Nowadays, the quality standards of higher education institutions pay special attention to the performance and evaluation of the students. Then, having a complete academic record of each student, such as number of attempts, average grade and so on, plays a key role. In this context, the existence of missing data, which can happen for different reasons, leads to affect adversely interesting future analysis. Therefore, the use of imputation techniques is presented as a helpful tool to estimate the value of missing (...) data. This work deals with the academic records of engineering students, in which imputation techniques are applied. More specifically, it is assessed and compared to the performance of the multivariate imputation by chained equations methodology, the adaptive assignation algorithm based on multivariate adaptive regression splines and a hybridization based on self-organisation maps with Mahalanobis distances and AAA algorithm. The results show that proposed methods obtain successfully results regardless the number of missing values, in general terms. (shrink)

Habría que remontarse al periodo del emperador romano de Oriente, Justiniano, para recordar un Estado unitario en Italia. Una unidad política desmoronada tras la invasión de los Longobardos en el año 568-. La historia sucesiva registró 1300 años de divisiones que generaron naciones diversas, al menos en el sentir del pueblo común. Cada una de éstas desarrolló vicisitudes, cultura, usos y costumbres propios, muy diferentes entre los diversos Estados preunitarios. Baste como ejemplo decir que la alimentación del sur contaba con (...) productos ignorados por el norte. (shrink)

Todo lo que pertenece a la prehistoria de los pueblos suramericanos permanece envuelto en la sombra; ninguna de sus culturas poseía una escritura; no conocemos tampoco con absoluta certeza el nombre de alguna de aquellas poblaciones, ni siquiera el nombre del pueblo de los Incas (ya que con este nombre se designaba sólo a sus jefes)�.

Luz para enfocar unas joyas ocultas en espacios que, generalmente, no la reciben, celebrando el IV Centenario del Archivo Secreto Vaticano. Así nace la exposición "Lux in arcana" que, por primera vez saca un centenar de documentos de los registros de la Santa Sede para mostrarlos en los visitadísimos Museos Capitolinos de Roma.

La reseña arqueológica abierta en el prestigioso Museo de Nápoles despliega los extraordinarios descubrimientos que, ininterrumpidamente, desde hace tres siglos restituyen un lejano pasado al mundo entero. Un gran acontecimiento cultural que, entre otros valiosos testimonios, presenta las grandes obras escultóricas extraídas en Herculano -donde a principios del siglo XVIII se emprendió el camino de la arqueología moderna- al que se añade otro evento, la reapertura del atrio monumental del Museo destinado a espacio expositivo, consideraos ambos un estreno inmejorable para (...) las iniciativas públicas de la Superintendencia Especial para los Bienes Arqueológicos de Nápoles y Pompeya. (shrink)

Gracias a unas intervenciones de recuperación que se presentaban casi imposibles, dentro del amplio plan de restauración, precedido de investigaciones y estudios, de todo el conjunto de las edificaciones que bajo Augusto fueron realizadas en la colina del Palatino, se han abierto al público en Roma las puertas de la casa que Octaviano mandó edificar en el año 36 a.C., antes de convertirse en Augusto (27 a.C.-14d.C.).

In this paper I propose to conceive of forgiveness as a process of eliminating punitive reactive attitudes, which makes up part of the offended person’s willingness to reestablish a certain type of reciprocal relationship with the offender. Distinguishing among types of reciprocity allows us to realize that forgiveness is a more varied phenomenon than is usually assumed in the philosophical literature, as well as to understand why the dispute concerning the gratuitousnessconditionality of forgiveness is meaningless.

The current study analyzed the relationship between Coronavirus Awareness, mental health, and willingness to seek professional psychological help. This was made through a quantitative approach, using online questionnaires to collect data from 855 subjects. The questionnaires included the Brief Symptom Inventory to measure mental health indicators, the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale–Short Form, and the Coronavirus Awareness Scale-10. An Exploratory Factor Analysis suggests that three factors underlie the CAS-10: Coronavirus Concern, Exaggerated Perception, and Immunity Perception. Results indicate a (...) significant positive correlation between Coronavirus Concern and both general anxiety and phobic anxiety symptoms. Immunity Perception is positively related to paranoid ideation and psychotic symptoms. A Mediation Analysis determined that Coronavirus Concern has a significant positive direct effect on Openness to Seeking Psychological Treatment, while Exaggerated Perception and Immunity Perception scores have significant direct negative effects on the Value and Need in Seeking Treatment scores. Indirectly, the relationship between Coronavirus Concern and OPST is significantly mediated by anxiety symptoms. Similar results were found for the VNST subscale. There is a negative significant effect of Immunity Perception over OSPT mediated by Paranoid Ideation. However, the overall model only achieved small r2 coefficients for the OSPT and VNST scores. Comparisons in Coronavirus Awareness between sex, age, and the presence of children and older adults at home were also made. These results are discussed regarding their practical implications for mental health providers and policymakers. (shrink)

What happens in the agent that enables her to comply with the legal command or directive? When we perform an action because we are complying with the legal command or directive, are we still active, self-governed autonomous agents? In what sense are we still autonomous agents? The task of this study is to explain what legal authority is and the premise of the study is that this question can only be answered through understanding of how legal authority operates upon the (...) agent: if we recognize that legal commands or directives intervene upon, affect and change the agent’s practical reasoning, then we need to understand and explain how this happens. (shrink)

A systematic effort to rethink Freud's theory of the unconscious, aiming to separate out the different forms of unconsciousness.

Data are lacking with regard to participants' perspectives on return of genetic research results to relatives, including after the participant's death. This paper reports descriptive results from 3,630 survey respondents: 464 participants in a pancreatic cancer biobank, 1,439 family registry participants, and 1,727 healthy individuals. Our findings indicate that most participants would feel obligated to share their results with blood relatives while alive and would want results to be shared with relatives after their death.

The purpose of this study is exposition on the themes of method and mysticism in the work of Simone Weil. Nearly a decade before the onset of her first mystical experience, Weil developed a method to be rigorously applied in daily philosophical reflection. She outlines this method in her dissertation on Descartes (1929-1930). I examine the question of how Weil applied method to philosophical reflection on her mystical experiences (onset 1938-1939). I analyze Weil’s mystical experiences as a type of transformative (...) experience in L. A. Paul’s strict sense of the term. On Paul’s view, an experience is transformative if it is both epistemically and personally transformative. An experience is epistemically transformative if the only way to know what it is like to have it is to have it yourself. An experience is personally transformative if it changes your point of view, including your core preferences (Paul, 2014). I present a thought experiment and textual evidence to motivate the claim that Weil’s mystical experiences meet Paul’s conditions for transformative experience. I then propose two epistemological facts that can be revealed by philosophical reflection on mystical experience. First, it is possible to read meaning erroneously in the appearances of things. Second, it is possible to come to hold to the certainty of a conviction for reasons that elude the intellect. My findings suggest that Weil’s late views on philosophy accommodate these two epistemological constraints, thereby demonstrating a possible connection between Weil’s mystical experiences and her mature views on the nature, scope, and proper method of philosophy. However, my preliminary findings also suggest that Weil’s early work on method may have anticipated these epistemological obstacles prior to the onset of her first mystical experience. Thus, further exposition of Weil’s method is needed to support or elucidate the claim (Rozelle-Stone and Davis, 2021) that Weil’s epistemology underwent significant changes because of her mystical experiences. (shrink)

Gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, are being heralded as powerful new tools for delivering agricultural products and foods with a variety of beneficial traits quickly, easily, and cheaply. Proponents are concerned, however, about whether the public will accept the new technology and that excessive regulatory oversight could limit the technology’s potential. In this paper, we draw on the sociotechnical imaginaries literature to examine how proponents are imagining the potential benefits and risks of gene editing technologies within agriculture. We derive (...) our data from a content analysis of public comments submitted to the Food and Drug Administration’s 2017 docket titled “Genome Editing in New Plant Varieties Used for Food.” Our sample frame consists of 26 comments representing 30 agriculture and biotech companies, organizations, and trade associations. Our findings reveal three key sociotechnical imaginaries, including that gene editing technologies in agriculture: are not GMO but instead equivalent to traditional plant breeding; have the potential to usher in a new Green Revolution; and could facilitate the democratization of agricultural biotechnologies. We argue that forming and projecting these collective interpretations of the potential of gene editing technologies for crops and foods plays an important role in efforts by proponents to influence regulatory oversight, modes of governance, and build public acceptance. This research contributes to calls by science and technology studies scholars to investigate emergent concerns and imaginaries for novel technoscientific advances to help inform upstream models of public engagement and governance decisions. (shrink)

The perception of sensory effects generated by one’s own actions is typically attenuated compared to the same effects generated externally. However, it is unclear whether this specifically relates to self-generation. Recent studies showed that sensory attenuation mainly relies on action preparation, not actual action execution. Hence, an attenuation of sensory effects generated by another person might occur if these actions can be anticipated and thus be prepared for.Here, we compared the perceived loudness of sounds generated by one’s own actions and (...) actions of another person that either could or could not be anticipated. We found an attenuation of the perceived loudness for self- as compared to other-generated sounds. This difference was independent of whether the sound-eliciting actions of the other person could be anticipated or not. Thus, sensory attenuation seems to be specifically tied to self-generation instead of being a secondary effect of agent-independent preparation for an upcoming action. (shrink)

Given the crucial role of the mass media in influencing public discourse, this study examines the discourses around climate change within the Brazilian press, covering the time period of 2003–2013. Survey evidence has shown that Brazilians’ degree of concern about climate change is higher than almost anywhere else, with nine out of 10 Brazilians considering climate change a serious problem. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate how the press engendered Brazilians’ striking level of climate change concern, with (...) special attention to how the discourse developed over time. To this end, I undertake a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine the most dominant linguistic patterns in the discourse, presenting evidence on an unprecedented scale and with considerable depth. The corpus consists of 19,686 newspaper texts published by 12 Brazilian broadsheet papers. The results are interpreted in the light of available opinion polls on the public’s perception of climate change as well as Brazil’s national context and environmental governance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hispanic Utopian Studies and Activism as a PromptJulia Ramírez-Blanco (bio)In the last few years I have come to the Utopian Studies Societýs yearly conference as part of a smaller group, one that has its own parallel history in the left corner of the South of Europe and is networked mostly with Latin America. I am referring to the interdisciplinary research group Histopia, which has its base in Madrid́s (...) Autónoma University, is comprised of twenty-seven researchers from different institutions, and is coordinated by historian Juan Pro. As the name Histopia suggests, it was founded by historians. From the beginning there have been people from other fields, such as political science, architecture, cultural studies, and art history. The aim was always understanding utopianism beyond the study of texts, and centering research in everything that utopianism produces, such as social movements, political programs, and urban programs. In this sense, a premise was to understand utopias not as a footnote in history or a series of eccentric events, but as a guiding force that drives a [End Page 510] history. This placing of utopianism in history was clearly announced in the grouṕs website:Histopia seeks to go beyond the philological approach that predominates in Utopian Studies and to historicize the study of contemporary utopias and dystopias, showing how they respond to the contexts in which they arise, since they reflect the problems and frustrations of a society as well as the aspirations for change it contains, and the conditions of possibility that a particular cultural and emotional framework offers for developing them.1Together with this focus on history, which departs from the more text-centered traditions of an important part of utopian studies, the other main particularity of Histopia is its decentralizing of utopian studies towards the Spanish-speaking world. And to this end, the group also founded the Transatlantic Network for the Study of Utopias, which was created in 2015 to put in communication over 250 researchers, most of them from Latin America, but also from other places such as Australia or Japan.2The Spanish statés research funding programs have provided the bureaucratic framework and the material resources for the research group since 2015. Together with seminars, conferences, or workshops, the resulting publications have been linked with utopian literature, with dystopia, and with a focus on viewing history through the lens of utopia. One of the most recent endeavors has been a radically collective one, articulating a Dictionary of Utopian Places written by a multitude of authors.3 Histopia has also initiated several projects with schools, for the most part ongoing, and there have been many attempts to disseminate its work through radio and video projects. And since its founding, Histopia has tried reaching out beyond the Academy—an effort that is finally gaining success. In 2021 the international conference Intentional Communities: Concrete Utopias in History was extremely fruitful: we saw involved participation both in various interventions, and through activities such as streaming. Participants included people and organizations from social movements and from intentional communities.I want to argue here that the very formation of Histopia was a logical development from certain political triggers—and in particular, the so-called 15M Movement, a series of anti-austerity protests and direct-democracy initiatives that ignited antigovernment activism throughout Spain from 2011 on, culminating in the occupation of urban spaces (“encampments”) and in very large political assemblies. It is not just that the forces of activism were [End Page 511] reignited after 2011, and that its inheritors came together with the Histopia research group; the very existence of Histopia, I am arguing, can be read as a consequence of the 15M encampment and its aftermath.Prefigurative PracticesIn May 2011, following the example of the Arab world, Madrid’s Puerta del Sol was populated by a crowd armed with posters, slogans, and self-made banners. On the inhospitable ground of the square, anonymous persons erected an encampment so complex that it functioned as a miniature city, with spaces for preparing food, for nursery care, for rest, for legal consultation, for anti-racist and/or feminist activity. All work was voluntary, and materials were... (shrink)

ABSTRACT In “The Lost Thread: the democracy of Modern Fiction”, Jacques Rancière will criticize Roland Barthes, stating that his interpretation of Gustave Flaubert’s book “A simple heart” would have shown himself unable to understand the politics of writing of romanesque literature. For Thomas Clerc, reader of Barthes, Rancière would have been confused by the double character of Barthesian thought: both structuralist and critical. Both authors, Barthes and Rancière, strive to refuse a thought based on the notion of representation. Our hypothesis, (...) however, is that the authors diverge in relation to the very meaning of representation, resulting in a divergence in the understanding of politics, which would support Rancière’s criticism of Barthes not as a confusion, but, rather, as a refusal to the politics of Barthesian writing. With this, we intend to reconstruct the arguments of both autors around Flaubert, to understand the politics of writing that they operate. Refusing the structuralist and ideology-demystifying point of view of Barthes, Rancière points to another reading that sees in the Romanesque literature the rupture in relation to the politics of writing of the representative regime and the configuration of the aesthetic regime. (shrink)

Uterus transplantation (UTx) research has been introduced in several countries, with trials in Sweden and the United States producing successful outcomes. The growing interest in developing UTx trials in other countries, such as Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, and Australia, raises important questions regarding the ethics of surgical innovation research in the field of UTx. This paper examines the current state of UTx in the context of the surgical innovation paradigm and IDEAL framework and discusses the ethical challenges faced by those (...) considering the introduction of new trials. We argue that UTx remains an experimental procedure at a relatively early stage of the IDEAL framework, especially in the context of de novo trials, where protocols are likely to deviate from those used previously and where researchers are likely to have limited experience of UTx. We conclude that countries considering the introduction of UTx trials should build on the strengths of the reported outcomes to consolidate the evidence base and shed light on the uncertainties of the procedure. Authorities responsible for the ethical governance of UTx trials are advised to draw on the ethical framework used in the oversight of surgical innovation. (shrink)

This article turns to Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem in order to illustrate the difficulties involved in approaching the (formerly) metaphysical concept of evil as a secular phenomenon. It asks how the advocate of plurality, natality and forgiveness could also vouch for the death sentence of Eichmann based on a rhetoric of retribution and revenge. It then shows that Arendt's surprisingly consistent view of evil is based on a quasi-ontological understanding of the human condition that allowed her to negate Eichmann's (...) humanity. Rather than simply unmasking a metaphysical account in disguise, however, the article develops an alternative perspective that emerges from the conversation between Arendt and Jaspers. It argues that Jaspers's interpretation of Kant offers a way to defend the idea of secular evil and judge Eichmann on the basis of his thoughtlessness. (shrink)

Aristotelian conceptions of the good life are often criticized from several ethical positions, like G.E. Moore’s anti-naturalism or emotivism and prescriptivism. Aristotelians are accused of committing the naturalistic fallacy when they make a moral evaluation of features, actions, intentions and faculties of human beings. In this paper, I examine and refute AlfonsoGómez-Lobo’s strategy to reject that accusation; then, I propose another strategy and I argue that inclusivist Aristotelian conceptions of the good life could be freed from such criticism if they (...) appeal to the concept of “brute facts relative to” as proposed by G.E. Anscombe. (shrink)

What paths are taken by post-posi tiv ist so - cial the ory?. Be yond the three ba sic types of contemporarty the o ries stud ied in this pa per, the pre sup po si tions of which com bine struc ture and agent, the study of so ci ety in which ac knowl - edge ment of the prop er ties of dis tinct..

En 2014 la Corte Constitucional solicito a varias universidades “un concepto científico acerca de los efectos que para el desarrollo integral del menor podría tener el hecho de ser adoptado por personas de un mismo sexo”. Este concepto fue requerido en virtud de la demanda 10135/14 por parte del ciudadano Diego Andrés Prada Vargas contra los artículos 64, 66 y 68 y contra el artículo primero de la Ley 54 de 1990, los cuales excluyen a parejas del mismo sexo para (...) la adopción. Por solicitud del director del Departamento de Psicología, elabore un concepto ratificando lo planteado en Domínguez, al mostrar que los estudios internacionales desde el repertorio empirico-analitico han comprobado que el cuidado y la proveeduría dependen cada vez menos del género y la orientación sexual. La corte constitucional nuevamente desconoció los conceptos científicos favorables a las familias homoparentales, y solamente ratifico la adopción en el caso de que uno de los integrantes de la pareja fuera la madre biológica o el padre biológico. Al continuar la controversia, propongo revisar las reclamaciones de justica de la demanda 10135/14 desde las propuestas de un “pacto de cuidado” y de “neutralidad con respecto de Appiah en cuanto a: el reconocimiento a las personas del mismo sexo de su “deseo de vivir bien”, la obligatoriedad de reglamentar la adopción para personas del mismo sexo o la custodia para padres biológicos en esta situación ; y la inclusión dentro del pacto de cuidado de hijas o hijos de familias homoparentales en la educación al valorar la donación por parte de las parejas homosexuales de una socialización primaria basada en la estima y el respeto. Primero, presento las avances de la jurisprudencia colombiana frente a los derechos de los homosexuales, muestro como la solicitud de conceptos psicológicos sobre las personas homosexuales ha sido una estrategia dilatoria, y propongo revisar las pretensiones de la demanda 10135/14 en cuanto a las razones suficientes para encontrar una distancia justa hacia el derecho a un pacto de cuidado para la _debida inclusión_ de familias monoparentales en los beneficios y obligaciones frente al estado. (shrink)

Esta investigación busca comprender el sustrato emocional en los planes de vida de los jóvenes universitarios, en cuanto a sus juicios de valor sobre una vida digna y buena en situaciones de vulnerabilidad, así como la intencionalidad y los modos de comunicación de estos en la experiencia universitaria. A partir de la propuesta investigativa hermenéutica narrativa de Quintero-Mejía, se interpretaron las emociones morales presentes en las tramas de planes de vida de los estudiantes de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. El (...) autoexamen reveló los conflictos emocionales sobre las situaciones vulnerables que escaparon al control, y los juicios reconstructivos mostraron cómo el miedo, la culpa, la vergüenza o la humillación afectaron el equilibrio emocional. Además, cada estudiante mostró, los juicios compromisorios para el bien propio y creencias hacia el bien común. (shrink)

RESUMENEn este artículo se ponen de manifiesto algunos aspectos de la ética pontiana. El núcleo gira en torno al sujeto como ente relacional. Este aparece inmerso en una praxis intersubjetiva que impregna el obrar humano en conexion incesante con el mundo, físico, cultural y socialPALABRAS CLAVEMERLEAU-PONTY-ETICA-FENOMENOLOGIAABSTRACTThe paper focuses on Merleau-Ponty's ethics. it deals with the subject as a relational being. According to Merleau Ponty, the subject appears immersed within the intersubjective praxis of human action in the world, physical, cultural and (...) socia.KEYWORDSMERLEAU-PONTY-ETHICS-PHENOMENOLOGY. (shrink)

A wide array of species throughout the animal kingdom has shown the ability to distinguish between quantities. Aside from being important for optimal foraging decisions, this ability seems to also be of great relevance in group-living animals as it allows them to inform their decisions regarding engagement in between-group conflicts based on the size of competing groups. However, it is often unclear whether these animals rely on numerical information alone to make these decisions or whether they employ other cues that (...) may covary with the differences in quantity. In this study we used a touch screen paradigm to investigate the quantity discrimination abilities of two closely related group-living species, wolves and dogs, using a simultaneous visual presentation paradigm. Both species were able to successfully distinguish between stimuli of different quantities up to 32 items and ratios up to 0.80, and their results were in accordance with Weber's law (which predicts worse performances at higher ratios). However, our controls showed that both wolves and dogs may have used continuous, non-numerical cues, such as size and shape of the stimuli, in conjunction with the numerical information to solve this task. In line with this possibility, dogs' performance greatly exceeded that which they had shown in other numerical competence paradigms. We discuss the implications these results may have on these species' underlying biases and numerical capabilities, as well as how our paradigm may have affected the animals' ability to solve the task. (shrink)