The European Commission has recently proposed the introduction of legally binding quotas for women on corporate boards of European companies. This proposal has put the spotlight on the question of whether increasing female representation on the board brings economic benefits to the firm. In order to shed light on the issue, this study investigates the direct and indirect effects of women on the board on firm value. We use a simultaneous equation model to estimate the effects of women on the (...) board on firm value, financial performance, and compliance with ethical and social principles adopted by the firm. We find no evidence that a higher female representation on the board directly affects firm’s value. However, we find indirect effects. Women on the board are positively related with financial performance (measured in terms of return on assets and return on sales) and with ethical and social compliance, which in turn are positively related with firm value. The findings in this study suggest that greater female representation on corporate boards of large European firms can increase firm value indirectly. Further, part of the indirect effect comes from stronger compliance with ethical principles, something that is not captured by accounting-based financial performance. (shrink)

ABOUT THE BOOK:A new systematization of the main philosophical tenets of Hinayana Buddhism as derived from the Four Noble Truths. The work is divided in three parts: (1) Suffering and the Nature of Existence; (2) Origin of Suffering and the Notion.

Hilden and Gammelgaard's comments on the evaluation and application of statistical trials and on informed consent lead to the same conclusion that there are special circumstances when clinical trials are performed in emergency situations.The decision to comment on the work that H&G responded to was motivated by the wish to manifest the need to reach a consensus on modifying the conditions in which clinical trials should be performed in special circumstances.One unquestionable fact must first be addressed: clinical trials are necessary (...) for acquiring new knowledge and consequent improvements in health care services. At the same time, patient participation should be encouraged under conditions that respect patients' decision making capability.Are these conditions being met at present? An answer to this is given below. (shrink)

Advances in medicine are closely linked to clinical research, but certain study procedures may be in conflict with the fundamental principles of ethics and codes of conduct in medicine. Following an analysis of two studies involving treatments for acute myocardial infarction (AMI), the admissibility of continuing a study was questioned after the initial results for two types of treatment showed that one was significantly better than the other. Also considered doubtful was the information provided to patients with the object of (...) obtaining their informed consent. (shrink)

In this papper, we will do a travel to the history about Movimiento 19 de Abril, a Colombian guerrilla, and one of their units: the Batallón América. This army was conformed for four groups: M-19 and Movimiento Armado Quintín Lame, Alfaro Vive Carajo, and Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru. This battalion was a perfect example about the relation of M-19 with national and international guerrillas, and the Socialist International. Across this paper, we will show a primal idea about the internationalism in (...) the Latin American guerrillas, its effects in the posterior history from these guerrillas, the important paper from the Batallón América in their strategy about the cooperation between guerrillas in Colombia and the creation of a transnational revolutionary army in the Latin American continent. (shrink)

La migración internacional es parte de la globalización, todos los países desarrollados han recibido un gran número de inmigrantes. España también ha recibido a alta cantidad de nómadas. La población española era emigrante y ahora ella tiene que hacer frente a este nuevo fenómeno, las sociedades desarrolladas van a tener que adaptarse a las grandes afluencias de extranjeros. La migración ha sido a menudo una fuente de tensiones entre culturas e incluso entre movimientos racistas y xenófobos. Un problema político fundamental (...) en España es la situación que hay en la frontera del sur, por donde mucha gente intenta entrar en la UE desde África, arriesgando su vida y perdiéndola a menudo.International migration is part of globalization, all developed countries have received significant numbers of migrants. Spain have also received a high amount of migrants. Spanish people were traditionally emigrants and now they have to face this new phenomena, developed societies are going to have to face larger inflows of migrants. Migration has often been a source of tensions among cultures and even racist and xenophobic movements. A prominent political problem in Spain is the situation on the Southern border, where many people try to enter the EU from Africa, risking their life and often losing. (shrink)

This paper presents a graffito written after firing on a Samian-ware bowl dated to the turn of the first and second centuries c.e., which seems to contain part of a hexameter included in the well-known anthology Carmina XII sapientum, the composition of which has recently been attributed to the Christian author Lactantius.

The problem of non-compliance with treatment and its repercussions on the clinical evolution of different conditions has been widely investigated.1–4 Non-compliance has also been shown to have significant economic implications, not only as a result of product loss but also indirectly through the complication of disease management and its subsequent healthcare and social costs.5–7Non-compliance as a health problemThe term “non-compliance” might be taken to refer both to the failure to follow a drug regimen and to the failure to adopt other (...) measures that contribute to improvement in health—for example, changes in lifestyle or diet. This letter focuses on the former.Non-compliance with a drug regimen can be the result of a number of different factors9–11 and a variety of techniques have been developed in an attempt to control it.12,13 Of these, the few techniques that have been shown to be effective have only managed to solve the problem in specific situations over short periods of time. The use of such techniques to control non-compliance, particularly where these are effective, raises interesting ethical questions about the extent to which their application constitutes an infringement of the patient’s right to decide on how to manage their own health.8 Here we suggest that in some cases one factor that leads to non-compliance is the tendency to provide extensive and exhaustive information on side effects in …. (shrink)

La teoría husserliana de la constitución es el método de la fenomenología como filosofía trascendental. Su problema especifico es la constitución de objetividades en la conciencia. La reducción trascendental descubre la estructura noético-noemática de la conciencia, abriendo así el acceso a una esfera absoluta de relaciones eidéticas. El análisis fenomenológico de la vivencia nos enfrenta con dos seres en si: la conciencia y el ser de que se tiene conciencia. La cuestión de la evidencia plantea el problema de la legitimidad (...) racional de toda correlación entre conciencia, verdad y ser. La fenomenología tiene su fundamento en la "subjetividad trascendental absoluta". (shrink)

El objetivo de estas breves notas esquemáticas es trazar una visión de conjunto del hombre religioso y de la esencia de la religiosidad. Ofrezco primero una presentación de los niveles de la experiencia de la interioridad religiosa -vida, espíritu, misterio inefable- en versión libre y moderna de las hipóstasis plotinianas: alma, inteligencia, uno-bien (nn. 1, 2, 3). Sigue después una visión de las unidades sintéticas reales, desde las cuales puede hablarse de sujeto religioso: la persona, el cosmos (por extensión), la (...) comunidad (nn. 4, 5, 6). Estas dos presentaciones del hombre religioso nos permitirán acercarnos a la determinación de la esencia de la religiosidad (nn. 7, 8, 9), para ver cómo es una esencia que sobrepasa toda esencia o estructura (n. 10), en tanto que núcleo dinámico (n, 11) previo a toda diferenciación de momentos estructurales. (shrink)

Habla pausadamente, con un cierto distanciamiento irónico. El tema es, naturalmente, su libro "Yo y tú, objetos de lujo". No afirma nada categóricamente, pero, como observador crítico de una cultura tal vez emergente, sugiere interpretaciones de la realidad muy alejadas de visiones apocalípticas o condenatorias hacia lo que viene (está ya aquí, de hecho) en la era del consumo y del ciberespacio. Y, sin embargo, me parece descubrir en él un punto de melancolía�.

An experimental breast-feeding education programme conducted at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila demonstrated that women could be motivated to improve their breast-feeding practices and lengthen their period of lactational amenorrhoea in comparison to a control group. Mothers who participated in the programme breast-fed their babies more frequently, delayed the introduction of regular supplements, used fewer bottles and pacifiers and maintained night feeding longer than mothers who were not exposed to the positive breast-feeding messages. The programme was successful in lengthening (...) the period of amenorrhoea among women with elementary, high school, or technical school education, but not among college-educated women. Different educational approaches may be necessary for women of different education levels. (shrink)

In this paper we study the relations between the fragment L of classical logic having just conjunction and disjunction and the variety D of distributive lattices, within the context of Algebraic Logic. We prove that these relations cannot be fully expressed either with the tools of Blok and Pigozzi's theory of algebraizable logics or with the use of reduced matrices for L. However, these relations can be naturally formulated when we introduce a new notion of model of a sequent calculus. (...) When applied to a certain natural calculus for L, the resulting models are equivalent to a class of abstract logics (in the sense of Brown and Suszko) which we call distributive. Among other results, we prove that D is exactly the class of the algebraic reducts of the reduced models of L, that there is an embedding of the theories of L into the theories of the equational consequence (in the sense of Blok and Pigozzi) relative to D, and that for any algebra A of type (2,2) there is an isomorphism between the D-congruences of A and the models of L over A. In the second part of this paper (which will be published separately) we will also apply some results to give proofs with a logical flavour for several new or well-known lattice-theoretical properties. (shrink)

Knowledge about maize varieties is the key to rural households' survival in native Mexico. Native peoples relate to nature in particular ways and they play a crucial role in maintaining biodiversity. This paper discusses the relationship between native women's accumulated knowledge on maize varieties and the laboratory analysis of the species that they manage. Fieldwork was conducted in an Otomí community, San Pablo Arriba, located in the state of Mexico.

La teoría husserliana de la constitución es el método de la fenomenología como filosofía trascendental. Su problema específico es la constitución de objetividades en la conciencia. La reducción trascendental descubre la estructura noético-noemática de la conciencia, abriendo así el acceso a una esfera absoluta de reladones cidéticas. El análisis fenomenológico de la vivencia nos enfrenta con dos seres en sí: la conciencia y el ser de que se tiene conciencia. Lacuestión de la evidencia plantea el problema de la legitimidad racional (...) de toda correlación entre conciencia, verdad y ser. Lafenomenología tiene su fundamento en la «subjetividad trascendental absoluta».The husserlian theory of constitution is the method of phenomenology as transcendental philosophy. Its specific problem is the constitution ofobjectivities in consciousness.The transcendental reduction uncovers the noetic-noematic structure of consciousnes, opening up in tbat way the acreas to an absolute sphere of eidetic relationships. Tbe phenomenological analysis of experiential process confronts us withtwo beings: the consciousnessand the being aware of one’s consciousness. As regards evidence one thinks about the problem of rational legitimacy of every correlation between consciousness, truth and heing. Phenomenology has its foundations in the «absolute transcendental subjectivity». (shrink)

The concepts of “good” and “bad” are associated with right and left space. Individuals tend to associate good things with the side of their dominant hand, where they experience greater motor fluency, and bad things with their nondominant side. This mapping has been shown to be flexible: Changing the relative fluency of the hands, or even observing a change in someone else's motor fluency, results in a reversal of the conceptual mapping, such that good things become associated with the side (...) of the nondominant hand. Yet, based on prior studies, it is unclear whether space–valence associations were determined by the experience of fluent versus disfluent actions, or by the mere expectation of fluency. Here, we tested the role of expected fluency by removing motor execution and perceptual feedback altogether. Participants were asked to imagine themselves performing a psychomotor task with one of their hands impaired, after which their implicit space–valence mapping was measured. After imagining that their right hand was impaired, right-handed participants showed the “good is left” association typical of left-handers. Motor imagery can change people's implicit associations between space and emotional valence. Although asymmetric motor experience may be necessary to establish body-specific associations between space and valence initially, neither motoric nor perceptual experience is needed to change these associations subsequently. The mere expectation of fluent versus disfluenct actions can drive fluency-based effects on people's implicit spatialization of “good” and “bad.” These results suggest a reconsideration of the mechanisms and boundary conditions of fluency effects. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se realiza un recorrido por las revisiones y representaciones que el cine de ficción ha realizado en torno a la violencia política en Irlanda del Norte tras la firma de los Acuerdos de Viernes Santo en 1998 y la desaparición del IRA Provisional, una de las principales organizaciones armadas activas en la zona durante el periodo conocido como _The Troubles_. Analizando un total de cinco ejemplos cinematográficos, se pretende demostrar que, una vez finalizada la violencia política, (...) se abre un nuevo escenario en el que se hace necesario revisitar los relatos históricos ya confeccionados, adaptarlos a la nueva realidad o construir unos nuevos con elementos ignorados previamente. Será mediante este análisis como se señalará la situación actual del relato cinematográfico, sus referencias, la atención que otorga a cada elemento histórico, así como el mensaje que se muestra en las pantallas. (shrink)

We present a map of standard quantum mechanics onto a dual theory, that of the classical thermodynamics of irreversible processes. While no gravity is present in our construction, our map exhibits features that are reminiscent of the holographic principle of quantum gravity.