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Finland lived, in the 1920s and 1930s, through an ephemeral time of peace and enthusiastic ideas in which it began to forge itself as a modern nation. Its borders still unstable, the country used its landscape as a social unifier and an element of national identity. Finland's incipient welfare state, institutionalised holidays and the democratised consumer goods encouraged a new leisure lifestyle in natural settings. This article studies the recreational housing programme that responded to that demand. The new typology, later called mökki in Finland, was developed during the rise of Nordic functionalism (funkkis in Finnish) – the revision of the romantic villa and the traditional rural housing model, together with the emergence of prefabrication techniques. Among the architectural competitions and drawing albums published on the subject, this article studies the competition run by the Enso-Gutzeit paper company in 1932. Other studies have analysed this competition from constructive, stylistic or historical perspectives. This paper provides a different view by explaining that the competition was a testing ground where one of modern Finnish architecture's distinctive features was forged: tuning into a constructed idea of nature. This fact is revealed through a graphical analysis of the competition's proposals, as well as through the incipient personal traits in the work of the promising, young Finnish architects who participated in the competition. ; Finlandia vivió en los años 1920 y 1930 un tiempo efímero de paz y efervescencia de ideas en los que comenzó a forjarse como nación moderna. Con sus fronteras aún inestables, el país utilizó su paisaje como aglutinador social y elemento de identidad nacional. El incipiente estado del bienestar, la institucionalización de las vacaciones y la democratización de los bienes de consumo, alentó una nueva forma de vida y ocio en entornos naturales. Este artículo estudia el programa de vivienda recreativa que dio respuesta a esa demanda. La nueva tipología, posteriormente llamada mökki en Finlandia, se desarrolló durante el auge del funcionalismo Nórdico (funkkis en finés), la revisión de la villa romántica y del modelo de vivienda rural tradicional, junto con la aparición de técnicas de prefabricación. De entre los concursos de arquitectura y álbumes de dibujos que se publicaron sobre el tema, este artículo estudia el convocado por la empresa papelera Enso-Gutzeit en 1932. Otros estudios han analizado este concurso desde lo constructivo, lo estilístico o lo histórico. Este artículo proporciona una visión diferente al afirmar que fue un campo de pruebas en el que se forjó uno de los rasgos distintivos de la arquitectura finlandesa moderna: el de su sintonía con una idea construida de naturaleza, que se desvela, en el análisis gráfico de las propuestas, a través de los incipientes rasgos personales del trabajo de las jóvenes promesas de la arquitectura finlandesa que participaron en el concurso.

Scheduling and resource allocation to optimize performance criteria in multi-cluster heterogeneous environments is known as an NP-hard problem, not only for the resource heterogeneity, but also for the possibility of applying co-allocation to take advantage of idle resources across clusters. A common practice is to use basic heuristics to attempt to optimize some performance criteria by treating the jobs in the waiting queue individually. More recent works proposed new optimization strategies based on Linear Programming techniques dealing with the scheduling of multiple jobs simultaneously. However, the time cost of these techniques makes them impractical for large-scale environments. Population-based meta-heuristics have proved their effectiveness for finding the optimal schedules in large-scale distributed environments with high resource diversification and large numbers of jobs in the batches. The algorithm proposed in the present work packages the jobs in the batch to obtain better optimization opportunities. It includes a multi-objective function to optimize not only the Makespan of the batches but also the Flowtime, thus ensuring a certain level of QoS from the users' point of view. The algorithm also incorporates heterogeneity and bandwidth awareness issues, and is useful for scheduling jobs in large-scale heterogeneous environments. The proposed meta-heuristic was evaluated with a real workload trace. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method, providing solutions that improve the performance with respect to other well-known techniques in the literature. ; This work was supported by the Government of Spain under contract TIN2011-28689-C02-02 and the CUR of DIUE of GENCAT and the European Social Fund.

In the preclinical stage of the Alzheimer's disease (AD) continuum, subjects report subjective memory complaints (SMCs), although with the absence of any objective decline, and have a higher risk of progressing to dementia than the general population. Early identification of this stage therefore constitutes a major focus of current AD research, to enable early intervention. In this study, healthy adult participants with high and low SMCs (HSMCs and LSMCs) performed a Go/NoGo task during electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Relative to LSMC participants, HSMC participants performed the task slower (longer reaction times) and showed changes in the event-related potential (ERP) components associated with response preparation (lower readiness potential -RP- amplitude in the Go condition), and also related to response inhibition processes (lower N2-P3 amplitude in the NoGo condition). In addition, HSMC participants showed lower Go-N2 and NoGo-N2 peak-to-baseline amplitudes, however these results seem to be influenced by a negative tendency overlapping stimulus-related waveforms. The declines observed in this study are mostly consistent with those observed in aMCI participants, supporting the notion of the AD continuum regarding SMC state ; This study was supported by grants from the Spanish Government, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R; PSI2017-89389-C2-2-R), with FEDER Funds; the Galician Government, Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas do Sistema Universitario de Galicia: GRC (GI-1807-USC); Ref: ED431-2017/27, with FEDER funds; the Galician Government, Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Programa de axudas de apoio á etapa de formación posdoutoral (Xunta de Galicia, 2016); Ref: ED481B2016/078-0 ; SI

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) represents a prodromal stage of Alzheimer`s disease (AD), especially when additional cognitive domains are affected (Petersen et al., 2009). Thus, single-domain amnestic MCI (sdaMCI) and multipledomain-amnestic MCI (mdaMCI) biomarkers are important for enabling early interventions to help slow down progression of the disease. Recording event-related potentials (ERPs) is a non-invasive and inexpensive measure of brain activity associated with cognitive processes, and it is of interest from a clinical point of view. The ERP technique may also be useful for obtaining early sdaMCI and mdaMCI biomarkers because ERPs are sensitive to impairment in processes that are not manifested at behavioral or clinical levels. In the present study, EEG activity was recorded in 25 healthy participants and 30 amnestic MCI patients (17 sdaMCI and 13 mdaMCI) while they performed a Simon task. The ERPs associated with visuospatial (N2 posterior-contralateral – N2pc -) and motor (lateralized readiness potential – LRP –) processes were examined. The N2pc amplitude was smaller in participants with mdaMCI than in healthy participants, which indicated a decline in the correlates of allocation of attentional resources to the target stimulus. In addition, N2pc amplitude proved to be a moderately good biomarker of mdaMCI subtype (0.77 sensitivity, 0.76 specificity). However, the LRP amplitude was smaller in the two MCI groups (sdaMCI and mdaMCI) than in healthy participants, revealing a reduction in the motor resources available to execute the response in sdaMCI and mdaMCI patients. Furthermore, the LRP amplitude proved to be a valid biomarker (0.80 sensitivity, 0.92 specificity) of both amnestic MCI subtypes ; This study was financially supported by funds from the Spanish Government: Ministerios de Educación (Beca FPU AP2007-04362) and Economía y Competitividad (PSI2010-22224-C03-03), and from the Galician Government: Consellería de Economía e Industria (10 PXIB 211070 PR), and Consellería de ...

The Simon task is used to study interference from irrelevant spatial information. Interference is manifested by longer reaction times when the required response –based on non-spatial features- is spatially incompatible with stimulus position. Interference is greater when incompatible trials are preceded by compatible trials (compatible-incompatible sequence) than when they are preceded by incompatible trials (incompatible-incompatible sequence). However, the relationships between spatial attention, interference and cognitive control have not been investigated. In the present study, we distinguished three experimental conditions according to sequential effects: same mappings (SM, compatible-compatible/incompatible-incompatible sequences: low interference), opposite mappings (OM, compatible-incompatible/incompatible-compatible sequences: high interference) and unrelated mappings (UM, central-compatible/central-incompatible sequences: intermediate interference). The negativity central contralateral (N2cc, a correlate of prevention of spatial response tendencies) was larger in OM than in SM, indicating greater cognitive control for greater interference. Furthermore, N2cc was larger in UM than in SM/OM, indicating lower neural efficiency for suppressing spatial tendencies of the response after central trials. Attentional processes (negativity posterior contralateral) were also delayed in UM relative to SM/OM, suggesting attentional facilitation by similar sets of attentional shifts in successive trials. Overall, the present findings showed that cognitive control is modulated by the magnitude of interference and pre-activation of monitoring mechanisms ; his study was funded by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R), the Galician Government (Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria, Axudas para a consolidación e Estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do SUG: GPC2014/047, with FEDER funds and by European Commission (Marie Skłodowska ...

Longitudinal studies have shown that a high percentage of people with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) develop Alzheimer's disease (AD). Prodromal AD is known to involve deficits in executive control processes. In the present study, we examined such deficits by recording EEG in 13 single-domain amnestic MCI (sdaMCI), 12 multiple-domain amnestic MCI (mdaMCI) and 18 healthy elderly (control group, CG) participants while they performed a Simon task. The Simon task demands deployment of executive processes because participants have to respond to non-spatial features of a lateralized stimulus and inhibit the more automatic spatial tendency of the response. We specifically focused on the negativity central contralateral (N2cc), an event-related potential (ERP) component related to brain activity that prevents the cross-talk between direction of spatial attention and manual response preparation. The reaction time (RT) was not significantly different among the three groups of participants. The percentage of errors (PE) was higher in mdaMCI than in CG and sdaMCI participants. In addition, N2cc latency was delayed in mdaMCI (i.e., delayed implementation of mechanisms for controlling the spatial tendency of the response). The N2cc latency clearly distinguished among mdaMCI and CG/sdaMCI participants (area under curve: 0.91). Longer N2cc was therefore associated with executive control deficits, which suggests that N2cc latency is a correlate of mdaMCI ; This study was funded by the Spanish Government: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2010-22224-C03-03); and by the Galician Government: Consellería de Economía e Industria (10 PXIB 211070 PR), and Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Axudas de Apoio á etapa inicial de formación posdoutoral 2011-2015 (Plan I2C); Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de unidades de investigación competitivas do sistema universitario de Galicia. Ref: CN 2012/033; with FEDER funds) ; SI

Memory capacity suffers an age-related decline, which is supposed to be due to a generalized slowing of processing speed and to a reduced availability of processing resources. Information encoding in memory has been demonstrated to be very sensitive to age-related changes, especially when carried out through self-initiated strategies or under high cognitive demands. However, most event-related potentials (ERP) research on age-related changes in working memory (WM) has used tasks that preclude distinction between age-related changes in encoding and retrieval processes. Here, we used ERP recording and a delayed match to sample (DMS) task with two levels of memory load to assess age-related changes in electrical brain activity in young and old adults during successful information encoding in WM. Age-related decline was reflected in lower accuracy rates and longer reaction times in the DMS task. Beside, only old adults presented lower accuracy rates under high than low memory load conditions. However, effects of memory load on brain activity were independent of age and may indicate an increased need of processing after stimulus classification as reflected in larger mean voltages in high than low load conditions between 550 and 1000 ms post-stimulus for young and old adults. Regarding age-related effects on brain activity, results also revealed smaller P2 and P300 amplitudes that may signal the existence of an age dependent reduction in the processing resources available for stimulus evaluation and categorization. Additionally, P2 and N2 latencies were longer in old than in young participants. Furthermore, longer N2 latencies were related to greater accuracy rates on the DMS task, especially in old adults. These results suggest that age-related slowing of processing speed may be specific for target stimulus analysis and evaluation processes. Thus, old adults seem to improve their performance the longer they take to evaluate the stimulus they encode in visual WM ; This study was funded by the Spanish Government ...

This work was financially supported by funds from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2010-22224-C03-03), and from the Galician Government: Consellería de Industria e Innovación (PGIDIT07PXIB211018PR, 10PXIB 211070 PR); and Consellería de Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (Ref: CN 2012/033) ; The main aim of the present study was to assess whether aging modulates the effects of involuntary capture of attention by novel stimuli on performance, and on event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with target processing (N2b and P3b) and subsequent response processes (stimulus-locked Lateralized Readiness Potential -sLRP- and response-locked Lateralized Readiness Potential -rLRP-). An auditory-visual distraction-attention task was performed by 77 healthy participants, divided into three age groups (Young: 21–29, Middle-aged: 51–64, Old: 65–84 years old). Participants were asked to attend to visual stimuli and to ignore auditory stimuli. Aging was associated with slowed reaction times, target stimulus processing in working memory (WM, longer N2b and P3b latencies) and selection and preparation of the motor response (longer sLRP and earlier rLRP onset latencies). In the novel relative to the standard condition we observed, in the three age groups: (1) a distraction effect, reflected in a slowing of reaction times, of stimuli categorization in WM (longer P3b latency), and of motor response selection (longer sLRP onset latency); (2) a facilitation effect on response preparation (later rLRP onset latency), and (3) an increase in arousal (larger amplitudes of all ERPs evaluated, except for N2b amplitude in the Old group). A distraction effect on the stimulus evaluation processes (longer N2b latency) were also observed, but only in middle-aged and old participants, indicating that the attentional capture slows the stimulus evaluation in WM from early ages (from 50 years onwards, without differences between middle-age and older adults), but not in young adults ; SI

Several studies reported that healthy elderly with subjective memory complaints (SMC) evolve to Alzheimer's disease (AD) more frequently than elderly without subjective memory decline. In the present study, we investigated event-related potentials (ERPs) associated to executive control processes taking place during the performance of a Simon task with two irrelevant dimensions (stimulus position and direction pointed by an arrow) in healthy elderly divided in low and high SMC (LSMC, HSMC) groups. P300 was studied as a correlate of working memory. Medial frontal negativity (MFN) was studied as a correlate of conflict monitoring. Whereas the LSMC group showed interference from the stimulus position, participants with HSMC showed interference from both irrelevant dimensions. P300 latency was longer and P300 amplitude was lower when the stimulus position was incompatible with the required response but differences between both groups were not observed. MFN was not modulated in the LSMC group; however, the HSMC group showed larger MFN when the stimulus position and/or the direction pointed by the arrow were incompatible with the required response. These results suggest that participants with HSMC deployed greater conflict monitoring activity to maintain the performance when the target stimulus contained conflictive spatial information ; This study was financially supported by funds from the Spanish Government: Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R; PSI2017-89389-C2-2-R), with FEDER Funds; the Galician Government: Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; Axudas para a Consolidación e Estruturación de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas do Sistema Universitario de Galicia: GRC (GI-1807-USC); Ref: ED431-2017/27, with FEDER funds; Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación postdoctoral grants ; SI

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) has become a major health issue in recent decades, and there is now growing interest in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), an intermediate stage between healthy aging and dementia, usually AD. Event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have sometimes failed to detect differences between aMCI and control participants in the Go-P3 (or P3b, related to target classification processes in a variety of tasks) and NoGo-P3 (related to response inhibition processes, mainly in Go/NoGo tasks) ERP components. The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether the age factor, which is not usually taken into account in ERP studies, modulates group differences in these components. With this aim, we divided two groups of volunteer participants, 34 subjects with aMCI (51–87 years) and 31 controls (52–86 years), into two age subgroups: 69 years or less and 70 years or more. We recorded brain activity while the participants performed a distraction-attention auditory-visual (AV) task. Task performance was poorer in the older than in the younger group, and aMCI participants produced fewer correct responses than the matched controls; but no interactions of the age and group factors on performance were found. On the other hand, Go-P3 and NoGo-N2 latencies were longer in aMCI participants than in controls only in the younger subgroup. Thus, the younger aMCI participants categorized the Go stimuli in working memory and processed the NoGo stimuli (which required response inhibition) slower than the corresponding controls. Finally, the combination of the number of hits, Go-P3 latency and NoGo-N2 latency yielded acceptable sensitivity and specificity scores (0.70 and 0.92, respectively) as regards distinguishing aMCI participants aged 69 years or less from the age-matched controls. The findings indicate age should be taken into account in the search for aMCI biomarkers ; This study was supported by grants from the Spanish Government, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2014-55316-C3-3-R; ...

The genus Proceratium Roger comprises rare ants that are irregularly distributed in tropical and temperate regions of the world. Despite this global distribution, these ants are rarely collected, likely due to their cryptobiotic lifestyle. In the New World, the genus comprises 22 known species distributed from Southern Canada to the South of Brazil, and in some Caribbean islands. The taxonomy of the genus Proceratium is here updated for South America. We describe P. amazonicum sp. nov, from Rondônia state and provide distribution data for P. brasiliense, P. convexipes, and P. silaceum. We also present, for the first time, high-resolution images of the P. colombicum type and P. ecuadoriense, and provide a new record of P. micrommatum from Peru, and comment about its morphological variation and distribution. A key for the workers of the P. micrommatum clade is also provided. The species we describe belongs to P. micrommatum clade and represents the second species recorded from Brazil after 60 years, since only P. brasiliense was known previously in the country.

AbstractSocial capital is the whole set of shared norms, values, attitudes, and beliefs that promote cooperation among individuals within the community and that has proved to be a key factor in explaining development processes. This article aims to provide an analytically reliable notion of social capital within the farming sector and a methodological tool for empirically measuring how social capital is accumulated at the farmer level. The theoretical framework proposed is based on the multidimensionality of the complex concept of social capital. Thus, to develop a comprehensive index for social capital, we identify three dimensions of the concept, structural, relational, and cognitive social capital, each one also comprising several subdimensions. This integrative approach permits creation of a composite indicator of the agricultural social capital accumulated at the farmer level, further identifying socioeconomic factors that influence its accumulation at that level. We empirically apply this methodological approach to farmers in Andalusia in southern Spain as a case study. This research provides an interesting starting point for informing policymakers about social capital and helping them implement the necessary programs to facilitate sustainable development in the agricultural sector.

This paper analyzes the way participants change their mind in a deliberative forum. Its contribution lies in studying the extent to which these changes persist over time. We start from Mackie's assumption that changes of opinion in a deliberative context cannot be interpreted by considering isolated variables, but must be based on individual attitudinal networks in which preferences are embedded. The results show that certain changes after deliberation are not maintained by some individuals. The paper details the importance of certain variables in the change of opinion in the short and long term, as well as the relationship that exists between different attitudes (information, preferences, beliefs and political efficacy) at three different times before and after deliberation. ; El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar el cambio de opinión de los participantes en un foro deliberativo. Su contribución reside en estudiar hasta qué punto esos cambios perduran en el tiempo. Partiremos de la hipótesis de Mackie que sostiene que los cambios de opinión en un contexto deliberativo no pueden ser interpretados considerando variables de forma aislada, sino que deben basarse en la red actitudinal de los individuos de la que emergen sus preferencias. Los resultados nos muestran que algunos cambios no se mantienen tiempo después de la deliberación entre algunos individuos. El trabajo detalla la importancia que adquieren determinadas variables en el cambio de opinión a corto y a largo plazo, así como la interrelación que se da entre diferentes actitudes en tres momentos distintos antes y después de la deliberación. ; This article was made possible by the funding received from the Agencia Andaluza del Agua (Andalusian Water Agency) and the Proyecto Intramural del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Intramural Project of the Ministry of Science and Innovation) 201010I014.