Background:Personal values influence nursing students’ development of professional values, which affect professional outcomes, and how nursing students react to different situations. Personal values can be shaped by different factors, including culture, gender, and age.Aims:To explore personal values held by nursing students, and to verify if and how gender and year of study affect nursing students’ personal values.Research design:A multicenter, cross-sectional study was used.Participants and research context:The whole population of nursing undergraduate students available at the time was recruited from eight centers (...) of two Universities, composing a sample of 947 students. Demographic data were collected and it was administered the Portrait Values Questionnaire.Ethical considerations:Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Boards of the University of the participating centers.Findings:The study sample was mainly composed of young (92.6%, n = 877), female (77.3%, n = 732), Italian (95.8%, n = 907), and unmarried (98.6%, n = 934) nursing students. The most important value for nursing students, consistently through the years of nursing school, was Self-transcendence, which has the motivational emphasis on helping others and selflessness. Then, we found that male students had higher levels of Power (p < 0.001) and Achievement (p = 0.031), while female students outscored male students in Benevolence (p = 0.005) and Security (p = 0.006). Year of study showed no statistically significant difference.Discussion:Nursing students express high levels in hetero-directed values. Male nursing students, although they choose a stereotypically feminine profession, outscored females in stereotypical masculine values such as dominance and success. This is the first study that describes the personal value profile of undergraduate nursing students, according to the Theory of Basic Human Values, and it is a starting point for future research.Conclusion:Nursing educators might want to consider the findings from this study while guiding students in developing awareness for their personal values. (shrink)

The New Economic Windows Series, derived from Massimo Salzano's ideas and work, incorporates material from textbooks, monographs and conference proceedings that deals with both the theoretical and applied aspects of various sub-disciplines ...

One of the difficulties nurses experience in clinical practice in relation to ethical issues in connection with young oncology patients is moral distress. In this descriptive correlational study, the Moral Distress Scale-Paediatric Version (MDS-PV) was translated from the original language and tested on a conventional sample of nurses working in paediatric oncology and haematology wards, in six north paediatric hospitals of Italy. 13.7% of the total respondents claimed that they had changed unit or hospital due to moral distress. The items (...) with the highest mean intensity in the sample were almost all connected with medical and nursing competence and have considerably higher values than frequency. The instrument was found to be reliable. The results confirmed the validity of the MDS-PV (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.959). This study represents the first small-scale attempt to validate MDS-PV for use in paediatric oncology-ematology nurses in Italy. (shrink)

Heath and Tversky (1991, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 4:5–28) posed that reaction to ambiguity is driven by perceived competence. Competence effects may be inconsistent with ambiguity aversion if betting on own judgement is preferred to betting on a chance event, because judgemental probabilities are more ambiguous than chance events. This laboratory experiment analyses whether ambiguity affects prices and volumes in a double auction market, and contrasts ambiguity aversion to competence effects. In order to test for the presence of competence (...) effects, in the experiment uncertainty is tied to the realisation of events about which the decision maker is more or less knowledgeable. Two experiments are presented: in the first, knowledge is exogenous, whereas in the second the knowledge judgement is endogenous. Market prices provide evidence in favour of the competence hypothesis only when competence is self-assessed. Comparable volumes are observed in both experiments. (shrink)

Histone octamers (hos) and DNA topoisomerase I contribute, along with other proteins, to the higher order structure of chromatin. Here we report on the similar topological requirements of these two protein model systems for their interaction with DNA. Both histone octamers and topoisomerase I positively and consistently respond to DNA supercoiling and curvature, and to the spatial accessibility of the preferential interaction sites. These findings (1) point to the relevance of the topology‐related DNA conformation in protein interactions and define the (...) particular role of the helically phased rotational information; and (2) help to solve the apparent paradoxical behaviour of ubiquitous and abundant proteins that interact with defined DNA sites in spite of the lack of clear sequence consensuses. Considering firstly, that the interactions with DNA of both DNA topoisomerase I and histone octamers are topology‐sensitive and that upon their interaction the DNA conformation is modified; and secondly, that similar behaviours have also been reported for DNA topoisomerase II and histone H1, a topology‐based functional correlation among all these determinants of the higher order structure of chromatin is here suggested. (shrink)

Objective: to develop and test the factorial structure of a new self-determination theory-based measure of behavioral regulation in children. Method: 590 (F = 51.7%) children aged 7-11 years completed the Motivation to Exercise and Diet (MED-C) questionnaire, which comprises 16 items (8 for exercise and 8 for diet) grouped into eight-factors (5 motivations and 3 needs). Psychometric testing included confirmatory factor analysis and internal consistency. Measurement invariance analyses were also performed to evaluate whether the factorial structure of the MED-C was (...) equivalent for gender (male vs. female), age ( 10yo) and the perception of having at least one parent with overweight or obesity (yes vs. no). Results: factorial analysis confirmed an acceptable factors solution for the MED-C and a good fit to the data for both the exercise and the diet subscales assessed independently. The Maximal Reliability coefficient revealed good reliability for the exercise and the diet subscales. Moreover, the MED-C factor structure was invariant across group comparisons. Discussion: findings support the construct validity and reliability of the MED-C. Therefore, it represents the first validated instrument simultaneously measuring motivational regulation and psychological need satisfaction in the context of children’s exercise and diet. Considering the goodness of these results, scale percentile ranks of the total score distribution as well as the z-score and the T-score were provided for clinical and research purposes. Conclusion: The MED-C might support the understanding of motivations and needs of children with weight problems and assist their process of behavioural change in primary and secondary prevention programs. Psychological factors represent, in fact, potential targets for interventions to increase children’s motivation to exercise and diet. (shrink)

More than one reader of George Santayana will approach the pages of this book with the same anxiety that led me to go through them: Could it be even possible to give account of a current burning problem, terrorism, with elements of the philosophy of that “detached” thinker? A problem, the one of terrorism, that as the editors of the book note, presents itself with an uncommon visceral intensity whose media coverage surpasses by far the one of other urgent topics (...) (global warming, immigration,... (shrink)

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a severe mental illness that affects 5 to 20% of the general population. Current antidepressant drugs exerts only a partial clinical efficacy because approximately 30% of depressed patients failed to respond to these drugs and antidepressants produce remission only in 30% of patients. This can be explained by the fact that the complex pathophysiology of depression has not been completely elucidated, and treatments have been mainly developed following the “monoaminergic hypothesis” of depression without considering the (...) key role of other factors involved in the pathogenesis of MDD, such as the role of chronic stress and neuroinflammation. Chronic stress acts as a risk factor for the development of MDD through the impairment of neurotrophins signaling such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and transforming-growth-factor-β1 (TGF-β1). Stress-induced depressive pathology contributes to altered BDNF level and function in MDD patients and, thereby, an impairment of neuroplasticity at the regional and circuit level. Recent studies demonstrate that aerobic exercise strongly increases BDNF production and it may contribute as a non-pharmacological strategy to improve the treatment of cognitive and affective symptoms in MDD. Here we will provide a general overview on the possible synergism between physical activity and antidepressants in MDD. Physical activity can synergize with antidepressant treatment by rescuing neurotrophin signaling in MDD patients, promoting neuronal health and recovery of function in MDD-related circuits, finally enhancing pharmacotherapeutic response. This synergism might be particularly relevant in elderly patients with late-life depression, a clinical subgroup with an increased risk to develop dementia. (shrink)

The semantical structures called T x W frames were introduced in (Thomason, 1984) for the Ockhamist temporal-modal language, $[Unrepresented Character]_{o}$ , which consists of the usual propositional language augmented with the Priorean operators P and F and with a possibility operator ◇. However, these structures are also suitable for interpreting an extended language, $[Unrepresented Character]_{so}$ , containing a further possibility operator $\lozenge^{s}$ which expresses synchronism among possibly incompatible histories and which can thus be thought of as a cross-history 'simultaneity' operator. (...) In the present paper we provide an infinite set of axioms in $[Unrepresented Character]_{so}$ , which is shown to be strongly complete for T x W-validity. Von Kutschera (1997) contains a finite axiomatization of T x W-validity which however makes use of the Gabbay Irreflexivity Rule (Gabbay, 1981). In order to avoid using this rule, the proof presented here develops a new technique to deal with reflexive maximal consistent sets in Henkin-style constructions. (shrink)

The λ-continuum of inductive methods was derived from an assumption, called λ-condition, which says that the probability of finding an individual having property $x_{j}$ depends only on the number of observed individuals having property $x_{j}$ and on the total number of observed individuals. So, according to that assumption, all individuals with properties which are different from $x_{j}$ have equal weight with respect to that probability and, in particular, it does not matter whether any individual was observed having some property similar (...) to $x_{j}$ (the most complete proof of this result is presented in Carnap, 1980). The problem thus remained open to find some general condition, weaker than the λ-condition, which would allow for the derivation of probability functions which might be sensitive to similarity. Carnap himself suggested a weakening of the λ-condition which might allow for similarity sensitive probability functions (Carnap, 1980, p. 45) but he did not find the family of probability functions derivable from that principle. The aim of this paper is to present the family of probability functions derivable from Carnap's suggestion and to show how it is derived. In Section 1 the general problem of analogy by similarity in inductive logic is presented, Section 2 outlines the notation and the conceptual background involved in the proof, Section 3 gives the proof, Section 4 discusses Carnap's principle and the result, Section 5 is a brief review of the solutions which have previously been proposed. (shrink)

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome severely affects psychological well-being. This syndrome frequently occurs in obesity; however, no previous study has investigated the level of psychological well-being in the case of OSA syndrome associated with obesity. In this work, we assessed the level of psychological well-being in fifty-two individuals affected by OSA syndrome and obesity through the Psychological General Well-Being Index. Moreover, we investigated the role of personality, cognitive functioning and attentional capabilities, subjective perception and objective measurement about sleeping, on the subjective (...) perception of psychological well-being. Our sample reported a lower level of psychological well-being; the participants’ scores were below the normative cut-off in all components, except for depression symptoms. A lower expression of harm avoidance temperament and a lower level of daily sleepiness predicted a higher level of psychological well-being. Psychological well-being seemed to be severely affected in individuals affected by OSA syndrome and obesity. The temperament and subjective perception of daily alertness and sleepiness, rather than the syndrome severity, seemed to play a crucial role in the individual perception of the psychological well-being. (shrink)

Reconstruction of human ecosystems and their stability over time provides knowledge of the processes of adaptability developed by isolated communities. Seasonality of vital events is a good indicator of the effects of different lifestyles, which in turn depend on the ecological context in which a population developed specific subsistence models. Seasonality of births reflects the cultural attitude towards the best time to conceive, in relation to work activities and loads; the latter may also affect physiological functions related to fertility. The (...) present research concerns gross birth rates and seasonality of births and conceptions during four centuries in south-central Italy. Birth rates were between 33·0 and 36·5 per 1000. The pattern of seasonality of births and, by extension, of conceptions defines a southern-type agricultural area for the earlier periods. However, it also shows a progressive shift towards an increasing concentration of conceptions in spring namely from April to August – with a large increase in summer in the 19th century with respect to the previous periods. The new 19th century pattern is reported by Crisafulli, Dalla Zuanna & Solero (2000) as being representative of the central Adriatic region, a geographical classification to which Abruzzo can also be attributed. (shrink)

COVID-19 outbroke in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and promptly became a pandemic worldwide, endangering health and life but also causing mild-to-severe psychological distress to lots of people, including healthcare workers. Several studies have already showed a high prevalence of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic symptoms in HCWs but less is known about the efficacy of psychological interventions for relieving their mental distress. The aims of this study were: to evaluate the psychological adjustment of Italian HCWs during the COVID-19 pandemic; to (...) investigate the efficacy of an expressive writing intervention, based on Pennebaker’s paradigmatic protocol, on their psychological adjustment; to analyze if outcomes of EW vary in function of individual differences. Fifty-five HCWs were randomly assigned to one of two writing conditions: EW or neutral writing. Psychological adjustment was assessed before and after three writing sessions. Participants who received the EW intervention showed higher improvements in ptsd, depression, and global psychopathology symptoms. Improvements in EW group varied in function of age, gender, marital status, and baseline values: young, men, married participants and those who had higher baseline scores showed a higher reduction of psychological distress symptoms while women, single and those who had lower baseline value showed increased social support, and resilience. In conclusion, the EW intervention had positive effects which varied in function of individual differences on HCWs’ psychological health. (shrink)

The spread of COVID-19 in Italy resulted in the implementation of a lockdown that obligated the first time the general populace to remain at home for approximately two months. This lockdown interrupted citizens’ professional and educational activities, in addition to closing shops, offices and educational institutions. The resulting changes in people’s daily routines and activities induced unexpected changes in their thoughts, feelings and attitudes, in addition to altering their life perceptions. Consequently, the present study explores how young adults perceived their (...) lives under lockdown during the final week of March 2020, when the reported number of daily coronavirus infections reached its peak in Italy. The research was carried out among 293 university students (234 women and 59 men) with an average age of 20.85 years old (SD = 3.23). The researchers asked participants to describe the emotions, thoughts and experiences that characterized their time under lockdown. The study analyzed specific narratives related to time and space using grounded theory methodology, which was applied using Atlas 8 software, leading to the creation of 68 codes. The study organized these codes into three specific categories: confined in the present, confined in the past, and striving toward one’s goals. Finally, the researchers also created a core-category labeled “continuity of being.” The results showed that the closure of open spaces caused a division in participants’ perceptions of time continuity, with many viewing themselves as feeling fragmented and as living the present in a static and fixed way. Additionally, participants also saw the present as being discontinuous from the past, while, simultaneously, projecting toward the future and the changes it might bring. Finally, this study examined further implications surrounding individual projecting among young people in greater depth. (shrink)

Engaging stakeholders in policy making and supporting policy development with advanced information and communication technologies including policy simulation is currently high on the agenda of research. In order to involve stakeholders in providing their input to policy modeling via online means, simple techniques need to be employed such as scenario technique. Scenarios enable stakeholders to express their views in narrative text. At the other end of policy development, a frequently used approach to policy modeling is agent-based simulation. So far, effective (...) support to transform narrative text input to formal simulation statements is not widely available. In this paper, we present a novel approach to support the transformation of narrative texts via conceptual modeling into formal simulation models. The approach also stores provenance information which is conveyed via annotations of texts to the conceptual model and further on to the simulation model. This way, traceability of information is provided, which contributes to better understanding and transparency, and therewith enables stakeholders and policy modelers to return to the sources that informed the conceptual and simulation model. In this paper, we present the consistent conceptual description (CCD) as conceptual modeling approach to bridge the gap between narrative texts and formal policy models. The CCD meta-model with the underlying vocabulary for describing policy contexts is detailed. A case study introduces the application of the approach in the Open Collaboration for Policy Modeling project. (shrink)

In this study, we extended a model of the relations among ADHD symptoms, anxiety, and academic performance. Undergraduates (N = 515) completed self-report measures of anxiety (i.e. trait, test, math, and literacy) and ADHD symptoms. During the study, they completed math and literacy measures and reported their current (i.e. state) anxiety three times. There were significant correlations among ADHD symptoms and all measures of anxiety. However, neither ADHD symptoms nor trait anxiety were correlated with math or literacy performance. Test-anxious students (...) reported increasing state anxiety as the study progressed. In contrast, math-anxious students reported increased state anxiety following the math tasks but not the literacy tasks and literacy-anxious students reported increased state anxiety following the literacy tasks but not the math tasks. With respect to performance, math-anxious students had worse math performance and literacy-anxious students had worse literacy performance whereas test anxiety was not directly related to performance on either math or literacy tasks. Patterns of relations did not differ for men and women, but, except for literacy anxiety, women reported higher levels of all types of anxiety. These results could help educators understand how affective responses are related to university students’ academic performance. (shrink)

As a theoretical extension of other previous studies, this work represents an improvement of the notions about the relationship between adolescence and Mafia. The research has been aiming at exploring teenagers’ universe within specific social contexts where the presence of criminal organizations is significant, focusing the attention on the modalities through which evolutionary tasks are coped with in contexts with high Mafia density and often characterized by a perception of social space that makes personal, financial, and political development problematic. The (...) research has involved 93 teenagers who live in southern regions where the presence of Mafia organizations is significant. Six focus groups have been carried out, recorded, and transcribed. Verbalizations were analyzed through appropriate qualitative templates, which allowed detecting of three thematic macro-areas: representations of Mafia, emotions connected to it, and planning skills. The qualitative analy.. (shrink)

We introduceself-divisibleultrafilters, which we prove to be precisely those$w$such that the weak congruence relation$\equiv _w$introduced by Šobot is an equivalence relation on$\beta {\mathbb Z}$. We provide several examples and additional characterisations; notably we show that$w$is self-divisible if and only if$\equiv _w$coincides with the strong congruence relation$\mathrel {\equiv ^{\mathrm {s}}_{w}}$, if and only if the quotient$(\beta {\mathbb Z},\oplus )/\mathord {\mathrel {\equiv ^{\mathrm {s}}_{w}}}$is a profinite group. We also construct an ultrafilter$w$such that$\equiv _w$fails to be symmetric, and describe the interaction between the (...) aforementioned quotient and the profinite completion$\hat {{\mathbb Z}}$of the integers. (shrink)

A partire dalla metà del Novecento, dopo una modernità dominata da prospettive di stampo deontologistico o utilitaristico, la filosofia pratica contemporanea ha visto il sorgere di una ripresa di interesse per un’etica “in prima persona”, in grado di offrire una prospettiva integrale sul soggetto e centrata sullo sviluppo del suo carattere e della sua personalità; in breve, si è assistito a un nuovo potente ingresso in scena dell’idea del bene, e, con essa, della virtù quale via maestra per conseguire il (...) fine adeguato della vita umana. Il volume si propone di rendere conto – anche in correlazione al ruolo delle emozioni, ma non solo – del percorso filosofico della virtù: dall’indagine delle sue fonti “classiche”, all’inizio del suo declino nella modernità, al risorgere della sua vitalità negli ultimi decenni nelle diverse aree linguistico-culturali, tenendo anche conto delle differenti discipline con cui si è interfacciata. Esso non pretende di esaurire i percorsi e le suggestioni che una tematica così vasta presenta, né di coprirne tutta la storia; piuttosto, vuole rappresentare uno stimolo alla ricerca, ponendo in connessione tagli disciplinari e metodologici differenti per offrire una riflessione a tutto campo, che metta in dialogo studiosi provenienti da ambiti diversi ed apra nuove prospettive.Saggi di: Francesco Camera, Angelo Campodonico, Elisabetta Cattanei, Michel Croce, Elisa Cuttini, Marco Damonte, Elisa Grimi, Simona Langella, Alberto Masala, Alma Massaro, Letterio Mauro, Giacomo Samek Lodovici, Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, Paolo Vignola, Lodovica Maria Zanet, Matteo Zoppi. (shrink)

The paper discusses an ethical analysis of three common cases involving the most popular requests in rhinoplasty. As the nose plays a fundamental role in the aesthetics and physiognomy of the human face, the request for rhinoplasty may be an expression of both subjective discomfort and objective dysfunction. The paper aims, therefore, to fill the gap between qualitative-subjective impressions related to bodily self-perception and its quantitative-objective assessment. Ethical evaluation should start with consideration of the formal object and circumstances of the (...) act, by posing the following question: Is this a real clinical case? Only after an undoubtedly positive answer to this question, should we consider specific case-related aspects; i.e., the best scientific evidence, available nosography and informed consent, before conducting an ethical evaluation of the case. DOI: 10.5294/pebi.2016.20.1.8. (shrink)

Estudos recentes têm sugerido a existência de interações entre sexo, gênero e ambiente sociocultural na determinação de níveis de indecisão vocacional. Participaram do estudo 186 adolescentes de ambos os sexos (86 do interior e 100 da capital do estado), estudantes do ensino médio. Os instrumentos u..

A definition of nonstandard universe which gets over the limitation to the finite levels of the cumulative hierarchy is proposed. Though necessarily nonwellfounded, nonstandard universes are arranged in strata in the likeness of superstructures and allow a rank function taking linearly ordered values. Nonstandard universes are also constructed which model the whole ZFC theory without regularity and satisfy the κ-saturation property.