Miguel Garcia

In this paper we address the problem of short-term electric energy prediction using a time series forecasting approach applied to data generated by a Paraguayan electricity distribution provider. The dataset used in this work contains data collected over a three-year period. This is the first time that these data have been used; therefore, a preprocessing phase of the data was also performed. In particular, we propose a comparative study of various machine learning and statistical strategies with the objective of predicting the electric energy consumption for a given prediction horizon, in our case seven days, using historical data. In this paper we have tested the effectiveness of the techniques with different historical window sizes. Specifically, we considered two ensemble strategies, a neural network, a deep learning technique and linear regression. Moreover, in this study, we tested whether the inclusion of meteorological data can help achieve better predictions. In particular, we considered data regarding temperature, humidity, wind speed and atmospheric pressure registered during the three-year period of data collection. The results show that, in general, the deep learning approach obtains the best results and that such results are obtained when meteorological data are also considered. Moreover, when meteorological data is used, a smaller historical window size is required to obtain precise predictions.

Following Ballantyne, we can distinguish between descriptive and regulative epistemology. Whereas descriptive epistemology analyzes epistemic categories such as knowledge, justified belief, or evidence, regulative epistemology attempts to guide our thinking. In this paper, we argue that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on what we call epistemic prudence. Our argument proceeds as follows: First, we lay out an objection to virtue-based regulative epistemology that is analogous to the no-guidance objection to virtue ethics. According to this objection, virtue-based regulative epistemology cannot offer us useful guidance in our deliberations, because an abstract knowledge of virtue does not tell us what we should do here and now, especially in hard cases. We respond to this objection by showing that our making good epistemic decisions cannot simply be a matter of our following the right epistemic rules. In order to reliably inquire and deliberate well, we need epistemic prudence. Thus, while virtue-based regulative epistemology fails to determine how we should inquire and resolve deliberation here and now, this is also true of norm-based regulative epistemology. The upshot of this argument is that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on understanding the nature of epistemic prudence and on understanding how we can promote its development in ourselves and others.

On 26 June 2000, during the presentation of the Human Genome Project's first draft, Bill Clinton, then President of the United States, claimed that "today we are learning the language in which God created life".1 Behind his remarks lay a story of more than half a century involving the understanding of DNA as information. This paper analyses that story, discussing the origins of the informational view of our genes during the early 1950s, how such a view affected the research on the genetic code (1950s and '60s) and the transformation of the information idea in the context of DNA sequencing and bioinformatics ('80s and '90s). I suggest that the concept of DNA as information reached a climax with the proposal of the Human Genome Project (HGP), but is currently facing a crisis coinciding with the questioning of the information society. Finally, I discuss the emergence of systems biology as an alternative paradigm.

En este texto se plantea el comienzo de un tratado de filosofía primera que divide los problemas de ésta en asuntos de ontología, agatología y lógica. Se presentan luego las bases de la lógica como teoría del conocimiento y las bases de la ontología como teoría de las pluralidades. Se critican las posiciones aparentemente más plausibles, en dirección a mostrar cómo el peculiar fenomenismo defendido por Husserl en su madurez filosófica es la mejor de las soluciones globales para la problemática lógica.The text puts forward how to begin an exposition of prima philosophia dividing its problems in ontological, agathological and logical ones. The foundations of logics as the theory of knowledge and the foundations of ontology as the theory of pluralities are explored by the way of critizing apparently plausible solutions. The aim is to guess why the peculiar phenomenalism sustained by Husserl in his mature philosophy is the best approach to logical nuclear problems.

En este trabajo se propone una revisión de la fenomenología de la vida de Michel Henry y su relación con la intencionalidad, tal como esta es pensada en y por Husserl. Se pasa revista al modo en el que el fundador del método fenomenológico se ocupa de cuestiones centrales de la fenomenología de la vida, así como de la forma en la que Henry habla de la vida, la autodonación, la autorevelación, la verdad, el cuerpo originario o absoluto, etc. La tesis es que en el fenomenólogo francés no se trata, en sentido propio, de una inversión de la intencionalidad, sino de una “absorción en sí misma”.

Este artículo expone el resultado de la puesta en práctica de una metodología docente novedosa a través de la que se busca superar las dificultades que el proceso de enseñanza/aprendizaje encuentra en las asignaturas jurídicas que forman parte de los grados universitarios no jurídicos. Comienza destacando el papel que tienen las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en dicho proceso y, significativamente, el campus virtual. Seguidamente, desgrana cada uno de los elementos de la metodología docente aplicaba, entre los que encuentra la gamificación. Concluye con la determinación de las consecuencias de la experiencia desarrollada.

This article proposes a new bi-directional way of understanding the convergence of biology and computing. It argues for a reciprocal interaction in which biology and computing have shaped and are currently reshaping each other. In so doing, we qualify both the view of a natural marriage and of a digital shaping of biology, which are common in the literature written by scientists, STS, and communication scholars. The DNA database is at the center of this interaction. We argue that DNA databases are spaces of convergence for computing and biology that change in form, meaning, and function from the 1960s to the 2000s. The first part of the article shows how, in the 1980s, DNA sequencing shifted from passively incorporating computers to be increasingly modeled in digital coding and decoding. Information retrieval algorithms, reciprocally, were altered according to the peculiarities of DNA in the first sequence-storage databases. The second part of the article investigates the impact of these reciprocal interactions and globalization on the organization of research centers, ways of conducting big science, and scientific values. Through convergence and new technologies such as data mining, biology and computing were transformed technologically, institutionally, and culturally into a new bio-data enterprise called genomics.

Fred Sanger, the inventor of the first protein, RNA and DNA sequencing methods, has traditionally been seen as a technical scientist, engaged in laboratory bench work and not interested at all in intellectual debates in biology. In his autobiography and commentaries by fellow researchers, he is portrayed as having a trajectory exclusively dependent on technological progress. The scarce historical scholarship on Sanger partially challenges these accounts by highlighting the importance of professional contacts, institutional and disciplinary moves in his career, spanning from 1940 to 1983. This paper will complement such literature by focusing, for the first time, on the transition of Sanger’s sequencing strategies from degrading to copying the target molecule, which occurred in the late 1960s as he was shifting from protein and RNA to DNA sequencing, shortly after his move from the Department of Biochemistry to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, both based in Cambridge (UK). Through a reinterpretation of Sanger’s papers and retrospective accounts and a pioneering investigation of his laboratory notebooks, I will claim that sequencing shifted from the working procedures of organic chemistry to those of the emergent molecular biology. I will also argue that sequencing deserves a history in its own right as a practice and not as a technique subordinated to the development of molecular biology or genomics. My proposed history of sequencing leads to a reappraisal of current STS debates on bioinformatics, biotechnology and biomedicine.

Fred Sanger, the inventor of the first protein, RNA and DNA sequencing methods, has traditionally been seen as a technical scientist, engaged in laboratory bench work and not interested at all in intellectual debates in biology. In his autobiography and commentaries by fellow researchers, he is portrayed as having a trajectory exclusively dependent on technological progress. The scarce historical scholarship on Sanger partially challenges these accounts by highlighting the importance of professional contacts, institutional and disciplinary moves in his career, spanning from 1940 to 1983. This paper will complement such literature by focusing, for the first time, on the transition of Sanger's sequencing strategies from degrading to copying the target molecule, which occurred in the late 1960s as he was shifting from protein and RNA to DNA sequencing, shortly after his move from the Department of Biochemistry to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, both based in Cambridge (UK). Through a reinterpretation of Sanger's papers and retrospective accounts and a pioneering investigation of his laboratory notebooks, I will claim that sequencing shifted from the working procedures of organic chemistry to those of the emergent molecular biology. I will also argue that sequencing deserves a history in its own right as a practice and not as a technique subordinated to the development of molecular biology or genomics. My proposed history of sequencing leads to a reappraisal of current STS debates on bioinformatics, biotechnology and biomedicine

This paper explores the different identities adopted by connective tissue research at the University of Manchester during the second half of the 20th century. By looking at the long-term redefinition of a research programme, it sheds new light on the interactions between different and conflicting levels in the study of biomedicine, such as the local and the global, or the medical and the biological. It also addresses the gap in the literature between the first biomedical complexes after World War II and the emergence of biotechnology. Connective tissue research in Manchester emerged as a field focused on new treatments for rheumatic diseases. During the 1950s and 60s, it absorbed a number of laboratory techniques from biology, namely cell culture and electron microscopy. The transformations in scientific policy during the late 70s and the migration of Manchester researchers to the US led them to adopt recombinant DNA methods, which were borrowed from human genetics. This resulted in the emergence of cell matrix biology, a new field which had one of its reference centres in Manchester. The Manchester story shows the potential of detailed and chronologically wide local studies of patterns of work to understand the mechanisms by which new biomedical tools and institutions interact with long-standing problems and existing affiliations

Grounded theory, a research method born out of the social sciences field, offers a flexible technique that allows simultaneous data collection and processing. Researchers using this method immerse themselves in an area of study, focusing their observations on the data and taking into consideration not only their own interpretations, but also those of the other subjects involved, in order to strengthen their understanding of the social phenomena under examination. This text briefly describes the concept of grounded theory and uses concrete examples to illustrate how data are analysed from the standpoint of the stereotype as an object of study. La teoría fundamentada, nacida al interior de las ciencias sociales, es un método de investigación que posee una técnica flexible y que realiza simultáneamente la recolección y el procesamiento de los datos. En este método, el investigador se encuentra inmerso en el campo de estudio y sus observaciones se abocan al dato, considerando tanto su interpretación como la de los otros sujetos implicados, con la finalidad de fortalecer la comprensión del fenómeno social investigado. En este texto se describe brevemente la teoría fundamentada y cómo se analizan los datos mediante ejemplos concretos, que se presentan a partir del estereotipo como objeto de estudio.