[Abridged] In the late nineteenth century, Mars emerged as one of the most intensively reported astronomical objects in the popular press, driven by favourable oppositions, improved telescopic capabilities and growing speculation regarding planetary habitability. I examine how Mars was interpreted in Australian newspapers between the 1870s and 1899, focusing on the ways in which astronomical knowledge was framed, contextualised and debated within a colonial media environment. Drawing on a large collection of digitised newspaper articles, I analyse how observational authority, instrumental credibility and individual expertise were harnessed in press reporting. The paper situates Australian Mars coverage within a global network of scientific communication dominated by metropolitan centres in Europe and North America, while highlighting the distinctive role played by southern-hemisphere visibility. Australian observatories and observers were frequently positioned as contributors of confirmatory observation rather than interpretive leadership, reinforcing a pattern of locally grounded but internationally oriented scientific engagement. The analysis traces a shift from early emphasis on disciplined observation and measurement to later periods characterised by contested interpretations, particularly surrounding the so-called Martian "canals" and the speculative claims advanced by personalities such as Percival Lowell in the USA. By examining how newspapers mediated between observational astronomy, engineering analogies and popular imagination, this study contributes to a broader understanding of how planetary science entered public discourse beyond metropolitan centres. In doing so, it underscores the active role of colonial newspapers in shaping scientific meaning and situates Australian Mars reporting within the wider history of nineteenth-century astronomical culture.
María Grandury, Javier Aula-Blasco, Júlia Falcão
et al.
Leaderboards showcase the current capabilities and limitations of Large Language Models (LLMs). To motivate the development of LLMs that represent the linguistic and cultural diversity of the Spanish-speaking community, we present La Leaderboard, the first open-source leaderboard to evaluate generative LLMs in languages and language varieties of Spain and Latin America. La Leaderboard is a community-driven project that aims to establish an evaluation standard for everyone interested in developing LLMs for the Spanish-speaking community. This initial version combines 66 datasets in Basque, Catalan, Galician, and different Spanish varieties, showcasing the evaluation results of 50 models. To encourage community-driven development of leaderboards in other languages, we explain our methodology, including guidance on selecting the most suitable evaluation setup for each downstream task. In particular, we provide a rationale for using fewer few-shot examples than typically found in the literature, aiming to reduce environmental impact and facilitate access to reproducible results for a broader research community.
Hagit Attiya, Michael A. Bender, Martin Farach-Colton
et al.
A data structure is called history independent if its internal memory representation does not reveal the history of operations applied to it, only its current state. In this paper we study history independence for concurrent data structures, and establish foundational possibility and impossibility results. We show that a large class of concurrent objects cannot be implemented from smaller base objects in a manner that is both wait-free and history independent; but if we settle for either lock-freedom instead of wait-freedom or for a weak notion of history independence, then at least one object in the class, multi-valued single-reader single-writer registers, can be implemented from smaller base objects, binary registers. On the other hand, using large base objects, we give a strong possibility result in the form of a universal construction: an object with $s$ possible states can be implemented in a wait-free, history-independent manner from compare-and-swap base objects that each have $O(s + 2^n)$ possible memory states, where $n$ is the number of processes in the system.
This work presents PyPSA-Spain, an open-source model of the Spanish energy system based on the European model PyPSA-Eur. It aims to leverage the benefits of single-country modelling over a multi-country approach. In particular, several databases provided by Spanish institutions are exploited to improve the estimation of solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind generation hourly profiles, as well as the spatio-temporal description of the electricity demand. PyPSA-Spain attains hourly resolution for a entire year and represents the Spanish energy system using a configurable number of nodes, while selecting around 35-50 nodes is identified as a good compromise between spatial resolution and model simplicity. To accommodate cross-border interactions, a nested model approach with PyPSA-Eur was used, wherein time-dependent electricity prices from neighbouring countries were precomputed through the optimisation of the European energy system. As a case study, the optimal electricity mix for 2030 was obtained and compared with the latest update of the Spanish National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) from September 2024.
María J. Cano, Juan A. Jiménez, Mónica Martínez
et al.
<i>Aloina catillum</i> is a variable moss typical of xerophytic environments in the Neotropics, characterized against other closely allied <i>Aloina</i> species with well-differentiated leaf border by its setae twisted to the left throughout. In order to clarify its variability and its relationships with the allied species with differentiated leaf border <i>A. brevirostris</i>, <i>A. obliquifolia</i>, and <i>A. rigida</i>, we performed an integrative study including sequence data from four markers (nuclear ITS, plastid <i>atp</i>B-<i>rbc</i>L, <i>trn</i>G, <i>trn</i>L-F), morphometry, and species assembling by automatic partitioning (ASAP) algorithm. Our data suggest that <i>A. catillum</i> consists of at least three species: <i>A. calceolifolia</i> (an earlier name for <i>A</i>. <i>catillum</i>), and two species described here as a new, <i>A. bracteata</i> sp. nov. and <i>A. limbata</i> sp. nov. This latter species includes the specimens previously identified as <i>A. obliquifolia</i> from South America. Additionally, some morphological and molecular variability was also detected in <i>A. limbata</i>, but was not consistent enough to be recognized taxonomically. The study supports the presence of <i>A. brevirostris</i> in the Neotropics and <i>A. rigida</i> is tentatively excluded from South America. Full descriptions of the <i>A. catillum</i> s.l. species and a diagnostic key to this complex in South America are provided.
J. Gomez-Gomez, R. Carmona-Cabezas, A. B. Ariza-Villaverde
et al.
In the last decades, an ever-growing number of studies are focusing on the extreme weather conditions related to the climate change. Some of them are based on multifractal approaches, such as the Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (MF-DFA), which has been used in this work. Daily diurnal temperature range (DTR), maximum, minimum and mean temperature from five coastal and five mainland stations in Spain have been analyzed. For comparison, two periods of 30 years have been considered: 1960-1989 and 1990-2019. By using the MF-DFA method, generalized Hurst exponents and multifractal spectra have been obtained. Outcomes corroborate that all these temperature variables have multifractal nature and show changes in multifractal properties between both periods. Also, Hurst exponents values indicate that all time series exhibit long-range correlations and a stationary behavior. Coastal locations exhibit in general wider spectra for minimum and mean temperature than for maximum and DTR, in both periods. On the contrary, the mainland ones do not show this pattern. Also, width from multifractal spectra of these two variables (minimum and mean temperature) is shortened in the last period in almost every case. To authors' mind, changes in multifractal features might be related to the climate change experienced in the studied region. Furthermore, reduction of spectra width for minimum and mean temperature implies a decrease of the complexity of these temperature variables between both studied periods. Finally, the wider spectra found in coastal stations might be useful as a discriminator element to improve climate models.
Recensión del libro: Fernando Andrés Robres, Rafael Benítez Sánchez-Blanco y Eugenio Ciscar Pallarés, El monasterio rebelde. Monarquía y poder monástico en el Reino de Valencia (1665-1670), Madrid, Marcial Pons Historia, 2020, 438 pp. ISBN 978-84-17945-19-0.
Concepción Payares-Herrera, María E. Martínez-Muñoz, Inés Lipperheide Vallhonrat
et al.
Abstract Objectives 1. To assess the efficacy of Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSC) versus a control arm as described in the primary endpoint. 2. To evaluate the effects of MSC on the secondary efficacy endpoints. 3. To evaluate the safety and tolerability profiles of MSC. 4. To study soluble and cellular biomarkers that might be involved in the course of the disease and the response to the investigational product. Trial design A double-blind, randomized, controlled, trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of MSC intravenous administration in patients with COVID-induced Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) compared to a control arm. Participants The trial is being conducted at a third level hospital, Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro, in Majadahonda, Madrid (Spain). Inclusion criteria 1. Informed consent prior to performing study procedures (witnessed oral consent with written consent by representatives will be accepted to avoid paper handling). Written consent by patient or representatives will be obtained whenever possible. 2. Adult patients ≥18 years of age at the time of enrolment. 3. Laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection as determined by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), in oropharyngeal swabs or any other relevant specimen obtained during the course of the disease. Alternative tests (e.g., rapid antigen tests) are also acceptable as laboratory confirmation if their specificity has been accepted by the Sponsor. 4. Moderate to severe ARDS (PaO2/FiO2 ratio equal or less than 200 mmHg) for less than 96 hours at the time of randomization. 5. Patients requiring invasive ventilation are eligible within 72 hours from intubation. 6. Eligible for ICU admission, according to the clinical team. Exclusion criteria 1. Imminent and unavoidable progression to death within 24 hours, irrespective of the provision of treatments (in the opinion of the clinical team). 2. “Do Not Attempt Resuscitation” order in place. 3. Any end-stage organ disease or condition, which in the investigator’s opinion, makes the patient an unsuitable candidate for treatment. 4. History of a moderate/severe lung disorder requiring home-based oxygen therapy. 5. Patient requiring Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO), haemodialysis or hemofiltration at the time of treatment administration. 6. Current diagnosis of pulmonary embolism. 7. Active neoplasm, except carcinoma in situ or basalioma. 8. Known allergy to the products involved in the allogeneic MSC production process. 9. Current pregnancy or lactation (women with childbearing potential should have a negative pregnancy test result at the time of study enrolment). 10. Current participation in a clinical trial with an experimental treatment for COVID-19 (the use of any off-label medicine according to local treatment protocols is not an exclusion criteria). 11. Any circumstances that in the investigator’s opinion compromises the patient’s ability to participate in the clinical trial. Intervention and comparator - Experimental treatment arm: Allogeneic MSC (approximately 1 x 106 cells/kg). - Control arm: placebo solution (same composition as the experimental treatment, without the MSC). One single intravenous dose of the assigned treatment will be administered on Day 0 of the study. All trial participants will receive standard of care (SOC). In the context of the current worldwide pandemic, SOC can include medicines that are being used in clinical practice (e.g. lopinavir/ritonavir; hydroxy/chloroquine, tocilizumab, etc.), as well as those authorised for COVID (e.g., remdesivir). Main outcomes Primary endpoint: Change in the PaO2/FiO2 ratio from baseline to day 7 of treatment administration, or to the last available PaO2/FiO2 ratio if death occurs before day 7. Secondary endpoints: - All-cause mortality on days 7, 14, and 28 after treatment. - PaO2/FiO2 ratio at baseline and days 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28 after treatment. - Oxygen saturation (by standardized measurement) at baseline, daily until day 14, and on day 28 after treatment. - Time to PaO2/FiO2 ratio greater than 200 mmHg. - Subjects’ clinical status on the WHO 7-point ordinal scale at baseline, daily until day 14, and on day 28 after treatment. - Time to an improvement of one category from admission on the WHO 7-point ordinal scale. - Percentage of patients that worsen at least one category on the WHO 7-point ordinal scale. - Percentage of patients that improve at least one category (maintained 48h) on the WHO 7-point ordinal scale. - Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) scale at baseline and days 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28 after treatment. - Duration of hospitalization (days). - Duration of ICU stay (days). - Oxygen therapy-free days in the first 28 days after treatment. - Duration of supplemental oxygen. - Incidence of and duration of non-invasive and invasive mechanical ventilation in the first 28 days after treatment. - Mechanical ventilation-free days in the first 28 days after treatment. - Ventilation parameters. - Incidence of new onset pulmonary fibrosis at 3 and 12 months after treatment, based on CT scan and pulmonary function tests. - Survival at 3 and 12 months. - Cumulative incidence of Serious Adverse events (SAEs) and Grade 3 and 4 Adverse Events (AEs). - Cumulative incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) in the experimental treatment arm. - Cumulative incidence of AEs of special interest. - Levels of analytical markers (C-Reactive Protein, lymphocyte and neutrophil counts, lymphocyte subpopulations, LDH, ferritin, D-dimer, coagulation tests and cytokines...) at baseline and days 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28 after treatment. - Other soluble and cellular biomarkers that might be involved in the course of the disease and the response to MSC. Randomisation The assignment to treatment will be carried out randomly and blinded, with a 1:1 allocation. Randomization will be done through a centralized system embedded in the electronic Case Report Form (CRF). Blinding (masking) To ensure blinding, treatments will be prepared for administration at the Cell Production Unit and the administration of the treatment will be masked, not allowing the identification of the Investigational Medicinal Product (IMP). Numbers to be randomised (sample size) A total of 20 participants are planned to be randomized, 10 to each treatment group. Trial Status Protocol version: 1.2, dated October 14th, 2020 Start of recruitment: 01/10/2020 End of recruitment (estimated): December 2020. Trial registration EudraCT Number: 2020-002193-27 , registered on July 14th, 2020. NCT number: NCT04615429 , registered on November 4th, 2020. Full protocol The full protocol is attached as an additional file, accessible from the Trials website (Additional file 1). In the interest in expediting dissemination of this material, the familiar formatting has been eliminated; this Letter serves as a summary of the key elements of the full protocol.
Santanu Saha, Simone Di Cataldo, Maximilian Amsler
et al.
In this work we probe the possibility of high-temperature conventional superconductivity in the boron-carbon system, using ab-initio screening. A database of 320 metastable structures with fixed composition (50$\%$/50$\%$) is generated with the Minima-Hopping method, and characterized with electronic and vibrational descriptors. Full electron-phonon calculations on sixteen representative structures allow to identify general trends in $T_{\textrm{c}}$ across and within the four families in the energy landscape, and to construct an approximate $T_{\textrm{c}}$ predictor, based on transparently interpretable and easily computable electronic and vibrational descriptors. Based on these, we estimate that around 10$\%$ of all metallic structures should exhibit $T_{\textrm{c}}$'s above 30 $K$. This work is a first step towards ab-initio design of new high-$T_{\textrm{c}}$ superconductors.
Cristobal Gallego-Castillo, Miguel Heleno, Marta Victoria
European climate polices acknowledge the role that energy communities can play in the energy transition. Self-consumption installations shared among those living in the same building are a good example of such energy communities. In this work, we perform a regional analysis of optimal self-consumption installations under the new legal framework recently passed in Spain. Results show that the optimal sizing of the installation leads to economic savings for self-consumers in all the territory, for both options with and without remuneration for energy surplus. A sensitivity analysis on technology costs revealed that batteries still require noticeably cost reductions to be cost-effective in a behind the meter self-consumption environment. In addition, solar compensation mechanisms make batteries less attractive in a scenario of low PV costs, since feeding PV surplus into the grid, yet less efficient, becomes more cost-effective. An improvement for the current energy surplus remuneration policy was proposed and analysed. It consists in the inclusion of the economic value of the avoided power losses in the remuneration.
Kimberley Miner, Laura Meyerson, . Climate Change Institute
et al.
Mediterranean ecosystems such as those found in California, Central Chile, Southern Europe, and Southwest Australia host numerous, diverse, fire-adapted micro-ecosystems. These micro-ecosystems are as diverse as mountainous conifer to desert-like chaparral communities. Over the last few centuries, human intervention, invasive species, and climate warming have drastically affected the composition and health of Mediterranean ecosystems on almost every continent. Increased fuel load from fire suppression policies and the continued range expansion of non-native insects and plants, some driven by long-term drought, produced the deadliest wildfire season on record in 2018. As a consequence of these fires, a large number of structures are destroyed, releasing household chemicals into the environment as uncontrolled toxins. The mobilization of these materials can lead to health risks and disruption in both human and natural systems. This article identifies drivers that led to a structural weakening of the mosaic of fire-adapted ecosystems in California, and subsequently increased the risk of destructive and explosive wildfires throughout the state. Under a new climate regime, managing the impacts on systems moving out-of-phase with natural processes may protect lives and ensure the stability of ecosystem services.
Load flexibility management is a promising approach to face the problem of balancing generation and demand in electrical grids. This problem is becoming increasingly difficult due to the variability of renewable energies. Thermostatically controlled loads can be aggregated and managed by a virtual battery, and they provide a cost-effective and efficient alternative to physical storage systems to mitigate the inherent variability of renewable energy sources. But virtual batteries require of an accurate control system being capable of tracking frequency regulation signals with minimal error. A real-time control system allowing virtual batteries to accurately track frequency or power signals is developed. The performance of this controller is validated for a virtual battery composed of 1,000 thermostatically controlled loads. Using virtual batteries equipped with the developed controller, a study focused on residential thermostatically controlled loads in Spain is performed. The results of the study quantify the potential of this technology in a country with different climate areas and provides insight about the feasibility of virtual batteries as enablers of electrical systems with high levels of penetration of renewable energy sources.
Conversational question answering (ConvQA) is a simplified but concrete setting of conversational search. One of its major challenges is to leverage the conversation history to understand and answer the current question. In this work, we propose a novel solution for ConvQA that involves three aspects. First, we propose a positional history answer embedding method to encode conversation history with position information using BERT in a natural way. BERT is a powerful technique for text representation. Second, we design a history attention mechanism (HAM) to conduct a "soft selection" for conversation histories. This method attends to history turns with different weights based on how helpful they are on answering the current question. Third, in addition to handling conversation history, we take advantage of multi-task learning (MTL) to do answer prediction along with another essential conversation task (dialog act prediction) using a uniform model architecture. MTL is able to learn more expressive and generic representations to improve the performance of ConvQA. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our model with extensive experimental evaluations on QuAC, a large-scale ConvQA dataset. We show that position information plays an important role in conversation history modeling. We also visualize the history attention and provide new insights into conversation history understanding.
This study presents an extension of the Gaussian process regression model for multiple-input multiple-output forecasting. This approach allows modelling the cross-dependencies between a given set of input variables and generating a vectorial prediction. Making use of the existing correlations in international tourism demand to all seventeen regions of Spain, the performance of the proposed model is assessed in a multiple-step-ahead forecasting comparison. The results of the experiment in a multivariate setting show that the Gaussian process regression model significantly improves the forecasting accuracy of a multi-layer perceptron neural network used as a benchmark. The results reveal that incorporating the connections between different markets in the modelling process may prove very useful to refine predictions at a regional level.
The ideology of the independence of Chile (1810-1818) has been usually analyzed based on the influence that the illustrated liberalism exercised over it. Nevertheless, a new reading of the texts written in the context of the emancipation see also to reveal, the relevance of the classic Greco-Roman model for the configuration and legitimization of the first republican projects.
How and why classics became models to follow? Which were the model authors in the context of the independence? A review on the circulation of books and the writing and reading practices, which were predominant since the 18th century in Spanish America, will allow discovering the process through which the classic nourished part of the imaginary of the Chilean patriots.
This essay presents the transatlantic confluence of two hegemonic cultural traditions; the ideology of mestizaje and lusotropicalismo in the discourses of the Angolan and Cuban socialist regimes. The shared political utopia during the Angolan Civil War envisioned a South-South community, racially homogeneous. In the last part of the essay I review the works Dulces guerreros cubanos (1999) by Norberto Fuentes, Desconfiemos de los amaneceres apacibles (2011) by Emilio Comas Paret, Geração da Utopía (1992) by Pepetela, and Estação das Chuvas (1996) by José Eduardo Agualusa, in order to demonstrate socio-racial conflicts embedded in the leftist armed struggle. These narratives challenge the homogeneity of official discourses about identity that sustained the transatlantic mestiza territoriality. In doing so, they note a historical continuity of inequality and authoritarianism between colonial and postcolonial, between pre-national and revolutionary nation.
José M. Madiedo, Francisco Espartero, Alberto J. Castro-Tirado
et al.
On 10 June 2012, an Earth-grazer meteor which lasted over 17 s with an absolute magnitude of -4.0 $\pm$ 0.5 was observed over Spain. This work focuses on the analysis of this rare event which is, to our knowledge, the faintest Earth-grazing meteor reported in the scientific literature, but also the first one belonging to a meteor shower. Thus, the orbital parameters show that the parent meteoroid belonged to the Daytime $ζ$-Perseid meteoroid stream. According to our calculations, the meteor was produced by a meteoroid with an initial mass ranging between 115 and 1.5 kg. During its encounter with Earth, the particle travelled about 510 km in the atmosphere. Around 260 g were destroyed in the atmosphere during the luminous phase of the event as a consequence of the ablation process. The modified orbit of the remaining material, which left our planet with a fusion crust, is also calculated.