Manuel Ángel Rojo Guerra

Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe

We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000–3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost 400,000 polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of Western and Far Eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000–5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, ∼8,000–7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in Germany, Hungary and Spain, different from indigenous hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ∼24,000-year-old Siberian. By ∼6,000–5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ∼4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ∼75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ∼3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.

Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians

Ancient DNA makes it possible to observe natural selection directly by analysing samples from populations before, during and after adaptation events. Here we report a genome-wide scan for selection using ancient DNA, capitalizing on the largest ancient DNA data set yet assembled: 230 West Eurasians who lived between 6500 and 300 bc, including 163 with newly reported data. The new samples include, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide ancient DNA from Anatolian Neolithic farmers, whose genetic material we obtained by extracting from petrous bones, and who we show were members of the population that was the source of Europe’s first farmers. We also report a transect of the steppe region in Samara between 5600 and 300 bc, which allows us to identify admixture into the steppe from at least two external sources. We detect selection at loci associated with diet, pigmentation and immunity, and two independent episodes of selection on height.

Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe

The arrival of farming in Europe around 8,500 years ago necessitated adaptation to new environments, pathogens, diets, and social organizations. While indirect evidence of adaptation can be detected in patterns of genetic variation in present-day people, ancient DNA makes it possible to witness selection directly by analyzing samples from populations before, during and after adaptation events. Here we report the first genome-wide scan for selection using ancient DNA, capitalizing on the largest genome-wide dataset yet assembled: 230 West Eurasians dating to between 6500 and 1000 BCE, including 163 with newly reported data. The new samples include the first genome-wide data from the Anatolian Neolithic culture, who we show were members of the population that was the source of Europe’s first farmers, and whose genetic material we extracted by focusing on the DNA-rich petrous bone. We identify genome-wide significant signatures of selection at loci associated with diet, pigmentation and immunity, and two independent episodes of selection on height.

La Cueva de Els Trocs: un asentamiento del Neolítico Antiguo junto al Pirineo Axial

VV would like to acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 801809).Funding from the European Research Council under the 7th Framework Programme (ERC Strating Grant no. 203428 nµLIPIDS) is gratefully acknowledgedThis project has been funded by European Union within the Seventh Framework Programme of R&D.Trabajo presentado en Aquaculture Europe 19 (Our future, growing from water), celebrado en Berlin del 7 al 10 de octubre de 2019.Tesis llevada a cabo para conseguir el grado de Doctor por la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.--2017-07-21.--Sobresaliente Cum LaudeOur aim is to provide insights into some basic facts of US government debt management by introducing simple financial frictions in a Ramsey model of fiscal policy. We find that the share of short bonds in total U.S. debt is large, persistent, and highly correlated with total debt. A well known literature argues that optimal debt management should behave very differently: long term debt provides fiscal insurance, hence short bonds should not be issued and the position on short debt is volatile and negatively correlated with total debt. We show that this result hinges on the assumption that governments buy back the entire stock of previously issued long bonds each year, which is very far from observed debt management. We document how the U.S. Treasury rarely has repurchased bonds before 10 years after issuance. When we impose in the model that the government does not buy back old bonds the puzzle disappears and the optimal bond portfolio matches the facts mentioned above. The reason is that issuing only long term debt under no buyback would lead to a lumpiness in debt service payments, short bonds help offset this by smoothing out interest payments and tax rates. The same reasoning helps explain why governments issue coupon-paying bonds. Solving dynamic stochastic models of optimal policy with a portfolio choice is computationally challenging. A separate contribution of this paper is to propose computational tools that enable this broad class of models to be solved. In particular we propose two significant extensions to the PEA class of computational methods which overcome problems due to the size of the model. These methods should be useful to many applications with portfolio problems and large state spaces.Este documento contiene la edicion critica, estudio e indices de la traduccion latina del Coran preparada para el cardenal italiano Egidio de Viterbo (c. 1465 – 1532). El texto fue traducido por primera vez en 1518 aunque su copia completa y corregida data del ano 1621. El estudio preliminar, que constituye la primera parte de la introduccion, incluye una sinopsis de las traducciones conocidas del Coran al latin, una edicion del prologo a uno de los manuscritos, presentacion de las personas historicas involucradas intelectualmente en la elaboracion y estudio de esta traduccion y tambien un estudio de algunas glosas. La segunda parte del estudio de la introduccion esta dedicada a los manuscritos y a las normas de edicion, y profundiza en el problema de la transmision del texto. La edicion critica esta fijada a partir de los dos manuscritos conservados, Cambridge ms. Mm. v. 26 (C) y Milan ms. D 100 inf. (M). El material editado ha requerido la lectura de 936 folios en total, que han sido editados en 708 paginas. El aparato critico recoge los variantes entre C y M, correcciones y aclaraciones anadidas entre lineas en ambos manuscritos, correcciones y anotaciones anadidas por la segunda mano de C y algunas glosas de caracter filologico o cultural relacionadas con la traduccion. Los indices elaborados en base a la edicion latina recogen nombres propios y palabras redactadas tambien en idiomas que no sean latin. Estos indices estan divididos en cuatro listas: los nombres propios (Index nominum personarum, locorum et rerum), las palabras arabes (Index verborum arabicorum), las palabras griegas (Index verborum graecorum) y las palabras hebreas (Index verborum hebraeorum).The structural phase behavior of high-quality single crystals of methylammonium lead iodide (CH₃NH₃PbI₃ or MAPbI₃) was revisited by combining Raman scattering and photoluminescence (PL) measurements under high hydrostatic pressure up to ca. 10 GPa. The single crystals were specially grown with the final thickness needed for pressure experiments, retaining their high quality due to a less invasive preparation procedure, which avoids sample thinning. Both PL and Raman spectra show simultaneous changes in their profiles that indicate the occurrence of three phase transitions subsequently at around 0.4, 2.7, and 3.3 GPa. At the second phase transition, the Raman spectra exhibit a pronounced reduction in the line width of the phonon modes of the inorganic cage, similar to the changes observed at the tetragonal-to-orthorhombic phase transition occurring at around 160 K but ambient pressure. This behavior is interpreted as evidence for the locking of the organic cations in the cage voids above 2.7 GPa due to the reduced volume and symmetry of the unit cell. At the third phase transition, reported here for the first time, the PL is greatly affected, whereas the Raman spectrum experiences only subtle changes related to a splitting of some of the peaks. This behavior may indicate a change mostly in the electronic structure with little effect on the crystal structure. Strikingly, the sharp Raman features observed at high pressures do not support amorphization of MAPbI₃ with onset at 3 GPa, as claimed by most of the high-pressure (X-ray) literature. We interpret this apparent discrepancy in terms of the degree of disorder introduced at different length scales in the perovskite lattice by the pressure-induced freeze-out of the methylammonium cation motion.espanolEl presente articulo estudia el tratamiento que la historiografia espanola de epoca Moderna dio a Al-Andalus, y como la integro en una narracion de la historia nacional. En el, trato de ir mas alla de la narrativa, apologetica o critica, de la “Reconquista”, y muestro como Al-Andalus se asocia a una idea del Oriente biblico relacionada con la escritura de la historia sagrada, que acaba introduciendose en el pensamiento critico del s. XVII. EnglishThis paper studies the way in which Early Modern Spanish historiography dealt with Al- Andalus, and how it tried to integrate it into the framework of Spanish national history. I criticize the narratives linked to the “Reconquista” (both critical and apologetic), and argue how Al-Andalus was connected to a more general idea of the Biblical Orient, that was used to write the sacred history of Spain. Finally, I try to show how this idea became part of the 17th-century Spanish critical thought.Trabajo presentado en el XL Congreso de la Sociedad Espanola de Genetica, celebrado en Cordoba del 16 al 18 de septiembre de 2015.XXIII Europhysics Conference on Atomic and Molecular Physics of Ionized Gases, ESCAMPIG XXIII. -- Bratislava, Slovakia, July 12-16, 2016. -- https://www.escampig2016.org/The influence of the humanities on the study of a technological subject like robotics needs to rapidly grow, for the simple reason that robotics is becoming a part of humanity: assisting, interacting, and enabling people in an increasing number of ways in daily life. The robotics research community is well aware of the need for such a crossover with the humanities and many joint ventures are being undertaken, such as forums on “Robotics meets the Humanities” at main robotics conferences, the launching of research projects, and the publication of special issues in scientific journals. This cross-cutting has even led to a new discipline: Roboethics, a subfield of applied ethics studying both the positive and negative implications of robotics for individuals and society, with a view to inspire the moral design, development and use of so-called intelligent/autonomous robots, and help prevent their misuse against humankind. The discipline involves two main areas: legal regulation and ethical education. Regarding the former, institutions such as the European Parliament, the South Korean Robot Ethics Charter, the IEEE Standards Association, and the British Standards Institution are developing regulations for robot designers, programmers, and users. There are many options to integrate ethics education (or Humanities) in technological university degrees, ranging from including a professional ethics course in the syllabus, to allowing students to take certain credits or a minor in a Humanities Department, to even offering a combined degree, like the Computer Science and Philosophy degree at the University of Oxford. Prestigious associations such as IEEE and ACM include 18 knowledge areas in their Computer Science curricula, one of which is “Social Issues and Professional Practice”, so that “students develop an understanding of the relevant social, ethical, legal and professional issues”. To this end, some courses in this area recur to science fiction to exemplify conflictive situations, since narrative is a good way to engage students in safe discussion and reasoning about difficult and emotionally charged issues without making it personal. Some experiences along this line will be described.Los materiales aqui presentados incluyen: la presentacion de la actividad, el guion para el profesorado, un power-point para poner en la sesion, las 30 fichas de cada personaje, asi como un par de objetes representativos.M. E. F. Brollo acknowledges the Brazilian agency CNPq for the grant [232947/2014-7] within the Science without Borders program and the COST action program for the grant [TD1402 – 38989]. The work was supported by the Spanish Government under projects MAT2017-88148-R (AEI/FEDER, UE), MAT2016-76507-R, CTQ2016-78454-C2-2-R, by the Comunidad de Madrid (S2018/NMT-4321 NANOMAGCOST-CM), the European Research Council through ERC-AG grant 340177. IMDEA Nanociencia acknowledges support from the ‘Severo Ochoa’ Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (MINECO, Grant SEV-2016-0686). The characterization was performed using the ICMM/CSIC general services (X-ray, ICP). ACS analyses were performed at RISE Acreo in Gothenburg, Sweden and cryo-TEM images were taken by Dr. Francisco Javier Chichon at the Cryo-EM facility (CiB-CNB-CSIC) placed on the National Center for Biotechnology in Madrid, Spain.Oral presentation given at the XII Reunion Cientifica de la Sociedad Espanola de Astronomia, held in Bilbao (Spain), on July 18-22th, 2016.This dossier is the result of a project funded by European Research Council under the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ ERC Grant Agreement number 323316, project CORPI “Conversion, Overlapping Religiosities, Polemics, Interaction. Early Modern Iberia and Beyond,” IP: Mercedes Garcia-ArenaD. G. and Y. K. C would like to acknowledge sup-port from the project ND-PHOT jointly funded by CSIC and CNRS. D. G. and P.C. acknowledge financial support from Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (AEI,Spain) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional un-der Project SuMaEco, grant number: RTI2018-095441-B-C22 (AEI/FEDER,UE) and Agencia Estatal de Investigacion through Maria de Maeztu Program for Units o fExcellence in R&D (MDM-2017-0711). Y. K. C. also ac-knowledges funding from the European Research Council through the projects NextPhase & Versyt, from the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales(CNES) through the project SHYRO, and from the University of Maryland.Trabajo presentado en el 57th European High Pressure Research Group Meeting on High Pressure Science and Technology ( EHPRG 2019), celebrado en Praga (Republica Checa), del 1 al 6 de septiembre de 2019Este trabajo de tesis ha sido posible gracias a una beca predoctoral del Subprograma de Formacion del Personal Investigador (FPI) del Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad asociada al proyecto SAF2011-26273. La investigacion ha sido financiada por los siguientes proyectos de investigacion: “Caracterizacion de los mecanismos moleculares involucrados en la generacion de neuronas serotonergicas”. Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad. Plan Nacional I+D (SAF2011-26273). “Estudio de los mecanismos transcripcionales que regulan la diferenciacion de las neuronas monoaminergicas y su conservacion evolutiva”. Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad. Plan Nacional I+D (SAF2014-56877-R). “Dissecting the gene regulatory mechanisms that generate serotonergic neurons and their link to mental disorders”. European Research Council. Starting Grant.Funding from the European Research Council under the 7th Framework Programme (ERC Starting Grant, project no. 203428, “nμ-LIPIDS”) and the ETH for the fellowship to J.P.-L. is gratefully acknowledged.V.V. would like to acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 801809)In this technical report we present a framework for the empirical validation of a physical cloth model. First, we introduce the model to be validated and its parameters, next we explain how to obtain real world data of the motion of a textile and finally we show how to fit the model to the experimental data. Institut de Robòtica i Informàtica Industrial (IRI) Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient́ıficas (CSIC) Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) Llorens i Artigas 4-6, 08028, Barcelona, Spain Tel (fax): +34 93 401 5750 (5751) http://www.iri.upc.edu Corresponding author: Franco Coltraro tel: +34 93 401 5750 fcoltraro@iri.upc.edu http://www.iri.upc.edu/staff/fcoltraroLa linea de investigacion principal de este trabajo se desarrolla en el marco del «Los Caminos del Neolitico» (HAR2009‑09027), concedido por la Subdireccion General de Proyectos de Investigacion / Direccion General de investigacion y gestion del Plan Nacional de I+D+I / Secretaria de Estado de Investigacion, del Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion. Del mismo modo, la parte analitica se enmarca en el proyecto denominado «Origins and spread of agriculture in the western Mediterranean region» (ERC‑AdG 230561), financiado por el ERCFRAGMENT has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 773051). Carlos Perez Garcia- Pando also acknowledges support by the AXA Research Fund, and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RYC-2015-18690 and CGL2017-88911- R)Trabajo presentado en Aquaculture Europe 19 (Our future, growing from water), celebrado en Berlin del 7 al 10 de octubre de 2019.We thank the National Museum of Nairobi for permits to study the Leakey collection from SHK. Funding by the NSF (BCS-0852292) and the European Research Council-Starting Grants (283366) is gratefully acknowledgedEuropean Research Council under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) ERC grant agreement no 340863 / JAE-PRE program

Cave acoustics in prehistory: Exploring the association of Palaeolithic visual motifs and acoustic response

During the 1980 s, acoustic studies of Upper Palaeolithic imagery in French caves-using the technology then available-suggested a relationship between acoustic response and the location of visual motifs. This paper presents an investigation, using modern acoustic measurement techniques, into such relationships within the caves of La Garma, Las Chimeneas, La Pasiega, El Castillo, and Tito Bustillo in Northern Spain. It addresses methodological issues concerning acoustic measurement at enclosed archaeological sites and outlines a general framework for extraction of acoustic features that may be used to support archaeological hypotheses. The analysis explores possible associations between the position of visual motifs (which may be up to 40 000 yrs old) and localized acoustic responses. Results suggest that motifs, in general, and lines and dots, in particular, are statistically more likely to be found in places where reverberation is moderate and where the low frequency acoustic response has evidence of resonant behavior. The work presented suggests that an association of the location of Palaeolithic motifs with acoustic features is a statistically weak but tenable hypothesis, and that an appreciation of sound could have influenced behavior among Palaeolithic societies of this region.