This article deals with festivities linked to rites of passage, which serve to sanction changes in social status based on age and gender. Therefore, it looks at rituals related to the life cycle, such as baptism, first communion, marriage or death, symbolic actions intertwined with a thoroughly culture-defined biological cycle and occurring in unequivocally festive contexts.

Immersed in modernity the festival has become a reflexive celebration of identity, a gateway to transcend everyday life. It is a special time to regain consciousness in front of

Els dos modes bàsics d’elaboració de calendaris, el de dies assenyalats i el de cicles estacionals o mensuals, els mostren com una sèrie de codificacions que revelen una concepció qualitativa del temps, i ambdós són formes institucionalitzades.

© Antonio Ariño I seem to recall my first memories of the Muixeranga1 were set in the street Molí de la Vila, just where

The existence of adult neurogenesis in the brain of mammals, our species included, as well as the identification of the cells responsible for said neurogenesis, has

El creixent desenvolupament aconseguit per les tècniques de neuroimatge funcional ha representat un gran avenç en l'estudi de les bases neurals del funcionament cognitiu. En aquest sentit, aquestes potents tècniques estan ajudant a donar resposta a preguntes com ara on i quan ocorren certs processos al cervell. No obstant això, és un bon disseny experimental, que permeta interpretar els resultats que aporten aquestes tècniques a la llum de contrastats models teòrics, allò que ens dóna peu a respondre a la més important de les preguntes: com es produeix la conducta?

En les darreres dues dècades els avenços de la neurociència han estat espectaculars i cada vegada som més a prop d'entendre el llenguatge del nostre cervell. Això és així gràcies als avenços tècnics i metodològics, però sobretot a nous enfocaments en els dissenys experimentals. Els avenços en el coneixement sobre el funcionament bàsic del cervell estan guiant el desenvolupament d'eines terapèutiques cada vegada més sofisticades per curar o almenys alleujar els símptomes de malalties neurològiques i trastorns psiquiàtrics. No obstant això, aquests avenços no estan exempts de riscos i comporten dilemes ètics als quals la societat ha de donar resposta.

2012 is The Year of Neuroscience in Spain. This is a field that has seen great advances in the last two decades. With this feature, Mètode

Turing’s influence on biology has taken a long time to emerge, but it is now beginning to grow and become important. Since Turing’s most outstanding and

In the early 18th century, the great astronomer Johannes Kepler had already finished what is today considered the first science-fiction novel ever written. Somnium,published in 1634, after his death, tells

Turing's childhood and early years Considered the father of modern computing, Alan Mathison Turing was born in London on June 23, 1912. In spite of his struggles to learn to read

Here at Mètode, we could take a look back and consider the journey undertaken by our journal since its very first issue, which came out in 1992. In the first

  To trace the evolutionary origins of festive celebrations as specific forms of ritualistic interactions, we will pinpoint the repertoire of festive activities (playing, singing, dancing, music making

Like any social institution, festivals are universal: a society without a festive ritual of its own is unknown. But what is a festival? Beyond any normative definition, we can state

The history of human coexistence is the history of the freedom of the individuals and the individualities in which they are grouped. Freedom is an idea regarding the I-other pair,

For centuries, humans have considered the way in which we sense smell. We obtained the answer to this question mainly in the last twenty years. Naturally, the answer is still incomplete: recent discoveries keep opening new fascinating questions.

ESA/Hubble & NASA Travelling at hyperluminal speeds would open to humanity the possibility of exploring the whole galaxy, and even, perhaps, other galaxies. In the image, the UGC 12158, photographed by

© Photo: Javier Díez (www.jdiez.com). Montage of the constellations: Fernando Ballesteros. The night sky from the Observatory of the University of Valencia in Aras de los Olmos. In the photograph we

Carles Puche The universe is full of gas clouds, dust and organic matter. Radiotelescopes have detected the presence of water and a great variety of organic molecules, essential pieces for the

In a group of islets in the North of Madagascar, a hitherto unknown chameleon species has been found whose adults barely reach 3 cm in length. This minuscule chameleon has the same bone arrangement as any gigantic crocodile.

© Vicenç M. RossellóCala d'Or (Mallorca). The wave of tourism-driven urban development that hit the Balearic Islands from the mid-twentieth century on has greatly

A la literatura balear, la cala no ha centrat el protagonisme de la poesia, tot i la seua predominança en el paisatge de les Illes, però sí que hi té una presència selecta.