The aim of this article is to contribute to understanding the changing role of government in promoting corporate social responsibility (CSR). Over the last decade, governments have joined other stakeholders in assuming a relevant role as drivers of CSR, working together with intergovernmental organizations and recognizing that public policies are key in encouraging a greater sense of CSR. This paper focuses on the analysis of the new strategies adopted by governments in order to promote, and encourage businesses to adopt, CSR (...) values and strategies. The research is based on the analysis of an explanatory framework, related to the development of a relational analytical framework, which tries to analyze the vision, values, strategies and roles adopted by governments, and the integration of new partnerships that governments establish in the CSR area with the private sector and social organizations. The research compares CSR initiatives and public policies in three European countries: Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom, and focuses on governmental drivers and responses. The preliminary results demonstrate that governments are incorporating a common statement and discourse on CSR, working in partnership with the private and social sectors. For governments, CSR implies the need to manage a complex set of relationships in order to develop a win–win situation between business and social organizations. However, the research also focuses on the differences between the three governments when applying CSR public policies. These divergences are based on the previous cultural and political framework, such as the welfare state typology, the organizational structures and the business and social and cultural background in each country. (shrink)

ObjectiveTest anxiety (TA) is a construct that has scarcely been studied based on Lang’s three-dimensional model of anxiety. The objective of this article is to investigate the repercussion of sociodemographic and academic variables on different responses for each component of anxiety and for the type of test in adolescent students.MethodA total of 1181 students from 12 to 18 years old (M= 14.7 and SD = 1.8) participated, of whom 569 were boys (48.2%) and 612 girls (51.8%). A sociodemographic questionnaire and (...) theCuestionario de Ansiedad ante los examenes-Adaptado (CAEX-A)[Test Anxiety Questionnaire-Adapted] an adaptation for Spanish secondary school levels (ESO) and Bachillerato were administered.ResultsGirls scored higher on the cognitive and physiological components of TA than boys, the intensity of the physiological response increasing with age. Bachillerato level students reported more physiological anxiety than those of ESO level. Students with better marks in the previous year presented more anxiety in the cognitive component, while those who obtained the lower mark presented higher anxiety values in the behavioral component. Participants reported that the types of tests that cause them more anxiety were oral tests in front of the class, oral presentation in front of a panel, and mathematics tests.ConclusionAdolescents show a differential response of TA based on the physiological, cognitive and motor components, mediated by the variables of gender, age, grade, academic performance and type of exam. These results serve to design specific intervention programs to manage anxiety in situations of academic assessment. (shrink)

Anecdotal evidence has long lamented the status of social studies in elementary classrooms as observed by preservice teachers. As standardized testing has risen for mathematics and language arts, social studies has been pushed aside. In the aftermath of accountability legislation such as No Child Left Behind, research indicates that social studies is less visible in elementary classrooms due to an instructional focus on tested content areas (e.g. math, language arts, reading). In this study, approximately 90 elementary preservice teachers enrolled in (...) a social studies methods course responded to a survey and indicated the frequency and quality of lessons they observed over the course of a single semester. Findings report that preservice elementary teachers witnessed few, if any, lessons in social studies in the elementary classroom. Implications for teacher education are discussed. (shrink)

The everyday harms of structural racism and discrimination, perpetuated through institutions, laws, policies, and practices, constitute social determinants of health, but measures that account for their debilitating effects are largely missing in genetic studies of complex diseases. Drawing on insights from the social sciences and public health, we propose critical methodologies for incorporating tools that measure structural racism and discrimination within genetic analyses. We illustrate how including these measures may strengthen the accuracy and utility of findings for diverse communities, clarify (...) elusive relationships between genetics and environment in a racialized society, and support greater equity within genomics and precision health research. This approach may also support efforts to build and sustain vital partnerships with communities and with other fields of research inquiry, centering community expertise and lived experiences and drawing on valuable knowledge from practitioners in the social sciences and public health to innovate biomedical and genomic study designs aimed at community health priorities. (shrink)

Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855) was a genius who combined science and sanctity. His contribution turns on the theory of the suspended middle of the original relationship between the natural and the supernatural, which he experienced and elaborated. The device of the relationship between the original metaphysical-affective-symbolic structure of the believing conscience and the affective turn in metaphysics, intrinsically linked to his trinitarian ontology, allowed Rosmini to elaborate theories and epistemologies from a unitary perspective in various fields of knowledge. This volume (...) indicates the implications of the unbreakable bond between Rosmini's philosophy and theology in disciplines such as pedagogical science, political science, and juridical science. Following the favorable resolution of the "Rosminian question" the Catholic Church beatified Rosmini in 2007 and in 2018 indicated his theoretical-practical approach as a universal education model to be followed. Through essays by major experts in Rosmini's thought, this curatorship offers an international public a brief, reasoned overview of Rosmini's thinking on these disciplines, finally translated into English, so that this perspective can be understood and explored with particular regard to the possibility of encouraging ecumenical comparison between Rosmini's suspended middle and, for example, that of Radical Orthodoxy. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is that people in Northeast Brazil refuse to let a good person who helped them during his (or her) lifetime die. They do this through several of the religious traditions practiced in the region. Beings, human and other, now in another plane of reality established in modern thinking, cross the conceptual divide and return through mediums or other intermediaries to heal the living. We examine two religious traditions, “folk” or “popular” Catholicism and Kardecist‐Spiritism, focusing on (...) the spirit of Argeu Hebster, a medical doctor who lived in the municipality of Marangaupe in the state of Ceará until his death in 1977. The return of the doctor is told in stories told to the authors while doing ethnography that provide the data used in analyzing the enchanted worlds of the two religions. (shrink)

Peace is a hallmark of human societies. However, certain ant species engage in long-term intergroup resource sharing, which is remarkably similar to peace among human groups. We discuss how individual and group payoff distributions are affected by kinship, dispersal, and age structure; the challenges of diagnosing peace; and the benefits of comparing convergent complex behaviours in disparate taxa.

The aim of this study was to analyze the association between coaches’ experience and their perceptions on the implementation of a long-term athletic development model created in 2016 by the Portuguese Swimming Federation. Eighty-six swimming coaches were assembled in groups according to their experience level: “novice”, “intermediate”, and “experienced”, and they answered a questionnaire with the following items: awareness of the existing model acceptance usefulness for practice, and implementation of this model by their peers. Regardless of experience, ~67% of the (...) coaches were aware of the model. Among those, a large number showed acceptance and confidence in its usefulness for their daily practice. Most coaches showed concerns about the fact that their peers do not respect the model frameworks, declaring the search for their swimmers’ immediate success as the main cause for such behavior. The results also showed an association between experience and knowledge about the model’s existence [χ2 = 10.223, p < 0.01, V = 0.345], and experienced coaches exhibited better knowledge than their intermediate [χ2 = 9.555, p < 0.01, V = 0.393] or novice [χ2 = 5.926, p = 0.02, V = 0.314] counterparts. While there was an association between the coaches’ experience and knowledge about the LTAD model’s existence, this situation does not seem to influence the way coaches accept and understand the usefulness of the model for their daily practice. (shrink)

Half a Brain is Enough is the extraordinary story of Nico, a three-year-old boy who was given a right hemispherectomy to control his severe intractable epilepsy...

It is certainly true that in early modern thought the emergence of a new science changed the image of the universe in a mechanistic way. It must be considered, though, that most of the main protagonists of this revolution (Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, ‘biologists’ like Leeuwenhoek, Hartsoeker, Hooke, Malpighi, Redi, etc.) still continued to consider the importance and the utility of a finalistic explanation of natural phenomena. Concepts like “function”, “self-organization”, “organism” have roots in early modern thought: not only from a (...) linguistic and semantic point of view. They were the basis of an epistemology in which different kinds of categories are strictly related. The aim of the paper is to take into account the relevance of the mechanical explanation of natural phenomena in Leibniz’s thought and at the same time to highlight the polarization between mechanical explanations and finalistic consideration that emerges in his philosophy. The specific aim of the paper is to analyze and to develop this kind of dialectic between “teleology” and "mechanism", with particular reference to the concept of “living being”. (shrink)

La tesis que deseo discutir en este trabajo es la siguiente: las ciencias humanas (ciencias del espíritu según Dilthey, ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas según Habermas) son posibles en la medida en que pueda ser epistemológicamente justificado el método que las hace posibles, a saber, la comprensión hermenéutica del sentido cuyo núcleo central lo constituye el círculo hermenéutico. Se trata, pues, de justificar epistemológicamente la hermenéutica como comprensión del sentido de las vivencias propias y ajenas, para lo cual es preciso analizar la reflexividad (...) y reciprocidad que impregna la estructura del lenguaje ordinario. En el diálogo que Habermas establece con Dilthey en Conocimiento e interés aparecen los suficientes argumentos para dicha fundamentación. Nuestro texto hará especial hincapié en los siguientes tópicos: distinción entre ciencias de la naturaleza y ciencias del espíritu, comprensión hermenéutica del sentido, lenguaje ordinario y reflexividad, especificidad del círculo hermenéutico, ciencia y contexto vital, y, finalmente, haremos un balance de la interpretación habermasiana de Dilthey a partir de las relaciones entre ciencias histórico-hermenéuticas e interés práctico del conocimiento. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of Philosophy within the works written by Wittgenstein if we take into account the ambivalent sense of the term phármakon. Thus, it will be outlined a contest of paradoxes between, on the one hand, healthiness, sanity, and the adaptable confidence produced by western rationality materialized into objective science, and, on the other hand, sickness, insanity, the world of perplexities, and the realm of desire and death, essential to philosophical thought. Bearing (...) in mind last Wittgenstein’s approaches, we will understand the Tractatus both critical to the deficiencies of western Reason and imprisoned within them. But the “enchanting” power of western Reason, conducting to identify rationality and scientificity in that work, will be conjured in the last Wittgenstein through the opening of plural realms of rationality and of discourses. In this way, philosophical questions will be rescued from silence and absurdity. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the specific shift in the meaning of “civilization” that took place in texts and documents of early American philosophical naturalism. Particularly, it will focus on the specific role that naturalization plays in the edification of a newly secularized, science-oriented, and democratic society, as well as of a naturalized conception of culture and civilization. Indeed, as the work of many philosophers and intellectuals of the Forties highlights, naturalism represents not only the banner of a new idea of civilization, (...) but at the same time becomes the symbol of a powerful postwar ideology. (shrink)

Este trabajo consiste en una reconstrucción de los motivos de reflexión en ese ámbito privilegiado de la experiencia filosófica al que de la mano de Habermas, vamos a denominar pensamiento postmetafísico, como superación mediadora de la eterna disputa entre el pensar metafísico y el pensar antimetafísico. En él desarrollaremos aquellas categorías empírico-trascendentales que van a constituir las condiciones de posibilidad de esta nueva experiencia filosófica, a saber, racionalidad procedimental, razón sin trascendencia, razón comunicativa, giro lingüístico y deflación de lo extracotidiano.

Usually scholars think of Marvin Farber as an American pupil of Husserl and his figure is given historical and institutional credit. It is also said that his thought misrepresented the intentions of the master and that his idea of a naturalization of phenomenology was devoid of hermeneutical grounds. All this has fed the myth of his heresy, the idea that his philosophical proposal could be summarized as a deviation from the orthodox canon. In this paper the legitimacy of this perspective (...) is widely discussed. Is it really correct to think of him as a child of the phenomenological continental tradition transplanted on American soil? Or would it not be more fruitful to consider him, beyond the canon, as an American philosopher fully immersed in the epistemological debates of his time? The paper argues in favor of this way of interpretation, discussing Farber’s own theoretical proposal in conjunction with the ecosystem of the American philosophical history. (shrink)

Vertebrates respond to light with more than just their eyes. In this article, we speculate on the intriguing possibility that a link remains between non‐visual opsins and neurohormonal systems that control neuronal circuit formation and activity in mammals. Historically, the retina and pineal gland were considered the only significant light‐sensing tissues in vertebrates. However over the last century, evidence has accumulated arguing that extra‐ocular tissues in vertebrates influence behavior through non‐image‐forming photoreception. One such class of extra‐ocular light detectors are the (...) long mysterious deep brain photoreceptors. Here, we review recent findings on the cellular identity and the function of deep brain photoreceptors controlling behavior and physiology in zebrafish, and discuss their implications. (shrink)

The emerging field of neuroeducation, concerned with the interaction between mind, brain and education, has proved revolutionary in educational research, introducing concepts, methods, and technologies into many advanced institutions around the world. The Educated Brain presents a broad overview of the major topics in this new discipline: Part I examines the historical and epistemological issues related to the mind/brain problem and the scope of neuroeducation; Part II provides a view of basic brain research in education and use of imaging techniques, (...) and the study of brain and cognitive development; and Part III is dedicated to the neural foundations of language and reading in different cultures, and the acquisition of basic mathematical concepts. With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book features the most recent and advanced research in cognitive neurosciences. (shrink)

El artículo presenta una reflexión sobre la manera en que en los últimos veinte años la promoción de un determinado tipo de solidaridad en Chile ha contribuido a la conformación de una gubernamentalidad liberal avanzada, necesaria para la instalación de un programa neoliberal. La reflexión se enmarca en los aportes teóricos de Michel Foucault y tiene por objeto empírico piezas de publicidad de promoción de la solidaridad emitidas en Chile entre los años 2009 y 2010, que han sido analizadas en (...) el contexto del proyecto Fondecyt 1090534. Se presentan tres tipos de resultados: (a) se describen los sectores sociales que se construyen como agentes de la solidaridad, (b) se reflexiona sobre las prácticas solidarias más promovidas y (c) se indaga en la forma en que se interpela a los sujetos a ser solidarios. (shrink)

The word “organism” represents an original keyword of the early-modern philosophical world. As it was first developed by Leibniz, it seems to blend together two different conceptual paradigms: the Cartesian model of the “machines” and the Aristotelian legacy of the “individual natures”. According to the first, nature represents itself the prototype of any good mechanical functioning, but at the same time its inner development is explained by the occurrence of a normative dimension that rules the world of primitive forces in (...) the dynamics. For such reasons, the “organism” lexicon is affected by an internal stress that is extremely interesting to analyze for it seems to posit a normative turn acting from the within of a mechanically conceived notion of life. (shrink)

Classification learning is a preeminent human ability within the animal kingdom but the key mechanisms of brain networks regulating learning remain mostly elusive. Recent neuroimaging advancements have depicted human brain as a complex graph machinery where brain regions are nodes and coherent activities among them represent the functional connections. While long-term motor memories have been found to alter functional connectivity in the resting human brain, a graph topological investigation of the short-time effects of learning are still not widely investigated. For (...) instance, classification learning is known to orchestrate rapid modulation of diverse memory systems like short-term and visual working memories but how the brain functional connectome accommodates such modulations is unclear. We used publicly available repositories (openfmri.org) selecting three experiments, two focused on short-term classification learning along two consecutive runs where learning was promoted by trial-by-trial feedback errors, while a further experiment was used as supplementary control. We analyzed the functional connectivity extracted from BOLD fMRI signals, and estimated the graph information processing in the cerebral networks. The information processing capability, characterized by complex network statistics, significantly improved over runs, together with the subject classification accuracy. Instead, null-learning experiments, where feedbacks came with poor consistency, did not provoke any significant change in the functional connectivity over runs. We propose that learning induces fast modifications in the overall brain network dynamics, definitely ameliorating the short-term potential of the brain to process and integrate information, a dynamic consistently orchestrated by modulations of the functional connections among specific brain regions. (shrink)

En la actualidad podemos observar –en algunos sectores cualificados de la Iglesia Católica– un tipo de interés por devaluar la fuerza reformista con la que el Papa Juan XXIII imprimió al Concilio Vaticano II desde su convocatoria (25 de enero de 1959). La celebración de este Concilio Ecuménico (1962-1965) provocó una ola de entusiasmo y optimismo dentro de la Iglesia, y no poca expectación en el resto del mundo. En el post-concilio encontraríamos luces y sombras. Incluso podemos escuchar voces (no (...) muy fuertes, pero desde instituciones significativas de la Iglesia) que indican que el concilio se equivocó al tomar ciertas posiciones reformistas dentro del cristianismo católico. Este artículo surge de este contexto y –declarando el Concilio Vaticano II como un regalo preciosode Dios a su Iglesia- desea ser una clara e inequívoca reivindicación de la “letra” y especialmente del “espíritu” que iluminaron este Concilio en la Iglesia Católica. La “letra” del Concilio sin su espíritu es un cuerpo muerto. El “espíritu” sin la letra, una fuerza verdaderamente ineficaz. (shrink)

This paper develops the very basic notions of analysis in a weak second-order theory of arithmetic BTFA whose provably total functions are the polynomial time computable functions. We formalize within BTFA the real number system and the notion of a continuous real function of a real variable. The theory BTFA is able to prove the intermediate value theorem, wherefore it follows that the system of real numbers is a real closed ordered field. In the last section of the paper, we (...) show how to interpret the theory BTFA in Robinson's theory of arithmetic Q. This fact entails that the elementary theory of the real closed ordered fields is interpretable in Q. (shrink)