We start this Volume 13 with the usual Editorial Note reviewing the main features of Economics and Business Letters. EBL is an online letter-type journal, free both for authors and readers, covering all areas of economics and business and with theoretical and empirical letters.

Background: Nurses who practice limitation of therapeutic effort become fully involved in emotionally charged situations, which can affect them significantly on an emotional and professional level. Objectives: To describe the experience of intensive care nurses practicing limitation of therapeutic effort. Method: A qualitative, phenomenological study was performed within the intensive care units of the Madrid Hospitals Health Service. Purposeful and snowball sampling methods were used, and data collection methods included semi-structured and unstructured interviews, researcher field notes, and participants’ personal letters. (...) The Giorgi proposal for data analysis was used on the data. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Ethical Research Committee of the relevant hospital and by the Ethics Committee of the Rey Juan Carlos University and was guided by the ethical principles of voluntary enrollment, anonymity, privacy, and confidentiality. Results: In total, 22 nurses participated and 3 themes were identified regarding the nurses’ experiences when faced with limitation of therapeutic effort: (a) experiencing relief, (b) accepting the medical decision, and (c) implementing limitation of therapeutic effort. Conclusion: Nurses felt that, although they were burdened with the responsibility of implementing limitation of therapeutic effort, they were being left out of the final decision-making process regarding the same. (shrink)

Metallothioneins (MTs) are ubiquitous proteins with the capacity to bind heavy metal ions (mainly Cd, Zn or Cu), and they have been found in animals, plants, eukaryotic and prokaryotic micro‐organisms. We have carried out a comparative analysis of ciliate MTs (Tetrahymena species) to well‐known MTs from other organisms, discussing their exclusive features, such as the presence of aromatic amino acid residues and almost exclusive cysteine clusters (CCC) present in cadmium‐binding metallothioneins (CdMTs), higher heavy metal‐MT stoichiometry values, and a strictly conserved (...) modular–submodular structure. Based on this last feature and an extensive gene duplication, we propose a possible model for the evolutionary history of T. thermophila MTs. We also suggest possible functions for these MTs from consideration of their differential gene expressions and discuss the potential use of these proteins and/or their gene promoters for designing molecular or whole‐cell biosensors for a fast detection of heavy metals in diverse polluted ecosystems. (shrink)

Proponemos una revisión crítica a una corriente interpretativa de base lingüística de las religiones prerromanas del área indo-europea de la Península Ibérica que se ha venido desarrollando durante los últimos quince años; para ello tomamos como referencia un reciente trabajo de B.M. Prósper (Lenguas y religiones del occidente de la Península Ibérica, Salamanca, 2002) en el que se exponen los puntos de vista de dicha hipótesis interpretativa. Nuestro trabajo revisa sus tres planteamientos metodológicos básicos: su consideración de dichas religiones como (...) cultos idolátricos, su base evolucionista decimonónica y su manifiesto anti-dumezilianismo. Nuestra propuesta consiste en integrar el aporte de la lingüística dentro del ámbito de la Historia de las Religiones como un tipo de análisis que contribuya, con otros, a la construcción de hipótesis explicativas del fenómeno religioso de dichas sociedades. (shrink)

In recent decades, the expansion of economic activity has been accompanied by negative environmental impacts. In response, there have been dramatic changes worldwide in terms of an increased demand for environmentally friendly products and services. To achieve these eco-innovations, firms have sought to acquire knowledge and implement operational flexibility by cooperating with different agents such as universities through a value cocreation system that is also expected to enhance firms’ performance. Using a sample of 250 companies, the present paper examines the (...) role of cooperation with universities in the development of diverse environmental innovations and building operational flexibility and, through this, improving firm performance. Results show that firms that value cooperation with universities develop a wider range of environmental innovations and increase their sales and benefits. (shrink)

Drawing on the natural-resource-based view, we propose that employee stakeholder integration is linked to environmental performance through firms’ proactive environmental strategies, and that this link is contingent on shared vision. We tested our model with a cross-country and multi-industry sample. In support of our theory, results revealed that firms’ proactive environmental strategies translated employee stakeholder integration into environmental performance. This relationship was pronounced for high levels of shared vision. Our findings demonstrate that shared vision represents a key condition for advancing (...) the corporate greening agenda through proactive environmental strategies. We discuss implications for the CSR and the environmental management literatures, with a particular focus on the NRBV and stakeholder integration debates. (shrink)

Consideramos que uno de los principios basales de las democracias representativas, es el que determina “Una persona, un voto”, debe ser reformulado, debido a que mediante el mismo hemos edificado un sistema socio-político, que estableció, precisamente lo contrario, tanto en términos teóricos como prácticos, de lo que se ufana como definición y que por ende se propuso como finalidad. La frase fetiche que pretendemos erradicar, podríamos circunscribirla en una falacia de “finalidad”, es decir plantea un estado de situación potencial, ideal, (...) de posibilidad hacia; de ninguna manera, puede ser considerado un principio respetable, legítimo o hasta formalmente correcto. El planteo que trazamos parte de la realidad de que todos, no sólo somos, sino que significamos, o poseemos un valor distinto para ese estado que nos promete aquello imposible, incumplible y utópico. La variable determinante es la presencia que el estado ha tenido o no, en el desarrollo de las vidas de los ciudadanos aptos para votar. Utilizaremos el límite de la consideración de pobreza, de acuerdo a las estipulaciones de organismos internacionales, que será el báculo para sostener porque el concepto de compensación se torna central, sí es que pretendemos una democracia que se precie de ser representativa de la voluntad del pueblo. Dentro del contexto o insertos en lo que se da en llamar “filosofía latinoamericana”, que sostiene como uno de sus principios la opción del pobre, creemos que el voto de estos tiene un valor diferente, de cinco, a diferencia de los que no están en tal situación. (shrink)

Aberrations introduced by the atmospheric turbulence in large telescopes are compensated using adaptive optics systems, where the use of deformable mirrors and multiple sensors relies on complex control systems. Recently, the development of larger scales of telescopes as the E-ELT or TMT has created a computational challenge due to the increasing complexity of the new adaptive optics systems. The Complex Atmospheric Reconstructor based on Machine Learning is an algorithm based on artificial neural networks, designed to compensate the atmospheric turbulence. During (...) recent years, the use of GPUs has been proved to be a great solution to speed up the learning process of neural networks, and different frameworks have been created to ease their development. The implementation of CARMEN in different Multi-GPU frameworks is presented in this paper, along with its development in a language originally developed for GPU, like CUDA. This implementation offers the best response for all the presented cases, although its advantage of using more than one GPU occurs only in large networks. (shrink)

Koselleck en su escrito Futuro Pasado, considera que la historia conceptual permite la comprensión del pensamiento socio-político ya que los conceptos son las herramientas con las que los actores de un momento histórico articularon sus estructuras socio-políticas, y proyectaron diversas expectativas sobre su futuro. Por otra parte, la implementación de la historia conceptual en el estudio del pensamiento socio-político latinoamericano, ofrece a la historia social y a la filosofía política una nueva mirada sobre la consolidación, el cambio o desaparición de (...) las sociedades, sus instituciones y sus conceptos políticos fundamentales. Ahora bien, en este escrito presento una aproximación sobre la libertad y su importancia como concepto fundamental del pensamiento socio-político, en el periodo de la Regeneración, en tres momentos. Primero, describo los lineamientos generales de la historia conceptual. Segundo, expongo la influencia de la historia conceptual en el estudio del pensamiento socio-político latinoamericano. Finalmente, establezco las posibilidades del análisis del concepto libertad durante el periodo de la Regeneración. (shrink)

In a critique of Heidegger that respects his path of thinking, Francisco Gonzalez looks at the ways in which Heidegger engaged with Plato’s thought over the course of his career and concludes that, owing to intrinsic requirements of Heidegger’s own philosophy, he missed an opportunity to conduct a real dialogue with Plato that would have been philosophically fruitful for us all. Examining in detail early texts of Heidegger’s reading of Plato that have only recently come to light, Gonzalez, in (...) parts 1 and 2, shows there to be certain affinities between Heidegger’s and Plato’s thought that were obscured in his 1942 essay “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” on which scholars have exclusively relied in interpreting what Heidegger had to say about Plato. This more nuanced reading, in turn, helps Gonzalez provide in part 3 an account of Heidegger’s later writings that highlights the ways in which Heidegger, in repudiating the kind of metaphysics he associated with Plato, took a direction away from dialectic and dialogue that left him unable to pursue those affinities that could have enriched Heidegger’s own philosophy as well as Plato’s. “A genuine dialogue with Plato,” Gonzalez argues, “would have forced [Heidegger] to go in certain directions where he did not want to go and could not go without his own thinking undergoing a radical transformation.”. (shrink)

Scientific theories are pure theoretical models integrated by a categorical scaffolding. Marx built a pure theoretical model that he called the capitalist mode of production; the historicity of its categories expresses the modes of production from which the capitalist comes and others that followed different paths. It also implies the existence of social formations in which a dominant mode of production and dominated forms of production coexist. The agrarian community is the highest form reached in the community entity and from (...) it comes the peasant economic unit generated in the parcelling of the land during the ancient form and gestation of capitalism, which is why the construction of a peasant mode of production does not proceed. (shrink)

_Dialectic and Dialogue_ seeks to define the method and the aims of Plato's dialectic in both the "inconclusive" dialogues and the dialogues that describe and practice a method of hypothesis. Departing from most treatments of Plato, Gonzalez argues that the philosophical knowledge at which dialectic aims is nonpropositional, practical, and reflexive. The result is a reassessment of how Plato understood the nature of philosophy.

Seen from the point of view of evaluation conditions, a usual way to obtain a connexive logic is to take a well-known negation, for example, Boolean negation or de Morgan negation, and then assign special properties to the conditional to validate Aristotle’s and Boethius’ Theses. Nonetheless, another theoretical possibility is to have the extensional or the material conditional and then assign special properties to the negation to validate the theses. In this paper we examine that possibility, not sufficiently explored in (...) the connexive literature yet.We offer a characterization of connexive negation disentangled from the cancellation account of negation, a previous attempt to define connexivity on top of a distinctive negation. We also discuss an ancient view on connexive logics, according to which a valid implication is one where the negation of the consequent is incompatible with the antecedent, and discuss the role of our idea of connexive negation for this kind of view. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia la ciudad ha constituido el espacio por excelencia de la democracia. Esta es la razón por la que reconstruyendo la cambiante funcionalidad de los espacios urbanos podemos rastrear la genealogía de la esfera pública. Este artículo aborda el estudio de las prácticas democráticas a través de los lugares de la ciudad en los que se han desarrollado, particularmente las plazas públicas. Las plazas se presentan desde esta perspectiva como un espacio agonístico añadido a las (...) instituciones formales de representación política. (shrink)

We start from an understanding of the human person as a communicative and symbolic reality. We emphasise the more subjective aspect of education, as showing the best of the person (educere) by creatively appropriating the treasures of history (educare). With these premises, we approach narratives that are surprising for the heterodoxy (resistance) they manifest, with respect to the social reality in which they were written, in the 1st century, in which they were written. In this approach it becomes evident that (...) the interruption of the silence of women, which appears in these narratives, shows the radical value of the human personal reality, opening an egalitarian educational space. (shrink)

La idea de ciudadanía conlleva las nociones de derechos, pertenencia política y obligaciones cívicas. El distinto énfasis sobre cada uno de estos elementos nos remite a tradiciones histórica e intelectualmente distintas en su concepción. No obstante, el principio de la autonomía de las identidades, tal y como se reclama en numerosos países nacionalmente plurales, plantea todo un desafío a la forma en que tradicionalmente se han venido planteando las virtudes políticas de la ciudadanía, Este artículo parte de una revisión histórica (...) de las nociones liberal y republicana de la misma, analiza su relación con la idea de la nacionalidad y termina con una reflexión sobre la lealtad como virtud política y las condiciones para su posible reformulación como patriotismo federal en los Estados plurinacionales. (shrink)

The lockdown resulting from coronavirus disease 2019 has had a huge impact on peoples’ health. In sport specifically, athletes have had to deal with frustration of their objectives and changes in their usual training routines. The challenging and disruptive situation could hold implications for their well-being. This study examined the effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on changes in athletes’ reported eudaimonic well-being and goal motives over time. The relationship of resilience to changes in subjective vitality was also determined, and changes (...) in athletes’ goal motives were examined as potential mediators. Participants were 127 Spanish university athletes aged between 18 and 34 years. Approximately 4 months before the start of the lockdown in Spain, athletes responded to a questionnaire assessing their resilience, goal motives, and subjective vitality. Around 6 months later into the lockdown period, athletes’ goal motives and subjective vitality were assessed again. Growth modeling using hierarchical linear models revealed a significant decrease of autonomous goal motives and subjective vitality during the lockdown, but athletes did not show change over time in controlled goal motives. Path analysis, adjusting T2 measures for their corresponding T1 measures, showed that resilience significantly predicted changes in athletes’ autonomous goal motives, which then accounted for changes in subjective vitality. The indirect effect was significant. Resilience did not predict changes in athletes’ controlled goal motives. However, changes in controlled goal motives negatively predicted changes in subjective vitality during lockdown. The findings suggest negative impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on athletes’ goal motives and eudaimonic well-being. Results also support the hypothesized mediational role of autonomous goal motives in the relationship between resilience and subjective vitality during the lockdown. As such, findings confirm the relevance of resilience to a key feature of athletes’ eudaimonic well-being and the importance of enhancing their autonomous goal striving. (shrink)

Research is being conducted on how corn and the llama, extremely modest elements linked to everyday Andean life, had a prominent religious significance in pre-Hispanic Peru and continue to assume, in much of the Andean Quechua culture, syncretic connotations as a result of more than five centuries of cultural and religious transformations. Likewise, a religious duality is established between these - which seems to be the organizing matrix of the complex symbols of the Andean Quechua culture - that manifests itself (...) in a series of symbolic relationships of opposition, complementation, and analogical and homological equivalence. The theoretical perspective is to conceive religion as a cultural system, with its subjective and symbolic dimension in the terms of Clifford Geertz, and with its objective dimension as proposed by Manuel Marzal. For the study, significant ethnographic work has been carried out in the peasant communities of Lorensayocc and Anansayocc in the Quinua district and in others in Ayacucho region. Additionally, chronicles and other ethnographic sources referring to Cusco and Puno, in southern Peru, have been reviewed. (shrink)

Concern about air-quality in urban areas has led to the implementation of Low Emission Zones as one of many other initiatives to control it. Recently in Spain, the enactment of a law made this mandatory for cities with a population larger than 50k inhabitants. The delimitation of these areas is not without controversy because of possible negative economic and social impacts. Therefore, clear assessments of how these initiatives decrease pollutant concentrations are to be provided. Madrid Central is a major initiative (...) of Madrid city council for reducing motor traffic and the associated air pollution in the city centre. This Low Emission Zone starts at the end of 2018, but the first fully-operational period corresponds to the second quarter of 2019. In this work, a methodology based on the Gaussian Process to analyse the evolution of Nitrogen Dioxide inside Madrid Central is undertaken. A Gaussian Process is a stochastic process suitable for interpretable model selection and predictions. Due to its probabilistic nature it provides error estimation at predictions. After the activation of Madrid Central, a relevant reduction of Nitrogen Dioxide has been observed. However, the role of the meteorology during this period must be ascertained to correctly evaluate the role of the activation of the Low Emission Zone against a prone weather. In this work, a model based on the Gaussian Process is trained with meteorological information to predict the concentration of Nitrogen Dioxide at Madrid Central, $[NO_{2}]$. This probabilistic description allows extracting statistical information on the reduction affected by the meteorological scenario and separately by the Madrid Central activation. (shrink)

In the recently published 1924 course, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, Martin Heidegger offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's definition of kinesis in the Physics. This interpretation identifies entelecheia with what is finished and present‐at‐an‐end and energeia with being‐at‐work toward this end. In arguing against this interpretation, the present paper attempts to show that Aristotle interpreted being from the perspective of praxis rather than poiesis and therefore did not identify it with static presence. The paper also challenges later variations of Heidegger's (...) interpretation, in particular his account of dunamis in the 1931 course on Metaphysics Theta, which insists that its mode of being is presence‐at‐hand. By arguing that this reading too is untenable, the paper concludes that Aristotle's metaphysics is not a metaphysics of presence and that his texts instead point toward a possibility of metaphysics ignored by the attempts of Heidegger and others to overcome it. (shrink)