Portable Large Interactive Display Concept





Source: edgargonzalez

World War II in photos (XIX): The Fall of Imperial Japan














































Fuente - Source: The Atlantic.

Primerasegundaterceracuartaquintasextaséptimaoctavanovenadécimaundécima, duodécimadecimeterceradecimocuartadecimoquinta, decimosextadecimoséptima y decimoctava entregas. (First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth parts).

En el reportaje original se incluyen los pies de foto. (Original report includes captions).

Neuroscience and Justice - Neurociencia y Justicia. Michael Gazzaniga

Traducido al español por Verónica Puertollano.


What I'm going to do is talk about neuroscience and how it may impact justice. I had to give a talk recently to judges and lawyers, but it really is the same talk you would give anybody. It is a summary of four years of effort that I've put into this MacArthur Law and Neuroscience project.


How that came about is there was a meeting in New York of lawyers, philosophers, neuroscientists, and psychologists. They met four or five years ago to talk about whether one should study the topic of law and neuroscience. I left the room to go to the bathroom or something, I came back and they said, okay, you're directing it. So don't leave the room when these things are going on because you get saddled with surprises!

Since "basic neuroscience for judges and lawyers" was exactly the wrong talk for you at 3:00 o'clock this afternoon, let's say "perspectives on basic neuroscience" because the former one reminds you of your high school biology class which most of you probably didn't like.

I'm going to give you the fastest three-minute review of neuroscience. As I said I just gave to the judges of the Second Circuit Court of New York.  Many of you maybe have cases in front of the Second Circuit, and they have a retreat every year up at Lake Sagamore , New York. The idea is: You can't, obviously, for someone who's not in neuroscience, you can't communicate the wealth of neuroscience in a hundred lectures, let alone one, let alone a few minutes. But you can kind of get a feel for it.

I want to take you through that feel and then take that into the question of how is this field of neuroscience going to impact how we think about the law and, more importantly, how we think about justice.



Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence. Daniel Kahneman

Many decades ago I spent what seemed like a great deal of time under a scorching sun, watching groups of sweaty soldiers as they solved a problem. I was doing my national service in the Israeli Army at the time. I had completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, and after a year as an infantry officer, I was assigned to the army’s Psychology Branch, where one of my occasional duties was to help evaluate candidates for officer training. We used methods that were developed by the British Army in World War II.

One test, called the leaderless group challenge, was conducted on an obstacle field. Eight candidates, strangers to one another, with all insignia of rank removed and only numbered tags to identify them, were instructed to lift a long log from the ground and haul it to a wall about six feet high. There, they were told that the entire group had to get to the other side of the wall without the log touching either the ground or the wall, and without anyone touching the wall. If any of these things happened, they were to acknowledge it and start again.

A common solution was for several men to reach the other side by crawling along the log as the other men held it up at an angle, like a giant fishing rod. Then one man would climb onto another’s shoulder and tip the log to the far side. The last two men would then have to jump up at the log, now suspended from the other side by those who had made it over, shinny their way along its length and then leap down safely once they crossed the wall. Failure was common at this point, which required starting over.


Read full in The New York Times.

Así se descontamina Japón tras el accidente de Fukushima. Antonio Martínez Ron



Medio año después del accidente nuclear de Fukushima el programa de rehabilitación iniciado por las autoridades japonesas apunta resultados prometedores. El director técnico de Protección Radiológica del Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear (CSN), Juan Carlos Lentijo, ha liderado la segunda misión internacional enviada a Japón por el Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica (OIEA) y ha constatado que el programa japonés para la recuperación de las zonas afectadas por el accidente de Fukushima es "serio", "solvente" y se están tomando las "medidas adecuadas".
Para entender cómo están evolucionando las consecuencias del accidente, y cómo pretende combatirlas el gobierno japonés, conviene echar una mirada al mapa elaborado por medios aéreos por estadounidenses y japoneses hace unos meses en el que se registran los distintos niveles de contaminación.

Leer completo en La Información.

Banca, pagos y finanzas. Francisco Capella

Un banco puede realizar para sus clientes diversas funciones que pueden ser agrupadas en dos grandes categorías: gestión de cobros y pagos, e intermediación financiera. Un banco puede además prestar servicios adicionales como cambio de divisas o cajas de seguridad.

A grandes rasgos la banca comercial realiza operaciones de cobros y pagos, y la banca de inversión (o industrial) se dedica a la intermediación financiera o gestión del ahorro y la inversión; pero estos límites y denominaciones no son rígidos, drásticos o absolutos y pueden depender del marco legal de cada país.

Un cliente abre una cuenta corriente en un banco y con ella puede realizar ingresos y retiradas, cobros y pagos: utilizar billetes (si el banco los emite) o depósitos a la vista como medios de pago; domiciliar nóminas y recibos; realizar transferencias o giros; emplear cheques; utilizar tarjetas de débito y crédito (si el pago se aplaza durante un tiempo largo se convierte en un asunto financiero).

En la intermediación financiera el banco por un lado obtiene fondos prestados por un plazo determinado (ahorro) y por otro los presta o invierte (compra de acciones o deuda ajena por el propio banco); además puede ofrecer garantías, avales, cartas de crédito, y distribuir o colocar productos financieros ajenos (acciones, bonos).

Los ingresos y potenciales beneficios del banco pueden proceder de comisiones por operación (o  por mantenimiento de cuentas) y de márgenes de intermediación financiera (el tipo de interés al que el banco presta es mayor del que paga por recibir fondos prestados).



Leer completo en el Instituto Juan de Mariana.

Elizabeth Austin (1962)

Cry Baby
Yankee Rose
Peace Of Heaven
Fallen Grace
Miss January
For The Boys


Source: American Gallery.


More: Elizabeth Austin web.

Is self-knowledge overrated? Jonah Lehrer

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and the author of the new book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” changed the way people think about thinking by asking them questions. They weren’t trick questions, either. Instead, Kahneman relied almost exclusively on straightforward surveys, in which he described various scenarios. Here’s a sample:

The U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If program B is adopted, there is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved. Which of the two programs would you favor?

When Kahneman put this question to a few hundred physicians, seventy-two per cent chose option A, the safe-and-sure strategy. Most doctors would rather save a certain number of people for sure than risk the possibility that everyone might die.

Now consider this scenario:

The U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. If program C is adopted, 400 people will die. If program D is adopted, there is a one-third probability that nobody will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die. Which of the two programs would you favor?

The two different hypotheticals, of course, examine identical dilemmas: saving one-third of the population is the same as losing two-thirds. And yet, doctors reacted very differently depending on how the question was framed. When the possible outcomes were stated in terms of deaths (and not survivors), physicians were suddenly eager to take chances: seventy-eight per cent chose option D.


Read full in The New Yorker.