La afirmación de que las reglas jurídicas son derrotables significa que, de acuerdo con nuestras prácticas jurídicas, puede estar justificado que los jueces dejen de lado las normas aplicables en la resolución de disputas y tengan en cuenta en su lugar otras consideraciones. En línea con este enfoque, este trabajo busca esclarecer los tipos de casos y las condiciones en las que, de acuerdo con nuestras convenciones asentadas, es aceptable que los jueces se desvíen de lo establecido en las reglas (...) jurídicas. En concreto, en el artículo se diferencian tres tipos distintos de derrotabilidad: D1 ; D2, y D3. Finalmente el artículo aborda la cuestión de si podemos considerar como jurídicas las consideraciones alternativas a las que los jueces deben apelar cuando estiman que deben dejar de lado las reglas prima facie aplicables. El trabajo concluye apuntando que la clave para trazar los límites entre el Derecho dúctil y el Derecho arbitrario descansa en una respuesta afirmativa a esta última pregunta. (shrink)

Esta reseña analiza una serie de reflexiones, elaboradas por doce diferentes autoras, acerca de algunos aspectos sustantivos de las teorías tradicionales de derechos humanos. Estos aspectos son sistematizados en torno a los siguientes apartados: La relevancia de la perspectiva iusfilosófica en la revisión crítica de las concepciones sobre derechos humanos; el problema de la fundamentación de los derechos humanos; el problema del carácter absoluto como propiedad esencial de estos derechos; el temor de que los derechos fundamentales pierdan su papel de (...) límite ante intereses de tipo colectivo; la dignidad humana como principio que posibilita, pero que también restringe, la autonomía individual; el ejercicio efectivo de la autonomía frente al presupuesto del agente autónomo; el problema de la universalidad de los derechos humanos en un contexto de pluralidad y diversidad; la importancia del orden internacional; y el rechazo a una concepción de los derechos y los deberes en términos estatistas y de correlación. (shrink)

It has been assumed that the person represented on the Shroud of Turin is dead and the image corresponds to a person dead from crucifixion. We have conducted an analysis of the cadaveric data of a body and the presence of face life signs and we could think that the image could corresponds to a living person. Therefore, it might correspond to a man starting a getting up gesture. If we examine the Gospels, a remarkable symmetry is found between the (...) data obtained from the image and the events described in the Gospels, regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus. (shrink)

In this article several signs of life present in the Shroud of Turin are pointed out. Following the development of rigor mortis, the body posture of the image on the Shroud is analyzed. This, together with the presence of specific facial folds indicate that the person wrapped in it is alive. Therefore, the image on the Shroud of Turin shows both signs of death and life in a person whose image was imprinted when he was alive. If this is a (...) fraud case, it should be considered as an artwork performed by a genius with medical, forensic and image processing knowledge from at least the XX century. But if we read the Gospels, a remarkable symmetry is found between the data obtained from the image and the events described in the Gospels, both regarding the death and resurrection of Jesus. (shrink)

Bullying of people with Special Educational Needs with or without disabilities is a reality, being one of the most affected groups. This study presents the data obtained in a European Erasmus+ project in which 96 young people and adults with SEN/D from four countries participated: Ireland, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Firstly, a questionnaire was passed to see the general knowledge of these people in relation to bullying. Then a training program was carried out and finally the questionnaire was passed again (...) to see if the data improved. From the data it appears that people with SEN/D lack skills, knowledge, and resources to deal with bullying. After the completion of the training program the data obtained from the questionnaire improved in many respects. Sometimes people with SEN/D are not aware that they are suffering from this type of situation due to lack of knowledge, so it is necessary to continue implementing training programs to help improve this situation. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia, el devenir de los acontecimientos ha hecho que determinados autores, que quizá en su época gozaron de fama y popularidad, hayan caído en el olvido o hayan sido forzados al ostracismo. Un caso clásico sería el del poeta y narrador estadounidense William Gilmore Simms quien, antes de la Guerra de Secesión, disfrutó de los laureles de la fama y la admiración de sus contemporáneos. Sin embargo, su apoyo a la causa confederada ha hecho de (...) él un autor prácticamente olvidado hoy en día. El caso de Joseph de Maistre es similar, pues también se enmarca dentro del apoyo a las causas perdidas o, más concretamente, a las causas que, andando el tiempo, no han resultado las vencedoras. Su apoyo a la causa contrarevolucionaria en el momento en que Europa se abría a la contemporaneidad social y política lo ha convertido en una isla en el pensamiento moderno, a pesar de que en su momento fuera un intelectual conocido y un pensador político respetado en los círculos conservadores. Como bien pone de manifiesto la Dra. Guerrero en su introducción, habría que esperar hasta 2007, para que la figura del senador saboyano volviera a los círculos académicos franceses, cuando Philippe Sollers escribió su ya clásico “Elogio de un maldito”. [...]. (shrink)

The World Health Organization has declared a world pandemic due to COVID-19. In response, most affected countries have enacted measures involving compulsory confinement and restrictions on free movement, which likely influence citizens' lifestyles. This study investigates changes in health risk behaviors with duration of confinement. An online cross-sectional survey served to collect data about the Spanish adult population regarding health behaviors during the first 3 weeks of confinement. A large sample of participants from all Spanish regions completed the survey. Binomial (...) logistic regressions adjusted for socioeconomic characteristics, body mass index, previous HRBs, and confinement context were conducted to investigate associations between the number of weeks confined and a set of six HRBs. When adjusted, we observed significantly lower odds of experiencing a higher number of HRBs than before confinement overall in a time-dependent fashion: OR 0.63; 95% CI: 0.49–0.81 for the second and OR 0.47; 95% CI: 0.36–0.61 for the third week of confinement. These results were equally consistent in all age and gender subgroup analyses. The present study indicates that changes toward a higher number of HRBs than before confinement, as well as the prevalence of each HRB except screen exposure, decreased during the first 3 weeks of COVID-19 confinement, and thus the Spanish adult population may have adapted to the new situational context by gradually improving their health behaviors. (shrink)

Para J. Bennett el núcleo del tercer paralogismo está en decir algo sobre los juicios, basados en un aparente recuerdo, de la forma “Era yo quien era F en t”. La idea es que el juicio de una persona de que era ella quien era F en t podría ser erróneo en lo relativo a la identidad de la persona que realmente era F en t. Según A362-4, el rol del observador externo sería corregir un juicio de esa clase. Pero (...) P. F. Strawson sostiene que lo que el tercer paralogismo trata de decir es algo derivado del hecho de que el “Yo pienso” expresa el pensamiento de la identidad de la conciencia. El error del psicólogo racional está en creer que el “Yo pienso” realmente expresa un conocimiento de objetos de la identidad del sujeto pensante como la identidad de un Ego cartesiano. Entonces, el rol del observador externo consiste en no estar sujeto a una tal ilusión de conocimiento del sujeto pensante. La tesis defendida en este artículo es que el error del psicólogo racional está en creer que el “Yo pienso” realmente expresa un conocimiento a priori de la identidad del sujeto de experiencias como la identidad de una sustancia pensante. El rol del observador externo consiste en no estar sujeto a una tal ilusión de conocimiento. (shrink)

Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in clinical practice. It often starts with asymptomatic and short episodes, which are difficult to detect without the assistance of automatic monitoring tools. The vast majority of methods proposed for this purpose are based on quantifying the irregular ventricular response during the arrhythmia. However, although AF totally alters the atrial activity reflected on the electrocardiogram, replacing stable P-waves by chaotic and time-variant fibrillatory waves, this information has still not been explored for automated (...) screening of AF. Hence, a pioneering AF detector based on quantifying the variability over time of the AA morphological pattern is here proposed. Results from two public reference databases have proven that the proposed method outperforms current state-of-the-art algorithms, reporting accuracy higher than 90%. A less false positive rate in the presence of other arrhythmias different from AF was also noticed. Finally, the combination of this algorithm with the classical analysis of RR series variability also yielded a promising trade-off between AF accuracy and detection delay. Indeed, this combination provided similar accuracy than RR-based methods, but with a significantly shorter delay of 10 beats. (shrink)

The production of good sound generation in the violin is a complex task that requires coordination and spatiotemporal control of bowing gestures. The use of motion-capture technologies to improve performance or reduce injury risks in the area of kinesiology is becoming widespread. The combination of motion accuracy and sound quality feedback has the potential of becoming an important aid in violin learning. In this study, we evaluate motion-capture and sound-quality analysis technologies developed inside the context of the TELMI, a technology-enhanced (...) music learning project. We analyzed the sound and bow motion of 50 participants with no prior violin experience while learning to produce a stable sound in the violin. Participants were divided into two groups: the experimental group received real-time visual feedback both on kinematics and sound quality, while participants in the control group practiced without any type of external help. An additional third group of violin experts performed the same task for comparative purposes. After the practice session, all groups were evaluated in a transfer phase without feedback. At the practice phase, the experimental group improved their bowing kinematics in comparison to the control group, but this was at the expense of impairing the sound quality of their performance. At the retention phase, the experimental group showed better results in sound quality, especially concerning control of sound dynamics. Besides, we found that the expert group improved the stability of their sound while using the technology. All in all, these results emphasize the importance of feedback technologies in learning complex tasks, such as musical instrument learning. (shrink)

because whenever an observer observes, he creates a contingent distinction between what is observed and what is by necessity left unobserved. ...

This paper explores the philosophical debate between Muguerza and Habermas, starting with the meeting of the two in the summer of 1994 in Madrid. To this end, some of the core aspects of their respective ethical and legal thoughts are interpreted and apostilled, both in their agreements and in their disagreements. The text focuses on the controversy between two of their apparently irreducible positions. Namely, the “primacy of the moral conscience of the individual”, defended by Muguerza, and the “primacy of (...) the legal law of society”, advocated by Habermas. The paper concludes by suggesting a third approach, which methodically tempers the controversy, in reference to the duality of the “individual” constituted in-intra-societal relationship, and the “society” instituted by individuals-in-inter-relationship. (shrink)

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, procrastination has become commonplace due to changes in teaching and learning, which trigger students' academic burnout. As a result, it has increased the intensity of procrastination among students who are enrolled in online learning programs. As a result, students have difficulty as a result of the rapid change from in-person learning to online learning. The study investigates the relationship between academic burnout and procrastination among 150 grade 12 senior high school students. Hence, this study employed (...) a correlational design. Based on the inferential analysis, the r coefficient of 0.71 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between academic burnout and academic procrastination among grade 12 senior high school students. (shrink)

In this paper a formalized logic of propositions, PA1, is presented. It is proven consistent and its relationships to traditional logic, to PM ([15]), to subjunctive (including contrary-to-fact) implication and to the “paradoxes” of material and strict implication are developed. Apart from any intrinsic merit it possesses, its chief significance lies in demonstrating the feasibility of a general logic containing theprinciple of subjunctive contrariety, i.e., the principle that ‘Ifpwere true thenqwould be true’ and ‘Ifpwere true thenqwould be false’ are incompatible.

Big Data evangelists often argue that algorithms make decision-making more informed and objective—a promise hotly contested by critics of these technologies. Yet, to date, most of the debate has focused on the instruments themselves, rather than on how they are used. This article addresses this lack by examining the actual practices surrounding algorithmic technologies. Specifically, drawing on multi-sited ethnographic data, I compare how algorithms are used and interpreted in two institutional contexts with markedly different characteristics: web journalism and criminal justice. (...) I find that there are surprising similarities in how web journalists and legal professionals use algorithms in their work. In both cases, I document a gap between the intended and actual effects of algorithms—a process I analyze as “decoupling.” Second, I identify a gamut of buffering strategies used by both web journalists and legal professionals to minimize the impact of algorithms in their daily work. Those include foot-dragging, gaming, and open critique. Of course, these similarities do not exhaust the differences between the two cases, which are explored in the discussion section. I conclude with a call for further ethnographic work on algorithms in practice as an important empirical check against the dominant rhetoric of algorithmic power. (shrink)

The Totonac homegarden is a traditionally designed agroecosystem mixing different elements, such as cultivated and wild plants, and livestock. Our objective was to understand the role and importance of homegardens as a strategy for subsistence and natural resources management. Anthropological fieldwork was carried out in Coxquihui, Veracruz, Mexico, a Totonac community. Conventional sampling using a questionnaire yielded a sample of 40 individuals, each representing a family group. Personal interviews, life stories, observations, and field transects enriched survey information. Fieldwork permitted identification (...) of four types of Totonac homegardens: backyards, cropping fields, acahuales or fallow fields, and fences or field edges. Each of these gardens yields an array of products and services important for several cultural roles and natural resource management aims. Totonacs see land as the dominant and most critical resource. A great deal of terrain is steeply sloped and soils are poor. Homegardens play a key role in a production system that minimizes these site limitations, striking a balance between resource maintenance and subsistence needs. Their functions are ecological, to foster a multistrata vegetation cover, and a continuous supply of organic matter to the soil; economic, serving as living storehouses where diverse products (food, timber, firewood, forage, animals, ceremonial supplies, medicinal products), are kept through the annual cycle; and social, performing various social roles such as growing medicinal, ritual, and edible plants, thus supporting beliefs and culture continuity. Studies like this contribute to a better understanding of Totonac culture and native ecology, and give ideas for a better land management. (shrink)

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) is Jewish history's greatest exponent of a rational, philosophically sound Judaism. He strove to reconcile the teachings of the Bible and rabbinic tradition with the principles of Aristotelian philosophy, arguing that religion and philosophy ultimately must arrive at the same truth. Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) is Jewish history's most illustrious "heretic". He believed that truth could be attained through reason alone, and that philosophy and religion were separate domains that could not be reconciled. His critique of the Bible (...) and its teachings caused an intellectual and spiritual upheaval whose effects are still felt today. Rabbi Marc D. Angel discusses major themes in the writings of Maimonides and Spinoza to show us how modern people can deal with religion in an intellectually honest and meaningful way. From Maimonides, we gain insight on how to harmonize traditional religious belief with the dictates of reason. From Spinoza, we gain insight into the intellectual challenges which must be met by modern believers--Book jacket. (shrink)

Sometimes two expressions in a discourse can be about the same thing in a way that makes that very fact evident to the participants. Consider, for example, 'he' and 'John' in 'John went to the store and he bought some milk'. Let us call this 'de jure' coreference. Other times, coreference is 'de facto' as with 'Mark Twain' and 'Samuel Clemens' in a sincere use of 'Mark Twain is not Samuel Clemens'. Here, agents can understand the speech without knowing that (...) the names refer to the same person. After surveying many available linguistic and pragmatic tools (intentions to corefer, presuppositions, meanings, indexing, discourse referents, binding etc.) I conclude that we must posit a new semantic primitive to account for de jure coreference. (shrink)

Individuals and businesses make numerous payments every day. They sometimes have choices about what forms of payment to make or accept, and at other times are effectively forced to use a particular form. Often there is an asymmetric power relationship between payer and payee that raises the issue of whether one side unfairly exploits the other. Is it unethical exploitation for an employer to pay employees with a fee-laden payroll card over other more convenient forms of payment? Does the fee (...) structure of payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard unfairly exploit merchants? The bitcoin payment system is an ethical as well as technological evolution as it was designed to be an electronic payment system that does not rely upon trust. Can an entire payment system like bitcoin be “evil,” as charged by Krugman? Payment tools as such are ethically neutral, but can be used in an ethical or unethical manner. (shrink)

A common theme in social science studies of algorithms is that they are profoundly opaque and function as “black boxes.” Scholars have developed several methodological approaches in order to address algorithmic opacity. Here I argue that we can explicitly enroll algorithms in ethnographic research, which can shed light on unexpected aspects of algorithmic systems—including their opacity. I delineate three meso-level strategies for algorithmic ethnography. The first, algorithmic refraction, examines the reconfigurations that take place when computational software, people, and institutions interact. (...) The second strategy, algorithmic comparison, relies on a similarity-and-difference approach to identify the instruments’ unique features. The third strategy, algorithmic triangulation, enrolls algorithms to help gather rich qualitative data. I conclude by discussing the implications of this toolkit for the study of algorithms and future of ethnographic fieldwork. (shrink)

American doctors in the 1990s are being asked to serve as "double agents," weighing competing allegiances to patients' medical needs against the monetary costs to society. This situation is a reaction to rapid cost increases for medical services, themselves the result of the haphazard development since the 1920s of an inherently inflationary, open-ended system for funding and delivering health care. The answer to an inefficient system, however, is not to stint on care, but rather to restructure the system to remove (...) the inflationary pressures. As long as we are spending enormous resources on an inherently inefficient and inflationary system we cannot justify asking doctors to withhold beneficial care to save money for third-party payers. Doing so serves a largely political agenda and endangers the patient-centered ethic that is central to medicine. (shrink)

This event-related potential (ERP) study examined the impact of phonological variation resulting from a vowel merger on phoneme perception. The perception of the /e/–/ε/ contrast which does not exist in Southern French-speaking regions, and which is in the process of merging in Northern French-speaking regions, was compared to the /ø/–/y/ contrast, which is stable in all French-speaking regions. French-speaking participants from Switzerland for whom the /e/–/ε/ contrast is preserved, but who are exposed to different regional variants, had to perform a (...) same-different task. They first heard four phonemically identical but acoustically different syllables (e.g., /be/–/be/–/be/–/be/), and then heard the test syllable which was either phonemically identical to (/be/) or phonemically different from (/bε/) the preceding context stimuli. The results showed that the unstable /e/–/ε/ contrast only induced a mismatch negativity (MMN), whereas the /ø/–/y/ contrast elicited both a MMN and electrophysiological differences on the P200. These findings were in line with the behavioral results in which responses were slower and more error-prone in the /e/–/ε/ deviant condition than in the /ø/–/y/ deviant condition. Together these findings suggest that the regional variability in the speech input to which listeners are exposed affects the perception of speech sounds in their own accent. (shrink)

Who should have a right to participate in a polity’s decision-making? Although the answers to this ‘boundary problem’ in democratic theory remain controversial, it is widely believed that the enfranchisement of tourists and children is unacceptable. Yet, the two most prominent inclusion principles in the literature – Robert Goodin’s ‘all (possibly) affected interests’-principle and the ‘all subjected to law’-principle – both enfranchise those groups. Unsurprisingly, democratic theorists have therefore offered several reasons for nonetheless exempting tourists and children from the franchise. (...) In this paper, I argue that their attempts fail. None of the proposed rationales can do the job without having unacceptable implications for the voting rights of other groups. I then develop a new specification of the affected interests-view, one that avoids such problems. According to my life plan-principle, a person is entitled to participate in a polity’s decision-making if and only if its decisions will actually affect her autonomously chosen life plans, or prevent her from developing or revising plans of that kind. I show that this principle straightforwardly avoids enfranchising tourists and children, and thus improves upon its two prominent rivals. The paper ends by considering and rejecting two objections to my new principle. (shrink)

In this article we defend the view that, on the All Affected Principle of voting rights, the weight of a person’s vote on a decision should be determined by and only by the degree to which that dec...

Auditory-guided vocal learning is a mechanism that operates both in humans and other animal species making us capable to imitate arbitrary sounds. Both auditory memories and auditory feedback interact to guide vocal learning. This may explain why it is easier for humans to imitate the pitch of a human voice than the pitch of a synthesized sound. In this study, we compared the effects of two different feedback modalities in learning pitch-matching abilities using a synthesized pure tone in 47 participants (...) with no prior music experience. Participants were divided into three groups: a feedback group receiving real-time visual feedback of their pitch as well as knowledge of results; an equal-timbre group receiving additional auditory feedback of the target note with a similar timbre to the instrument being used ; and a control group practicing without any feedback or knowledge of results. An additional fourth group of violin experts performed the same task for comparative purposes. All groups were posteriorly evaluated in a transfer phase. Both experimental groups improved their intonation abilities with the synthesized sound after receiving feedback. Participants from the equal-timber group seemed as capable as the feedback group of producing the required pitch with the voice after listening to the human voice, but not with the violin. In addition, only participants receiving real-time visual feedback learned and retained in the transfer phase the mapping between the synthesized pitch and its correspondence with the produced vocal or violin pitch. It is suggested that both the effect of an objective external reward, together with the experience of exploring the pitch space with their instrument in an explicit manner, helped participants to understand how to control their pitch production, strengthening their schemas, and favoring retention. (shrink)

As the result of the complexity inherent in nature, mathematical models employed in ecology are often governed by a large number of variables. For instance, in the study of population dynamics we often deal with models for structured populations in which individuals are classified regarding their age, size, activity or location, and this structuring of the population leads to high dimensional systems. In many instances, the dynamics of the system is controlled by processes whose time scales are very different from (...) each other. Aggregation techniques take advantage of this situation to build a low dimensional reduced system from which behavior we can approximate the dynamics of the complex original system.In this work we extend aggregation techniques to the case of time dependent discrete population models with two time scales where both the fast and the slow processes are allowed to change at their own characteristic time scale, generalizing the results of previous studies. We propose a non-autonomous model with two time scales, construct an aggregated model and give relationship between the variables governing the original and the reduced systems. We also explore how the properties of strong and weak ergodicity, regarding the capacity of the system to forget initial conditions, of the original system can be studied in terms of the reduced system. (shrink)

We analysed research ethics committee (REC) letters. We found that RECs frequently identify process errors in applications from researchers that are not deemed “favourable” at first review. Errors include procedural violations (identified in 74% of all applications), missing information (68%), slip-ups (44%) and discrepancies (25%). Important questions arise about why the level of error identified by RECs is so high, and about how errors of different types should be handled.