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Language Mètode Science Studies Journal : Annual Review. 2021. Issue 11
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- Saving the pharmacy of the sea : how does global change affect species with bioactive potential in the Mediterranean?(2021) Carreño, Arnau; Izquierdo Font, A.; Lloret Romanach, JosepSeveral marine species in the Mediterranean produce molecules with bioactive potential that could be used to develop new drugs (antibiotics, antifungals, antivirals, and antitumourals). Different human activities such as pollution, marine recreation, and fishing, as well as climate change, threaten and even endanger some of these species. These vulnerable species with bioactive potential must be protected, especially in marine reserves, not only because they are valuable components of marine ecosystems, but also because they are a potential source of molecules with pharmacological properties that are currently being researched for the creation of new drugs.
- Invisible pollution : emerging marine pollutants(2021) González Gaya, BelénSince the start of the Anthropocene, the planet has been threatened by a number of risks associated with human activity. Among them, chemical pollution is posing conceptual and technical challenges that are particularly difficult to characterise on a global scale. We must ask ourselves, what is a pollutant? What properties are relevant in their definition? Studies on the abundance, persistence, mobility in the environment, and bioaccumulation potential of the chemical compounds we use every day are changing the paradigm of what we consider pollutants. Thus, compounds that do not cause acute toxicity can still be dangerous for the ecosystem when they continually reach the environment, exist in very high concentrations, or disperse easily. Thus, raising awareness about the forgotten pollution that we unknowingly generate but which is affecting our oceans will be essential to protect the planet.
- Sea-level rise : which is the role of glaciers and polar ice sheets?(2021) Navarro, Francisco JoséSea-level has been rising at an accelerated rate during recent decades and is projected to continue increasing at an accelerated rate over the twenty-first century and beyond, mostly as a result of anthropogenic warming. A substantially raised sea level can have severe impacts on low-lying coastal areas, including coastal erosion and flooding of inhabited areas. Under continued climate warming, these impacts will be exacerbated by extreme meteorological events and extreme wave heights, posing severe risks to the human communities and coastal ecosystems. In this paper we review the recent advances on the contributions of glaciers and sheets to sea-level rise, in the light of the recently released IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.
- Toxic microalgae and global change : why have proliferations increased along the Mediterranean coast?(2021) Vila, Magda; Camp Sancho, Jordi; Berdalet, ElisaThe ocean and the continent converge in a very narrow line that is, nonetheless, truly relevant to the health, leisure, and economy of our society. The Mediterranean coastline has undergone major changes over the last fifty years, which is evident in the alteration of its microalgae species. The proliferation of dinoflagellates is now common in microscopic organism communities in this ecosystem as a result of the modifications caused by humans and climate change. The increased frequency with which toxic microalgae blooms are detected has been key to raising awareness of this change.
- How much warmer is the Mediterranean becoming? : thirty-five years of satellite observations(2021) López García, María JoséGlobal warming particularly affects the oceans and seas. In the Mediterranean Sea, in situ oceanographic and meteorological records, together with the most recent satellite observations, show an estimated warming of between 0.6 °C and 1 °C over the last three decades. In this article we present the results of an analysis of a 35-year series of monthly thermal images in the western basins of the Mediterranean. The data indicate an intensification in the summer season: with the summers becoming longer and more intense and the months of June and July recording the highest rates of warming, with increases of 0.6 °C/decade.
- Educational tools for better eating : origin and evolution of dietary guidelines in Catalonia(2021) Manera, Maria; Salvador Castell, GemmaDietary guidelines are educational tools based on scientific evidence and on the characteristics of the target population. They must make it easier for people to make better food choices and therefore improve their health, as well as take better care of their environment. The first guidelines used different graphic ideas, until the so-called food triangle or pyramid model, first popularised in the 1990s, became the representation of reference for decades. More recently, the «healthy plate» has come to complement or replace the pyramid in many contexts, although other organisations, such as the Public Health Agency of Catalonia, have chosen to change the approach and design different and innovative guidelines.
- Miracle diets : when eating guidelines cause health problems(2021) Soriano del Castillo, José Miguel; Zarzo Llobell, Mª InmaculadaGlobally, 1.9 billion adults are overweight, 650 million of which are obese, which in turn impacts both health and the economy. Treating obesity involves strategies such as physical activity and dietary planning, always under the supervision of healthcare professionals. Recent decades have brought many fad diets, although they originated at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, these can lead to health problems among their users. A practical way to detect them is that they promise rapid weight loss (more than 1 kg per week), are allegedly effortless, impose excessive energy restrictions, and exclude food or nutrients from the diet.
- Beyond global warming : stressed oceans, globe-wide in the Anthropocene(2021) Pelejero, Carles; Calvo, EvaThe footprint of human activities on the planet is so profound that many scientists are already suggesting that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene. From among these activities, those that are accompanied by large emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) affect our entire planet and, especially, the oceans. Besides becoming warmer, the oceans are also growing progressively more acidic and less oxygenated. In this article we discuss the extent of these global stresses on the oceans after contextualising the disproportionate anthropogenic increase in CO2 and examining how it is distributed. We conclude with a discussion of mitigation possibilities that use the oceans themselves, stressing the urgent need to tackle the problem, especially during this present decade.
- Diet, drugs, and the brain : are ultra-processed foods a gateway to addiction?(2021) Blanco Gandía, María del Carmen; González Portilla, Macarena; Rodríguez Arias, MartaFoods that are rich in fats and sugars are pleasurable because they stimulate our reward circuits, the same circuits that are activated by drugs. In a context in which unhealthy diets and drug abuse are common from adolescence, it is important to investigate their consequences. This article reviews the relationship between especially tasty food, our brain?s reward system, and drug use. Studies with animal models have proven that an intermittent high-fat diet during adolescence increases the consumption of cocaine and ethanol. Moreover, recent research has shown the fundamental role of the diet in the development and treatment of addictions.
- Evidence-based nutritional guidelines : what is meant by trustworthy recommendations(2021) Zaj?c, Joanna; G?odo, Paulina; Bala, Ma?gorzata M.The article aims to describe the characteristics of trustworthy recommendations as well as standards for trustworthy guidelines published by the Institute of Medicine and tools that can be used for quality assessment. The next section summarizes published assessments of guidelines quality using AGREE (Appraisal of Guidelines, Research and Evaluation) Instrument and the problems raised by the National Academy of Sciences regarding the development process of nutritional guidelines. Similar problems are also reflected in the assessment of quality of dietary guides, since less than 50?% of the documents were rated as high quality. The article is concluded with the description of the NutriRECS protocol, as an example of a strict, transparent and comprehensive approach to draw up nutritional guidance.
- Oceans : the impact of global change on the sea(2021) Pedrós-Alió, Carles; Gasol, Josep M.; Simó Martorell, RafelA phenomenon of exceptional importance such as global change and its multiple effects has been discussed in several Mètode monographs. In recent years, public concern about what we already perceive to be the greatest threat to humanity has not stopped growing; at the same time, the United Nations have proclaimed the period 2021-2030 as the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development, recognising the close relationship between the oceans, climate, and social welfare. The sea is a climate regulator and a reservoir of biodiversity, a source of food and other resources, a transport route, a cultural asset, and the driving force behind the tourism industry; it is also a natural hazard and, unfortunately, a dumping ground for waste and refuse.
- Diet-disease relationships : recent advances in nutritional epidemiology(2021) Zamora Ros, Raul; Gonzalez, Carlos AlbertoNutritional epidemiology currently studies the diet-disease relationships. In order to evaluate these associations, an accurate estimation of nutritional exposure is essential. Traditional dietary questionnaires are being complemented with the measurement of nutritional biomarkers. New methodologies, including the use of new dietary assessments, metabolomics for increasing the quantity and quality of biomarkers, and statistical approaches to combine both techniques, are required to move forward in this field. In this review, we have selected five of the more relevant accomplishments in this field as examples of the importance of dietary factors in the prevention of non-communicable diseases. This theoretical knowledge needs to be finally translated by public health experts into dietary recommendations to the general population.
- Feeding, cooking, sharing : a brief social history of food(2021) Aguirre, PatriciaThis work addresses the food system as a complex structure connected to the environment, like a living organism. It uses the contributions from multiple fields (including anthropology, nutritional, medicine, and economics) to establish connections between analytically disparate fields in order to highlight their transformations over time and space. It also studies social organisation over millions of years to understand the synergy between the environment, extraction technologies, economic and political structures, and the resulting cooking environments (each with their own social construction of tastes) as conditioning factors for sickness and death. In short, it delves into the anthropology of food by relying on three main pillars: critical thinking, a relational approach, and historicity.
- Good to eat : food and health at a time of information overload(2021) Casino Rubio, Gonzalo; Rabassa, MontserratFor most of the world's population, eating is no longer what it was just a few decades ago. The diversification and globalisation of the food supply, the industrialisation of food, and the abundance of information have simplified this everyday activity, but they have also made it more complex. Never before has it been so easy to eat well and to eat poorly. The proof is that obesity and overweight are no longer a problem exclusive to the richest, while nutritional deficiencies do not affect only the most impoverished. The new thing about our time is that both problems, over-nutrition and under-nutrition, coexist not only in countries and cities, but also within the same family and even throughout a person's lifetime. Growing concern for health has fuelled interest in the relationship between diet and disease prevention. But despite the remarkable scientific advances, there are still many unanswered questions, and many evidence-based messages do not reach the population and are lost in a sea of misinformation and half-truths. In this monograph, apart from presenting a brief social history of food, we will delve into the advances in nutritional epidemiology, we will separate facts and fiction regarding current food, we will review what reliable dietary recommendations are and how they are identified, we will explain the evolution of dietary guidelines with an example, we will tackle the problem of ultra-processed food from the point of view of addiction and we will analyse miracle diets and how to detect them.
- Disentangling nutrition facts from fiction : towards healthy and sustainable consumption in industrialized societies(2021) Gómez Donoso, Clara; Martínez González, Miguel Ángel; Bes-Rastrollo, MairaOver the last centuries, in the context of industrialization, globalization, and urbanization, profound dietary changes have occurred. Ubiquitous access to cheap, readily available and highly palatable unhealthy products, together with aggressive marketing that significantly influences social norms, have led to overconsumption of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods. This has not only been associated with a higher prevalence of obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases, but also with detrimental effects on the world?s natural resources. Broader and braver public health measures favoring the availability and affordability of healthy, minimally processed foods should be implemented in conjunction with educational strategies to re-encourage a healthy and sustainable food consumption.
- Towards the right standards : the intersection of open science, responsible research and innovation, and standards(2021) Garfinkel, Robert S.The introduction of standards in research and development leading to new products or innovative processes can be thought of as a particularly technical approach to framing scientific enterprises. At the other end of the spectrum, open science or responsible research and innovation may be initially thought of as concepts with no underlying technical approaches to support them. In reality as currently practiced, the development and use of standards engages significant non-technical aspects, needing to take into account research cultures or desired societal outcomes. Similarly, open science, and responsible research and innovation can operate using very practical and technical approaches. This essay focuses at the intersections of these concepts to try to contribute to larger discussions in both the research and governance communities as to how researchers should conduct their research, and what respective responsibilities of researchers, their institutes, and their supporters are.
- When biology became engineering : adopting standards for living systems(2021) Lorenzo Prieto, Víctor deFor decades, molecular biologists have been removing or inserting genes into all kinds of organisms with biotechnological intent or simply to generate fundamental knowledge. Synthetic biology (SynBio) goes one step further by incorporating conceptual frameworks from computing, electronics, and industrial design. This change makes it possible to conceive the creation of complex biological objects that were previously considered too difficult to assemble. To do this, the stages of any industrial production process must be adopted: design, construction of the components, assembly, and final manufacture. This objective requires standardisation of the physical and functional formats of the components involved, DNA assembly methods, activity measurements, and descriptive languages.
- Standardisation and social ordering : a change of perspective(2021) Schyfter, PabloThis article examines standardisation in synthetic biology as a form of social coordination and ordering. I discuss standardisation by exploring what makes standards possible, and offer an understanding based on infrastructures: technical and social systems that support the existence and operation of accepted standards. By exploring the role of social infrastructures, I contend that standards depend upon social ordering: ways of arranging people in particular positions, relations, and hierarchies. I suggest that synthetic biologists ought to develop an awareness of these social orders, take responsibility for their creation, and accept accountability for their consequences, both technical and social.
- Standards. : The building blocks of complexity(2021) Peretó, Juli; Porcar, ManelWithout standards, the world as we know it would not be possible. International and supra-cultural standards and norms have been a key factor in engineering, as well as in the development of industrial societies. Despite the obvious successes in electronic and mechanical design, other technological areas present difficulties for the application of standards. In the field of biotechnology and synthetic biology ??which aims at studying living things from an engineering perspective?? standards are desirable, but whether they can be widely adopted remains to be proved. This monograph reviews the sociological and scientific aspects of standardisation and delves into the more problematic facets of universal standardisation, especially in the biological field. Are standards possible in synthetic biology at all? What are the limitations to the universal use of modular and interchangeable parts in a cellular context? Could it be that the biological world resists standardisation, similarly to the field of software engineering, where these attempts have not progressed? And should some kind of standard be applicable in synthetic biology, what qualities might be required in an environment of open science and responsible research and innovation?
- The long and winding road : accidents and tinkering in software standardization(2021) Valverde, SergiSoftware is based on universal principles but not its development. Relating software to hardware is never automatic or easy. Attempts to optimize software production and drastically reduce their costs (like in hardware) have been very restricted. Instead, highly-skilled and experienced individuals are ultimately responsible for project success. The long and convoluted path towards useful and reliable software is often plagued by idiosyncratic accidents and emergent complexity. It was expected that software standardisation would remove these sources of unwanted diversity by aiming at controllable development processes, universal programming languages, and toolkits of reusable software components. However, limited adoption of development standards suggests that we still do not understand why software is so difficult to produce. Software standardisation has been limited by our poor understanding of humans? role at the origin of technological diversity.
