The global market for biologics and biosimilar pharmaceutical products is experiencing rapid expansion, primarily driven by the continuous discovery of new molecules. However, information regarding Latin America’s biological market remains limited.

The description of how individual models in families of models are related to each other is crucial for the general philosophical understanding of model-based scientific practice. We focus on the Capital Asset Pricing Models (CAPM) family, a cornerstone in financial economics, to provide a descriptive analysis of model relations within a family. We introduce the concepts of theoretical and empirical complementarity to characterise model relations. Our complementarity analysis of model relations has two types of payoff. Specifically regarding the CAPM, our (...) analysis reveals why this model family, which has been empirically contested, has yet remained popular and important: the different models that have been added over time have made new empirically and theoretically complementary contributions to the model family. More generally, our analysis reveals the dynamic character of model-based scientific practice. Characterising relations between models as theoretically and/or empirically complementary yields three hitherto underappreciated lessons: (i) actual modelling purposes are not always primarily epistemic, (ii) a model's individual import is relative, not absolute, and (iii) there is an important interplay between theory and data models. Faithfully characterising scientific modelling in this way facilitates subsequent analysis of models' epistemic import. (shrink)

Philosophers of science typically focus on the epistemic performance of scientific models when evaluating them. Analysing the effects that models may have on the world has typically been the purview of sociologists of science. We argue that the reactive (or “performative”) effects of models should also figure in model evaluations by philosophers of science. We provide a detailed analysis of how models in financial economics created the impetus for the growing importance of the phenomenon of “passive investing” in financial markets. (...) Considering this case motivates the position that we call contextualism about model evaluation, or _model contextualism_ for short. Model contextualism encompasses standard analyses of the epistemic performance of the model, but also includes their reactive aspects. It entails identifying the _epistemic and contextual import of the model_, the ways in which a model can engender change in the world (which we call the _channels of transmission_), and the _interactions between the epistemic and reactive import of a model_. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPolitical actors use metaphor in their speeches in order to frame political issues [Charteris-Black, J.. Politicians and rhetoric: The persuasive power of metaphor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. If they succeed in imposing a particular frame, especially when there is no agreement on the definition of certain political issues, this can become the prevailing way for referring to that issue [Semino, E.. Metaphor in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. In this research, we argue that this was the case for the metaphor of (...) the JOURNEY in the Catalan political conflict during electoral periods. To that end we use Critical Metaphor Analysis [Charteris-Black, J.. Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] to analyse televised campaign ads from the last three elections for the Parliament of Catalonia – from 2010, 2012, and 2015 – in order to identify how political actors’ use metaphors to talk about the Catalan political situation during these years and to verify if JOURNEY metaphor resulted into the dominant narrative. The results show that the political situation has been conceptualized in terms of a ‘process en route,’ although the narratives generated by the political actors that shaped that discourse differ. (shrink)

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate (...) Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance. (shrink)

Nursing staff plays a key role in the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, being in the front line of care. This study sought to synthesise the qualitative literature on care experiences of frontline nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic. A search was conducted on five databases in January 2021. Fifteen qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the research, being submitted to interpretive meta-synthesis according to the eMERGe guide. The final synthesis included a line of argument (...) that shows the experiences of frontline nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic, divided into three major themes: ‘Instability on the edge of a cliff: unpredictable and unknown context,’ ‘The price of walking the tightrope: the uncertainty surrounding care,’ and ‘Finding the balance to reach the other side: dealing with the emotional demands of care.’ Although essential in the health response to the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses experienced an emotional impact arising from the hampered care provision. Our results point to need for strengthening the training of nurses and future nurses, creating and promoting measures that contribute to their psycho-emotional well-being, ensuring a safe environment for their clinical practice, and promoting their participation in decision-making processes. (shrink)

Banking firms are becoming increasingly aware that their clients’ management of environmental and social risks may in term threaten their own business as lenders and investors. In addition, stakeholders are requiring banks to improve their social performance. As a result, some banks are developing corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and management systems to reduce potential risks and improve their performance. In the Spanish financial system, half of the banking firms are savings banks, most of which have always used some Corporate (...) Social Responsibility (CSR) criteria in their management. Private Banks have only recently started to integrate social aspects in their performance. However, no formal analysis has been carried out on the impact of CSR strategies. Various initiatives have been launched nationally and internationally to include the social dimension in management systems. The purpose of this research is to analyse the social performance of the main Spanish financial companies through public data such as social or sustainability reports and media sources. In order to do this, we need to determine which CSR criteria most greatly affect banking firms and to choose the most accurate quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure social performance. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 218 Seiten: 91-117.

In the context of a new wave of women’s activism for equality, the body is once again at the centre of the discussion today, in the USA and globally. Analysing American discourses about health and illness at the turn of the twenty-first century, Tasha Dubriwny has argued that the current narratives are dominated by neoliberal and postfeminist philosophies that have thrived in a framework of biomedicalisation and self-surveillance. What happens, then, when a successful feminist artist is diagnosed with uterine cancer? (...) How does Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day, face the fact that her life may have a painful ending? How does a woman so aware of her physical and psychological self come to terms with illness? Is she willing to put her political project aside to become a patient? Through a close reading of Ensler’s uterine cancer memoir In the Body of the World, and focusing particularly on its structure and narrative strategies, this article situates her work within the corpus of female literature about health and illness in the twenty-first century, exploring her meaning-making process in the light of the current tensions between feminism and postfeminism. (shrink)

The pandemic caused by the COVID 19 Virus creates an unprecedented situation of global confinement altering the development of competition and sports training at all levels of participation and in all sports, including rhythmic gymnastics (RG). To avoid possible effects of physical, technical and psychological detraining, coaches looked for home training alternatives. The objectives of the study were to know how rhythmic gymnastics training developed during the lockdown period (the conditions, type of training, performance monitoring means, and determinants of gymnasts’ (...) participation) and to provide recommendations for a possible future lockdown. Three hundred and two RG coaches from twenty-six different countries throughout the five continents and four professional levels took part in the study: national team (28), international (26), national (172) and regional (75). The data collection tool was a questionnaire consisting of 39 closed questions structured in three dimensions: identification data of the coaches, training data during confinement and gymnast participation data. The independent variable was the gymnasts’ performance levels and the dependent variables organized in four categories: the technical media used to conduct and monitor the training sessions, the type of training done, the mechanisms for monitoring training performance and the aspects that determined participation. Most coaches kept their gymnasts training during confinement, although 76.5% confirm abandonment of any of their gymnasts. The main means used were real-time video conferencing, although at the lower practice levels the media stand out in deferred time. The contents of the training were mainly body technique, physical preparation and body difficulties. For performance monitoring, challenges, physical, and technical tests were predominant. The determinants for the development of training in the confinement vary depending on the level of the gymnasts, connectivity and electronic resources at the highest level, and the availability of spaces and social distancing at lower levels. For future lockdowns, it is necessary to review the content of the trainings, as well as the performance evaluation and the means necessary for it. (shrink)

Background:The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shortage of qualified nurses in Spain. As a result, the government authorized the hiring of senior students.Objectives:To explore the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts experienced by final-year nursing students who worked during the first outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain.Research design:A qualitative exploratory study was conducted using purposive sampling. Semi-structured interviews were carried out using a question guide. Interviews took place via a private video chat room platform. A thematic, inductive (...) analysis was performed of the information gathered.Participants and research context:Eighteen nursing students were recruited from two universities of Madrid, aged between 18 and 65 years old, enrolled in the fourth year of nursing studies and who were hired under a relief contract for health professionals during the pandemic.Ethical considerations:The present study was carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study was approved by the Local Ethics Committee of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.Results:Three specific themes emerged: (a) coping with patient triage, (b) difficulties in providing end-of-life care, and (c) coping with patient death. Nursing students participated in the process of patient selection for resource allocation and ICU bed occupancy. They were shown how to care for patients who were not admitted to the ICU, in their last moments and were faced with the difficulties of applying end-of-life care. Finally, the nursing students were confronted with the death of their patients, in overwhelming numbers and under adverse conditions.Conclusions:These findings can help shed light on the ethical dilemmas and ethical conflicts faced by novice nursing students, incorporated into the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, it was described that students may normalize the death due to the exhaustion and overwhelmed routine. (shrink)

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in children and adolescents. People who have this disorder are characterized by presenting difficulties in the processes of sustained attention, being very active, and having poor control of their impulses. Despite the high prevalence of this disorder and the existence of various tests used for its diagnosis, few data are available regarding the usefulness and diagnostic validity of these tools. Given the difficulties that these subjects present in executive functions, (...) the aim of this study was to evaluate whether the Neuropsychological Assessment of Executive Functions battery for Children allows to establish specific profiles of executive performance for people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. The sample was made up of 197 participants of both sexes, aged between 6 and 12 years age. A nonexperimental design was followed, using a comparative descriptive study method. The results indicated that the scales of phonological fluency, color path, rings, and interference are the most associated with the diagnosis of ADHD, providing data on inhibition, mental flexibility, sustained and selective attention, planning, verbal fluency, and working memory, among others. The practical implication of these results is in line with providing support in the clinical diagnosis that is carried out in children’s mental health units. In addition, the ENFEN tool can be valued as a suitable psychometric instrument in the psychoeducational field, helping professionals in a school environment to be more aware of the areas of cognitive development in which a student diagnosed with ADHD will have more difficulties and, in doing so, providing more adjusted and effective psychopedagogical measures when it comes to supporting students in their adaptation to the school environment. (shrink)

Children and adolescents are not indifferent to the dramatic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the need to be forced to live in confinement. The change in life to which they have been abruptly subjected forces us to understand the state of their mental health in order to adequately address both their present and future needs. The present study was carried out with the intention of studying the consequences of confinement on anxiety, sleep routines and executive functioning of 1,028 children (...) and adolescents, aged from 6 to 18 years, residing in Spain to; assess if there are differences regarding these consequences in terms of sex and age; how anxiety affects executive functioning in males and females; and to examine the possible correlations between the measured variables. For this purpose, an online questionnaire containing five sections was designed: the first section gathers information on sociodemographic and health data, while the following sections gather information from different standardized scales which measure anxiety, sleep and executive functions, whose items were adapted in order to be completed by parents, and/or legal guardians. The statistical analyzes carried out highlights significant differences in executive functioning between males and females. In turn, in regards to age, greater difficulties were detected in anxiety in the 9 to 12 age group and greater sleep disturbances between 13 and 18 year olds. On the other hand, significant differences were found in intra-sexual executive functioning depending on whether they presented greater or lesser anxiety, with executive functioning being more tendentiously maladjusted in males than in females, revealing a significantly relevant effect size. Positive correlations are obtained between state anxiety and sleep and executive functioning alterations. Finally, through Path Analysis, it is verified that state anxiety is the variable with the greatest weight within the model that would explain the alteration in the executive functioning of the present sample. (shrink)

Tafalla, Marta.Ecoanimal: Una estética plurisensorial ecologista y animalistaMadrid: Plaza y Valdés Editores. Dilemata, 362 p.ISBN 978-84-17121-20-4.

The aim of the present study was to assess the impact of past traumatic war experiences on preadolescents in the Gaza Strip, which could be useful for psychological intervention with current and future child victims. Participants were 521 preadolescents from United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, aged 11 and 13 years old. Sections I to IV from Iraqi Version-Arabic of Harvard Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess trauma experiences and Post-Traumatic Stress (...) Disorder (PTSD). The results show that the preadolescents in the Gaza Strip witnessed the destruction of their homes and the murder of family members and friends. A quarter of the individuals assessed either suffered torture or witnessed others undergoing it, including sexual assaults. Almost half of them experienced a lack of food and clean water. The traumatic and torture experiences seriously affected preadolescents’ mental health as 26.29% met criteria for the diagnosis of PTSD. The data analysis revealed two PTSD modalities, with the severity of impact depending on whether social implications were involved. Further research is required to check whether these two modalities fit to PTSD and complex PTSD. Understanding the effects of past wars on preadolescents in Gaza and distinguishing between different PTSD types could enhance comprehension of the impacts of current attacks on child victims. It can also aid in determining the type of intervention needed to minimize the impact on the mental health of Palestinian youth, enhancing their resilience through psychological and social support. (shrink)

Aims: Attentional bias, alcohol craving, and anxiety have important implications in the development and maintenance of alcohol use disorder. The current study aims to test the effectiveness of a Virtual Reality Cue-Exposure Therapy to reduce levels of alcohol craving and anxiety and prompt changes in AB toward alcohol content.Method: A 49-year-old male participated in this study, diagnosed with severe AUD, who also used tobacco and illicit substances on an occasional basis and who made several failed attempts to cease substance misuse. (...) The protocol consisted of six VR-CET booster sessions and two assessment sessions over the course of 5 weeks. The VR-CET program consisted of booster therapy sessions based on virtual reality exposure to preferred alcohol-related cues and contexts. The initial and final assessment sessions were focused on exploring AB, alcohol craving, and anxiety using paper-and-pencil instruments and the eye-tracking and VR technologies at different time points.Results: Pre and post assessment sessions indicated falls on the scores of all instruments assessing alcohol craving, anxiety, and AB.Conclusions: This case report, part of a larger project, demonstrates the effectiveness of the VR-CET booster sessions in AUD. In the post-treatment measurements, a variety of instruments showed a change in the AB pattern and an improvement in craving and anxiety responses. As a result of the systematic desensitization, virtual exposure gradually reduced the responses to significant alcohol-related cues and contexts. The implications for AB, anxiety and craving are discussed. (shrink)

In the last 30 years, the key issue in developmental Theory of Mind has been if and when children are capable of representing false beliefs. Moving away from this research question, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of attentional processes in false-belief tasks. We focused on the design of the test phase and investigated two factors that may be critical for 3-year-old children’s success: the form of the wh-question and the salience of the target object. The (...) results of two experiments confirmed that 3-year olds are able to explicitly choose the correct answer in a false-belief task provided that they are allowed to focus on the protagonist throughout the task. The salience of the target object, however, was a critical factor in the design of the test phase, as increasing it had a negative effect on children’s performance. These results suggest that the experimental record of the last 30 years may be skewed since standard false-belief tasks do not control for the relative salience of the wrong response, potentially hindering the performance of children under 4. We conclude that a careful investigation of performance factors in false-belief tasks has the potential to reveal deep insights into the development of Theory of Mind skills, even if not directly focused on children’s representation of beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of how existential phenomenology has influenced qualitative research methods across a range of disciplines across the social, health, educational, and psychological sciences. It focuses specifically on how the concepts of “existential structures,” or “existentials”—such as selfhood, temporality, spatiality, affectivity, and embodiment—have been used in qualitative research. After providing a brief introduction to what qualitative research is and why philosophers should be interested in it, the chapter provides clear, straightforward examples of how qualitative researchers have used (...) existentials to analyze qualitative data and design qualitative studies. The chapter is intended to introduce philosophers to existential approaches to phenomenological qualitative research, with the aim of facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration. (shrink)

Varios recursos empleados en la construcción de un grupo de parábolas coinciden con puntos que la ciencia actual enfoca. 1) El hecho de que la situación ajena es percibida de un modo más objetivo, con menos sesgos, que la situación propia. 2) El “altruismo espontáneo”, que empuja a conductas automáticas de ayuda. 3) La enorme influencia que el lenguaje puede ejercer para modular la atención, tanto la ajena como la propia. 4) La coherencia cognitiva, que interviene en el autocontrol, tanto (...) el autocontrol moral como el que está al servicio de los propios intereses del sujeto. Al analizar el efecto de esos puntos en las parábolas en cuestión, intento mostrar que las capacidades comunicativas humanas están allí funcionando al máximo para facilitar la decisión del oyente, y que esa facilitación o ayuda es diferente por completo a las manipulaciones de cualquier tipo. (shrink)

Robots should be able to represent emotional states to interact with people as social agents. There are cases where robots cannot have bio-inspired bodies, for instance because the task to be performed requires a special shape, as in the case of home cleaners, package carriers, and many others. In these cases, emotional states have to be represented by exploiting movements of the body. In this paper, we present a set of case studies aimed at identifying specific values to convey emotion (...) trough changes in linear and angular velocities, which might be applied on different non-anthropomorphic bodies. This work originates from some of the most considered emotion expression theories and from emotion coding for people. We show that people can recognize some emotional expressions better than others, and we propose some directions to express emotions exploiting only bio-neutral movement. (shrink)

No Aggression, Only Teasing: The Pragmatics of Teasing and Banter A bone of contention among researchers is whether the primary function of humour is the expression of aggression against the hearer or the promotion of solidarity between the interlocutors. It is commonly averred that teasing boasts a dichotomous nature, i.e. malignant and benevolent. The former coincides with the potential for criticising, mocking and ostracising the interlocutor, whereas the latter accounts for playfulness and bonding capacity.The overriding goal of the paper is (...) to expound the rapport-building function, which is here postulated to be inherent to teasing. First and foremost, I will determine the scope of interest differentiating between putdown humour and teases, which may assume the form of retorts and develop into multi-turn teases, i.e. banter. Subtypes of teasing will be discussed with a view to proving that it is inherently devoid of genuine aggressiveness. The underlying premise is that teases, even if ostensibly aggressive, i.e. face-threatening, are geared towards solidarity, in conformity with the framework of politeness, including mock impoliteness, holding between intimates. Also, teases fulfil a few subordinate functions such as defunctionalisation or mitigation of face-threatening messages they may carry. (shrink)

Según la liturgia, mi vida, es decir, la de cada cual, en su realidad concreta, no es «cosa» alguna, sino proyecto, empresa, misión; acontece, se va haciendo. La tradicional perspectiva cris-tiana reclama una intensificación del conocimiento, relativamente descuidado, de lo que significa ser persona. Un peso del pensamiento helénico, ajeno al cristianismo, ha orientado al pensamiento poste-rior, filosófico y también teológico, a un «sustancialismo» que ha lle-vado a reducir la persona a un tipo muy particular de «cosa».