Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Este artículo reflexiona sobre formas de acceder a la realidad social a través del uso de metodologías de investigación online que tienen características híbridas. Primero se dan algunas claves para la construcción y ejecución de grupos de discusión en un contexto online. Una de las características centrales de esta técnica es su composición híbrida, moviéndose entre lo que sería un grupo de discusión y un grupo focal. El paso de la mediación a la conducción marca fuertemente la transición de una (...) fase de grupos de discusión a una fase de grupo focal. Segundo, se reflexiona sobre Facebook y algunos posibles usos que se le puede dar a esta red social digital con la finalidad de llevar a cabo de mejor manera técnicas de investigación aplicadas al contexto online. En este sentido, se reflexiona sobre el avatar o perfil de Facebook en dos direcciones: para efectos de la composición muestral de un grupo de discusión online y como material que ayuda al análisis de las posiciones discursivas que tienen los sujetos estudiados. (shrink)

En este trabajo adoptamos una postura crítica, en primer lugar, ante un planteamiento que desde la investigación empírica pretende explicar los fines propios de la educación. Frente a éste proponemos la metodología hermenéutico-crítica para desentrañar cuáles son los fines últimos de la educación. Descubrimos que desde la metodología hermenéutico-crítica es posible enfocar adecuadamente el fin de la educación así como aportar una justificación ética solvente. Profundizando en la dimensión crítica de la hermenéutica, pero sin desvincularla de su quicio experiencial, reparamos (...) en que no basta con interpretar los valores establecidos por la sociedad, sino que es necesario ahondar en el radical ético que justifica la educación como auténtico desarrollo humano de las capacidades morales. Esta experiencia primordial de la educación que hunde sus raíces en el radical humano es una experiencia genuinamente ética. A este respecto, destacamos once claves del enfoque éticohermenéutico y sus ventajas para la determinación del enclave de la educación. (shrink)

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lower-level handwriting and motor skills and higher-order cognitive processes. It is important to allocate mental resources to these high-order processes since these processes place a great demand on cognitive capacity. This is possible when lower-level skills such as transcription are effortlessness and fluent. Given that fluency is a value in virtually all areas of academic learning, schools should provide instructional activities to promote writing fluency from the first stages of learning (...) to write. In an effort to determine if teaching handwriting enhances writing fluency, we conducted a systematic and meta-analytic review of the writing fluency intervention literature. We selected 31 studies: 21 true and quasi-experimental studies, 4 single-group design, 3 single-subject design, and 3 non-experimental studies, conducted with K-6 students in a regular school setting. A total of 2,030 students participated in these studies. When compared to no instruction or non-handwriting instructional conditions, teaching different handwriting intervention programs resulted in statistically significant greater writing fluency. Moreover, three specific handwriting interventions yielded statistically significant results in improving writing fluency, when compared to other handwriting interventions or to typical handwriting instruction conditions: handwriting focused on training timed transcription skills, multicomponent handwriting treatments, and performance feedback. There were not enough data to calculate the impact of sensory-motor and self-regulated strategy handwriting interventions on writing fluency. The significance of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting fluency instruction and guiding future research will be discussed. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In this article, we analyze the relationship between the main dimensions of organizational structure (i.e., formalization, centralization, and complexity) and ecological responsiveness in a sample of 109 firms in the European air passenger transport industry. Broadly confirming our hypotheses, the results show that high formalization of routine tasks favors ecological responsiveness. Structures characterized by high decentralization and low complexity also favor ecological responsiveness. Furthermore, decentralization has a significant, positive relationship with ecological responsiveness among firms with low vertical complexity. Overall, the (...) results indicate that organizational structure plays a major role in ecological responsiveness. (shrink)

Bernard Suits’ groundbreaking work, The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, has profoundly shaped the philosophy of sport. Its sequel, Return of the Grasshopper: Games, Leisure, and the Good Life in the Third Millennium, released in October 2022, enriches scholarly understandings of Suits’ views on games, emphasizing the normative aspects of gameplay and its impact on people’s pursuit of the good life. In this book symposium, world-leading Suits scholars analyze the Suitsian conception of gameplay and its relevance to his views on (...) Utopia outlined in the sequel, covering a wide range of topics. Filip Kobiela explores counterfactual situations in Suits’ oeuvre. Christopher Bartel and Gwen Bradford scrutinize the ethical nature and ramifications of Suits’ claim that life is an unconscious game. R. Scott Kretchmar and John S. Russell present thoughtful critiques of Suits’ musing on Utopia. William J. Morgan’s contribution integrates contemporary work studies to illuminate Suits’ utopia. The symposium concludes with the editors, Francisco Javier Lopez Frias and Christopher Yorke, offering their perspectives on Suitsian Utopia, ethics, and metaethics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we contextualize and introduce the papers that comprise the special issue, “Bernard Suits’ Legacy: New Inspirations and Interpretations.” The articles discuss the work of S...

La paradoja de Moore es el tipo de absurdo de, entre otras cosas, la aserción de una oración de la forma �p pero yo no creo que p�. Propongo una explicación de la paradoja en términos del uso del pronombre personal �yo�. Más aún, recurro a un modelo del uso competente al que me referiré como modelo de la autorreferencia autoconsciente. A continuación, muestro que la explicación introducida es independiente de otras explicaciones recientes basadas en la naturaleza consciente de la (...) aserción y de la creencia. Pero, además, concluyo que está justificado pensar que ni la aserción ni la creencia son de naturaleza consciente. (shrink)

Se trata de revisar el expresivismo respecto a emisiones de la forma "Creo que p". El expresivista sostiene que una emisión de "Creo que llueve" es una expresión, y no una descripción, de la creencia de que llueve. Se propone una variación del expresivismo según la cual una emisión así expresa la creencia consciente de que llueve, en el sentido de la teoría de la conciencia de Brentano: una creencia consciente de que llueve tiene el contenido de que llueve y (...) de que él mismo, el creyente, cree que llueve. (shrink)

There is an argument by M. Dummett about the relative priority of language as a social phenomenon. The first step is to explain how the speaker and the hearer have to know the same language, ceteris paribus. The second step is to show how the speaker's idiosyncratic beliefs depend on his knowledge of common language; the last step is to appeal to Quine's principle of translation between languages in order to have a language at all.

Jackson has ellaborated an argument to show that our experiences or qualitative states gather information which cannot be obtained in any other way. Functionalists reject in many ways that experience may bring new information. The point of this paper is to argue that, if func-tionalism is right, if experiences or "qualia" are not informative, then functionalism cannot report about them. The functionalist criticism of Jackson's argument makes it impossible for any functionalist theory to know experience.

In this article, we scrutinize views that justify exclusionary policies regarding transgender athletes based primarily on physiological criteria. We introduce and examine some elements that deserve...

In this article, I investigate whether states should regulate energy-drink marketing practices targeting gamers. Energy drinks are high-sugar, high-caffeine, non-alcoholic beverages that allegedly improve energy, stamina, cognitive performance, and concentration. First, I define what “gamer” means and identify the market agents that play a crucial role in the gaming community, including the energy-drink industry. In doing so, I analyze energy-drink marketing practices and explore calls for regulating them. Second, I draw parallels between regulation of energy-drink marketing and marketing of products (...) such as video games and comics with explicit violent and sexual content, tobacco, alcohol, and food high in fat, sugar, and salt. Third, I examine arguments to justify regulation of energy-drink marketing practices that target gamers. Lastly, I formulate an autonomy-based argument for regulating such marketing practices. (shrink)

Una experiencia de Teatro en el IES Universidad Laboral. Muestra de Teatro Escolar Gijón.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) shows the state of air pollution in a unique and more understandable way. This work aims to forecast the AQI in Algeciras (Spain) 8 hours in advance. The AQI is calculated indirectly through the predicted concentrations of five pollutants (O3, NO2, CO, SO2 and PM10) to achieve this goal. Artificial neural networks (ANNs), sequence-to-sequence long short-term memory networks (LSTMs) and a newly proposed method combing a rolling window with the latter (LSTMNA) are employed as the (...) forecasting techniques. Besides, two input approaches are evaluated: using only the data from the own time series of the pollutant in the first case or adding exogenous variables in the second one. Several window sizes are employed (24, 28 and 72 hours) with ANNs and LSTMNAs. Additionally, several feature ranking methods are applied in the exogenous approach to select the most relevant lagged variables to feed the models. Results show how the proposed exogenous approach increases the performance of the prediction models. Besides, the newly proposed method LSTMNA provides the best performances in most of the cases evaluated. Hence, it constitutes an exciting alternative to standard LSTMs and ANNs to predict pollutants concentrations and, consequently, the AQI. (shrink)

La filosofía del deporte, al igual que la pedagogía, la historia y otros estudios humanísticos alrededor del fenómeno deportivo, ha permanecido tradicionalmente en un segundo plano en facultades e instituciones educativas, incluso en aquellas cuyo fin es, precisamente, comprender adecuadamente cómo y por qué jugamos del modo que lo hacemos y con qué finalidades (Kretchmar, 2005). En una reciente editorial de la revista Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, Michael McNamee (2015) hace un repaso de la actualidad, exponiendo cómo a pesar de (...) que la disciplina no para de crecer y ganar protagonismo, sobre todo en el ámbito editorial, no acaba de hacerse el hueco pertinente en la academia. (shrink)

In this article, I revise the normative account of sport that I proposed in ‘William J. Morgan’s “conventionalist internalism” approach. Furthering internalism? A critical hermeneutical response.’ I first present Habermas’ discursive ethics, placing emphasis on his interpretation of the relationship between moral (Kantian) and ethical (Hegelian/hermeneutical) principles. Then, I provide a reformulation of my account by both drawing on Habermas and going beyond him—as I go beyond Habermas, I will refer to the account as ‘discourse-ethics based.’ To further explore the (...) normative potential of the account, I connect its main tenets to the three main normative theories of sport (formalism, broad internalism, and deep conventionalism) and illustrate it with examples from anti-doping governance. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, I will identify two key normative principles at the core of Robert L. Simon’s mutualist theory of sport, namely, the respect-for-the-opponent principle and the idea that sport is a practice aimed at pursuing excellence. The former is a Kantian principle grounded in human beings’ rationality, and the latter is an Aristotelian principle related to the development of excellences as a means to human flourishing. After having presented and analyzed both principles, I will critically evaluate Simon’s attempt to (...) combine them within his mutualist approach. To conclude, I will highlight the challenges that mutualism should face to complete such a combination more successfully.Abbreviation: Categorical imperative. (shrink)

In this article, I draw on psychoanalysis to provide a novel understanding of Suits’ theory of games by analyzing the riddle in the Grasshopper’s recurring dream, which Suits presents in his semina...

In this paper, I engage the debate on Suits’ theory of games by providing a Kantian view of Utopia. I argue that although the Kantian aspects of Suits’ approach are often overlooked in comparison to its Socratic-Platonic aspects, Kant’s ideas play a fundamental role in Suits’ proposal. In particular, Kant’s concept of ‘regulative idea’ is the basis of Suits’ Utopia. I regard Utopia as Suits’ regulative idea on game playing. In doing so, I take Utopia to play a double role (...) in Suits’ theory of games. First, it highlights the primary condition of possibility of game-playing, namely, the lusory attitude. Second, it provides a normative criterion that serves as a critical principle to evaluate instances of game playing and as a counterfactual assumption that makes game playing possible. I provide further support for my Kantian interpretation of Suits’ Utopia by bringing to light the anthropological assumptions upon which Utopia is built. In doing so, I argue that both Suits’ theory of games, in general, and his Utopia, in particular, lay out the conditions of possibility of game playing, not an analysis on the life most worth living. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine the legal case involving the Court of Arbitration of Sport, the Union of European Football Associations, and the Turkish team Eskişehirspor to analyze the leg...

In this paper, we explore the issue of the elimination of sports, or elements of sports, that present a high risk of brain injury. In particular, we critically examine two elements of Angelo Corlett’s and Pam Sailors’ arguments for the prohibition of football and Nicholas Dixon’s claim for the reformation of boxing to eliminate blows to the head based on the empirical assumption of an essential or causal connection between brain injuries incurred in football and the development of a degenerative (...) brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy ; and John Stuart Mill’s rejection of consensual domination. We present four arguments to contest the validity of Corlett, Dixon’s and Sailor’s positions. Specifically, we argue that certain autonomy-based arguments undermine paternalist arguments for reform; the nature of the goods people pursue in their lives might justify their foregoing future autonomy; Mill’s argument against consensual domination draws on ambiguous and arbitrary distinctions; the lack of consensus and empirical evidence regarding CTE arising from brain injuries in sport underdetermines calls for reform. We conclude that these proposals for reforming or eliminating sports with high risks of brain injuries are not well founded. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of sport. In the book, Suits investigates two fundamental issues in general p...

Bernard Suits’ account of play as an autotelic activity has been greatly influential in the philosophy of sport. Suits borrows the notion of ‘autotelicity’ from Aristotle’s ethics, formulating diff...

This study attempts to analyse the relationship between two key psychological variables associated with performance in sports - Self-Determined Motivation and Competitive Anxiety - through Bayesian Networks analysis. We analysed 674 university students/athletes from 44 universities that competed at the University Games in México, with an average age of 21 years (SD = 2.07) and with a mean of 8.61 years’ (SD = 5.15) experience in sports. Methods: Regarding the data analysis, first a CHAID algorithm was carried out to determine (...) the dependence links between variables, and then a Bayesian networks was developed. The validation of the BN revealed AUC values ranging from 0.5 to 0.92. Subsequently, various instantiations were performed with hypothetical values applied to the “bottom” variables. Results showed two probability trees that have extrinsic motivation and amotivation at the top, while the anxiety/activation due to worries about performance was at the bottom of the probabilities. The instantiations carried out support the existence of these probabilistic relationships, demonstrating their scarce influence on anxiety about competition generated by the intrinsic motivation, and the complex probabilistic effect of introjected and identified regulation regarding the appearance of anxiety due to worry about performance. (shrink)

In this article, I consider Alkis Kontos’ and Allan Bäck’s critiques to Suits that his theory of games and good living lack ontological grounds or rests on the wrong foundations. Taking these criti...

In this article, we examine scholarly analyses of justice and develop a framework that can help assess the claims from the parties in the Russian state-led doping scandal, including, but not limited to, Russian athletes, non-Russian athletes, the World Anti-Doping Agency, and sport governing bodies. The two key components of this justice framework are pluralism and relationality/contextuality. We argue that a justice framework built upon these elements better captures the nature of justice. We conclude that no party in the Russian (...) state-led doping case has exclusive access to justice. Rather, all the parties have legitimate calls for justice against one another. Thus, the administration of justice will fail to serve justice, in its different meanings, for all parties. (shrink)

Since Sigmund Freud developed and popularized psychoanalysis, this psychological theory has significantly influenced contemporary thinking, particularly in philosophical disciplines focused on understanding human behavior and addressing social problems. Take the examples of political philosophy, race theory, and feminist thought, among many others. However, although sport philosophy qualifies as one such discipline, scholars in this field have given little to no attention to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theorists. Remarkably, psychoanalytical notions, especially those of Eric Berne and Norman O. Brown, significantly shaped Bernard (...) Suits’ pioneering thoughts on games. Nevertheless, sport philosophers have largely overlooked the importance of psychoanalysis in Suits’ examinations of games and, more broadly speaking, rarely attempted to apply psychoanalytical concepts to their analyses of sport. In this paper, I explain the psychoanalytical roots of Suits’ theory of games and explore how much of his theory of games is indebted to psychoanalysis. Specifically, I first compare Suits’ analysis of unconscious gameplay to psychoanalytic concepts of repression and neurosis. Subsequently, I explore the alignment between Suits’ views on gameplay and psychoanalytic accounts of play and pleasure. To conclude, I examine the therapeutic and emancipatory character of Suits’ proposal, drawing parallels between his philosophical corpus and critical theorists whose critical analyses of modern society are heavily indebted to Freud. (shrink)

The emergent Coronavirus Disease 2019 caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 could produce a maternal immune activation via the inflammatory response during gestation that may impair fetal neurodevelopment and lead to postnatal and adulthood mental illness and behavioral dysfunctions. However, so far, limited evidence exists regarding long-term physiological, immunological, and neurodevelopmental modifications produced by the SARS-CoV-2 in the human maternal-fetal binomial and, particularly, in the offspring. Relevant findings derived from epidemiological and preclinical models show that a MIA (...) is indeed linked to an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders in the offspring. We hypothesize that a gestational infection triggered by SARS-CoV-2 increases the risks leading to neurodevelopmental disorders of the newborn, which can affect childhood and the long-term quality of life. In particular, disruption of either the maternal or the fetal cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway could cause or exacerbate the severity of COVID-19 in the maternal-fetal binomial. From a translational perspective, in this paper, we discuss the possible manifestation of a MIA by SARS-CoV-2 and the subsequent neurodevelopmental disorders considering the role of the fetal-maternal cytokine cross-talk and the CAP. Specifically, we highlight the urgent need of preclinical studies as well as multicenter and international databanks of maternal-fetal psychophysiological data obtained pre-, during, and post-infection by SARS-CoV-2 from pregnant women and their offspring. (shrink)

By themselves, mesencephalic subcortical mechanisms provide a preattentive kind of consciousness, related to stimulus-related, short-latency dopamine release triggered by collicular input. Elaborate forms of consciousness, containing identifiable objects (visual, auditory, tactile, or chemical), imply longer-lasting phenomena that depend on the activation of prosencephalic networks. Nevertheless, the maintenance of these higher-level networks strongly depends on long-lasting mesencephalic dopamine release. (Published Online May 1 2007).

While sport has been practised since pre-historic times, it is a relatively new subject of systematic philosophical enquiry. Indeed, the philosophy of sport as an academic sub-field dates back only to the 1970s. Yet, in this short time, it has grown into a vibrant area of philosophical research that promises both to deepen our understanding of sport and to inform sports practice. Recent controversies at the elite and professional level have highlighted the ethical dimensions of sport in particular. Lance Armstrong’s (...) use of performance-enhancing drugs raised new issues in the ethics of cheating, middle-distance runner Caster Semenya has challenged prevailing rules around sex classification in sport, and Oscar Pistorius’s prosthesis has problematized the distinction between able-bodied and disabled sport. While philosophical analysis may help to achieve a deeper understanding of sport, such analysis may also illuminate problems of philosophy beyond sport, ranging from the nature of skill to the ethics of altruism. -/- This entry proceeds in three sections. Section 1 introduces the philosophy of sport with particular emphasis on the history of systematic philosophical thinking about sport. Section 2 examines the nature and value of sport, and it considers the main normative theories of sport developed in the literature. Section 3 addresses a cluster of topics that are central to the philosophy of sport, including: sportsmanship; cheating; performance enhancement; violent and dangerous sport; sex, gender, and race; fans and spectators; disability sport; and the aesthetics of sport. (shrink)

El conocimiento histórico –entendido como un proceso metacognitivo de asimilación constructiva sobre el pasado para explicar fenómenos– comporta un análisis del impacto y la transcendencia de determinados acontecimientos y procesos históricos, en cuya comprensión y valoración influye el concepto de relevancia histórica. Desde esta perspectiva es necesario implementar propuestas de evaluación sólidas, vinculadas al desarrollo competencial. El objetivo de este estudio es diseñar una guía de caracterización de los instrumentos evaluativos –actividades y ejercicios– más utilizados por el profesorado de Historia, (...) con el fin de optimizar los procesos de evaluación de esta competencia mediante una serie de descriptores estructurales, competenciales y transferenciales. Estos indicadores de pertinencia pueden marcar el camino de aquellos docentes que deseen perfeccionar su manera de evaluar lo históricamente determinante. En conclusión, este innovador planteamiento supone un proceso de formación continua del profesorado que contribuye a la mejora de la calidad educativa. (shrink)