ObjectiveThis study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the MotivAir program—a phone-based intervention based on Motivational Interviewing principles and techniques—in enhancing adherence to Continuous Positive Airway Pressure therapy among patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome.MethodsA multicenter randomized controlled trial design with random allocation at the level of the individual will be conducted to compare the impact of the experimental program with a control group receiving usual care only in improving selected clinical and psychological parameters in the patients. A minimum sample (...) of 80 participants will be recruited in each center according to the inclusion criteria. After the initial screening, participants will be randomly assigned to either the experimental group or the control condition. The program will last 180 days and will be delivered by a trained nurse. The impact of the MotivAir program on selected primary and secondary outcomes will be measured at baseline, and after 1-, 3-, and 6-month from CPAP initiation.DiscussionParticipants are expected to show an increased level of adherence to CPAP and to acquire the skills and self-confidence necessary to deal with the psychological consequences of their chronic condition. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the lived experience in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and comorbid obesity following after continuous positive airway pressure therapy made with the disease the device, and to identify barriers and facilitators to the use of CPAP to improve rehabilitation provision and aid in disease self-management.MethodsQualitative research was conducted using three focus groups with a representative sample of 32 inpatients undergoing a 1-month pulmonary rehabilitation program at the IRCSS Istituto Auxologico Italiano San Giuseppe Hospital, Verbania, (...) Italy. The focus groups were recorded on tape, and contemporaneous notes were made. The tapes were transcribed verbatim, and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to develop themes.ResultsSix main themes were extracted: Living the diagnosis as a shock; You should not sleep on it: the importance of prevention; The adjustment to CPAP; Barriers and facilitators to the use of CPAP; Three in a bed; and The relationship with the healthcare system.ConclusionResults of this study suggest potential avenues for interventions to increase adherence to CPAP, including the provision of information and continued support. Individual counseling providing strategies aimed at helping the person to cope with the emotional problem and relational difficulties associated with the use of CPAP, and at strengthening self-efficacy and self-management skills are also encouraged for optimal care during the rehabilitation program. (shrink)

It is thought that just as hunger itself, the expectancy to eat impacts attention and cognitive control toward food stimuli, but this theory has not been extensively explored at a behavioral level. In order to study the effect of expectancy to eat on attentional and cognitive control mechanisms, 63 healthy fasting participants were presented with an affective priming spatial compatibility Simon task that included both food and object distracters. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: an “immediate expectancy” group (...) made up of participants who expected to eat immediately after the task and a “delayed expectancy” cohort made up of individuals who expected to eat a few hours later. Slower reaction times toward the food and non-food distracters and a more pronounced effect on the RTs in the incompatible condition [i.e., the Simon effect ] were noted in both groups. The effect of the food and non-food distracters on the RTs was more pronounced in the immediate with respect to the delayed expectancy group. The magnitude of the SE for the food and the non-food distracters was also greater in the immediate with respect to the delayed expectancy group. These results seem to indicate that when the expectancy to eat is short, the RTs are delayed, and the SE is more pronounced when food and non-food distracters are presented. Instead, when the expectancy to eat is more distant, the distracters have less of an effect on the RTs and the correspondence effect is smaller. Our results suggest that the expectancy to eat can modulate both attention orienting and cognitive control mechanisms in healthy fasting individuals when distracting details are competing with information processing during goal directed behavior. (shrink)

More than any other philosopher, Duns Scotus and Simondon both gave extensive consideration to the relation between what is primarily common and what is primarily singular. Pointing to certain resonances between their ideas can help us to develop a theoretical model to decipher the mode of being of the contemporary multitude. This article deals with: 1. The critique that Duns Scotus and Simondon address to everyone who believes that the matter form pair can account for the process of individuation; 2. (...) The gap separating the notion of the « universal » from that of the « common », and therefore, the need to precisely define the ontological and logical status of the « common » without any surreptitious use of categories linked to the « universal 1); 3. The paradoxical relation involving both addition and subtraction - between the individuated individual and « common nature »; and 4. The question of angels , a source of enduring fame in school textbooks for Duns Scotus, re-examined here in the light of Simondon ’s concepts of « transindividuality » and of « collective individuation ». (shrink)

Companies seeking to effectively manage the ethical dimensions of their business have created formal and informal practices, including those with the labels “ethics and compliance” and “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). However, there is little research describing how practitioners who create and implement these practices understand their meaning and relationship. Leveraging a communities of practice theoretical perspective, this qualitative study proposes that these practices can be studied as artifacts of managerial learning. Thematic analysis of interviews with senior managers suggests that practices (...) have diverse meaning, with only informal relationships between them in most cases. Theoretically, this research offers a new lens through which to view compliance and CSR practices as socially negotiated, contextual, and dynamic. Practically, it suggests that there may be new opportunities for learning if managers create practices through an intentional exploration of shared meaning. (shrink)

This article offers an in-depth case study of a global high tech manufacturer that aligned its ethics and compliance, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability practices. Few large companies organize their responsible business practices this way, despite conceptual relevance and calls to manage them comprehensively. A communities of practice theoretical lens suggests that intentional effort would be needed to bridge meaning between the relevant managers and practices in order to achieve alignment. The findings call attention to the important role played by (...) employees who broker understanding between managers and practices, and the boundary objects used to create shared meaning and engagement. They also highlight that an organizing logic is necessary but not sufficient to align practices. This study describes the dynamics of alignment and provides a practical road map for scholars and managers interested in understanding how responsible business practices may be collectively organized. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate possibilities for conceptions of critical thinking beyond the established educational framework that emphasizes skills. Distancing ourselves from the older rationalist framework, we explain that what we think wrong with the skills perspective is, amongst other things, its absolutization of performativity and outcomes. In reviewing the relevant discourse, we accept that it is possible for the skills paradigm to be change‐friendly and context‐sensitive but we argue that it is oblivious to other, non‐purposive kinds (...) of rationality that are indispensable to critical thought. Our suggestion is that there is an aporetic element in critical thought that is missing from contemporary educational positions. We consider some other efforts to redeem the surplus of criticality that performativity fails to take into account and conclude that the aporetic element that we highlight accommodates better than other theories do the significance of thematizing the taken‐for‐granted instead of focusing on problem solving. (shrink)

This article makes the normative case for a differentiated approach to the sovereignty of states over natural resources. In the first half of the article, drawing on the example of the Yasuní-ITT-Initiative, I will argue that countries commit a moral wrong when they exploit natural resources for their own benefit, but that they have the moral right to do so given the current structure of the international system. In the second half of the article, I address the question of whether (...) states' rights over natural resources can be justified. Central to my argument will be the distinction between “control rights” and “income rights.” Only control rights, I will argue, can be justified as inherently tied to collective self-determination. (shrink)

Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude" is a far better tool to analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people." Globalization is forcing us to rethink some of the categories—such as "the people"—that traditionally have been associated with the now eroding state. Italian political thinker Paolo Virno argues that the category of "multitude," elaborated by Spinoza and for the most part left fallow since the seventeenth century, is a far better tool to (...) analyze contemporary issues than the Hobbesian concept of "people," favored by classical political philosophy. Hobbes, who detested the notion of multitude, defined it as shunning political unity, resisting authority, and never entering into lasting agreements. "When they rebel against the state," Hobbes wrote, "the citizens are the multitude against the people." But the multitude isn't just a negative notion, it is a rich concept that allows us to examine anew plural experiences and forms of nonrepresentative democracy. Drawing from philosophy of language, political economics, and ethics, Virno shows that being foreign, "not-feeling-at-home-anywhere," is a condition that forces the multitude to place its trust in the intellect. In conclusion, Virno suggests that the metamorphosis of the social systems in the West during the last twenty years is leading to a paradoxical "Communism of the Capital.". (shrink)

Suppose that, yesterday at noon, Maria considered flipping a fair coin, but didn't. What probability do you assign to "If Maria had flipped the coin, the coin would have landed heads"? Now suppose that, contrary to fact, Maria did indeed flip the coin. In that counterfactual scenario, what is the probability of "The coin will land tails"? The two questions sound strikingly similar. I argue that they sound similar because they are equivalent. The chance of a counterfactual "If A, would (...) C" equals the chance of C, in the counterfactual scenario that A (and a similar principle holds for credence). This principle does better than similar principles that have been defended (like Skyrms' Thesis), avoids triviality, and gives us important clues for a semantics for counterfactuals. (shrink)

Este trabalho teve como objetivo buscar evidência de validade convergente entre a Escala de Motivação para Aprendizagem em Universitários (EMAPRE-U) e a Escala de Avaliação da Motivação para Aprender de Alunos Universitários (EMA-U) e, também, verificar possíveis diferenças entre as variáveis sexo,..

This paper reports two studies investigating the role of culture on the design and personalisation of virtual spaces. The first study was a systematic analysis of 60 MSN virtual spaces belonging to British and Chinese students. The analysis concentrated on design patterns and communication style. The second study was an on-line survey designed to compare the relative importance of cultural values and personality traits on self-reported behaviour with, and preferences for, virtual space design. Results highlighted the importance of culture on (...) design and communication in virtual spaces. Implications for interaction design are discussed. (shrink)

Trata-se, no presente artigo, de analisar as mudanças que historicamente tem ocorrido no EU e as rupturas na apreensâo da realidade. As atuais transformaçoes da realidade teriam levado a um asvaziamento do ser? Ou ainda, a realidade nâo teria mais nada a ver com o sujeito? Como apreender essas transformaçoes? Esta investigaçâo faz-se valer da leitura de Gramsci, por meio da qual a unidade entre se e o pensar aparece como uma possibilidade de superaçao da metafísica do sujeito à elaboraçâo (...) de uma ontología concreta. (shrink)

Introduction -- Media and representation. On the one medium / Eric Gans -- The scapegoat mechanism and the media: beyond the folk devil paradigm / John O'Carroll -- The apocalypse will not be televised / Chris Fleming -- Film. Mirrors of nature: artificial agents in real life and virtual worlds / Paul Dumouchel -- Superheroes, scapegoats, and saviors: the problem of evil and the need for redemption / Joel Hodge -- Sanctified victimage on page and screen: The hunger games as (...) prophetic media / Debra E. Macdonald -- The mimetic e-motion: from The matrix to Avatar / Nidesh Lawtoo -- Apocalypse of the therapeutic: The cabin in the woods and the death of mimetic desire / Peter Y. Paik -- Eyes wide shut: mimesis and historical memory in Stanley Kubrick's The shining / David Humbert -- Against romantic love: mimeticism and satire in Woody Allen's Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona; you will meet a tall dark stranger; and To Rome with love / Scott Cowdell -- A beautiful crisis: Ang Lee's film adaptation of The ice storm / Carly Osborn -- Cowboy metaphysics, the virtuous-enough cowboy, and mimetic desire in Stephen Fears' The hi-lo country / Thomas Ryba -- Television. The self in crisis: watching Mad men and Homeland with Girard and Hegel / Paolo Diego Bubbio -- Media, murder, and memoir: Girardian baroque in Robert Drewe's The shark net / Rosamund Dalziell -- Conversion in Dexter / Matthew John Paul Tan and Joel Hodge. (shrink)

The influential Italian thinker offers three essays in the political philosophy of language. Multitude between Innovation and Negation by Paolo Virno translated by James Cascaito. The publication of Paolo Virno's first book in English, Grammar of the Multitude, by Semiotext in 2004 was an event within the field of radical political thought and introduced post-'68 currents in Italy to American readers. Multitude between Innovation and Negation, written several years later, offers three essays that take the reader on a (...) journey through the political philosophy of language. “Wit and Innovative Action” explores the ambivalence inevitably arising when the semiotic and the semantic, grammar and experience, rule and regularity, and right and fact intersect. Virno unravels the infinite potential and wonders of everyday linguistic praxis and ambiguity. Wit, he argues, is a public performance, and its modus operandi characterizes human action in a state of emergency; it is a reaction, an articulate response, and a possible solution to a state of crisis. “Mirror Neurons, Linguistic Negation, and Mutual Recognition” examines the relationship of language and intersubjective empathy: without language, would human beings be able to recognize other members of their species? And finally, in “Multitude and Evil,” Virno challenges the distinction between the state of nature and civil society and argues for a political institution that resembles language in its ability to be at once nature and history. Few thinkers take the risks required by innovation. Like a philosophical entrepreneur, Virno is engaged in no less than rewriting the dictionary of political theory, an urgent and ambitious project when language, caught in a permanent state of emergency impossible to sustain, desperately needs to articulate and enact new practices of freedom for the multitude. Paolo Virno is the author of several books, including A Grammar of the Multitude, 2004). (shrink)

Some modal expressions in language—for example, "can" and "able'"—describe what is possible in light of someone's abilities. Ability modals are obviously related to other modalities in language, such as epistemic or deontic modality, but also give rise to anomalies that make them unique. This paper develops a general theory of ability modals that is broadly compatible with standard modal semantics, while predicting their peculiar behavior. The central idea is that ability modals include reference to a notion of dependence. At the (...) level of truth conditions, "S is able to A" simply says that there is a circumstantially accessible world where S As. On top of this, a not-at-issue element requires that whether S As depends, in part, on intrinsic features of S. Differently from most analyses, this account divorces ability modals from a notion of agency. (shrink)

Despite the propensity of species introductions to disrupt ecosystems through community disassembly, the use of species translocations is becoming more widely accepted. In this paper, we examine ethical investigations into human migration in an attempt to evaluate how translocation may be justified. Previous attempts to make the analogy between human and species migration have been prone to black and white thinking. We argue that the disagreement between nativist and cosmopolitan approaches to introduced species can be defused by extending the analogy (...) through the migration ethics literature. Additionally, by extending the discussion to the special status of refugees, we are able to develop a theoretical framework for species migrations that acknowledges the risk of species introduction while recognising that special obligations towards endangered species may necessitate the use of translocations. (shrink)

This paper examines Kirzner's contribution to the study of the equilibrating tendency in economics. By analyzing his interpretation of Jevons’ law of indifference, we participate in the debate on Kirzner association with neoclassicals when discussing the equilibrating tendency. A reconstruction of Kirzner’s use of Jevons’ law is conducted, considering his argumentative strategy when presenting the Austrian economics ideas to other professionals in the field. We conclude that Kirzner drew close to neoclassical economics to emphasize the relevance and uniqueness of Austrian (...) economics. By doing so, we highlight the main differences between the two currents of economic thought. (shrink)

The cinema of Martin Scorsese has been analysed in connection with a wide range of themes and issues. In this paper, through a film-philosophical analysis, we aim to demonstrate how his filmography produces storyworlds pervaded by a tension similar to the one Søren Kierkegaard expressed in his existentialist writings. Indeed, one of the tenets of film-philosophy is that audio-visual media generate, in an affective and experiential manner, complex moral and ethical systems and existential viewpoints with which viewers interact in a (...) direct and creative way. Empathising with the self-sacrifice of the unlikely martyr played by Jake LaMotta or feeling the collapsing certainties of a missionary in seventeenth-century Japan are thus occasions to encounter particular conceptual personae. These characters embody specific iterations of Kierkegaardian knights of faith: existentialist figures whose doom takes in ambiguous film ecologies where the desire for wholesomeness constantly clashes with mortality and finitude. (shrink)

Boolean algebras are one of the main algebraic tools in the region-based theory of space. T. Ivanova provided strong motivations for the study of mere semilattices with a contact relation. Another significant motivation for considering an even weaker underlying structure comes from event structures with binary conflict in the theory of concurrent systems in computer science. All the above-hinted notions deal with a binary contact relation. Several authors suggested the more general study of n-ary ‘hypercontact’ relations. A similar evolution occurred (...) in the study of the just mentioned event structures in computer science. To unify the above lines of research, in this paper, we study joining semilattices with a hypercontact relation. We provide representation theorems into Boolean algebras. With a single exception, our proofs are choice-free. We also present several examples and problems; in particular, we briefly discuss some connections with event structures and hypergraphs. (shrink)

Biotechnology's promises has been widely recognized as a major enterprise accelerating the commodification of the biological. After the 9/11 events and the subsequent anthrax letters, biotechnologies have additionally been described as contributing to the construction of biosecurity risks. This paper proposes to investigate the collaboration between the FBI and the DIYbio network as a case study illustrating the productive entanglement of biological risks and promises. To do so, the paper explores the social construction of risks and promises associated with the (...) vision of distributed biotechnologies as enacted in this collaboration. We argue that the FBI needs to police the DIYbio network in order to disseminate a specific notion of bioterrorist risk, while, in a counter-intuitive manner, the DIYbio network benefits from being policed by the FBI as it helps them disseminate their socio-technological vision. If the entanglement of technoscientific risks and promises is a well established finding of the STS literature, our case study suggests that such entanglement now additionally comprises the sphere of biosecurity and the promises of a distributed biotechnology available to everyone. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a design tool, the positioning cards that we have developed, validated, and used in different projects. These cards are built to allow CI4CG and Participatory Design researchers to discuss the political alignment of design projects, in iterative processes of design involving people in the definition of the technological features to be implemented. The background of the cards is the conceptualization of contemporary participatory design as public design, engaging with societally relevant phenomena outside the traditional environment (...) of the workplace. To engage with such an extended dimension of participatory design, we frame our contribution in the contemporary form of capitalism, stressing how contemporary capitalism dispossess the wealth created by social production. In this context, we argue, CI4CG designers need to engage deeply with the theoretical implications of their work. To support this effort, we built the cards combining a political perspective oriented toward nourishing the common—the ensemble of the material and symbolic elements tieing together human beings—with the “affect turn” in the social sciences—therefore including affective dimensions like joy, sadness, and desire in the design of CI4CG technologies. In the final part of the article we discuss how we have used the cards in four different projects. (shrink)

Manuel Chrysoloras was a Byzantine scholar and diplomat. He is best known as the first notable professor of Greek language in Italy. He occupied the chair of Greek at the Florentine Studium, and he also taught Greek occasionally in Pavia, Milan, and Rome. Among his students were some of the prominent early Italian humanists including Leonardo Bruni, Uberto Decembrio, Guarino of Verona, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Palla Strozzi, Roberto Rossi, Jacopo Angeli da Scarperia, Cencio de’ Rustici, and others. His (...) method of teaching Greek language and literature was innovative and was continued by some of his students. He had a significant impact on the revival of Greek studies in the West through his Erotemata, as this work became the central textbook of Greek grammar until the sixteenth century. He was a pioneer of the so-called transferre ad sententiam method for translating Greek texts into Latin, and he was the first who translated Plato’s Republic (in collaboration with his student Uberto Decembrio). His other writings are mainly rhetorical epistles; he engaged in extensive correspondence with many of his contemporaries, eminent humanists and ecclesiastical and political figures, such as the Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus and Coluccio Salutati. He was appointed to a number of important diplomatic missions on behalf of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, and he was in the service of Pisan Pope John XXIII. He spent most of his life visiting the European courts in an attempt to secure help for Byzantium and to negotiate the Union of the Churches. He was an ardent unionist, he participated in the Council of Constance, and he may have converted to Catholicism. (shrink)

An algebraization of the notion of topology has been proposed more than 70 years ago in a classical paper by McKinsey and Tarski, leading to an area of research still active today, with connections to algebra, geometry, logic and many applications, in particular, to modal logics. In McKinsey and Tarski’s setting the model theoretical notion of homomorphism does not correspond to the notion of continuity. We notice that the two notions correspond if instead we consider a preorder relation \( \sqsubseteq (...) \) defined by $a \sqsubseteq b$ if _a_ is contained in the topological closure of _b_, for _a_, _b_ subsets of some topological space. A _specialization poset_ is a partially ordered set endowed with a further coarser preorder relation $\sqsubseteq$. We show that every specialization poset can be embedded in the specialization poset naturally associated to some topological space, where the order relation corresponds to set-theoretical inclusion. Specialization semilattices are defined in an analogous way and the corresponding embedding theorem is proved. Specialization semilattices have the amalgamation property. Some basic topological facts and notions are recovered in this apparently very weak setting. The interest of these structures arises from the fact that they also occur in many rather disparate contexts, even far removed from topology. (shrink)

[Patañjali, Yogasūtras with Bhoja’s Rājamārtaṇḍa Commentary. With an Introduction, Translation, Subcommentary and Notes by Paolo Magnone].

La struttura a livelli modella il tutto e le sue parti con grande generalità. Lo dimostrano le argomentazioni teoriche (4.3), (4.4) e (4.5), e lo comprova la casistica che è stata aggiunta. Una tale struttura non presenta affatto i problemi a), b) e c) che sono tipici della struttura ad albero. Essa corregge inoltre deviazioni concettuali che sono diffuse nel settore informatico. L’immediatezza deviazioni concettuali che sono diffuse nel settore informatico. L’immediatezza visiva, infine, ne facilita la diffusione sul piano professionale (...) e tecnico.Per concludere, ritengo che la struttura a livelli possa fornire un contributo anche alle ricerche di ontologia e in particolare possa favorire i tentativi di unificazione condotti sia sul piano teorico, sia su quello applicativo [Uschold 1996]. Le difficoltà ed i limiti che la teoria degli insiemi oppone ad un formalismo generale (ad esempio quando riduce la casistica della relazione concetto di livello possiede una valenza estremamente ampia e ciò lo predispone per gli auspicati sviluppi ontologici. (shrink)

In this study some typical aspects of human behavior are reconsidered in a new evolutionary perspective. Firstly, a theoretical paradigm is introduced, according to which animals show a natural propensity to maintain behavior far beyond the time when the triggering motivation has been removed;, these drifting conducts are defined as Vestigial Drifting Drives or. Such a paradigm is then applied to those human attitudes that once conferred an adaptive advantage on our species but have now become dysfunctional within the framework (...) of the current ecological crisis. In this context, human beings are considered the repository of VDDs that may play out as evolutionary threats. This thesis is supported by many examples and references that, hopefully, could stimulate scientific debate and further research in evolutionary anthropology, psychology, and related disciplines. (shrink)

The two theories of pancreatic enzyme secretion, those of exocytosis and transmembrane flow, are described. Data thought to support the theory of transmembrane flow of single molecules from pancreatic acinar cells are first reviewed, and the conditions which could allow these data to be explained by the theory of exocytosis of enzyme quanta, i.e. secretory granules, are then discussed.The evidence suggesting short‐term modulation of the composition of pancreatic juice is also considered, and its possible explanations at the organ and cellular (...) level are discussed, in the light of suggested theories on enzyme secretion pathways. (shrink)