This article presents some culture and social influences in the construction of Brazilian identity in the hypermodern society of big cities. For that I’ll analyze the advertising world that represents this contemporanea society. I’ll describe some results of my doctorate thesis defended in May of 2007 with I pointed out the thematic and strategies of publicity persuasions more appeared in the more consumed magazines in Brazil in 2005, mainly the emotional strategies of publicity that are frequently used in this country (...) which I related them to the hypermodern values. Now I point out some reflexions to understand possible social relationships caused from those identities that appear in advertisings. The social media influence the ways of living, so they represent important material to study and comprehend the problems of contemporaneous social relationships. (shrink)

Implementation of formal specifications is very important in formal software development and can be described in terms of simple logical concepts. Formal specifications are presentations of theories in many-sorted first-order logic, and an implementation of a formal specification on another formal specification amounts to an interpretation of the former into a conservative extension of the latter. Here we present and analyse some sort introducing constructs akin to those found in many programming languages. This is of importance because it occurs often (...) in implementing formal specifications, when new sorts are ‘constructed’ from the concrete ones. We specify these constructs and show that these specifications provide extensions with behaviour close to that of the familiar extensions by definitions. (shrink)

Os mitos antigos não estão mortos. A partir desta afirmação fundamentada nas obras de autores como Warburg, Jean Seznec, Erwin Panofsky e Fritz Saxl, este trabalho pretende apontar os caminhos históricos que legitimaram a sobrevivência do mito das sibilas no mundo cristão, em sua estreita relação com a astrologia. O paganismo não renasceu após o medievo, mas esteve sempre presente no cristianismo, não só como símbolos, mas como efetiva influência essencial sobre os homens e as suas vidas. Alguns momentos históricos (...) em particular são privilegiados neste caminho, desde os padres apologistas do cristianismo primitivo até o nascimento da ciência moderna. Sibilas e astrologia, como testemunhos “de fora” são presença constante seja na teologia cristã, seja na literatura e na música, ou nas representações plásticas do mundo cristão, que aqui privilegiamos. A sua sobrevivência ou pós-vida é ora afirmada também pela legitimação de grandes nomes da patrística e da escolástica, e ainda por meio da influência de Albumasar, teólogo muçulmano nascido no século VIII e que faz o elo entre sibilas, astrologia e a Virgem Maria. O que fazem as sibilas nos tetos das igrejas católicas? É esta a pergunta que o presente trabalho pretende, em grande medida, responder. (shrink)

This paper studies a family of monotonic extensions of first-order logic which we call modulated logics, constructed by extending classical logic through generalized quantifiers called modulated quantifiers. This approach offers a new regard to what we call flexible reasoning. A uniform treatment of modulated logics is given here, obtaining some general results in model theory. Besides reviewing the “Logic of Ultrafilters”, which formalizes inductive assertions of the kind “almost all”, two new monotonic logical systems are proposed here, the “Logic of (...) Many” and the “Logic of Plausibility”, that characterize assertions of the kind “many”, and “for a good number of”. Although the notion of simple majority (“more than half”) can be captured by means of a modulated quantifier semantically interpreted by cardinal measure on evidence sets, it is proven that this system, although sound, cannot be complete if checked against the intended model. This justifies the interest on a purely qualitative approach to this kind of quantification, what is guaranteed by interpreting the modulated quantifiers as notions of families of principal filters and reduced topologies, respectively. We prove that both systems are conservative extensions of classical logic that preserve important properties, such as soundness and completeness. Some additional perspectives connecting our approach to flexible reasoning through modulated logics to epistemology and social choice theory are also discussed. (shrink)

La Teoría estética de Adorno es uno de los más logrados intentos por llevar el arte moderno a su concepto. Su punto de partida es el reconocimiento del carácter social del hecho estético así como la resistencia del arte moderno respecto de cualquier finalidad social. Este doble carácter (de hecho social y autonomía) constituye al arte como un elemento crítico al interior de lo social, con lo que el intento de conceptualización toma la deriva de la crítica social. La naturaleza (...) de la crítica estética hace que el arte medie entre lo social y la utopía. (shrink)

Este trabalho, apresentado em forma de ensaio filosófico e pedagógico, propõe experimentar modos outros de escrever e interpretar os conceitos de Michel Foucault. Para desenvolver a analítica, parte-se de três conceitos basilares: saber, poder e subjetividade. A tese que se instaura é que a interpretação se dá na articulação entre movimentos recíprocos de interioridade e exterioridade do sujeito –constituído pelos discursos, pelos jogos de poder e pelas tecnologias de si – que, para significar o mundo, dá nomes e, assim, sentido (...) para a existência. Como resultado, o trabalho propõe pensar a hermenêutica foucaultiana como transgressora, não pelo seu caráter subversivo, mas pela possibilidade de funcionar como ferramenta teórica e metodológica. Interpretar é, nessa perspectiva, projetar o espaço-outro, o tempo-outro e a vida-outra, indagando o impacto da crise anti-intelectualista e negacionista. (shrink)

Este trabalho é de natureza bibliográfica e de revisão de literatura e tem por objetivo fazer uma reflexão sobre as reinvindicações sociais que estão na pauta de grupos que por vezes foram negligenciados por discursos hegemônicos da sociedade. As reinvindicação destes grupos buscam dar visibilidade a lutas por reconhecimento de direitos básicos das mulheres, das pessoas negras, da classe trabalhadora, e de outras vozes que são silenciadas pelo totalitarismo dos discursos hegemônicos. Buscaremos utilizar estudos de Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha e (...) Judith Butler, visando questionar a pretensa homogeneidade e estabilidade das categorias de cultura, etnia e gênero. A partir de uma compreensão de que tais categorias não são estanques, buscaremos questionar algumas vozes preconceituosas que se fundamentam na compreensão homogênea dessas categorias. Além disso, pretendemos apresentar o pensamento de Angela Davis como uma forma de unificar as reinvindicações de classe, etnia e gênero, como meio de dar mais consistência a luta daqueles que muitas vezes são excluídos do pleno exercício da cidadania. (shrink)

Many sentences can be interpreted both as a metaphor and as a literal claim, depending on the context. The aim of this paper is to show that there are discourse-based systematic constraints on the identification of an utterance as metaphorical, literal, or both (as in the case of twice-apt metaphors), from a normative point of view. We claim that the key is contextual coherence. In order to substantiate this claim, we introduce a novel notion of context as a rich and (...) heterogeneous body of information, including previous discourse, elements coming from the surroundings of the utterance, background information, and Questions Under Discussion (QUD) issued from these three sources. We then define contextual coherence as a relation between what we call the minimal paraphrase of the metaphor and the context, and argue that for an interpretation to be coherent two conditions must be met. First, the minimal paraphrase must address some question in the QUD stack. Second, it must be externally consistent, i.e. consistent with the available contextual information. Finally, we argue that an approach based on contextual coherence is better suited to deal with twice-true and twice-apt metaphors than traditional approaches based on semantic deviance or pragmatic lack of fit. (shrink)

IntroductionIndividuals with high scores of perceived stress are more likely to develop arterial hypertension than those with low levels of stress. In addition to this, AH and stress are both independent risk factors for executive function impairment and worse quality of life. Therefore, strategies to control and cope with emotional stress are of paramount importance. However, less is known about the association of PS with EF, QoL, and coping in individuals with hypertension. This study aimed to evaluate the association of (...) PS with EF performance, coping strategies use, and QoL in a sample of hypertensive patients.MethodsWe assessed a group of 45 hypertensive individuals. The EF evaluation was: Frontal Assessment Battery; Controlled Oral Word Association Test—FAS; Letter-Number Sequencing subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Third Edition ; Digit Span subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. The type and frequency of coping strategies used were measured by the Brief Coping with Experienced Problems Scale. The World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire Bref was applied to measure QoL. The associations of the PS with EF performance, coping strategies, and QoL were investigated using univariate and multiple linear regression models adjusted for age, sex, education, systolic pressure, and depression symptoms.ResultsIn the multivariate analyses, higher PS was an independent predictor for a lower frequency of emotion-focused strategy use. However, PS was not significantly related to EF and Qol in this sample. The lower the PS, the greater the use of emotion-focused coping.ConclusionHypertensive individuals with high PS use less frequently positive emotion-focused coping strategies. (shrink)

Tarski presented his definition of consequence operator to explain the most important notions which any logical consequence concept must contemplate. A Tarski space is a pair constituted by a nonempty set and a consequence operator. This structure characterizes an almost topological space. This paper presents an algebraic view of the Tarski spaces and introduces a modal propositional logic which has as a model exactly the closed sets of a Tarski space. • DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n1p47.

In this paper, we propose an account of metaphor identification on the basis of contextual coherence. In doing so, we build on previous work by Nicholas Asher and Alex Lascarides that appeals to rhetorical relations in order to explain discourse structure and the constraints on the interpretation of metaphor that follow from it. Applying this general idea to our problem, we will show that rhetorical relations are sometimes insufficient and sometimes inadequate for deciding whether a given utterance is a case (...) of metaphor. They are insufficient, since rhetorical relations fall short at times of providing a basis for disambiguating between literal and metaphorical interpretations. In such cases, contextual information other than previous discourse needs to enter the picture. To this effect, we bring the idea of external consistency into play. Beyond that, though, we will argue that rhetorical relations are sometimes inadequate to account for coherence, if conceived as relations among sentences only. The reason is that extra-linguistic elements of the situation in which the sentence is uttered may be crucial for getting at the preferred interpretation. To account for these cases, we allow rhetorical relations to connect both with previous discourse and with extra-linguistic situations. In our final refinement of the notion of contextual coherence, we forfeit any appeal to rhetorical relations in favour of Questions Under Discussion (QUD). We defend the view that this account does not only explain the same sort of cases. What is more, it solves the issue of metaphor identification in impoverished contexts. (shrink)

Dysfunction in motor skills can be linked to alterations in motor processing, such as the anticipation of forthcoming graphomotor sequences. We expected that the difficulties in motor processing in schizophrenia would be reflected in a decrease of motor anticipation. In handwriting, motor anticipation concerns the ability to write a letter while processing information on how to produce the following letters. It is essential for fast and smooth handwriting, that is, for the automation of graphomotor gestures. In this study, we examined (...) motor anticipation by comparing the kinematic characteristics of the first l in the bigrams ll and ln written on a digitiser. Previous studies indicated that the downstroke duration of the first l is modulated by the anticipation of the local constraints of the following letter. Twenty-four adult individuals with diagnosis of schizophrenia and 24 healthy adults participated in the study. The classic measures of duration, trajectory, and dysfluency were used for the kinematic analysis of the upstroke and downstroke. In the control group, the duration of the downstroke of the l was longer in ln than ll whereas no differences were found for the group with schizophrenia. Likewise, the control group showed a longer DS trajectory for the l of ln than ll in downstrokes, while the group of patients failed to show this effect. These results suggest that the motor alterations in patients with schizophrenia could also affect their ability for motor anticipation. (shrink)

Rather than focusing on political and legal debates surrounding attempts to determine if and when genocidal rape has taken place in a particular setting, this essay turns instead to a crucial, yet neglected area of inquiry: the moral significance of genocidal rape, and more specifically, the nature of the harms that constitute the culpable wrongdoing that genocidal rape represents. In contrast to standard philosophical accounts, which tend to employ an individualistic framework, this essay offers a situated understanding of harm that (...) features the importance of interdependence and relationality and that conceptualizes harms as embodied and contextual. The paper ultimately reveals what is distinctive about this particular crime of sexual violence by exploring the logic of genocidal rape: genocidal rape involves the harm of forced self-betrayal unleashed relationally, causing victims as representatives of their group to participate inadvertently in the destruction of that group. (shrink)

O principal objectivo do artigo é pensar a educação como um valor intemporal. Apresentar-se-á um duplo sentido que esta intemporalidade pode assumir: A educação surge como um valor essencial, quer ao longo da história, quer ao longo da nossa vida. Tendo em consideração o primeiro sentido proposto, procurar-se-á realçar a sua intemporalidade, nomeadamente em terreno filosófico. Destacar-se-ão, neste sentido, as seguintes obras: A República, de Platão; O Mestre, de Santo Agostinho; Emílio, de Rousseau, e Pedagogia, de Kant. Relativamente ao segundo (...) sentido, quanto à intemporalidade da educação ao longo da vida, destacar-se-ão os quatro pilares fundamentais desta mesma educação, como apresentados no pertinente Relatório para a UNESCO da Comissão Internacional sobre Educação para o século XXI: aprender a conhecer; aprender a fazer; aprender a viver juntos; aprender a ser. Por fim, pretender-se-á evidenciar a grande finalidade comum aos dois sentidos propostos: o aprender a ser. (shrink)

Este trabalho discute os resultados de uma pesquisa de caráter longitudinal, que teve dois anos de duração, cujo objetivo foi investigar como crianças com idades entre 5 e 6 anos, matriculadas em uma instituição de Educação Infantil, se apropriam da linguagem escrita. Utiliza o método instrumental ou histórico-genético, elaborado por Vygotski (1997) e seus colaboradores, para estudar o desenvolvimento das funções psicológicas superiores. Os resultados da pesquisa indicaram que: a) as crianças compreendem a função mnemônica ou de registro antes de (...) terem o domínio do caráter alfabético da escrita; b) os modos como as professoras trabalham a linguagem escrita afetam/ influenciam os processos de apropriação da escrita; c) existem percursos de desenvolvimento da linguagem escrita nas crianças que não são únicos e lineares, mas que dependem das aprendizagens. (shrink)

Este artigo tem por objetivo apresentar, a partir de uma leitura de Paul Ricoeur, a experiência do sofrimento como enigma para a razão e desafio para a fé. Os males éticos e religiosos, compreendidos como transgressão e pecado, estão relacionados a uma atitude ativa, a um fazer. O sofrimento inocente, ao contrário, deve ser pensado a partir da perspectiva da vítima. Como justificar a dor de inocentes vítimas de catástrofes, de doenças incuráveis, de violência? É possível, por exemplo, conferir sentido (...) à experiência do sofrimento de famílias que perdem a luta contra o COVID-19? Se Deus é justo por que ele permite que os inocentes sofram? Com o objetivo de pensar a respeito destas questões dividirei este texto em duas partes. Na primeira, apresentarei como Paul Ricoeur compreende o problema do mal a partir de três dimensões: a ética da transgressão, a religiosa do pecado e a dimensão do sofrimento inocente. Na segunda, mostrarei de que modo Ricoeur pensa o sofrimento como desafio. Para Ricoeur, como veremos, a dialética tradicional não é capaz de conferir significado ao sofrimento inocente. O problema do mal exige a convergência entre pensamento e ação, e a transformação espiritual dos sentimentos. Esta transformação deve conduzir a amar a Deus de modo desinteressado. Ela pressupõe compreensão específica da relação entre amor e justiça. (shrink)

We present an OWL 2 ontology, called SaintGall, representing the Saint Gall plan, one of the most ancient documents arrived intact to us. The Saint Gall plan describes the ideal model of a Benedictine monastic complex that inspired the design of many European monasteries. The structural, functional, and architectural specification of an ideal Benedectine monastery is modeled by the SaintGall ontology, which allows one to analyse and model the Monastery architectural type. This work started with the purpose of relating Catania’s (...) San Nicolò l’Arena Benedectine Monastery with the abstract notion of Benedectine monastery, in the ambit of an ontological model based on the renovation works carried out by the architect Giancarlo De Carlo and developed by the same authors. The SaintGall ontology opens a research path aiming at comparing different monastic architectures that can be useful in any intervention of refurbishment or design for a monastery. (shrink)

El estudio de la motivación de la utilización de los sistemas de control avanzado de música ambiental y el hecho de crear un buen ambiente, una buena experiencia de cara al cliente que entra en un local a realizar una compra debido al atractivo generado por la música es el objetivo de esta investigación. El estudio de las emociones que se derivan de la utilización de la música en locales comerciales y la repercusión que tiene en el comportamiento de compra (...) del consumidor serán analizados con el estudio de varios casos de éxito sobre esta cuestión. (shrink)

Este trabalho tem o intuito de problematizar um conjunto de enunciações, acerca da matemática escolar, de um grupo de dezesseis estudantes concluintes do Ensino Médio noturno, em uma escola pública localizada no Vale do Taquari, ao sul do Brasil. Qualitativa, a investigação fez uso de entrevistas efetivadas por meio da técnica de grupo focal, tendo como aportes teóricos algumas ferramentas foucaultianas, também discutidas por seus comentadores. O material de pesquisa foi gerado em cinco sessões, com duração média de uma hora (...) cada, nas dependências do educandário, com a perspectiva de examinar, na ótica destes estudantes, o lugar ocupado pelas assim chamadas Ciências Exatas, a saber, Matemática, Química e Física. A análise do material de pesquisa permite inferir que, para eles, a Matemática, por um lado, segue com a alcunha de “a rainha das ciências” pois serve de suporte para outras áreas do conhecimento. Por outro, enfatizam a importância de um de seus conteúdos específicos, a Matemática Financeira, nos currículos escolares do Ensino Médio pois, nessa ótica, conhecer e dominar suas regras é imprescindível sobretudo para quem quer empreender. Tais resultados podem fomentar a problematização de duas questões. A primeira delas aponta para a importância de dar voz aos estudantes, notadamente em questões vinculadas ao currículo escolar no Ensino Médio. Não se trata de eximir a escola de suas funções, mas de ouvir os estudantes acerca de suas expectativas em relação aos conteúdos escolares. A segunda questão remonta à ideia das funções da escola na contemporaneidade, tendo em vista as demandas e necessidades do mundo do trabalho e de ascensão econômica e social para todos os estudantes. Palavras-chave: Matemática Financeira. Escola Básica. Estudantes. (shrink)

Approaches to the “Indian Issue” which fail to go beyond the mere charting of evolutions in legal norms or the articulation between neoliberalism and multiculturalism do not allow us to take the full measure of indigenous policies, in terms of the goal set for the enlargement of the spaces for public interpellation and the reconfiguration of ideas and practices pertaining to citizenship. Starting from the Argentine experience, the aim of this article is to examine the question of the sedimentation of (...) neoliberal procedures, in a context marked by the will to re-appropriate national and popular sovereignty over territories and resources. The Indian question thus poses both the problem of the model of development that has been adopted and the question of the characterizing of the pleb (the category of the popular, or of those most underprivileged) as a part of the populus, that is, as part of the people of the nation, and therefore of the demos, understood as the space open to those who can legitimately give form and content to populus and who can put words on the world. (shrink)

Las personas dedicadas a otorgar servicios de la salud tienen el compromiso legal, ético, profesional y humano de velar por la salud y el bienestar de la sociedad. Un médico no sólo debe formarse en el ámbito académico y técnico, también debe construir y trabajar en su ética profesional. La actualización médica continua en medicina basada en evidencia y el continuo adiestramiento en el área práctica y clínica, si bien son de suma importancia, deben ir de la mano con la (...) aplicación de los principios éticos tales como el respeto por la autonomía, la beneficencia, no maleficencia al paciente y la justicia. El análisis de casos clínicos reales a la luz de la ética es un ejercicio muy enriquecedor para trascender en nuestra práctica diaria. No solamente es de gran ayuda para detectar y prevenir conductas que pudieran vulnerar o atentar contra la dignidad de los pacientes, sino para reafirmar el valor y la centralidad de la persona humana en el abordaje médico. (shrink)

Uterus transplantation is a relatively new intervention. A woman with absolute uterine factor infertility receives, by a surgical procedure, a transplanted uterus, most often by living donation. The uterus recipient may thus become pregnant and conceive her own child. As with any other medical treatment, UTx requires legitimation. The anticipated benefits must outweigh the risks of the medical intervention. The risks and benefits of UTx are by no means unequivocal and cannot be easily determined. The benefits depend on the final (...) evaluation of the suffering to be alleviated by the intervention. In the following, we will analyze the suffering addressed by UTx and discuss its normative value. First, we point out that (a) suffering is generally considered an important normative criterion in medicine as well as in the context of UTx; (b) we then describe the risks and anticipated benefits of UTx for the three persons directly concerned: the child, the donor, and the recipient; (c) we further analyze the suffering addressed by UTx. The intervention addresses a form of existential suffering. We discuss the common notion that existential suffering should be evaluated from the subjective perspective of the sufferer; (d) afterwards, we argue that in a social practice like medicine, a one‐sided evaluation stemming from the sufferer alone is not sufficient; and (e) finally, arguments from a societal perspective lead us to the conclusion that the existential suffering addressed by UTx does not possess a sufficiently strong normative value to legitimize a high‐risk, expensive procedure. (shrink)

Considering the high impact strain that the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic has put on medical personnel worldwide, identifying means to alleviate stress on healthcare professionals and to boost their subjective and psychological wellbeing is more relevant than ever. This study investigates the extent to which the relationships between the status of working in healthcare and the subjective and psychological wellbeing are serially mediated by work recovery experiences and the need for recovery. Data were collected from 217 Romanian (...) employees using a cross-sectional design with self-report instruments, during the first stage of the nationwide lockdown. The results of the serial mediation analyses revealed that working in the medical field is indirectly related to subjective and psychological wellbeing through the following: mastery experiences and mastery experiences as an antecedent of the need for recovery. As such, our findings indicate that working in the medical field is, in fact, linked to healthcare professionals’ subjective and psychological wellbeing, and they provide some input on how recovery experiences and the need for recovery intervene in these relationships. Based on these findings, theoretical, methodological, and practical implications were suggested, and future research directions were proposed to maximize healthcare professionals’ wellbeing. (shrink)

: This work focuses on emotional concepts. We define concepts as patterns of neural activation that re-enact a given external or internal experience, for example the interoceptive experience related to fear. Concepts are mediated and expressed through words. In the following, we will use “words” to refer to word meanings, assuming that words mediate underlying concepts. Since emotional concepts and the words that mediate them are less related to the physical environment than concrete ones, at first sight they might be (...) depicted as abstract concepts. Evidence coming from several studies shows, instead, that the issue is more complex. In this work, we will briefly outline the debate and illustrate results from recent studies on comprehension of concrete, emotional and abstract words in children and adults. We will argue that emotional words can be accounted for from a grounded perspective and will contend that emotional words represent a particular set of words that differs from both the concrete and purely abstract ones. Keywords: Embodied and Grounded Cognition; Abstract Concepts; Emotional Words; Language Acquisition; Language Processing La peculiarità delle parole emotive: un approccio basato sulla grounded cognition Riassunto: Questo lavoro si incentra sui concetti emotivi. Intendiamo qui per concetti i pattern di attivazioni neurali che riattivano un’esperienza interna o esterna, per esempio le esperienze interocettive collegate alla paura. I concetti sono mediati ed espressi dalle parole. Di seguito, useremo “parole” in riferimento al significato delle parole, assumendo le parole come veicolo dei concetti. I concetti emotivi e le parole che li esprimono, dal momento che sono meno legati all’ambiente fisico rispetto a quelli concreti, potrebbero essere a tutta prima classificati come concetti astratti. Molti studi invece mostrano come la questione sia più complessa. In questo lavoro illustreremo brevemente il dibattito e i risultati di recenti studi sulla comprensione di parole astratte, concrete ed emotive in bambini e adulti, per mostrare come una prospettiva grounded possa rendere conto delle parole emotive, sostenendo che queste rappresentano un insieme particolare di parole, diverse sia da quelle concrete che da quelle puramente astratte. Parole chiave: Embodied and Grounded Cognition; Concetti astratti; Parole emotive; Acquisizione del linguaggio; Processamento del linguaggio. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza tres cuentos de Edgar Allan Poe (El demonio de la perversidad, El gato negro y El corazón delator). Estos cuentos tienen en común el tema de la perversidad hacia cuya elucidación pretendemos avanzar desde la premisa deleuziana según la cual es preciso volver al espacio literario donde fueron nombradas las perversidades, con el fin de obtener algunas claves de comprensión sobre las causas y consecuencias de la perversidad, así como sobre la naturaleza de estos personajes literarios que, (...) en los tres cuentos citados, se autodefinen como víctimas de esta condición que se encarna en los seres humanos bajo la forma de un demonio. Nos acompañarán en este recorrido los aportes teóricos de Julia Kristeva, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, François Delaporte y Claude-Olivier Doron. (shrink)

Para responder a la pregunta: ¿Qué es la literatura?, Sartre propone el concepto de unidad como su característica exclusiva que la relaciona con la sociedad por la vía del compromiso. Se analiza tal exclusividad, así como las objeciones de Adorno a la noción de compromiso, para encontrar, en medio de sus grandes diferencias, algunas afinidades que permitan establecer las relaciones entre la literatura y la sociedad.

Este trabalho apresenta a experiência de uma abordagem interdisciplinar, desenvolvida na modalidade de pesquisa-ação, no atendimento ambulatorial a um grupo de 20 pacientes em tratamento da hepatite C. As especialidades envolvidas no projeto foram: assistência social, enfermagem, gastroenterologia, ..

This paper reflects on quality assessment and performance evaluation in higher education, namely by analysing the insufficient link between those two aspects. We start by reviewing the current state of the art regarding different processes and mechanisms of quality assessment and performance evaluation and discuss some of the major issues regarding the implementation of some of them. In particular, we analyse the current limitations regarding data collected, available and publicised on the performance of HEIs and the problems those limitations bring (...) to a fair evaluation of higher education. Through this analysis we intend to contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms of evaluation in higher education and the way these may lead to the promotion of better quality assessment practices and institutional management. (shrink)

Background: In the present study, we aimed to better investigate attention system profile of Parkinson's disease-Mild Cognitive Impairment patients and to determine if specific attentional deficits are associated with 123I-FP-CIT SPECT.Methods: A total of 44 de novo drug-naïve PD patients [ with normal cognition and 17 with MCI ], 23 MCI patients and 23 individuals with subjective cognitive impairment were recruited at the Clinical Neurology Unit of Santa Chiara hospital. They were assessed by a wide neuropsychological battery, including Visual Search (...) Test measuring selective attention. Performances among groups were compared by non-parametric tests. Further, Spearman's rank correlations were performed to explore the association between neuropsychological variables and 123I-FP-CIT SPECT data in PD subgroup.Results: PD-MCI patients performed worse on VST than patients with PD-NC, patients with MCI and individuals with SCI. The performance of PD-MCI patients on VST significantly correlated with caudate nucleus 123I-FP-CIT SPECT uptake, whereas a negative correlation between such test and 123I-FP-CIT SPECT uptake in the left putamen was found in PD-NC patients.Conclusions: We suggest that selective attention deficit might be a trigger of cognitive decay in de novo PD-MCI patients. The VST should be routinely used to detect attentional deficits in hospital clinical practice, in the light of its closely association with dopamine depletion of basal ganglia in mildly impaired PD patients. (shrink)