This work analyzes and characterizes the spread of the COVID-19 disease in Mexico, using complex networks and optimization approaches. Specifically, we present two methodologies based on the principle of the rupture for the GC and Newton's law of motion to quantify the robustness and identify the Mexican municipalities whose population causes a fast spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Specifically, the first methodology is based on several characteristics of the original version of the Vertex Separator Problem, and the second is based (...) on a new mathematical model. By solving VSP, we can find nodes that cause the rupture of the giant component. On the other hand, solving the NLM can find more influential nodes for the entire system’s development. Specifically, we present an analysis using a coupled social network model with information about the main characteristics of the contagion and deaths caused by COVID-19 in Mexico for 19 months. This work aims to show through the approach of complex networks how the spread of the disease behaves, and, thus, researchers from other areas can delve into the characteristics that cause this behavior. (shrink)

This paper makes the claim that the overall structure of Plato’s Laws follows the principle of indirect access to the knowledge of human soul, which consists in the understanding that a philosophical approach to the soul is only possible initially through an image of it. The structure of the Laws can be interpreted as a movement towards the soul’s interior, beginning with the famous image of the puppet. According to this image, the movement opens with the analysis of the non-rational (...) elements of the soul, which are capable of an harmonic relation with the rational element, and advances bit to bit to the rational or epistemic element. The political necessity of undertaking the dialectical investigation in order to attain a philosophical knowledge of the human soul and its specific excellence appears only at the end of the dialogue. In this way, the structure of the Laws dramatizes the progressive birth of philosophy, conceived as the dialectical investigation of the unity of virtue, starting from the initial understanding of the human soul contained in the myth of the puppet. (shrink)

Relationships between degree/area of academic formation and religious and Darwinian views are controversial. This study aimed to compare the religious beliefs and acceptance of Darwinian evolution between two contrasting South American scientific communities (Chile and Colombia), accounting for different degrees and areas of academic formation. In 2018, 115 last year bachelor students (surveyed as freshmen in 2014 for a previous study) from Chile, and 283 first/last year bachelor students, graduate students, and professors from Colombia, all belonging to biology, chemistry, or (...) physics, were surveyed. Chilean students/faculty were significantly more agnostic/atheist, more accepting of Darwinian evolution, and less creationist than their Colombian counterparts. Academic degree and area differently affected these views in both countries, as only in Chile there was a clear tendency among biologists and physicists with higher degrees to hold less religious and creationist views. Marked differences between the history, socioeconomic contexts, and especially in high school and university curricula of both countries might explain these results. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene por objetivo realizar un análisis del quehacer del profesional y especialista de seguridad y salud en el Trabajo de un grupo egresados de esta disciplina, este proceso parte del análisis de cuatro dimensiones, una primera enfocada a la parte demográfica, la segunda lo sociolaboral, la tercera a las barreras que se pueden presentar en la Gestión de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo en las empresas y la cuarta enfocada en aspectos tecnológicos y de innovación en (...) el diseño, implementación y mantenimiento del Sistema de Gestión de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo. (shrink)

The essential role of creativity has been highlighted in several human knowledge areas. Regarding the neural underpinnings of creativity, there is evidence about the role of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) on divergent thinking (DT) and convergent thinking (CT). Transcranial stimulation studies suggest that the left DLPFC is associated with both DT and CT, whereas left IFG is more related to DT. However, none of the previous studies have targeted both hubs simultaneously and compared (...) transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and random noise stimulation (tRNS). Additionally, given the relationship between cognitive flexibility and creativity, we included it in order to check if the improvement in creativity may be mediated by cognitive flexibility. In this double-blind, between-subjects study, 66 healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups (N = 22) that received a transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), or sham for 20 min. The tDCS group received 1.5 mA with the anode over the left DLPFC and cathode over the left IFG. Locations in tRNS group were the same and they received 1.5 mA of high frequency tRNS (100–500 Hz). Divergent thinking was assessed before (baseline) and during stimulation with unusual uses (UU) and picture completion (PC) subtests from Torrance Creative thinking Test, whereas convergent thinking was evaluated with the remote association test (RAT). Stroop test was included to assess cognitive flexibility. ANCOVA results of performance under stimulation (controlling for baseline performance) showed that there were significant differences in PC (F = 3.35, p = 0.042, np2 = 0.10) but not in UU (F = 0.61, p = 0.546) and RAT (F = 2.65, p = 0.079) scores. Post-hoc analyses showed that tRNS group had significantly higher scores compared to sham (p = 0.004) in PC. More specifically, tRNS showed higher performance in fluency (p = 0.012) and originality (p = 0.021) dimensions of PC compared to sham. Regarding cognitive flexibility, we did not find any significant effect of any of the stimulation groups (F = 0.34, p = 0.711). Therefore, no further mediation analyses were performed. Finally, the group that received tDCS reported more adverse effects than sham group (F = 3.46, p = 0.035). Altogether, these results suggest that tRNS may have some advantages over tDCS in DT. (shrink)

Trope theory is an increasingly prominent contender in contemporary debates about the existence and nature of properties. But it suffers from ambiguity concerning the nature of a trope. Disambiguation reveals two fundamentally different concepts of a trope: modifier tropes and module tropes. These types of tropes are unequally suited for metaphysical work. Modifier tropes have advantages concerning powers, relations, and fundamental determinables, whereas module tropes have advantages concerning perception, causation, character-grounding, and the ontology of substance. Thus, the choice between modifier (...) tropes and module tropes is significant and divides the advantages of trope theory simpliciter. In addition, each resulting trope theory is unstable: modifier trope theory threatens to collapse into realism and module trope theory threatens to collapse into austere nominalism. This invites reflection on the stability of trope theory in general. (shrink)

Morality and religion: intimately wed, violently opposed, or something else? Discussion of this issue appears in pop culture, the academy, and the media―often generating radically opposed views. At one end of the spectrum are those who think that unless God exists, ethics is unfounded and the moral life is unmotivated. At the other end are those who think that religious belief is unnecessary for―and even a threat to―ethical knowledge and the moral life. -/- This volume provides an accessible, charitable discussion (...) that represents a range of views along this spectrum. The book begins with a lively debate between Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig on the question, Is goodness without God good enough? Kurtz defends the affirmative position and Craig the negative. Following the debate are new essays by prominent scholars. These essays comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of religion and morality. The book closes with final responses from Kurtz and Craig. (shrink)

The amount of information that can be transmitted through a noisy channel is affected by relativistic effects. Under the presence of a fixed noise at the receiver, there appears an asymmetry between “slowly aging” and “fast aging” observers which can be used to have private information transmission. We discuss some models for users inside gravitational wells and in the twin paradox scenario.

Appearing in English for the first time, this book comprises two of Ortega’s most important works, ¿Qué es conocimiento? and the essay “Ideas y creencias.” This is Ortega’s attempt to systematically present the foundations of his metaphysics of human life and, on that basis, to provide a radical philosophical account of knowledge. In so doing, he criticizes idealism and overcomes it. Accordingly, this book goes well beyond a treatise on epistemology; in fact, as understood in modern philosophy, this discipline and (...) its questions are shown to be derivative and, in that sense, they are transcended here by Ortega’s systematic effort. Written during the time of his maturity, these works are representative of his fruitful and radical period. Both ¿Qué es conocimiento? and “Ideas y creencias” are equally decisive not only for the understanding and radical completion of Ortega’s work, but also for their relevance to the work of continental philosophers during the same period and for years to come. (shrink)

Postmodernism may seem a particularly inappropriate term when used in conjunction with a region that is usually thought of as having only recently, and then unevenly, acceded to modernity. Yet in the last several years the concept has risen to the top of the agenda of cultural and political debate in Latin America. This collection explores the Latin American engagement with postmodernism, less to present a regional variant of the concept than to situate it in a transnational framework. Recognizing that (...) postmodernism in Latin America can only inaccurately be thought of as having traveled from an advanced capitalist "center" to arrive at a still dependent neocolonial "periphery," the contributors share the assumption that postmodernism is itself about the dynamics of interaction between local and metropolitan cultures in a global system in which the center-periphery model has begun to break down. These essays examine the ways in which postmodernism not only designates the effects of this transnationalism in Latin America, but also registers the cultural and political impact on an increasingly simultaneous global culture of a Latin America struggling with its own set of postcolonial contingencies, particularly the crisis of its political left, the dominance of neoliberal economic models, and the new challenges and possibilities opened by democratization. With new essays on the dynamics of Brazilian culture, the relationship between postmodernism and Latin American feminism, postmodernism and imperialism, and the implications of postmodernist theory for social policy, as well as the text of the Declaration from the Lacandon Jungle of the Zapatatista National Liberation Army, this expanded edition of boundary 2 will interest not only Latin Americanists, but scholars in all disciplines concerned with theories of the postmodern. Contributors. Xavier Albó, José Joaquín Brunner, Fernando Calderón, Enrique Dussel, Néstor García Canclini, Martín Hopenhayn, Neil Larsen, the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, Norbert Lechner, María Milagros López, Raquel Olea, Aníbal Quijano, Nelly Richard, Carlos Rincón, Silviano Santiago, Beatriz Sarlo, Roberto Schwarz, and Hernán Vidal. (shrink)

Why is it that most fictions present one and only one ending, rather than multiple ones? Fictions presenting multiple endings are possible, because a few exist; but they are very rare, and this calls for an explanation. We argue that such an explanation is likely to shed light on our engagement with fictions, for fictions having one and only one ending seem to be ubiquitous. After dismissing the most obvious explanations for this phenomenon, we compare the scarcity of multiple endings (...) in traditional kinds of fiction to their profusion in the case of interactive fictions. This contrast poses a challenge to accounts of our engagement with fictions in terms of games of make-believe. We conclude that solving this puzzle is likely to improve our philosophical understanding of fictions. (shrink)

The agency objection to applying distributive justice globally is that principles of distributive justice need to apply to the behaviour of a special kind of institutional agent of distributive justice because of the special powers of that agent. No such agent exists capable of configuring cooperative arrangements between all persons globally, and so distributive justice does not apply globally. One response to institutional views of this kind is that they do not rule out Natural Duties of Justice that fall on (...) all of us to bring about institutional agencies capable of global distributive justice. In this article I argue that this move presupposes a particular, teleological, conception of justice whilst institutional accounts most plausibly rest on a non-teleological one. I provide an argument for favouring the non-teleological conception. I also show why alternative ways of arguing for global Natural Duties of Justice do not get around this controversy. The debate is at the level of presuppositions about justice, and relying on a partisan conception is question begging. (shrink)

Las relaciones con el poder son una práctica ineludible de todo aquel individuo que pasaba a América. Fray Pedro de Ayala, franciscano, obispo de Nueva Galicia (1561-1569) tuvo que desempeñarse, como religioso y gobernante, en esta difícil tarea de congeniar voluntades: de una parte, la sociedad civil y, de otra, los intereses espirituales de las personas encomendadas a su tarea episcopal. Sus cartas al rey Felipe II ofrecen el testimonio directo del hombre contra el entorno social y geográfico de un (...) territorio en construcción, como era la Nueva Galicia de mediados del siglo XVI. (shrink)

This paper argues that Susan James' definition of rights as 'enforceable claims' suffers from key faults based in its descriptive approach to a normative and evaluative concept (rights). James cannot explain key and valuable functions of the concept of rights as action-guiding and reason-giving, and some upshots of the view are inconsistent with the reasons one would appeal to rights as a distinctive concept. On her view it is difficult to explain how a right can be violated, given that violation (...) appears to imply lack of effective enforcement. (shrink)

Los objetivos principales de este trabajo son, por una parte, plantear una propuesta metodológica para el estudio del cambio lingüístico en árabe clásico y, por otra, explorar las particularidades de los procesos de gramaticalización y el cambio lingüístico en esta lengua semítica. Para ello, hemos analizado los procesos de cambio y gramaticalización experimentados por la partícula ḥattā (‘hasta’, ‘incluso’) en árabe clásico desde el siglo VII hasta el XX. Se han analizado 731 ejemplos de ḥattā extraídos de uno de los (...) más completos corpus históricos del árabe, el HADC, todavía inédito. El estudio ha tenido en cuenta 30 variables diferentes que se han recogido en fichas recopiladas en una base de datos relacional. Los resultados se han organizado en un esquema conceptual que presenta la vinculación semántica de cada uno de los cinco valores de ḥattā así como las trayectorias evolutivas de esta partícula en árabe clásico. Las conclusiones más relevantes son que, por descontado, sí hay cambio lingüístico en árabe clásico, si bien sus trayectorias evolutivas se ven constreñidas tanto por la presión de la norma coránica como por su naturaleza de lengua esencialmente escrita. Los resultados también revelan que existe una marcada estratificación, persistencia y divergencia en los procesos y apuntan, a su vez, la relevancia de incluir variables como el origen del autor o los tipos de texto cuando se analiza el cambio lingüístico. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory has largely been anthropocentric in its focus on human actors and interests, failing to recognise the impact of nonhumans in business and organisations. This leads to an incomplete understanding of organisational contexts that include key relationships with nonhuman animals. In addition, the limited scholarly attention paid to nonhumans as stakeholders has mostly been conceptual to date. Therefore, we develop a stakeholder theory with animals illustrated through two ethnographic case studies: an animal shelter and Nordic husky businesses. We focus (...) our feminist reading of Driscoll and Starik’s (J Bus Ethics 49:55–73, 2004) stakeholder attributes for nonhumans and extend this to include affective salience built on embodied affectivity and knowledge, memories, action and care. Findings reveal that nonhuman animals are important actors in practice, affecting organisational operations through human–animal care relationships. In addition to confirming animals are stakeholders, we further contribute to stakeholder theory by offering ways to better listen to nontraditional actors. (shrink)

En esta investigación se analiza la expresión escrita individual de las élites miliares que participan en las guerras de la independencia de Cuba. La producción escrituraria es un reflejo de la variedad social coetánea, por lo que permite tanto estudiar la vitalidad de fenómenos sociolingüísticos como determinar los rasgos que constituyen la base de la variedad cubana del español. Además, la selección de cartas cruzadas entre mandos militares y afectos a la causa evidencia la gestación del modelo de _cubanía_ que (...) simboliza la nueva patria. (shrink)

«Aristotle in Spain in sixteenth century. Background, significance and aspects of his influence». The aim of this paper is to explain, on the basis of some significant testimonies, the way in which Aristotelianism penetrates in Spain, and how this penetration of the new Aristotelian thought in the European countries reveals a permanent conflict between the Middle Age and the Renaissance, particularly in Spain, where the rediscovery and the use of the ancient authorities very often constitutes an important theoretical problem. The (...) author shows some of these difficulties with examples from many fields. (shrink)

Resumen Nombrar implica ejercer el poder sobre lo nombrado, involucra coacción y coerción social. La atribución de nombres, adjetivos, designaciones, favorece la taxonomía cognitiva, pero también socio-ideológico-cultural. Cuando una Institución al servicio del Estado nomina, esas denominaciones tienen consecuencias en los sujetos nombrados. En México, a través de las prácticas semiótico- discursivas se llevó a cabo esta edificación del concepto de discapacidad con importantes implicaciones. El objetivo de este artículo es describir la construcción discursiva, a través de la historia de (...) la nominación de la discapacidad para vincular este hecho con el imaginario social de México y revisar las implicaciones socio-ideológicas resultantes. Para efectuar un primer acercamiento, estudiamos los términos con que se designa la discapacidad en los Censos de población y vivienda realizados por el organismo responsable y sustentamos la exposición del proceso a partir de las propuestas de Lyons y Serrano sobre las implicaciones semánticas vinculadas con la designación; de Thiebaut respecto a la articulación semántica del nombre con la pragmática del texto, y con apoyo en Koike para la co-construcción del significado. (shrink)

There is an increasing demand by society that university students demonstrate competitive skills to enable them to achieve greater success when entering the workplace. Creativity and life satisfaction correlate positively with academic performance, productivity, and excellence in the working environment. The presence of creativity and emotional intelligence in the curriculum and teaching methods in Spanish universities, however, is surprisingly lacking. Studies that examine gender differences in these variables provide conflicting results. The purpose of our research is to analyse the changes (...) produced in both creativity and life satisfaction in university students by a positive emotional and creative intervention and explore individual differences by gender. The methodology used was a quasi-experimental pre- test/post- test design with experimental/control groups. Three hundred university students from the Community of Madrid completed three exercises that evaluated creativity and life satisfaction. The results show significantly higher results in creativity and life satisfaction in women, who continued to achieve high results after the intervention. Finally, we discuss the need for emotional and creative education in universities and focus on the employability and the guarantee of equal opportunities through the development of these competencies. (shrink)

La concepción de los espacios educativos se genera dentro de una sociedad tecnológica afanada en preparar al alumnado. Se plantea descubrir qué conceptos se barajan acerca de los espacios educativos creando tendencias. La metodología de revisión bibliográfica tiene en cuenta la base de datos WOS seleccionando y revisando críticamente 10 publicaciones de actualidad. Se concluye que hay profusión de nuevos conceptos que se barajan teniendo en cuenta la asimilación de estos nuevos espacios, los espacios de aprendizaje y las tecnologías usadas. (...) También se barajan temáticas teniendo en cuenta la situación del alumnado y del profesorado adaptándose a estos nuevos espacios. (shrink)

Schiffer has given an argument against supervaluationist accounts of vagueness, based on reports of vague contents. Suppose that Al tells Bob ‘Ben was there’, pointing to a certain place, and later Bob says, ‘Al said that Ben was there’, pointing in the same direction. According to supervaluationist semantics, Schiffer contends, both Al’s and Bob’s utterances of ‘there’ indeterminately refer to myriad precise regions of space; Al’s utterance is true just in case Ben was in any of those precisely bounded regions (...) of space, and Bob’s is true just in case Al said of each of them that it is where Ben was. However, while the supervaluationist truth-conditions for Al’s utterance might be satisfied, those for Bob’s cannot; for Al didn’t say, of any of those precisely delimited regions of space, that it is where Ben was. In an earlier version of the material presented here (García-Carpintero 2000) I replied to Schiffer’s argument that supervaluationism has an independently well-motivated defense. The response is essentially based on the point that the occurrence of ‘there’ in Bob’s utterance (and of ‘tall’ in Wright’s argument) occurs in indirect discourse, and supervaluationists may allow that it shifts its referent there. Schiffer’s reply to this response shows that it was not made sufficiently clearly. In this paper I will try to improve on that score. In his more recent reply, Schiffer (2000b, 325) dismisses a proposal like the one I will make, mainly because it “undermines … a leading virtue of supervaluationism … its implication that vagueness is … not a feature of the world.” I will argue that my reply does not undermine the fundamental contentions of the supervaluationist account. (shrink)

This work presents a novel approach to forecast streaming big time series based on nearest similar patterns. This approach combines a clustering algorithm with a classifier and the nearest neighbours algorithm. It presents two separate stages: offline and online. The offline phase is for training and finding the best models for clustering, classification and the nearest neighbours algorithm. The online phase is to predict big time series in real time. In the offline phase, data are divided into clusters and a (...) forecasting model based on the nearest neighbours is trained for each cluster. In addition, a classifier is trained using the cluster assignments previously generated by the clustering algorithm. In the online phase, the classifier predicts the cluster label of an instance, and the proper nearest neighbours model according to the predicted cluster label is applied to obtain the final prediction using the similar patterns. The algorithm is able to be updated incrementally for online learning from data streams. Results are reported using electricity consumption with a granularity of |$10$| minutes for 4-hour-ahead forecasting and compared with well-known online benchmark learners, showing a remarkable improvement in prediction accuracy. (shrink)

Beyond different starting points, stakeholder theory and Catholic Social Thought share many compatible perspectives when analyzing the role of the firm in economic activity, especially regarding the attention of the firm to different social and economic actors. Additionally, ST bears limitations regarding its ethical and anthropological foundation, and also about the legitimation of the different stakeholders’ interests. Therefore, ST lacks clear criteria to solve possible conflicts of interest between stakeholders. This paper analyzes the potentiality of ST, widely accepted in corporate (...) management, to integrate CST principles in order to solve those conflicts. At the same time, the paper studies the possibility of finding in the principles of CST an anthropological and ethical foundation for ST. This foundation could be the source of criteria to discuss the levels of legitimation and prioritization between stakeholders´ interests, especially when those interests collide. (shrink)

Violence in sexual-affective relationships among teens and young people is recognized as a social, educational, and health problem that has increased worldwide in recent years. Educational institutions, as central developmental contexts in adolescence, are key in preventing and responding to gender violence through implementing successful actions. In order to scientifically support that task, the research reported in this article presents and discusses a psycho-educational intervention focused on autobiographical memory reconstruction that proved to be successful in raising young women’s critical consciousness (...) about the force of the coercive dominant discourse upon sexual-affective experiences and memories. We examined among a sample of young women (n = 32, age range 17-30) whether reading a scientific text about love, the Radical Love book, modified autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in line with preventing future victimization. This group was compared with a control group (n = 31, age range 17-30). Memory reports were collected before and after the reading and coded to analyze their content, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Memory quality features were assessed with the Memory Quality Questionnaire. A focus group was also conducted to examine the personal impact of the intervention on participants. Compared with controls, the experimental group had stronger critical memories (of episodes involving violence), an average decrease in positive emotions induced by recall, and an average increase in negative emotions. The results show the effectiveness of the reading intervention designed in relation to gender violence prevention, as they indicate the ability of the psycho-educational action to debilitate the force of the coercive dominant discourse in young women’s memories. The findings both advance knowledge on the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memories of violent sexual-affective relationships in female youth and indicate the potential of memory-based interventions as an instrument to prevent and reduce gender violence in school contexts. Teachers and teaching staff, and educational psychologists, among others, can benefit from these results by expanding the tools they have to address gender violence among female adolescents and youth. (shrink)

Geroscience and philosophy of aging have tended to focus their analyses on the biological and chronological dimensions of aging. Namely, one ages with the passage of time and by experiencing the cellular-molecular deterioration that accompanies this process. However, our concept of aging depends decisively on the social valuations held about it. In this article, we will argue that, if we study social aging in the contemporary world, a novel phenomenon can be identified: the paradox of aging in the digital era. (...) If the social understanding of aging today is linked to unproductivity and obsolescence; then there is a possibility that, given the pace of change of digital technologies, we become obsolete at an early chronological and biological age, and therefore, feel old at a younger age. First, we will present the social dimension of aging based on Rowe and Kahn's model of successful aging. We will also show that their notion of social aging hardly considers structural aspects and weakens their approach. Second, departing from social aging in its structural sense, we will develop the paradox of aging in the digital era. On the one hand, we will explain how the institutionalization of aging has occurred in modern societies and how it is anchored in the concepts of obsolescence and productivity. On the other hand, we will state the kind of obsolescence that digitalization produces and argue that it can make cohorts of biologically and chronologically young individuals obsolete, and thus they would be personally and socially perceived as old. (shrink)

Extensive research has documented the harmful effects associated with working for a narcissistic supervisor. However, little effort has been made to investigate ways for victims to alleviate the burdens associated with exposure to such aversive persons. Building on the tenets of conservation of resources theory and the documented efficacy of functional assets to combat job-related stress, we hypothesized that subordinates’ resource management ability would buffer the detrimental impact of narcissistic supervisors on affective, cognitive, and behavioral work outcomes for subordinates. We (...) found support for our hypotheses across three independent samples of US workers (N = 187; 199; 136). Specifically, higher levels of subordinate resource management ability attenuated the harmful effects of supervisor narcissism on employee-reported emotional exhaustion, job tension, depressed mood, task performance, and citizenship behavior. Conversely, these relationships further deteriorated for subordinates with lower levels of resource management ability. Overall, our research contributes to the literature that, although extensively documenting the harmful ramifications of narcissism in organizations, has neglected to investigate potentially mitigating factors. (shrink)