The informed consent process is the legal embodiment of the fundamental right of the individual to make decisions affecting his or her health., and the patient’s permission is a crucial form of respect of freedom and dignity, it becomes extremely important to enhance the patient’s understanding and recall of the information given by the physician. This statement acquires additional weight when the medical treatment proposed can potentially be detrimental or even fatal. This is the case of thalassemia patients pertaining to (...) class 3 of the Pesaro classification where Allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation remains the only potentially curative treatment. Unfortunately, this kind of intervention is burdened by an elevated transplantation-related mortality risk , equal to 30% according to published reports. In thalassemia, the role of the patient in the informed consent process leading up to HSCT has not been fully investigated. This study investigated the hypothesis that information provided by physicians in the medical scenario of HSCT is not fully understood by patients and that misunderstanding and communication biases may affect the clinical decision-making process. (shrink)

This paper proposes the CorpRank algorithm to extract social hierarchies from electronic communication data. The algorithm computes a ranking score for each user as a weighted combination of the number of emails, the number of responses, average response time, clique scores, and several degree and centrality measures. The algorithm uses principal component analysis to calculate the weights of the features. This score ranks users according to their importance, and its output is used to reconstruct an organization chart. We illustrate the (...) algorithm over real-world data using the Enron corporation’s e-mail archive. Compared to the actual corporate work chart, compensation lists, judicial proceedings, and analyzing the major players involved, the results show promise. (shrink)

Background: The health professionals are involved in the paths of care for patients with different medical conditions. Their life is frequently characterized by psychopathological outcomes so that it is possible to identify consistent burdens. Besides the possibility to develop pathological outcomes, some protective factors such as resilience play a fundamental role in facilitating the adaptation process and the management of maladaptive patterns. Personal characteristics and specific indexes such as burdens and resilience are essential variables useful to study in-depth ongoing conditions (...) and possible interventions. The study was aimed at highlighting the presence and the relations among factors as personal variables, burdens, and resilience, to understand health professionals' specific structure and functions.Methods: The observation group was composed of 210 participants, 55 males, and 155 females, aged from 18 to 30 years old with a mean age of 25.92 years old. The study considered personal characteristics of the subjects, such as age, gender, years of study, days of work per week, hours of work per week, and years of work. Our study had been conducted with the use of measures related to burdens and resilience.Results: The performed analyses consisted of descriptive statistics, correlations, and regressions among the considered variables. Several significant correlations emerged among personal characteristics, CBI, and RSA variables. Specifically, age and work commitment indexes appeared to be significantly related to the development of burdens, differently from the years of study. Significant correlations emerged among personal and RSA variables, indicating precise directions for both domains. Age and gender were identified as predictors to perform multivariate regression analyses concerning CBI factors. Significant dependence relations emerged with reference to all CBI variables.Conclusion: Pathological outcomes and resilience factors represent two sides of the health professionals' experiences, also known as “invisible patients.” Greater knowledge about present conditions and future possibilities is a well-known need in literature so that the current analyses considered fundamental factors. In line with state of the art, future studies are needed in order to deepen elusive phenomena underlying maladjustment. (shrink)

Bizarre delusions are not specific to schizophrenia and can be found in other psychotic disorders. However, to date, there are no studies investigating socio-demographic and clinical characteristics associated with BizD across the psychosis spectrum. In this study 819 subjects with a diagnosis of SZ, schizoaffective disorder and bipolar I disorder were included. Patients with history of BizD and with no BizD were compared with respect to socidemographic and clinical variables, and predictors of BizD were explored. Patients with BizD were less (...) educated, less likely to be married, had higher Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale negative scores and lower Young Mania Rating Scale scores. Younger age, SZ and SZA diagnoses, higher PANSS positive scores, presence of reference delusions, tactile and olfactory hallucinations were predictors. Our results indicate that BizD are associated with higher illness severity, lower functionality and specific set of symptoms. (shrink)

Background: Defense mechanisms serve as mediators referred to the subjects’ attempt to manage stressors capable of threatening their integrity. Mature defense mechanisms represent the high adaptive group, including suppression, which allows the subject to distance disturbing contents from consciousness. In line with general defensive intents, suppression would preserve stable mood states, as in the case of euthymia. Clinical issues usually disturb homeorhesis, so that the study of subjects’ suppressive tendencies would suggest possible existing relations among defense mechanisms, mood states, and (...) clinical issues. The study highlighted the significant existing relations among factors such as suppression, euthymia, mood states, and clinical psychological phenomena.Methods: The observation group was composed of 150 participants, 51 males and 99 females, aged from 25 to 30 years old, with a mean age of 26.63 years old. The study was conducted through the use of measures related to subjects’ characteristics, euthymia, psychological flexibility and psychological well-being, suppression, well-being, and compassion.Results: The performed analyses consisted of descriptive statistics, correlations, differences, and regressions among the considered variables. Starting from the first hypothesis, SMQ factors appeared to be significantly and positively correlated with Euthymia factors, rather than Regression in the Ego service. In line with the previous result, significant and positive correlations emerged among SMQ and Well-being variables, maintaining an inverse relation with Regression in the Ego service. Significant differences emerged between male and female groups concerning SMQ total score and rationalization, with higher male group scores. Finally, significant dependencies emerged among the selected predictors and Compassion satisfaction.Conclusion: The emerged results highlighted significant relations among the considered variables so that it was possible to highlight the common directions assumed by suppression variables, well-being, and euthymia. Moreover, suppression appeared as a significant predictor with a causal role in clinical satisfaction. The results that have emerged allow us to consider defenses through an empirical perspective, useful to suggest an extension to other groups, phenomena, and conditions. (shrink)

Sentences that exhibit sensitivity to order (e.g. 'John and Mary arrived at school in that order' and 'Mary and John arrived at school in that order') present a challenge for the standard formulation of plural logic. In response, some authors have advocated new versions of plural logic based on fine-grained notions of plural reference, such as serial reference (Hewitt 2012) and articulated reference (Ben-Yami 2013). The aim of this article is to show that sensitivity to order should be accounted for (...) without altering the standard formulation of plural logic. In particular, sensitivity to order does not call for a fine-grained notion of plural reference. We point out that the phenomenon in question is quite broad and that current proposals are not equipped to deal with the full range of cases in which order plays a role. Then we develop an alternative and unified account, which locates the phenomenon not in the way in which plural terms can refer, but in the meaning of special expressions such as 'in that order' and 'respectively'. (shrink)

The book contains essays in honor of Victor Raskin. The contributions are all directly related to some of the major areas of work in which Raskin's scholarship has spanned for decades. The obvious connecting idea is the encyclopedic script-based foundation of lexical meaning, which informs his pioneering work in semantics in the 1970s and 1980s. The first part of the book collects articles directly concerned with script-based semantics, which examine both the theoretical and methodological premises of the idea and its (...) applications. Script-based semantics is the foundation of both Raskin's ground-breaking work in humor research (addressed by the articles in part 2) and in Ontological semantics (addressed in part 3), the most recent development of script-based semantics. The fourth part is dedicated to a less-known, but equally important, strand of Raskin's research, the applications of linguistics to other fields, including writing, lexicography, and professional applications (e,g., tourism). Overall, the book provides and up-to-date, in-depth discussion of an influential strand of the discussion on semantics and its most recent developments and influence on other seemingly unrelated fields, such as Cognitive Linguistics. (shrink)

The Vitruvian Man of Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous and most studied drawings over the world as well as one of the most reproduced ones, e.g. in coins, space suit patches, books and movies. The aim of the present work is to discuss the Vitruvian Man as a figurative representation of the Leonardo’s scientific method. Our analysis is based on scientific elements both present in the drawing and provided by Leonardo in his approach to this drawing. (...) Our thesis is that the square symbolizes the measurable physical world and that the man inscribed within the square refers to the physics measurement process based on the operational definition of quantities, including the measurement unit system and the quantities conversion factors. Therefore, the measurement process is fundamental for the Leonardo’s approach to the scientific knowledge, albeit, the drawing also suggests that this latter does not correspond with the true knowledge. The circle, which has a different center with respect to the square, symbolizes the truth, to which the man inscribed in the square yearns, without ever achieving it, the truth being reachable only by the man inscribed within the circle. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and criticize a number of influential contemporary anti-skeptical strategies inspired by G.E. Moore’s “proof of an external world”. I argue that these accounts cannot represent a valid response to skeptical worries. Furthermore, drawing on Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Moore, I argue that Radical skeptical hypotheses should be considered nonsensical combinations of signs, excluded from our epistemic practices.

Una significativa acquisizione, nella cornice della letteratura palmomantica, perviene dal ms. Laur. Plut. XXVIII, 14, che tramanda pure un trattato πεϱι αλλομένων μελων, cap. υξβ′, 462°, ff. 306r-v, vagheggiato da G. Vitelli nell'edizione di P. Flor. III 391 e pubblicato, quindi, da E. Rostagno, che si rivela un gemello del testimone vindobonese, H, censito da H. Diels e presentato quale un ramo della sua tradizione tripartita. Il testo del Laur. permette inoltre di migliorare notevolmente il dettato e la coerenza linguistica (...) della versione H, emendandone i segnali di incipiente collasso casuale. Il Laur. XXVIII, 14 rappresenta del resto un esemplare tipico di codice collettaneo astrologico, vergato negli ultimi decenni del XIV sec., una miscellanea apotelesmatica di epigrafi, pseudepigrafi e adespoti. (shrink)

Although most aspects of world and self-consciousness are inherently subjective, neuroscience studies in humans and non-human animals provide correlational and causative indices of specific links between brain activity and representation of the self and the world. In this article we review neuroanatomic, neurophysiological and neuropsychological data supporting the hypothesis that different levels of self and world representation in vertebrates rely upon i) a 'basal' subcortical system that includes brainstem, hypothalamus and central thalamic nuclei and that may underpin the primary (or (...) anoetic) consciousness likely present in all vertebrates; and ii) a forebrain system that include the medial and lateral structures of the cerebral hemispheres and may sustain the most sophisticated forms of consciousness (e.g. noetic (knowledge based) and autonoetic, reflective knowledge). We posit a mutual, bidirectional functional influence between these two major brain circuits. We conclude that basic aspects of consciousness like primary self and core self (based on anoetic and noetic consciousness) are present in many species of vertebrates and that, even self-consciousness (autonoetic consciousness) does not seem to be a prerogative of humans and of some non-human primates but may, to a certain extent, be present in some other mammals and birds. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between Stakeholder Engagement (SE) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), approaching CSR as a complex system made up of components and interactions. Adopting a System Thinking approach to analyze CSR in a stakeholders-company network, explorative research is conducted through three stages: (1) a critical literature review aimed to identify the components of the CSR system model, (2) the development of the dataset and of the Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) model, (3) the analysis of the CSR behavior (...) in light of the ‘system archetypes’ underpinning the system. The analysis reveals both the structure and the dynamics of CSR and explain its behavior in light of the stakeholder engagement network variables. Findings from this research underscore the existence of six feedback loops, which characterize the relation CSR-SE. The ‘company-stakeholder fit’ acts as a growth engine for the stakeholder engagement network, however other balancing dynamics (e.g., detriment of business objectives) require a tradeoff between Social and Business orientation. This paper contributes to a more profound understanding of the relation between CSR and stakeholder engagement, showing in particular the link between CSR and SE under the assumption of stakeholder-company network. The insights provided serve as a guide for managers and policymakers to navigate the complex dynamics of SE to inform effective strategies of CSR based on network structural actions. (shrink)

Understanding how the chordate body plan originated and evolved is still controversial. The discovery by Spemann and Mangold in 1924 of the vertebrate organizer and its inductive properties in patterning the AP and DV axis was followed by a long gap until the 1960s when scientists started characterizing the molecular events responsible for such inductions. However, the evolutionary origin of the organizer itself remained obscure until very recently; did it appear together with the origin and radiation of vertebrates, or was (...) it a chordate affair? A recent study by Yu and collaborators,1 which analyses the expression of several organizer‐specific genes in amphioxus together with recent phylogenetic data that reversed the position of invertebrate extant chordates (e.g. urochordates and cephalochordates), indicates that the organizer probably appeared in early chordates. It likely had separate signalling centres generating BMP and Wnt signalling gradients along the DV and AP axis. The organizer was then lost in the urochordate lineage, most probably as an adaptation to a rapid and determinate development. BioEssays 29:619–624, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The structures of discourse used by legal and ordinary languages share differences that foster technical issues when applying or fine-tuning general-purpose language models for open-domain question answering on legal resources. For example, longer sentences may be preferred in European laws (i.e., Brussels I bis Regulation EU 1215/2012) to reduce potential ambiguities and improve comprehensibility, distracting a language model trained on ordinary English. In this article, we investigate some mechanisms to isolate and capture the discursive patterns of legalese in order to (...) perform zero-shot question answering, i.e., without training on legal documents. Specifically, we use pre-trained open-domain answer retrieval systems and study what happens when changing the type of information to consider for retrieval. Indeed, by selecting only the important parts of discourse (e.g., elementary units of discourse, EDU for short, or abstract representations of meaning, AMR for short), we should be able to help the answer retriever identify the elements of interest. Hence, with this paper, we publish Q4EU, a new evaluation dataset that includes more than 70 questions and 200 answers on 6 different European norms, and study what happens to a baseline system when only EDUs or AMRs are used during information retrieval. Our results show that the versions using EDUs are overall the best, leading to state-of-the-art F1, precision, NDCG and MRR scores. (shrink)

In this paper we study and equationally characterize the subvarieties of BL, the variety of BL-algebras, which are generated by families of single-component BL-chains, i.e. MV-chains, Product-chain or Gödel-chains. Moreover, it is proved that they form a segment of the lattice of subvarieties of BL which is bounded by the Boolean variety and the variety generated by all single-component chains, called ŁΠG.

A chi si rivolge l’agile volumetto di Settis? Lungi dall’essere - solo - un saggio per addetti ai lavori, la questione teorica sviluppata in questo percorso di ricognizione di “vita e fortuna” del classico rivela l’intenzione di catturare l’attenzione di un pubblico ben più vasto e non per forza specialistico. In un periodo di riforma del «Codice dei Beni culturali e del paesaggio», recentemente uscito a firma dell’attuale Ministro dei Beni culturali, è bene interrogarsi sul ruolo che hanno g...

ABSTRACT:Neuroethics, the study of the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying ethical decision-making, is a growing field of study. In this review, we identify and discuss four themes emerging from neuroethics research. First, ethical decision-making appears to be distinct from other types of decision-making processes. Second, ethical decision-making entails more than just conscious reasoning. Third, emotion plays a critical role in ethical decision-making, at least under certain circumstances. Lastly, normative approaches to morality have distinct, underlying neural mechanisms. On the basis of (...) these themes, we draw implications for research in business ethics and the practice of ethics training. (shrink)

Research has demonstrated that employee reactions to monitoring systems depend on both the characteristics of the monitoring system and how it is implemented. However, little is known about the role individual differences may play in this process. This study proposes that individuals have generalized attitudes toward organizational control and monitoring activities. We examined this argument by assessing the relationship between employees’ baseline attitudes toward a set of monitoring and control techniques that span the employment relationship. We further explore the effects (...) of employees’ generalized attitudes toward monitoring and their individual ethical orientations on their attitudinal reactions to an Internet monitoring system implemented in their workplace. Results of a longitudinal study indicate that as expected, prior beliefs and ethical orientation interact to affect employees’ reactions to monitoring systems. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

Written over the last 18 months of his life and inspired by his interest in G. E. Moore's defence of common sense, this much discussed volume collects Wittgenstein's reflections on knowledge and certainty, on what it is to know a proposition for sure.

More than twenty-five years after the first signs of potential harm, the US remains locked in the grip of an opioid epidemic, with more Americans dying from overdoses than ever before.1 Diversion of prescription opioids plays an important role in opioid-related harms. Much of the scientific and public health focus on diversion has been on end-users, given how commonly non-medical prescription opioid use occurs, as well as the proportion of individuals who report that their source of non-medical opioids was friends (...) or family. However, diversion of opioids, as well as their rampant oversupply, can be discerned higher up the supply chain, including among wholesalers, pharmacies and rogue prescribers whose behavior may trigger well-described “flags” warranting further evaluation and action. (shrink)

G H Bantock; The Parochialism of the Present: some reflections on the history of educational theory, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 13, Issue 1, 30.

G. H. Bird; Discussions: Kantian Myths, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 245–252, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristot.

G I Wall; The Concept of Vocational Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 2, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 51–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9.

The problems of this passage were concisely stated by M. Platnauer more than thirty years ago and his suggestions for their solution have been adopted and developed in A. S. F. Gow's magnum opus. Its authority—so the present writer suspects—is liable at this point to eclipse the meaning of the text.

The conceptual framework of behaviorism is reconstructed in a logical scheme rather than along chronological lines. The resulting reconstruction is faithful to the history of behaviorism and yet meets the contemporary challenges arising from cognitive science, psycholinguistics, and philosophy. In this reconstruction, the fundamental premise is that psychology is to be a natural science, and the major corollaries are that psychology is to be objective and empirical. To a great extent, the reconstruction of behaviorism is an elaboration of behaviorist views (...) of what it is for a science to be objective and empirical. The reconstruction examines and evaluates behaviorist positions on observation and the rejection of introspection, the behavioral data language, theory construction, stimulus-response psychology, the organization of behavior, complex processes, agency, and the interpretation of mentalistic language. The resulting reconstruction shows behaviorism to be a pragmatic psychological version of positivism based on a behavioral epistemology. (shrink)