Bioethics emerged as a discipline in the 70s of the last century. One of its main objectives has been to analyze clinical cases that pose moral problems. This analysis is generally carried out by a multidisciplinary group, the Health Care Ethics Committee, which is comprised of ethical experts or healthcare providers assisted by a facilitator, depending on the context. Different methodologies are used in these situations. The deliberative method, in its various configurations, is the most widely used in many Committees. (...) Identify whether the deliberative method is included in regulated undergraduate and postgraduate teaching; analyze whether a single model can be identified or whether there is heterogeneity in the proposals. A bibliographic review was carried out, following the scoping review method. With respect to the first objective, there is no evidence on the teaching and use of the deliberative method in the Faculties and Schools of Medicine and Nursing, the emphasis is placed on training oriented to the resolution of clinical cases and a certain deliberative proposal is developed from them, more pragmatic than ethical-philosophical. In relation to the second objective, differences are observed between the two most prevalent schools (D. Gracia and B. Molewijk), with the model proposed by Gracia being used more in the Spanish-speaking world, and Molewijk's model in the English-speaking world. It can be seen that D. Gracia's proposal is more philosophical and Molewijk's more pragmatic. Finally, it is considered pertinent to further disseminate the deliberative method and its advantages, as well as its potential for bioethics education. (shrink)

Only a negative fundamental option, that is, the engagement of man's core awareness and freedom, can bring about the reality known as mortal sin.

Dentro de la sociología francesa actual, Gilles Lipovetsky se ha convertido de forma paulatina en uno de los sociólogos con mayor proyección internacional, con sus finos análisis sobre las sociedades postmodernas. En este artículo se plantea una revisión crítica de las principales líneas argumentativas que expone el autor francés. El objetivo es el de reflexionar sobre las limitaciones de su aproximación a los conceptos de postmodernidad, hipermodernidad, y consumo.

A theologian answers the question: What is the relationship between the hallucinogenic drugs, such as hashish, marihuana, mescaline, psilocybin, LSD, and both mysticism and morality?

Alonso-Meijide and Fiestras-Janeiro (2002, Annals of Operations Research 109, 213–227) proposed a modification of the Banzhaf value for games where a coalition structure is given. In this paper we present a method to compute this value by means of the multilinear extension of the game. A real-world numerical example illustrates the application procedure.

This article identifies a double allusion to the tragic characters of Phaedra and Eriphyle in Amm. Marc. 14.1.3 and considers its possible meanings. In combination, these allusions evoke the double nature of the story of Eriphyle, therefore functioning as a reference to the double nature of Caesar Gallus’ depiction in Ammianus. The double allusion consequently forms part of Ammianus’ tragic style throughout Book 14. Having identified the presence of this double allusion, the article illuminates its possible meaning by connecting Ammianus’ (...) passage to the Virgilian rewriting of the description of Eriphyle in Homer. (shrink)

The Gait Deviation Index is a multivariate measure of overall gait pathology based on 15 gait features derived from three-dimensional kinematic data. GDI aims at providing a comprehensive, easy to interpret, and clinically meaningful metric of overall gait function. It has been used as an outcome measure to study gait in several conditions: cerebral palsy, post-stroke hemiparetic gait, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and Parkinson’s disease, among others. Nevertheless, its use in population with Spinal Cord Injury has not been studied yet. The (...) aim of the present study was to investigate the applicability of the GDI to SCI through the assessment of the relationship of the GDI with the Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury II. 3D gait kinematics of 34 patients with incomplete SCI was obtained. Besides, 3D gait kinematics of a sample of 50 healthy volunteers was also gathered with Codamotion motion capture system. A total of 302 and 446 strides were collected. GDI was calculated for each stride and grouped for each WISCI II level. HV data were analyzed as an additional set. Normal distribution for each group was assessed with Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. Afterward, ANOVA tests were performed between each pair of WISCI II levels to identify differences among groups. The results showed that the GDI was normally distributed across all WISCI II levels in both iSCI and HV groups. Furthermore, our results showed an increasing relationship between the GDI values and WISCI II levels in subjects with iSCI, but only discriminative in WISCI II levels 13, 19, and 20. The index successfully distinguished HV group from all the individuals with iSCI. Findings of this study indicated that the GDI is not an appropriate multivariate walking metric to represent the deviation of gait pattern in adult population with iSCI from a normal gait profile when it is compared with the levels of walking impairment described by the WISCI II. Future work should aim at defining and validating an overall gait index derived from 3D kinematic gait variables appropriate for SCI, additionally taking into account other walking ability outcome measures. (shrink)

Explicit and implicit learning have been attributed to different learning processes that create different types of knowledge structures. Consistent with that claim, our study provides evidence that people integrate stimulus events differently when consciously aware versus unaware of the relationship between the events. In a first, acquisition phase participants sorted words into two categories , which were fully predicted by task-irrelevant primes—the labels of two other, semantically unrelated categories . In a second, test phase participants performed a lexical decision task, (...) in which all word stimuli stemmed from the previous prime categories and the primes were the labels of the previous target categories . Reliable priming effects in the second phase demonstrated that bidirectional associations between the respective categories had been formed in the acquisition phase , but these effects were found only in participants that were unaware of the relationship between the categories! We suggest that unconscious, implicit learning of event relationships results in the rather unsophisticated integration of the underlying event representations, whereas explicit learning takes the meaning of the order of the events into account, and thus creates unidirectional associations. (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)

Al cumplirse los 50 años de la publicación de la Populorum Progressio este artículo presenta los orígenes y la evolución del concepto del desarrollo y de la reflexión en torno a las políticas de desarrollo. A continuación, se hace un breve recorrido del Magisterio pontificio sobre la cuestión, desde la Populorum Progressio a la Laudato Si’. Sintetizando lo aprendido en ambos recorridos, el artículo concluye presentando las exigencias y los desafíos con los que se enfrenta el discípulo misionero a propósito (...) del desarrollo. (shrink)

Power indices are commonly required to assign at least as much power to a player endowed with some given voting weight as to any player of the same game with smaller weight. This local monotonicity and a related global property however are frequently and for good reasons violated when indices take account of a priori unions amongst subsets of players (reflecting, e.g., ideological proximity). This paper introduces adaptations of the conventional monotonicity notions that are suitable for voting games with an (...) exogenous coalition structure. A taxonomy of old and new monotonicity concepts is provided, and different coalitional versions of the Banzhaf and Shapley–Shubik power indices are compared accordingly. (shrink)

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)

The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

In this paper, the foundations for setting up a knowledge industry are laid. Firstly, it is established that this industry constitutes the only way of making use of the huge amounts of knowledge produced as a result of the introduction of the Science-Technology binomial in postindustrial society. Then, the elements which will lead to such an industry are defined, that is, the resources and means. Under the ‘Means’ section, special emphasis is placed on the processes involved, in other words, inference (...) methods and commonsense reasoning. Finally, it is concluded that the establishment of this industry, calledmindfacturing because of the raw material that it processes and uses, is, more than possible, desirable, provided that the precautions outlined in the epilogue are taken. (shrink)