8,123 research outputs found
A critical analysis of happiness and well-being. Where we stand now, where we need to go
This paper aims to critically analyse happiness and well-being to find novel ways for theorizing and promoting better life conditions for individuals and societies. The necessity to shift from a subjective view of individual well-being to a more social and contextual version of these constructs is the common thread running throughout the whole work. To this end, the first part introduces the reader into the complexity of the happiness and well-being scholarship by outlining some of the most relevant approaches developed by the psychological and economic literature. After highlighting the limitations of both disciplines, the second part of the paper presents some alternative models, namely the Feminist Economics, the Capabilities Approach, and the model of Four Qualities of Life. In addition to these, we will draw attention, in the last section, to the Critical Community Psychology approach to happiness and well-being. Our main argument is that this emerging discipline bears the potential to frame the pursuit of the good life in a whole new fashion that takes into account a) contextual features, in particular the recourses that a given environment offers and the opportunity to access them, b) the role of power, justice, and liberation, and c) the value of participation, reciprocity, and ethics of care. Current limitations of CCP are also discussed and future directions outlined
From "Gomorrah Domain" to "Don Peppe Diana Lands". A Southern Italian Experience of Work-Based Liberation, Community Networking, and Well Being
The article describes working experiences in relation to empowering activities, which have been carried out in a local community in the province of Caserta (in Southern Italy), a place characterized by the widespread presence of organized criminal groups. In this study, workplace is intended as a community network aimed at the promotion of coscientization, liberation, and well-being. Specifically, this paper features initiatives and projects aimed at establishing new community values through a re-construction of a work-based social system standing against criminal clans, which tend to dominate not only economical transactions but also civil life
CCD and photon-counting photometric observations of asteroids carried out at Padova and Catania observatories
We present the results of observational campaigns of asteroids performed at
Asiago Station of Padova Astronomical Observatory and at M.G. Fracastoro
Station of Catania Astrophysical Observatory, as part of the large research
programme on Solar System minor bodies undertaken since 1979 at the Physics and
Astronomy Department of Catania University. Photometric observations of six
Main-Belt asteroids (27 Euterpe, 173 Ino, 182 Elsa, 539 Pamina, 849 Ara, and
984 Gretia), one Hungaria (1727 Mette), and two Near-Earth Objects (3199
Nefertiti and 2004 UE) are reported. The first determination of the synodic
rotational period of 2004 UE was obtained. For 182 Elsa and 1727 Mette the
derived synodic period of 80.23+/-0.08 h and 2.981+/-0.001 h, respectively,
represents a significant improvement on the previously published values. For
182 Elsa the first determination of the H-G magnitude relation is also
presented.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in Planetary and Space
Scienc
Primary teachersâ beliefs and emotional disposition towards mathematics and its teaching
As researches in mathematics education and as teacher educators we are strongly interested in facing the question âwhat is necessary for teaching mathematics effectivelyâ. The main directions of research emphasize the cognitive side of the answer to this question. In our view, attention from a purely cognitive dimension has to shift to a wider view encompassing also an affective plane, focusing on teachersâ beliefs, emotions and attitudes. We conducted a study to investigate the attitude towards mathematics and its teaching of 189 primary school pre-service teachers. We used as tool a questionnaire composed by questions focused on the three components of attitude (emotional disposition, view, perceived competence), declined along the two dimensions of mathematics and its teaching, according to the TAMT-model. In this paper we discuss some of the results regarding the relationships among the different components of the model with a particular attention to the links among past experiences as students, present, and future perspectives as future teachers
Attualità della fenomenologia?
Si pu\uf2 parlare di una attualit\ue0 della fenomenologia e, in particolare, della fenomenologia di Edmund Husserl? Negli ultimi decenni, insomma, si \ue8 realizzata una \u201cstrana\u201d parabola, che ha condotto a un suo singolare \u201critorno\u201d. In un orizzonte post-heideggeriano, la fenomenologia rappresenta la possibilit\ue0 per la filosofia di non rinunciare al rigore, di interagire positivamente con la ricerca scientifica, di mettere in questione le ipotesi esplicative totalizzanti, metafisiche o scientifiche, in una metodica fedelt\ue0 alla manifestativit\ue
Feynman graphs and the large dimensional limit of multipartite entanglement
We are interested in the properties of multipartite entanglement of a system
composed by -level parties (qudits).
Focussing our attention on pure states we want to tackle the problem of the
maximization of the entanglement for such systems. In particular we effort the
problem trying to minimize the purity of the system. It has been shown that not
for all systems this function can reach its lower bound, however it can be
proved that for all values of a can always be found such that the lower
bound can be reached.
In this paper we examine the high-temperature expansion of the distribution
function of the bipartite purity over all balanced bipartition considering its
optimization problem as a problem of statistical mechanics. In particular we
prove that the series characterizing the expansion converges and we analyze the
behavior of each term of the series as .Comment: 29 pages, 11 figure
Spectral Graph Convolutions for Population-based Disease Prediction
Exploiting the wealth of imaging and non-imaging information for disease
prediction tasks requires models capable of representing, at the same time,
individual features as well as data associations between subjects from
potentially large populations. Graphs provide a natural framework for such
tasks, yet previous graph-based approaches focus on pairwise similarities
without modelling the subjects' individual characteristics and features. On the
other hand, relying solely on subject-specific imaging feature vectors fails to
model the interaction and similarity between subjects, which can reduce
performance. In this paper, we introduce the novel concept of Graph
Convolutional Networks (GCN) for brain analysis in populations, combining
imaging and non-imaging data. We represent populations as a sparse graph where
its vertices are associated with image-based feature vectors and the edges
encode phenotypic information. This structure was used to train a GCN model on
partially labelled graphs, aiming to infer the classes of unlabelled nodes from
the node features and pairwise associations between subjects. We demonstrate
the potential of the method on the challenging ADNI and ABIDE databases, as a
proof of concept of the benefit from integrating contextual information in
classification tasks. This has a clear impact on the quality of the
predictions, leading to 69.5% accuracy for ABIDE (outperforming the current
state of the art of 66.8%) and 77% for ADNI for prediction of MCI conversion,
significantly outperforming standard linear classifiers where only individual
features are considered.Comment: International Conference on Medical Image Computing and
Computer-Assisted Interventions (MICCAI) 201
Prospective teachers' interpretative knowledge: giving sense to subtraction algorithms
The process of interpretation and assessment of studentsâ mathematical productions represents a crucial aspect of teachersâ practices. In such processes, teachers rely on the so-called interpretative knowledge, which includes particular aspects of their mathematical and pedagogical knowledge, their view of mathematics, and their values. In this paper, we analyze and discuss prospective primary teachersâ interpretative knowledge gained through their assessment of different subtraction algorithms
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