Se, con i new media, è lecito sperare in un mondo umano

This paper focuses on the risks and opportunities associated with the way people use new media. In this context, we propose that more attention must be paid to language in order to create new dynamics within the humanities

Challenges in approximating the Black and Scholes call formula with hyperbolic tangents

In this paper, we introduce the concept of standardized call function and we obtain a new approximating formula for the Black and Scholes call function through the hyperbolic tangent. Differently from other solutions proposed in the literature, this formula is invertible; hence, it is useful for pricing and risk management as well as for extracting the implied volatility from quoted options. The latter is of particular importance since it indicates the risk of the underlying and it is the main component of the option’s price. That is what trading desks focus on. Further we estimate numerically the approximating error of the suggested solution and, by comparing our results in computing the implied volatility with the most common methods available in the literature, we discuss the challenges of this approach

Quo vadis, Self? - A Comment on "The Importance of Sensing One's Movements in the World for the Sense of Personal Identity" by Haselager, Broens & Quilici Gonzalez

Quo vadis, Self? Commento a The Importance of Sensing One's Movements in the World for the Sense of Personal Identity di Haselager, Broens e Quilici GonzalezRiassunto: Il presente testo discute il nucleo teorico dell’argomentazione proposta da Haselager, Broens e Quilici Gonzalez in The Importance of Sensing One’s Movements in the World for the Sense of Personal Identity, secondo cui il movimento spontaneo è il fattore corporeo più rilevante rispetto alla genesi dell’identità personale nei processi psichici. Questo lavoro cerca inoltre di mostrare come tale principio possa essere ricompreso in un quadro epistemologico che renda conto della duplice dinamica sottesa alla costituzione del sé, data dall’intersezione fra il Mind-Body Problem e il Mind-Culture Problem. Le interpretazioni suggerite concernono la possibilità di ancorare le esperienze del’io alle sensazioni corporee intese come manifestazioni di un’ontologia della carne, e alla matrice semiosica interente sia l’attività del movimento che la proto consapevolezza della potenzialità del movimento stesso. Infatti, anche nei primi movimenti che generano la sensazione di essere “qualcuno” e non “qualcosa” si innesca una ricerca di senso realizzata progressivamente come individuazione di una direzione, ossia la presa in carico di una meta e l’elaborazione di un progetto.Parole chiave: Agentività; Soggettività; Tecnologie del corpo; Ontologia della carne; Culturalismo metodologico. Abstract: This paper discusses the core arguments proposed by Haselager, Broens & Quilici Gonzalez in their paper The Importance of Sensing One’s Movements in the World for the Sense of Personal Identity, according to which spontaneous movement is the most relevant bodily factor with respect to the genesis of personal identity in human psychic processes. Moreover, this research aims to show that this principle could be included in an epistemological framework that can account for the double dynamic underlying the constitution of the Self, given by the intersection between the Mind-Body Problem and the Mind-Culture Problem. The paper suggests that it is possible to bind “I”-Experiences on the one hand to bodily sensations, understood as manifestations of a “flesh ontology”, and on the other to a semiotic matrix which is related to both the activity of movement and the proto-awareness of the potentiality for movement itself. Indeed, the early movements that generate the sensation of being “someone” and not only “something” already trigger a search for sense which is progressively carried out by determining a direction, i.e. choosing a goal and working out a strategy to reach that goal.Keywords: Agency; Subjectivity; Body Technologies; Flesh Ontology; Methodological Culturalism

“Little things make big things”. A psycholinguistic analysis of immigrants’ life stories of cultural integration in Italy

Within the last decades, the global economical revolution which has invested the labor market has prompted calls for a redefinition of traditional human resource management practices. The rapid growth of ethnic diversity in the workplace has turned managers' attention to the management of difference. Yet, cross cultural management has become a priority for most organizations interested in improving competitiveness and in enhancing their human (multicultural) capital. In view of the above, the present study aimed at investigating the process of cultural integration experienced by a group of 12 immigrants workers employed in different Italian organizations. Moving from an applied psycholinguistics perspective, the study collected narrative interviews as to understand the impact that the new cultural experience may have had on the sense-making procedures used to integrate and reshape their personal and professional identity. The discursive data were processed through Diatextual Analysis as to catch the psychological and linguistic features binding identities to texts and to contexts of experience

Forecasting interest rates through Vasicek and CIR models: a partitioning approach

The aim of this paper is to propose a new methodology that allows forecasting, through Vasicek and CIR models, of future expected interest rates (for each maturity) based on rolling windows from observed financial market data. The novelty, apart from the use of those models not for pricing but for forecasting the expected rates at a given maturity, consists in an appropriate partitioning of the data sample. This allows capturing all the statistically significant time changes in volatility of interest rates, thus giving an account of jumps in market dynamics. The performance of the new approach is carried out for different term structures and is tested for both models. It is shown how the proposed methodology overcomes both the usual challenges (e.g. simulating regime switching, volatility clustering, skewed tails, etc.) as well as the new ones added by the current market environment characterized by low to negative interest rates.Comment: Research artcile, 23 pages, 8 figures, 7 table