The scientific study of lucid sleep, defined as the ability to retain critical self-awareness during ongoing sleep, has traditionally focused on lucid dreaming and induction techniques that specifically target REM sleep. Recently, interest has grown to include other forms of lucid sleep, such as out-of-body experiences, sleep paralysis, and “witnessing-sleep” episodes described in Indian philosophical traditions. Empirical data on these states remain limited, primarily due to the lack of specific induction techniques designed for their study. In this case series study, (...) we examine four individuals who reported lucid sleep episodes in a controlled laboratory setting, using a novel induction method combining pre-sleep meditation and visual stimulation. While this method requires future validation, we captured five lucid sleep episodes, including one instance of lucid dreamless sleep, one out-of-body-like experience, and three different types of lucid dreams. Sleep was monitored using wearable EEGs and submental EMGs. A detailed phenomenological analysis provided further context for these experiences, which were reported during both REM and non-REM sleep. Together, the induction protocol and findings described here may inform future research on lucid sleep and altered states of consciousness during sleep. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a heightened focus on the study of minimal forms of awareness during sleep to advance the study of consciousness and understand what makes a state conscious. This focus draws on an increased interest in anecdotical descriptions made by classic Indian philosophical traditions about unusual forms of awareness during sleep. For instance, in the so-called state of witnessing-sleep or luminosity sleep, one is said to reach a state that goes beyond ordinary dreaming and abide in a state (...) of just awareness, a state in which one is not aware of anything else other than one’s own awareness. Moreover, for these traditions, this state is taken to be the essence or background of consciousness. Reports on such a state opens the door to exciting new lines of research in the study of consciousness, such as inquiry into the so-called “objectless” awareness during sleep—states of awareness that lack an ordinary object of awareness. In this two-staged research project, we attempted to find the phenomenological blueprints of such forms of awareness during sleep in 18 participants by conducting phenomenological interviews, informed by a novel tool in qualitative research, the micro-phenomenological interview (MPI) method. Following a phenomenological analysis, we isolated a similar phase across 12 reported experiences labelled as ‘nothingness phase’ since it described what participants took to be an experience of ‘nothingness’. his common phase was characterised by minimal sense of self—a bodiless self, yet experienced as being ‘somewhere’—, the presence of non-modal sensations, relatively pleasant emotions, an absence of visual experience, wide and unfocused attention, and an awareness of the state as it unfolded. (shrink)

El texto que presentamos recoge las principales conclusiones que han derivado de los estudios sobre la Colección de documentos árabes del Archivo Histórico Provincial de Granada. Compuesta principalmente por documentos de carácter jurídico, el análisis del contenido de cada uno de ellos en relación con la materialidad del soporte y las tintas así como la coincidencia en el diseño y planificación de la página revelan el uso de idénticos protocolos de ejecución. Esta investigación nos está permitiendo, además, establecer coincidencias relevantes (...) relacionadas con los procesos de elaboración del papel entre los últimos años de permanencia de los árabes en la Península Ibérica y los primeros tras la incorporación del territorio a la Corona de Castilla y, sobre todo, con el modo de ejecutar el documento de archivo en sus formas externa e interna. (shrink)

Dating manuscripts is a difficult task – particularly when these are not expressly datemarked, but even when they are. Factors such as the existence of successive copies that continue and repeat established models and production methods make dating a challenging task. The present work forms part of a much broader, comprehensive, investigation on the material composition of dated and bound manuscripts from the School of arabic Studies– CSIC of Granada. By means of a study protocol, errors in the dating of (...) manuscripts ms6, ms10, ms26 and ms29 are successfully detected and corrected, and alternative dating proposed. (shrink)

BackgroundThe H2020 i-CONSENT project has developed a set of guidelines that offer ethical recommendations and practical tools aimed at making the informed consent process in clinical studies more comprehensive, tailored, and inclusive. An analysis of the appropriateness of some of its novel recommendations was carried out by a group of experts representing different stakeholders.MethodsAn adaptation of the RAND/ucla Appropriateness Method was used to assess the level of agreement on the recommendations among 14 representatives of different stakeholders, including patients, regulators, investigators, (...) ethics experts, and the pharmaceutical industry. The process included two rounds of rating and a virtual meeting.ResultsFifty-three recommendations were evaluated. After the first round, 34 recommendations were judged “appropriate”; 19 were judged “uncertain”; and none was judged “inappropriate”. After the second round, 9 “uncertains” changed to “appropriate”. All recommendations rated medians of 6.5–9 on a 1–9 scale (1 = “extremely inappropriate”, 5 = “uncertain”, 9 = “extremely appropriate”). The sections “General recommendations” and “Gender perspective during the consent process for clinical studies” showed the highest “uncertainty” rating. The four keys to improving the understanding of the ICP in clinical studies are to: (1) consider consent a two-way continuous interaction that begins at the first contact with the potential participant and continues until the end of the study; (2) improve investigators’ communication skills; (3) co-create the information; and (4) use a layered approach, including information to compensate for the potential participant’s possible lack of health literacy and a glossary of terms.ConclusionsThe RAND/ucla method has demonstrated validity for assessing the appropriateness of recommendations in ethical guidelines. The recommendations of the i-CONSENT guidelines were mostly judged “appropriate” by all stakeholders involved in the informed consent process. (shrink)

A new model of the development of temporal concepts is described that assumes that there are substantial changes in how children think about time in the early years. It is argued that there is a shift from understanding time in an event-dependent way to an event-independent understanding of time. Early in development, very young children are unable to think about locations in time independently of the events that occur at those locations. It is only with development that children begin to (...) have a proper grasp of the distinction between past, present, and future, and represent time as linear and unidirectional. The model assumes that although children aged 2 to 3 years may categorize events differently depending on whether they lie in the past or the future, they may not be able to understand that whether an event is in the past or future is something that changes as time passes and varies with temporal perspective. Around 4 to 5 years, children understand how causality operates in time, and can grasp the systematic relations that obtain between different locations in time, which provides the basis for acquiring the conventional clock and calendar system. (shrink)

Previous studies of children’s counterfactual reasoning have focused on scenarios in which a single causal event yielded an outcome. However, there are also cases in which an outcome would have occurred even in the absence of its actual cause, because of the presence of a further potential cause. In this study, 152 children aged 4-9 years reasoned counterfactually about such scenarios, in which there were ‘doubly-determined’ outcomes. The task involved dropping two metal discs down separate runways, each of which was (...) sufficient to knock over a toy pig. One of the runways was shorter than the other, meaning that one of the discs actually knocked over the pig whereas the other always arrived too late to do so. Children were asked whether the pig would have been knocked over in the absence of the first metal disc descending the runway. We found that children could accurately answer such counterfactual questions by 6-7 years. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a discussion of the significance of studies of aspects of tool use in understanding causal cognition. It argues that tool use studies reveal the most basic type or causal understanding being put to use, in a way that studies that focus on learning statistical relationships between cause and effect or studies of perceptual causation do not. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey: validation across different occupational groups in Poland This paper concerns the psychometric evaluation of the Polish version of a self-report questionnaire to measure burnout. Although the Maslach Burnout Inventory is the most commonly employed measure of burnout, researchers have been troubled by some of its psychometric limitations. The aim of this study is to examine the MBI-GS factor structure in three occupational groups, and to evaluate its reliability. In evaluating factorial validity, we carried out an (...) explanatory analysis and a number of confirmatory analyses. An additional aim was to explore the relationships between biographic characteristics and burnout. The results of the confirmatory analyses show us that all three models fit the data almost acceptably, both in the total sample and in the separate occupational groups, and that the fit of the three-factor solution appears to be somewhat better than that of the one- and two-factor solutions. When the initial model failed to fit the data well, we had to eliminate two items with weak reliability. The results then confirmed the factorial validity of the MBI-GS—as expected, the MBI-GS consists of three scales that are moderately correlate. (shrink)

During its century-long unfolding, spreading in numerous directions, Husserlian phenomenology while loosening inner articulations, has nevertheless maintained a somewhat consistent profile. As we see in this collection, the numerous conceptions and theories advanced in the various phases of reinterpretations have remained identifiable with phenomenology. What conveys this consistency in virtue of which innumerable types of inquiry-scientific, social, artistic, literary – may consider themselves phenomenological? Is it not the quintessence of the phenomenological quest, namely our seeking to reach the very foundations (...) of reality at all its constitutive levels by pursuing its logos? Inquiring into the logos of the phenomenological quest we discover, indeed, all the main constitutive spheres of reality and of the human subject involved in it, and concurrently, the logos itself comes to light in the radiation of its force (Tymieniecka). Papers by: Kristana Arp, Gary Backhaus, Mafalda Blanc, Piotr Blaszczyk, Manuel Bremer, Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield, Peter Abumhenre Egbe, Jesus Adrian Escudero, Wayne Froman, Jorge Garcia-Gomez, David Grunberg, Dasuke Kamei, Arion Kelkel, Filip Kolen, Tze-wan Kwan, Leonard Lawlor, Grahame Lock, Nancy Mardas, Nikolay Milkov, Cezary J. Olbromski, Helena De Preester, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Gertrudis Van de Vijver, Luca Vanzago, Anatoly Zotov. (shrink)

This book explores the “new normal” for teaching, learning, and leadership in higher education. Emphasis is placed on welcoming growth and change and being curious to the transformative opportunities that exist for today’s students so that the next generation is prepared to solve the world’s most pressing issues.

El texto que presentamos recoge las principales conclusiones que han derivado de los estudios sobre la Colección de documentos árabes del Archivo Histórico Provincial de Granada. Compuesta principalmente por documentos de carácter jurídico, el análisis del contenido de cada uno de ellos en relación con la materialidad del soporte y las tintas así como la coincidencia en el diseño y planificación de la página revelan el uso de idénticos protocolos de ejecución. Esta investigación nos está permitiendo, además, establecer coincidencias relevantes (...) relacionadas con los procesos de elaboración del papel entre los últimos años de permanencia de los árabes en la Península Ibérica y los primeros tras la incorporación del territorio a la Corona de Castilla y, sobre todo, con el modo de ejecutar el documento de archivo en sus formas externa e interna. (shrink)

The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the effects of complex training on sprint, jump, and change of direction ability among soccer players. After an electronic search, 10 peer-reviewed articles were considered in the meta-analysis. The athletes included in this meta-analysis were amateur to professional level male soccer players. These studies incorporated CT in soccer players who were compared to a control group. Significant moderate to large improvements were observed in the CT group [sprint: standard mean difference = 0.92–1.91; (...) jump: SMD = 0.96–1.58; COD: SMD = 0.97–1.49] when compared to control groups. Subgroup analysis were also conducted based on age, duration, and competitive level. The beneficial effects of CT were greater in players <18 vs. ≥18 years, after ≥8 vs. <8 weeks and among professional vs. amateur players. In conclusion, regular soccer training programs may be supplemented with CT to improve sprint, jump, and COD performance. A longer duration of CT seems to be optimal in improving the physical abilities of soccer players. Professional players and <18 years players may benefit more from CT program. (shrink)

BackgroundResearch during 2020 has been rapidly attending to the impact of COVID-19 on various dimensions of wellbeing on adults and children around the world. However, less attention has focused on the psychoeducational impact on children and their families. To our knowledge, no currently available studies have looked specifically at the impact of COVID-19 on students with dyslexia and their families. Research on this topic is needed to offer greater support for this population of students and their families.ObjectiveThe main objective of (...) this paper is to examine the psychoeducational impact of the required COVID-19 quarantine in Spain among children with dyslexia and their families.MethodA sample of 32 children with dyslexia and their mothers participated in this study.MeasuresChildren and adolescents with dyslexia and their mother completed several measures before the required national quarantine in Spain and again during the quarantine. Children completed measures of depression, state anxiety, reading activity, and reading motivation. Mothers provided demographic information and completed measures related to students’ emotional and behavioral difficulties as well as parenting stress, parental distress, and a questionnaire about educational problems during quarantine.ResultsMajor findings showed that during quarantine, children with dyslexia had increased levels of depression and anxiety symptoms, and parents perceived their children as having more emotional symptoms, hyperactivity-inattention, and conduct problems. During quarantine, children and adolescents with dyslexia also showed less reading activity and less reading motivation. Parents also reported significantly more stress, during quarantine compared to pre-quarantine conditions. Some demographic and psychological variables predicted children’s state anxiety as well parental stress. The questionnaire related to impacts of quarantine also revealed several important findings. For example, nearly all parents of children with dyslexia reported difficulties in establishing study routines, that the quarantine negatively affected their child’s learning, and that they did not receive sufficient help from teachers on how to support their child’s learning. Additionally, the vast majority of the parents were very worried about the child’s learning and school success, the child’s motivation and interest in reading, the child’s peer relations, and the professional skills of the child’s teacher.ConclusionThis study offers a preliminary investigation into this topic and elucidates several psychoeducational challenges that children with dyslexia and their families have experienced during the quarantine in Spain. Study findings highlight the need to provide immediate support for children with dyslexia and emphasizes the importance of developing prevention programs to mitigate any future negative impacts of COVID-19 on children with dyslexia and their parents. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume argue that we can, and they offer a new way: the "participatory turn," which proposes that individuals and communities have an ...

As Social Economy financial institutions, credit unions have traditionally been considered less efficient than traditional banking entities. However, like banks and savings banks, they have to be as efficient and competitive as possible to survive in today’s business environment, especially at times of crisis. To date, there have been very few studies on their efficiency and practically none for the crisis period. Moreover, almost all the existing studies assess only financial efficiency, without considering their social function. This study examines the (...) levels of both financial and social efficiency in Spanish credit unions as well as their main determinants during the recent crisis. We apply the two-stage double bootstrap data envelopment analysis methodology based on panel data corresponding to all the credit unions active in Spain between 2008 and 2013. The empirical results indicate that financial and social efficiency achieved an acceptable level, although on average the former was slightly greater than the latter. We also find that both age and merger and acquisition activity were positively influential on the financial efficiency of credit unions but had a significant negative effect on their social efficiency. Moreover, the regional location of such entities and the financial crisis were also crucial determinants of both types of efficiency. Our findings are therefore useful for all the stakeholders of credit unions to know if these entities have been efficient according to a double bottom line accounting in the crisis period and hence to maintain successful social management that is compatible with satisfactory financial efficiency. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive study of the origins of seminal early modern debates on the certainty and ontology of mathematics. It analyzes Alessandro Piccolomini's De certitudine mathematicarum (1547), a work that ignited widespread controversy by challenging the scientific status of mathematics. The study delves into Piccolomini's logical doctrines, his philosophy of mathematics, and his perspectives on the relationship between mechanics and natural philosophy. Special attention is given to Piccolomini's ancient and medieval sources, the 16th-century rediscovery of Proclus' In Euclidem, (...) and the influence of Priscian's In De Anima. (shrink)

Translation from German to English by Daniel Fidel Ferrer -/- What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? -/- German title: "Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren?" -/- Published: October 1786, Königsberg in Prussia, Germany. By Immanuel Kant (Born in 1724 and died in 1804) -/- Translation into English by Daniel Fidel Ferrer (March, 17, 2014). The day of Holi in India in 2014. -/- From 1774 to about 1800, there were three intense philosophical and theological controversies (...) underway in Germany, namely: Fragments Controversy, the Pantheism Controversy, and the Atheism Controversy. Kant’s essay translated here is Kant’s respond to the Pantheism Controversy. During this period (1770-1800), there was the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Urge (stress)) movement with thinkers like Johann Hamann, Johann Herder, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Goethe; who were against the cultural movement of the Enlightenment (Aufklärung). Kant was on the side of Enlightenment (see his Answer the Question: What is Enlightenment? 1784). -/- What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? / By Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). [Was heißt: sich im Denken orientieren? English]. (shrink)

Our society is being shaped in a non-negligible way by the technological advances of recent years, especially in information and communications technologies. The pervasiveness and democratization of ICTs have allowed people from all backgrounds to access and use them, which has resulted in new information-based assets. At the same time, this phenomenon has brought a new class of problems, in the form of activists, criminals and state actors that target the new assets to achieve their goals, legitimate or not. Cybersecurity (...) includes the research, tools and techniques to protect information assets. However, some cybersecurity measures may clash with the ethical values of citizens. We analyze the synergies and tensions between some of these values, namely security, privacy, fairness and autonomy. From this analysis, we derive a value graph, and then we set out to identify those paths in the graph that lead to satisfying all four aforementioned values in the cybersecurity setting, by taking advantage of their synergies and avoiding their tensions. We illustrate our conceptual discussion with examples of enabling technologies. We also sketch how our methodology can be generalized to any setting where several potentially conflicting values have to be satisfied. (shrink)

India is the emerging country with the world’s greatest social banking program, so Indian banks are required to finance the weaker sectors of society that are excluded from the traditional financial system, while also providing mainstream banking services to non-priority sectors. For social banks to promote the ethical–social management of their dual mission and to be successful in today’s business environment, they must be as efficient as possible in both dimensions of their banking activity. Whereas the efficiency of Indian banks (...) in the financial dimension is well understood, to date there has been no research evaluating their double bottom-line of achieving social and financial goals. Our study applies an innovative Network Slack-Based DEA model to evaluate how efficient Indian public banks are when providing credit to priority and non-priority sectors. We also explore the main factors influencing bank efficiency. Results suggest that Indian public banks have performed relatively well in both activities, although social efficiency has been slightly greater than financial efficiency. Moreover, their commitment to priority sector lending has not come into conflict with the profit-seeking objectives of mainstream banking services. As regards determinants of social and financial efficiency, there are countervailing forces played by regional wealth, bank size, branch networks, and rural location. Our findings are therefore useful for stakeholders of Indian public banks as they indicate if these entities have adequately managed their double bottom-line, and hence if they are critical for poverty alleviation and development in India. (shrink)

Los juegos de mesa son un producto cultural emergente estrechamente vinculado a actividades de aprendizaje informal sobre disciplinas variadas como la biología, las matemáticas o los idiomas. De entre estas áreas de conocimiento destaca la Historia, ya que desde el inicio del juego de mesa moderno hace 50 años se han publicado miles de juegos inspirados en las más diversas eras y hechos históricos, desde la Prehistoria hasta la Guerra Fría. Existe un interés académico creciente para desarrollar métodos de Aprendizaje (...) Basado en Juegos para aprovechar el potencial del juego como herramienta didáctica, pero la mayor parte se centra en el uso de videojuegos en el aula, y son escasos los trabajos que analizen el juego de mesa histórico en tanto que actividad de aprendizaje informal. Este trabajo explora el contenido histórico recreado en miles de juegos de mesa entendidos como motores de aprendizaje informal, con el objetivo de conocer qué temas de la Historia aparecen en juegos de mesa comerciales y, por tanto, son susceptibles de aprendizaje por parte de los jugadores. Para ello se ha desarrollado un método computacional basado en el modelado de tópicos y la visualización de datos para la identificación automática de temas en juegos de mesa a partir de sus descripciones textuales. El análisis presentado aquí se centra en un estudio comparativo de tres períodos con una escala diferente: a) la época Medieval, b) el siglo XIX, y c) Segunda Guerra Mundial. Los resultados del trabajo muestran como las temáticas tratadas en los juegos dependen directamente de la época en la que éstos se enmarcan, así como la existencia de marcados sesgos hacia la sobrerepresentación de guerras y la historia de Europa. Estas contribuciones sugieren que los juegos de mesa pueden promover el aprendizaje informal crítico sobre hechos históricos y al mismo tiempo reforzar una percepción pública desigual de nuestro pasado. (shrink)

A key aim in biology and psychology is to identify fundamental principles underpinning the behavior of animals, including humans. Analyses of human language and the behavior of a range of non-human animal species have provided evidence for a common pattern underlying diverse behavioral phenomena: Words follow Zipf's law of brevity (the tendency of more frequently used words to be shorter), and conformity to this general pattern has been seen in the behavior of a number of other animals. It has been (...) argued that the presence of this law is a sign of efficient coding in the information theoretic sense. However, no strong direct connection has been demonstrated between the law and compression, the information theoretic principle of minimizing the expected length of a code. Here, we show that minimizing the expected code length implies that the length of a word cannot increase as its frequency increases. Furthermore, we show that the mean code length or duration is significantly small in human language, and also in the behavior of other species in all cases where agreement with the law of brevity has been found. We argue that compression is a general principle of animal behavior that reflects selection for efficiency of coding. (shrink)

La universidad fue una invención europea y desde su origen en el siglo XIII ha tenido un papel decisivo en la formación de la Europa moderna y en su expansión al resto del mundo. Pero, a partir de 1945, Europa pierde su hegemonía y las universidades se globalizan. Además, en las cuatro últimas décadas se ha impuesto el neoliberalismo y, con él, el llamado capitalismo académico o educativo. En este artículo se hace un balance de las grandes transformaciones de la (...) institución universitaria y, siguiendo la inspiración de José Ortega y Gasset, Jacques Derrida y Boaventura de Sousa Santos, se esbozan algunas propuestas sobre el papel que debería desempeñar en el siglo XXI. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene por objetivo plantear la pregunta por la técnica económica en el sentido heideggeriano del preguntar. Con “sentido heideggeriano” nos referimos al modo en el que Heidegger plantea la pregunta por la técnica a partir de la perturbación que provoca la técnica moderna. En otras palabras, nos preguntamos por “la” técnica económica inspirados por las consecuencias – pasadas, actuales y potenciales – de la técnica económica moderna: la economía de mercado. El trabajo procederá de la siguiente manera. (...) En primer lugar, planteamos la pregunta por la técnica económica explicando los motivos que nos llevan a ella y la inspiración heideggeriana de esta pregunta. En particular, apuntamos al fenómeno de la crisis económica en su sentido contemporáneo. En segundo lugar, buscaremos mostrar que, tal como hizo Heidegger con la técnica, no es posible hablar de “la” economía, sino que será necesario distinguir entre una economía antigua y una economía moderna. En tercer lugar, recurriremos al estudio histórico-antropológico de Karl Polanyi para describir la distinción entre ambos modos de concebir lo económico. En cuarto lugar, a partir de la descripción anterior mostraremos que la economía de mercado no es un mero instrumento para la producción de condiciones materiales, pues está caracterizada por una esencia provocante. Finalmente, concluiremos en torno a las consecuencias y posibilidades de esta descripción filosófica de la economía de mercado. Palabras clave: Economía de mercado, Martin Heidegger, Karl Polanyi, Filosofía de la economía. (shrink)

Desde hace ya bastante tiempo existe una tendencia a afirmar que el derecho o las normas de diferente tipo no son adecuadas o aplicables para las diferentes nuevas tecnologías que van apareciendo de forma continua. Este trabajo intentará dar la vuelta a ese razonamiento y, centrándose en la inteligencia artificial, tratará de plantear criterios adecuados para que esa tecnología y muchas otras sean desarrolladas y aplicadas de forma adecuada a los derechos fundamentales en general y a la privacidad en particular. (...) Dentro de esos criterios se analizará lo que debe aportar la explicabilidad de la tecnología mencionada y se profundizará en algunos conceptos adicionales como la posibilidad y la necesidad de controlar y de auditar sistemas de inteligencia artificial. Para realizar la mencionada profundización se recurrirá a lo que se conoce como objetivos de protección y a los principios de la ciberética, incluyendo una referencia especial a la sostenibilidad y a la resiliencia de este tipo de sistemas. (shrink)