In the current digital era, the borders amongst firms are getting blurred when it comes to value creation. Therefore, the traditional configuration of the value chain is frequently replaced by other ones which include the collaborative participation of different agents. Within this context, global value chains, where the value activities are located in different countries, and industrial clusters, which combine competition and cooperation, are attracting a growing attention of both business leaders and scholars in the recent years. Through a bibliometric (...) analysis, this paper disentangles the intellectual and conceptual structure of the research topic of industrial clusters and global value chains. Results show the multidisciplinary character of the topic, including papers published in different areas, such as business, regional studies and world development, as well as its close link with aspects like innovation, regional development, governance or organization. Finally, this study remarks the research lines that could attract more attention in the immediate future. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe social content of affective stimuli has been proposed as having an influence on cognitive processing and behaviour. This research was aimed, therefore, at studying whether automatic exogenous attention demanded by affective pictures was related to their social value. We hypothesised that affective social pictures would capture attention to a greater extent than non-social affective stimuli. For this purpose, we recorded event-related potentials in a sample of 24 participants engaged in a digit categorisation task. Distracters were affective pictures varying in (...) social content, in addition to affective valence and arousal, which appeared in the background during the task. Our data revealed that pictures depicting high social content captured greater automatic attention than other pictures, as reflected by the greater amplitude and shorter latency of anterior P2, and anterior and posterior N2 components of the ERPs. In addition, social content also provoked greater allocation of processing resour... (shrink)

This study aimed to examine the relationship between anxiety, depression, subjective well-being, and academic performance in Peruvian university health science students with COVID-19-infected relatives. Eight hundred two university students aged 17–54 years ; 658 females and 144 males ; who completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-2, Coronavirus Anxiety Scale, Subjective Well-being Scale, and Self-reporting of Academic Performance participated. A partial unregularized network was estimated using the ggmModSelect function. Expected influence values were calculated to identify the central nodes and a two-tailed permutation (...) test for the difference between the two groups. The results reveal that a depression and well-being node presents the highest relationship. The most central nodes belonged to COVID-19 anxiety, and there are no global differences between the comparison networks; but at the local level, there are connections in the network of COVID-19-infected students that are not in the group that did not present this diagnosis. It is concluded that anxious–depressive symptomatology and its relationship with well-being and evaluation of academic performance should be considered in order to understand the impact that COVID-19 had on health sciences students. (shrink)

In this paper I review the different opinions held by scientists and philosophers as regards the status of the action-at-a-distance concept within relativistic physics. It is shown that in spite of the fact that the prevailing opinion has been that special relativity precludes actions at a distance, some important physicists have continued employing that concept throughout the present century. The key to understand that “anomalous” behaviour lies, in fact, in the relationships existent between quantum and classical physics (“inverse” principle of (...) correspondence). (shrink)

Literature and Character Education in Universities presents the potential of literary and philosophical texts for character education in modern universities. The book engages with theoretical and practical aspects of character development in higher education, combining conceptual discussion of the role of literature in character education with applied case studies from university classrooms. Character education within the academic context of the university presents unique challenges and opportunities. Literature and Character Education in Universities presents perspectives from academics in Europe, the USA and (...) Asia, offering unique insights into the ways that engaged reading and discussion of core texts can promote the development of intellectual and moral virtues. Chapters draw on a wide range of texts from Confucius' Analects to J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, focusing on themes such as truthfulness, self-knowledge, prudence, tolerance, friendship, and humility. Literature and Character Education in Universities will be of real use to researchers, academics and postgraduates in the fields of higher education, philosophy, and literature. It should be essential reading for university educators interested in character development and advocates of literary education in modern universities. (shrink)

The price of copper is unstable but it is considered an important indicator of the global economy. Changes in the price of copper point to higher global growth or an impending recession. In this work, the forecasting of the spot prices of copper from the New York Commodity Exchange is studied using a machine learning method, support vector regression coupled with different model schemas (recursive, direct and hybrid multi-step). Using these techniques, three different time series analyses are built and its (...) performance are compared. The numerical results show that the hybrid direct-recursive obtains the best results. (shrink)

IntroductionExcitability of the primary motor cortex measured with TMS has been associated with cognitive dysfunctions in patient populations. However, only a few studies have explored this relationship in healthy adults, and even fewer have considered the role of biological sex.MethodsNinety-seven healthy middle-aged adults completed a TMS protocol and a neuropsychological assessment. Resting Motor Threshold and Long-Interval Intracortical Inhibition were assessed in the left motor cortex and related to attention, episodic memory, working memory, reasoning, and global cognition composite scores to evaluate (...) the relationship between cortical excitability and cognitive functioning.ResultsIn the whole sample, there was a significant association between LICI and cognition; specifically, higher motor inhibition was related to better working memory performance. When the sample was broken down by biological sex, LICI was only associated with working memory, reasoning, and global cognition in men. No associations were found between RMT and cognitive functions.ConclusionGreater intracortical inhibition, measured by LICI, could be a possible marker of working memory in healthy middle-aged adults, and biological sex plays a critical role in this association. (shrink)

In April 1933, Albert Einstein was offered an ‘Extraordinary’ Chair of Physics at the University of Madrid. Einstein first accepted, then sought to withdraw without causing damage to the anti-Fascist Republican government. However, this proved an opportunity for the Spanish press to harness Einstein’s notoriety to their own programmes. This article discusses the genesis and resolution of this episode, which says much about Einstein and science and politics in modern Spain.

Since the mid-20th century, the study of Self-Regulated Learning has aimed to identify the distinctive characteristics that enable individuals to acquire new knowledge and skills under their control. The theory of Internal Self-Regulation vs. External-Regulation in Learning has postulated that a large number of self-regulatory variables are mediated by regulated/non-regulated or dysregulated features of the context. After signing their informed consent, a total of 616 university students completed validated instruments of SRL vs. ERL, behavioral regulation, regulatory teaching, and metacognitive study (...) control strategies. Using an ex-post facto design and correlation, regression, structural equation model and mediation analyses, the present research aimed to establish multicausal predictive relationships among the analyzed variables. Results indicated positive predictive effects between the external regulation variables on the self-regulation variables in learning [regulation /non-regulation /dysregulation ]; as well as positive predictive effects between SRL on SRB, RT and metacognitive SRS. Additionally, external regulation not only predicted but mediated numerous relations among the variables studied. Other findings and important considerations for future research in the field of self-regulation are discussed. (shrink)

Lower extremity non-contact soft tissue injuries are prevalent in elite futsal. The purpose of this study was to develop robust screening models based on pre-season measures obtained from questionnaires and field-based tests to prospectively predict LE-ST injuries after having applied a range of supervised Machine Learning techniques. One hundred and thirty-nine elite futsal players underwent a pre-season screening evaluation that included individual characteristics; measures related to sleep quality, athlete burnout, psychological characteristics related to sport performance and self-reported perception of chronic (...) ankle instability. A number of neuromuscular performance measures obtained through three field-based tests [isometric hip strength, dynamic postural control and lower extremity joints range of motion ] were also recorded. Injury incidence was monitored over one competitive season. There were 25 LE-ST injuries. Only those groups of measures from two of the field-based tests, as independent data sets, were able to build robust models [area under the receiver operating characteristic curve score ≥0.7] to identify elite futsal players at risk of sustaining a LE-ST injury. Unlike the measures obtained from the five questionnaires selected, the neuromuscular performance measures did build robust prediction models. The inclusion in the same data set of the measures recorded from all the questionnaires and field-based tests did not result in models with significantly higher performance scores. The model generated by the UnderBagging technique with a cost-sensitive SMO as the base classifier and using only four ROM measures reported the best prediction performance scores. The models developed might help coaches, physical trainers and medical practitioners in the decision-making process for injury prevention in futsal. (shrink)

Business ethics is one of the most significant demands made by institutional and individual investors, who usually require the participation of the board of directors in the planning and implementation of ethical behaviour in corporations. This is done by drawing up an ethics code and then monitoring its fulfilment. This study has a dual objective: first, to analyse the role played by the composition of the board of directors, and by that we mean its independence and the diversity of its (...) members, on the implementation and scope of an EC, and, second, to detect whether the corporate governance system moderates the level of involvement of the board in ethical issues. The findings obtained from a data panel sample made up of 760 listed companies from 12 countries for the years 2003–2009 show that the largest companies with large-sized and diverse boards implement the most developed ECs. Nevertheless, the extent of involvement of the independent directors is conditioned by the level of shareholder orientation characteristic of the system of CG in the corporation’s country of origin. (shrink)

Identity has been widely understood in Western societies as a specular construction that operates simultaneously both from within and from outside oneself. However, this process is fiercely changing in a world in which almost every human action is mediated by information and communication technologies. This paper, from a theoretical perspective, aims to discover the main educational implications of this change. For that purpose, we first consider the traditional meaning and process of forming the self in Western culture. Afterwards, we identify (...) and describe the mechanisms for the construction of the self in our current context, highlighting the fact that technologies, in themselves and regardless of the use we make of them, hide implications. Taking this into account, we show to what extent the current development of the self presents shades, conflicts and tangible risks from an educational perspective. We finally conclude that it is essential to promote an education on technology that goes beyond the use regulation in which, up to now, it has been solely focused on. (shrink)

Studies demonstrating the benefits of ethical behavior at an individual level are scarce. The business ethics literature centers its analysis on unethical behaviors and their consequences, rather than ethical behaviors and their benefits. There is now considerable debate on the role of auditors in society and the function of accounting firms in the free market capitalist system. Specifically, the eminently ethical nature of the auditor’s work has been highlighted. Therefore, the aim of our paper is to show the impact of (...) auditors’ sustained ethical behavior: the trust it generates. This trust results in considerable benefits for the firm due to a reduction in the costs of the partner’s supervision of the auditor. The methodology chosen to validate these claims is a survey of partner of the audit firm in auditing companies. The results of this research confirm the hypotheses raised in the theoretical model. (shrink)

Introduction: Resilience is a multidimensional and dynamic construct associated with positive growth and the capacity to transform stressful and negative factors into opportunities of personal development and self-improvement when faced with difficult experiences. The resilience process of each individual integrates multiple analysis levels, which range from genetic-environmental interactions to a complex process of adaptation between the individual and his/her family, friends, co-workers, society, and culture.Objective: To determine whether resilience improves in students of occupational therapy when exposed for the first time (...) to practice placement education.Methodology: Quasi-experimental, prospective, observational, multi-center study with a sample composed of students from the Degree of Occupational Therapy of the public universities of Málaga and Castilla-La Mancha. Two weeks prior to the beginning of the practice education period, the participants completed a questionnaire that included sociodemographic data and the area of their internships. They were also given the Spanish version of the Connor-Davidson's resilience scale. All these instruments were also completed 1 week after the end of the clinical practice.Results: There were statistically significant differences between the variables that make up resilience and the different internship areas. On the other hand, there was a significant improvement of global resilience after the clinical practice period, in both women and men, when the internship area was not considered.Conclusions: The results show that resilient students are more optimistic and work to improve a situation beyond doing simply what is expected of them, knowing how to control their feelings. This is beneficial for students in practice education, since, during these, they face difficult situations that require a resilient pattern, which helps reduce stress and the burnout syndrome. (shrink)

Aberrations introduced by the atmospheric turbulence in large telescopes are compensated using adaptive optics systems, where the use of deformable mirrors and multiple sensors relies on complex control systems. Recently, the development of larger scales of telescopes as the E-ELT or TMT has created a computational challenge due to the increasing complexity of the new adaptive optics systems. The Complex Atmospheric Reconstructor based on Machine Learning is an algorithm based on artificial neural networks, designed to compensate the atmospheric turbulence. During (...) recent years, the use of GPUs has been proved to be a great solution to speed up the learning process of neural networks, and different frameworks have been created to ease their development. The implementation of CARMEN in different Multi-GPU frameworks is presented in this paper, along with its development in a language originally developed for GPU, like CUDA. This implementation offers the best response for all the presented cases, although its advantage of using more than one GPU occurs only in large networks. (shrink)

Imagination has received a great deal of attention in different fields such as psychology, philosophy and the cognitive sciences, in which some works provide a detailed account of the mechanisms involved in the creation and elaboration of imaginary worlds. Although imagination has also been formalized using different logical systems, none of them captures those dynamic mechanisms. In this work, we take inspiration from the Common Frame for Imagination Acts, that identifies the different processes involved in the creation of imaginary worlds, (...) and we use it to define a dynamic formal system called the Logic of Imagination Acts. We build our logic by using a possible-worlds semantics, together with a new set of static and dynamic modal operators. The role of the new dynamic operators is to call different algorithms that encode how the formal model is expanded in order to capture the different mechanisms involved in the creation and development of imaginary worlds. We provide the definitions of the language, the semantics and the algorithms, together with an example that shows how the model is expanded. By the end, we discuss some interesting features of our system, and we point out to possible lines of future work. (shrink)

The fast–slow paradigm of life history focuses on how individuals grow, mate, and reproduce at different paces. This paradigm can contribute substantially to the field of personality and individual differences provided that it is more strictly based on evolutionary biology than it has been so far. Our study tested the existence of a fast–slow continuum underlying indicators of reproductive effort—offspring output, age at first reproduction, number and stability of sexual partners—in 1,043 outpatients with healthy to severely disordered personalities. Two axes (...) emerged reflecting a double-track pathway to fast strategy, based on restricted and unrestricted sociosexual strategies. When rotated, the fast–slow and sociosexuality axes turned out to be independent. Contrary to expectations, neither somatic effort—investment in status, material resources, social capital, and maintenance/survival—was aligned with reproductive effort, nor a clear tradeoff between current and future reproduction was evident. Finally, we examined the association of LH axes with seven high-order personality pathology traits: negative emotionality, impulsivity, antagonism, persistence-compulsivity, subordination, and psychoticism. Persistent and disinhibited subjects appeared as fast-restricted and fast-unrestricted strategists, respectively, whereas asocial subjects were slow strategists. Associations of LH traits with each other and with personality are far more complex than usually assumed in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Este artículo explora el concepto de trauma colectivo y su aplicación en el contexto histórico y social de las sociedades latinoamericanas. La transferencia del término «trauma colectivo» desde el campo del conocimiento psicológico a la esfera social e histórica plantea preguntas sobre su legitimidad y marco conceptual. El estudio examina la fidelidad de esta transferencia conceptual y su relación con la comprensión psicoanalítica temprana de los fenómenos traumáticos. El contexto cultural europeo de finales del siglo xix y principios del siglo (...) xx proporcionó la base para teorizar las consecuencias de experiencias intensas y violentas, lo que resultó en el concepto de «neurosis traumática», influenciado significativamente por el trabajo de Freud. El artículo discute la apropiación de herramientas psicoanalíticas en la crítica histórica y cultural para comprender eventos que desafían marcos tradicionales y la inteligibilidad social, como el Holocausto. La noción del trauma como una fuerza enigmática y recurrente en la experiencia histórica se explora a través del enfoque de los estudios del trauma. El artículo pone de relieve a destacados y destacadas académicas en este campo y su uso de conceptos psicoanalíticos, demostrando la preservación y aplicación significativa de estas nociones en la comprensión de fenómenos históricos y colectivos. Al acortar la brecha entre las experiencias psicológicas individuales y los traumas colectivos, los estudios del trauma ofrecen un enfoque único para interpretar y representar eventos que resisten las narrativas históricas tradicionales. (shrink)

This paper studies an Umayyad Andalusi foundation inscription, dated 387/4 January 997-2 January 998, which is no longer extant but has been transmited in a summary in Castilian on a tablet dated 1259 and repaired in 1575. An attempt is made to deduce the original Arabic text, and the documented facts and persons are discussed.