Highlights

Every year, a committee of experts sits down with a tough job to do: from among all ICREA publications, they must find a handful that stand out from all the others. This is indeed a challenge. The debates are sometimes heated and always difficult but, in the end, a shortlist of  the most outstanding publications of the year is produced. No prize is awarded, and the only additional acknowledge is the honour of being chosen and highlighted by ICREA. Each piece has something unique about it, whether it be a particularly elegant solution, the huge impact it has in the media or the sheer fascination it generates as a truly new idea. For whatever the reason, these are the best of the best and, as such, we are proud to share them here.

LIST OF SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHTS

Format: yyyy
  • What is language for? (2021)

    Wiltschko, Martina E. (UPF)

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    What is language for?

    The capacity for language sets humans apart from all other animals. As long as scholars have been thinking about language there has been a debate as to why it evolved: is its core function to configure human-specific thought or is it rather mainly a tool for communication? The debates surrounding this question typically evolve around aspects of language that are used to express thoughts like "The dog is sleeping in my bed." However, there are other aspects of language which are dedicated to regulate communication and the expression of thought in conversational interaction is typically enriched in this way. Interactional aspects of language are used to regulate the construction of common ground as well as the interaction itself (e.g., turn-taking). Without interactional language (eh, yeah, right) the below conversation would sound curt, wheras its addition adds an interactive component that conveys that the speakers care about understanding each other.

    I:  Gal Gadot was amazing as Wonderwoman, eh? R: Yeah, I know, right?

    The fact that the language dedicated to interaction is as much part of language as the language dedicated for the expression of thought suggests that the function of language cannot be reduced to one or the other. And in fact, the same logic that configures the language of thought also configures the language of interaction. This logic, which we may refer to as a grammar of sorts, is arguably part of our genetic endowment, as evidenced by the fact that it is human-specific (animals communicate but they have no means to regulate their communication) and its acquisition is automatic (children automatically aquire interactional language just as they do the language they need to express the thoughts they want to communicate). In this way, the distinction between thought and communication dissolves: language unites them.

  • Neandertal Art (2021)

    Zilhão, João (UB)

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    Neandertal Art

    Analysis of the splattered red pigment covering a large stalagmite dome in the Sala de las Estrellas of Ardales cave (Malaga, Spain) proved their anthropogenic nature, showed the mineral sources used must have been located outside the cave itself, and revealed variations in composition that correspond to the different ages as previously measured by U-Th dating, thereby corroborating the Neanderthals' symbolic used of this underground space over an extended time span beginning >65,000 years ago.

  • Anthropogenic Climate Change Affects Marine Plankton Populations In The Mediterranean Sea (2021)

    Ziveri, Patrizia (UAB)

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    Anthropogenic Climate Change Affects Marine Plankton Populations In The Mediterranean Sea

    Anthropogenic climate change is already affecting the marine plankton populations present in the western Mediterranean Sea. This is the result of a recent study that warns on the increasing surface ocean temperature lowering primary production, which has negative impacts on plankton communities and marine biodiversity.

    The studied records from the 10th century up to the present in the the Balearic and the Alboran seas focus on a model group of marine calcifying zooplankton known as planktic foraminifera. Planktic foraminifera are single celled organisms with a shell made of calcium carbonate commonly found in the sedimentary record. They live in the upper ocean, responding sensitively to climate and environmental changes. 

    The anthropogenic warming occurs more abruptly in the Mediterranean region compared to the global average, affecting marine plankton communities. Since 1880, atmospheric warming has been greater, accelerating the increase of sea surface temperature. Before anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions led to enhanced ocean warming (prior to 1880, according to records), alterations in planktic foraminifera were mainly driven by natural variability. In contrast, during the past ca. 150 years, unprecedented anthropogenic warming of the western Mediterranean Sea has reduced the planktic foraminiferal stock. At the same time, changes in species composition are indicating that the biological productivity of the western Mediterranean diminished.

    The results of the study can be seen as a sign of reduced marine productivity caused by anthropogenic warming. A less productive Mediterranean Sea would affect the food web complexity and fish stocks as well as biodiversity, causing a degradation of ecosystem services in the Mediterranean. Together with overfishing, a reduced marine productivity further threatens the rapidly changing Mediterranean Sea ecosystems and natural resources, highlighting once again the need of protecting this sea, adapting and first of all addressing the mitigation of climate change.

  • Connector Tensor Networks: A Renormalization-Type Approach to Quantum Certification (2020)

    Acín Dal Maschio, Antonio (ICFO)

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    Connector Tensor Networks: A Renormalization-Type Approach to Quantum Certification

    Certain quantum features with no classical counterpart, such as entanglement and the violation of Bell inequalities, arise as collective properties of systems with several components and cannot be detected by looking at the individual parts. Recognizing whether a given system exhibits such features is central in the study of quantum fundamentals and quantum information science but is generally a very complicated problem, often even intractable. In our work, we propose a novel method to detect quantum properties. While existing methods can address systems with just a few components, our approach is scalable and can be applied to systems with hundreds of parts.

    Our approach exploits an important insight from statistical physics: A large system can often be coarse grained to a smaller one in ways that leave important global properties intact while discarding small-scale details. We develop new classes of coarse-graining transformations, called connectors, which preserve the feature of interest. The net result of these transformations is to map the original problem of detecting quantum properties to a simpler one with a tractable number of components.

    While we showcase our method by constructing specific classes of connectors for detecting entanglement and Bell nonlocality, the formalism is remarkably general: It can be applied to identify collective global properties in any system’s network. We therefore expect that connector theory will find application in other areas of quantum theory.

  • Bioactivity descriptors for drug-like compounds (2020)

    Aloy Calaf, Patrick (IRB Barcelona)

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    Bioactivity descriptors for drug-like compounds

    Small molecules are an excellent tool to probe biological functions and, indeed, they are the main asset of pharmaceutical companies. However, they have received a limited attention by academic researchers during the ‘omics revolution’ since, contrary to gene and protein knowledge, compound data are scattered and diverse, making them inaccessible to most researchers and not suited to standard statistical analyses. Often, the only way to approach the characterization of a compound is to assume it will have the same activity as compounds with similar chemical properties (i.e. the so-called ‘similarity principle’).

    The broad release of bioactivity data has led to the realization that the similarity principle applies beyond chemical properties (i.e. molecules eliciting similar side-effects tend to share the mechanism of action, even when their chemical structures appear to be unrelated), suggesting that ‘biological’ similarities offer an alternative means to functionally characterize small molecules. Unfortunately, there is no blueprint to compare the biological profiles of small molecules, since bioactivity data come expressed in formats that are not adapted to common similarity metrics. The Chemical Checker (CC) provides processed, harmonized and integrated bioactivity data on ~1M small molecules. The CC divides data into five levels of increasing complexity, from the chemical properties of compounds to their clinical outcomes. In between, it includes targets, off-targets, networks and cell-level information, such as omics data, growth inhibition and morphology. Bioactivity data are expressed in a vector format, extending the concept of chemical similarity to similarity between bioactivity signatures. We show how CC signatures can aid drug discovery tasks, including target identification and library characterization. We also demonstrate the discovery of compounds that reverse and mimic biological signatures of disease models and genetic perturbations in cases that could not be addressed using chemical information alone. Overall, the CC signatures facilitate the conversion of bioactivity data to a format that is readily amenable for modern machine learning.

  • A novel theoretical framework for analyzing environmental justice in green cities  (2020)

    Anguelovski, Isabelle (UAB)

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    A novel theoretical framework for analyzing environmental justice in green cities 

    It is increasingly orthodox practice for cities to deploy urban greening interventions to address diverse socio-environmental challenges, from protecting urban ecosystems to enhancing built environments and climate resilience or improving health outcomes. In a recent article, myself and colleagues have proposed to expand the theoretical boundaries used to challenge this growing orthodoxy by laying out a nuanced framework that advances critical urban environmental justice scholarship. Beginning from the now well-supported assumption that urban greening is a deeply political project often framed by technocratic principles and promotional claims that this project will result in more just and prosperous cities, our work identifies existing contributions and limits when examining urban green inequities through the traditional lenses of distributional, recognition, and procedural justice. We also lay out a different framework for analyzing justice in urban greening. Here, our argument highlights the need to uncover how persistent domination and subordination prevents green interventions from becoming an emancipatory anti-subordination, intersectional, and relational project that consider the needs, identities, and everyday lives of marginalized groups. We also illustrate our framework’s usefulness by applying it to the analysis of urban residents’ (lack of) access to urban greening and by applying it to two different planning and policy domains: (a) greening for wellbeing, care, and health and (b) greening for recreation and play. This final analysis serves to provide critical questions and strategies that can hopefully guide new urban green planning and practice approaches.