Open Access Books from the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes

Aging, health and disease

Fernando Jaramillo Juárez — 2025-06-17

As the decade, proposed by the United Nations for Healthy Aging (2012-2030), progresses, the knowledge that allows accepting new opportunities for a healthier aging and better quality of life progresses, and its interaction from the biological, psychological, social and spiritual plane is distinguished, which also leads us to consider that gerontology not only refers to the stage of old age and the older adult, but goes beyond in what we now recognize as the life cycle of people. Under this concept, then, we are referring to the aging process. Aging is the set of changes that occur throughout life (from conception to death) that is combined with development and where not all these changes have to be adverse. Therefore, this book, Aging, health and disease, seems, besides being important, very important for the dissemination of knowledge and its application.

The objective of this edition is to make known in particular the biological advances in the search for alternatives to prevent, delay or reverse the adverse effects associated with aging, especially oriented to be a useful tool for the population studying the health sciences, students, teachers or people interested in this area of knowledge, with a professional appeal or their own aging and health. The authors of each chapter take us by the hand towards the understanding of aging, old age and diseases of the elderly.

The perspective from which the book is approached is evolutionary, structured in four thematic axes: the first includes the general aspects of aging as a process and three trajectories of successful, normal and pathological life, through a concise description of physiological and pathophysiological changes; the second emphasizes the role of biology in explaining the most relevant theories of the aging process and highlights the proposals of oxidative stress and telomeres; the third explains how aging, through life with risk and protective factors, makes people more vulnerable to the effects of aging; the third explains how aging, through a lifetime of risk and protective factors, makes people more vulnerable to disease and, in turn, contributes to accelerated aging, and cognitive decline is shown as an example of this; and the fourth gives an account of advances in healthier aging, particularly a perspective on cellular antioxidants. Given the scientific advances and social progress since the middle of the last century and with greater emphasis in this last decade, human and population aging have awakened greater interest; thus, this book closes with the chapter on "Aging and health".

This book will be of great use to health science professionals and people interested in their own aging and health. It should be noted that, in addition to the strength of this book, the compilers and authors are researchers, teachers and clinicians recognized for their professional work. In the work of planning and developing this book, it is important to highlight the multidisciplinary work in the chapters and the inter-institutional contribution of universities and research centers recognized nationally and internationally. Aging is a life-long contribution of acquired knowledge, genetic inheritance, vital capacity, commitment to self-care and the interaction of our social environment. This book contributes to learning, growing and making decisions for healthy aging.

Writing and reading practices in Iberian America, 17th to 19th centuries

María Idalia García Aguilar — 2025-06-06

The writers of our past were authors of the books that circulated during the centuries in which Iberian America developed under the gaze of rules and regulations elaborated in Europe. Those books accompanied the daily life of all those men and women who moved from the Old World to settle in these territories, but also of those natives born in these latitudes of cultural mixtures that would define them in the long term and that today characterize the diversity of Latin America. It has been years since these two people who offer you these lines, dear reader, shared research interests and a solid friendship forged in the heat of our university lives. In this pair of authors who today give you this warning before entering this book, reader, there is a young academic in full development and one, not so young, who is working the last stretch towards the consolidation of more than two decades of work. The younger one is a historian and the older one started out as a librarian, but today she is an apprentice historian and master witch.

That first interdisciplinary contact allowed another daring step, which was the invitation to Ana Cecilia to formally become the second captain on board of an academic space founded at UNAM in 2002. At that time, we designed a research seminar dedicated to the study of antiquarian books, to which we invited librarians, researchers and professors who were working together until 2012. A decade later, the Internal Council of the Institute for Library and Information Research decided, without prior notice, to eliminate lines of research related to documentary heritage and book history. Such institutional decision also implied the definitive closure of our research seminar.

Two years later, thanks to the reading of a work program of the Interdisciplinary Seminar of Studies on Written Culture (SIECE) coordinated by Dr. Antonio Castillo Gómez at the University of Alcalá de Henares, we learned that there was a working group called “From the Scriptorium to the Obrador”. As you can see, kind reader, that conjunction could get us out of the proscription to be able to return to the public light, so we asked Dr. Castillo for authorization to baptize us this way, which he kindly accepted. With this name we presented ourselves to the public in 2014 and to the aforementioned councils, but we did not obtain the official authorization until 2017.

In this truculent history and not exempt of shipwrecks, there was the debt of an edition with the works of some guests. We do so now, fifteen years after the first edition of the seminar, compiling the chapters in which you will find numerous objects of study such as printed matter, libraries, readers, inquisitors, readings, annotations, authors and printers, by the hand of our guests and three members of our working group who have agreed to honor us with their reflections. Colleagues from all disciplinary frontiers and from geographies as close as Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

This seminar is a resilient and combative group because it not only shares an interest in knowledge, but also a deep commitment to public institutions, especially with the bibliographic legacy that concerns and occupies us. As a group, and individually, we have worked for years in archives and libraries, as privileged spaces and others not. We share the commitment with the social responsibility we have to safeguard from our place those patrimonial objects that we study. For us, these objects of study and the institutions that preserve them are more than accessories to intellectual vanities, they are a collective cultural heritage for which each of us is responsible in order to guarantee that future generations will enjoy the same cultural right of access to these resources.

Finally, we can only recognize that the bibliographic and documentary legacy that we inherited from our indigenous, colonial and nineteenth-century past is so great and incomprehensible, not because of its quantity, but because of its lack of registration and identification. For this reason, we do not consider that our task and our interests are an impediment to any other research group with similar interests. Let us remember that the historian Ernesto de la Torre Villar said that to face such a task we need all possible efforts and that none is unnecessary. Let us hope that one day this field of knowledge will become a space for exchange, rather than for battles and battles.

Arts, health and wellness

Irma Susana Carbajal Vaca — 2025-06-02

This book, entitled Arts, Health and Wellness: Interdisciplinary Research with Social Impact, has been made possible thanks to the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes and the sponsorship provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), an institution that promotes communication between professors and researchers who have received, at some point in their academic training, financial support for postgraduate studies or research stays at German universities with internationally recognized researchers. The author, as a former DAAD scholarship holder, responded to the call to organize the International Seminar "Arts, Health and Wellbeing" - "Kunst, Gesundheit und Wohlbefinden" - as part of the DAAD Alumni Seminars at the beginning of 2024. As stated on the DAAD homepage, this program recognizes research work carried out byalumni.

The main objective of the meeting was to learn about the work being done from this interdisciplinary perspective in our country in order to analyze possibilities of designing and implementing, in the short, medium and long term, interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research projects. The seminar was attended by researchers from different parts of Mexico -Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Mexico City, Puebla, Tamaulipas and Veracruz- and from abroad -Germany, Estonia and Costa Rica- who, from different disciplines -musicology, semiotics, education, philosophy, philosophy, aesthetics, geophysics, geophysics, geophysics, geophysics, geophysics, geophysics and geophysics- participated in the seminar, education, philosophy, aesthetics, geophysics, plastic arts, film studies, urban planning, electrical engineering, epidemiology, mathematics, psychology, cultural history, neuro-arts, cognition and linguistics - have studied artistic expressions in relation to wellbeing and health.

Of great relevance was the participation of researchers from the three academic bodies of the Center for Arts and Culture of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes (UAA-CA-117, Education and Knowledge of Music; UAA-CA-120, Artistic Production, Image and Sound; and UAA-CA-115, Linguistic and Literary Studies), as well as undergraduate and graduate students, so the activities carried out by the DAAD Alumni had a direct impact on the academic community of the UAA. The project, in addition to supporting the mobility of alumni living in Mexico and Latin America to participate in this meeting, included the publication of this book. The central interest of the book was to compile the work of colleagues who have managed to reflect in an interdisciplinary manner on the role that the arts play in the well-being and health of human beings. Participation in the seminar was not a selection criterion for this publication, so in addition to the contributions of the former fellows, other works by researchers who have explored the seminar's theme were included. Thus, this book is made up of thirteen texts.

Endless poetry

Onésimo Ramírez Jasso — 2025-05-27

Encountering a book is nothing other than establishing contact, through language, with reality. In the case of a book with literary content, it also entails the clear intermediation of the author, because he does not limit himself to literally narrate something of reality, but he narrates what he himself has created and, on the other hand, he also expresses what he feels towards that reality. Literature has traditionally been considered as the art of building with words, but the word bridging the gap between the reality to which it refers and the way in which the writer sees and feels it. And even more so when it comes to the poetic genre.

To read literature, to read poetry, is not simply to understand the language, but to delve into what the writer feels. Not for nothing have the classics argued that the main purpose of literature in general, and of poetry in particular, is to "provoke aesthetic emotion". Thus, its objective is not exhausted with the fact that something is described or narrated, but its intention extends to generating emotions in the reader. Moreover, it would not be enough to "talk about emotions", not even to "narrate the emotions experienced" by the writer, but it tends to cause the emotional experience in the reader precisely because of the way the language is handled.

The warp of this book is woven by the variety of emotions, feelings, affections and essential contexts in the life of the human being: the ties of blood, the experiences in the village or the city, the experience of world events, the vibration before nature, the experience of everyday life, transcendence..., in short, the different shades of human life. Therefore, a certain attitude of empathy on the part of the readers is to be expected. And, if in some cases, the reader reaches the point of experiencing the aesthetic emotion, then it can be assured that the work was able to effectively convey what it was intended to convey. It is clear that this purpose is not exhausted with the mere fact of understanding the meaning of what is written, not even with identifying the emotion or affection that is expressed, but it seeks to reach the point of experiencing the beauty in the way of saying what is said.

Comparative legal systems

José Manuel López Libreros — 2025-05-26

Is there only one legal system? Are there different legal ways of solving the same problems? What makes legal systems similar or different? How can a process of legal comparison be carried out? Questions such as these have been asked in recent times to identify the contingent nature of law, issues that have been the subject of legal philosophical analysis, without reaching a final determination to date.

Within this context, it becomes necessary to identify the basic characteristics of the different legal systems; the classification that exists within taxonomic proposals (families, traditions); the way in which the processes of exchange of the legal through harmonization or unification take place; the judicial dialogue, and the incidence that the processes of reception of norms and institutions that are being forged in the international sphere, in other legal systems, have in order to improve their own. Hence the importance of comparative analysis of law and of the different legal systems that exist today.

The subject of Comparative Legal Systems is included in the curriculum of the Law Degree Study Plan (2021) of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes and is taught in the tenth semester. Said document describes Comparative Legal Systems as that "subject of a theoretical and practical nature, which provides knowledge about the basic characteristics of contemporary legal families, with special emphasis on Western legal systems, enabling it in the application of different techniques of legal comparison, to propose innovative legal solutions to common problems".

Thus, these notes are developed through four thematic units and twenty-nine sequential topics. The first unit deals with basic concepts of legal comparison, nature, evolution and classification of contemporary legal systems into large legal families. The second unit studies legal comparison in a context of globalization, analyzing what globalization is and how the change of paradigms has impacted the legal world, as well as some methodological references to be taken into consideration in the comparative process. After analyzing the above, the third unit deals with the historical background, basic characteristics, system of sources and referents of Western legal formants, specifically, the Roman and common law families, and within the latter, the study focuses on English and American law. Finally, in the fourth unit, the process of European Community integration and the emergence of supranational law are presented as evidence of legal and political interaction in the European Union.

The aim of this work is to offer students a manual as basic reference material for the study of comparative legal systems, precisely to meet the general and specific objectives of the subject of study. Due to its essentially didactic nature, the objectives and thematic contents of the units are included, as well as a series of control questions for each topic and information references, as well as unit outlines. Likewise, a compilation of texts, in English or translated into English, that address key topics of the subject is included, so that students can refer to them for further information on comparative law, legal systems and methodology in the comparison. To the extent deemed appropriate, they refer to the citations of the texts in which the study of the topics in exposition can be extended.