1,721,031 research outputs found
El problema de indagación en ciencia, tecnología y profesión: ideas para reflexionar sobre política científica
No full textScience, technology, and professions form a system with strong interactions. Yet, these activities attack different kinds of problems which require different kinds of solutions. The problems that trigger scientific and technological research remain insufficiently solved or unsolved, therefore their possible solutions must be invented (i.e. they are partially or totally original) and, consequently, they should be tested against reality by researchers before considering them as true or useful. On the contrary, the problems that trigger professional inquiry are already solved, or have at least some partial solution at hand that is available in the form of a technical protocol. This solution is applied with caution but without testing (i.e. the professional assumes that the solution works because it was already challenged by researchers). Moreover, science and technology tackle unsolved inverse problems, which allow the radical advancement of knowledge, and genuine innovation. A science policy based on a clear distinction between creative and routine activities (i.e. a creatively friendly policy) offers an opportunity for societies to reach value-added innovative economic and integral development.Fil: Marone, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin
Ethical dimensions of ocean governance
Get PDFOn this essay in honour of Elisabeth Mann-Borgese, by analyzing the Ethical Dimensions of Ocean Governance, we explore the ethical principles behind one of her most relevant gifts for the Oceans and society: the promotion of the common heritage of mankind concept at UNCLOS. Her work, together with other important personalities, was imbued of deep ethical roots, whichever the main ethical schools one might choose, from Ancient Greeks to modern days. She can be considered one of those rare people earning the higher level and stage of ethical adequacy. Furthermore, she made us aware that we need a solid scientific knowledge if we want to establish a proper Ocean Governance to promote society to the next level, while it is clear that only Ethics will keep us there. To do so, not just the well-being of humankind has to be pursued, but also the wealth of all life forms and the systems that sustain them in good shape, in order to give for future generations, and us, the opportunity of enjoying the Oceans.Fil: Marone, Eduardo. Universidade Federal do Paraná; BrasilFil: Marone, Luis. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin
Causa de la dieta de aves granívoras
No full textWe evaluated whether seed mass, handling time, handling efficiency and profitability account for (a) preferences in controlled experiments and (b) field-diet composition of four bird species of the Monte desert, Argentina. The question of whether birds maximise their energy intake rates while feeding on seeds is assessed. We used feeding experiments with six native seed species of 0.07–0.75 mg (i.e. the seed-size range consumed in nature), which account for 0.59–0.84 of the field diet of the four birds. We measured seed-handling times and used published information on bird preferences and diets, and on seed chemistry, for further calculations. Bird preferences were always positively related to seed mass and also to seed profitability in the two intermediatesized birds. Diet composition correlated positively with seed mass and negatively with seed profitability in three species, but some birds also showed a flexible behaviour eating the most attractive seeds according to their availability. This behaviour is not genuinely opportunistic because it only focuses on a restricted fraction of the total seed species present in the field. Contrary to expectations of species coexistence due to resource partitioning, small and large birds showed similar feeding efficiencies when eating the smaller and the larger seeds. The positive association between seed mass and profitability in several studies suggests that most birds can maximise their energy reward, on average and in the long-term, by preferring the larger seeds. A combination of potential feeding optimisation with certain flexibility in the field may characterise the feeding ecology of desert seed-eating birds.Fil: Marone, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin
La función de la teoría para mitigar la ‘crisis de reproducibilidad’
No full textLa falta de reproducibilidad de los resultados científicos desafía la confianza en ellos. Se requiere un esfuerzo tendiente a difundir la naturaleza dinámica, aunque no arbitraria, de la evidencia científica, además de instrumentar medidas para aumentar la confianza en los resultados publicados. La reflexión y las acciones dirigidas a evaluar e incrementar la reproducibilidad de las conclusiones científicas suelen estar dirigidas a aumentar la validez de los datos a través de un manejo cuidadoso de su proceso de curación, prestando atención a aspectos empíricos de la puesta a prueba de hipótesis. Sin embargo, estos importantes aspectos no son suficientes porque solo atienden elementos empíricos y técnicos de la prueba (i.e., diseño experimental, datos, análisis estadístico), por lo que deberían complementarse con herramientas teóricas y conceptuales que incrementen la confianza en las conclusiones. Tanto la robustez de los patrones ecológicos como la comprensión de los mecanismos fisiológicos, comportamentales y ecológicos que los causan contribuyen a dar solidez a las conclusiones. La puesta a prueba de hipótesis a priori (e.g., sobre rasgos biológicos funcionales) con evidencia novedosa (y redundante) ofrece a la investigación en ecología el apoyo simultáneo de datos y un entramado teórico actualizado y pertinente, contribuyendo a incrementar la confiabilidad en los resultados que se publican.The lack of reproducibility of scientific results is jeopardizing the trust in science. An effort to inform the dynamic, but non-arbitrary, nature of scientific evidence is required along with strengthening the reliability of published results. Concerns and actions aimed at testing and increasing the reproducibility of scientific conclusions are usually directed at increasing data validation through careful management of the data-curation process, paying attention to the empirical aspects of hypotheses testing. But important as they are, these aspects may be vulnerable to the perils of radical empiricism and therefore should be combined with more theoretical and conceptual tools. Pattern consistency and an understanding of the physiological, behavioral, or ecological mechanisms that cause patterns make scientific assertions more robust. Testing a priori hypotheses (e.g., about functional biological traits) with fresh (and redundant) evidence offers theoretical as well as empirical support for ecological research and may help strengthen the reliability of published results.Fil: Marone, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin
“Lo que es y lo que nunca sería”: La corroboración, la refutación y la construcción del conocimiento en ecología
No full textEl refutacionismo surgió como una alternativa a los problemas de la inducción como método en el contexto de justificación. Y trajo consigo, asociado, un nuevo principio de demarcación para la ciencia: las teorías científicas, para ser genuinamente científicas, deben ser refutables. Así, el de refutabilidad pasó a ser el criterio principal (¿único?) de cientificidad. Pero el mismo refutacionismo resultó enseguida permeable a varios cuestionamientos, que derivaron hacia versiones sofisticadas del método. ¿En qué medida se ha modificado aquel principio de demarcación a la luz de esta sofisticación? Si ninguna afirmación se puede refutar de manera inequívoca, ¿podemos pretender que la refutabilidad sea el criterio universal de buena ciencia? En Ecología estas preguntas toman una dimensión trascendente como consecuencia de las características propias de la disciplina. Cimentada en la teoría de evolución por selección natural, se enfrenta a falibilidad, contingencia, variabilidad y multicausalidad. Estas características la hacen vulnerable a las críticas de aquellos que piensan que solo existe un método único, uniforme e interdisciplinario de hacer ciencia y que la refutabilidad es la única “guía” en tal proceso. Sin embargo, la epistemología actual indica que tal pretensión es injustificada e insostenible.Fil: Lopez de Casenave, Javier Nestor. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires; ArgentinaFil: Marone, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
The "freezing" of science: consequences of the dogmatic teaching of ecology
Get PDFIn his classic work “The Essential Tension: Tradition and Innovation in Scientific Research,” the historian and philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn (1991) asserts that natural sciences are taught almost exclusively from textbooks written especially for students at both graduate and postgraduate levels, and, as often as not, these textbooks do not describe the sorts of problems the future professional will very likely have to deal with, nor the variety of techniques available to treat them. Instead, he says, textbooks usually offer a concrete solution—the “paradigmatic” one—as a model for how to solve similar problems. Continuing, he points out that students are not encouraged to read the classical works of their field, and the learning process is a sort of dogmatic initiation in a tradition that students are not prepared to evaluate for themselves. In sum, textbooks and teachers frequently offer versions of science that—as philosophers David Hume and Karl R. Popper have shown—are unssustainable from the logical point of view (Popper 1977).Fil: González del Solar. Rafael. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; ArgentinaFil: Marone, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; Argentin
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
El valor cultural de la ciencia y la tecnología
Get PDFLa justificación del financiamiento público de la ciencia exclusivamente por sus resultados tecnológicos no hace justicia a la diversidad de sus aportes a la cultura y la sociedad. El método general de la ciencia alienta el desarrollo de actitudes críticas e inconformistas, apuesta a la imaginación y la innovación, y respeta las ideas diferentes aunque también promueve su evaluación rigurosa. La incapacidad de reconocer la apuesta innovadora y original propia de la ciencia y la tecnología conduce a confundirlas con la técnica o profesión. En una cultura afectada por esa confusión los investigadores abandonan su papel de libres indagadores, de auténticos filósofos de la naturaleza, y se transforman en meros relatores de un orden prefijado, guardianes de un conocimiento tradicional que castiga la creatividad y el cambio cualitativo.Arguments attempting to justify the public funding of science by appeal to its technological results exclusively make no justice to the diversity of contributions science makes to culture and society. The general method of science encourages critical analysis and nonconformist attitudes, promotes imagination and innovation, and respect for heterodox ideas together with their rigorous appraisal. An inability to notice the inherence of innovation and originality in science and technology is one of the causes of their conflation with technique and profession. In a culture affected by such confusion, researchers tend to abandon their role as free enquirers, genuine philosophers of nature, and become mere narrators of a prefixed order, guardians of a traditional knowledge that punishes creativity and qualitative changeFil: Marone, Luis. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Provincia de Mendoza. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas; ArgentinaFil: Gonzalez del Solar, Rafael. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Españ
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