The Oxidative State of Chylomicron Remnants Influences Their Modulation of Human Monocyte Activation

8 p.

Analysis of volatility transmissions in integrated and interconnected markets: The case of the Iberian and French markets

This paper models the mean and volatility spillovers of prices within the integrated Iberian and the interconnected Spanish and French electricity markets. Using the constant (CCC) and dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) bivariate models with three different specifications of the univariate variance processes, we study the extent to which increasing interconnection and harmonization in regulation have favoured price convergence. The data consist of daily prices calculated as the arithmetic mean of the hourly prices over a span from July 1st 2007 until February 29th 2012. The DCC model in which the variances of the univariate processes are specified with a VARMA(1,1) fits the data best for the integrated MIBEL whereas a CCC model with a GARCH(1,1) specification for the univariate variance processes is selected to model the price series in Spain and France. Results show that there are significant mean and volatility spillovers in the MIBEL, indicating strong interdependence between the two markets, while there is a weaker evidence of integration between the Spanish and French markets. We provide new evidence that the EU target of achieving a single electricity market largely depends on increasing trade between countries and homogeneous rules of market functioning.

Word frequency cues word order in adults: cross-linguistic evidence

[EN] One universal feature of human languages is the division between grammatical functors and content words. From a learnability point of view, functors might provide entry points or anchors into the syntactic structure of utterances due to their high frequency. Despite its potentially universal scope, this hypothesis has not yet been tested on typologically different languages and on populations of different ages. Here we report a corpus study and an artificial grammar learning experiment testing the anchoring hypothesis in Basque, Japanese, French, and Italian adults. We show that adults are sensitive to the distribution of functors in their native language and use them when learning new linguistic material. However, compared to infants’ performance on a similar task, adults exhibit a slightly different behavior, matching the frequency distributions of their native language more closely than infants do. This finding bears on the issue of the continuity of language learning mechanism.

A genealogical map of the concept of habit

The notion of information processing has dominated the study of the mind for over six decades. However, before the advent of cognitivism, one of the most prominent theoretical ideas was that of Habit. This is a concept with a rich and complex history, which is again starting to awaken interest, following recent embodied, enactive critiques of computationalist frameworks. We offer here a very brief history of the concept of habit in the form of a genealogical network-map. This serves to provide an overview of the richness of this notion and as a guide for further re-appraisal. We identify 77 thinkers and their influences, and group them into seven schools of thought. Two major trends can be distinguished. One is the associationist trend, starting with the work of Locke and Hume, developed by Hartley, Bain, and Mill to be later absorbed into behaviorism through pioneering animal psychologists (Morgan and Thorndike). This tradition conceived of habits atomistically and as automatisms (a conception later debunked by cognitivism). Another historical trend we have called organicism inherits the legacy of Aristotle and develops along German idealism, French spiritualism, pragmatism, and phenomenology. It feeds into the work of continental psychologists in the early 20th century, influencing important figures such as Merleau-Ponty, Piaget, and Gibson. But it has not yet been taken up by mainstream cognitive neuroscience and psychology. Habits, in this tradition, are seen as ecological, self-organizing structures that relate to a web of predispositions and plastic dependencies both in the agent and in the environment. In addition, they are not conceptualized in opposition to rational, volitional processes, but as transversing a continuum from reflective to embodied intentionality. These are properties that make habit a particularly attractive idea for embodied, enactive perspectives, which can now re-evaluate it in light of dynamical systems theory and complexity research.

Dependencia térmica del disponible metabólico para la actividad en bivalvos aclimatados a distintas temperaturas

[es]Para la realización del presente estudio, se utilizaron 50 ejemplares de Ruditapes Decussatus o almeja fina y otros 50 de Ruditapes Philippinarum o almeja japonesa, recogidas y seleccionadas por mariscadores profesionales de la Bahía de Santoña (Cantabria). La temperatura influye en las tasas fisiológicas, llegando a generar finalmente alteraciones en el metabolismo del organismo. Por ello, una variable de interés para el estudio se trata de la tasa metabólica, la cual puede ser estimada a través de la medición de la tasa de consumo de oxígeno (VO2). El objetivo final de este estudio es, por tanto, observar el efecto cinético de la temperatura y la aclimatación sobre el metabolismo de ambas especies de almejas, distribuidas en cuatro grupos de estudio (almeja fina y japonesa aclimatadas a 12oC y 22oC), midiendo la VO2 a diferentes temperaturas de exposición (7oC, 12oC, 17oC, 22oC y 27oC). Utilizando el la respirometría como medio para calcular la VO2 y el cálculo de la Q10 para determinar las tasas metabólicas. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que en tres de los cuatro casos no se observaron diferencias significativas entre el metabolismo rutina y el metabolismo estándar. También se comprobó positivamente el efecto cinético de la temperatura sobre la VO2; así como la presencia de un intervalo de temperaturas, en las que se realiza compensación, más amplio para almeja japonesa que para almeja fina.