El Museo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología acoge en sus almacenes más de 10.000 objetos históricos relacionados con la ciencia y la tecnología, de los que solamente se encuentran expuestos en sus salas de exposiciones 230. Este artículo pretende dar a conocer los contenidos más significativos de estas colecciones y ofrecer una primera valoración de este importante patrimonio.

We explored the home learning environments of 173 Mexican preschool children (aged 3–6 years) in relation to their numeracy performance. Parents indicated the frequency of their formal home numeracy and literacy activities, and their academic expectations for children’s numeracy and literacy performance. Children completed measures of early numeracy skills. Mexican parent–child dyads from families with either high- or low-socioeconomic status (SES) participated. Low-SES parents (n= 99) reported higher numeracy expectations than high-SES parents (n= 74), but similar frequency of home numeracy (...) activities. In contrast, high-SES parents reported higher frequency of literacy activities. Path analyses showed that operational (i.e., advanced) numeracy activities were positively related to children’s numeracy skills in the high- but not in the low-SES group. These findings improve the understanding of the role of the home environment in different contexts and provide some insights into the sources of the variable patterns of relations between home learning activities and children’s numeracy outcomes. They also suggest that SES is a critical factor to consider in research on children’s home numeracy experiences. (shrink)

Background: The acquisition of experience is a major concern for nurses in intensive care units. Although the emotional component of the clinical practice of these nurses has been widely studied, greater examination is required to determine how this component influences their learning and practical experience. Objective: To discover the relationships between emotion, memory and learning and the impacts on nursing clinical practice. Research design: This is a qualitative phenomenological study. The data were collected from open, in-depth interviews. A total of (...) 22 intensive care unit nurses participated in this research between January 2012 and December 2014. Ethical considerations: The School of Nursing Ethics Committee approved the study, which complied with ethical principles and required informed consent. Findings: We found a clear relationship between emotion, memory and the acquisition of experience. This relationship grouped three dimensions: (1) satisfaction, to relieve the patient’s pain or discomfort, give confidence and a sense of security to the patient, enable the presence of family members into the intensive care unit and provide family members with a realistic view of the patient’s situation; (2) error experience, which nurses feel when a patient dies, when they fail to accompany a patient in his or her decision to abandon the struggle to live or when they fail to lend support to the patient’s family; and (3) the feel bad–feel good paradox, which occurs when a mistake in the patient’s care or handling of his or her family is repaired. Conclusion: Emotion is a capacity that impacts on nurses’ experience and influences improvements in clinical practice. Recalling stories of satisfaction helps to reinforce good practice, while recalling stories of errors helps to identify difficulties in the profession and recognise new forms of action. The articulation of emotional competencies may support the development of nursing ethics in the intensive care unit to protect and defend their patients and improve their relationships with families in order to maximise the potential for patient care. (shrink)

Con el presente estudio se pretende analizar el conjunto de fotografías incluidas en la obra Causa General. La dominación roja en España. Avance de la información instruida por el Ministerio Público, publicada por el Ministerio de Justica en diciembre del año 1943, para averiguar su posible influencia en el constructo del imaginario colectivo.De dicha obra se desprenden tres conceptos que serán las imágenes asociadas a aquel período: la anarquía, la persecución de la iglesia y la vinculación del gobierno republicano a (...) Rusia. Así como la idea transversal de la inevitabilidad del golpe de Estado. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone ofrecer una panorámica general de un tema que ha sido, es y seguirá siendo polémico: la responsabilidad penal de los menores. Para lograr dicho objetivo se dará cuenta de la regulación vigente al respecto, la que hasta llegar a la situación actual ha debido recorrer un largo camino de reformas que serán revisadas en algunos de sus aspectos más controvertidos. Asimismo se fundamentará el indudable carácter penal de la LO 5/2000, de 12 de enero, reguladora (...) de la responsabilidad penal de los menores, de las medidas que impone y, en consecuencia, de la responsabilidad que se exige a los menores sometidos a ella. Parte importante de este artículo estará dedicada, de un lado, a estos menores de entre 14 y 18 años destinatarios de la LO 5/2000, respecto de los que, entre otras cuestiones, se determinará si son o no imputables; y, de otro, a aquellos que tienen menos de 14 años, reflexionando, entre otros extremos, sobre la necesidad o no de rebajar dicha edad como límite mínimo para comenzar a exigir responsabilidad criminal. (shrink)

Background Healthcare professionals, especially professional nurses, experience various types of moral suffering due to inevitable ethical conflicts. Moral resilience is recently proposed as a resource to address moral suffering. However, there is no tool to measure moral resilience in Chinese professional nurses. Aim This study aimed to translate the Rushton Moral Resilience Scale (RMRS) into Chinese and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of RMRS (Chi-RMRS). Research design A methodological and descriptive research design. Participants and research context A (...) convenience sample of 411 Chinese professional nurses was recruited through an online survey platform between February and March 2023. Ethical considerations This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committees of the University and hospitals involved. Results The RMRS was translated and culturally adapted into a Chinese version. Neither floor nor ceiling effects were observed. The scale-level content validity index (CVI) was 0.922 with the item-level CVIs ranging from 0.833 to 1.000. The explanatory factor analysis (EFA) generated a three-factor structure for the Chi-RMRS, and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated the three-factor structure with factor loadings for each item ranging from 0.42 to 0.80. The scale-level Cronbach’s α coefficient was 0.811 with each dimension ranging from 0.717 to 0.821, and composite reliability (CR) coefficient for the overall scale was 0.920, with each dimension varying from 0.739 to 0.824. The standard error of measurement (SEM) and smallest detectable change (SDC) were 3.522 and 9.763, respectively. Discussion The Chi-RMRS is able to measure moral resilience of Chinese professional nurses, and has good validity and reliability. It can be used in research and practice to determine the level of moral resilience, thus helping nursing managers to monitor the status of Chinese professional nurses, then develop interventions to maintain the well-being of professional nurses and to ensure quality of care. (shrink)

El objetivo de esta contribución es detallar el proceso para realizar un estudio sobre la población de un municipio que permita la elaboración de un diagnóstico sociológico. Para ello, se identificarán variables demográficas, económicas, sociales y de participación pública. El proceso permite alcanzar la información mínima y necesaria para el desarrollo de la primera fase de un proyecto enfocado hacia la planificación de políticas públicas: la fase de diagnóstico sociológico. El estudio de dichos elementos estructurales permite obtener resultados detallados de (...) la población y confeccionar las tesis fundamentales sobre las necesidades y problemáticas sociales que se presentan. (shrink)

Este trabajo describe la experiencia docente sobre el trabajo de campo experimental que se lleva a cabo desde la asignatura Nuevos Espacios Escenográficos del Máster de Producción Artística que se imparte en la Universitat Politècnica de València. La asignatura se fundamenta en las nuevas actitudes escénicas contemporáneas y el concepto de teatro expandido, siendo este el motivo de realizar la practica fuera del aula y colaborar entre instituciones para encontrar un espacio multidisciplinar donde desarrollar la propuesta que debe integrar la (...) vivencia e interacción con el público. (shrink)

Podíamos leer una noticia en EL PAÏS el pasado 20 de marzo que nos dio el punto de partida para reflexionar sobre los fenómenos actuales que giran alrededor de los consumos excesivos de alcohol. En realidad poco importa la ciudad de la que se trata porque hechos similares los estamos viviendo desde hace tiempo en diversos y múltiples municipios. La noticia versaba sobre� "la posibilidad de habilitar una zona controlada y vigilada para acoger e botellón juvenil� acotar una zona en (...) el recinto portuario, en los aledaños de la carpa de la� para acoger el fenómeno juvenil. La iniciativa contó con el respaldo unánime de los asistentes a la reunión (entre ellos dos representantes de la Autoridad Portuaria de� y la subdelegada del Gobierno). Nadie puso ninguna objeción a la propuesta y se aprobó por unanimidad, señalan fuentes del Ayuntamiento. (shrink)

Reactivity, or the phenomenon by which subjects tend to modify their behavior in virtue of their being studied upon, is often cited as one of the most important difficulties involved in social scientific experiments, and yet, there is to date a persistent conceptual muddle when dealing with the many dimensions of reactivity. This paper offers a conceptual framework for reactivity that draws on an interventionist approach to causality. The framework allows us to offer an unambiguous definition of reactivity and distinguishes (...) it from placebo effects. Further, it allows us to distinguish between benign and malignant forms of the phenomenon, depending on whether reactivity constitutes a danger to the validity of the causal inferences drawn from experimental data. (shrink)

Much of the methodological discussion around experiments in economics and other social sciences is framed in terms of the notions of internal and external validity. The standard view is that internal validity and external validity stand in a relationship best described as a _trade-off_. However, it is also commonly held that internal validity is a _prerequisite_ to external validity. This article addresses the problem of the compatibility of these two ideas and analyzes critically the standard arguments about the conditions under (...) which a trade-off between internal and external validity arises. Our argument stands against common associations of internal validity and external validity with the distinction between field and laboratory experiments and assesses critically the arguments that link the artificiality of experimental settings done in the laboratory with the purported trade-off between internal and external validity. We conclude that the idea of a trade-off or tension between internal and external validity seems, upon analysis, far less cogent than its intuitive attractiveness may lead us to think at first sight. (shrink)

A series of recent debates in experimental economics have associated demand effects with the artificiality of the experimental setting and have linked it to the problem of external validity. In this paper, we argue that these associations can be misleading, partly because of the ambiguity with which “artificiality” has been defined, but also because demand effects and external validity are related in complex ways. We argue that artificiality may be directly as well as inversely correlated with demand effects. We also (...) distinguish between the demand effects of experimentation and the reactions that they may trigger and that might endanger experimental validity. We conclude that economists should pay more attention to the way in which subjects construe the experimental task and learn to exploit subjects’ reactivity to expectations in their experiments. (shrink)

The goal of this research is to analyze the heterogeneity of family firms in the normative attention to their non-family stakeholders. With this aim, we suggest that the psychological process of top family managers in terms of individual affective commitment to their firms is a key variable to explain that heterogeneity. However, we also suggest a moderator effect of the family stakeholder salience in the relationship between the managers' affective commitment to the firm and the establishment of firm goals toward (...) non-family stakeholders. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis on data obtained from 207 family executives show a significant positive influence of managers' affective commitment on the establishment of goals related both to internal and external non-family stakeholders. In addition, we can observe a negative moderator effect of the family utilitarian power—as an indicator of the family stakeholder salience—on the relationship between the family managers' affective commitment and the goals related to non-family employees. (shrink)

Background: Decision-making and assessment in emergency situations are complex and result many times in ethical conflicts between different healthcare professionals. Aim: To analyse and describe situations that can generate ethical conflict among nurses working in emergency situations. Methods: Qualitative analysis. A total of 16 emergency nurses took part in interviews and a focus group. Ethical considerations: Organisational approval by the University Hospital, and informed consent and confidentiality were ensured before conducting the research. Result/conclusion: Two categories emerged: one in ‘ethical issues’ (...) and one in ‘emotions and feelings in caring’. The four ethical subcategories are presented: Autonomy, the first sub category: first, the nurse’s ability to practise care on an emergency ward and, second, to support the patient and/or relatives in terms of care and medical treatment. The conflicts arise when the nurse ends up in the middle between the patient and the physician responsible for the diagnosis and treatment from a nature scientific perspective. Reification of injured body: patient was often reified and fragmented, becoming just a leg or arm. Different factors contributed in this perspective. Pain: pain relief was often inadequate but more effectively treated in the emergency medical services than at the emergency department. The nurses highlighted the phenomenon of suffering because they felt that pain was only an object, forgetting the patients’ care need, like separating mind from body. Death: the nurses felt that the emergency services are only prepared to save lives and not to take care of the needs of patients with ‘end-of-life’ care. Another issue was the lack of ethical guidelines during a cardiac arrest. Resuscitation often continues without asking about the patient’s ‘previous wishes’ in terms of resuscitation or not. In these situations, the nurses describe an ethical conflict with the physician in performing their role as the patient’s advocate. The nurses express feelings of distress, suffering, anger and helplessness. (shrink)

The experimental revolution in the social sciences is one of the most significant methodological shifts undergone by the field since the ‘quantitative revolution’ in the nineteenth century. One of the often valued features of social science experimentation is precisely the fact that there are clear methodological rules regarding hypothesis testing that come from the methods of the natural sciences and from the methodology of RCTs in the biomedical sciences, and that allow for the adjudication among contentious causal claims. We examine (...) critically this claim and argue that some current understandings of the practices that surround social science experimentation overestimate the degree to which experiments can actually fulfil this role as “objective” adjudicators, by neglecting the importance of shared background knowledge or assumptions and of consensus regarding the validity of the constructs involved in an experiment. We take issue with the way the distinction between internal and external validity is often used to comment on the inferential import of experiments, used both among practitioners and among philosophers of science. We describe the ways in which the more common use of the internal/external distinction differs from Cook and Campbell’s original methodological project, in which construct validity and the four-fold validity typology were all important in assessing the inferential import of experiments. We argue that the current uses of the labels internal and external, as applied to experimental validity, help to encroach a simplistic view on the inferential import of experiments that, in turn, misrepresents their capacity to provide objective knowledge about the causal relations between variables. (shrink)

The Dictator Game, one of the best-known designs in experimental social science, has been extensively criticized, and declared by some to be defunct, on the grounds that its results are the product of a research artefact. Critics of the DG argue that the behaviour observed in the game is not the outcome of genuine pro-social preferences but must, instead, be interpreted as a response to the cues given by the experimental design, where these cues signal that the game is about (...) ‘sharing’. Despite this criticism, the DG continues to be extensively used, and some have defended its validity as an instrument capable of measuring the role of social pressure and social norms against economic motivations. This article examines the assumptions implicit in the claim that the DG results are artefactual and spells out the conditions under which the game can be used to test hypotheses about pro-social... (shrink)

Ethical debate exists on the effect of gender diversity of the top management teams on organizations. This study aims to contribute to this debate by analyzing the effects of gender diversity of TMTs on the relationship between knowledge combination capability and organizations’ innovative performance. We use a sample of 205 small- and medium-sized enterprises belonging to the sector of Spanish technology-based firms. Our results indicate that gender diversity positively moderates the relationship between knowledge combination capability and innovation performance. Implications for (...) theory and practice are discussed—among them, ways to contribute to more equal gender distribution and to the benefits of gender diversity in top management positions. (shrink)

The paper explores some normative challenges concerning the integration of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms into anticorruption in public institutions. The challenges emerge from the tensions between an approach treating ML algorithms as allies to an exclusively legalistic conception of anticorruption and an approach seeing them within an institutional ethics of office accountability. We explore two main challenges. One concerns the variable opacity of some ML algorithms, which may affect public officeholders’ capacity to account for institutional processes relying upon ML techniques. (...) The other pinpoints the risk that automating certain institutional processes may weaken officeholders’ direct engagement to take forward-looking responsibility for the working of their institution. We discuss why both challenges matter to see how ML algorithms may enhance (and not hinder) institutional answerability practices. (shrink)

Mental body-representations are highly plastic and can be modified after brief exposure to unexpected sensory feedback. While the role of vision, touch and proprioception in shaping body-representations has been highlighted by many studies, the auditory influences on mental body-representations remain poorly understood. Changes in body-representations by the manipulation of natural sounds produced when one's body impacts on surfaces have recently been evidenced. But will these changes also occur with non-naturalistic sounds, which provide no information about the impact produced by or (...) on the body? Drawing on the well-documented capacity of dynamic changes in pitch to elicit impressions of motion along the vertical plane and of changes in object size, we asked participants to pull on their right index fingertip with their left hand while they were presented with brief sounds of rising, falling or constant pitches, and in the absence of visual information of their hands. Results show an "auditory Pinocchio" effect, with participants feeling and estimating their finger to be longer after the rising pitch condition. These results provide the first evidence that sounds that are not indicative of veridical movement, such as non-naturalistic sounds, can induce a Pinocchio-like change in body-representation when arbitrarily paired with a bodily action. (shrink)

The idea that mechanisms are crucially important to differentiate between genuine and spurious causal relations is ubiquitous both in the philosophical and in the social scientific literature. Yet...

La vulneración de derechos en la atención sanitaria en Latinoamérica representa una problemática creciente que afecta la calidad de los servicios y la equidad en la salud. Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar las principales causas y consecuencias de la violación de derechos en los sistemas de salud de la región, enfocándose en los derechos humanos, el acceso a la atención médica, la discriminación y la corrupción. Se realizó una revisión bibliográfica que incluye legislación, artículos que abordan la temática y (...) sentencias sobre la vulneración del derecho a la atención sanitaria. Los resultados indican que las vulneraciones más frecuentes incluyen la falta de acceso a servicios adecuados, el trato desigual hacia poblaciones vulnerables y la carencia de recursos. Se concluye que es urgente implementar reformas estructurales en los sistemas de salud de Latinoamérica para garantizar la protección efectiva de los derechos humanos y mejorar la calidad de la atención sanitaria. (shrink)

The article identifies a latent debate in the recent literature on the role and worth of experiments in economics and other social sciences concerning the relationship between the external and the internal validity of experimental designs. Our work identifies two incompatible views regarding the relationship between internal and external validity of experiments. While in the methodological literature references to the idea that there is a trade-off between the internal and external validity of experiments abound, this view coexists with the position (...) stating that internal validity is rather a prerequisite of external validity. By identifying the contours of this implicit debate in the recent methodological literature around the use of experiments in the social sciences we call attention upon a series of insufficiently conceptualized issues regarding the central notions of internal and external validity and we question the standard view positing a trade-off between the two. This article stands against common associations of internal validity and external validity with the distinction between field and laboratory experiments and assesses critically the arguments that link the artificiality of experimental settings done in the laboratory with the purported trade-off between internal and external validity. (shrink)

For years, the phenomenon of experimental reactivity (defined as the alteration of the subject’s behaviour as a result of their awareness of being studied) seemed to be of little or no concern to experimental economists. With their clear-cut methodological stance shaped by Vernon Smith’s list of precepts, economists could avoid the worries associated with subjects’ reactivity through a rigorous control over the incentives proposed by the experimental setting as designed in the game. More recently, as experimental economists gradually moved in (...) their study towards topics in which economic incentives intermingled with normative considerations (such as in the study of altruism, punishment, or social norms), a corresponding interest in the problem of reactivity has ensued. This chapter offers an interpretation of this transit: it argues that the success of experimental economics and the unforeseen expansion of their object of enquiry into the realm of ethics and norm-related behaviour forces experimental economists to adopt some of the conceptual tools of psychologists. This ultimately undermined the economists’ initial methodological project, but this is the price to be paid to study the mechanisms of prosociality. This way, and regarding the pitfalls of reactivity, experimental economists are in the same predicament as fellow psychologists, philosophers, and other social scientists. (shrink)

In a range of peace process scenarios, the expert’s knowledge has become a fundamental tool for generating information systems as a mechanism for the storage and circulation of data. These information artifacts are supposed to faithfully document situations of human rights violations and contribute to the design of public policy and the construction of collective memory. Following Latour’s (1993) original coinage of the term coproduction, this paper analyzes how the Inter-Institutional System of Information for Justice and Peace (SIIJYP)1 was designed (...) to define victims of war and means of reparation from the State in Colombia. From an actor network theory perspective, we explain how victimizers become the main beneficiaries of the application of the SIIJYP. To comprehend this unintended social impact of the technological artifact and how it becomes an artifact that functions as an aseptic mediator of the historical-judicial truth, and the policy of transitional justice, we examine the relations between human and nonhuman actors, how information is collected, organized, hierarchized, and negotiated, as well as the consequences of the technical and legal construction of the notion of victims of war. (shrink)

Background A combination of theoretical and practical approaches is required to learn and acquire ethical competencies in caring. Occasionally, reflection on practical action differs from theoretical learning. In the context of reflective learning, issues such as ethical values can be discussed since they evoke conflict among nursing students. Aim To identify ethical conflicts encountered by nursing students during clinical placements and to determine their cooperation strategies. Research design Qualitative study with a content analysis according to Elo and Kinglas framework. Participants (...) and research context Students enrolled in a nursing program at a Spanish university aged between 22 and 35, mainly women. Methodology The study includes 134 ethical reflections from nursing students in the last year of the nursing program, written during their clinical practices in a variety of learning environments. The research team analyzed the reflections using an inductive content analysis method. Ethical considerations Ethical permission was obtained by the management center according to Law 3/2028, and all the participants accepted to participate through the informed consent form. Findings Three main categories emerged from the analysis of the ethical reflections: (1) evaluation of professional performance and patient care; (2) the student as the protagonist of the dilemma; (3) student coping. Student dilemmas and concerns are related to ignorance, student-patient communication, mistakes made and self-confidence. Some situations conflict with the autonomy of patients and their rights, and can contribute to stressful situations for patients. Stress factors include hospital routines, which the patient cannot modify, and asymmetric relationships with staff, which encourage passivity. Conclusion All ethical problems detected by the students begin with the professional-patient relationship, including issues related to bad news, errors or malpractice. Reflection on the ethical values of nursing, both in the classroom and in clinical practices, allows students to develop a greater ethical awareness of care, enhancing their decision-making skills in ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar lo que las investigaciones realizadas desde el ámbito psicológico señalan sobre cómo se sienten las mujeres que sufren violencia en la pareja e inician un procedimiento judicial, incluso antes de interponer la denuncia. Comenzaremos señalando las dif icultades que para las mujeres conlleva denunciar a quien es o ha sido su pareja afectiva, para seguir con un análisis de lo que esperan conseguir con la denuncia, cómo se sienten tratadas en su contacto con (...) el sistema judicial, cómo viven las primeras respuestas obtenidas, especialmente las que conciernen a las Órdenes de Protección, las emociones y expectativas a lo largo del procedimiento judicial, así como la importancia del acompañamiento y asesoramiento especializado. Para f inalizar, resaltaremos la importancia de la especialización de los y las profesionales que intervienen a lo largo del procedimiento judicial. Con dicho conocimiento sobre los aspectos emocionales y comportamentales de estas mujeres que han sufrido violencia y de los motivos que pueden explicarlos, pretendemos contribuir a una mayor comprensión de las mismas que evite la victimización secundaria y el que las mujeres acaben renunciando por una pérdida de conf ianza en el sistema judicial. (shrink)

Isidoro de Sevilla, padre y doctor de la Iglesia, es considerado uno de los más grandes enciclopedistas de la Antigüedad Tardía y la Alta Edad Media. Entre los muchos temas que trató se encuentra la música y, dentro de esta, diferentes conceptos armónicos, dedicando una especial atención al de symphonia, y, en menor medida, al de diaphonia. En este artículo se analizan por primera vez los conceptos de symphonia y diaphonia dentro del marco del pensamiento musical isidoriano, localizando y analizando (...) todas las reflexiones sobre dichos conceptos distribuidas por toda la obra del obispo hispalense. Para ello se partirá de la tradición clásica y patrística de la que proceden, teniendo en cuenta también el resto del pensamiento isidoriano, musical y no musical. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se analiza las posibilidades de la teoría de las Representaciones Sociales (RS) para, desde la perspectiva de los sujetos, analizar los elementos cognitivos implicados y socialmente construidos que sustentan las acciones de gestión micro y macro institucional, y de coordinación entre varias municipalidades de un mismo territorio, lo que la literatura de gestión denomina trabajo asociativo o asociativismo. Interesan específicamente las representaciones sociales de la asociatividad en el tema educativo, desde actores político-administrativos y profesionales implicados en (...) la mejora de la educación municipal. Se postula y fundamenta que el estudio de las Representaciones Sociales del Asociativismo Municipal en Educación es pertinente desde los elementos conceptuales de la perspectiva Procesual, dado que el objeto de Representación –el Asociativismo Municipal en Educación- y las técnicas para su análisis se ajustan a las estrategias de implementación del trabajo asociativo en los distintos niveles de organización municipal en el tema educativo. (shrink)

The use of conventional manufacturing methods is mainly limited by the size of the production run and the geometrical complexity of the component, and as a result we are occasionally forced to use processes and tools that increase the final cost of the element being produced. Additive manufacturing techniques provide major competitive advantages due to the fact that they adapt to the geometrical complexity and customised design of the part to be manufactured. The following may also be achieved according to (...) field of application: lighter weight products, multimaterial products, ergonomic products, efficient short production runs, fewer assembly errors and, therefore, lower associated costs, lower tool investment costs, a combination of different manufacturing processes, an optimised use of materials, and a more sustainable manufacturing process. Additive manufacturing is seen as being one of the major revolutionary industrial processes of the next few years. Additive manufacturing has several alternatives ranging from simple RepRap machines to complex fused metal deposition systems. This paper will expand upon the structural design of the machines, their history, classification, the alternatives existing today, materials used and their characteristics, the technology limitations, and also the prospects that are opening up for different technologies both in the professional field of innovation and the academic field of research. It is important to say that the choice of technology is directly dependent on the particular application being planned: first the application and then the technology. (shrink)