Shades of Schadenfreude. A phenomenological account of pleasure at another’s misfortune

In the present essay I would like to explore the different meanings of the emotion named Schadenfreude from a perspective integrating Plato’s and Aristotle’s moral philosophy with the analyses of phenomenological anthropologists such as Scheler, Plessner and Blumenberg. In the first half of my essay I will focus on Aristotle’s distinction between, on the one hand, a pleasure at another’s misfortune which does not necessarily obstruct pity in the opposite position and provides relief from indignation, and a malicious pleasure at another’s misfortune (epichairekakia) understood as the opposite of envy. In the second half of the essay I will examine the link between the joy involved in Schadenfreude and laughter by asking whether and to what extent this contemplative emotion contributes to the emergence of a theoretical attitude

Naturalness and Historicity: Strauss and Klein on the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns

Nell'articolo si esaminano i diversi modi in cui Leo Strauss e Jacob Klein interpretano il bisogno di riaprire l'annosa disputa tra antichi e moderni. Il loro obiettivo è di rispondere alla crisi della ragione sancita dalla Prima Guerra Mondiale. Ci si sofferma in particolare sul modo in cui la filosofia intende la propria dimensione naturale e la propria dimensione storica. Le posizioni di Strauss e Klein appaiono a riguardo speculari. Mentre Strauss pensa che il ritorno al pensiero antico possa superare l'approccio storicistico che ha spesso caratterizzato la filosofia moderna e riscoprire l'attenzione per la natura delle cose, Klein pensa invece che il ritorno al pensiero antico possa condurre l'uomo moderno a riscoprire le origini sedimentate del proprio approccio filosofico. Il modello filosofico di Strauss è quello del commentario medievale, che riconosce l'autorevolezza di Platone e Aristotele, mentre Klein pensa che si possa fare teoria attraverso un'analisi storico filosofica di come nel corso delle epoche cambiano i paradigmi filosofici di riferimentoIn the current article I discuss the different ways in which Leo Strauss and Jacob Klein interpret the need of reopening the hoary quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. Their task is to response to the crisis of reason characterizing European thought and the style of life after the First World War. This provides me with the opportunity to address the issue of how philosophy should face the problem of its naturalness and historicity. I argue that Strauss’s position can be understood as the mirror-image of that of Klein. Strauss thinks that the return to the ancients could overcome the historicist approach to fundamental issues characterizing modern philosophy, and consequently arise the problem of the nature of things over again. Klein thinks that the return to the ancients can lead modern man back to the hidden roots of its typical philosophical approach. The model for Strauss’s approach to philosophical eternal issues is the medieval commentary. On the contrary, Klein holds that the philosopher should devote himself, or herself, to doing history of philosophy, by reconstructing how philosophical paradigms changes over the centuries

The Situated Mind and the Space of Reasons. On the Match and Mismatch between Pragmatism and Phenomenology

In this article, I discuss the primacy that, following Sellars, Robert Brandom ascribes to the intersubjective and discursive space of reasons over all other processes in which the human mind is involved. I will compare Brandom’s perspective with that of the situated approach to the study of mind. At first, my aim is to show that the origin of intentionality has to be found in the sphere of sentience and the living body. Second, by comparing the enactivist account of language that derives from the naturalization of Husserl’s phenomenology with the neo-pragmatist approach to the linguistic turn, I argue for a heuristic primacy owing to the linguistic practice of giving and asking for reasons. This allows me to reflect with a meta-philosophical approach on to what extent two families of views such as pragmatism and phenomenology, with their different variants, interact in the attempt to blend things together, i.e., nature and culture; mind and world; and what happens inside the human body and what happens outside it

Charge doping and large lattice expansion in oxygen-deficient heteroepitaxial WO3

Tungsten trioxide is a versatile material with widespread applications ranging from electrochromic and optoelectronic devices to water splitting and catalysis of chemical reactions. For technological applications, thin films of WO3 are particularly appealing, taking advantage from high surface-to-volume ratio and tunable physical properties. However, the growth of stoichiometric, crystalline thin films is challenging because the deposition conditions are very sensitive to the formation of oxygen vacancies. In this work, we show how background oxygen pressure during pulsed laser deposition can be used to tune the structural and electronic properties of WO3 thin films. By performing X-ray diffraction and low-temperature transport measurements, we find changes in WO3 lattice volume up to 10%, concomitantly with an insulator-to-metal transition as a function of increased level of electron doping. We use advanced ab initio calculations to describe in detail the properties of the oxygen vacancy defect states, and their evolution in terms of excess charge concentration. Our results depict an intriguing scenario where structural, electronic, optical, and transport properties of WO3 single-crystal thin films can all be purposely tuned by a suited control of oxygen vacancies formation during growth

Superconducting quantum point contact with split gates in the two dimensional LaAlO3/SrTiO3 superfluid

One of the hallmark experiments of quantum transport is the observation of the quantized resistance in a point contact formed with split gates in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures. Being carried out on a single material, they represent in an ideal manner equilibrium reservoirs which are connected only through a few electron mode channel with certain transmission coefficients. It has been a long standing goal to achieve similar experimental conditions also in superconductors, only reached in atomic scale mechanically tunable break junctions of conventional superconducting metals, but here the Fermi wavelength is so short that it leads to a mixing of quantum transport with atomic orbital physics. Here we demonstrate for the first time the formation of a superconducting quantum point contact (SQPC) with split gate technology in a superconductor, utilizing the unique gate tunability of the two dimensional superfluid at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) interface. When the constriction is tuned through the action of metallic split gates we identify three regimes of transport: (i) SQPC for which the supercurrent is carried only by a few quantum transport channels. (ii) Superconducting island strongly coupled to the equilibrium reservoirs. (iii) Charge island with a discrete spectrum weakly coupled to the reservoirs. Our experiments demonstrate the feasibility of a new generation of mesoscopic all-superconductor quantum transport devices.Comment: 18 page

Epitaxial growth and thermodynamic stability of SrIrO3/SrTiO3 heterostructures

Obtaining high-quality thin films of 5d transition metal oxides is essential to explore the exotic semimetallic and topological phases predicted to arise from the combination of strong electron correlations and spin-orbit coupling. Here, we show that the transport properties of SrIrO3 thin films, grown by pulsed laser deposition, can be optimized by considering the effect of laser-induced modification of the SrIrO3 target surface. We further demonstrate that bare SrIrO3 thin films are subject to degradation in air and are highly sensitive to lithographic processing. A crystalline SrTiO3 cap layer deposited in-situ is effective in preserving the film quality, allowing us to measure metallic transport behavior in films with thicknesses down to 4 unit cells. In addition, the SrTiO3 encapsulation enables the fabrication of devices such as Hall bars without altering the film properties, allowing precise (magneto)transport measurements on micro- and nanoscale devices.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Exploiting Feature Selection in Human Activity Recognition: Methodological Insights and Empirical Results Using Mobile Sensor Data

Human Activity Recognition (HAR) using mobile sensor data has gained increasing attention over the last few years, with a fast-growing number of reported applications. The central role of machine learning in this field has been discussed by a vast amount of research works, with several strategies proposed for processing raw data, extracting suitable features, and inducing predictive models capable of recognizing multiple types of daily activities. Since many HAR systems are implemented in resource-constrained mobile devices, the efficiency of the induced models is a crucial aspect to consider. This paper highlights the importance of exploiting dimensionality reduction techniques that can simplify the model and increase efficiency by identifying and retaining only the most informative and predictive features for activity recognition. More in detail, a large experimental study is presented that encompasses different feature selection algorithms as well as multiple HAR benchmarks containing mobile sensor data. Such a comparative evaluation relies on a methodological framework that is meant to assess not only the extent to which each selection method is effective in identifying the most predictive features but also the overall stability of the selection process, i.e., its robustness to changes in the input data. Although often neglected, in fact, the stability of the selected feature sets is important for a wider exploitability of the induced models. Our experimental results give an interesting insight into which selection algorithms may be most suited in the HAR domain, complementing and significantly extending the studies currently available in this field

Inclusion of predatory journals in Scopus is inflating scholars’ metrics and advancing careers

Copper (Cu) interconnect lines are widely used in advanced, high-density integrated circuits (ICs), large-area flat panel displays, and many nano and microelectronic and optoelectronic products. Compared with aluminum (Al), Cu has many advantages, such as the higher conductivity and longer lifetime. However, Cu is difficult to etch into fine lines using the conventional plasma etching method because the reaction product is nonvolatile. Another problem of Cu interconnect lines is that it has poor adhesion to the dielectric film unless an adhesion layer is used. Recently, Kuo’s group solved the etching problem with a novel room-temperature process that consumes the Cu thin film with a plasma reaction and then removes the reaction product with a liquid solution. This method has been used in the fabrication of ICs and TFT LCDs. One of the most critical issues in applying Cu lines in products is the reliability – electromigration (EM) lifetime prediction. As the IC keeps shrinking, the geometry effect on the lifetime of the thin Cu line is important especially for advanced products. Previously, Kuo’s group had studied temperature and mechanical bending effects on the Cu fine line’s lifetime. Geometry effects on the lifetime of the Al or Al-Cu alloy line have also been discussed before. However, there are few reports on the geometry effect on the Cu fine line prepared by the plasma-based etch process. In this research, the author investigated the relationship between the Cu line width or length and the EM failure time. The change of the line resistance with the stress time has also been studied. The capping layer effect is very important in multi-layer devices. There were some research studies on Cu capping layer before, i.e., Ag layer to protect Cu oxidation and SiN layer as interlayer dielectrics. However, few studies had been done on the TiW capping layer effect on plasma etched Cu lines. In this study, the TiW capping layer effect on lifetime has been studied