and Embedded. Embedded methods are usually the preferred feature selection method that efficiently obtains a selection of the most relevant features of the model. However, not all models support an embedded feature selection that forces the use of a different method, reducing the efficiency and reliability of the selection. Neural networks are an example of a model that does not support embedded feature selection. As neural networks have shown to provide remarkable results in multiple scenarios such as classification and regression, sometimes in an ensemble with a model that includes an embedded feature selection, we attempt to embed a feature selection process with a general-purpose methodology. In this work, we propose a novel general-purpose layer for neural networks that removes the influence of irrelevant features. The Feature-Aware Drop Layer is included at the top of the neural network and trained during the backpropagation process without any additional parameters. Our methodology is tested with 17 datasets for classification and regression tasks, including data from different fields such as Health, Economic and Environment, among others. The results show remarkable improvements compared to three different feature selection approaches, with reliable, efficient and effective results.

The aim of this study is to examine whether gender diversity on audit committees (hereinafter, ACs) influences financial reporting quality by using panel data of Spanish listed firms. The financial reporting quality of firms is measured by the type of opinion received in the audit report. We estimate various panel data models of audit opinions and control for factors that are traditionally found to impact audit opinions. This study provides evidence to support the hypotheses that the percentage of females on ACs reduces the probability of qualifications due to errors, non‐compliance or the omission of information. Furthermore, the results also find that the percentage of female directors on ACs, the percentage of independent female directors on ACs and ACs chaired by females increase the likelihood of further transparency by disclosing audit reports with uncertainties and scope limitation qualifications.

This paper examines how independent and institutional women directors on boards affect corporate social responsibility (hereafter CSR) reporting. Most of the previous empirical evidence has shown a linear association between female directors and CSR disclosure, but to the best of our knowledge, no research has investigated the individual effect of independent and institutional female directors on CSR reporting. Therefore, the analysis of how the disclosure of CSR information is affected by independent and institutional women directors in a separate way merits our attention. Thus, we posit that there is a nonlinear association, concretely quadratic, between independent and institutional female directors on boards and CSR reporting. Our results demonstrate that, in line with the monitoring hypothesis, as the presence of independent and institutional women directors on boards increases, the CSR disclosure improves, but when their presence on boards reaches a tipping point (20.47% and 13.32%, respectively), CSR reporting decreases, which is consistent with the collusion hypothesis. This research contributes to the existing literature on the relationship between board gender diversity and CSR disclosure by suggesting that board structures formed by institutional and independent female directors have an effect on CSR reporting. Hence, female directors play a relevant role on boards since they may influence the CSR disclosure.

In Chapter 4, Making up people. A project of more than three decades, I present the notions Ian Hacking uses to work in the human sciences. Hacking defines himself as a dynamic nominalist, insofar as he is interested in the interaction between classification and the classified individuals, and he vindicates Michel Foucault as antecedent of this nominalism, being interested in the essential role of history in the constitution of its objects, people and forms of behavior. Hence his idea of historical ontology, which deals with the ways in which the possibilities of choice and of being emerge from history and from making up people, that is to say, the ways in which a new scientific classification can make a new kind of people emerge. This interaction between classification and the classified individual results in what Hacking calls the looping effect of human kinds. But making up people, besides, takes place within an ecological niche. Given that in the kinds of the human sciences the aforementioned loop effect presents itself, Hacking proposes the existence of different classes of kinds. In order to illustrate this, I recuperate Hacking’s work process on this matter, departing from his original question about whether kinds of people are natural kinds.

Chapter On Foucault’s Shoulders, starts by proposing that the subject that awarded Ian Hacking more visibility and consideration, dealt with in Representing and Intervening, is not the one that he has been most interested in nor the one to which he has devoted more time and publications. I show that when one analyzes his corpus as a whole, a very different image emerges from the one that appears if one focuses its study only on this area of his work. This analysis, decentered from the axis around which the work of Hacking has traditionally been understood, is the basis of my proposal for this book. To defend it, I articulate the items dealt with in previous chapters and I close the circle I open in the first chapter, going back to the proposal of a reticular structure in Hacking’s work and the place Michel Foucault occupies in this web, which I define as the texture, the always underlying thread that runs across in the loom where the cloth is woven. I claim that it is the notion of conditions of possibility for the emergence of concepts and scientific objects, inherited and at the same time different from Foucault’s, what impregnates Hacking’s whole corpus.

Even though Ian Hacking vindicates in general the influence of Michel Foucault’s the archaeological stage on his own thought, I posit that in many aspects of his proposal for the human sciences there is an imprint of the genealogical stage of the French philosopher—although Hacking does not deal with power, one of the concepts that characterize Foucault’s genealogy, at least not in a systematic and explicit way. In this chapter, Hacking and Foucault. Classifications, looping effect and power, I discuss the fundamental role of power in relation with the notions of classification, looping effect, and making up people that Hacking proposes for the human sciences. To this end, I start with a brief outline of the idea of power in Foucault, in order to show how the elements he takes as essential in a power relation can be clearly identified in the looping effect. I illustrate how power is imbricated in Hacking’s proposal, resorting to several of the examples he himself has used to develop the notions mentioned in the title of this chapter.

In this chapter, Styles of scientific thinking & doing. A genealogy of scientific reason, I work on the “style of scientific reasoning”, later called “style of scientific thinking & doing”. I deal with this node in the first place because I visualize it as basal, both because it is a condition of possibility for the emergence of objects and concepts that appear in other nodes, and because one way or another all the others are related to it. At the beginning of the chapter I deal with the antecedents, differences and convergences that Ian Hacking’s notion of style of scientific reasoning has with meta-concepts proposed by other philosophers and historians of science. I show how already in 1979, in an article where Hacking offers his interpretation of Michel Foucault’s thinking, he discusses some of what will later be characteristic of his own notion of style. I deal in particular with the notion of style of scientific thinking of Alistair Crombie, which Hacking considers an immediate antecedent of his notion of style of scientific reasoning. I continue by going deeper into the notion of style of scientific reasoning by means of an analysis of its particular features, as well as their relation to notions proposed by Foucault.

In this chapter, Taking a look at Ian Hacking’s work, I present a novel perspective on Ian Hacking’s oeuvre, developing a systematic and structured outline of the author’s main works. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: to offer a general overview of Hacking’s work by means of a systematization of his bibliography, departing from the lesser-known axles of his work. Secondly, to look for an underlying texture in Hacking’s work, departing from his interest in the historical and situated conditions of possibility of the emergence of concepts and objects scientific, and explore how Michel Foucault’s thought works as a thread that runs across this web. Based on a wide review and critical analysis of his bibliography, I aim to organize Hacking’s work around four nodes: styles of scientific thinking & doing; probability; making up people and experimentation and scientific realism. I show the internal structure of each node, I review the most representative texts and I present the main notions with each one. The chapter explores a series of relations between the nodes which, besides showing the reticular structure of Hacking’s work, justify the order in which they are presented.

In this chapter Experimentation and Scientific Realism. A Return to Francis Bacon, mainly based on Representing and Intervening, I present Ian Hacking’s critique of representation, of the theory and the realisms based on them. For Hacking, insofar as debates between realism and antirealism take place in terms of representation and theory, realism will not be capable of facing the challenges of antirealism. To correct this, he suggests shifting the discussion from realism to a different realm, experimentation, where—in his opinion—scientific realism is irresistible. I continue by presenting his defense of entity realism. The central notion in Hacking’s argument for scientific realism is not reference but manipulation. In this sense, I analyze the two fundamental arguments on which Hacking bases his defense of scientific realism -intervention and coincidence—as well as his best-known examples, electrons and microscopes, respectively. Hacking’s incursion in the realist debates of the 80s is a strategy to draw attention towards experimental scientific activity, to defend the vital and preeminent role of experimentation, and more precisely, the creation of phenomena in natural sciences.

In this chapter, Probability. Books that smell of other books, I deal with the node of Probability by means of an analysis of two of Ian Hacking’s most representative texts. Regarding The Emergence of Probability, I show that Hacking not only uses the Foucauldian archaeological method, but he practically paraphrases its characteristics when explaining the methodology he uses in this book. I also show that while Michel Foucault analyzed the historical conditions of possibility of knowledge for each one of the historical periods he deals with in The Order of Things, Hacking tries to show which are the historical conditions that make the emergence of probability possible. In The Taming of Chance, Hacking aims to show that analytic philosophy does not need to be the antithesis of historical sensibility and even though he uses the same archaeological methodology, he goes beyond it to reflect the influence of Foucault’s genealogical works. This can be seen in what could be called an incursion into Foucauldian biopolitics. Following Foucault’s line called “history of the present”, in this text Hacking aims to understand how we think and why we seem to be compelled to think in a certain way.

Most scientific theories are globally inconsistent. Chunk and Permeate is a method of rational reconstruction that can be used to separate, and identify, locally consistent chunks of reasoning or explanation. This then allows us to justify reasoning in a globally inconsistent theory. We extend chunk and permeate by adding a visually transparent way of guiding the individuation of chunks and deciding on what information permeates from one chunk to the next. The visual representation is in the form of bundle diagrams. We then extend the bundle diagrams to include not only reasoning in the presence of inconsistent information or reasoning in the logical sense of deriving a conclusion from premises, but more generally reasoning in the sense of trying to understand a phenomenon in science. This extends the use of the bundle diagrams in terms of the base space and the fibres. We then apply this to a case in physics, that of understanding binding energies in the nucleus of an atom using together inconsistent models: the liquid drop model and the shell model. We draw some philosophical conclusions concerning scientific reasoning, paraconsistent reasoning, the role of logic in science and the unity of science.

A partir de una encuesta por correo electrónico a estudiantes de Ingeniería en el SAI de la UAMA en un contexto de enseñanza remota forzado por la pandemia, se caracteriza la gestión de la docencia, desde la visión de los estudiantes, se realiza un diagnóstico de los aspectos relacionados. Es un estudio transversal con un análisis cualitativo y descriptivo de las respuestas. La gestión docente se ve afectada por factores inherentes al proceso, así como también por factores externos. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que fue impactada fuertemente al realizarse el proceso totalmente vía remota especialmente, la comunicación e interacción alumno-profesor.

Social care robots (SCR) have come to the forefront of the ethical debate. While the possibility of robots helping us tackle the global care crisis is promising for some, others have raised concerns about the adequacy of AI-driven technologies for the ethically complex world of care. The robots do not seem able to provide the comprehensive care many people demand and deserve, at least they do not seem able to engage in humane, emotion-laden and significant care relationships. In this article, we will propose to focus the debate on a particularly relevant aspect of care: trust. We will argue that, to answer the question of whether SCR are ethically acceptable, we must first address another question, namely, whether they are trustworthy. To this end, we propose a three-level model of trust analysis: rational, motivational and personal or intimate. We will argue that some relevant forms of caregiving (especially care for highly dependent persons) require a very personal or intimate type of care that distinguishes it from other contexts. Nevertheless, this is not the only type of trust happening in care spaces. We will adduce that, while we cannot have intimate or highly personal relationships with robots, they are trustworthy at the rational and thin motivational level. The fact that robots cannot engage in some (personal) aspects of care does not mean that they cannot be useful in care contexts. We will defend that critical approaches to trusting SCR have been sustained by two misconceptions and propose a new model for analyzing their moral acceptability: sociotechnical trust in teams of humans and robots.

Social coexistence and with oneself, in recent years, is characterized by an absence of tenderness and the presence of objectification of oneself and the other, the same thing happens in university classrooms, a reflection of this is the non-desire to play, to meet the other from the imagination of play. This research aimed to understand how students define play and what could trigger free and joyful play. It was a qualitative study, with the phenological and hermeneutical method based on the recovery of threads of life and the experience of playing with students. The results showed a devaluation of play because it is stripped of freedom and limits distance from ordinary life. Playful memory opens the door to free play, movement of the imagined body and world, triggering a humanizing game.

For years, the sexual and reproductive health of women with intellectual and developmental disability or disabilities has been insufficiently addressed by institutions and family members due to a lack of information, training, and, sometimes, religious issues. In this context, contraceptive digital pills can enhance the sexual and reproductive control of this population group. Digital pills could help to improve adherence to treatments aimed to prevent unwanted pregnancies, as well as allowing women and their caregivers to exert better drug intake control. However, there are some ethical risks to consider that may outweigh these benefits. This study sets out to explore the ethical considerations that should be taken into account in the case of a potential roll‐out of contraceptive digital pills as a way of improving the sexual and reproductive health of these women.

RESUMEN. Este trabajo tiene el propósito principal de estudiar cómo las nuevas formas de acceder a la paternidad y maternidad, a través de las técnicas de reproducción asistida con donación de gametos o embriones, afectan a algunos derechos de los hijos e hijas. En concreto, serán analizados los derechos de filiación paterna y materna y el derecho a conocer los orígenes biológicos. Para ello, será central tomar en consideración el deber que pesa sobre los poderes públicos de asegurar la protección integral de los hijos y posibilitar la investigación de la paternidad, junto con el deber de los padres de prestar asistencia de todo orden a sus hijos. La igualdad de todos los hijos ante la ley, con independencia de su filiación, llevará a comprobar las diferencias entre las personas nacidas mediante reproducción asistida, las nacidas por reproducción natural y las adoptadas, y a valorar si tales diferencias pueden seguir siendo justificadas. ABSTRACT. This work has the main purpose of studying how new ways of access to parenthood, through assisted reproductive technologies with donation of gametes or embryos, affect some rights of the children. Specifically, there will be analyzed the children´s right to both a mother and a father and the right to know their biological origins. To do so, it will be central to take into consideration the duty of public authorities to ensure the comprehensive protection of children and enable the investigation of paternity, together with the duty of parents to provide assistance of all kinds to their children. The equality of all children before the law will lead to testing the differences between those born through assisted reproduction, those born by natural reproduction and the adopted ones, and to assess if such differences may continue being justified.