The recent global outspread of the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the lives of people across multiple countries including athletes, coaches, and supporting staff. Along with everybody else, coaches found themselves constrained to an at-home self-isolation, which limited their ability to normally engage with their profession and to interact with their athletes. This situation may also have impacted their own psychological well-being. With this study, we explored coaches’ perceptions of stress in relation to their emotion regulation strategies depending upon their gender (...) and competitive level. A sample of 2272 Italian coaches were surveyed during the period of lockdown. Mean values for perceived stress and emotion regulation strategies were compared to normative data of the two instruments as reported in the original studies. Furthermore, two Multivariate analyses of variance were completed to observe the potential differences in the coaches’ emotion regulation strategies and perception of stress. Finally, a blockwise regression analysis was run to assess how coaches’ emotion regulation strategies impacted upon their perception of stress. Both women and men reported higher levels of perceived stress than those reported in the normative data. Similarly, average scores for emotion regulation strategies were significantly different from those reported for normative data, in particular, coaches reported slightly higher use of emotion regulation strategies than participants in the original study. Significant gender-based differences emerged in terms of emotional regulations, with men adopting more suppression than women. No differences by competitive level were found. In terms of perceived stress, male coaches and elite coaches showed to be more in control of the situation than female coaches and non-elite coaches, respectively, while women experienced more negative stress than men. The blockwise regression evidenced how reappraisal resulted to be predictive in helping coaches to reduce their perception of stress, while suppression predicted higher stress perceptions. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 206 Seiten: 13-35.

When we use secure computer systems, we engage with carefully orchestrated and ordered interactions called “security ceremonies”, all of which exist to assure security. A great deal of attention has been paid to improving the usability of these ceremonies over the last two decades, to make them easier for end-users to engage with. Yet, usability improvements do not seem to have endeared end users to ceremonies. As a consequence, human actors might subvert the ceremony’s processes or avoid engaging with it. (...) Here, we consider whether beautification could be one way of making ceremonies more appealing. To explore beautification in this context, we carried out three studies. Study 1 surveyed 250 participants to derive a wide range of potential dimensions of “beautiful ceremonies”. These statements were sorted into dominant themes and converted into statements, which fed into the second study, with 309 respondents, to reveal the dominant dimensions constituting beauty. Study 3 asked 41 participants to carry out a Q-sort, which revealed the ways that people combine the identified dimensions when characterising security ceremonies as “beautiful”. These studies have allowed us to pin down the perceived dimensions of beauty in the context of security ceremonies, and also to understand how people combine these dimensions in different ways in judging security ceremonies to be beautiful, confirming the old adage of beauty being “in the eye of the beholder”. We conclude by highlighting the constraints imposed by the overarching requirement for security to be maintained in the face of any usability improvements and beautification endeavours. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2016 Heft: 213 Seiten: 123-164.

In the end of the section 219a 10-21 of the 11th chapter of Physics IV Aristotle defines the ‘before and after’ in movement as follows: «The ‘before and after’ in motion is identical ὅ ποτε ὂυ with motion, yet differs from it τò εἶυατ αύτῷ, and is not identical with motion t (11. 19-21)». These lines convey the answer to the question whether the ‘before’ and after’ are the same thing as movement or not: in one sense, ὅ ποτε ὂυ, (...) they are, in another sense, τò εἶυαι, they are not. But, first and foremost, the opposition of ὅ ποτε ὂυ to то τò εἶυαι is very useful to Aristotle to solve the main aporia of the chapter about the contradictory – at a first sight – and concurrent diversity and identity of the instant, τò υῠυ. Therefore, this aporia will be solved, if only ὅ ποτε ὂυ and то τò εἶυαι mean two really opposing points of view. But what are these points of view? What do they really mean? As it is well known, the phrase ὅ ποτε ὂυ is one of the most enigmatic in the Aristotelian corpus, and yet one of the most important in his physical research because concerns the nature and definition of time. The lower was the agreement among the scholars, with greater force the debate has flared up. An alternative way for attempting to successfully tackle the problem is take in consideration the occurrence of the same phrase in other works than Physica, since the other occurrences of it in the 11th and 14th chapter of the same book are of no help. It is present in only two other works: On Generation and Corruption, I, 3, 319b 3 and Parts of Animals, II, 2, 649a 15; II, 3, 649b 24. In both works we are led to take ὅ ποτε ὂυ as being associated to such terms as ύποκεἰμενον and ύπóκειται. So, Aristotle seems to point out a contrast between a formal respect and a material respect by the opposition of τò εἶυαι to ὅ ποτε ὂυ. The reading of all passages from Physics – particularly, 219a 20-21 – wherein ὅ ποτε ὂυ occurs provides further confirmation of this contrast. As matter of fact, in all three works τò εἶυαι was employed by Aristotle for the same purpose: to set out the difference between a substratum of its own and its ability to actually exist just as substratum underlying worldly things. This difference implies that a substratum cannot but be limited by or relating to time. A condition which is emphasized by the presence of the term ποτε. In conclusion, each instant comes out from the division by the ‘before and after’ of movement’s substratum. If this substratum is found to exist in time, the ‘before and after’ turns out to be ‘what that is now and then’ (ὅ ποτε ὂυ), which, reversely, is the same as the ‘before and after’ in the movement. The occurrences of the incomplete phrase (as ὅ ποτε plus other verbal voices than ὂυ) in other works substantiate this view. (shrink)

Noetherian type and Noetherian π-type are two cardinal functions which were introduced by Peregudov in 1997, capturing some properties studied earlier by the Russian School. Their behavior has been shown to be akin to that of the cellularity, that is the supremum of the sizes of pairwise disjoint non-empty open sets in a topological space. Building on that analogy, we study the Noetherian π-type of κ-Suslin Lines, and we are able to determine it for every κ up to the first (...) singular cardinal. We then prove a consequence of Changʼs Conjecture for ℵω regarding the Noetherian type of countably supported box products which generalizes a result of Lajos Soukup. We finish with a connection between PCF theory and the Noetherian type of certain Pixley–Roy hyperspaces. (shrink)

During a Barolo en primeur tasting session, a seasoned wine taster is assailed by a procedural unease which leads him to question the foundations on which his work rests. Sparked off by his reading of Michel Le Gris’ pamphlet Dionysos crucifié, the taster’s objections and perplexities are directed towards teasing out the rules and coordinates of a tasting aesthetic which has become tamed and domesticated, at the service of a narcissistic “tyranny of instant gratification”. Such an approach translates into wines (...) that are beaten into submission by interventionist winemakers, wines that derive from a tasting model that has been pre-emptively cleansed of tension or dissonance so as to exalt products that are easy, reassuring, docile to marketing logic, and increasingly similar. What sort of doubts, what interpretative friction can hope to reacquaint wine criticism with its true and original aims? What relations between the tongue that tastes and the tongue that speaks can respond to the needs of a new approach to wine appreciation, a ‘tasting different’? (shrink)

The law commonly conceived as a norm : deficiency of this conception -- On some general hints of this deficiency, and in particular those evinced by the likely origin of the current definitions of law -- The need to distinguish the distinct legal norms from the legal order considered as a whole. The logical impossibility of defining the legal order as a set of norms -- How the unity of a legal order has been sometimes intuited -- How a legal (...) order is not only a set of norms, as it also encompasses other elements -- How such ements are implicitly postulated by the common inquiry into the distinguishing characteristics of law -- Assessment, from this point of view, of the so-called objectivity of law -- The element of sanction -- The expression "the legal order" -- The essential elements of the concept of law. The law as an institution and the law as a precept -- The preceding doctrine on the concept of institution -- My concept of institution and its fundamental characteristics : 1. The objective existence of the institution; 2. Institution and social body; 3. The institution's selfness; 4. The unity of the institution -- Equivalence of the concept of institution and the concept of a legal order -- Evidence for this equivalence based on the doctrine that the law is only "form" -- Mention of some problems that need solving in the light of this equivalence -- Cases in which the original establishment of a law does not depend on norms, but on the emergence of an institution, and the impossibility of reducing the institution to the norms -- The concept of institution and the international legal order -- The institution and the legal relationship: relationships between more persons -- Relationships between persons and things : examples of some of these relationships that, considered more broadly, cab be portrayed as institutions -- The institution and the legal person -- My conception of the law with respect to certain problems relating to : 1. The legal character of state power; 2. The extension of the state personality; 3. The legal relevance of its territory and citizenry -- Critical assessment of some opinions that attach importance to the legal order only insofar as it reflect relationships between persons. Applications to: 1. The legal sanction; 2. The state territory and citizenship; 3. The state bodies; 4. The limits of the legislative function -- Some consequences of my conception with regard to the subjective aspect of the law: the legal relationship; the status of persons; rights in rem; the correlation between rights and obligations; the equal position of subjects -- Recapitulatory remarks -- The plurality of legal orders and the doctrine that reduces all law to state law -- The untenability of this doctrine from a historical and theoretical point of view -- Its untenability with respect to the existing law -- Non-state legal orders; international law -- Ecclesiastical law -- The order of entities that are considered unlawful or are ignored by the state -- Entities that are regulated by the state, but also have an order of their own which is not recognized by the state (private disciplinary orders; the internal organisation of workplaces; so-called unrecognized associations or institutions, etc.) -- Doctrines that confine the concept of a legal order to the order of communities in general and specifically to necessary communities -- The relations between different legal orders. Principles that have to be taken into account with respect to : 1. Original or derivative institutions; 2. The particular or general ends of institutions; 3. Their diverse basis; 4. Simple or complex institutions; 5. Perfect or imperfect; 6. With or without personality; 7. Independent, coordinated or subordinated -- The concept of relevance of one order to another -- The title for this relevance: a. The relation of superiority and correlative dependence between two orders; b. The relation whereby an order presupposes another; c. The relation whereby reciprocally independent orders depend a further one; d. The relevance unilaterally attributed by an order to another on which it depends; e. The relation of succession between orders -- Diverse aspects (existence, content, effectiveness) expressing the relevance an order to another one. Cases in which the existence of an order depends on another: a. Complete subordination of the former to the latter which directly establishes the former or assigns limited autonomy to it. Independence, as far as its existence is concerned, of an order in case of a less expansive subordination (some spheres of the order of the states of a federal state vis-à-vis the latter; the order of states vis-à-vis international law) and general principles; b. In the hypothesis of an order that represents the presupposition of another (state law vis-à-vis international law) -- The relevance of an order to another with respect to its content. Various cases: a. The superior order as the mediated or unmediated source of an inferior order; the superior order (international law, ecclesiastical concordats) which is not the source, and yet affects the content of inferior orders; b. the Superior order about effects the content of more orders subjected to, which however are independent from each other; c. the order of that itself that determines its own content by considering a subjected or independent order : private international law; ecclesiastical law as it refers to civil laws; the law of the state that refers to ecclesiastical law; d. an order that incorporates another -- The relevance of an order to one another with respect to its effects: external and internal effectiveness of an order. Various cases of external effectiveness: a. The relationships between orders where the one partially or totally depends on the other; b. Relationships between more orders that are independent from each other because of a unilateral disposition of one or each of them. Private international law; civil effectiveness of ecclesiastical law; c. Relationships meeting more orders in which one is of the presupposition of the other; d. Relationships between orders that succeed each other -- Diverse extension of the relevance of an order to another. Applications with regard to the problem of so-called natural obligations -- The irrelevance of an order to another; total or partial, reciprocal or unilateral -- A legal order that as such is irrelevant to another, but it is relevant in other respects (orders that are considered unlawful by the state; corporations, de facto institutions) -- Total developments of an order to another: possibility of such an irrelevance also with respect to the order of the state -- Critical assessment of the opposite doctrine. The limitations of the state order; various figures and consequences; examples of matters that are legally indifferent to the state (private disciplinary orders; particular religious orders; the orders of some non-patrimonial associations; etc.) -- The internal orders of the institutions, especially state ones, vis-à-vis the order of other institutions in which they are included. (shrink)

Aristotle�s account on natural slavery is neither misleading nor paradoxical, but plausible even though controversial, unlike many commentators think of. On his view natural masters are essentially the virtuous people, viz. those who have been perfected in their process of growing, and natural slaves are essentially the vicious people, viz. those who have been injured or corrupted in some way in their growing up so as to suffer from a lack of autonomous practical rationality. Of course, many barbarians are in (...) this state, but there is no need to presume that all of them are. More to the point, some Greeks will be in this state, especially the many and he who the many have a high regard for. Because of this state, slavery is for the better allowing a slave�s life to become more worthwhile as an instrumental part of the master�s living a good life. Particularly, nature requires that some humans will be able to attain happiness some other will not. Masters and slaves are linked through the rational pursuit of happiness by the political community where they play different roles but equally required. Thus, master and slave will form a single system whose working unity does confirm that a clear separation between that which dominates and that is being dominated must always take place for natural things to be according the best standard. (shrink)

‘Nomofanie’ sta per “manifestazioni del nómos”. Nel libro si presentano configurazioni concettuali, problemi teoretici e contesti empirici che sono altrettanti dispositivi nomofanici, cioè produttivi di varie e molteplici manifestazioni di quel nómos che la filosofia del diritto è chiamata ad indagare. Quattro i filosofi più richiamati: Aristotele, Tommaso d’Aquino, Kant e Hegel, che costituiscono una sorta di “quadratura” per pensare alcune questioni critiche del vivere-insieme anche nelle società presenti.

The goal of the present paper is to assess Hans Vaihinger’s understanding of the notion of the given in Die Philosophie des Als Ob. The claim will be advanced that the overall framework of Vaihinger’s theory of knowledge and, more specifically, his understanding of both the given and fictions should be sought for in the manner in which R. Hermann Lotze assesses the problem of knowledge, namely, the relation between thought and being in both his early and late Logik. As (...) we will argue, the way in which Vaihinger recasts the opposition between what is given objectively (data of sensations) and what is added subjectively is to be deemed a direct radicalization of Lotze’s own stance. As the conclusion will further add, what is at stake inVaihinger’s fictionalism is a quite specific understanding of the ideas of reason and transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Social data mining has become an emerging area of research in information and communication technology fields. The scope of social data mining has expanded significantly in the recent years with the advance of telecommunication technologies and the rapidly increasing accessibility of computing resources and mobile devices. People increasingly engage in and rely on phone communications for both personal and business purposes. Hence, mobile phones become an indispensable part of life for many people. In this article, we perform social data mining (...) on mobile social networking by presenting a simple but efficient method to define social closeness and social grouping, which are then used to identify social sizes and scaling ratio of close to “8”. We conclude that social mobile network is a subset of the face-to-face social network, and both groupings are not necessary the same, hence the scaling ratios are distinct. Mobile social data mining. (shrink)

This study deals with an exploratory research about understanding of art in students of different age, grades and kind of schools attended. In particular, we analysed how beliefs and reflections about art and aesthetical experiences expressed during a cross-age interview, changed in elementary school children involved for two years in a UE Project titled “Philosophy and European Contemporary Art”. The activities are based on guided philosophical discussions, transforming the classroom in a “community of inquiry”, according to the methodology of “Philosophy (...) for Children” program . The elementary school group was tested pre and post the program activities. A qualitative analysis of the students’ answers was carried out, considering the data with respect to the five stages of art understanding defined by Micheal Parsons which correspond to different beliefs about art in the subjects. (shrink)

El ordenamiento jurídico de Santi Romano es, sin duda alguna, una obra fundamental. Y no es la circunstancia concreta de presentar ahora la obra al lector español la que dicta estas palabras, sino que las recojo conociendo plenamente el valor objetivo que ellas tienen; sobradamente tendremos ocasión de ver la consideración que la obra de Romano recibe por parte de la doctrina, como de un auténtico y verdadero hito en el desarrollo del pensamiento jurídico contemporáneo. De ahí precisamente que (...) no trate de llevar a cabo ni un análisis crítico de la misma, ni menos aún de la obra de Romano en general; tal pretensión de enjuiciamiento limitaría casi con lo grotesco, por carecer de toda autoridad en el campo de la dogmática general del Derecho, que es en el que, en concreto, se mueve Santi Romano en la obra que presentamos. Estas páginas, por el contrario, pretenden tener una finalidad mucho más modesta: simplemente presentar la obra al lector español, formulando al mismo tiempo algunas aplicaciones concretas de la tesis ordinamental en el campo específico del Derecho administrativo. Sebastián Martín Retortillo. (shrink)