The purpose of this paper is aimed at examining the educational needs and didactic competences of teachers for the preparation and use of didactic-methodical teaching materials in the teaching of the subject Macedonian language for the program areas Initial reading and writing and Language (first, second and third grade), and all with the aim of improving the teaching of the Macedonian language. For the successful realization of the goals/standards for evaluation needed in the program areas Initial reading and writing and (...) Language from the first to the third grade, it is necessary to prepare, apply and classify the teaching materials that will serve as a kind of teaching support for the teachers, but also for the students, which will help them in learning the Cyrillic and Latin letters, writing and reading with them, language and spelling rules, as well as the application of spelling signs. In teaching practice, there is a need for didactic-methodical design of teaching materials within the program areas Initial reading and writing and Language, respecting modern methodical, methodological and dokimological principles. For that reason, the examination of the attitudes and educational needs of teachers, as immediate implementers of teaching, is the methodological justification for their inclusion as a special research subsample. (shrink)

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) withits Optional Protocol is the first binding legal act and leading international instrumentregarding the rights of persons with disabilities. One of the principles of CRPDis “respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to makeone’s own choices and independence”, whereby persons with disabilities are recognizedas holders of rights taking into account their specific situation. CRPD recognizes inArticle 6 that “women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination”and (...) mandates signatory countries to “take measures to ensure their full and equalenjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” The research was done inorder to examine the readiness of the state to institutionally cover the awareness of girlsand women with disabilities, their education on the issue of violence, access to servicesand information appropriate to the needs of each category separately, as well as systemicsolutions for their protection from violence. A qualitative research strategy was applied,and the research was conducted with representatives of the Centers for Social Work, representativesfrom the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, professionals who are directproviders of services in the field of non-family protection, as well as the girls and womenwith disabilities themselves. The main conclusions that emerge from the research saythat girls and women with disabilities are more susceptible to violence, especially bytheir partners or family members. More awareness is needed to recognize and encouragereporting of violence. (shrink)

… philosophy must be a practice as much as it is a theory.Leah Kalmanson, Cross-Cultural Existentialism, p. 1In the face of the sheer quantity of life's uncertainties, Leah Kalmanson's Cross-Cultural Existentialism provides more than a novel take on existential theory ; following the mantra of European existentialists that "philosophies are meant to be lived," Cross-Cultural Existentialism introduces the reader to a series of practices central to the Ruist tradition required to make philosophy "a concrete attitude, a way of life". Kalmanson's (...) turn to the East Asian tradition is largely motivated by her assessment that the... (shrink)

This special issue collects the results of the workshop “The Philosophy of Keith Lehrer” which was held in October 2010 at the University of Graz, Austria, where Keith Lehrer is Honorary Professor and Honorary Doctor of Philosophy. Over the last decades Lehrer has been a frequent visitor in Graz. As a much admired teacher and scholar, he has decisively influenced generations of students and inspired many of them to choose an academic career. The guest-editors, who organized the workshop, want to (...) thank all the participants for making the workshop a success. Special thanks go to Keith Lehrer for commenting on each talk at the workshop as well as each contribution to this volume. We are grateful to Stewart Cohen for publishing this issue in his prestigious journal. This volume honors Lehrer and his invaluable contributions to philosophy. It contains five chapters, each illustrating the impressively wide range of his philosophy. The chapters are divided into discussions and applications of Lehrer´s work in theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The fifth and final chapter contains his replies to all of the contributions. (shrink)

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has highlighted the interdependency of healthcare systems and research organizations on manufacturers and suppliers of personnel protective equipment and the need for well-trained personnel who can react quickly to changing working conditions. Reports on challenges faced by research laboratory workers are rare in contrast to the lived experience of hospital health care workers. We report on experiences gained by RLWs who significantly contributed to combating the pandemic under particularly challenging conditions due to increased workload, sickness and interrupted (...) PPE supply chains. RLWs perform a broad spectrum of work with SARS-CoV-2 such as autopsies, establishment of virus cultures and infection models, development and verification of diagnostics, performance of virus inactivation assays to investigate various antiviral agents including vaccines and evaluation of decontamination technologies in high containment biological laboratories. Performance of autopsies and laboratory work increased substantially during the pandemic and thus led to highly demanding working conditions with working shifts of more than eight hours working in PPE that stressed individual limits and also the ergonomic and safety limits of PPE. We provide detailed insights into the challenges of the stressful daily laboratory routine since the pandemic began, lessons learned, and suggest solutions for better safety based on a case study of a newly established HCBL designed for autopsies and research laboratory work. Reduced personal risk, increased resilience, and stress resistance can be achieved by improved PPE components, better training, redundant safety measures, inculcating a culture of safety, and excellent teamwork. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that seeing-in can sometimes be central to the aesthetic appreciation of pictures. The key concept is that of inflected seeing-in, a special case of picture perception connected with the wollheimean notion of twofoldness. In order to further understand inflection, I focus on Nanays account. He holds that conscious attention is essential to inflected seeing-in. I agree, but I suggest our conceptualization of the properties of the pictorial vehicle is necessary to account for the complexity of (...) this experience. Developing a suggestion from Wollheim, I then characterize inflected pictorial experience in terms of different pictorial hows and our grasping of them. This makes it possible to account for the intuitive link between properties of experiences and properties of the pictures that trigger them, as well as for the appealing idea that our conscious apprehension of the way a picture depicts its subject - what I may call the pictorial hows - plays a significant role in our aesthetic experience of pictures. I finally look at these results in the more general perspective of a representationalist theory of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Die philosophische Selbstergründung läuft als roter Faden durch das Gesamtwerk Wiebke Schraders. Aus der anthropologischen Auflösung der Gottesfrage folgte nicht die erwartete Aufwertung, sondern die Entwertung des Individuums mit katastrophalen politischen Konsequenzen. Gott als Problem ist systematisch nicht von der Selbstergründung der Vernunft, dem Fundament der Menschenwürde, zu trennen. Beide Problemkomplexe arbeitete W. Schrader in spekulativer Absicht denkgeschichtlich heraus. So erstreckt sich die Spannweite ihrer Studien u.a. von der Ideologiediskussion bei Mannheim, Marx und Comte über Kants Vernunftkritik, der Welt- und (...) Selbstgestaltung in der Philosophie der Renaissance zurück bis zu Augustinus und dem Problem eines höchsten Begriffs bei Anselm von Canterbury, Platon und Aristoteles. (shrink)

This article explores how Alzheimer’s disease caregivers struggle under the impact of a parent’s memory loss on their own personality. In particular, it analyses how caregivers perceive and, thus, present their experiences of the ever intensifying caregiving activity in terms of a ‘journey’. In doing so, this work takes into account both the patient’s continuing bodily as well as cognitive decline and its intricately linked influence on the caregiver’s physical and emotional stability. Equally, this study investigates how caregivers portray memory (...) loss, and how their portrayal fits into our conceptualisation of illness narratives and the culture of autobiographical writing. (shrink)

Instructions for authors need to be informative and regularly updated. We hypothesized that journals with a higher impact factor have more comprehensive IFA. The aim of the study was to examine whether IFA of journals indexed in the Journal Citation Reports 2013, “Medical Laboratory Technology” category, are written in accordance with the latest recommendations and whether the quality of instructions correlates with the journals’ IF. 6 out of 31 journals indexed in “Medical Laboratory Technology” category were excluded. The remaining 25 (...) journals were scored based on a set of 41 yes/no questions and divided into four groups by three authors independently. We tested the correlation between IF and total score and the difference between scores in separate question groups. The median total score was 26 [portion of positive answers 0.63 ]. There was no statistically significant correlation between a journal’s IF and the total score. IFA included recommendations concerning research ethics and manuscript preparation more extensively than recommendations concerning editorial policy and research integrity. Some policies were poorly described, for example: procedure for author’s appeal, editorial submissions, appointed body for research integrity issues. The IF of the “Medical Laboratory Technology” journals does not reflect a journals’ compliance to uniform standards. There is a need for improving editorial policies and the policies on research integrity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this research, we investigated whether appraisals of faces follow distinct rules of information integration under arousing versus non-arousing conditions. Support for this prediction was found in four experiments in which participants observed angry faces that were presented with a direct versus an averted gaze, on a red versus a grey background, and after performing a motor exercise versus no exercise. Under arousing conditions, participants’ appraisals of faces reflected summation whereas, under non-arousing conditions, appraisals did not reflect summation and could (...) instead be accounted for by three alternative rules of information integration based on averaging, mere exposure, or the number of strong stimuli. (shrink)

BackgroundThere are two types of voluntary interruption of pregnancy: elective and therapeutic abortion. These forms are different for many reasons, and it is reasonable to assume that they can have negative consequences that can last until a subsequent gestation. However, no study has analyzed the psychological experience of gestation after a previous abortion, distinguishing the two forms of voluntary interruption of pregnancy.ObjectiveThis study aims to explore the level of prenatal attachment and centrality of pregnancy in nulliparous low-risk pregnant women with (...) a recently previous elective or therapeutic abortion.MethodsA total of 34 nulliparous pregnant women with a history of abortion, aged from 27 to 48 years, were recruited in the maternity ward of a public hospital of the metropolitan area of Tuscany and Lombardy during the third trimester of gestation. The participants filled out a battery of questionnaires aimed at assessing prenatal attachment and centrality of pregnancy.ResultsAnalyses of variance showed that women with a history of elective abortion reported a higher centrality of pregnancy than women with a past therapeutic abortion. On the contrary, women with a past therapeutic abortion reported higher prenatal attachment.ConclusionElective and therapeutic abortions are different experiences that impact the way women experience a subsequent pregnancy. Future research should further investigate the psychological experience of gestation after abortion. (shrink)

Miranda Fricker’s insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I (...) show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. (shrink)

In this article I will address the issue of the embodiment of computing systems from the point of view distinctive of the so-called Unconventional Computation, focusing on the paradigm known as Morphological Computation. As a first step, I will contextualize Morphological Computation within the disciplinary field of Embodied Artificial Intelligence: broadly conceived, Embodied Artificial Intelligence may be characterized as embracing both conventional and unconventional approaches to the artificial emulation of natural intelligence. Morphological Computation stands out from other paradigms of unconventional (...) Embodied Artificial Intelligence in that it discloses a new, closer kind of connection between embodiment and computation. I will further my investigation by briefly reviewing the state-of-the-art in Morphological Computation: attention will be given to a very recent trend, whose core concept is that of “organic reconfigurability”. In this direction, as a final step, two advanced cases of study of organic or living morphological computers will be presented and discussed. The prospect is to shed some light on our title question: what progress has been made in understanding the embodiment of computing systems? (shrink)

In this article I will address the issue of the meaning of human-machine interaction as it is configured today in the light of substantial results achieved in the design and the manufacture of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. My starting point is a refined solution for meaningful AI recently suggested by Froese and Taguchi from the perspective of so-called augmented intelligence. Interpreted as a kind of human-machine interaction, augmented intelligence distinguishes itself by the fact that it merges the interacting poles into (...) a new hybrid entity. After having clarified the technical and the methodological background of my proposal, I will discuss a case of study of so-called bio-synthetic augmentation, where hybridisation overlaps with the cyborgisation of the human body. (shrink)

Although learning from multiple representations has been shown to be effective in a variety of domains, little is known about the mechanisms by which it occurs. We analyzed log data on error-rate, hint-use, and time-spent obtained from two experiments with a Cognitive Tutor for fractions. The goal of the experiments was to compare learning from multiple graphical representations of fractions to learning from a single graphical representation. Finding that a simple statistical model did not fit data from either experiment, we (...) searched over all possible mediation models consistent with background knowledge, finding several that fit the data well. We also searched over alternative measures of student error-rate, hint-use, and time-spent to see if our data were better modeled with simple monotonic or u-shaped non-monotonic relationships. We found no evidence for non-monotonicity. No matter what measures we used, time-spent was irrelevant, and hint-use was only occasionally relevant. Although the total effect of multiple representations on learning was positive, they also had a negative effect on learning, mediated by a higher error-rate. Our evidence suggests that multiple representations increase error-rate, which in turn inhibits learning. The mechanisms by which multiple representations improve learning are as yet unmodeled. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health issue leading older adults to an increased vulnerability to unfavorable outcomes. Indeed, the presence of physical frailty has recently led to higher mortality due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, no longitudinal studies have investigated the role of neuropsychogeriatric factors associated with lockdown fatigue in healthy cognitive aging. Eighty-one healthy older adults were evaluated for their neuropsychological characteristics, including physical frailty, before the pandemic. Subsequently, 50 of them agreed to be interviewed and neuropsychologically re-assessed during the (...) lockdown and immediately after it. Moreover, during another home confinement, they performed a psychological screening to evaluate possible mood changes and fatigue. According to Fried's frailty criteria, at T0, 63% of the sample was robust, 34.5% pre-frail, and only 2.5% frail. Significantly, these subjects presented a decrease in handgrip strength and walking speed. Results from Principal Component Analyses and multiple regression models highlighted the contribution of “cognitive” and “psychological” factors in explaining handgrip strength and gait speed. At T3, lockdown fatigue was explained by higher scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and lower scores on the Trail Making Test part A. Results from a moderated-mediation model showed that the effect of psychomotor speed on lockdown fatigue was mediated by depression, with a moderating effect of gait speed. Our findings highlight the complex interrelationship between cognitive, psychological, and physical factors in the emergence of pandemic fatigue in a carefully selected older population. (shrink)