This study focuses on the influence of the quality of services received by thalassotherapy customers on their global satisfaction and the relationship between this and the word of mouth. This study uses a hybrid SEM—classification tree analysis. The empirical findings reveal a significant relationship between the quality of each offered service and global satisfaction. This study contributes to identify tourist’s satisfaction or delight on received thalasso services through a proposed methodology. The main contribution of this work consists of the proposal (...) of a methodology to identify objectively through the opinion of tourists if they were satisfied or had reached delight. This work demonstrates, confirming what has been found in previous literature, that global satisfaction is related to the different experiences provided by the service. Thus, all hypotheses are accepted, supporting the hypotheses that relate the pool, the staff, the treatments, and the environment to satisfaction. In addition, the hypotheses that link satisfaction with the word of mouth are also supported. This theoretical implication has important practical implications for managers of the type of facilities such as those studied in this paper, since it shows that it is not enough to do well in one of the services provided if the environment or the interaction with the staff is not right. (shrink)

In recent years, after various scandals, the role of auditors has been called into question, even casting doubt on whether their reports reliably reflect the true financial situation of the auditee, especially when this situation is not good. Normative changes in the way auditors have to rate certain questions provide a good opportunity to study this problem. These changes have acquired great relevance among the factors involved in studying audit quality. Thus, the present study analyzed the effect of the normative (...) change that took place in Spain in December 2010, related to opinions modified for going-concern uncertainties. Until that date, the auditor’s uncertainty about the company’s going-concern status led to a qualified opinion. However, under the new regulation, it became an opinion that included an explanatory paragraph stating the reasons for concern, which was considered less serious. In all, 152 small- and medium-sized enterprises that had begun bankruptcy proceedings were studied. Expert systems were used for their analysis, based on classification trees assembled through boosting and bagging. In addition, the logistic regression was used as baseline to compare previous methods. The main result obtained was that a change in the norm that catalogs the going-concern issue as less serious made auditors more likely to report this situation, thus questioning the audit quality. (shrink)

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)

The eme r gence of the concept of pr o g ress is cu r rent l y associated with th e Enlightenment o r , going som e w hat further back, with the que r elle des anciens et des modernes in the 1 7 t h centu r y . Y et the notion of pr o g ress can be traced back to a signi f icant l y earlier period: the foundations of a possi b (...) le Christian pr o g ress i vism w ere, in m y opinion, laid b y St. Augustine; this ess a y e xplores its guidelines. J . G. Herde r ' s reaction a g ainst the notion of pr o g ress proposed b y the Enlightenment possesses also a Christian inspiration. While Enlightened pr o g ress i vism conce i v es past cultures as o v ercoming steps in a rising staircase, Herde r , in turn, claims that each of them amounted to a "self-centered sphere" and w as therefore v alua b le in its o wn right. The sense of the e xistence of past generations cannot lie in p a ving the w a y for future ful f illment as this w ould be incompati b le with d i vine l o v e, w hich estimates each of its creatures in its o wn right, as an unrepeata b le ind i vidual. In contrast to Enlightened a r r o g ance (contempt for the "obscurantist" past), Herder presents a "democratic" vi e w of History within w hich all epochs h a v e the same v alue. (shrink)

This is the fourth volume of the Clarendon edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the first of three volumes of Commentary. It contains commentary on the text up to p. 327 of volume one - i.e. The Argument of the Frontispeice, Democritus to the Reader, and Partition 1 as far as the end of Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15: 'Misery of Schollers'. In his study of morbid psychology as it was understood in his day, Burton cites many (...) other writers. No previous edition of the Anatomy has identified all of these or verified all his quotations. In addition to explanatory notes and translations of all the passages in Latin, this edition attempts to locate all Burton's sources in the actual books he himself owned or to which he probably had access. The last of the three volumes of commentary will contain a Biobibliography listing over 1,500 authorities referred to by Burton, many very obscure, and will give not only bibliographical details but information about the writers. (shrink)

Brock Macdonald1, Evi Vakiani2, Rhonda K Yantiss3, Jun Lee4, Robert S Brown Jr5, Samuel H Sigal61Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, 2Department of Pathology, Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 3Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, New York Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 4Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, 5Division of Gastroenterology, Department of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, (...) NY, 6Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Medicine, New York University, New York, NY, USA: The use of sirolimus as an alternative to calcineurin inhibitors for posttransplant immunosuppression is associated with a variety of inflammatory conditions. In this report, we describe the case of a 34-year-old man who developed abnormal liver tests 6 years after live-donor kidney transplantation and 5 years after initiation of sirolimus-based immunosuppression. Elevated aminotransferase levels persisted after withdrawal of potentially hepatotoxic medications, and serologic evaluation for viral hepatitis, autoimmune disease, and genetic disorders was unrevealing. Liver biopsy revealed prominent hepatocellular injury associated with a mixed inflammatory infiltrate and liver tests normalized within 2 weeks of discontinuation of sirolimus. In this report, we review previous reports of sirolimus hepatotoxicity and propose a unifying hypothesis for the various inflammatory conditions that have been attributed to sirolimus.Keywords: sirolimus, immunosuppression, transplant, inflammatory conditions, hepatotoxicity. (shrink)

In the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant presented a method for discovering what morality requires us to do in any situation and claimed that it is a method everyone can use. The method consists in testing one's maxim against the requirement stated in the formulations of the categorical imperative. There has been endless discussion of the adequacy of Kant's method in giving moral guidance, but there has been little effort to situate Kant's view of ethical method in its (...) historical context. In this paper I try to do so. I take the label "method of ethics" from the work of Henry Sidgwick. A method of ethics, he says, is any rational procedure by which we determine what it is right for an individual to do or what an individual ought to do. Since the moralists I want to consider do not all think of morality as rational, I shall broaden the notion by saying that a method is any systematic or regular procedure, rational or not, by which we determine what morality requires... (shrink)

Although the existence of tachyons is not ruled out by special relativity, it appears that causal paradoxes will arise if there are tachyons. The usual solutions to these paradoxes employ some form of the reinterpretation principle. In this paper it is argued first that the principle is incoherent, second that even if it is not, some causal paradoxes remain, and third, the most plausible “solution,” which appeals to boundary conditions of the universe, will conflict with special relativity.

What does it take for a positive epistemic status to obtain? I argue throughout my thesis that if a positive epistemic status obtains, this is not a brute fact. Instead, if for example a belief is justified, it is justified in virtue of some further condition(s) obtaining. A fundamental topic in epistemology is the question of what sorts of factors can be relevant to determining the positive epistemic status of belief. Epistemic Internalism holds that these factors must be “internal” (in (...) a sense that needs to be specified). Epistemic Externalism is the denial of internalism. My thesis is an explanation and defense of an internalist theory of epistemic justification. -/- The central claim of my thesis is that something is “internal” in this sense only if it is, or can easily be, the object of the agent’s conscious awareness. By considering key cases, I show that without an awareness requirement on justification, the subject cannot avoid what I call the Subject’s Perspective Objection. In developing this objection I examine and respond to an argument against the awareness requirement which claims that such awareness either leads to a vicious regress of requiring higher order beliefs of increasing complexity (if any beliefs are to be justified), or else requiring such awareness is unmotivated. This regress is generated because it is assumed that the relevant kind of awareness must be doxastic. My solution invokes what I call ‘strong non-doxastic awareness’ that grounds non-inferential justification and thereby avoids this dilemma, while meeting the Subject’s Perspective Objection. -/- I also argue that external factors, such as the reliability (actual or conditional) of the mechanism supporting the belief, are not necessary for justification. I argue for this conclusion by comparing what constitutes justified belief in the actual world with one’s counterpart in a ‘demon world’. I argue that this intuition, correctly interpreted, counts in favour of internalism. As I explain, many philosophers moved by arguments presented by externalists about mental content deny that such a case is possible. In opposition I argue that the awareness requirement remains substantially unaffected, no matter which view of content turns out to be correct. What is key is that the two worlds are completely subjectively indistinguishable from each other for those who inhabit them in all the ways of which they are consciously aware. -/- If neither the obtaining of truth nor reliability is necessary for epistemic justification, what makes justification genuinely epistemic? In the final chapter I argue against recent work that assimilates justification with knowledge, as well as for a positive account of the truth connection. As to the former question, I defend the orthodoxy that they are distinct epistemic statuses; as to the latter, I argue that the connection between justification and truth is conceptual. That is, epistemic justification is epistemic because it turns on evidence; evidence is epistemic because it is conceptually linked with truth. Epistemic justification, therefore, is conceptually linked with the truth (via evidence), which is what makes it distinctively epistemic. -/- In short, this thesis is an explanation and defense of an internalist theory of epistemic justification. The central claim of the thesis is that something is “internal” in this sense only if it is, or can easily be, the object of the agent’s conscious awareness. I argue that conscious awareness is a necessary condition of epistemic justification obtaining, and that factors external to consciousness play no justificatory role. (shrink)