This study examines whether character strengths predict resilience (operationalized as stable or higher mental health and subjective well-being despite an adverse event) over a period of approximately one month during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Spain. Using a longitudinal design, participants (N = 348 adults) completed online measures of sociodemographic data, information regarding their situation in relation to the COVID-19, character strengths, general mental health, life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. All variables were measured at Time 1 and Time (...) 2, except for sociodemographic and most COVID-related information (Time 1 only). Time 1 data collection was conducted between March 21, 2020 and April 2, 2020, i.e., approximately the second week of lockdown in Spain. Time 2 data collection was conducted between April 24, 2020 and May 18, 2020, after the Spanish government announced ita intention to progressively release the lockdown. A principal component analysis of character strengths was conducted. Five character strength factors were extracted: fortitude, goodness, intellectual, interpersonal, and restraint. Factor structures at Times 1 and 2 were highly consistent. All character strength factors at Time 1 correlated positively with life satisfaction and positive affect, and negatively with negative affect and mental health at T2 (higher scores in the mental health measure indicate poorer mental health). Fortitude strengths showed the highest correlations. We conducted a series of regression analyses with strength factors at Time 1 as predictors, and mental health, life satisfaction, and positive and negative affect as dependent variables, controlling for their baseline levels. To test the directionality of the relationship between strengths and the dependent variables, all analyses were reversed. All character strength factors predicted an increase in mental health. They also predicted positive affect, with the exception of strengths of restraint. Fortitude, intellectual and interpersonal strengths predicted an increase in life satisfaction. Finally, fortitude strengths, interpersonal strengths, and strengths of restraint, predicted a decrease in negative affect. None of the reversed analyses yielded significant effects. Limitations, implications, and possible character strengths-based interventions aimed at promoting mental health in the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed. (shrink)

EDUCERE is a government funded research and development project. EDUCERE objectives are to investigate, develop, and evaluate innovative solutions for society to detect changes in psychomotor development through the natural interaction of children with toys and everyday objects, and perform stimulation and early attention activities in real environments such as home and school. In the EDUCERE project, an ethical impact assessment is carried out linked to a minors’ data protection rights. Using a specific methodology, the project has achieved some promising (...) results. These include use of a prototype of smart toys to detect development difficulties in children. In addition, privacy protection measures which take into account the security concerns of health data, have been proposed and applied. This latter security framework could be useful in other Internet of Things related projects. It consists of legal and technical measures. Special attention has been placed in the transformation of bulk data such as acceleration and jitter of toys into health data when patterns of atypical development are found. The article describes the different security profiles in which users are classified. (shrink)

Nesta entrevista, conduzida por Gonçalo Marcelo e Maria Luísa Portocarrero, Daniel Frey, professor de filosofia da religião na Universidade de Estrasburgo e Presidente do Conselho Científico do Fonds Ricoeur, apresenta alguns aspetos centrais da sua investigação filosófica, do seu desenvolvimento intelectual e das atividades desenvolvidas no Fonds Ricoeur. Daniel Frey expõe a sua teoria hermenêutica da leitura, influenciada por Gadamer e Ricoeur, mostrando a especificidade da abordagem hermenêutica da leitura. Na entrevista, o autor também explora a importância da filosofia do (...) jovem Ricoeur dos anos 1950‑1960, e a evolução da relação entre filosofia e religião em Ricoeur. Fazendo uma breve descrição do estatuto das obras que se tornam “clássicas” e dos projetos recentes do Fonds Ricoeur, como a digitalização dos arquivos de Ricoeur, esta entrevista de Daniel Frey mostra‑nos até que ponto o trabalho de Ricoeur se encontra hoje aberto a novas leituras e interpretações. (shrink)

Hospitals are paying increasing attention to the delivery of humanized care. The purpose of this study was to explore from the nursing perspective what hospital managers might do to facilitate this. A secondary analysis from a primary ethnographic study regarding dignity in nursing practice was conducted. Twenty interviews of internal medicine nurses from four hospitals were analyzed, and three main themes were identified: Management of nursing teams, Management of ethical values, and Management of the context. It is important for institutional (...) values to be closely aligned with those of the nursing profession, and nurse managers play a key role in ensuring that the latter are applied in practice. The proposed actions offer a cost‐effective framework through which nurses and managers may promote the delivery of humanized care. (shrink)

Resumen: Casablanca la bella de Fernando Vallejo continúa el diálogo que el narrador sostiene con la muerte en sus textos anteriores. La novela evidencia y despliega las obsesiones del autor a partir de la compra y restauración de Casablanca, antigua casa ubicada en el barrio Laureles, Medellín, y cifra de un antiguo esplendor, ahora devastado y vencido por el paso del tiempo. La refacción de la casona constituye una empresa utópica que, aunque condenada al fracaso, trasciende el plano arquitectónico y (...) alcanza alturas revolucionarias, políticas, en el delirio narrativo. La entronización del Corazón de Jesús cuando la casa es inaugurada se erige como la posibilidad de reunir a las presencias amadas en una fiesta heterotópica y soñar con ganarle la batalla no solo a Colombia, la mala patria, sino fundamentalmente a la destrucción y a la muerte. Así, la escritura deviene funeraria, poblada de los vestigios y de la irreductible presencia de los otros, los muertos y los animales, quienes encuentran un espacio hospitalario en el recuerdo y la memoria.: Casablanca la bella, the latest novel by Fernando Vallejo, is a continuation of the dialogue the writer has with Death in earlier works. The novel shows and displays the writer’s obsession from the moment he buys Casablanca, an old house in the Laureles neighbourhood, Medellin, and begins its restoration. The refurbishment of the large house, a symbol of long gone and devastated splendour, becomes a utopian enterprise that, though doomed to fail, transcends the architectural scope and reaches revolutionary, political, heights in the narrative delusion. The enthronement of the Sacred Heart when the house is reopened rises as the possibility to reunite the ghosts of loved ones in a heterotopic party and to dream of winning the battle not only over Colombia, the bad mother country, but most importantly over destruction and death. Thus, the writing becomes funerary, inhabited by remnants and the insurmountable presence of the others, the dead and the animals, who find a welcoming place in remembrance and memory. (shrink)

In this article, our objective was to analyze the emotions expressed regarding the Covid-19 vaccine in content published in Brazilian Portuguese on TikTok, a video sharing platform that has recently experienced global popularity. Our data set for this investigation was comprised of posts including the hashtag #vacina (vaccine), extracted using the Python TikTokAPI library. Emotions were identified and classified using standardized descriptors from the Human-Machine Interaction Network on Emotion (HUMAINE) and the Core Affect Model. Given the diversity of content on (...) TikTok, videos with emotional content were also separated into categories. Results revealed a prevalence of positive emotions such as contentment, enthusiasm, and interest regarding the vaccines, especially in videos of a personal and informative character. Negative emotions, such as doubt and disapproval, were associated with contextual and strategic factors, with significant expression in humorous and infotainment publications. (shrink)

Euthanasia has become the subject of ethical and political debate in many countries including Mexico. Since many physicians are deeply concerned about euthanasia, due to their crucial participation in its decision and implementation, it is important to know the psychological meaning that the term ‘euthanasia’ has for them, as well as their attitudes toward this practice. This study explores psychological meaning and attitudes toward euthanasia in 546 Mexican subjects, either medical students or physicians, who were divided into three groups: a) (...) beginning students, b) advanced students, and c) physicians. We used the semantic networks technique, which analyzed the words the participants associated with the term ‘euthanasia’. Positive psychological meaning, as well as positive attitudes, prevailed among advanced students and physicians when defining euthanasia, whereas both positive and negative psychological meaning together with more ambivalent attitudes toward euthanasia predominated in beginning students. The findings are discussed in the context of a current debate on a bill proposing active euthanasia in Mexico City. (shrink)

Background: The COVID-19 crisis has had a considerable mental health impact on healthcare workers. High levels of psychological distress are expected to have a significant impact on healthcare systems, warranting the need for evidence-based psychological interventions targeting stress and fostering resilience in this population. Online cognitive behavioral therapy has proved to be effective in targeting stress and promoting resilience. However, online CBT programs targeting stress in healthcare workers are lacking.Objective: The aim of our study is to evaluate the feasibility and (...) acceptability of an internet-based CBT intervention, the My Health Too program we developed during the first COVID-19 epidemic peak in France.Methods: We recruited 10 participants among Alsace region hospital staff during the first peak of the pandemic in France. They were given 1 week to test the website and were then asked to answer an internet survey and a semi-structured phone interview.Results: We conducted a thematic analysis of the content from the phone interviews. Major themes were identified, discussed and coded: the technical aspects, the content of the website and its impact on participants’ emotions and everyday life. Overall, the participants reported finding the website easy to use and interactive. They described the resources as easy to understand, readily usable, and useful in inducing calm and in helping them practice self-compassion.Conclusion: Our results suggest that the My Health Too online CBT program is highly feasible and acceptable to healthcare workers during the highly stressful times of the pandemic peak. The feedback provided helped to improve the program whose efficacy is to be tested. (shrink)

ORCA.IT, a new online test of online research and comprehension was developed for the Italian population. A group of 183 students attending various types of upper secondary schools in Northern Italy were tested with the new tool and underwent further cognitive and neuropsychological assessment. The different school types involved in the study are representative of the school population in the Italian system, but can also be easily compared with the educational systems of other countries. The new test turned out to (...) have good psychometric properties after accurate item construction and final selection. In particular, Version 1 showed better characteristics than Version 2. Subsequently, comparison with one-way ANOVAs were performed to test whether differences exist between different school types, between groups with and without reading difficulties, and between males and females. Such differences are sometimes reported in the literature, but many remain controversial. Further, Pearson’s bivariate correlations were calculated to analyze associations between scores on the ORCA.IT and cognitive/neuropsychological variables. Finally, a stepwise regression analysis was performed on aggregated scores to identify the predictors of performance on each of the two versions, The test, especially in the most complete version (Version 1), appears to accurately and reliably capture students’ web searching abilities and online reading comprehension. The tool could highlight differences in online search and comprehension ability between students with and without reading difficulties, not penalizing overall performance but allowing very specific weaknesses to be pointed out. Further, it seems to be able to capture differences due to both educational pathways (different school types) and social attitudes (differences between males and females). Most interesting, it shows to be clearly resting on specific cognitive and neuropsychological abilities, including language, memory and attentional skills, which explain a large portion of the total variance. Offline text reading comprehension is a crucial predictor of online reading performance, while decoding ability is not. Prior knowledge also influences the results, as expected. The new tool turns out to be rather independent from previous internet experience and to measure more cognitively grounded processes related to information gathering, processing and communicating. (shrink)

[Esotericism. One-day Workshop about the Annale n. 25 of the Storia d'Italia Einaudi]. This section contains the proceedings of the one-day workshop on the book Esoterismo, published as the Annale n. 25 in the collection "History of Italy" by Einaudi. The workshop was organized by ISPF on the October 26, 2011 to promote the discussion on the significance of Western esotericist traditions in Italian history. S. Caianiello’s introduction highlights some major concepts and goals of the recent field of studies about (...) Western Esotericism, and some open problems about its definition. M. Cambi comments on the substantial transformation of esotericist themes in Giordano Bruno’s natural philosophy, whereby the sources of the magician’s power are completely enclosed in the realm of nature, thus rejecting any transcendent foundation. M. Conforti focuses on "the function and opportunities" offered by the Western Esotericism approach "to the genesis and development of early modern science" and comments from this perspective on different contributions in the volume, emphasizing however the importance of largely pre-existing traditions in the history of science and medicine which have long challenged the wiggish separation between science and magic, rational and irrational thought. L. Simonutti provides new material to the general theme, with a historical-philosophical analysis of the esotericist elements in Picart’s iconography of the 18th Century edition of "Cymbalum mundi". F. Sofia discusses the effective role of esotericist traditions in the attempts to establish a "civil religion" in Italy from Risorgimento to Fascism, a history in which, she argues, it is difficult to establish "how much esotericism was an intentional choice or the product of an unavoidable nicodemism". C. Castellano reviews the contributions dedicated to the "political teology" of Italian Risorgimento, dealing in depth with the complex relationship between Freemasonry and Carbonari in Italy – in her view, more of a cultural than of a strictly political connection – and highlights the relevance of the anticurial component in their esotericist inspiration. G.M. Cazzaniga, author and editor of the Annale, beyond reacting to the different stimuli offered by the discussion, provides a brief history of Western Esotericism studies in Europe and of the reasons of their difficult reception in Italy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Feminist Philosophy in a Historical Context Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy Feminist Methodologies: Key Issues New Orientations References Further Reading.

En este artículo examino la noción de amor a Dios (amour envers Dieu) en Descartes, conectándola con los principios metafísicos de su sistema y con los objetivos a los que da respuesta, y mostrando sus beneficios para la vida de todo hombre. Los desacuerdos de Spinoza en esta materia no constituyen una discrepancia menor, sino que adquieren relevancia sistémica desde el momento en que el amor Dei está conectado con nociones centrales de su filosofía, como la idea de Dios y (...) sus atributos, la relación del hombre con la sustancia infinita, la actividad mental-corporal, el conocimiento como expresión del deseo, la función liberadora de los afectos y la fruición del amor a Dios. Esta noción constituye una plataforma privilegiada para examinar las peculiaridades de los sistemas de Descartes y Spinoza, y deja ver notables diferencias en sus respectivos proyectos de naturalización de la realidad. (shrink)

Aunque admito sin reservas -nos dice Spinoza en su TTP- que todas las cosas son determinadas por leyes universales de la naturaleza a existir y a obrar de una forma fija y determinada, afirmo, no obstante, que [...], para el uso de la vida,...

Humans have this extraordinary cognitive ability: They imagine inexistent objects, they treat them as if they were real, and by doing so they make them real. They thus give rise to a shared institutional reality that enables them to cooperate in ways that would be impossible otherwise. In this paper, we would like to revisit the account that HLA Hart gives of the practice of collective acceptance that makes a legal system possible. We try to provide an explanation of what (...) Hart calls the ‘internal point of view’, on the basis of experiments on institutional concepts, drawing on the paradigm known as ‘embodied cognition’. Experts and non-experts in law rated the role of several cognitive dimensions for a list of words referring to two kinds of abstract concepts (institutional and theoretical/scientific) and two kinds of concrete ones (food and artifact). Institutional concepts were distinguished into pure-institutional (e.g., ‘contract’, ‘state’, ‘property’) and meta-institutional (e.g., ‘norm’, ‘duty’, ‘justice’). The results provide an empirical account of how our way of thinking about institutions changes as we acquire expertise in the legal field, thus shading light on the cognitive underpinnings of the ‘internal point of view’. (shrink)

BackgroundFace-to-face visual contact is a key component of the early parent-child interaction, therefore a visual impairment condition of the parent or the child represents a risk factor for dyadic patterns' development.AimsThe study presents a critical single case of a blind father and a 18-month-old visually impaired child. The study aims to explore changes in the relational functioning of this dyad during an early family-centered intervention.Methods and proceduresTen parent-child sessions were videotaped and micro-analytically coded. Data were analyzed through a State Space (...) Grid crossing child's social cues and types of father verbalizations.Outcomes and resultsFindings showed a stable increase in the amount of child social cues over time. Moreover, the dyad exhibited progressive changes in dyadic regulation, stability, and organization. The return time to the “active interaction” region of interest decreased progressively. A reduction was observed also for the time spent by the dyad in the region “no vocal contact.”Conclusions and implicationsThis critical single case highlighted the benefits of parental engagement in early interventions for the dyadic regulation in parent-child interaction. (shrink)

Genetic and early environmental factors are interwoven in the etiology of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Epigenetic mechanisms offer the molecular machinery to adapt to environmental conditions. There are gaps in the knowledge about how epigenetic mechanisms are involved in the effects of early affective environment, development of BPD, and psychotherapy response. We reviewed the available evidence of the effects of psychotherapy on changes in DNA methylation and conducted a pilot study in a sample of 11 female adolescents diagnosed with BPD, (...) exploring for changes in peripheral DNA methylation of FKBP5 gene, which encodes for a stress response protein, in relation to psychotherapy, on symptomatology and underlying psychological processes. For this purpose, measures of early trauma, borderline and depressive symptoms, psychotherapy outcome, mentalization, and emotional regulation were studied. A reduction in the average FKBP5 methylation levels was observed over time. Additionally, the decrease in FKBP5 methylation observed occurred only in those individuals who had early trauma and responded to psychotherapy. The results suggest an effect of psychotherapy on epigenetic mechanisms associated with the stress response. The finding that epigenetic changes were only observed in patients with early trauma suggests a specific molecular mechanism of recovery. The results should be taken with caution given the small sample size. Also, further research is needed to adjust for confounding factors and include endocrinological markers and therapeutic process variables. (shrink)

The H19 gene produces a non‐coding RNA, which is abundantly expressed during embryonic development and down‐regulated after birth. Although this gene was discovered over 20 years ago, its function has remained unclear. Only recently a role was identified for the non‐coding RNA and/or its microRNA partner, first as a tumour suppressor gene in mice, then as a trans‐regulator of a group of co‐expressed genes belonging to the imprinted gene network that is likely to control foetal and early postnatal growth in (...) mice. The mechanisms underlying this transcriptional or post‐transcriptional regulation remain to be discovered, perhaps by identifying the protein partners of the full‐length H19 RNA or the targets of the microRNA. This first in vivo evidence of a functional role for the H19 locus provides new insights into how genomic imprinting helps to control embryonic growth. (shrink)

This paper investigates the influence of contrastive stress in resolving potential semantic ambiguities. The sentences under investigation contain the focus operator only. Sentences with only have three main properties: (a) some sentential element is typically in focus, (b) the speaker presupposes that a set of alternatives to the focus element (the contrast set) has previously been introduced in the context; and (c) the speaker makes the assertion that the focus element has some unique property which other members of the reference (...) set lack. Previous literature on focus has concluded that stress plays a role in the interpretation of only-sentences in many natural languages, including English (Rooth, 1992). In processing terms, this suggests that contrastive stress could immediately determine which NP bears the semantic focus (and therefore the NP that presupposes a contrast set in the context). On this scenario, the processing cost associated with contrastive stress should be no greater than the cost associated with neutral stress. There is, however, a theoretically motivated proposal that makes the opposite prediction (Reinhart, 1999). As we understand it, in this model the parser is expected calculate default stress first, with its associated interpretation, and only later reanalyze the sentence, if necessary, based on the contrastive stress pattern. Since in English the default stress falls on the last NP of the sentence, any deviation from this pattern will be more costly. In processing sentences with contrastive stress, the model implies that the parser first calculates the interpretation that is associated with the default stress pattern. In this regard, young children’s interpretation of sentences with stress and the focus operator only is of special interest. Because young children are in the throes of grammar formation, their behavior can reveal default strategies for sentence processing, as well as the extent to which the parser’s sensitivity to contrastive stress is universal, i.e., includes child languages.. (shrink)

O Brasil é o país com a maior população católica. A evolução de variáveis socioeconômicas na década de 1990, aí incluindo casamentos, fertilidade, renda, moradia entre outras, revelam que nenhuma mudou tanto quanto a composição religiosa da população brasileira. O Censo é a base de dados mais usada nos estudos no tema, porém, as estatísticas estão hoje paradas no Censo 2000. A Pesquisa de Orçamentos Familiares 2009 – POF/IBGE permite medir a religiosidade brasileira recente detalhando subgrupos religiosos com classificação comparável (...) a do Censo e possibilidade de cruzamentos com uma gama maior de variáveis. Este estudo processa microdados da POF de 2003 e 2009, quando o contexto econômico difere das décadas anteriores, permitindo estudar as relações entre economia e religiosidade num contexto de expansão. Mostramos que: i) há velocidade de queda do catolicismo dez vezes mais rápida do que a observada entre 1872 e 1980, mas similar à dos anos 1990, embora as novas filiações sejam não apenas nos grupos evangélicos pentecostais, mas mais nos protestantes tradicionais; ii) ao contrário dos países europeus mais católicos que vivem contração econômica (PIIGS), as localidades brasileiras mais católicas vivem expansão mais forte que as demais; iii) os brasileiros se mostram na mediana de frequência a cultos religiosos em 150 países; iv) as mulheres, embora mais religiosas que os homens, tornaram-se menos católicas; v) os jovens mostram uma fuga mais acelerada do catolicismo. Palavras-chave: Religião. Economia. Max Weber. Mapa das Religiões no Brasil.Brazil is the country with the biggest Catholic population in the world. The evolution of socio-economic variables during the 1990s such as marriage, fertility, incomes, housing among others, revealed that no other variable changed as much as the religious composition of Brazilian population. Demographic Census is the mostly widely used survey in religious studies. However, these statistics are today only available until 2000. Microdata from national Family Expenditure Surveys (POF/IBGE) allow us to measure the recent Brazilian religious evolution by detailing religious subgroups and also by exploring a richer array of correlated variables. This study processes microdata from POF in 2003 and 2009 when the economic context differs from the previous decades. It allows us to study the relation between economy and religion during a boom. This article aims to show that: i) The speed of the fall in Catholicism in Brazil is two times faster than the one observed in 1990, although similar to the one observed in the 1990s; the destinies of the Catholics however are less the Pentecostal Evangelicals and more the Traditional Protestants. ii) In contrast to major European Catholic countries that are facing a recession, the Brazilian localities with a catholic population have experienced an economic expansion. iii) Brazilians are on the World median in terms of attendance to religious activities. iv) Although females are more religious than males, they are less catholic. v) There is a faster reduction of Catholics among the youth in Brazil. Key words: Religion. Economy. Max Weber. Maps of Religions in Brazil. (shrink)