Self-medication behaviour is the use of natural materials or chemical substances to manipulate behaviour or alter the body’s response to parasites or pathogens. Self-medication can be preventive, performed before an individual becomes infected or diseased, and/or therapeutic, performed after an individual becomes infected or diseased. We summarized all available reports of self-medication in mammals and reconstructed its evolution. We found that reports of self-medication were restricted to eutherian mammals and evolved at least four times independently. Self-medication was most commonly reported (...) in primates. Detailed analyses of primates suggest that self-medication is a life-history trait associated with body size, absolute brain size and longevity, but we found no support for the hypothesis that self-medication evolved to reduce the costs of social living. Large, longer-lived species might thus benefit uniquely from self-medication. (shrink)

The ontological turn (OT) is a loose cluster of theoretical approaches within cultural anthropology that advocates a synthetic, overarching way forward for ethnographically oriented cultural anthropology. We argue that in order to contribute substantively to ethnobiology the OT needs to distance itself from a long-standing tradition of thinking within ethnography that assumes some kind of fundamental divide between the natural and the social sciences. This distancing seems especially unlikely in light of the meta-anthropological nature of the OT as primarily a (...) perspective on ethnographic methodology. Instead, we advocate for naturalistic theoretical alternatives for thinking about human sociality, where philosophical innovation develops in concert with ongoing empirical work across the biological, cognitive, and social sciences. We illustrate this perspective by drawing on two naturalistic accounts likely to prove more fruitful for ethnobiological practice, namely, trans-genera models of sociality and progenerative views of kinship. (shrink)

Modern humans are probably a product of social and anatomical preadaptations on the part of our Miocene australopithecine ancestors combined with the increasingly high amplitude, high frequency climate variation of the Pleistocene. The genus Homo first appeared in the early Pleistocene as ice age climates began to grip the earth. We hypothesize that this co-occurrence is causal. The human ability to adapt by cultural means is, in theory, an adaptation to highly variable environments because cultural evolution can better track rapidly (...) changing environments than can genes. High resolution ice and sediment cores published in the early 1990s showed the last ice age was characterized by high amplitude millennial and submillenial scale variation, exactly the sort of variation mathematical models suggest should favor a costly capacity for culture. More recent cores suggest that over the last several 100 thousand year glacial cycles the amount of millennial scale variation has increased rather dramatically in parallel with increases in hominin brain size and sophistication of the artifacts they made. (shrink)

Humans are social beings. However, we are not alone in the realm of social reality; we share this space with diverse entities, including more than just animals. The term "social" has recently been applied to describe the collective behaviors of microorganisms and plants, as well as interactions among parts and groups of organisms. Therefore, there is a need to develop a framework that enables the study of social phenomena in a clearer and less restrictive manner. In this thesis, I lay (...) the groundwork for such a framework by describing the basic building blocks of social systems and their implications in the study of social behavior. This project necessitates breaking down disciplinary boundaries between the biological, cognitive, and social sciences to provide a more comprehensive perspective on the social phenomenon. In Part I, I review recent proposals that describe social systems based on interactions. I argue that these models can be extended to other interactive systems beyond animals, questioning the limits of the standard view of social systems. Also, by challenging an argument that supports a gap between humans and nature, I advocate for a broader understanding of social reality that includes both human and nonhuman beings. In Part II, I present a new framework for studying social systems consisting of three fundamental building blocks: interactions, relationships, and social units. I argue that interactions are vital components of social systems, highlighting their dynamic and entwined nature. Relationships, arising from distinctive patterns of interactions sensitive to the identity of the individuals, play a crucial role in these systems and encompass both objective and subjective components. Lastly, I develop an account of social units as cognitively autonomous individuals, drawing on biogenic approaches to cognition. Thus, I propose that a social system emerges when cognitively autonomous individuals (social units) engage in repeated interactions and form relationships. In Part III, I apply this framework to two entities that are subjects of contemporary debate: groups and plants. I argue that both groups and plants are potential social units. Specifically, plants interact repeatedly and demonstrate the ability to differentiate between individuals, providing evidence of their capacity to form social relationships. This framework serves as a guide for studying the social behavior of these entities and offers valuable insights into their interactive systems. Overall, this expanded framework establishes connections between social phenomena across different taxa and levels of organization, facilitating comparative investigations. It introduces new perspectives on social behavior, encourages interdisciplinary collaboration, and broadens our understanding of multi-species interactions. (shrink)

The non-random occupation of habitats is termed habitat selection. Some species of whip spiders select trees with burrows at their base, while others use substrates such as rocks. Here, we investigated the habitat use by Charinus asturius Pinto-da-Rocha, Machado & Weygoldt, 2002, an endemic species of Ilhabela Island in Brazil. We found that C. asturius is more likely to be found under rocks that cover larger areas of substrate. Our results also suggest the existence of territorialism in C. asturius and (...) show that C. asturius adults may be found again on the same rock a week later. Additionally, our data show that C. asturius is present in a greater area of Ilhabela than previously documented. (shrink)

In the book The Insect Societies, Wilson proposed categories of sociality that were presented as a landmark unification of terminology in the study of social behavior. Since then, many new behavioral patterns have been described, but they could not be fitted into any of the available categories, undermining the consensus around that well-established classification. New general classifications tried to circumvent the limitations shown by Wilson’s categorization, but with little success. Among the proposals, some maintain the form of discrete categorization, while (...) others advance a quantitative model to characterize sociality. These proposals have failed to clarify the use of the categories of sociality, and none of them has become widely accepted or overcome the problems faced by the classification of social behaviors. Here we explore whether an analysis of types of concepts proposed by Carnap can help to move forward in this discussion. His distinction between qualitative concepts and quantitative concepts is used here as an epistemological basis for analyzing the development of the proposed conceptual changes and classifications of sociality. Recently, social behavior has come to be considered a complex phenomenon, and quantitative concepts could bring a lot of informative data to understanding its development and perhaps its evolution. We conclude that a new metric of sociality should be built, using characteristics that are nonarbitrary, evolutionarily meaningful, and amenable to comparing all social animals. Finally, we advocate for an integrative view of social complexity based on individuals’ interactions as a useful metric of sociality. This approach still needs further development. (shrink)

Recently, psychological phenomena have been expanded to new domains, crisscrossing boundaries of organizational levels, with the emergence of areas such as social personality and ecosystem learning. In this contribution, we analyze the ascription of an individual-based concept (personality) to the social level. Although justified boundary crossings can boost new approaches and applications, the indiscriminate misuse of concepts refrains the growth of scientific areas. The concept of social personality is based mainly on the detection of repeated group differences across a population, (...) in a direct transposition of personality concepts from the individual to the social level. We show that this direct transposition is problematic for avowing the nonsensical ascription of personality even to simple electronic devices. To go beyond a metaphoric use of social personality, we apply the organizational approach to a review of social insect communication networks. Our conceptual analysis shows that socially self-organized systems, such as isolated ant trails and bee’s recruitment groups, are too simple to have social personality. The situation is more nuanced when measuring the collective choice between nest sites or foraging patches: some species show positive and negative feedbacks between two or more self-organized social structures so that these co-dependent structures are inter-related by second-order, social information systems, complying with a formal requirement for having social personality: the social closure of constraints. Other requirements include the decoupling between individual and social dynamics, and the self-regulation of collective decision processes. Social personality results to be sometimes a metaphorical transposition of a psychological concept to a social phenomenon. The application of this organizational approach to cases of learning ecosystems, or evolutionary learning, could help to ground theoretically the ascription of psychological properties to levels of analysis beyond the individual, up to meta-populations or ecological communities. (shrink)

Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This paper reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subaltern forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a demarcationist focus obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, transdisciplinary (...) philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production. (shrink)

Este artigo focaliza a construção de novos espaços para a loucura no processo de fortalecimento de pessoas que transitaram do papel de usuárias de um serviço de saúde mental para o lugar de cuidadores. Realizamos um estudo de caso no Movimento de Saúde Mental Comunitário do Bom Jardim (Fortaleza/Cea..

BackgroundAdults with ADHD exhibit a neuropsychological profile that may present deficits in many cognitive domains, particularly attention and executive functions. However, some authors do not consider executive disfunction as an important part of the clinical profile of the syndrome; this could be related to the use of inappropriate neuropsychological tests, probably not adapted and not sufficiently ecological. Moreover, new data are required on specific correlation of attentive-executive symptoms with socio-demographic factors. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze the (...) neuropsychological performance of a group of adults with ADHD, also evaluating the influence of gender, age and education level.MethodsWe retrospectively collected health-related personal data of 40 adult ADHD patients, clinically diagnosed and evaluated via a battery of 4 neuropsychological tests and 1 self-administered questionnaire. Gender, age and years of education differences were assessed.ResultsAttention and EFs deficits have been highlighted mainly on the d2-R and 5-point neuropsychological tests, which therefore seem to be more sensitive in measuring the attention-executive dysfunction in an adult ADHD population, than TAP Go/No-go and ROCFT. ADHD patients also manifested subjective behavioral impulsivity disorders on BIS-11. There were no statistically significant gender differences in cognitive performance. On the contrary, younger patients performed worse on subscales TAP Go/No-go errors and 5-points number of drawings, while participants with a higher education level performed better on subscales d2-R speed of execution and d2-R errors. This supports a reduction in the number of errors and the execution time as a function of older age and a higher level of education. Finally, patients with higher education also self-reported greater impulsivity in planning.ConclusionOur preliminary findings suggest that adult ADHD is not a lifelong stable disorder, but it may change over time. Moreover, attention-executive deficits may be influenced and partially counterbalanced by experience and a higher level of education. This could underlie the development of specific psycho-behavioral and cognitive compensatory strategies. The use of self-administered questionnaires is therefore recommended to highlight attentional and executive difficulties that may not result in neuropsychological tests. (shrink)

The European framework surrounding clinical trials on medicinal products for human use is going to change as demonstrated by the large debate at European institutional level. One of the major challenges is to overcome the lack of harmonisation of clinical trial procedures among countries. This aspect is gaining more and more importance, considering the increasing number of multicentre and multinational studies. In this work, the actual European rules governing the Clinical Trial Application have been analysed throughout the different steps including (...) the registration of the trial in the European database; the preparation of documents to be submitted and their contents; the preparation of documents related to the information and consent process; the submission to competent bodies. Specific issues related to paediatric research and trials involving non EU/EEA countries have been addressed as well. Results reveal that the European legislation offers a well defined set of European rules covering different aspects of a Clinical Trial Application. However, these are not suitable to meet the challenges from multicentre and multinational clinical studies. A stronger set of rules, such as is available in a composite European Regulation has been adopted and is expected to harmonise practices and enable sponsors to carry out well conducted trials. But will the new regulation overcome the existing criticisms of Directive 2001/20/EC? (shrink)

BackgroundInformation and communication technology solutions have the potential to support active and healthy aging and improve monitoring and treatment outcomes. To make such solutions acceptable, all stakeholders must be involved in the requirements elicitation process. Due to the COVID-19 situation, alternative approaches to commonly used face-to-face methods must often be used. One aim of the current article is to share a unique experience from the Pharaon project where due to the COVID-19 outbreak alternative elicitation methods were used. In addition, an (...) overview of common functional, quality, and emotional goals identified by six pilot sites is presented to complement the knowledge about the needs of older adults.MethodsOriginally planned face-to-face co-creation seminars were impossible to carry out, and all pilot sites chose alternative requirements elicitation methods that were most suitable in their situation. The elicited requirements were presented in the form of goal models. In one summary goal model, we provide an overview of common functional, quality, and emotional goals.ResultsDifferent elicitation methods were combined based on the digital literacy of the target group and their access to digital tools. Methods applied without digital technologies were phone interviews, reviews of literature and previous projects, while by means of digital technologies online interviews, online questionnaires, and virtual co-creation seminars were conducted. The combination of the methods allowed to involve all planned stakeholders. Virtual and semi-virtual co-creation seminars created collaborative environment comparable to face-to-face situations, while online participation helped to save the time of the participants. The most prevalent functional goals elicited were “Monitor health,” “Receive advice,” “Receive information.” “Easy to use/comfortable,” “personalized/tailored,” “automatic/smart” were identified as most prevalent quality goals. Most frequently occurring emotional goals were “involved,” “empowered,” and “informed.”ConclusionThere are alternative methods to face-to-face co-creation seminars, which effectively involve older adults and other stakeholders in the requirements elicitation process. Despite the used elicitation method, the requirements can be easily transformed into goal models to present the results in a uniform way. The common requirements across different pilots provided a strong foundation for representing detailed requirements and input for further software development processes. (shrink)

Object relative clauses are harder to process than subject relative clauses. Under Grillo’s Generalized Minimality framework, complexity effects of object relatives are construed as intervention effects, which result from an interaction between locality constraints on movement and the sentence processing system. Specifically, intervention of the subject DP in the movement dependency is expected to generate a minimality violation whenever processing limitations render the moved object underspecified, resulting in compromised comprehension. In the present study, assuming Generalized Minimality, we compared the processing (...) of object relatives with the processing of subject control in ditransitives, which, like object relatives, instantiates a syntactic dependency across an intervening DP. This comparison is justified by the current debate on whether Control should be analyzed as movement: if control involves movement of the controller DP, as proposed by Hornstein, a parallel between the processing of object relatives and subject control in ditransitives may be anticipated on the basis of intervention. In addition, we explored whether general cognitive factors contribute to complexity effects ascribed to movement across a DP. Sixty-nine adult speakers of European Portuguese read sentences and answered comprehension probes in a self-paced reading task with moving-window display, comprising four experimental conditions: Subject Relatives; Object Relatives; Subject Control; Object Control. Furthermore, participants performed four supplementary tasks, serving as measures of resistance to interference, lexical knowledge, working memory capacity and lexical access ability. The results from the reading task showed that whereas object relatives were harder to process than subject relatives, subject control was not harder to process than object control, arguing against recent movement accounts of control. Furthermore, we found that whereas object relative complexity effects assessed by response times to comprehension probes interacted with Reading Span, object relative complexity effects assessed by comprehension accuracy and reading times did not interact with any of the supplementary tasks. We discuss these results in light of Generalized Minimality and the hypothesis of modularity in syntactic processing. (shrink)

Before the advent of fibrinolytic therapy as a gold standard method of care for cases of acute ischemic stroke in Romania, issues regarding legal medicine aspects involved in this area of medical expertise were already presented and, in the majority of cases, the doctors seem to be unprepared for these situations. The present research illustrates some of the cases in which these aspects were involved, that adressed a clinical center having 6 years of professional experience in the application of fibrinolytic (...) treatment for stroke. The following cases report either situations in which the afore mentioned therapy was not rightfully administrated or legal aspects regarding the obtainment of informed consent. Obtaining informed consent is a mandatory procedure, which takes time, to the detriment of application of fibrinolytic treatment. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the controversy of Alexander Alexandrovich Bogdanov, the so-called “another Bolshevik”, with Lenin and his associates on the question of the revolution and the ways of building a socialist society and state. It is shown that Bogdanov expressed a critical attitude towards the revolution and its socialist nature, the ability of the proletariat to play a decisive role in it, and wrote about Russia’s unpreparedness for an anti-capitalist coup, thereby expressing a distinctly marked anti-Leninist position. Based (...) on the analysis of a large corpus of Bogdanov’s works, the authors focused their attention on the following aspects of his work relating to the theme of revolution: the contradictions between Bogdanov and Lenin in its interpretation even before October 1917; Bogdanov’s views on the revolution and real socialism after its completion; his interpretation and evaluation of “war communism”; the program for building socialism in the USSR and the search for ways to form fundamentally new social structures developed in the context of the science of tectology, created by him; Bogdanov’s project “Proletkult” and his utopian novels, in which he foresaw how “socialism in one country” would be built and how the transition from the old exploitative to new forms of human coexistence would be carried out, as well as the danger of the degeneration of democracy into a dictatorship. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in some populations being confined to their homes as part of infection control measures. This situation can be hard to cope with due to separation from loved ones, prohibition of regular activities, fear of infection, loss of freedom, and so on. These negative impacts cause considerable psychological stress, and all the more so when the situation continues for an extended period, as was the case in Spain. The present study was aimed at investigating the effects (...) of COVID-19 quarantine on the emotional functioning of confined Spanish individuals after 8 weeks of lockdown by means of a cross-sectional study. The possible associations between changes in emotional functioning and demographic variables, health habits, social support, and resilience were also analyzed.MethodsA total of 906 Spanish adults completed an online survey to gather information about their prevailing mood and affects, using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, and other variables related to their habits and protective factors.FindingsAs expected, the data indicated an increase in negative affects and a decrease in positive affects after 8 weeks under lockdown, as well as a general decline in overall mood. The largest increases in negative affects were observed in young adults and women. We did not find any differences between people who were or were not diagnosed with COVID-19. Adhering to a routine, maintaining the same weight, and moderate physical exercise were associated with fewer negative affects, which indicates they are important protective factors, as are perceived social support and resilience.ConclusionIn order to mitigate the psychological impact of confinement, it is important to develop psychoeducational measures that encourage subjects to adhere to health habits and promote social support and resilience as protective factors. A special preventive focus should be placed on the most vulnerable population groups, namely women and young adults. For a public health lockdown to succeed, its negative consequences must be minimized insofar as possible through adequate knowledge of the risk factors and protective factors, and by means of prevention-oriented organization. (shrink)

We distinguish two pathways people may follow when they join violent groups: compliance and internalization. Compliance occurs when individuals are coerced to join by powerful influence agents. Internalization occurs when individuals join due to a perceived convergence between the self and the group. We searched for evidence of each of these pathways in field investigations of former members of two renowned terrorist organizations: the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Islamist radical groups. Results indicated that ex-fighters joined LTTE for reasons (...) associated with both compliance and internalization but that ex-fighters joined Islamist radical groups primarily for reasons associated with internalization. When compliance occurred, it often took the form of coercion within LTTE but involved charismatic persuasion agents within Islamist groups. This evidence of systematic differences in the reasons why fighters enter violent groups suggests that strategies for preventing radicalization and fostering de-radicalization should be tailored to particular groups. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to know the role of learning tasks within the pedagogical content knowledge of novel sports coaches in initial stages of sports training of children/young people and their impact on their daily work. Participants are two coaches in their first or second working year. A mixed methodology was used by means of polar coordinates analysis. The results agree with previous studies that established that PCK of novel coaches presents deficits in task selection and modification, motivation (...) is the key factor determining tasks selection process, and they do not know how much time they should dedicate to each task. Even so, better development was found in the PCK of the coaches. (shrink)

La obtención de alimentos sanos y seguros requiere de técnicas de conservación inocuas para el consumidor y para el me­dio ambiente, entre las que se destaca la bioconservación. A su ca­tálogo de compuestos naturales o microorganismos, utilizados de forma habitual, la bioconservación ha incorporado recientemente los bacteriófagos y las proteínas fágicas con actividad lítica. La utilización de fagos y endolisinas en el biocontrol ofrece importantes ventajas frente a otros sistemas de conserva­ción tradicionales. Entre dichas ventajas destacan su inocuidad, especificidad y (...) versatilidad. Por otra parte, la acuciante necesidad de reducir el uso de antibióticos en la cadena alimentaria ha impul­sado la investigación basada en estos antimicrobianos con el fin de aplicarlos en producción primaria. Sin embargo, y a pesar de la gran eficacia ya demostrada en múltiples sectores, la falta de legislación de la Unión Europea sobre el uso de bacteriófa­gos junto con la necesidad de ser aceptados por los consumidores, son factores que están afectando negativamente a su implantación como bioconservantes. En este contexto, este artículo recoge los últimos resultados relacionados con este tipo de antimicrobianos en la industria agro-alimentaria, y resume los puntos clave para entender las posibilidades reales de su aplicación ante los nuevos requisitos asociados con una producción sostenible tanto desde una perspectiva económica como ambiental. (shrink)

This important new book provides a multidisciplinary overview on different discourses and practices, exploring cutting-edge questions from the burgeoning field of artistic research.

Este texto discute alguns filmes classificados como de ficção científica para marcar como o cinema nos tem ensinado a ver e a viver nessa civilização altamente tecnológica, à qual se tem atribuído o qualificativo cibernética. (APPIGNANESI; GARRAT, 1998). Tal civilização, também configurada como pós-moderna (Lyotard, 1989), como modernidade líquida (BAUMAN, 2001), ou como modernidade tardia (JAMESON, 2002), tem sido caracterizada por atuar na produção de subjetividades bastante diversas das usualmente invocadas para referir o homem no humanismo moderno. Muitos dos debates (...) conduzidos salientam a centralidade que as TICs alcançam nas sociedades contemporâneas, que também se caracterizam pela emergência de formas ciborgues, pós-humanas ou pós-orgânicas, que representam corpos descritos muito mais como processos ou arranjos da informação do que como corposmáquina, como as perspectivas modernistas enfatizavam. Argumentamos que se rompem nessas novas representações importantes binarismos modernos, tais como, homem/máquina, biológico/tecnológico e natureza/cultura. (shrink)

Lucia Schwarz urges a reconsideration of the implications of species egalitarianism, which is an essential element of the position in environmental ethics that Paul Taylor calls “respect for nature.” Species egalitarianism’s claim that every living thing has equal inherent worth appears to lead to counterintuitive conclusions, such as that killing a human being is no worse than killing a dandelion. Species egalitarians have generally responded by explaining that species egalitarianism is compatible with recognizing moral differences between killing different types (...) of living things, and that some killing is morally permissible. Schwarz raises doubts about whether this deflationary defensive strategy is philosophically justified, and suggests that taking seriously the supposedly repugnant implications of species egalitarianism may have a salutary effect on the overall debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Adoro Te Devote of St. Thomas AquinasSr. Lucia Marie of the Visitation Langford O.P.The Adoro te devote is perhaps the most well-beloved Eucharistic hymn of our time, popularly attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Dominican friar known for his theological treatises as well as his Eucharistic hymnography. Unlike most of Aquinas's work, the poem reveals the intensely personal side of his faith. Rich in theological content (...) and inspiring deep Eucharistic devotion, this poem amply repays a closer investigation. We will look first at the questions of authorship, background, and structure before moving on to a discussion of the text itself.The "Disputed Question" of AuthorshipWhile the Adoro te has traditionally been attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Thomistic authorship of the text was contested in the twentieth century, with two main objections being raised. The first claims that the content of the poem contradicts Thomas's own teachings and cannot have flowed from the same pen. The second objection is historical, claiming that a lack of evidence makes Thomistic authorship improbable.The first objection, claiming that the content of the poem is irreconcilable with Thomistic authorship, takes objection to a line in the poem which seems to claim that sense perception is unreliable and inaccurate, at least with regard to the Eucharist. The text of the Adoro te uses the word fallitur (deceived) with reference to the senses: "Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur"—"Sight, touch, taste in you are deceived." Some scholars have claimed that this line contradicts the teaching of Aquinas that the senses are [End Page 365] infallible in regard to their proper sensibles.1 Robert Wielockx addresses this charge in his study of the Adoro te, arguing that "the text does not contradict the continuous teaching of Thomas according to which the senses are not wrong when they judge their proper object, which as far as the Eucharist is concerned, is only the sacramental species."2 The substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a mystery which is not knowable by the senses, and as Paul Murray, O.P., observes: "That's surely the point St. Thomas is making."3 However, the Thomistic insistence that all knowledge comes through our senses is not missing even here. While sight, touch, and taste fall short of comprehending the truth before them, the Adoro te itself proclaims that it is another sense—hearing—which reveals the mystery: "sed auditu solo tute creditur"—"but by hearing alone it is safely believed."4Thus there is no solid objection to Thomistic authorship based on the poem's content. But what about the historical evidence? Dom André Wilmart published a comprehensive study of the manuscript tradition in 1929. Noting that there were no extant copies of the text dating to Aquinas's lifetime and that the biography of Aquinas written by his own Dominican confrere and contemporary, William of Tocco, made no mention of the Adoro te, he considered it most probable that the poem was authored at a later date and ascribed to Aquinas.5However, Dom Wilmart did not know that he was not working with William of Tocco's final version of his work. The publication of a critical edition of William of Tocco's Ystoria Sancti Thome de Aquino in 1996 demonstrated that Tocco published his work in four successive redactions. The fourth and final version of his text (unknown to Dom Wilmart) was finished just before his death in 1323, and in this final version, Tocco includes the text of the Adoro te, attributing its authorship to St. Thomas.6 [End Page 366] Furthermore, Wielockx published a study of the Adoro te in 1998; his investigation of the manuscript tradition found that, of fifty-one sources, forty-four explicitly cite St. Thomas as their author. The remaining sources simply lacked any attribution. We may thus conclude with Wielockx: "External evidence, which must be given priority in sound criticism, wholly favors Thomas Aquinas's authorship of the poem."7BackgroundWith the attribution of the poem to St. Thomas Aquinas on secure footing, we now move to the background of the poem. Unlike Aquinas's Eucharistic hymns such as... (shrink)

A single case study of a patient, D.M., with a lesion in the region of the right occipito-temporal gyrus is presented. D.M. had well-preserved language and general cognitive abilities. Colour discrimination, contrast sensitivity, gross depth perception, spatial localization, and motion appreciation were within normal limits.On the evaluation of perceptual abilities, he failed to identify two-dimensional shapes from stereoscopic vision, motion, and texture although in all cases he was able to identify the rough area subtended by the shape. These findings are (...) considered in relation to the current anatomical-physiological functional models of vision and it is suggested that D.M. 's deficits provide evidence for the existence in man of a functional pathway involved in the computation of texture and fine aspects of shape, which is distinct from the pathways involved in motion and stereopsis processing on one hand and colour and coarse aspects of form on the other hand. (shrink)

Twenty-four aphasic and fifteen right brain-damaged subjects were compared on their ability to identify the objects whose use was depicted in a series of twenty videotaped pantomimes. Aphasics were inferior to right brain-damaged patients in inferring object use. Success was correlated with Performance IQ, but not with language measures. Analysis of movement features contributing to subjects' choices reveal speed of movement and object weight to be the most robust and hand shape and size to be the most fragile.

Oftentimes, reality seems to us a chaos that we try to control with our theories. This article starts from the antithetic standpoint, inspired by Antonio Rosmini’s works: reality is intelligible, and originates our thinking. From this perspective, any research that tries to reach the truth is determined by the real, not the contrary. Moreover, interdisciplinarity, far from being a solipsistic enterprise, aims at achieving truth and guaranteeing scientific advancement. Here, we analyze the distinctive character of Rosminian encyclopedism and his principles (...) for preventing human errors. We then clarify why it is impossible to achieve perfection, and why such an impossibility is not problematic for the interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

Business students from the three NAFTA countries were shown a possible Sexual Harassment scenario from Arthur Andersen's Business Ethics Program. They were asked to respond to a pre-questionnaire concerning the three characters' behaviors and possible actions and a post-questionnaire after writing a report from the points of view of the three characters in the scenario. The students were asked to consider whether the characters should report the possible harasser to their supervisor, and thus engage in whistle-blowing behavior, as well as (...) directly confront the harasser. Hypotheses are formulated for the three NAFTA countries based on Hofstede's cultural dimensions. There were significant differences, but in some cases not in the direction expected. Gender differences are also explored, but there were few significant differences. (shrink)

Business students from the three NAFTA countries were shown a possible Sexual Harassment scenario from Arthur Andersen’s Business Ethics Program. They were asked to respond to a pre-questionnaire concerning the three characters’ behaviors and possible actions and a post-questionnaire after writing a report from the points of view of the three characters in the scenario. The students were asked to consider whether the characters should report the possible harasser to their supervisor, and thus engage in whistle-blowing behavior, as well as (...) directly confront the harasser. Hypotheses are formulated for the three NAFTA countries based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. There were significant differences, but in some cases not in the direction expected. Gender differences are also explored, but there were few significant differences. (shrink)

This paper describes a practice innovation: the addition of formal weekly discussions of patients with prolonged PICU stay to reduce healthcare providers’ moral distress and decrease length of stay for patients with life-threatening illnesses. We evaluated the innovation using a pre/post intervention design measuring provider moral distress and comparing patient outcomes using retrospective historical controls. Physicians and nurses on staff in our pediatric intensive care unit in a quaternary care children's hospital participated in the evaluation. There were 60 patients in (...) the interventional group and 66 patients in the historical control group. We evaluated the impact of weekly meetings to establish goals of care for patients with longer than 10 days length of stay in the ICU for a year. Moral distress was measured intermittently and reported moral distress thermometer scores fluctuated. "Clinical situations" represented the most frequent contributing factor to moral distress. Post intervention, overall moral distress scores, measured on the moral distress scale revised, were lower for respondents in all categories, and on three specific items. Patient outcomes before and after PEACE intervention showed a statistically significant decrease in PRISM indexed LOS, a statistically significant increase in both code status changes DNR, and in-hospital death, with no change in patient 30 or 365 day mortality. The addition of a clinical ethicist and senior intensivist to weekly inter-professional team meetings facilitated difficult conversations regarding realistic goals of care. The study demonstrated that the PEACE intervention had a positive impact on some factors that contribute to moral distress and can shorten PICU length of stay for some patients. (shrink)

The general question to be considered in this paper points to the nature of the world described by chemistry: what is macro-chemical ontology like? In particular, we want to identify the ontological categories that underlie chemical discourse and chemical practice. This is not an easy task, because modern Western metaphysics was strongly modeled by theoretical physics. For this reason, we attempt to answer our question by contrasting macro-chemical ontology with the mainstream ontology of physics and of traditional metaphysics. In particular, (...) we introduce the distinction between stuff-ontology, proper of chemistry, and individual-ontology, proper of physics. These two ontologies differ from each other in the basic categories of their own structures. On this basis, we characterize individual-ontology in such a way that the features of stuff-ontology will arise by contrast with it. (shrink)

Although the literature on corporate social responsibility has discussed the scope and meaning of CSR extensively, confusion still exists regarding how to define the concept. One controversial issue deals with the changing legal status of CSR. Based on a review of CSR definitions and meta-studies on CSR definitions, we find that the majority of definitions leans toward voluntary CSR. However, some recent regulatory amendments toward mandatory CSR have called into question the established idea of CSR as merely a managerial tool (...) of self-regulation. In this paper, we juxtapose the evolution of CSR in India against the scholarly literature discussing voluntary-versus-mandatory CSR to understand the recent shift toward a new conceptualization of CSR as a form of co-regulation that includes elements of both voluntary and mandatory regulation. The Indian Companies Act 2013 is a remarkable example in that it replaced an older version from 1956, taking a bold step toward the integration of voluntary and mandatory aspects in the application of CSR. We present practical implications of the Indian case for businesses and discuss implications for CSR theory development; we particularly consider the evolution of the business and society relationship from a voluntary soft law approach to CSR to an increasingly hard law approach and transitory hybrid forms in-between like soft–hard law and hard–soft law. (shrink)

La investigación propuesta indagó las relaciones que existen entre el derecho a la memoria y el derecho a la ciudad. Para ello se analizaron desde una teoría crítica de los derechos humanos y teniendo como punto de contacto entre ambos derechos las inscripciones espaciales que materializan la memoria colectiva en la ciudad de Madrid. Es así que se buscó comprobar, desde una dimensión jurídica basada en un enfoque de derechos y con perspectiva espacial, si aquellos lugares que materializan y garantizan (...) la memoria pueden a su vez garantizar el acceso al derecho a la ciudad en virtud de que colaboran en la creación de una ciudad más democrática. La metodología empleada consistió en un análisis crítico de textos, relevamiento y estudio exhaustivo de las normas y estándares nacionales e internacionales, políticas públicas locales, observación y registro de los lugares y, por último, una entrevista en profundidad mediante la técnica de muestra de caso sumamente importante para el problema analizado. (shrink)