This Article investigates the determinants of dividend policy in firms with concentrated ownership structures. A review of the empirical literature shows that dividend payout ratios are lower in firms with controlling shareholders. We explain this finding as a consequence of the legal rules governing cash distributions, which leave the dividend decision in the hands of the firm insiders, and the lack of monitoring mechanisms for checking the power of controlling shareholders. The analysis of the empirical evidence on dividend policy points (...) to the existence of an unresolved agency conflict between controlling shareholders and outside investors. We conclude that controlling shareholders are currently using the dividend policy to expropriate minority shareholders. (shrink)

This article analyzes the relationship between cyberbullying profile by racist reasons and social abilities in a group of intercultural teenagers living in Spain. The study includes participants aged between 12 and 16 years old. Of these, 738 were male and 740 were female. A correlational study was carried out using online tools with suitable psychometrics parameters. The first one was a scale that measured social abilities, and the second one evaluated racist or xenophobic cyberbullying, differentiating the victim and aggressor profiles. (...) The results indicated five main findings: generally, the participants analyzed present all their social abilities; for the most part, these participants do not normally experience cyberbullying; a positive correlation exists between the majority of social abilities analyzed and the cybervictim profile. It was also observed a negative correlation between the social ability associated with the ability of making requests and this profile; there is a positive correlation among the six social abilities analyzed and the cyberaggressor profile; the racist or xenophobic cyberbullying are driven not only by the absence of social abilities, but in some cases, they are also driven by socio-demographic variables. Likewise, this work shows how the absence of some social abilities in some participants involve racist or xenophobic experiences as victims and as aggressors, which may be of interest for the analysis of teenagers’ behavior in intercultural contexts, as well as according to age and gender. More transcultural research need to be carried out to know the global perspective of the link between social abilities and the different profiles of racist and xenophobic cyberbullying, framed in the context of social psychology and studies of mass communication. (shrink)

O presente estudo tem por objetivo a análise da prevalência de mobbing numa amostra de trabalhadores de centros de apoio a pessoas com deficiências. Utilizando uma amostra de 67 profissionais, e mediante um questionário formado por 30 itens, elaborado a partir do Leymann Inventory Psychological Terr..

There are few successful applications of automated reasoning over OWL-formalised bio-ontologies, and requirements are often unclearly formulated. Of what is available, usage and prospective scenarios of automated reasoning is often different from the straightforward classification and satisfiability. We list nine types of scenarios and specify the requirements in more detail. Several of these requirements are already possible in practice or at least in theory, others are in need of further research, in particular regarding the linking of the OWL ontology to (...) data, reasoning over roles, and dynamically linking modular ontologies. (shrink)

This Perspective adapts the ViolEx Model, a framework validated in several clinical conditions, to better understand the role of expectations in the recovery and/or maintenance of musculoskeletal pain. Here, particular attention is given to the condition in which dysfunctional expectations are maintained despite no longer being supported by confirmatory evidence. While the ViolEx Model suggests that cognitive immunization strategies are responsible for the maintenance of dysfunctional expectations, we suggest that such phenomenon can also be understood from a Bayesian Brain perspective, (...) according to which the level of precision of the priors is the determinant factor accounting for the extent of priors’ updating. Importantly, this Perspective translates the theory behind these two frameworks into clinical suggestions. Precisely, it is argued that different strategies should be implemented when treating MSK pain patients, depending on the nature of their expectations. (shrink)

Global environmental problems, such as global warming, pollution, or deforestation, are critical issues that require a rapid and common response. In this context, companies play a decisive role in achieving environmental objectives through the ecological knowledge they can store and manage. In this context, the present research focuses its interest on analyzing how the set of green intangibles possessed by organizations, i.e., Green Intellectual Capital, affects their Green Performance. Specifically, the study shows how GP is influenced by GIC through the (...) mediating role of the Green Innovation variable. Therefore, the research questions to be answered by this study are as follows: Does GIC influence environmental performance? Does GI mediate the GIC-GP relationship? What actions can companies take to improve their GP? There are several reasons that have led us to carry out this research. First, there is little empirical evidence of the relationships proposed in this study. Second, to the best of our knowledge, there is no previous research that has contextualized the relationships raised in the wine industry, thus representing an advance in the comprehension of the constructs studied. Third, GIC represents an incipient field of study that needs to be developed and established within the literature linked to Intellectual Capital. In order to achieve the proposed objectives, data from a survey of 202 wineries in Spain were used and a quantitative approach was followed using Structural Equation Modeling. The results of the research indicate that there is a positive and significant relationship between GIC and GP. In addition, GI partially mediates the relationship between these two variables, playing a key role in the environmental management of wineries. The theoretical and practical contributions of the study improve the understanding of the relationships raised, being a pioneering study due to its contextualization in the wine industry, as well as providing a series of guidelines for both environmental managers and winemakers to improve their GP. (shrink)

Estudos recentes têm sugerido a existência de interações entre sexo, gênero e ambiente sociocultural na determinação de níveis de indecisão vocacional. Participaram do estudo 186 adolescentes de ambos os sexos (86 do interior e 100 da capital do estado), estudantes do ensino médio. Os instrumentos u..

María Jesús Vitón es Doctora en Ciencias de la Educación y Profesora Titular de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Desarrolla su docencia y sus investigaciones en el terreno de lo socio-educativo, en grupos, en territorios, en países y en paisajes donde su quehacer profesional cobra el sentido de contribuir a transformar; a transformar con otros.Diálogos con Raquel es una propuesta metodológica práctica para planificar, desarrollar y evaluar acciones educativas en la diversidad cultural, con ..

Motor learning can be defined as a process that leads to relatively permanent changes in motor behavior through repeated interactions with the environment. Different strategies can be adopted to achieve motor learning: movements can be overtly practiced leading to an amelioration of motor performance; alternatively, covert strategies (e.g., action observation) can promote neuroplastic changes in the motor system even in the absence of real movement execution. However, whether a training regularly alternating action observation and execution (i.e., Action Observation Training, AOT) (...) may surpass the pure motor practice (MP) and observational learning (OL) remains to be established. To address this issue, we enrolled 54 subjects requiring them to learn tying nautical knots via one out of three types of training (AOT, MP, OL) with the scope to investigate which element mostly contributes to motor learning. We evaluated the overall improvement of each group, along with the predictive role that neuropsychological indexes exert on each treatment outcome. The AOT group exhibited the highest performance improvement (42%), indicating that the regular alternation between observation and execution biases participants toward a better performance. The reiteration of this sequence provides an incremental, adjunct value that super-adds onto the efficacy of motor practice or observational learning in isolation (42% > 25% + 10%, i.e., OL + MP). These findings extend the use of the AOT from clinical and rehabilitative contexts to daily routines requiring the learning and perfectioning of new motor skills such as sports training, music, and occupational activities requiring fine motor control. (shrink)

A systematic review was carried out on the production and publication of research papers related to the study of the variables Administrative Accounting, Innovation, Financial Management and Sustainability, the PRISMA approach (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses). The purpose of the analysis proposed in this document was to know the main characteristics of the publications registered in the Scopus and Wos databases and their scope in the study of the proposed variables, achieving the identification of 58 publications in (...) total. Thanks to this first identification, it was possible to refine the results through the keywords entered in the search button of both platforms, the following keywords: MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING, INNOVATION, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, SUSTAINABILITY, reaching a total of 15 documents, excluding duplicates and those that did not meet the analysis criteria. From this analysis, it is expected to know the contributions of the scientific community to the study of the contributions of administrative accounting in sustainable financial management, in support of decision-making by senior management, always seeking the optimization of resources and increase profitability through innovation and the principles of sustainability. (shrink)

Background The legitimacy of conscientious objection to abortion continues to fuel heated debate in Italy. In two recent decisions, the European Committee for Social Rights underlined that conscientious objection places safe, legal, and accessible care and services out of reach for most Italian women and that the measures that Italy has adopted to guarantee free access to abortion services are inadequate. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Health states that current Italian legislation, if appropriately applied, accommodates both the right to conscientious objection (...) and the right to voluntary abortion. Main body One empirical argument used to demonstrate that conscientious objection does not create barriers to abortion is the “no correlation” argument, which the Italian Committee for Bioethics employed to demonstrate that no association exists between conscientious objection and waiting times for voluntary abortion in Italy and to support the weak form of conventional comprise adopted by the Italian legislation to balance the conflict between women’ autonomy and healthcare professionals’ moral integrity. Conversely, we showed how the “no correlation” argument fails to demonstrate the absence of a relationship between the number of conscientious objectors and waiting times for voluntary abortion, and that the limitations of the “no correlation” argument itself demonstrate how it is still difficult to describe the real effect of conscientious objection on the access to abortion services and to evaluate the suitability of conventional compromise to effectively balance conflicting moral principles. Conclusion Further studies are needed to better describe the relationship between conscientious objection and waiting times for voluntary abortion. If new evidence would show that the increasing proportion of objectors does undermine the efficacy of the Italian law and the right of a woman to freely obtain a voluntary abortion, new ways will need to be found to address the conflict between moral principles and restrict the protection accorded to the principle of moral integrity. This would inevitably imply the need to constrain and to redefine the terms and conditions for claiming conscientious objection. (shrink)

L’introduzione al fascicolo Analogia e medioevo sive vent’anni di analogie presenta il numero 18 di "Doctor Virtualis" e traccia le tappe fondamentali della rivista. Si delineano dapprima alcune linee della storia della rivista e le sue ispirazioni teoriche e storiografiche principali, per poi mettere in luce le ragioni della rilevanza del tema dell’analogia, come oggetto utilizzato e pensato nei secoli medievali e come strumento di ricerca storiografica, e infine si conclude con l’articolazione del fascicolo. The introduction to the issue Analogy (...) and the Middle Ages sive twenty years of analogies presents issue n. 18 of Doctor Virtualis and traces the milestones of the journal. It first sketches some lines of the history of the journal and its main theoretical and historiographical inspirations, then highlights the reasons for the relevance of the theme of analogy, as an object used and thought of in the medieval centuries and as a tool for historiographical research, and finally concludes with the articulation of the issue. (shrink)

El presente artículo, de carácter descriptivo, analiza los principales métodos científicos utilizados en las Ciencias Sociales para analizar la violencia audiovisual. Así, los experimentos de laboratorio, o investigación experimental., estudios de campo, estudios correlacionales, estudios de panel longitudinal, experimentos naturales, estudios de intervención y revisión de meta-análisis han sido los principales métodos empleados por los investigadores más destacados en el campo de las Ciencias Sociales. En este artículo se presentan las técnicas utilizadas así como las principales investigaciones realizadas,con las conclusiones (...) más importantes sobre la violencia audiovisual. (shrink)

The Test Your Memory is a brief self-administered, cognitive screening test, currently used in several settings. It requires minimal administrator supervision and the computation of the final test score takes approximately 2 min. We assessed the discrimination ability of the Italian version of the TYM in detecting Mild Cognitive Impairment in clinical setting. TYM-I was administered to 94 MCI patients and 134 healthy controls. The clinical diagnosis of MCI was considered as the gold standard. An extended formal neuropsychological test battery (...) was used to define MCI subtypes. Receiver Operating Characteristic analyses were conducted to find the optimal cut-off and measure discrimination ability of TYM-I in detecting MCI. TYM-I had a similar area under the curve point estimate as Mini Mental State Examination. A TYM-I score lower or equal to 36 was found to be optimal cut off to detect MCI. The TYM-I showed the highest discrimination ability among individuals aged more than 70 and high educational level. The amnestic MCI subtype patients, compared to non-amnestic MCI patients, had worse performance in recall, orientation and visuospatial abilities TYM-I subscores. The TYM-I is a valid screening test in detecting cognitive dysfunction, easily carried out in clinical practice. The TYM-I subscores may allow to identify amnestic and non-amnestic MCI subtypes. (shrink)

Probablemente no son los mejores tiempos para tomar una foto de nuestra ya no tan joven democracia, pero sí que puede resultar interesante reflexionar cómo ha evolucionado durante estos años la imagen de España tanto ad intra como ad extra, teniendo en cuenta que siempre va acompañada de una cierta distorsión marcada por los estereotipos, algunos inventados y otros reales pero exagerados. Es importante, por lo tanto, reflexionar no sólo en cómo han visto los demás desde fuera la suerte de (...) la puesta en práctica de los principios marcados por la Constitución de 1978, sino también cómo hemos vivido nosotros ese proceso desde dentro durante estas tres décadas. (shrink)

Firm managers play an important role in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. Education is emerging as the key factor in developing a sense of moral responsibility amongst the business students who will eventually become company managers and decision makers. The aim of this research is, thus, twofold. First, to analyze the existence of a direct positive correlation between university students’ perception of CSR and its impact on business performance; and second, to examine the extent to which two (...) factors (advantages brought by CSR and responsibilities toward stakeholders) act as mediation variables in the aforementioned correlation. The analysis was performed with a sample of 390 business‐related university students. Amongst the potential contributions made by this study we can highlight the possibility of knowing future managers’ way of thinking and of knowing the aspects where educational centers might improve their CSR teaching. (shrink)

Este trabajo aborda el pacto librepensador suscri­to por las autoras Rosario de Acuña y Ángeles López de Ayala. Se examinan sus contribuciones en la prensa librepensadora y su activismo feminista a través de un análisis de sus colabora­ciones en Las dominicales del librepensamiento, El gladiador: órgano de la “Sociedad progresiva femenina” y El gladiador del librepensamiento. La ideología de estas publicaciones les permitió vincular la lucha feminista con la agenda política de ideología progresista. Se parte de dos ejes complementarios cuya (...) intersección permite abordar su pacto de compromiso y transgresión: la lucha por la igualdad social y por la igualdad de género. Se estudian sus reflexiones sobre la explotación del pueblo por las castas, el empoderamiento de la mujer como agente constructor del progreso y la denuncia vehemente de su sometimiento. Se concluye que los escritos de Acuña y Ayala evidencian con el paso de los años una radicalización que pro­picia una postura cada vez más trasgresora y un feminismo más combativo, reflejando así su descontento con la actitud pater­nalista u hostil del librepensamiento y el republicanismo mas­culino en lo que respecta a los derechos de la mujer. (shrink)

What are intuitions? Do they exist as distinctive mental states? Do they have an epistemic function? Can we discern specific features that characterize intuitions? Questions like these are widely d...

Batteries are a fundamental storage component due to its various applications in mobility, renewable energies and consumer electronics among others. Regardless of the battery typology, one key variable from a user’s perspective is the remaining energy in the battery. It is usually presented as the percentage of remaining energy compared to the total energy that can be stored and is labeled State Of Charge (SOC). This work addresses the development of a hybrid model based on a Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) (...) power cell, due to its broad implementation. The proposed model calculates the SOC, by means of voltage and electric current as inputs and the latter as the output. Therefore, four models based on k-Means, Agglomerative Clustering, Gaussian Mixture and Spectral Clustering techniques have been tested in order to obtain an optimal solution. (shrink)

The exceptional pandemic due to the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has obliged all Italians to stay at home. In the literature, there are evidences that traumatic global events, such as natural catastrophes and pandemic, have negative effects on the physical and psychological health of the population. We carried out a survey to analyze the physical and psychological conditions of Italians during the pandemic. Due to the severe limitations in moving during the phase one lockdown, the survey was administered by internet. (...) Results show that Italians followed the provisions established by the Italian government to avoid contamination, but 43% of them declared to have suffered from physical symptoms, in particular migraine, sleep disorders, persistent exhaustion, and difficulty of concentration. They have great fear to be contaminated or that relatives or friends can be contaminated, and they actively take actions to avoid contamination. Participants declared that they had suffered a lot of inconveniences due to restrictions in their movements, and that their life habits were strongly changed. They spent their time at home in different activities, but their psychological well-being was strongly impaired by the lockdown. The level of anxiety tripled, in relation to the prepandemic period, and 30% of males and 41% of females declared to have severe levels of depression. Participants with high levels of optimism and hopefulness show a stronger resilience against anxiety and depression. In addition, there is a negative correlation between anxiety and depression and the five factors of personality. These results show that psychological diseases must not be neglected, and that people in lockdown do need support for their psychological health, also with the help of internet and communication technologies. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se analiza las posibilidades de la teoría de las Representaciones Sociales (RS) para, desde la perspectiva de los sujetos, analizar los elementos cognitivos implicados y socialmente construidos que sustentan las acciones de gestión micro y macro institucional, y de coordinación entre varias municipalidades de un mismo territorio, lo que la literatura de gestión denomina trabajo asociativo o asociativismo. Interesan específicamente las representaciones sociales de la asociatividad en el tema educativo, desde actores político-administrativos y profesionales implicados en (...) la mejora de la educación municipal. Se postula y fundamenta que el estudio de las Representaciones Sociales del Asociativismo Municipal en Educación es pertinente desde los elementos conceptuales de la perspectiva Procesual, dado que el objeto de Representación –el Asociativismo Municipal en Educación- y las técnicas para su análisis se ajustan a las estrategias de implementación del trabajo asociativo en los distintos niveles de organización municipal en el tema educativo. (shrink)

Resumen: Los profesores universitarios ocupamos mucho tiempo en ofrecer retroalimentación oral o escrita a los trabajos de los estudiantes. Sin embargo, una de las preocupaciones que surge es saber qué hacen los estudiantes con dichas sugerencias ¿Las siguen? ¿Las omiten? El objetivo de esta investigación es presentar los resultados del análisis de las acciones ejecutadas por estudiantes universitarios a partir de los 434 comentarios escritos ofrecidos por dos profesores guías a un total de 6 borradores durante el desarrollo de una (...) investigación final de grado. Para ello, adaptamos la taxonomía de Faigley y Witte para analizar las acciones realizadas por escritores a partir de la retroalimentación recibida. Analizamos, a partir del texto terminado, las acciones realizadas por los estudiantes en términos de adopción, no adopción o supresión de las sugerencias ofrecidas para mejorar el escrito. Los resultados demuestran que los estudiantes adoptan prácticamente todas las sugerencias ofrecidas. Básicamente lo que más hacen es consolidar y sustituir en el escrito. Asimismo se reporta que existe alguna relación entre la manera como se ofrecen los comentarios y las acciones que realizan los escritores. Si bien se trata de un estudio de caso, es interesante notar una cierta relación entre la oferta de órdenes y la adición, y entre preguntas con reformulaciones en el escrito.: We, university teachers, invest most of our time in offering written or oral feedback to the student’s assignments. However, one of the issues is to know what students do with these comments. Do they follow them? Do they omit them? The aim of this research is to present the results of the analysis carried out about the actions that students perform based on 434 written comments provided by 2 supervisors teachers in total of 2 drafts produced in the development of the final undergraduate research. To analyze the actions carried out by the writers from the feedback received, Faigley and Witte taxonomy was adapted. These actions were analyzed in terms of adoption, non adoption or suppression of the suggestions offered to improve the text. The results show that students adopt almost all the suggestions offered. Basically, what they do the most is to consolidate and substitute. Likewise, it is possible to report that there is a relation between the way comments are offered and the actions the writers carry out. While, this is a case study, it is interesting to notice a certain relation between offering order and the text addition and questions with the text modifications. (shrink)

This article analyzes the financial performance and managerial abilities of a sample of US and European socially responsible (SR) mutual funds. The period analyzed commences from January 1994 and concludes in January 2013 and yields 18 US and 89 European green funds. The results obtained for green fund managers are compared with those achieved for conventional and other forms of SR mutual fund managers. We control for the mutual fund investment objective (distinguishing between domestic and global portfolios) and for the (...) effect of crisis market periods. For US SR funds, partitioning the data into crisis and normal periods reveals that SR funds obtain statistically insignificant performance in crisis periods but underperform relative to the market in normal periods. Furthermore, the findings indicate that green funds do not perform worse than other forms of SR mutual funds. For European SR funds partitioning the data into crisis and normal periods reveals that SR funds obtain statistically insignificant performance irrespective of market conditions. Similar to the US findings, green Europe SR funds do not perform worse than other forms of SR mutual funds. Managerial abilities are not evident in the findings though unsuccessful timing of the market is revealed for both Europe and US global green funds. When analyzing managerial abilities in crisis and non-crisis market periods, US green fund managers achieve better results in crisis market periods and the opposite occurs for green fund managers in European market. (shrink)