José Ortega y Gasset deu em Lisboa, em 1944, um curso universitário intitulado La razón histórica. Não obstante ter ficado incompleto, após interrupção por doença do autor, ele é talvez um dos mais importantes vestígios da sua estada em Portugal, durante a última etapa do seu longo exílio. Em edição da Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, Margarida I. Almeida Amoedo disponibiliza agora a tradução desse curso, enquadrando-o no contexto próximo da obra orteguiana.

Se trata de la reseña de un libro que, siguiendo en la estela de obras importantes como _La tradición velada _(Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1990), de Francisco José Martín, o _El pensamiento lingüístico de José Ortega y Gasset _(A Coruña: Spiralia, 2009), de Concha d’ Olhaberriague, destaca la relevancia y el múltiple significado de _exilio _que el año de 1932 representa en el trayecto biográfico del filósofo, cuando la decepción con la política y la necesidad de concentrarse en sus meditaciones filosóficas (...) lo llevan a una retirada del escenario público, antes mismo del exilio geográfico asociado a la Guerra Civil. Las circunstancias habían cambiado y a partir de 1936 cambiarán particularmente, aunque la vocación de Ortega no. Esmeralda Balaguer toma como ejemplo la cuestión de su silencio (tantas veces malinterpretada por otros autores) y comprueba cómo la fidelidad al imperativo de autenticidad permitió al filósofo renovar en las últimas décadas de su producción numerosas concepciones que defendía desde muy temprano. (shrink)

To identify how digital media are being used by community-led initiatives of the Centro Region of Portugal, and to identify the requirements that a digital platform for mediation between agents in the territory should have, two focus groups were conducted, involving six small-sized community-led initiatives and six larger-sized community-led initiatives. This article details the results of these focus groups, according to the following main categories: use of existing communication and mediation tools; the purpose of use of digital tools; type of (...) experiences prompted by digital tools and attributes and features desired in a digital platform to support community-led initiatives. The results show differences between the use and needs of digital tools by small- and larger-sized initiatives and offer interesting insights to prototype an innovative digital solution, to enhance the actions of community-led initiatives. A reference framework for digital mediation strategies and a mobile app prototype were developed, based on these surveys. The article contributes with an analytical view about the development of digital solutions, which aim to strengthen the relationship among agents of local communities and promote mediation mechanisms among all stakeholders in territorial-based innovation. (shrink)

Software testing is a complex and critical process for achieving product quality. Its importance has been increasing and well recognized, and there is a growing concern in improving the accomplishm...

Background: Moral distress is a kind of suffering that nurses may experience when they act in ways that are considered inconsistent with moral values, leading to a perceived compromise of moral integrity. Consequences are mostly negative and include physical and psychological symptoms, in addition to organizational implications. Objective: To psychometrically test the Moral Distress Risk Scale. Research design: A methodological study was realized. Data were submitted to exploratory factorial analysis through the SPSS statistical program. Participants and research context: In total, (...) 268 nurses from hospitals and primary healthcare settings participated in this research during the period of March to June of 2016. Ethical considerations: This research has ethics committee approval. Findings: The Moral Distress Risk Scale is composed of 7 factors and 30 items; it shows evidence of acceptable reliability and validity with a Cronbach’s α = 0.913, a total variance explained of 59%, a Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin = 0.896, and a significant Bartlett <0.001. Discussion: Concerns about moral distress should be beyond acute care settings, and a tool to help clarify critical points in other healthcare contexts may add value to moral distress speech. Conclusion: Psychometric results reveal that the Moral Distress Risk Scale can be applied in different healthcare contexts. (shrink)

The development of neuropsychological assessment methods using virtual reality (VR) is a valid and promising option for the detection of cognitive impairment in the older people, focusing on activities composed of tasks of multiple demands. This study verified the association of age, schooling, and general cognitive status on the performance of neurologically healthy older adults in ECO-VR, a virtual reality task of multiple demands for neuropsychological assessment. A total of 111 older adults answered a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Mini Mental State (...) Examination, the Vocabulary subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Adults (third edition), and the ECO-VR. Correlation analyses, multiple linear regression, and comparisons between groups (effects by age and schooling groups) were used to evaluate the results. The ECO-VR total score was significantly associated with age, years of education, MMSE, and Vocabulary subtest. The linear regression models identified that age was the main predictor for total score and rule breaking of ECO-VR. According to the univariate analysis, it was identified the main effect of age group and schooling group in the total ECO-VR score, but there was no interaction effect. The results are discussed in order to understand the role of sociodemographic characteristics in the performance of older adults in a virtual reality task of multiple demands. It was also verified the possibility use of virtual reality for neuropsychological assessment of older adults. (shrink)

This paper presents the Obstetric and Neonatal Ontology (OntONeo). This ontology has been created to provide a consensus representation of salient electronic health record (EHR) data and to serve interoperability of the associated data and information systems. More generally, it will serve interoperability of clinical and translational data, for example deriving from genomics disciplines and from clinical trials. Interoperability of EHR data is important to ensuring continuity of care during the prenatal and postnatal periods for both mother and child. As (...) a strategy to advance such interoperability we use an approach based on ontological realism and on the ontology development principles of the Open Biomedical Ontologies Foundry, including reuse of reference ontologies wherever possible. We describe the structure and coverage domain of OntONeo and the process of creating and maintaining the ontology. (shrink)

In this article, we will firstly explore the concept of connected design; secondly, we will explain how environments can be understood as interfaces for knowledge; and thirdly, we will expose the characteristics and objectives of the project Wired Book & Electronic Margin, which is part of a larger project called Universal Margin, as an example of connective design. Lastly, we will show the benefits of contextualizing information and transforming the world into a connected and lively real-time library, to underline how (...) connected design can facilitate a bottom-up construction of knowledge. (shrink)

Background: Moral sensitivity has been identified as a foundational component of ethical action. Diminished or absent moral sensitivity can result in deficient care. In this context, assessing moral sensitivity is imperative for designing interventions to facilitate ethical practice and ensure that nurses make appropriate decisions. Objective: The main purpose of this study was to validate a scale for examining the moral sensitivity of Brazilian nurses. Research design: A pre-existing scale, the Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire, which was developed by Lützén, was used (...) after the deletion of three items. The reliability and validity of the scale were examined using Cronbach’s alpha and factor analysis, respectively. Participants and research context: Overall, 316 nurses from Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, participated in the study. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Research of the Nursing School of the University of São Paulo. Findings: The Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire contained 27 items that were distributed across four dimensions: interpersonal orientation, professional knowledge, moral conflict and moral meaning. The questionnaire accounted for 55.8% of the total variance, with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.82. The mean score for moral sensitivity was 4.45 (out of 7). Discussion and conclusion: The results of this study were compared with studies from other countries to examine the structure and implications of the moral sensitivity of nurses in Brazil. The Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire is an appropriate tool for examining the moral sensitivity of Brazilian nurses. (shrink)

This introductory chapter integrates two different steps: a global consideration of the problems which the “signifier” limits is able to include and a detailed mapping of the reflective path which the following thirteen chapters effectively pursue.

An essentialist claim often made about organisms is that they could not have originated in different gametes. The thesis of gametic essentialism (GE) is usually understood either as a particular case of material origin essentialism, or as genetic essentialism. This paper argues that it should instead be understood in terms of the numerical identity of the gametes. Since gametes are living cells, their identity conditions should be the same as those of other living beings, and therefore involve neither specific material (...) composition, nor specific genes, but continuity of the same life. Understood in this way, GE is a particular case of biological antecedents essentialism (BAE), a kind of origin essentialism that is better justified in the light of the metaphysical nature of organisms as objects that inherit life from previously existing living organisms. BAE overcomes many objections facing other origin essentialist accounts, and it recognises the importance of the gametes in transmitting not just genes, but actively functioning physical structures necessary for life. If we wish to maintain an origin essentialism principle for organisms, we should prefer BAE. (shrink)

Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include ‘water is H 2 O’, ‘gold is the element with atomic number 79’, and ‘cats are animals’. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades (...) such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals. (shrink)

In two experiments, we examined the impact of color on cognitive performance by asking participants to categorize stimuli presented in three different colors: red, green, and gray (baseline). Participants were either asked to categorize the meaning of words as related to the concepts of “go” or “stop” (Experiment 1) or to indicate if a neutral verbal stimulus was a word or not (lexical decision task, Experiment 2). Overall, we observed performance facilitation in response to go stimuli presented in green (vs. (...) red or gray) and performance inhibition in response to go stimuli presented in red. The opposite pattern was observed for stop‐related stimuli. Importantly, results also indicated that color might also be used to categorize neutral stimuli. Overall, these findings provide support to the green‐go and red‐stop color associations and test the potential functional autonomy acquired by these colors and the boundary conditions to their effects on stimuli categorization. (shrink)

Gilberto Monteiro foi médico municipal da freguesia de Carnaxide de 1921 a 1961, Chefe dos Serviços Clínicos da extinta fábrica dos Fermentos Holandeses (F.P.F.H.), sediada na Cruz Quebrada, de 1934 a 1962 e, durante a II Guerrra Mundial, exerceu no Hospital Militar de Belém, na qualidade de tenente médico miliciano. Amante do desporto e desportista, G. Monteiro foi um dos fundadores do Sport Algés e Dafundo (SAD), instituição onde, enquanto membro da sua primeira Comissão Cultural, criou a Biblioteca, organizou conferências, (...) exposições e concertos e outras actividades culturais que ali atrairam figuras de relevo como Aquilino Ribeiro, Viana da Mota, Hernâni Cidade e Norton de Matos, entre outros. Se nas suas crónicas escritas para “O Fermento” deparamos com o G. Monteiro, historiador inconformado, que denuncia os constantes atentados à integridade histórica e patrimonial, no Esboço Histórico do Hospital Militar (1945) convivemos com um testemunho de vertical e desassombrada coragem cívica, denunciadora dos males de que padecia a medicina contemporânea. Finalmente, acompanhamos o esforço e as diligências que, numa linha de justiça, educação e melhoria da qualidade de vida das pessoas, G. Monteiro desenvolveu, em pleno Estado Novo, a fim de instituir na fábrica (FPFH) uma assistência médico-social moderna. (shrink)

Life is a self-maintaining process based on metabolism. Something is said to be alive when it exhibits organization and is actively involved in its own continued existence through carrying out metabolic processes. A life is a spatio-temporally restricted event, which continues while the life processes are occurring in a particular chunk of matter (or, arguably, when they are temporally suspended, but can be restarted at any moment), even though there is continuous replacement of parts. Life is organized in discrete packages, (...) particular cells and multicellular organisms with differing degrees of individuality. Biological species, too, have been shown to be individuals, and not classes, as these collections of organisms are spatio-temporally localized, restricted, continuous, and somewhat cohesive entities, with a definite beginning and end. Assuming that all life on Earth has a common origin, all living organisms, cells, and tissues descending from this origin exhibit continuity of the life processes at the cellular level, as well as many of the features that define the individual character of species: spatio-temporal localization and restriction, continuity, historicity, and cohesiveness. Therefore, life on Earth is an ontological individual. Independent origins of life will have produced other such individuals. These provisionally called ‘life-individuals’ constitute a category of organization of life which has seldom been recognized. The discovery of at least one independent life-individual would go a long way toward the project of the universality of biology. (shrink)

_The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings_ addresses the problems an Anselmian perfect being faces in contexts involving unlimited options. Recent advances in the theory of vagueness, the metaphysics of multiverses and hyperspace, the theory of dynamic or sequential choice, the logic of moral and rational dilemmas, and metaethical theory provide the resources to formulate the new challenges and the Anselmian responses with an unusual degree of precision. Almeida shows that the challenges arising in the unusual contexts involving unlimited options sometimes (...) produce metaphysical surprise. (shrink)

For some of us, the defeasibility theory of knowledge remains the most plausible approach to the Gettier Problem. Epistemological fashion and faded memories notwithstanding, persuasive objections to the theory are very hard to find. The most impressive of those objections to the theory that have hitherto gone unanswered are examined and rejected here. These are objections put forward by Richard Feldman, Richard Foley, and John Turri. While these are all interesting, the objection recently put forward by Turri is, we think, (...) by far, the most serious threat to the theory that we have seen in a long time. A successful reply to it requires a surprising amount of care, as it turns out. If tenable, Turri's objection deals a devastating blow to the theory developed by Roderick Chisholm, Keith Lehrer, Peter Klein, Marshall Swain, Risto Hilpinen, John Pollock, and Paul Moser, among others. Under scrutiny, however, the threat proves illusory. It results from inattention to a crucial, but relatively subtle, aspect of.. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question ‘what is an organism?’. Extant theories of organismality only provide a partial answer because they do not include an account of composition on which an ontology of living entities can be based. Here we develop a new account of what organisms are, based on a naturalistic answer to the special composition question, the bound state view. We argue that physical structure, including the existence of a boundary, is essential for life, and that, therefore, organisms are (...) a particular kind of composite physical object – living objects. The bound state account of composition explains how composite physical objects exist in the world, and the property ‘life’ distinguishes the subset of those objects which are organisms. Our view obviates the need for disjunctive accounts of composition for living and non-living entities, placing ‘organism’ within the context of a broader scientific ontology, while at the same time providing a clear criterion of organismality that can be used in adjudicating problematic cases of biological individuality. (shrink)